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Half-Steps & Full-Steps.

As a white man, I will never fully understand some of the painful realities that people of color deal with. But as a follower of Jesus, having an interracial marriage, and being friends with many who have experienced race-based discrimination, it weighs heavily on my heart.

This weekend someone asked me how we are to respond to events like Charlottesville. This is how I’m processing it. It’s not polished or perfect, but I feel like it’s important to share. 

Many are speaking out against the violence in Charlottesville, which I am grateful for. Sometimes things seem so obvious that we forget that we need to actually say them out loud. I was reminded how critically important it is for us to say the words, though, on Sunday when I was standing in front of my church. The words that I prayerfully wrote down Saturday night were clean, Biblical, appropriate. But Sunday morning, when I had to say them out loud in front of people, they felt inadequate. It just didn’t feel like I could say enough. 

Pointing out the wrongs or the evils that we see around us is a half-step, but it’s only when we simultaneously move towards what is right is when we make a full step. Doing one or the other is nice and has good intentions I’m sure, but often doesn’t cause us to change. While it may look good, it probably won’t do any good. We have to name the wrong and move towards the right. Speak boldly against injustice, and also speak to what the better world is.

So yes, condemn evil and hate when we see it. Also, we must intentionally live our lives and speak in the way of love.

It should be easy for us to condemn evil when it escalates to the point of violence like we’ve seen recently, but do we also condemn and actively fight against the tiny seed of evil that is inside each one of us? We readily condemn the full-grown monster of white supremacy, but are we allowing it to exist in it’s infancy in each of our hearts?

Supremacy in any form goes against all that Jesus taught and called us to, yet it seems like we only call it out when it reaches it’s ugliest levels. We all this seed to take root in our hearts in smaller, “acceptable” ways.

While it is good and right to condemn the evil that we have seen, we are not allowed to call out the white supremacy we see in people until we’ve looked internally first at the plank of supremacy in our own eye.

Jesus commands us to love one another (John 13:34), which we take pretty seriously. Jesus commands us to put others before ourselves (Mark 9:35, 10:21, Matthew 5:41), which we try to do from time to time. And then he even invited us to give our lives for others (John 15:13), which we conveniently like to assume he just meant figuratively.

Viewing, treating, or believing anyone other than you is less-than you is directly opposed to the message of Jesus. He was always looking for ways to acknowledge and lift up outcasts on any side. He stood against racial, religious, and gender biases in his conversation with the Samaritan woman (John 4). He stood against political divides when he served a roman centurion (Luke 7:1-10). He even stood alongside the traitors that took advantage of their own people (Luke 19:1-10).

The one person who actually was supreme (Colossians 1:15) and had every right to live that way instead chose to spend his life releasing his privileges.

Supremacy in any form would be absurd to Jesus, so lets work against it in every form; including the way it rises up inside each of us.

So, back to the beginning, a half-step would be to condemn the evil spirit of supremacy, and the full-step is for us to lift others up.  What does it look like to lift others up? Man, that might just be the fun part. But I’m not sure I’ve got time for that now. 

So...would the Spirit continue to transform my heart and yours, as well as our churches and communities, as we have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.

Philippians 2:5-11

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

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The Little Mermaid & The Crucifixion of Christ

[Taken from “Story: Recapture the Mystery” by Steven James]

When I was a kid my pastor explained that God’s forgiveness was like a courtroom decision - God declaring us not guilty as he allowed his Son to be tortured to death in our place. I think I understand where that pastor was coming from, but the analogy never really resonated with me. Love isn’t forensic and sterile; it’s sacrificial. Grace isn’t a decree; it’s a gift. 

In Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale of “The Little Mermaid” (not the Disney version), a beautiful young mermaid has fallen in love with a human prince. The mermaid is a glorious singer beneath the sea, but she gives up her voice to be able to become human and love the prince. The deal is, if she can woo him, then she can remain human and receive an eternal soul. But if he marries another woman, the little mermaid will turn into sea foam, the fate of all mermaids. 

Well, despite all her devotion to him, the prince’s heart remains enamored with a different woman, a princess whom he believes rescued him from a shipwreck. However, the little mermaid was really the one who had saved him. She wants desperately to tell him that she was his savior and that she loves him, but she has no voice above the sea, no words he can hear. 

In the end, all three are sailing back to the prince’s palace for his wedding to the other woman. The little mermaid is about to turn back into sea foam when her sisters swim to the water’s surface and offer her a knife and a choice: if she will take the prince’s life, she need not give up her own. The magic can be reversed; she can become a mermaid again if only she will kill the prince. One of them must die before daybreak.

Everyone else is asleep on the boat. Silently the little mermaid approaches the prince and finds him in the arms of the other woman. As Hans Christian Andersen writes,

The knife trembled in the hand of the little mermaid: then she flung it far away from her into the waves; the water turned red where it fell, and the drops that spurted up looked like blood. She cast one more lingering, half-fainting glance at the prince, and then threw herself from the ship into the sea, and thought her body was dissolving into foam. The sun rose above the waves, and his warm rays fell on the cold foam of the little mermaid. 

The prince knew nothing of her sacrifice, nothing of her love. He didn’t know she had rescued him, given up her beautiful voice to become like him, and then exchanged her life for his. All this went on while he pursued another woman. She sacrificed all for her prince because she loved him, yet he never returned her love. 

When the gospel is told like that, I can understand it.

God’s love didn’t happen in a courtroom but on a cross where Jesus threw himself from the ship and into the sea. The story I see woven all throughout Scripture is a tale of passion and sacrifice - not a deal brokered between a lawyer and a judge. It was a gift given from a lover to his beloved: in one final act of sacrificial love, he offers his life so that she might live. 

We have a God who would let himself be nailed to a cross for his beloved. And there he would date to die for her. For us.

Hold onto this moment. See him hanging there, between heaven and earth. Between God and humanity. See him dying there on Skull Hill. Don’t turn away. Easter will never make sense without this moment. 

You threw the knife away and slipped into the sea. your cold foam washes over my soul as i sleep beside my other lovers.     what will i do about your love?

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Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment. You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in.

—Zen Buddhist nun, Jeong Kwan, CHEF’S TABLE, S03E01

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Let the just rejoice, for their Justifier is born. Let the sick and infirm rejoice, for their Savior is born. Let the captives rejoice, for their Redeemer is born. Let slaves rejoice, for their Master is born. Let free men rejoice, for their Liberator is born. Let all Christians rejoice, for Jesus Christ is born.

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-440)

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row row row your boat, but a much more shouty version. (at Costa Mesa, California)

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The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members…. It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Father Joseph Ratzinger, 1969

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So when Jesus directs us to pray, "thy kingdom come," he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: "on earth as it is in heaven." With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence.

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

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I could never see myself moving in the suburbs…There won’t be nothing to rap about except the birds

Biggie Smalls

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I speak of wondrous unfamiliar lessons from childhood
Make you remember how to smile good 📷: the unfadeable @storybyimage

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The truth is, I’m scared I’ll fail. I just wanted to get that out in the open, because I don’t want that secret to control me anymore. Over the last 2 years I’ve had a sense that the my next step in ministry, working in the church, is to plant and pastor a church. I’ve got about a hundred pretty solid reasons why I’m not the right guy for this, but couldn’t escape the sense that it’s just what I’m supposed to do. Have you ever had that feeling? Man. Earlier this year, Es and I joined staff @southhillschurch with the dream of planting a church in Orange County. And this past Sunday, we gathered about 35 folks together to share a meal and a table, and just dream of what this new church could look like. So…I am so thrilled (and terrified) to publicly say that in early 2017 we will be launching a church in Costa Mesa; a city that we have fallen in love with over the last 4 years. We’re excited to invite friends, family, neighbors, and strangers to join us on this journey. There's plenty of space 😃 The reality is, I never been more excited for the future. (at Costa Mesa, California)

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I feel a strong desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me – which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking about which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between those errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.  The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.  No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection... No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow.  We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.  We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results... We are prophets of a future not out own.

“A Future Not Our Own”, by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador

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The Bowmans

I had the incredible opportunity to get to know the Bowman family last year and capture their beautiful and painful story. I've never known anyone to hold on to joy in the midst of so much pain like this family does. Titus went to be with Jesus, and so I'm torn between sadness for loss and pain which it causes, but also holding on tightly to the hope we have that death is not the end and it doesn't have the final word. They wanted their story to be shared shared so to help other people know that hope, peace, and joy are possible no matter what you are facing. Visit Www.gofundme.com/team4titus to see how you can help. https://vimeo.com/146851521

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she's the best coast. (at Pacific City)

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taking votes for my fantasy football profile picture...anybody?

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when i'm not with her i just think about her.

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0 & O (at Mustard Seed Cafe)