A few weeks back I asked my congregation what the opposite of love was. I got different responses - hate, fear, indifference, etc. However, I think the opposite of love is sin. That's right - sin.
Why do I say that. Well, it has something to do with how I define sin. I don't look at sin as primarily bad behavior, breaking the law, immorality, or broken relationships - though they have something to do with the working out of sin in our lives - but for me sin is a preoccupation with self. It is about thinking about ourselves first, thinking about ourselves before we think about another.
As human beings into our own thing we are indeed people preoccupied with self.
Too often we confess “our sin” too easily. We may acknowledge that our lives are screwed up – but that still does not get to the heart of the matter – our confessions are still self-focused. Do we realize that this preoccupation with self is not just screwing “me” up, but it is also screwing up others, that it is screwing up the world.
This in my mind is the exact opposite of love is. We ask - as Foreigner sang - "Do you know what love is, I want to know what love is."
We have a difficult time understanding, experiencing what love is – because love is not preoccupied with self, but other-directed. We have got to get out of our preoccupation with self to begin to “know what love is.”
The problem is that we are not all that successful in dealing with our self-preoccupation by ourselves. We need help!
Love is more than a feeling, more than emotion – it is a choice we make!
But not the kind of choice we think.
In fact in reality “choosing to love” is a choice
· to be open to the Spirit of God,
· to be open for the Spirit of God to create Jesus’ nature into our lives
· to be open to God’s intervention to deal with our self-preoccupation
· to be open to the Spirit to cultivate in us a perspective of being other-occupied, of being
world-directed – just as it is the nature of God’s love to love the world – John 3:16.
And so when we are open to the Spirit to work in our lives – our lives are opened to be other-directed in the same way that the nature of God’s love is other-directed toward all humanity.
I say it this way because there are other things that are other-directed but not selflessly. War is other-directed, hate is other-directed, prejudice is other-directed – but these are other-directed through a focus or preoccupation with self. We think we are protecting ourselves, our way of life by engaging in war, hate or prejudice.
But love in the way of God, love which exemplifies God’s nature is selflessly other-directed.
As the Spirit of God develops love in our life – we too learn to love in ways which are selflessly other-directed. A way of being that:
· gives love to those who do not love us back,
· keeps loving when someone does whatever they can so that we might hate them,
· shares in their suffering, walking alongside with people not leaving them alone in their pain,
· loves all – even those whose behaviors or beliefs are contrary or adamantly opposed to our
own.
This is the way Jesus acted in love towards others – in the story of the Good Samaritan or washing his disciples feet – and we hear Jesus saying to us: “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10: 37; John 13: 17).
That's what I am trying to do. Join me?
Showing posts with label Holy Spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Spirit. Show all posts
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
What Does the Ground Feel Like When You Walk in the Spirit?
I was in conversation with a friend yesterday over a cup of coffee. We got talking about life and how walking is a metaphor for how we journey in life. What does the ground feel like under our feet on the pathways of life? Often we walk on hard paths - the same paths everyone else has walked on before, pathways that have been packed down - and so walking seems pretty easy. But from the Jesus' metaphor of the soils, not much grows on hard paths.
When our walking is frustrated it is often because the soil beneath our feet is not hard anymore, its soft and so every step takes an effort to move forward. We get frustrated when our forward movement is impeded and we try to get out of this kind of soil as fast as we can in order to find a hard path again. But this kind of soil in the parable of the soils (cf. Matthew 13) Jesus says is the kind of soil in which life takes root.
As followers of Jesus we are called to walk in the Spirit. I think this is difficult because we want to do the walking and walking in the Spirit requires our being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. When we are cruising along the hard pathways, we're in control - who needs the Spirit. But when life slows down, moving forward is bogged down, step taking requires effort - maybe then we can be most open to the Spirit in our lives. The soil we most despise because it slows us donw, is the soil that something can take root in, we can take root in, soil in which the Spirit of God can produce something in our lives.
We talk alot about making a living and we often think about our being Christian while we make our way in the world, while we make a living. But I am beginning to think differently about what it means to follow after Jesus. Could it be that our primary calling is to be persons who are open to the Spirit of God, to be instruments of the Spirit working in the world and our jobs, etc are secondary to that calling. Could it be we are called to be the people of God in such a way that our jobs, careers are merely the contexts in which we live out lives which are open to the Spirit of God. So for example, if someone was a plumber, maybe it is not about them going to their job and do what they do, and then also think about how they are to be a Christian in this context, but rather in all of life they are called to live/walk with a sensitivity to the Spirit's leading and it just so happens that plumbing provides the context in which they walk in the Spirit in the presence of other people.
This has implications for the way we live. We are to be primarily those who walk in the ways of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and our careers, or whatever we do, provides the context in which we do our walking.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Responding to the Presence of the Spirit
In my last blog I talked about how we might be aware of where the Spirit is present in the world. So what do we do then when we witness the presence of the Spirit - how do we respond? Do we rush in full force, "guns blazing" as it were with the Gospel, to somehow overwhelm the person becoming aware of the working of the Spirit in their life?
I think we take too many cues from the religious establishment in responding to our witnessing the presence of the Spirit. If a farmer plants a crop and begins to witness shoots coming through the ground, the farmer does not run out there with a harvester in order to gather a harvest - rather the farmer waters the soil, weeds the earth, nurtures the shoot - so that it might continue to grow in a healthy manner.
So much of our response to witnessing the Spirit is to run at people with a harvester with the result being that we uproot the work that the Spirit is just beginning to do in a person's life - with the result being that we uproot the Spirit in that person's life.
I think we need to take a cue from Jesus.
Jesus taught quite a bit in parables - clear messages, but with hidden meanings, meanings which took some time for reflection to begin to understand, meanings which required an openness to the Spirit of God to grasp. Most of these parables were about the kingdom or reign of God.
For example, he talked about sowing a mustard seed into the soil. I am not sure how important a crop it was in Jesus' day, but it seems to me that it was a crop that did not require much attention - plant it, let it take root, and watch it grow from a wee tiny seed into a large shrub in which birds could nest. Also, the woman baking bread, put yeast into her bread, expecting the yeast to work through the dough - her focus however was not so much on the yeast but on baking the bread - the yeast just kind of had to do its job on its own.
So to the working of the Spirit - like mustard seed or yeast, the Spirit works under the surface, somewhat unbeknown to our other purposes - so then it seems our response to becoming aware of the Spirit is not to rush in full force, but rather come alongside for us to listen to the person in whom the Spirit is working, to gain some insight into what the Spirit is doing, so that the Spirit can invite us into a relationship with a particular person in order for us to not trumpet our agenda, but for us to be of use to the Spirit in that person's life as the Spirit directs.
I am not all that sure of what we are to say or do, except to somehow be present to the Spirit, present to the person - in order to be, perhaps like the farmer, to water, weed, cultivate - so that the Spirit can produce the fruit the Spirit desires. This I believe entails a ministry of responding, which requires being there, listening, etc., rather than trying to insert our own meaning, direction in the encounter. The Spirit draws us in to assist the Spirit, not to take over. So often we just want to take over.
Jesus often responded in such a similar way - when the woman who was ill for years just wanted to touch his cloak and hopefully to be healed, his response was "who touched me?" In her touching she encountered the presence of the Spirit and in responding to her Jesus was open to discover what was going on in her life, her mind, etc. There are other examples - maybe we can find them together.
What I am learning is that I need to be more open to responding to where I see the Spirit's presence, rather than taking it as an opportunity to rush in and crowd out the whisper with which the Spirit is speaking in a person's life. Perhaps the first step in this is my needing to listen more - for me to become aware of how I am to be open to the Spirit so that I can even become more aware of the presence of the Spirit in the world.
I think we take too many cues from the religious establishment in responding to our witnessing the presence of the Spirit. If a farmer plants a crop and begins to witness shoots coming through the ground, the farmer does not run out there with a harvester in order to gather a harvest - rather the farmer waters the soil, weeds the earth, nurtures the shoot - so that it might continue to grow in a healthy manner.
So much of our response to witnessing the Spirit is to run at people with a harvester with the result being that we uproot the work that the Spirit is just beginning to do in a person's life - with the result being that we uproot the Spirit in that person's life.
I think we need to take a cue from Jesus.
Jesus taught quite a bit in parables - clear messages, but with hidden meanings, meanings which took some time for reflection to begin to understand, meanings which required an openness to the Spirit of God to grasp. Most of these parables were about the kingdom or reign of God.
For example, he talked about sowing a mustard seed into the soil. I am not sure how important a crop it was in Jesus' day, but it seems to me that it was a crop that did not require much attention - plant it, let it take root, and watch it grow from a wee tiny seed into a large shrub in which birds could nest. Also, the woman baking bread, put yeast into her bread, expecting the yeast to work through the dough - her focus however was not so much on the yeast but on baking the bread - the yeast just kind of had to do its job on its own.
So to the working of the Spirit - like mustard seed or yeast, the Spirit works under the surface, somewhat unbeknown to our other purposes - so then it seems our response to becoming aware of the Spirit is not to rush in full force, but rather come alongside for us to listen to the person in whom the Spirit is working, to gain some insight into what the Spirit is doing, so that the Spirit can invite us into a relationship with a particular person in order for us to not trumpet our agenda, but for us to be of use to the Spirit in that person's life as the Spirit directs.
I am not all that sure of what we are to say or do, except to somehow be present to the Spirit, present to the person - in order to be, perhaps like the farmer, to water, weed, cultivate - so that the Spirit can produce the fruit the Spirit desires. This I believe entails a ministry of responding, which requires being there, listening, etc., rather than trying to insert our own meaning, direction in the encounter. The Spirit draws us in to assist the Spirit, not to take over. So often we just want to take over.
Jesus often responded in such a similar way - when the woman who was ill for years just wanted to touch his cloak and hopefully to be healed, his response was "who touched me?" In her touching she encountered the presence of the Spirit and in responding to her Jesus was open to discover what was going on in her life, her mind, etc. There are other examples - maybe we can find them together.
What I am learning is that I need to be more open to responding to where I see the Spirit's presence, rather than taking it as an opportunity to rush in and crowd out the whisper with which the Spirit is speaking in a person's life. Perhaps the first step in this is my needing to listen more - for me to become aware of how I am to be open to the Spirit so that I can even become more aware of the presence of the Spirit in the world.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Do We See the Spirit of God Active in the World?
A couple of weeks ago I was leading a doctoral seminar at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The focus of the seminar was missional spirituality. Though we talked about how a missional perspective (about what God is doing in the world to reconcile humanity to himself and to one another) and how it effects and affects our spirituality, we also spent a significant amount of time talking about the Holy Spirits and the Spirit's presence and activity in the world.
John Taylor talks about the Holy Spirit as the Go-Between God in which he talks about the Spirit as God who goes before us, draws us into relationship with God and with one another, and prepares the hearts and lives of people to have ears to hear and eyes to see the activity and presence of God in the world.
A significant conclusion we came to as a class is that we need to become more aware of where the Spirit of God is in the world. As we live out our daily lives, we are so focused on our agendas, what issues and responsibilities are ours, our schedules, our appointments, our commitments. What we miss in this focus on what we are about or what we need to be doing is that we rarely take the time to see where the Spirit of God is present, what the Spirit of God is up to, the encounters the Spirit of God leads us into.
Two of us had an interesting encounter on the weekend between the first and second week of class. On Saturday I decided to take the transit system into Dallas to see Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor museum to reflect on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Afterwords I had some great barbecue at Sonny Bryans. On the way back to SMU I got involved in a conversation with a homeless person. We talked for about half an hour. His name is Robert and he had lost family and home through Katrina. I helped him out. Unbeknownst to me (I found out about this in class Monday), Joe, a pastor from Atlanta taking the class, also went into Dallas, also had an encounter with Robert, also helped him out and took him to lunch at Sonny Bryans. We missed each other by about 30 minutes. Robert gave Joe a different story about getting out of prison, etc. Did we get duped? Probably! Robert seems to have a different story for every occasion. But as we reflected upon it in class, we also concluded both Joe and my encounter with Robert was no coincidence - but something that revealed the activity of the Spirit - for sure in our lives and I am sure in Robert's life as well. If we had another weekend, I am sure Joe and I would have gone together into Dallas, found Robert and rather than confronting him, we were open to being present to him in the way Jesus might.
This brings about something else we talked about in class. Not only do we need to have better vision to see the presence of the Spirit in the world, but how do we respond when we see the Spirit being present in the world? Because the Spirit has taken possession of our lives, are we not at the Spirit's disposal to connect with others to whomever God leads us so that the Spirit of God can "go-between" us so that the other experiences an encounter with God?
I will address this more in another blog.
So the challenge for me (and maybe for you to) is not to live my life so self-absorbed and caught up in my own schedules, but to be open to see where the Spirit is, what the Spirit is doing. To be open to wherever the Spirit may lead me, because maybe, if I am open to the Spirit and I am not too caught up in what I am about, the Spirit just may bring the presence of God to bear into another person's life.
Anyways, this is a challenge I want to always be open to.
Roland
John Taylor talks about the Holy Spirit as the Go-Between God in which he talks about the Spirit as God who goes before us, draws us into relationship with God and with one another, and prepares the hearts and lives of people to have ears to hear and eyes to see the activity and presence of God in the world.
A significant conclusion we came to as a class is that we need to become more aware of where the Spirit of God is in the world. As we live out our daily lives, we are so focused on our agendas, what issues and responsibilities are ours, our schedules, our appointments, our commitments. What we miss in this focus on what we are about or what we need to be doing is that we rarely take the time to see where the Spirit of God is present, what the Spirit of God is up to, the encounters the Spirit of God leads us into.
Two of us had an interesting encounter on the weekend between the first and second week of class. On Saturday I decided to take the transit system into Dallas to see Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor museum to reflect on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Afterwords I had some great barbecue at Sonny Bryans. On the way back to SMU I got involved in a conversation with a homeless person. We talked for about half an hour. His name is Robert and he had lost family and home through Katrina. I helped him out. Unbeknownst to me (I found out about this in class Monday), Joe, a pastor from Atlanta taking the class, also went into Dallas, also had an encounter with Robert, also helped him out and took him to lunch at Sonny Bryans. We missed each other by about 30 minutes. Robert gave Joe a different story about getting out of prison, etc. Did we get duped? Probably! Robert seems to have a different story for every occasion. But as we reflected upon it in class, we also concluded both Joe and my encounter with Robert was no coincidence - but something that revealed the activity of the Spirit - for sure in our lives and I am sure in Robert's life as well. If we had another weekend, I am sure Joe and I would have gone together into Dallas, found Robert and rather than confronting him, we were open to being present to him in the way Jesus might.
This brings about something else we talked about in class. Not only do we need to have better vision to see the presence of the Spirit in the world, but how do we respond when we see the Spirit being present in the world? Because the Spirit has taken possession of our lives, are we not at the Spirit's disposal to connect with others to whomever God leads us so that the Spirit of God can "go-between" us so that the other experiences an encounter with God?
I will address this more in another blog.
So the challenge for me (and maybe for you to) is not to live my life so self-absorbed and caught up in my own schedules, but to be open to see where the Spirit is, what the Spirit is doing. To be open to wherever the Spirit may lead me, because maybe, if I am open to the Spirit and I am not too caught up in what I am about, the Spirit just may bring the presence of God to bear into another person's life.
Anyways, this is a challenge I want to always be open to.
Roland
Monday, September 03, 2007
The Uncomfortableness of Being Led by the Spirit
There are too many times that I would rather do what is comfortable. "Comfortable" is under my control. "Comfortable" allows me to know what is coming, allows me to do things in a manner that are not strange to me. "Comfortable" also gives me the power to shape my experience. The problem with "comfortable" is that I think it also keeps me from being open to the Spirit of God.
Being led by the Spirit of God into situations, different contexts, different experiences seems to take me into places where I am not very comfortable at all. I guess what makes me comfortable is that I can rely on myself, my abilities, my limitations. What makes me uncomfortable is to be asked to live outside of those bounds.
As I read Scripture -- I am in the midst of re-reading the birth narratives of Jesus -- I see there is very little of "being comfortable" in heeding the Spirit of God. Was Mary comfortable when she was visited by an angel telling her that she would give birth to a son who would be known as the Son of God? Was Joseph comfortable, finding Mary to be with child and wanting to break his engagement with her, to discover that what was conceived in her was by the Spirit? I think they were comforted by God, but there were far from being comfortable. They were filled with joy once they began comprehending this new reality - but it was way beyond their comfort zones.
I am finding that being led by the Spirit usually takes me out of my comfort zones -- and into zones that I am unable "to control," to rely wholly on my abilities. Rather, I have to rely on the Spirit; I have to rely on God to be able to go ahead in what the Spirit is leading me into. I find myself walking carefully, ensuring one foot is placed well before I take another, as if I were rock climbing, or walking a narrow mountain path. I am not comfortable with this at all -- but as I allow myself to be open to what the Spirit is doing in my life, I am comforted, strengthened, hopeful, that this pathway I am walking on I am not walking alone -- the Spirit of God is with me, because the Spirit is leading me.
It makes for an adventuresome journey - outside of my comfort zone - however, it is the only way I am able to develop clarity of vision, acuity of hearing, and courage to participate in what the Spirit of God is doing in the world as I trust the Spirit of God to guide me and lead me into what God is inviting me into.
Being led by the Spirit of God into situations, different contexts, different experiences seems to take me into places where I am not very comfortable at all. I guess what makes me comfortable is that I can rely on myself, my abilities, my limitations. What makes me uncomfortable is to be asked to live outside of those bounds.
As I read Scripture -- I am in the midst of re-reading the birth narratives of Jesus -- I see there is very little of "being comfortable" in heeding the Spirit of God. Was Mary comfortable when she was visited by an angel telling her that she would give birth to a son who would be known as the Son of God? Was Joseph comfortable, finding Mary to be with child and wanting to break his engagement with her, to discover that what was conceived in her was by the Spirit? I think they were comforted by God, but there were far from being comfortable. They were filled with joy once they began comprehending this new reality - but it was way beyond their comfort zones.
I am finding that being led by the Spirit usually takes me out of my comfort zones -- and into zones that I am unable "to control," to rely wholly on my abilities. Rather, I have to rely on the Spirit; I have to rely on God to be able to go ahead in what the Spirit is leading me into. I find myself walking carefully, ensuring one foot is placed well before I take another, as if I were rock climbing, or walking a narrow mountain path. I am not comfortable with this at all -- but as I allow myself to be open to what the Spirit is doing in my life, I am comforted, strengthened, hopeful, that this pathway I am walking on I am not walking alone -- the Spirit of God is with me, because the Spirit is leading me.
It makes for an adventuresome journey - outside of my comfort zone - however, it is the only way I am able to develop clarity of vision, acuity of hearing, and courage to participate in what the Spirit of God is doing in the world as I trust the Spirit of God to guide me and lead me into what God is inviting me into.
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