Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

I was at MCCC today doing some things and saw a bald eagle above, his white head and tail and black body clearly defined against a perfect blue sky. I, probably like you, have seen a lot of eagles in Monroe in the past several years. We’ve got eagles in Monroe! Is anyone else excited about this?

I was sitting on my deck this afternoon when a sparrow suddenly left the feeder and nearly flew into me and then our house. The reason: a large hawk landed in a tree next to the deck and the sparrow wacked out. I sat still - this was a holy moment for me. (”Holy,” in Greek, means “set apart.” This was a small, “set-apart” moment for me.)

Last night some of our church’s musicians were recording a cd and when we came out of the building we saw the orange moon on the horizon. Linda and I stared. Holy.

Psalm 8:3-4, in a translation called The Message, reads:

“I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?”

When you’re a theist like I am and believe the universe was created, hence a Creator, nature reveals the glory and majesty of God. Such earthly things were God’s idea, fashioned in the mind of God.

This includes you and I. In this regard Psalm 139:13 says: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Verse 14 then says, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” My microbiologist and biochemist professor-friends go ga-ga when they study the human cell and the human genome. I’ve talked for hours and hours with scientists who are theists and love it when their eyes get glassy and their words get poetic as they try to express the wonder and the glory. The God who created the macro-skies “bothers” with our tiny micro-selves.
Here’s a picture I took last night of the moon with the tiny zoom lens on my Canon Powershot. Holy, holy, holy Lord, heaven and earth and Monroe County are filled with your glory.

This stag beetle was on my deck this morning. I called Linda to show it to her while getting my camera. Isn’t it cool? Why would I want to just sit and stare at this thing and hope it hangs around and poses for some photos when I could be watching “Loonatics Unleashed” on TV right now? Because I’ve never lost the autochthonic childlike wonder that we all had - that means you, too - when we were little. For example, on our recent vacation there was a large green stink bug that greeted me and Linda outside our room. I took a lot of pictures of that thing, none of which turned out very well. And I just stared at it for a while. If you can get past the name it’s an amazing bug. The best adult book I’ve ever read about such things is Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Written in 1974, it won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s about the glory of God in the microcosmic world she discovered in a small creek by her home. There’s not a more brilliant writer in the world than Annie Dillard, and the fireworks of her wordsmanship are on full display here.  

Watch how Dillard describes a cedar tree by Tinker Creek as the “tree with lights.” She writes: “One day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw a backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”  Nooo…, that stuff is not really there in a tree by a creek, is it? The answer is: yes. You saw it when you were small. You didn’t have words to describe it. Annie Dillard has the words you and I didn’t have, so when I read her book there was a big “Yes!” happening in my soul. God displays his being in his handiwork, his creation, both on the macro- and micro-level. The good news for we Monroe County flatlanders is that the microcosmic display of God’s creativity is right here if only we would stop and smell the stag beetles. In order to begin to see this in all its blazing glory there must be a deconstruction of the American technophiliac passive screen-watcher in you and a re-learning to actually “see” again, like a little kid who’s not yet lost the wonder.  

I have a friend at Michigan State University who is a professor of entomology, which is the study of bugs. I consider him very lucky because he never really had to grow up, the little boy who loved bugs getting to stay that way. One day I invited him to speak at my church to a group of our MSU students. He talked about his insect research and how it drove him inexorably to think of how great God must be.  

The adult stag beetle eats next to nothing, flies around at night, and hides during the day, much like some teens I know. My specimen was just exiting when I caught his disappearing act this morning. My window of opportunity was there, so I sat in the chair next to the one he was sitting in, made some small talk, took a few closeups, and then watched him take a 30-minute slow-walk carrying his body armor on a straight vertical descent down the chair’s back and slip through a slat on the wooden deck floor.

Every Tuesday for the past 25 years I’ve taken the afternoon to go to a quiet place to pray for anywhere from 3 - 6 hours. I can remember the day I began this. I was working as a campus minister at Michigan State University. My schedule was loaded with meetings with students and professors and preparing talks and teachings and traveling doing fund-raising and then our first son was born and there was getting up in the middle of the night and lack of sleep and not making very much money and many times just barely getting by and spending time with just Linda and so on ad infinitum ad nauseum. My life looked like the picture I took of this truck driving west on North Custer in front of my house a few evenings ago.

One day I thought, “This is crazy!” Actually, I felt God tell me, “This is crazy! So, stop it!” I listened, and took action. For me the busiest day of my week was Tuesday, and I believed that was the day I was to slow down, get alone, and get heart-still. I told this to my campus ministry Board of Directors, some of whom were MSU professors and had very busy lives themselves teaching and researching and writing grants and just trying to live out this life while praying for the Spartan football team. My request was that I be allowed to take 3-6 hours a week out of work time to get alone with God, pray, listen, and allow the presence of God to recharge my inner batteries. They told me I could do it. That was a watershed moment in my life. It became and remains the deep well of my spiritual life.

But the beginning wasn’t easy. The first Tuesday afternoon I went to an area near East Lansing called Rose Lake Wildlife Refuge Area. There was an open field with an old rusty tractor sitting in it. I got up on the seat and stayed there for about four hours. Most Americans could never do this, and most would wonder “Why?” I was no exception. I wrote in my journal the words, “Why am I now just sitting here ‘doing nothing’ when I could be xeroxing things?”

America is a “fast food nation.” More than that, it’s just “fast.” And shallow. There’s something called “wisdom” that can never be Mc-learned. There’s a ton of activity on the internet, but very little actual knowledge. Being able to cut and paste data and chat about it says nothing about real learning. “Learning” is a slow cooker, not a microwave. ”Knowledge” is a word which in ancient Hebrew (yadah) means “intimate relationship.” By the way, relationships cannot be “Mc-done” either; the best of them simmer for years in a relational crockpot.

Here’s what I think: if you are still reading this you know that a whole lot of the busyness you are doing is not only not accomplishing much of any lasting value but is also burning out your soul, your inner fire. Anything that concerns relationship (you and God, husband and wife, parent-child, friend-friend) cannot be multitasked. So may I now encourage you: you must make choices to get off the “ladder of success” and instead “descend into greatness,” else you will lose touch with your own soul and as a result lose the most important things in your life.

Linda would tell you, if you asked, that my extended times of praying and listening and going alone are not merely good for me, but good for our marriage and family. There’s a whole lot of de-burdening and perspective-gaining that happens in me when I do this, and I find myself more joyful, less anxious, and thankful for Linda, my sons, friends, my church (i.e., thankful for all life’s really important things in such a way that I actually attend to them).

And God speaks to me during this time. Twenty-five years after the beginning on the tractor I now have nearly 3000 pages of journal entries, which record the voice of God speaking to me. I teach this in various places around the U.S. and world, especially to pastors and Christian leaders. Every year for the past 12 years I’ve gone in January to spend a week with as many as 25 pastors and leaders from around the world, teaching them how to get alone, listen to God, pray, and, as Henri Nouwen says, “tend the fire within.” These 1-week seminars are held in Valley Forge National Park at a beautiful conference center. Here’s a picture of me in Valley Forge walking very slowly…, heading out to pray…, for a few hours…

Some years ago when Linda and I were eating at Cracker Barrel she went into the gift shop and bought me something. It’s a plaque with a dog bearing a striking resemblance to our dog So-Fee. Underneath the dog are the words, “Lord, make me the person my dog thinks I am.” I think this is cool, and it now hangs in our kitchen with my full approval. For me this little plaque represents four essential truths about God and Jesus. 

#1 – “Love.” God loves me. If you knew me and what’s in my heart at times, you would be wonder “Why?” Because: the core Christian truth is that God is love. That is, God, in his essence, IS love. “Love” is not some contingent attribute of God. Essentially, the being of God is love. God cannot not-love. God cannot not-love me. Or you. In fact, God likes me, and God likes you. “For God so LOVED the world…” I know many Jesus-followers, and I am one of them who, when we think that God loves us with all our inner and outer struggles and sin, we stand astounded.

#2 – “Grace.” C.S. Lewis was once asked about what the distinctive difference between Christianity and the other major world religions was. Lewis responded: “That’s easy, it’s grace.” In the Bible the word “grace” is the Greek word charis. Literally, the word means “gift.” “Grace” is getting what we do not deserve. The grace of God gets experienced when we submit our lives to him, he accepts us like a prodigal son or daughter, and then throws a huge banquet on our behalf.

#3 – “Mercy.” The Hebrew word literally means “to stoop or bend down to another person’s level.” To be merciful is to descend to the level of hurting or suffering of another person and help them. If “grace” is getting what we do not deserve, “mercy” is not getting what we deserve. I would not now want to share with you all that I know of my own self that is deserving, not of love, but of condemnation. One of my personal favorites in the Bible is when Paul writes that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

#4 – “Forgiveness.” In a few weeks Linda and I will celebrate our 34^th wedding anniversary. I am eternally grateful to God for giving Linda to me. I know I do not deserve her, and she feels the same about me. Through these 34 years we have had many arguments and disagreements. And, at times, in our anger towards each other we have said things we should not have said, or acted in ways we should not have acted. How, then, have we made it this far? The key is: confession and forgiveness. We have always said these words to each other when we realize we have been hurtful: “Linda, I was wrong about that, will you forgive me?” And she says, “Yes, I forgive you.” And vice versa. If “grace” is getting what we do not deserve, and “mercy” is not getting what we deserve, “forgiveness” is cancelling the debt owed to us by the other. Forgiveness is the practical acting-out of grace. And when you experience it…  there’s life and freedom.

“Judgment?” Yes, there will be a day of judgment. But on that day you won’t be the Judge. Nor will I.  The great Christian truth about judgment is this: the mercy of God triumphs over judgment. James 2:12-14 says: “Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!” We see this unfolding in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as Jesus continually engages the religious Pharisees and the “teachers of the law.” They are the off-the-chart-law-enforcers, experts in judging other people (which does not take a whole lot of ability). They think righteousness, or real relationship with God, is purchased by the keeping of many rules and regulations. Like, “we don’t work on the Sabbath,” said in shock as they see the disciples of Jesus picking grain on the Sabbath. Jesus calls these “religious” people “white-washed tombs, who look good on the outside but are filled with dead men’s bones.” Jesus the Revolutionary has come to overthrow judgmentalism and replace it with love and grace and mercy and forgiveness, all of which got displayed on the Cross.

If you want to understand real Christianity, this is very important: The essence of following Jesus is not external rule-keeping, but inner heart-transformation. Transformation… into what? Into Christlikeness. Which is… what? Love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, peace, justice…   just read Matthew chapters 5-7 to get more of the whole story.

How important is this? For starters, one sign that the Real Jesus is in the house is when mercy is winning big-time over judgment. In a world where the media and churches and families and husbands and wives and employers and employees are constantly judging one another, this is radical, is it not? This has been and continues to be a hard lesson for me to learn. But not only is it real Christianity, it’s the road to personal and corporate freedom. Our heart-cry should be “Lord, make me the person that You think I am!” You and I are meant to be far better than we actually are. We have been created in the very image of God, and that image is about love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

(For two very good books about “grace” see: 1) Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace; and 2) Lewis Smedes, Shame and Grace.)