Partying with Jesus

Today at our church, we did something wonderfully unexpected that'll stay with me a long time.

We shared communion. And it was a party!

At this church, the opportunity to participate in communion happens smack dab in the middle of the worship service each week. In order to mix things up, the actual observance of communion cycles between passing the plate with the thimbleful of Biblical Welch's Grape Juice/fragments of matzo and inviting people to come to a table set with a little bowlful of aforementioned juice and a plateful of matzo pieces.

But today, the congregation was invited to a very different kind of communion celebration. At the close of the service, while the pastor was praying, someone uncovered two long tables covered with all varieties of bread: matzo, dense french bread, sweet breads, dark breads...and grapes...and chocolate! There was a table set with bottles of sparkling grape juices as well.

The ritual solemnity with which we Christians usually participate in communion was absent this morning. In my head, I've known these verses for a long time:

At His final Passover Seder on earth, Jesus said: "After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." - Luke 22:17-18

Fast forward to the end of the story, where the angels proclaim: "Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready." - Rev. 19:7

And in my head, I've known that communion is SO MUCH MORE than a Barbie-sized religious snack. (Even wrote a little piece about this very subject for Group magazine a couple of years ago.) A lot of the meditations out there to help people engage with communion tend to target our cognitive response to God. "Oh yeah," we say. "I must now remember that this little cracker fragment and sip of room-temperature juice is meant to help me remember that I'm supposed to remember...uh...Jesus died on the cross for me."

This morning, people of all ages were taking handfuls of chocolate and grapes, sampling breads, pouring sparkling juice into clear glasses. This morning's celebration, communion with a group of a group of happy, surprised people smiling, laughing and actually eating and drinking together was an experience that burned itself onto my heart.

This'll be an experience that I "bring to active remembrance" when I participate with Jesus as I share communion with Him and others in the future.

Celebrating! Tasting grace! It made me soul-hungry for the real thing - the party in heaven.

But you know what? I think Jesus enjoyed the party at the church this morning.

The Biggest Loser

Last night's American Idol featured the abysmal auditions of wanna-be pop stars who were missing something - looks, talent, confidence, a decent wardrobe. The show's producers are counting on our need to feel better about ourselves at someone else's expense with these Auditions From Purgatory shows. Last night's show could have been called "Ain't Too Proud To Beg". There were a number of people that pled their case for stardom with the same kind of urgency you'd see from someone begging not to be sent to the electric chair for their unpaid parking tickets.

"Man, I'm glad I'm not like those losers," we smirk. "Don't they know they stink?"

Well, some of them do, but a lot of them have had their friends and family tell them they're awesome and amazing and a way, way, way better singer than [fill in the blank with the name of your favorite season 1-5 American Idol]. And then Simon pulls out his Uzi and guns them down. Some would say it's a mercy killing...and maybe it is.

But I wonder what's happened to some of those failures. No, not the extreme cases the producers cherry-pick for our public consumption. But the rest of those thousands of people who showed up at the nationwide cattle calls and were sent home by some assistant to the associate junior producer after singing 4 bars of a song they'd been rehearsing for weeks. The whole thing goes on their failure resume.

Then there was this one guy auditioning last night who got to the Hollywood round of the competition last year and then bailed right there on stage. Couldn't hack the pressure. And everywhere he went, he had people asking him, "Hey aren't you the one that quit?" The Failure Factor had come to define his life. It had become his identity.

Today, blogger king Dan Edelen writes about how desperately we Christians need a gospel of failure. Man, do I agree with him! I hope to be exploring this topic in blog posts to come.

But for today, I just want to make an observation. In Uprooted, I tell the story of these two women I once worked with who NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS. This wouldn't have been much of a problem if we'd been employed at McDonalds (in fact, it probably would have made working together quite pleasant) - but we worked at a church. Though church is supposed to be a place for people with problems, we all know that it freqently is a place we find ourselves auditioning for our own version of Spiritual American Idol.

Again and again, I heard from the people-with-problems who attended the church - "Those women make me feel like I'm a loser." The irony is that the women were perfect examples of what we frequently tell each other the abundant, victorious Christian life is supposed to look like. And as a result, the women served as a kind of defacto Randy, Paula and Simon judgment panel for the church, since they had perfected their own performances so well.

Man, we need some new paradigms.

The Full Moon restaurant

I met a friend this morning at one of the truly fine dining establishments in the Chicago area - the Full Moon restaurant, conveniently located on a desolate stretch of Hwy. 41 between the sprawl of Abbott Labs and Great Lakes Naval Training Center. They feature a concoction I've never seen on a menu anywhere else - the Carbetsi omelet. I think "Carbetsi" is a Greek word for "wipe everything on the greasy counter into the pan".

Besides the Carbetsi, this dining establishment had something I haven't seen for years: a cigarette vending machine. Maybe I don't hang out in enough divey places. I dunno. Seeing that machine jammed into a corner near the washrooms was like a 3-D flashback to a time when cigarette machines were everywhere. My dad, a 2 pack-a-day Parliament man, sometimes bought his smokes from a vending machine. And when I was first toying with adult behaviors as a 13 year-old, the tired Holiday Inn on the other side of the fence just behind my house had a vending machine. I could walk over there and buy (really stale) Marlboros any time I wanted.

The world quietly moved on from the days when gas stations, bowling alleys and restaurants way nicer than The Full Moon had tobacco vend-o-matics. And though Jesus spared me the anguish of a lifelong nicotine addiction, seeing that vending machine today was like a flashback to the ordinary moments of my childhood: my dad sitting at the table, telling stories about his day's adventures in insurance adjusting. He'd flick his lighter open like he had about a bazillion times in his life, putting blue flame to the end of a cig. While he talked, my mom would be pulling the electric broom out of the closet so she could vacuum the avocado carpeting in our kitchen. (Yes, we had carpeting in our kitchen. Eeew.) My sister was usually parked in the den, watching "Speed Racer".

Just like that - launched into the past by a Carbetsi and a cigarette time machine.

On being uprooted

Two years ago, we sold our house in Wisconsin in a single day. We moved into our rental townome in Gurnee, not unpacking all the way, pretty confident that we'd be here only a short time. After all, with the kind of momentum that got us here, it was a sure bet that Gurnee would be our slingshot into the life we'd always dreamed of in the city.

Bill's job search dragged on for nearly a year and a half; a possible ministry position hovered like a hologram in the background for another lap or two on the calendar. I wrote two books in this disconnected (from a permanent address and church and community) yet connected (to God) waiting zone in which we've lived.

Meanwhile, our house search took a dozen wrong turns and dead ends. We watched high prices and rising interest rates erode our dream, redirecting us away from the city and toward the general area in which we once lived. Our kids watched us struggle, and struggled themselves, with the delay and our confusion. It's one thing to be 19 or 21 and trying to figure out who you want to be when you grow up. It's another thing to be 46 or 50 and trying (again) to answer some of the same questions.

I've coveted the lives I think other people are living - seemingly secure and teeming with friendships and purposeful ministry. I wish I had something "successful" to offer my kids instead of this season of uncertainty that seems to mirror their own growing pains.

Yet, I hope in God. I've wondered (with the hard rain of tears at times) if He likes other people better than He likes us since He isn't blessing us in ways that we can brag about. But here, today, I realize again that it isn't the product (the destination, the "success") that He's ever cared about in us. It is the process, shaping us to be like Him. We say and we sing and we pray that this is what we want, to be like Him. But when He answers that prayer like THIS, I find out how shallow I really am.

Yes, I'm uprooted. I need to be, so I can find my source and joy in Him. And be planted like that tree mentioned in Psalm 1, in Him. That's my prayer for me, for Bill, and even more, for my kids and grandson.

Finishing

I FedEx'd the manuscript for "Uprooted: Growing a Parablelife From The Inside Out" to FaithWalk last Friday. After that last final push to pull it all together, I was so excited to put the 50,000 words in the little box and hand it off to the guy behind the Kinko's counter. Today I feel a little hung-over. It is the same feeling you might have the day after the play closed in which you starred. The production is over, and real life calls you back.

I'm learning to enjoy these hang-overs. They used to really freak me out, but I have discovered that Jesus is there in them. A couple of months ago, I had the amazing privilege of speaking in the chapel at Trinity International University. My text was Mark 9:2-9, the Transfiguration. The words the Lord gave to me that day apply here, on hang-over day, as I come down to earth from the mountaintop where I tried to camp out as I wrote my book.

I am here today to tell you that the transfiguration isn’t an academic exercise, an experience best reserved for those given to mysticism, or a jolt of mountaintop high.

The transfiguration belongs to you if you are a Christ-follower. The kingdom is here. Heaven has invaded earth. Here and now! Yes, on the mountaintop, but also at Dunkin Donuts, and sitting parked in traffic on the tollway, and at the library. Standing at the foot of the cross…and looking into an empty tomb. Jesus knew that the transfiguration, the mountaintop experience, could only make sense to His friends because of the resurrection.

The kingdom is here. The resurrection is the power to have the transfiguration “STICK”. What happens on the mountaintop can not stay on the mountaintop. It must invade the library and your dorm rooms and the cafeteria.

And today, His transformation power must invade this writing hang-over of mine. Maranatha!

Community with a capital "Y"

Because I am a word person, I find myself taking note of phrases or ideas that seem suddenly to be on lots of different people's lips. "Paradigm" was a big one a few years ago. "Passion" was another.

A word I am hearing a lot lately is "community". As in "We need community" or "We are a community of faith" or "Let us discern truth together in community". This would be a good time to break into a little hand-wringing about how we Christ-followers in 21st century America are so scatter'd and disconnected from one another and how that leads us to be disconnected from God and then throw in problems with technology and modernization and...well, you know all the stanzas to that chorus, don't you? So I won't go there.

We all know there is a problem, and we try to solve it by trying to make the other guy do something. Maybe we try some programs - which actually and occasionally work - not so much because of the program but because a good group of people comes together and forms a covenant relationship out of the deal. (In spite of the program, not because of it, in other words.) Maybe we pound the problem into every sermon at church, telling people they HAVE to start being a community, darn it! Get moving, people! (Note to leaders everywhere - shame never works.) Or maybe we form a clique, which actually can feel like a community for those who are included. (Stinks for those on the outside, however - which means that it is, in fact, not really a picture of biblical community.)

The Bible talks about community not as something to force, manage or program, but as something we already ARE. But when I think about the language of Scripture, I want to weep. We do all that we can to not be what we already are.

A congregation whose hearts are rent in repentance might be the genesis for true community in our churches.

Post-charismatic?

Way back in the dark ages of the `70's and `80's, the Charismatic movement swept through the church like a very controversial flood. It was followed with the empowered Third Wave evangelicalism of the Vineyard movment. (And more controversy.) There were controversial renewal movements within the broader movement (Toronto, Brownsville). Throw in a variety of other controversial tangents like Word of Faith teaching, the Shepherding movement, some ungrounded and sometimes wacky teaching...and it can become easy to throw baby and bathwater out the window.

I recently ran across this guy's blog - he's an academic, and he did a really thoughtful analysis of the Charismatic movement in recent years. You might want to check it out: http://www.robbymac.org/charismatic/

When a church has a healthy relationship with the Giver, the Gifts (yes, all of them) are used to build up the body and proclaim the power and beauty of Jesus to a watching world. There is nothing more wonderful than seeing God animate someone to serve the body through a prophetic word, through a love of caring for little ones in the nursery, through teaching, through a healing gift, through pulling weeds. It is heaven invading earth. I long to be in a church like this!

But churches are full of sinners, and sometimes, things go south. People screw up. Mistakes are made. Messes happen. What happens then?

People get burned, or they get burned out. And, in most of the cases we've encountered, when a Charismatic church experiences a mess, they either (a) veer off into false teaching/unbiblical practice OR (b) they clamp down in order to make sure that no more messes happen ever, ever, ever.

We’ve seen more (b) than (a) - churches that at one time were willing to allow people to get messy while they learned, but the leadership (understandably) got tired of cleaning up the messes, so they declared that it was time to grow up and stop spilling milk all over the place. So nobody ever spills anything anymore. The places are very clean and antiseptic and controlled.

I'm thinking about this because someone recently said to me, "I am a Charismatic, but I just ‘do my thing’ on my own. There are no good Charismatic churches around here." The "doing my own thing" idea kind of flies in the face of what the gifts are all about - but I understood exactly what this person was saying. No more messes.

But no growth or learning, either.

Haters Anonymous

I just visited the website of one of the local Christian radio stations that broadcast where we used to live in WI. This station offers its listeners a steady diet of hyper-conservative talk shows, hyper-conservative sermons, very traditional music and dreary kids programs.

The people who listened to this propaganda tended to be some of the most combative individuals I've ever known. After listening to a steady diet of hate, all it took was the mention of a single word ("Clinton", "Unity", "Contemporary", "Diversity") and a tirade would likely follow. Just like they heard on the air, 24 hours a day.

When I visited the website tonight, I discovered that the station had once again given a conservative (but not conservative enough, apparently) preacher the boot. They do this pretty regularly in an effort to safeguard doctrinal purity. I'm not a huge fan of the preacher in question, and I am a big fan of doctrinal purity, but the muckraking tactics they used to make sure that this man's ministry has been discredited with their listeners was so, so sad.

This station is NOT a church (though many of its listeners use it for their main source of edification), so I'm not quite sure how this heavily documented rant against this man's minsitry fits into the Matthew 18 discussion that begins "if your brother sins against you..." The station doesn't have the biblical authority to undertake disciplinary action - much less slander the man's character - when he hasn't done anything wrong except speak at a conference where non-Christians were also speaking.

The station has the right to change their programming, adding and dropping programs as they see fit. If they drop a long-running program, they do owe their listeners an explanation of some kind. But what I saw on that website wasn't an explanation. It was a hachet job.

It Only Takes A Spark

In the span of a weekend's time recently, I heard worship expressed musically...
...by the jazz-improv structure of charismatic harp and bowl worship - scripture and prayers sung repetitively, contemplatively and with great passion and intensity
...by the pop-stylings of a church worship team - four carefully-chosen songs, each sung twice through (except the one folk version of a hymn, to which all the verses were sung) to underscore and re-teach the sermon's message
...by the roller-rink ambience of a gigantic pipe organ, banging out verses 1, 3, 5, 7. 9 and 14 of Hymn #698.

Though most of us understand the idea that worship is so much more than the songs we sing, and the first wave of music style battles is now a grim memory of the church circa 1975-2000 A.D., the discussion is far from over. There's $$$ in worship music now, and some of it seems to have been recorded to fulfill recording contracts, and some of it seems to be a bit artless.

One of the seminal moments in my life as a singing worshipper came a few years ago.

One Sunday morning, when the the lone piano player (she was a piano player, not a pianist) was absent from the congregation we attended at the time. No one in charge had felt it important to come up with a Plan B, even though they knew she wasn't going to be there to march us through the hymns and grim 1970's camp choruses that characterized the musical offerings each Sunday morning.

So that Sunday, the person giving the sermon had the entire congregation read Scripture out loud, together for the duration of the time normally allotted to music in the service. I'll never forget the surreal nature of that church service.

This worship was doctrinally correct, spare and simple. Organic. Retro. Very "early church".

In the name of avoiding any sort of transcendent emotional engagement with God, this church, which had always shunned anything but the most workmanlike and dutiful singing of songs, had finally arrived at a state of purity. (Or had they?)

It was completely heartbreaking.

The anti-picnic

I've been following this discussion that some of the people in my church have been having with one another about how hard it is to be hospitable in the suburbs. "If you invite a sorta stranger over for dinner, people think you're a potential mass murderer or something," suggested one writer. The solution proferred, in the form of a war cry on life in the `burbs, was a committment to practice subversive hospitality, which has the (unintended) effect of perhaps turning a plate of pasta into a complex theological practice.

This is all perfectly fascinating discussion. But I had this flashback last night when I was thinking about this topic, and it actually might cut to the heart of what the real problem might be.

Last summer, when we first started attending this church, they had a picnic after the Sunday service. It was one of those "bring your own meat to grill and a dish to pass" deals. We came to church prepared, and when the service ended, we expected to move out to the picnic area behind the church. We wandered around the building and peeked outside, looking to lend a hand, to connect. No one talked to us. No one even noticed we were there. We went to sit in the sanctuary to wait for a while. There were a few people in there, chatting amongst themselves. Again, no one talked to us.

I am not shy, and know how to catch a person's eye and get myself into a conversation. But none of those extrovert skills worked. We hung around for about 15 minutes, sitting there alone together, before we decided to leave.

It was not a happy day.

(You may be wondering why on earth we stuck around after such a sour experience. Adding any extra mileage onto our current odyssey feels like low-grade masochism. However, that summer day, so did staying for picnic.) I guess the point is that hospitality might be a lot more basic than having the neighbors think we're mass murderers if we invite them over for dinner. Maybe its talking to someone when church ends. You know, I wrote about this very phenomenon in my book. (Hmm.)

Lest I start loading up on stones, I am REALLY aware that I've been on the other end of this dilemma, the busy-busy end, buzzing around former churches chatting up my friends and favorites. I've been so blinded by my own importance that I can't imagine leaving the metaphorical head of the table in those circumstances so I can do a truly subversive thing and go hang out with the invisible ones that might just be wishing to be touched and befriended.

Lord, forgive me...