Creatio Ex Nihilo

God (not actual size)

A few months ago, we cleaned out a basement closet in the Heatley household.  This closet was primarily used for storing my old and now obsolete video equipment.  As our kids helped sort through the old items, they were confounded by such artifacts as VHS tapes and players.  Most puzzling was my old Motorola flip phone from the late nineties.  In their world of ultra-thin cell phones, such a monstrosity was inconceivable.

“How did you fit that in your pocket?” they asked.

“It didn’t fit in my pocket,” I explained. “I had a belt clip for it.”

“You wore that on your belt?  What a geek!”

I didn’t mention that, at the time, I also wore a pager on my belt so clients could reach me when I was out of cell phone range - which was just about everywhere.  This exhibit of the last century’s technology demonstrated how far we have come.  In the interest of convenience, cellular devices have become increasingly smaller and more portable.  Ironically, the more convenient we make them, the more inconvenient they can become.  Many of us feel we are at the beck and call of Blackberries.  They have taken control of our lives.  Portability has led to enslavement.

The same is true about God.  When we try to make God portable and controllable, we inevitably end up creating a false god that controls us.  In turn, these false gods become more important to us and lead us away from the one true God.

A portable containable god?  What in the world am I talking about, you may wonder.  To understand this concept, we must first look at how gods and idols functioned in the ancient world.  Some anthropologists theorize that many ancient  idols were in fact just representations of the values and traits of the collective community.  In other words, a group of people would develop a set of values, come up with a totem or image to represent those values (such as an animal), and then worship this symbolic representation of their own values.  The origin of these gods and idols was not from outside of human beings, but projections from within their own collective consciousness.

Many critics of the Judeo-Christian tradition would say we have done the same thing.  God is merely a projection of our own best ideals and values - and that’s the nicer critics.  However, such a criticism fails to take into account that built into our beliefs about this God is a self-awareness that humans tend to create gods.  It is as if there is a safety mechanism built into the Ten Commandments to keep us from constructing God in our own image.  As we explored last week, the commandments begin with the assertion that they have their origins not in our own best wishes, but in a source outside ourselves.

Have you noticed that people who believe in God tend to agree with what that God teaches or commands?  As a result, that god never seems to challenge them or stretch their beliefs?  When was the last time you felt God tugging on your heart to change your beliefs about something or someone?  When is the last time you felt God challenge you or your assumptions?  If it’s been a long time, it may just be that the god you believe in is not the God of Mt. Sinai, but an idol of your own construction.  Or it may be that you are trying to fit God into a manageable and convenient package.

Why Do Churches Need to Make Teens Cry?

This weekend I, along with others, am heading out to take seventeen kids on a Confirmation retreat.  Youth ministry is not my specialty, mostly because of my own personal aversion to it.  It’s not kids that bother me.  They’re always great. It’s the youth pastors and programs I have seen over the years.  Sometimes it’s due to a youth leader’s uncomfortable blend of neediness and ego.  Sometimes it’s the arrogant assumption that they know the kids better than the kid’s parents and as such these children must be saved from their families.  However, most of the time, the source of my squirming is the content of many youth educational materials.

As I put together the teaching sessions for this weekend, I relied on a denominational resource for youth retreats.  Overall, it was very good.  I selected a program with the theme of “Following Jesus” since I thought it would avoid all the heavy-handed emotional manipulation typical of “how-to-make-sure-you-go-to-heaven-if-you-die-tonight” curriculum.  I was wrong.

There it was, in the outline of the last session.  After a weekend of discussing the teachings of Jesus, fun activities and songs, but before closing the deal with an altar/campfire call and communion, there was the “make them cry” moment.  Wedged into a very intelligent retreat program was a reading to share with the kids about the forensic details of crucifixion.  Written by a doctor, it described in harrowing accuracy the physiological horror of this method of execution.  My guess is it’s supposed to make the girls cry while the gory details add a veneer of masculinity for the boys.  It was almost as if mainline denomination's resources were trying to emulate more Evangelical resources, in a desperate attempt at relevance.

I understand the need to discuss the suffering of God in Jesus.  After all, I just got back from a week with Jurgen Moltmann.  However this strikes me, not as a means to encounter the God who suffers with us, but a way of pushing the emotional buttons of teens.  Face it, you talk to a fourteen year-old kid about someone who died tragically and they’re going to cry and think it’s God.  Combined with the inherent sleep deprivation common to youth retreats, a more cynical observer would say this resembles brain washing.

This is not to single out a particular book since I have experienced this time and time and again.  For each of the past six years, our youth have gone a mission trip coordinated by a large Christian publishing house.  Each year, we are warned that the last night will be very emotional for the kids.  The worship program always includes a video that is melodramatic and sensational.  There is always an overtone of violence; clips from “The Passion”, testimonies about kids cutting themselves, or a horrible tragedy.  It works every time.  Afterwards many of the youth sit on the ground crying, consoled by their friends and counselors.  It makes us adults feel very useful.  But sometimes it strikes me as slapping a kid in the face just so we can kiss it and make it feel better.   In my evaluation form, I wrote that I found this emotionally manipulative.  A few weeks later, I received a form letter from the organization that parroted my comments back to me and said they were sorry the experience did not meet my expectations.  I think an airline once sent me the same letter when they lost my luggage.

My intention is not to bash youth ministry or even teens having emotional moments on youth retreats.  I had a few of my own campfire moments growing up and I turned out all right.  The teen years are certainly an emotional time and many of our teens are going through emotional struggles.  What I question is the church’s need to manufacture these moments through specious theology.  Why do we presume that unless teens are crying, the message of the gospel is not getting through to them?  Why is the gospel presented almost exclusively as merely a way to avoid a tragic fate? Most of our churches don’t treat adults that way.

When Jesus invited people to follow him, he did so by casting a vision of nets cast to catch people.  He didn’t titillate his audience with tales of poor Schlomo who died in a chariot accident on his way to hear the Sermon on the Mount.  He told open-ended stories about God’s reign and usually left it to his hearers to put the pieces together for themselves.  Why can’t we trust teens to encounter God’s Kingdom in the same way?

I would love to hear from those of you who work in youth ministry.  Have you had similar misgivings about the “make them cry” moment?  Are there healthier ways to form young disciples of Jesus, and how have you used them?  Where is the line for you, between honest emotional conversations and manufactured manipulation?  How do we honestly talk about the suffering of Jesus, as well all humans, without falling into this trap?

Who Says So?

There is an embarrassing social faux pas I make when I meet new people.  In an effort to be outgoing and say something nice, I meet someone, shake their hand, smile and say, “Hi!  Great to meet you.”  Unfortunately, there have been too far too many times when my greeting is not met with, “Great to meet you too.”  Instead, I hear the words, “Actually, we’ve already met - about three times before.”  Then there’s that awkward moment when I pretend that of course I knew that I meant that it’s great to meet you this particular day.   It rarely works.  The person is offended anyway. What I thought was a new aquaintence was actually someone who was already a part of my life.

Discovering you already know someone isn’t always an awkward experience.  Sometimes as adults we meet someone from our hometown, or school, and realize we knew each other way back when.  Or we meet someone and find we have a mutual friend.  That can a be a great feeling.  “How cool,” we think.  We already know this person.  They have already been a part of our life, even if we didn’t recognize it before.  We share a common story with them.

Likewise, when God gave the Hebrew people the Ten Commandments, it was not a first-time meeting.  The Hebrews were meeting the God whom they had not only met before, but this God had been already been working in their collective story to liberate them and give them a bright new future.   This is evident in the the very first words of the Ten Commandments, “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  

In Jewish tradition, this is considered the first “commandment”.  Actually it doesn’t sound much like a command.  That’s because the Hebrew word which we translate as “commandment” literally means “word”.  So Judaism speaks of the ten words or ten utterances of God. Although different traditions number the Ten Commandments differently,in the coming weeks we will be following the Jewish schema for numbering them.  So we start with the commandment that doesn’t seem like a commandment, yet is the lens through which we see all of them, “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” 

If you were God and you wanted to tell human beings how to live their lives, how would you do it?  Would you just give them rules about religion?  Would you tell people just to be nice to each other?  Would you ask for their input?  What would be the first thing you tell them?The first thing God tells people is not a law, but a proclamation of who God is and has been for them. 

Plant A Seed!

Once there was a man who wanted to be a gardener.  After reading about all the benefits of growing one’s own food, he was excited to get started. He cleared a space in his backyard.  He spent weeks reading books about gardening and watching TV shows on the subject.  Every night he spent hours debating in his mind which crops would grow in his garden. Sometimes, he would imagine what his new garden would look like when all the plants grew.  Tomatoes here.  Squash over there. In fact, he even envisioned losing weight and improving his health by eating all this self-grown food. Excited about his new hobby, he told everyone he knew about his new garden.  It was going to be great, he told them.  

When the harvest season rolled around, things were not great. It was a season of disappointment.  He went out to his garden, looked over the plot of land, and it was nothing but stark dirt.  Each day he went out and looked - still nothing.  This gardener had done all his homework.  He thought his gardening over very carefully.  He wasn’t lacking in desire. Unfortunately he forgot one thing.  He never planted any seeds.

I know it sounds silly. What could be more foolish than to think of oneself as a gardener but neglect to plant seeds?  I don’t know.  Maybe something like coming to church expecting to meet God or become more spiritual, but never planting the seeds of spiritual growth.  

Every Sunday, we gather here as the people of God to worship God.  As important as it is to celebrate God each week here, it is not enough.  Put aside his politics and outrageous statement for a moment.  I once heard Jeremiah Wright say that just showing up on Sunday and saying “See you next week, God” as you leave the building is like trying to lose weight but only following your diet one day week.  It doesn’t work.

Likewise, just coming to church on Sunday morning is vital to our relationship with God, but it is not enough.  We don’t gather here merely to fulfill an obligation.  We gather here to meet God.  For many of you, I believe the reason you want to meet God here each week is so can grow closer to God, and be transformed to be more like Christ.  Yet we feel stuck on how to do that.

Many of us want to grow in our journey with Christ.  There was something that drew us to following Jesus.  Somewhere in our mind, we imagined all sorts of things changing in our life, once we set out on way of Jesus. Yet at a certain point, we found ourselves stuck.  We were no longer growing.

 It may very well be that we stare at an empty spiritual field because, like that gardener, we never bothered to plant any seeds.  To be sure, by walking into the doors of this church, you planted a seed.  One seed is not enough.  In order to have the thriving garden of a growing Christian life, one must plant seeds continually.

It’s hard work planting those seeds.  That’s why you can’t do it alone.  It’s notable that many of Jesus’ parables used ecological images.  Seeds, farming, and crops.  In describing God’s Kingdom, Jesus rarely spoke of singular static entities.  He never said the Kingdom of God was like a solitary rock. He always spoke of God’s work as growing and always in relationships and community - the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan.  Seedlings grow together with other seedlings and cross-pollinate one another..  

Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like scattered seed that grows while we sleep.  Have we scattered any seed lately?  When was the last time you made your life a fertile soil in which God’s seeds could be planted?

How to Become Great

How many of you want to do something great with your life?  How many of you really think that you have or that realistically you are going to?  Jesus tells us that in order for us to become great, we must become servants.  In order to master the art of life, we must becomes slaves.  In order to be great, we must become the least.   So today I want to tell you how this church can help you become great.

One of the most interesting dinners I ever had was with a man who climbed Mt. Everest.  This man, a doctor, was the subject of a documentary I was editing.  What made his story so great was, not only was he an asthmatic, he had climbed the world’s highest mountain without using oxygen tanks (all thanks to a drug and a pharmaceutical company that paid for the documentary).  The night before I was to shoot an interview with him, we met in the hotel restaurant for dinner.  Never having met a mountain climber before, I was fascinated to learn about his adventure.  We reviewed pictures and videos of his climb, as well as the progression of how one makes it up such a daunting mountain.

If you have ever watched a show about Mt. Everest, you know that one cannot just drive up to the base of the mountain, park in the parking lot (Remember honey we parked in Yeti-3) get of the car and start climbing.   It is quite a feat just to make it to the foot of Everest.  In fact, one of this doctor’s friends who accompanied him had to spend months training to get in shape just to make the hike to base camp.  That is where he remained while the doctor’s expedition made the climb.  All climbs up Mt. Everest begin at the base camp, which is almost like a small village at the foot of the mountain.  From this base camp, people oversee those who make the climb with radios, medical services and other support.  Not only is getting to the base camp a feat in itself, setting up and maintaining the camp is a huge task.  Without the base camp, there can be no climbers.

We wrongly imagine mountain climbers as lone rangers, solo acts, who scale the slopes alone.  In reality, climbing a mountain requires teamwork, support and importantly, a base camp from which one sets out and returns. The great people in an expedition are not just those who reach the summit.  Those who serve at the base camp are also great.