Godgrown

Updates from April, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Mark 7:24 am on April 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Not Complex, Just Difficult 

  A friend of mine recently mentioned,

  “The solutions to the biggest problems in life will not be complex, only difficult.”

  This is SO true.

  When we look at the brokenness of our world, from the savage violence in Libya to a father abandoning his family to cling to his drink, you get the sense that things are very, very wicked – and turning this burning ship around will require more than well-crafted policies or enticing tax incentives.

  There is no law that will make me love my neighbor as myself.  There is no external motivation that brings me to my knees in prayer.

  We have been trying to end poverty, war, hunger, homelessness, spousal abuse, gang-violence…well, the list goes on and on.  The evening news shows begins each night with “Good evening…” then tells you all the reasons in the world why it isn’t!

  But that’s not the end of the story –

  The solutions to the world’s biggest problems…to the biggest problems in your own life… are not complex rules or well-managed institutions…no, they are quite simple…they are just difficult.

  It is not a matter of the head figuring out the solutions – it is now down to a matter of the heart.

  Can we trust our neighbor?

  Can we love them?

  Can we forgive them…and ourselves?

  Can we love our family as God loves them?

  Can we offer troubled youth a place in our family before they are sucked into the vortex of a gang?

  Can we rend ourselves of our wealth so that urban food deserts disappear?

  When Jesus quoted, “There will always be poor among you,”  he was hoping that his disciples would be convicted by what was obviously an ironic and tragic reference to Deuteronomy 15:4-11, The text begins: “There should be no poor among you…” Is Jesus misquoting Scripture?  Is he confused?  No – he’s making a point; that the end of poverty comes not with well-crafted laws of tithing, but by overcoming one’s self-centered selfishness.  ”There will always be poor among you,” was a rebuke of the disciples.

  “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” (Deut. 15:11)

  Did a command do the job? Did that verse end poverty at the stroke of a pen (or chisel as it were)?  No – there were plenty of people in Jesus’ day that were poor – thousands of years after the Law of Moses was written.

  Jesus knew this problem, like so many others in his world, and in our world today – can only come from overcoming the most difficult hurdle in the world — the human heart.

  

  Jay is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Jay 5:14 am on April 22, 2011 Permalink

    Life would be easier if I could disagree with you.
    The comfortable interpretation that says — since they will always be there what’s the rush, why bother, nothing can really be done about it, Jesus said so — just doesn’t cut it. If he was rebuking his poor disciples, what would he say to us with our opulence?

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  Mark 7:16 am on April 18, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Adventures in Missing the Point 

  We humans are pretty funny creatures.

  We hold in us the very essence of the Divine, the purpose of all creation.  We are the very focus of God’s love and his mission.  We were important enough to him to put everything else in the cosmos on hold so he could live and dwell among us as our friend.

  He dined with us; he died for us.

  And still – we have this funny habit of majoring in the minors.  What more does the Church bicker about than Communion / the Eucharist / the Lord’s Supper… see!  We can’t even agree on what to call it!  :)

  I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.  When something of that magnitude – dining with our Creator, is handed to us mortals, we have a tendency to shoot off in unimportant rabbit trails, just like the disciples did on that final evening with Jesus in the upper room.  As Jesus is sharing the elements of bread and wine, washing feet and calling them “friends,” they are busy bickering about who will desert Jesus – and we have been bickering ever since.  Right in the presence of Jesus, we have all these ‘adventures in missing the point.’

  Its almost as if we have some mechanism in our minds that numbs us from approaching what is real – and we choose instead the tertiary, the tangential and the temporary.

  It is like Mary hiding in the kitchen preparing the food to the neglect of her guest – Jesus, Immanuel…God with us.  God may be ‘with us’…but are we with him? Or are we just in the other room, finishing up the dessert?

  When it comes to Communion/Lord’s Supper, whatever you want to call it – (don’t call it anything!), let that be the one time when formalities don’t have to matter.  Who cares whether there should be leavened or unleavened bread, one or two cups of wine (grape juice?)

  Maybe its time to re-institute the holy sacrament of playfulness, of friendliness, of devotion to the one thing that matters.  Is it worth giving up your connection to Jesus to decide whether or not to pass a plate of bread around the room, or to come to the front to receive it?

  I’m done majoring in the minors.  I’m done focusing on the steps of the dance, and instead simply enjoying my Dance-Partner.  I’m interested in looking squarely into Jesus’ eyes and letting him remain the center of my life – where he wants to be anyway.  I’m ready to have some fun in my friendship with him – to let his love be the driving force of my theology, my liturgy, my life.  Its so much more fun!

  How about you?

  
   
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  Mark 7:22 am on April 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, Lent ( 3 )   

  Whose Side I’m Fighting For 

  It is hard to say or to know what exactly matters in my line of work.  The lines get so blurry.  I wish sometimes I could lay my head on the pillow at the end of the day and have a sense of knowing for sure that the Kingdom made its way, even just one more inch, into the city of Chicago through something I did, something I participated in.  But it doesn’t work like that.

  More often than not, it is messy dance of back and forth.  It is ambiguous victories mixed with incomplete failures.  I don’t know half the time whose side I’m fighting for – and often it feels like my efforts are doing more harm for the Kingdom than good.

  Why all this self-doubt?  We’re getting toward the end of Lent, and I realize each year that no matter how much purging and confession and buffeting I do to hone myself closer to the Living God, there is simply no way to transcend the fact that I’m a person who will also be mixed with the spiritual warfare going on all around us. At times I pick up the flag of the enemy and run in the opposite direction, hell bent on destroying everything I desperately want to see accomplished in God’s work here in Chicago.

  Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement once said:

  “What we do is very little.  But it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes.  Christ took that little and increased it.  He will do the rest.  What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing.  But so did he fail.  He met with apparent failure on the Cross.  But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest.”

  Being a missionary isn’t a neat and tidy job, but then again, Jesus had a fine time living in ambiguity and failure.  That brings me peace.

  

  Mark W, and Travis Akins are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Travis Akins 1:45 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink

    Mark-thanks for sharing honestly and openly. HUGE encouragement. I have the same worries/struggles in my ministry. Thanks for the re-focus.

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    Mark W 4:36 pm on April 12, 2011 Permalink

    It always helps to remember that all our “castles” we build in life are SANDcastles – and every so often its sort of refreshing to kick a few over!