Day 3 - Lent Reading, Meditation, & Reflection

SCRIPTURE READING - DAY 3

"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned…this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:1-3, NIV)

MEDITATION

Jesus and His disciples met a blind man near the temple, probably droning the beggar’s plea: “O tenderhearted, by me gain merit.” The Pharisees viewed him with contempt: “You were steeped in sin at birth!” (v. 34). The Rabbis traced physical disease to moral causes: “...the sick is not healed, till all his sins are forgiven.” Jews blind from birth could not recite Shema, the centerpiece of Jewish faith: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart …” (Deut. 6:4) Some tried magical cures, tying a cord to themselves and a dog. After the dog ate meat on a dunghill from seven houses, Rabbis untied the cord, intoning: “Let the blindness…pierce the eyeballs of the dog!” They said blindness continued into Sheol: “...every man would appear after death exactly as he had been in life, whether blind, dumb, or halting…afterwards God would heal.”

Imagine this man’s burdens! He stumbled along the stone streets of Jerusalem, bumped into walls, fell, and constantly needed help, even going to the toilet. He endured jeers and pranks from cruel children. He received little respect and was not treated with dignity. He begged because his parents were poor—perhaps from caring for him! He could not recite Shema. Unable to see impurities, he could not enter the temple. Possibly he tried superstitious cures. Even after death he anticipated further blindness. The idea that God punished him for his or his parents’ sin led to guilt, resentment against his parents or anger toward God. Then Jesus’ words came like a refreshing breeze.

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned… this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” “Not my fault? Nor my parents’?” Guilt, resentment and despair dissipated like fog in the morning sun. “My blindness, an opportunity for God’s work?”

Cautiously, hope dawned.

REFLECTION

1. Reflect on some of your “misfortunes.” Do you see them as divine judgments or divine opportunities?
2. Imagine yourself as the blind man in the text. How would you feel? What would Jesus’ words mean to you?
3. Have you ever prayed for freedom from pain, but it didn’t come?
4. Ask Jesus: “What are You saying to me through this story?”

Mike Crow, CRM

Ash Wednesday

Intro to Lent, 2009

Lent is approaching -- Ash Wednesday is tomorrow.

At the Mid-Peninsula Vineyard we are in a season of reflecting on what it means to live out an authentic Christian spirituality. The Lenten season is a great opportunity for us (individually and corporately) to put into practice some of what we're learning. For instance, identifying with Jesus and his grief and loss over the condition of humankind as he prepares to offer himself as the ultimate sacrifice for the sin that separates us from a holy and righteous God will instruct us in identifying with our own grief and loss. Additionally, Jesus models for us, on his way to the cross, what it means to live in brokenness and vulnerability. Jesus, possessing within his being the power that created our universe, still chose to submit his will to the Father's. (Meekness, for instance, is not to be confused with weakness - it is the power of our potential under God's control.)

For many Christ-followers, even those in the liturgical traditions, Lent can be a mystery. For some, Lent is a period of going on a diet; for others Lent a time when their Catholic friends wear ashes on their foreheads and eat fish on Fridays. Many evangelicals have found themselves strangely attracted to Lent, but know little about the Lenten season. Whatever your theological or denominational bent, we highly recommend exploring the season known as Lent.

The word Lent comes from the Teutonic (or, Germanic) word for springtime. The purpose of Lent is to be a season of reflection through prayer, fasting, repentance (of personal as well as corporate sins), simplicity, and re/focusing on an authentic Christian spirituality. The objective of our reflection is to grow closer to Jesus Christ. Thus it is fitting that the season of Lent begin with a symbol of repentance: placing ashes mixed with oil on one's head or forehead.

In practical terms, Lent is the 40+ day season before Easter. In the West Lent liturgically lasts from Ash Wednesday until Holy Thursday (often referred to as Maundy Thursday). The evening of Holy Thursday begins the The Easter Triduum, which lasts from Holy Thursday to the Evening Prayer of Easter Day. However, Lenten fasting and reflection continue until the end of Holy Week, and all of Holy Week is included in the traditional 40 day Lenten fast (despite Lent ending liturgically on Holy Thursday). While Sundays are excluded from the Lenten fasting and abstinence restrictions, and are not numbered in the traditional "40 Days" of Lent, they are still part of the Lenten season. Thus, the way Lent is observed in the West can be a bit tricky -- because the actual modern liturgical season of Lent (lasting 44 days, including Sundays) is numbered slightly differently than the traditional 40 day Lenten fast, which excludes Sundays (Get it?)

Here, to launch us into the Lenten season, is a reflection that acknowledges the brokenness of our lives and in our world and encourages us to find repentance through Christ...

Black History -- Some Distinctive Moments

Pictured to the right of President Obama (above) is Frederick Douglass, an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman, and reformer. Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in African-American and United States history.

William Lloyd Garrison & Harriet Tubman -Abolitionism & the Underground Railroad (1831)
The early abolition movement in North America was fueled both by slaves’ efforts to liberate themselves and by groups of white settlers, such as the Quakers, who opposed slavery on religious or moral grounds. Though the lofty ideals of the Revolutionary era invigorated the movement, by the late 1780s it was in decline, as the growing southern cotton industry made slavery an ever more vital part of the national economy. In the early 19th century, however, a new brand of radical abolitionism emerged in the North, partly in reaction to Congress’ passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the tightening of slave codes in most southern states. One of its most eloquent voices was William Lloyd Garrison, a crusading journalist from Massachusetts, who founded the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator in 1831 and became known as the most radical of America’s antislavery activists. Antislavery northerners—many of them free blacks—had begun helping fugitive slaves escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. Known as the Underground Railroad, the organization gained real momentum in the 1830s and eventually helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 slaves reach freedom. Harriet Tubman, its most celebrated —conductor,” was a former slave who married a free black man and escaped from Maryland to Philadelphia in 1849.

Jackie Robinson (1947)
By 1900, the unwritten color line barring blacks from white teams in professional baseball was strictly enforced. Jackie Robinson, a sharecropper’s son from Georgia, joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1945, after a stint in the U.S. Army (he earned an honorable discharge after facing a court–martial for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus). His play caught the attention of Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had been considering bringing an end to segregation in baseball. Rickey signed Robinson to a Dodgers farm team that same year and two years later moved him up, making Robinson the first African–American player to play on a major league team. Robinson played his first game with the Dodgers on April 15, 1947; he led the National League in stolen bases that season, earning Rookie of the Year honors. Over the next nine years, Robinson compiled a .311 batting average and led the Dodgers to six league championships and one World Series victory. Despite his success on the field, however, he encountered hostility from both fans and other players. Members of the St. Louis Cardinals even threatened to strike if Robinson played; baseball commissioner Ford Frick settled the question by threatening to suspend any player who went on strike.

Martin Luther King Jr has A Dream (1963)
On August 28, 1963, some 250,000 people—both black and white—participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the largest demonstration in the history of the nation’s capital and the most significant display of the civil rights movement’s growing strength. After marching from the Washington Monument, the demonstrators gathered near the Lincoln Memorial, where a number of civil rights leaders addressed the crowd, calling for voting rights, equal employment opportunities for blacks and an end to racial segregation. The last leader to appear was the Baptist preacher Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who spoke eloquently of the struggle facing black Americans and the need for continued action and nonviolent resistance. —I have a dream,” King intoned, expressing his faith that one day whites and blacks would stand together as equals, and there would be harmony between the races: —I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” King’s improvised sermon continued for nine minutes after the end of his prepared remarks, and his stirring words would be remembered as undoubtedly one of the greatest speeches in American history. At its conclusion, King quoted an —old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” King’s speech served as a defining moment for the civil rights movement, and he soon emerged as its most prominent figure.

The 44th President of the United States of America: Barack Obama (2008)
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. The product of an interracial marriage—his father grew up in a small village in Kenya, his mother in Kansas—Obama grew up in Hawaii but discovered his civic calling in Chicago, where he worked for several years as a community organizer on the city’s largely black South Side. After studying at Harvard Law School and practicing constitutional law in Chicago, he began his political career in 1996 in the Illinois State Senate and in 2004 announced his candidacy for a newly vacant seat in the U.S. Senate. He delivered a rousing keynote speech at that year’s Democratic National Convention, attracting national attention with his eloquent call for national unity and cooperation across party lines. In February 2007, just months after he became only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction, Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. After withstanding a tight Democratic primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, Obama defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona in the general election that November. Obama’s appearances in both the primaries and the general election drew impressive crowds, and his message of hope and change—embodied by the slogan —Yes We Can”—inspired thousands of new voters, many young and black, to cast their vote for the first time in the historic election.

Some links for more learning:

• http://www.history.com/home.do
• http://www.tntech.edu/history/bhmonth.html
• http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/
  

Why Go There?

This Sunday we will be addressing the issue of living in brokenness and vulnerability from three passages - 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, Romans 7:7-8:1, and Matthew 5:3. Certainly this feels counter-intuitive to most of us. Don't we prefer wholeness to brokenness? Don't we prefer invincibility to vulnerability? Could it be that the pathway to wholeness and invincibility leads us through the valleys of brokenness and vulnerability?

The pressure to present an image of ourselves as strong and spiritually "together" hovers over most of us. What we see in the Bible however is that it presents the flaws and weaknesses of its heroes. This reminds us that "every human being on earth regardless of their gifts and strengths, is weak, vulnerable, and dependent on God and others" (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, pg. 34).

“A theology of brokenness embraces our spiritual poverty, our questions, our doubts, our desire for love, hope and redemption, and reminds us that the stink and the beauty are all wrapped up into one.” Kathy Escobar

Mistakes are not forever, God loves us as sinners and that the task of Christianity is not to teach us how to live, but to teach us how to live again, and again, and again.

Here's a one-paragraph overview of Jenn Gaskin's sermon from Feb 1st...

God has created each and every person to be a jaw-dropping masterpiece, but our “issues” can get in the way of God’s glory being revealed in our lives. God invites us to get more in touch with our issues by beginning to notice our own super-charged responses-- either of emotions or actions, our own overly-charged communication, and our own repeated delusional ideas for a solution to our current problems. When we notice these three strains, we don’t want to ignore them AND we don’t want to give in to them or follow our emotions around. Instead, we want to listen to their signal and keep in a yielding place to God, knowing that eventually He will fulfill the desires of our hearts.

Wow.

Bullet Points from Sun (2/8)

Yesterday, our topic was "Enlarging Your Soul Through Grief and Loss." We looked at how Jesus engaged grief and loss by looking at the gospel passages related to the Garden of Gethsemane (see previous post).

[Also, it sounds like I generated some good dialogue through my comments on racism. Just to be clear... I believe that Anglos (white-folks) carry a cultural propensity toward racism. And that until we admit it, we can't really begin to be free from it. I'm not insisting that I am right about this, only that it is my current thinking (and has been for quite a while). My objective is to encourage people to think, pray, and dialogue. Remember, unity is not a goal, but a fruit -- the fruit of knowing, respecting, and relaeasing one another to be who God has called us to be.]

RE: Gethsemane passages -- If I were a gospel writer I might have conveniently forgotten to add this text to the narrative...

1. This text depicts an unsettled – and unsettling Jesus. In this text Jesus is a little more human than we’re comfortable with...
2. In the West, we like our heroes steely, strong, and dignified (like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, etc.). This is not the mighty, victorious Jesus that we are used to seeing depicted.
3. Part of the mystery of Jesus is that he was both fully God and fully human. (Maximus the Confessor)
4. In the passage we see the MAN, Christ Jesus deeply struggling with the fulfillment of his calling.
5. What’s Jesus struggling with? While we can’t REALLY know the depths of his struggle – we know he was facing total abandonment by his Father in heaven, betrayal by a beloved friend, he struggled with facing the physical agony of a torturous death. And how could we possibly know what it would feel like to bear the full weight of every sin that was ever committed – and would ever be committed?? Every act of injustice, every murder, every rape, every racist act, every adulterous act, every incestuous act, every lie, every bribe – the full weight of every sin for all time was bearing down on the Man, Christ Jesus.
6. These moments in the Garden of Gethsemane become THE defining moment in the history of the world… where the Man, Christ Jesus chooses, by an act of human will – empowered by the HS, the Father’s will and desire over his own – and he fully embraces grief and loss.

What does Jesus teach us about prayer? That we should ask away -- "This is what I want…" YET MORE IMPORTANTLY, "I want to want what You want God."

How Enlargement Happens…

1. Pay attention to the interruptions.

• Avoid superficial forgiveness. Pete Scazzero make a pretty bold statement in EHC: “I do not believe it is possible to truly forgive another person from the heart until we allow ourselves to feel the pain of what was lost. People who say it is simply an act of the will, do not understand grieving” (pg 157).
• So, how do we pay attention? 1) We need to stop and feel. It may spending time in thought and prayer – or it may be journaling… 2) It would be helpful to read the journaling, poetry, and prose of the Bible writers: More than half the psalms are lament psalms, Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations – lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem (City of Peace), Job is about grief and loss. Notice how Jesus grieved in the gospel accounts. 3) Pay attention to our pain.
• Try not to stuff interruptions -- or medicate them.
• Take a retreat day and journal your grief and losses.

2. Aim to live in the confusing “in-between.”

• Heb 5:7 tells us that Jesus, “learned obedience from the things he suffered.” Being willing to go here will break down our self-will.
• We are invited to live with our confusion and bewilderment – and to take it to God. I spoke a few weeks ago about a three-fold cycle that Linda and I have adopted to build our marriage: romance, disillusionment, and joy…
• In EHC Scazzero quotes OT theologian Walter Brueggemann as describing the psalms in a similar way – 3 types: orientation (songs of delight in God’s blessings and goodness), disorientation (songs of hurt, suffering, and grief), and reorientation (songs of deliverance, what we would now call songs of resurrection – or transformation).
• If we’re honest, we’d have to admit that in times of disorientation we are given to either rebellion or willfulness in an attempt to escape the pain.
• It’s in these confusing, disorienting times that we have the opportunity to be discipled to Christ...

3. Allow the old to birth the new.

• A grace disguised…
• To the degree that we are willing to feel and embrace grief and loss is the degree to which we will know joy – and true compassion.
• As we deeply grieve it empties our soul of all kinds of junk. 1) It pulls stuff out of us, 2) Creates a vacancy in our lives for God, 3) A couple of weeks ago I said that prayer is, first and foremost, listening for God to tell you that you are his beloved. And that obedience is, first and foremost, building a quiet center into our lives, 4) What I am trying to say is that leaning into grief and loss and learning to live in those confusing in-between times will lay the foundation for that quiet center in our lives, and
  
• We are not to get over our losses, we are to absorb them into our being and let them take us to God – it creates unimagined joy and authentic compassion.
• Do you know what our greatest fear SHOULD BE? Hardheartedness.

This coming week: Living in Brokenness and Vulnerability (probably from Matthew 5:3ff)

Gethsemane Passages Transposed

This Sunday we will be looking at the response of Jesus to his impending death. Below you'll find the passages from all four Gospels transposed into one passage. It helps us to get a more complete picture than if we simply focused on one of the Gospels. John doesn't take the time to go into the specifics of what happened in the Garden (maybe he was embarrassed because he fell asleep :), yet his words provide an excellent introduction to the other three Gospels that describe what happened with only slight (yet helpful) variation. I used Matthew's description as the base text and added Mark and Luke's accounts to make it more descriptive.

The picture is what the Garden looks like today. The site was/is a grove of olive trees (Gethsemane literally means "oil press" - geth-semane). Apparently it was a place where Jesus and the disciples often went to pray and engage the Scriptures. Today there is a church that has been built next to the Garden (as is the case with many of the "holy" sites -- sites aren't really holy - we just say that ;). For a very cool 3-D tour of the Garden and it's relative distance from Jerusalem proper, click here.

The Garden of Gethsemane
[Jn 18:1-2-When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the ravine of the Kidron, where there was a garden, in which He entered with His disciples. Now Judas also, who was betraying Him, knew the place, for Jesus had often met there with His disciples.]

Matthew 26:36-46
36Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane [Lk 22:39as was His custom], and said to His disciples, "[ Lk 22:40-Pray that you may not enter into temptation][and] Sit here while I go over there and pray."

37And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed [Mk 14:32 (MSG)-He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony]. [Lk 22:43-Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him.]

38Then He said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me."

39And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My [Mk 14:36-Abba] Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." [Lk 22:44-And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.]

40And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping [Lk 22:45-from sorrow], and said to [Mk 14:37-Simon] Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?

41"Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

42He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done."

43Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy [Mk 14:40-and they did not know what to answer Him].

44And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.

45Then He came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

46"Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!"

And BTW -- Did Jesus really sweat drops of blood as (Dr.) Luke notes?
“And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” --Lk 22:44 (NAS)

This was written by the physician Luke, a well-educated man and a careful observer by profession. Luke is also the only gospel writer to mention the bloody sweat, possibly because of his interest as a physician in this rare physiological phenomenon, which spoke eloquently of the intense spiritual agony Jesus was suffering… (Dr. Henry M. Morris, The Defenders Bible, marginal notes for Luke 22:44)

Although this medical condition is relatively rare, according to Dr. Frederick Zugibe (Chief Medical Examiner of Rockland County, New York) it is well-known, and there have been many cases of it. The clinical term is “hematidrosis.” “Around the sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like form.” Under the pressure of great stress the vessels constrict. Then as the anxiety passes “the blood vessels dilate to the point of rupture. The blood goes into the sweat glands.” As the sweat glands are producing a lot of sweat, it pushes the blood to the surface - coming out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat. (Here's a link to a medical dictionary.)

2 Most Admirable Qualities in a Leader

I thought this was interesting... The 2 Most Admirable Qualities in a Leader...

When asked what they look for and admire in a leader and in a colleague, people put:

1. Honesty
   
2. Forward-Looking
   

But the second-highest requirement of a leader -- that he or she be forward-looking -- wasn't applied to colleagues. 72% of respondents wanted leaders to be forward-looking, but only 27% looked for that trait in a colleague.

SOURCE: "To Lead, Create a Shared Vision" in Harvard Business Review, January 2009 (Excellent article, BTW)

10 Signs You're Not Ready for Change

Change is hard work. Looking at the book of Nehemiah (an example of a masterful change-agent) we see he did three initial things -- 1) he established a sense of urgency (including identifying and embracing the crises as well as "grace disguised" opportunities), 2) he created a guiding coalition (in other words he put together a group with enough influence to lead the change and sought to help them work together like a team), and 3) he developed a vision and strategy (asking, "how do we get there from here?").

Following is a list that has been percolating in me regarding the opportunities that have been placed before us to take our church to a new place. What does it take to change?

10 Signs You're Not Ready for Change

1. You believe conflict is a bad thing.
2. You are trying to avoid the criticism that comes when you fail -- and when you succeed.
3. You think the surrounding culture needs to think like you do (instead of contextualizing the gospel for them - like a missionary would).
4. your life is too fast and cluttered -- and there's no space to dream.
5. You value being right over being in right relationship.
6. You think disillusionment is a bad thing (remember, to have an illusion is to have a false idea).
7. You've stopped asking questions.
8. You think systems and strategy are the enemy of creativity (remember, we’re invited to live in the tension of Spirit AND Truth).
9. You're expecting to receive credit for your ideas.
10. You think you've already arrived.

BTW -- Clicking on the pic above will take you to kiva.org - loans that change lives...