Monthly Archives: February 2012

a parable about following.

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When our staff meets, I start with a question. Often I don’t know the answer myself. My goal is to help us learn what we might not in our regular conversations. Last week in our staff meeting I said, “We all know about our high school interns. We give them busy work, but we also help them understand why we do what we do. If you could intern like that with someone for a month, who would you choose?”

The answers were as diverse as our staff. And when we were done, I suggested that figuring out some version of an internship could be easier than we imagined. If we worked on it, it could happen.

I discovered that it’s harder than it seems.

My answer was Eugene Peterson. If you’ve been here you’ve heard that name before (one example). To watch him converse with others for awhile would be delightful.

And this week I had a chance. I could sit and listen to him talk by video for a couple hours as he was appearing at a conference. I had thought about the conference itself, briefly, but decided that I couldn’t. quite justify it. But now I could take just two hours, at my desk, to listen.

But I didn’t shut the door. And I worked on another project. And I checked other media. He was talking about Sabbath which he described simply as “Show up. Shut up.” And I did neither.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. You probably don’t have a problem with wanting to learn, having the opportunity, and not taking it. Of knowing of someone who freely offers truth and not stopping to listen. But then again, maybe you do.

Let me offer some advice I just heard: show up. shut up.

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You can hear Peterson on Wednesday, February 29 at 10:45 EST.

And for 7×7, see 2.29.12

A few sick people.

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Jesus went to synagogue Saturday morning. He started teaching. Everyone started whispering.

  • “He must have plagiarized that,” they said.
  • “I know the rumors about miracles, but really? Him?” they said.
  • “He’s a carpenter, not a scholar,” they said.
  • “We know his family and they aren’t nothing,” they said.
  • “Who does he think he is,” they said.

Mark’s story says that after synagogue, Jesus couldn’t do any miracles in town, other than healing a few sick people. Mark’s story says that Jesus was amazed at the lack of faith.

It wasn’t that he had done anything wrong, according to these people. No one said, “That bratty kid?” It was that he had been normal. These people were he grew up with. These were kids he had played with. These families ate their Sabbath dinner the night before at tables he had made for them. And who could believe that a table maker could become the special guest at the table.

One writer said “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

We think that if Jesus showed up at church and started talking to us, we would find church interesting. We think that if Jesus walked into our office, walked through our front door, came into our laundry room, sat in our kitchen–if Jesus showed up in our life, we would pay attention.

But maybe we would be so distracted by his ordinariness that we would ignore what he said, the hope he offered. And he would be amazed at us just as he was at his hometown.

This didn’t mean that he didn’t know what was coming. When we reread a book, we know how it will end. But we can be amazed at opportunity missed. And saddened.

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For the 7×7 reference and questions, please go to 2-28-12. And you can subscribe for emails of 7×7.

changing me.

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We were singing about the Bible.

Ancient words, ever true
Changing me, changing you

I looked across the room. I saw someone signing the song to her husband in his wheelchair. He had a stroke a few years back. He was in nursing care for a long time, but finally was able to move home last summer. They work really hard and they need help.

Most of us singing were looking at the lyrics. We were talking to each other, but we didn’t look at each other. Except for these two. They were looking right at each other. And when she signed “changing me” she pointed at herself. And when she signed “changing you” she pointed at her husband.

That’s just how the signs go. I know that. But it is one thing to sing words. It is very different to say them with your body, to acknowledge by pointing that the words of the Bible, the words from God are changing me. A physically tangible, identifiable, me. I can say lots of things. But when I have to raise my hand, when I have to sign my name, when I have to point at myself, I’m involved in a different way.

And it is a remarkable thing to point at someone and say, “I see that you are changing. God’s words are working at you, chipping at you, shaping you.”

Knowing the story of these two, I cried as I watched. As she signed, she was demonstrating gesture by gesture compassion and commitment and love. Suddenly the lyrics aren’t just words you sing. They are life. They are conversation. They are affirmation.

I’ve often had a sense that signing goes deeper into songs that singing. I don’t know whether that’s true.

But it was true on this Sunday morning.

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Ancient words video

And here’s the link for today’s 7×7: 2.27.12 And you can subscribe for emails of 7×7.)=

Psalm 27

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The reading over at 7×7 today is Psalm 27. It’s a poem written by David.

I started to think about the difference between reading story, which is what we’ve been doing in the Gospel of Mark and reading poetry. Poetry reads slower. It reads deeper. You can’t, with integrity, skim a poem the way you can skim a story. It’s because poems are responses to story. The poet looks at the story of an event or a life or a nation or a flower and then journals the progress of the heart through that story.

All of us are poets. We all have experiences and respond to them and wrestle with them. We report them to others in bits and pieces. Those that we recognize as poets wrestle those responses long enough to put them in a form that allow others to enter, not just into the story, but into the response.

That’s what David is doing in Psalm 27. Giving us a response to the stories we all face of fear and abandonment and wondering whether God is aware.

It’s a good poem for a Sunday in February.

(For 7×7, please go to 2-26-12. And you can subscribe for emails of 7×7.)

Saturday Reflection: on living the Bible

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A couple years ago, Ed Dobson decided to spend a year living like Jesus (The Year of Living like Jesus). He had heard A.J. Jacobs talking about his book, The Year of Living Biblically. Jacobs, who was agnostic and Jewish, needed a new book idea after having read through the Encyclopedia Britannica, and decided to live for a year doing what the Bible said to do. Dobson, who had been a pastor now was retired and living with ALS, decided that someone should try the same thing as Jacobs, but this time living like Jesus lived and taught.

What both of them realized was that living according to the Bible was a consuming project. It demanded reflection about how literal and how figurative to be. A.J. Jacobs wrestled with how to obey the teaching about stoning people. Ed Dobson struggled with living in a very conservative culture and following Jesus’ example of hanging around with sinners. Both of them found that they had to arrive at some accommodations. Each of them thought about quitting. But both of them completed their year of living with the constraints. Both of them were changed by the process.

Dobson and Jacobs shifted from “whether” questions to “how” questions. They made a commitment – “I will live for a year this way” – and that removed them from thinking about whether or not to obey, whether or not to think about the Bible. They shifted to “having made a commitment, how can I live it out?”

Their commitment meant that they didn’t say, “the Bible is stupid.” Or “The Bible makes no sense.” Or “The Bible is irrelevant.” Instead, they worked to understand why the Bible might say this thing and that thing and the other thing.

Commitment is an interesting decision. It changes the questions. It eliminates some options while opening up others. In a sense, commitment reduces breadth and enables depth.

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You can learn more about Dobson’s wrestling with life and death and purpose in his movie My Garden from edsstory.com. It’s 10 minutes that shook me.

For 7×7 reference and questions, please go to 2-25-12. And you can subscribe for emails of 7×7.

And it’s Andrew Swanson‘s birthday today. I love my son.