Walking under the fig tree

Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” 

And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”  John 1:38-39

The is the same question that Jesus later asked the band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, who went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.  The question He asks each of us, every day.

What do you seek?

What is the aching that longs to be filled?  The hole in my heart?

Andrew and John were unable to put it into words.  But they knew, in their inarticulate bumbling what they needed to do.  Stay.  

Stop seeking elsewhere.  

No person or lover will suffice. Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.  Certainly I myself am included in the all people.  I let myself down all the time as well.

No stuff. Remember moths and rust?  

Circumstances will always be as unstable as that ladder that the maintenance man wobbled on yesterday as he tried to change the florescent tube.  Down he went, like a tree in the forest.  

Stay.

He alone knows me.  He sees me, just as he saw the heart of Nathaniel standing under the fig tree.  And He has given me a new name: Beloved.

And just as He looked Phillip in the eye, He looks at me and says, “Follow Me.”

Veni, vidi, vici

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29

So last night, Pastor Chris and Tim and Fred and I honed the Vineyard values- what is is the heart of our particular fellowship. Weighing each word, we tried to strip verbiage of all excess, leaving only the essence.

Value Five: We join God in the work of restoration.

Jesus brings healing to a broken creation – our homes and streets, the neighborhood, the university, our city and beyond.

Jesus came and ministered to the lost and needy. His death and resurrection created the way to be reconciled to God. As His people, we are called to live out His love in word and actions.

We could have messed with them forever.  Shifting and sifting.  Jot and tittle.  We are are word people- aware of their potency.  The difference between denotation and connotation.  One step to the side and the shade flickers.

And yet, at a certain point, basta.  He, with a capital H, has done it all.  It is finished.  He came, He saw, He conquered.  And while our calling as His children is to join Him in the living part, in the word and action, it is all about Him.  (I yearned a bit for “deed” but it was deemed too fusty. And yes, “fusty” made it through spellcheck the first time; I sort of thought I was making it up.)

He, not anything we do, takes away the sins of the world.

Selah.

a story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise- Zafón

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. John 1:10

The thing about the family doing vacation together, no matter where in the world we wander, we drag the stacks of books around.  Alan is in the hammock rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, in English this time around.  Angie's had lots of Italian cooking in it and it was very very thick, so she is now just getting to book two, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is about a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Things I never knew about.  Guess which book is next on my list?

 I am sneaking Dustin's book away from him when he is distracted because I guess I have never actually read the Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees and Heather and I and my mom are doing the at least one book a day thing we do when we get rolling.  So each of us is immersed in a different time and place, each of us swathed in bug repellant and 50 SPF do-they-really-do-more-than-persuade-us-to-stay-out-in-the-sun-longer Coppertone. I have swallowed pages of used booksellers living in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and Jewish women settling the Arizona border region in the 1800s.  Personal essays by a Yale writing professor hop skip and jump from Arctic explorers to the discovery of coffee to famous people who wandered the streets in search of elusive sleep. And now Virginia hillbilly does Tucson in precise prose.  After of course an opening round ofPride and Prejudice.  Once again after a thirty or forty year break every word rings familiar, every raised eyebrow, every “What are men to rocks and mountains?” sort of quote.  I still remember it. 

The point of all this is that the world does not know Him. There is a lot of stumbling about looking for sense and meaning from the vigorously stirred mixture of beauty and pain in which we all flounder.  

And somehow I am coming out from under this avalanche of nuance more tenderhearted towards man.  Even after the brutality of the limpieza, ridding the Iberiean countryside of teachers and clerics and poets and other impurities.  For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

Very very aware of the sins of the world.  In crisp black and white print.  On pages damp from the sea breeze and now sand is everywhere and we will be shaking it loose for weeks on end.  

And the Lamb of God has arrived. To make Him known.  To take it all away and leave in its place faith, hope and love.  And the greatest of these is love.  

And I am reminded that all of our efforts even for His name's sake, without this love are just resounding gongs or clanging cymbals without gain.   

And what a hope it is, this true light, which gives light to everyone, and which has come into the world.  

 Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. - Carlos Ruis Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

And after a week on Playa Uva I have a much better sense of who this world is, and of who He is, His light reflecting back in my eyes.  May it be my heart as well.

You can't believe everything you read

And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. John 1:12

And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,

the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and might,

the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  Isaiah 11:2

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  John 1: 5

So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and He healed them.  Matthew 4:24

So my stuffed-full brain of Costa Rican reading has lead from the fictional but very real darkness of the Spanish Civil War to the much closer in geography to the borderlands rife with rifles and grudges to the very real ugly and documented racial darkness of the “separate but equal” world of my lifetime to back home again.  And the reading continues.

TUCSON - The driver who Pima County Sheriff's officials say fatally struck a pedestrian this morning has been arrested, and both men have been identified.

At about 6 a.m. this morning, PCSD deputies arrived at a reported collision near Rudasill Road and La Canada to find 54-year-old Peter Morse suffering from life-threatening injuries after being struck by a motorist, according to a news release form the department. Morse was transported to UMC were he later died.

• 54-year-old Peter Morse is the father of one of my heart-children.  We sat many a dusty Mexicali afternoon in the shade of José and Guadelupe’s tin-roofed trash-scrap church in watching the children bounce a soccer ball back and forth.

• A virulent email designed to slice and dice the receiver’s heart was received by someone I love.

• Con profundo dolor quiero comunicarles que esta manana, a las 10, mi mami fue llamada a la presencia del Senor. Tan pronto como tengamos los detalles del funeral se los estare comunicando. -Lisandro Restrepo

• A simple and sweet phrase in a newsletter that says so much more: Lynn and I left for Europe on June 15th, so there will not be a personal note on this letter, but know that I appreciate your prayers and support.  The bucket list as Lynn says goodbye after a weary battle with chemotherapy.

And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go back, then; let this be done for you, as your faith demands.’ And the servant was cured at that moment. Matthew 8:13

The faith of the centurion.  A heathen faith.  Not so up on on all of the theological details that the Southern Baptists are haggling out this week with as “tensions are expected to escalate Tuesday as church leaders descend on New Orleans.”  Is this really why Christ came to earth so that as church leaders gather in an achingly needy and hurting community, they are infighting over “blatantly semi-Pelagian” theology?

But he understood what was important, that the darkness cannot overcome the light. Sir, I am not worthy to have you under my roof; just give the word and my servant will be cured. For I am under authority myself, and have soldiers under me; and I say to one man: “Go,” and he goes; to another: “Come here,” and he comes; to my servant: “Do this,” and he does it.’

Oh LORD, might I have this faith.  A faith that demands the truth.  That demands reality.  And does not settle for appearances.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your Name. May your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  John 1:17

 Something in my eight-year-old Sunday School brain residue sort of understood that the Law was a plan that God tried on man, and it didn’t work out so well, and then He sent the prophets to run through it again for Him, and that didn’t work out, so then He sent Jesus as a Last Resort.  

Nope.  He was the First Resort.  Part of the plan from the very beginning.  The promised seed who would crush the serpent's head.  

And the Law.  What is its role?  People sort of sift through it and take what they like and disregard the rest.  I like oysters on the half shell, so forget that part of the abomination before the Lord bit.  Remember, Matthew cared a lot about the word “fulfilled” and so when Jesus said, “jot and tittle” he meant it.  He also meant, “It is finished.”  The job is done.    But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter and for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. No more old wineskins.

But Jesus.   Grace and Truth.  He who fulfilled the Law’s requirement for a blood sacrifice to cover our sins so carefully spelled out is God’s grace, undeserved favor, and the Grace who is the “empowering Presence of God enabling you to be who He created you to be, and to do what He has called you to do” (Ryle).  

Imagine The Word who created every thing come to live among man. To eat with sinners.  To reach out to the woman at the well.  To the seeking Pharisee.  To  tell the fishermen where to cast their nets.  And we beheld His glory.  His humble glory.  And comprehended it not. 

He is Truth.  Revealed.  What it all about.  The higher bar.  What to do if you have two shirts.    And being angry.  And keeping promises.  All of this is only possible with the Spirit at work in my life:  Love, joy, peace, patience, mercy. Now it’s all about being fruit bearers to God.  And the greatest of these is love.

And surely that is what it really means to be about my Father’s business.  

The world is silent when you snorkle

In quiet and silence the faithful soul makes progress.  Even as one learns to grow still, he draws closer to the Creator and farther from the hurly-burly of the world.  Thomas a Kempis

The jungle is never quiet.  And yet there is the sense of being swathed in a thick warm blanket that wraps out everything else.  So in the rattle, throb and drips there is silence. 

It was a long, hard road to get here.  Twenty-nine hours to be precise since we first loaded the suitcases into Jeff’s rented van.  We learned that when they say roads in Costa Rica are awful, that they were not talking about potholes, bur tather traffic that crept and stopped and crepted and stopped at twenty-five miles an hour for six and a half hours.  

But we were amongst friends.  The magic Mary Poppins bags of Angie’s that brought out one wonder after another.  The enthralled delight of Heather.  The gracious patience of momma.  The manly man hefting and hauling of Dustin.  And the driving, Alan driving right through the heart of San Jose population three million with nothing more than a “Hey mister, could you tell us the way to Limón?” shouted out to taxi driver after taxi driver. My google.map guide “turn left at the Shell station and drive 1.3 kilometers” had revealed itself to be sheer fantasy, as the rest of us tangled and retangled and hunched and wiggled in some tiny person’s idea of a seven-passenger vehicle.    At least we were chomping on the most amazing black beans and roasted chicken and cabbage and thick chewy corn tortillas known to mankind.  

May my soul grow still in this week of quiet and silence.  The silence of checklists and Micorsoft updates.  And stillness of now.  Even as Heather looks with glee for monkeys through the binoculars.  

The tidal wave of presence

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.  For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 

This Word through Whom and by Whom all things were created became flesh and lived with us fully and completely. John 1:14,16

So I have been reading Nicole’s book.  Well, Robby’s stories wrapped up in Nicole’s words.   And what is perfectly clear is that we, well at least me and I suspect a bunch of other people that I know and love, have been fiddling about with the sand crabs and seaweed along the shoreline, letting the foam run over our bare toes and then scrambling back up to the pointy black rocks that are hard to walk on and pretty much hurt all the time.  

Or we can just take the leap.  Let His power sweep us up off of our feet and carry us.  

There is a section in the book I read yesterday, not really doing my job of sorting through big ideas and logical flow, rather I was messing around the small stuff, the “its” and “it’s,” perhaps the needless details that eat away at my life overall.  A section describing the presence of God:

 During the feast of the Palms, just days before his death Jesus stood up in the midst of all of Jerusalem and shouted, “Come to me, all you who are thirsty, and streams of living water will flow from your lives.”

 All throughout Scripture, the presence of God is characterized as water.


The book of Revelation describes “a river whose streams make glad the city of God,” along whose banks are trees whose leaves are healing for the nations.”

 The prophet Ezekiel gives us a vivid portrayal the river that flows from the temple of God:

The man brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple...and the water was flowing from the south side. As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross.... Then he led me back to the bank of the river. When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river....When it empties into the Sea, the water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing."

What is described here is a portrayal of the presence of God that flows from His throne room.  When Jesus calls us the temple of God and promises that streams of living water will flow from any who come to him, I believe He is referring to the same river that is described both in Ezekiel and Revelations.  We see in Ezekiel’s description that it’s a river of different levels of increasing depth, that brings with it abundant life, fruit, and healing.  There are many, many references to this river all throughout Scripture, and many promises associated with it.  When Jesus told his disciples, “The kingdom of God is within you,” I believe this was another reference to the “streams of living water” that will flow from our lives.  The Presence of God is associated with the throne of God and His Kingdom reign.  When Jesus told his disciples, ‘abide in me, and I will abide in you,” this was another reference to the Presence of God that is not only within us giving us life, but flows from our lives.  In the middle-eastern desert context within which the Bible was written, the metaphor was more than clear: Where there is water, there is life.  Where there is no water, there is death.  As Christians we sometimes make distinctions between what we “can” do, and what we “can’t do.”  We think, “I can be nice to people, and love them.  I can pray, but I can’t heal the sick. I can’t raise the dead.” We must not look to our past experiences to determine what we can or can’t do, but to what the Bible says is true.  Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing, in me you will bear much fruit.” Apart from God’s presence, we can do nothing.

  In God, we can do anything.

  This has been the premise behind all of my teaching but I share it now in context of Ezekiel’s description of river that flows from the throne room because I think its such a powerful visual picture of what it means to be a People of the Presence.  Our ability to host the presence of God is probably one of the most determining factors of our Christian life.  

Anyways.  These are the images that are filling my mind and my heart and my soul.  And as I pack up for Costa Rica today, making the lists, packing the sunscreen, wiping down the counters, I am mulling over these truths.  And that He will make me glad.  

 “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”