The Words of God

     Have you heard of the Oaks of Righteousness?  You may not have if you haven't read Isaiah 61; or if you have read it but in a translation that differs from mine.  The NIV, ESV, NASB and many other fairly contemporary translations read something like this:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:1-3 NIV)

     The New King James and some other translations read "trees of righteousness."  So instead of translating the Hebrew word 'ayil as "trees" as is done in the King James, the NIV scholars chose "oaks."  Get it?  It's a different translation of the same word.

     Why am I making a point of this?  Because I think it's less important than many other Believers probably do.  You see, I was thinking about this verse while riding my bike, and it came to mind because I had just passed an oak tree.  This particular oak is a bur oak maybe 25 feet tall, and right now (in September) it's covered in bright green acorns that seem to glow amid the dense, dark green leaves.  The trunk is perhaps 20 inches in diameter and straight, and the branches grown virtually straight out from the trunk all the way up to the rounded crown.  In the short time I beheld this oak tree as I rode by, Isaiah 61:3 occured to me and I began to think of what it means to be an "oak of righteousness;" how majestic a thing an oak tree is; how slowly and strongly it grows; how it beautifies the landscape, provides shade, shelter and food, and lends an atmosphere of grandiosity to the place where it is planted.

     Now consider what might have occurred to me had I only known this verse with the phrase "trees of righteousness."  I would probably not have been impressed with the same sense of what the Lord says about us.  At least not with the impressions of grandeur, majesty and strength that the oak inspires.  The English word "trees" falls rather lamely in this passage compared to "oaks," laden as the latter word is with so much cultural significance.  A tree can be any kind of tree.  It can be an oak, of course, but it can also be a cottonwood, which leaves its own distinct impressions far different from oaks.

     The reason I think this quirk between or among translations of the Bible is not important is because these are words on a page.  The Bible as I know it is a pretty huge collection of words on pages, all of which could mean one thing or another depending on my mood, religious background, geographic region, ethnicity, political ideology or relative intelligence.  The words on these pages bear revelation and significance not because they are translated without error, but because God speaks in them.  God speaks in oaks and he speaks in trees.  To me He spoke revelation in the word oak, and I don't doubt that on another day, another bike ride, He may speak revelation in the word tree.  Truthfully the words of God as we envision them, captured by so many men over the course of centuries, are far less important than the voice of God that speaks in these words for those who have ears to hear.

     I hope that last statement caught you off guard.  In fact, I think I can already hear many of you formulating your arguments and mounting your defenses.  Some of you are raising your favorite translation into the air in triumph.  Perhaps you have Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek translations laid out on a table.  Your concordance is worn and heavily marked, as are your dictionaries and commentaries.  You have encountered arguments against the Bible and you're prepared to believe that this is another one, and you have your retort ready.  I'm also pretty sure you have a go to translation, the RIGHT one, the BEST one, the one you believe is the only version through which one hears the pure and unadulterated words of God.

     Personally I have no beef with deep study of the Bible.  I would be a fool to say there is no merit in studying this wonderful book, in delving into the ins and outs of the various languages in which it was written.  I have on my own gained a great deal of revelation from studying individual words, short enigmatic passages, deep and confusing biblical teachings.  I've also gained a great deal of revelation from misrememberings of certain scriptures.  The Lord has spoken to me in verses I couldn't even find when I went back to look.  Sometimes He encourages me with a scripture that, once I do find it and read it again, is far less impressive on the page than it was in my heart when He spoke it to me.  The reason that this occurs is because the voice of God is always more powerful, more significant and more revelatory than the simple words.  It's what's behind the words that touches my heart.  It's Him - He is behind the words, whatever they may be.

     Jesus often said this to those who gathered to hear him teach: "He who has ears, let him hear."  I find that to be a peculiar phrase, mostly because it is so simplistic.  Hearing is exactly what ears are for, so the directive sounds rather obvious - unless, of course, it is possible to have ears and NOT hear.  As we all know, it is not only possible to have ears and not to hear, more often than not this is just what we do.  Many who heard Jesus preach had ears, but very few heard just what he was saying about himself and he came to do.  The same is very much true today, and Jesus has not ceased speaking and teaching.  An ear is a rather useless appendage if it isn't used for hearing.  The fact remains that there are a lot of useless ears in the worlds, both inner and outer.  But even if you listen attentively with your outer ear, there is so much you will never hear, because the Father is speaking not to your human ear and mind but right to your spirit through His own Holy Spirit.

     This then is what makes the Bible worth reading.  This is what makes the words of God come alive as His very voice, regardless of how precise or perfect the translation is.  When we let the Holy Spirit speak and do what is his ministry - to teach, to exhort, to encourage, to lift up and inform - when we let God speak behind the words on the page then there is life in those words.  When the Holy Spirit is our guide and we know the sweet melody of his whispering voice, there is life in oaks and there is life in trees.  There is revelation all around, in fact, when we walk in step with the Holy Spirit.  We don't even have to be literate to find it.

Where Church Happens

I'm hung up on the idea of church.  For years this was a problem for me, to the point that I could not bring myself to even attend a church.  Having grown up going to church every Sunday and Wednesday, going to youth camps and revivals, church ski trips and special events, I was just tired of it.  In fact, I still am.

In the United States, church is an institution.  Collectively we tend to categorize churches the way we do schools and community centers - as institutions of significance in our communities.  And when we view churches as institutions, we treat them as such.  The problem with this paradigm is that we expect institutions to serve us, to provide some good.  Schools provide education; banks provide money; libraries provide information and books; churches provide...well, lots of things.  In fact as institutions churches are providing more and more.  In my city of just under 200,000 residents there are at least a couple of dozen churches with gyms, and probably just as many with preschools and daycares.  And every church, no matter how small, puts on a vacation bible school program in the summer.  Churches are constantly looking for programs that will help them connect to the community, either through service, fun, study or what have you.  Churches are bedrock institutions in America, to the point that you don't even need the Gospel to have a successful church.

But there is a problem here, because the Church - that body of believers with Jesus Christ as the head - is not an institution.  The Bible variously describes the church as a living body and a building made of living stones.  Paul goes into some detail about how the Church is a dynamic organism comprised of a diverse collection of believers, and how we as members of this body each serve an important purpose in making the body effective and whole.  The scriptures don't spend much time detailing how to increase attendance.  And nowhere have I yet found where it is written that the music comes before the preaching.  In fact the Bible doesn't really communicate the model of church that we are using at all, but something altogether different, so I have no idea where we got what we have.  How did the church go from sharing everything in common in the first century AD, to a bunch of strangers gathering once a week for an hour and a half to get a five point lesson on dealing with stress?

The American church is too much a product of American culture, which is why it has become an institution.  The culture does not understand the Church as it's meant to be, because the culture has not tolerance for spiritual faith.  But the culture has great tolerance for good works; in fact, it's the only aspect of the Church that the culture at large will tolerate.  And so, in order to fit in, to attract larger crowds, to avoid stepping on toes, American churches embrace the model of The Serving Institution.  We embrace the model of the Community Center and build gyms, host VBS in the summer, develop sports programs.  We embrace the model of the library and become quiet places for people to read, information centers, halls of study.  We embrace the model of the Public Space and offer our buildings as meeting halls, wedding chapels, gathering places.  In these ways the church in America has become a bedrock institution that is primarily associated with community service rather than the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The tricky thing about my indictment of the American church is that, well, these community services are really not a bad thing.  Who's going to complain about a preschool run by Christians?  And wouldn't it be better to work out at the church than at a secular gym?  What's wrong with vacation bible school if it brings in a lot of lost children to the church to hear about Jesus?  All of these are valid defenses of the church in America, and I would be remiss if I said that churches do not provide good things.  I haven't said that, by the way.  However, the principle problem with churches in America is that, for the most part, these are the only substantive things being provided.  When the best the church has to offer is a safe place for community activities, we have ceased being the Body of Christ and have instead become another community institution.

So if being a community institution is not sufficient for the Church, what exactly is the Church supposed to be?  A few things come to mind.  First of all the Church is the functioning Body of Christ in Jesus's physical absence.  We bear witness to His good works and His good news - His Gospel - to others on the Earth.  This is not as simple as taking a group around the neighborhood to knock on doors and "witness."  You can't bear witness of something you haven't seen or experienced, so what is really important is building a relationship with the Lord, one in which you see, hear, feel and know Him.  The Word says "Taste and see that the Lord is good."  If you don't do that first, it's very little use telling others how good He is; you'll be describing something you've never tasted.  So knowing who God is and what He stands for and who you are in Him is paramount.  A second thing is this - loving people.  There's a whole lot that we can do and accomplish both in our own names and in the name of Jesus, but as Paul reminds us, if we don't have love then these things are useless.  But just what does it mean to love?  What does it look like?  Well, that's a part of the experience of being a part of the Body, learning what love is, how it looks, how it can be expressed and experienced, and how it ultimately glorifies God.  A third thing I think the Church should be about is discipleship.  Not Bible Study, but Discipleship, which includes a whole lot of time together becoming friends, building relationships and learning how to walk out the teachings of the Holy Spirit.  Disciples spend more than an hour or two together a week.  Disciples build relationships that are strong enough and safe enough for wounding to occur, and healing thereafter.  Discipleship is hard, but it is not easily reproducible from time to time; you can't put Discipleship in a box and hand it off to someone else to duplicate.  It takes time and dedication and love and relationship.

And so we see a theme here about Church, and I believe that it is this: the Church requires, above all, Love.  Not love in the sense that we are used to at church - friendliness, empathy, enablement, soft words - but Love in the sense that Jesus conveyed.  Jesus was not always nice and friendly; sometimes with his best friends he was downright rude.  But he was always right; he was always true.  And he had some damn close friends, men who willingly laid down their lives for him.  He still has a lot of friends like that, and it's because of his Love, the Love he learned from the Father.  We have to learn to love like Jesus and learn also that loving like him is at the heart of being the Church.

The beautiful truth I am learning about the Church, in light of the fact that Love is the principal piece of what makes the Church what it should be, is that church can happen anywhere.  That is does happen anywhere and everywhere.  I have church every Tuesday morning for an hour and a half with a friend of mine over coffee.  And I have church pretty regularly in the evenings in conversation with my wife.  I have church over beers with my brother when he is in town, and my family has church over hot dogs and margaritas with our friends and their kids.  I have church when I meet a brother in Christ I have never met before and we are instantly family, and it doesn't matter what the setting is because the Church is a living body, a living temple, a dynamic thing that is never, ever contained in a specific setting or in a building of a specific architecture.  I guess it's a good thing that I'm hung up on church then, because I'm constantly reminded that as a Believer I am a temple, a repository of the Spirit of the Most High, and I take Church with me everywhere I go.

So do you.

Being Church

On more than one occasion I have heard a preacher talk about how his church began in a living room of one of the founding members.  This testimony is usually given wistfully, almost dismissive of the humble beginnings of the church, as if most in the room (regardless of the room's size) would be surprised that a functioning church body could begin in someone's house.  As it is, this is probably the most common way that any given church starts.  A group of people begin to build relationships and receive revelations that they're not getting in their current church or churches.  They go after these revelations and feel moved to do something different, and so the most obvious and easily achieved course of action is to get together at somebody's home and go after the Lord in this new way.

What I can't quite square is why these home churches don't last.  I know why they don't last, of course - because the group grows, the revelation finds appeal among a larger group, and so the body forms a church, buys or rents a building, hires the preacher, and another "church" is born.  Never mind that the group meeting in the living room was already a church.  While I know that we leave the house because our group grows, I don't understand why the new location has such appeal.  Which is more intimate: your living room or your church sanctuary?  Which setting has more appeal if what you really want out of church is deep, trustworthy and dynamic relationships?

So to hear a preacher brag about getting his group out of the house is not appealing to me.  As soon as you move your church out of the living room you acquire a lot of new difficulties: rent payments, utilities, nonprofit forms, bank accounts, staff.  And as the church grows so do the things that have to be managed.  Now people you have no relationship with are coming in, and you look for leaders in the larger group who you trust to carry on the revelations you all received there in your house.  Then rules come in, some of which don't or shouldn't apply to all people all the time, but which must apply if good order is to be maintained in this growing body.  And your youth population is growing too, or you have a lot of college students, or a lot of married couples - you have a subgroup that you feel the need to address with a specific program or meeting time, and you have to hire another staff member.

I think you know where I'm going.  I attend a church that probably wouldn't seat more than 350 people at one time and I find myself thinking, This is getting too big.  I find myself yearning for living rooms and kitchen islands; hungry for Godly conversation shared over pints of beer or bowls of salsa.  I find myself coveting the experience the preacher has apparently overcome, because I'm learning that church at somebody's house is almost always more authentic, sincere and powerful than church in the building down the block.

I have asked myself why I believe this.  It's not a requirement that the church meet in a house.  For instance, my wife and I met with a group in a coffee shop that was closed on Sunday's.  That wasn't a house, but we also spent time with these friends in their houses.  The barriers to church were not the church walls themselves because we didn't have a specific place we called "church."  This must be why I find church outside of the church walls so important, because when we relegate our church experience to the building on the corner, we relegate our relationships to the times the doors are open.  And this includes our relationship with the Lord.  We prop up this notion or understanding that church is just another place we go, instead of being a thing that we are.  We shouldn't be going to church, we should just be the church.

The answer to my search is not as easy as just dropping out and gathering a group in my living room.  I could do that, and if it was powerful and God was in it the group would grow and eventually something would probably have to be done.  What I'm not looking for is another "church" experience.  I don't want to replicate what goes on in the sanctuary.  If it's the same concept - if church remains this thing we attend, not this thing that we just are - then it doesn't matter where it occurs.  What we realize when we read about the first church in the Bible is not that they're somehow more authentic because they don't have a building, but that they are sincere in their pursuit of God.  They take care of each other's needs, spiritual and physical.  They are friends and colleagues; their children are welcome in each other's houses, and welcome to attend any given meeting.  I think that what we're so hungry for but can't quite get our hands on is a church experience that we don't have to think of as an "experience" because it's just our life, it's just what we do.

That sums it up: church should be what we are.  Because the entire Christian experience is not an experience, it's a lifestyle.  It's a life.  Church should not be another building that we visit in the course of our lifestyle, like we visit the bank or the grocery store or the school.  You don't leave church behind when the Sunday service is over; you can't.  The lie of the Enemy is embodied in this notion that church is something that we do and not something that we are, because the Enemy doesn't want us to grasp our true identity in Jesus Christ.  If church is a place we go, we can just fake it when we get there.  But if church is who we are, we can never take it off and we can never leave it behind.

Coming Clean

     One of the first healing miracles that Jesus performs after he begins his ministry is emblematic of everything he embodies.  This man he heals is a leper, which means that he suffers from some sort of skin disease, probably a contagious one.  This is significant because, according to Mosaic law, he is unclean due to his condition.  He is therefore an outcast - isolated, probably friendless, and quite hopeless.
     However, this man has good vision; he sees Jesus for who he is, he recognizes the power that Jesus possesses.  "If you will, you can make me clean," the leper says as he kneels.  And of course Jesus wills that he should be healed.  It's the will of God that all should be made clean, and this man is no exception.  So Jesus does something extraordinary: he touches the leper.

     Our common understanding of uncleanliness is that it is something we catch.  So cliches like "one bad apple spoils the bunch" embody our perspective.  Because this is our perspective, we avoid spending time with people we perceive as unclean.  For many Christians this means we have no relationships with non-believers.  Our circle of friends is limited to people who we view as "ceremonially clean."  People who, in other words, are just like us.
     But here is what Jesus does: he stretches out his hand and touches the unclean.  And what we think should happen - that Jesus should be made unclean - does not.  The opposite happens.  When Jesus puts his hand on someone they are changed.  You don't come to Jesus clean in the hopes of receiving something greater because the greatest thing you receive from Jesus is the gift of being made clean.
   
     In the old covenant the healing wasn't enough.  Jesus heals the leper, and then tells him not to tell anyone what happened, but  to go an "offer what Moses commanded, for a proof to them."  What Moses commanded was a series of sacrifices and actions required for the healed leper to be made clean so that he could rejoin society.  Not a simple series of actions, but a complicated and expensive set.  Even though he has been healed, he is not clean.
     But in the new covenant a miraculous thing occurs when we are healed by the hand of Jesus, in that his touch does both: it heals and makes clean all in one fell swoop.  And it's permanent; did I mention that?  In the old covenant, if the disease came back, bye-bye cleanliness.  But not with Jesus.  With Jesus we are made clean once and for all when we kneel before his outstretched hand and believe.
     If you know the story of the healed leper, you know that he did not go back to the priest to make the offering.  And neither did he keep his mouth shut about Jesus.  I have been pondering over this for several days now, trying to understand the significance of it.  At first I thought that Jesus is trying to tell us something about follow through - that the healing is freely given, but that there is follow through afterwards that requires time, effort and discipline.  Then I thought that maybe the leper was just wrong, just greedy for the healing, and that he symbolizes some kind of disobedience.  However, I think there's a different lesson here, at least for me.  I believe that the leper didn't need to make the offering because he didn't need that old covenant cleansing.  He had received the great gift of the healing touch of Jesus, and he was changed; so why should he desire to return to the crowd, to be accepted on cultural terms.  In a way I think he is heralding the change that Jesus is bringing - the new covenant that allows us to approach the throne of Grace directly.

Finding Life

There is a promise that people make to God that is probably as old as the human race, and it is this:  if you will do this for me, I'll give you anything.  Have you ever made this promise?  It's a desperate promise.  If you've made it you were probably in dire straits at the time.  And in that moment that you made the promise you probably meant it.  If God had given you what you'd needed just then, no doubt He would have had your promised devotion...for a time.  If you're like me you would have tired of being in His debt and you would have moved on.

Why is that?  I think the reason we move on from this promise is because, regardless of how dire the circumstances at the moment, a thing given without cost is easily discarded.  When we make this promise to God - when we ask Him to rescue us and in exchange offer him essentially nothing - we know that we're asking for something for nothing.  After all, our dire straits are rarely foisted upon us in innocence.  Lord knows my dire straits, my lowest points, were directly linked to some bad decisions.  I have mumbled many a dark, desperate prayer to God with my fingers crossed hoping (but not really believing) that he would get me out of just one more jam.

This is just what we do.  But here is what Jesus tells us:

"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it"

What we are doing when we sit and fervently pray our promise to God is we are finding our life.  All those dark times I promised my worthless exchange to the Father I was searching desperately for my life - for clarity, for solutions, for stability.  For a way out.  And when you live that way what winds up happening is you lose your life.  Things go to shit.  You hit a downward spiral.  Nothing changes.

The exchange that Jesus prompts us to make, the exchange that he himself promises to follow through on, is distinctly different.  It's opposite ours.  Jesus says that we have to give up first.  If we follow his advice, our promise goes from, "If you'll help me I'll give myself up," to, "I'll give myself up, and you'll help me."  The most difficult part of this promise is that we have to give up everything before we get anything.  Or rather, before we get EVERYTHING, because that is what Jesus promises in exchange.  He promises life.  Life.  His exchange is far, far beyond the scope of what we in our desperation were willing to accept.

So here is a truth: you will not find what you seek until you first surrender your search.  That's what Jesus says; he says we have to give up what we are in order to get what we need.  Because whether we realize it or not, Life is what we're searching for.  We are hungry for this life that he offers, as surely as the lame and the blind and the destitute were hungry for it when Jesus walked this earth.  We are so hungry for it that in our times of need we make hasty, desperate promises of all that we have.  May we just learn to make those promises in the right order, and make them now.

The Surprising Way Into the Kingdom

The Kingdom is at the end of a narrow road, and sometimes you will need to pass people to get there; and passing people on that narrow road is tricky.  It takes a sly foot to pass on that road.  It takes cleverness.  You may even see some people crawling along that road when they could just as easily walk, and they may even tell you that the only way to get to the Kingdom is to crawl.  Ignore them.  Your feet are healthy; use them.

The Kingdom of God does not have two entrances.  In the old days a home would have two entrances - one for the guests and one for the servants.  But the Kingdom of God has only one entrance, and it is a servant's entrance.

The door to the Kingdom is not easy to open; oftentimes it is nearly jammed shut.  You will need to press your shoulder against it with some force to get it to open.  Other times it is bolted to and you will have to pick the lock.  Did you know that you would perhaps have to break in to the Kingdom of God?  It's true.  You will find men and women forcing their way in, and you may even attempt to follow them in when they breach the door, but you will not be able to.  The door of the Kingdom does not admit a flood of violent people all at once.  It admits one violent man, one violent woman, at a time.

At Table With Jesus

Two people traveling to Emmaus after the crucifixion of Jesus are met by another traveler, a man.  He is Jesus, but they are kept from recognizing him by God.  He walks with them and they talk of the things that have happened in Jerusalem - how Jesus has preached and performed miracles, and how he has been handed over to death by the chief priests and elders.  And also how his body was found missing from the tomb in which it lay.  The travelers are amazed by this, but Jesus (whom they do not recognize) says, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!" and he goes on to describe to them how all of the prophets from Moses foretold of this very event, including the resurrection.

They arrive in Emmaus and Jesus makes to continue, but the two travelers ask him to stay, which he does.  As they are at table for their meal, Jesus blesses and breaks the bread and gives it to them.  Immediately their eyes are opened and they recognize him, and just as quickly he is gone.

This is the way it is with Jesus - we do not see him for who he is until we break bread with him.  The travelers walked with Jesus and he conversed with them and revealed much to them - they say afterwards, "Didn't our hearts burn within us while he spoke?" - but revelation doesn't occur until there is relationship.  This is why Paul said that "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."  Knowledge can take us to the very edge of revelation, but until we sit at table with Jesus and break bread with him, we come away puffier but no wiser.  Until we find intimacy with Jesus we don't see him for who he really is.

When Jesus during his ministry asks his disciples who people say he is, they tell him, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."  Jesus asks them who they say he is, and right away Simon Peter pipes up and says the most important thing he may ever say.

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

"Blessed are you Simon bar-Jonah," replies Jesus, "for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven."  Jesus reveals to us what Peter realized only a moment earlier: that he really does know Jesus because he has given himself to the relationship.  And in this relationship the Father is just as close and significant - and knowable! - as the son.  Peter's love for God, his intimacy with the great I Am, reveals the biggest truth of his life to him.  Flesh and blood does not reveal such great truth.

This is the point where any one of us goes from following Jesus to loving him: when we see him for who he really is.  And in order to see him we have to be willing to sit at his table and let him break the bread and bless us.  Then we can confess that we really do know this man called Jesus.