My Trip to Russia: A Reflection on Darkness and Memory

Ever since I traveled solo to Russia this past summer, I have struggled to assign language to the experience. When people would ask about my trip, I tried to relate to them my dichotomous experience. There was an incredible ebb and flow of extreme emotion during those 10 days – at times, a spiraling down into the depths of darkness and at other times, a soaring to elevated heights of joy.  

But, if I am completely honest, the sense of grief disseminated from the darkness was so overwhelming I tended to fixate on the negative power of loneliness to all who asked about the trip. Maybe, just maybe, depending on if I still had their attention after I clothed them in my melancholy, I would share the beauty I encountered in the art, people, and culture. Maybe.

Even now, seven months later, I am still focusing on the darkness. Since I am not much of a story teller, I’m going to boil down the root of the darkness as such: loneliness predicated from the fact almost everyone one I crossed paths with spoke little to no English.

I was alone for ten days surrounded by millions of people. I was isolated in an unfamiliar crowd.

The darkness oppressed me in Russia. What darkness doesn’t oppress? But as I become farther and farther removed from the Russian darkness, my memory of the trip has evolved. In my sleep, I dream of the beauty of Russia; I speak to my students about the people I met and the effect they had on my soul; I changed my desktop photo on my school computer to Maurice de Vlaminck’s “View of the Seine” from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Every reflection, seven months from the trip, does not explicitly point to the darkness of the actual moment.

Why is that? Why, even though there is a remnant of darkness remaining in my heart, a remnant which will probably remain forever, does a light seem to expose something which wasn’t even experienced in the actual moment?

Ruthie, in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, speaks of memory and its power as such:

“Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it…There is so little to remember of anyone – an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair what dreaming habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

Memory of an event, an experience, a person, recreates those moments/people into the hope, the expectation, of who or what you wished them to actually be. While you lose the particular moment or person in actuality, you pick up the pieces and recreate it into something else, always hoping, rationally or irrationally, this recreation will return in its new, beautified form. Yet, the very hope or expectation of this construction, is a very real thing in your consciousness. Its nature resides in your very real imagination.

I hopped on the plane to Russia with the expectation, with the hope, I would tangibly experience the culture which has shaped my view of God and man. I expected for, I hoped for, a mystical experience where the Holy Spirit provided the peace of Christ to a parched soul, further validating the life I feel called to and the faith I embody. There were moments in which it occurred, but the light faded quickly and eventually yielded to the asphyxiating darkness.

Now, it’s as if my memory has given me that experience I expected but seven months later. It’s as if the darkness wasn’t even with me in Moscow and St. Petersburg; that it actually didn’t throw me into the deepest despair of my life. It’s as if I predominately experienced the light.

Maybe, just maybe, then, darkness is actually the catalyst for the light of memory. Maybe my conception of darkness and its role in my life is too narrow…

This life if full of darkness. The darkness seems to overwhelm the light. But, it’s not as if the light isn’t there; and it’s not as if the light takes precedent over the darkness, or the darkness takes precedent over the light, for one does not exist without the other.

Yet, the darkness. It saturates. It envelops. I tend to set it up against the light in opposition to one another. Rightfully so. Christ is the light of man; sin, the flesh, evil is the seed of darkness. Nothing good happens after midnight they say…

In the dark, man and woman become one. In the dark, man is shaped and molded into the physical imago dei. In the dark, man finds rest for his weary soul.

Darkness, then, is a purification of sorts, allowing us to be who we were intended to be. Purifying to a point in which the light becomes essential and a natural consequent.

The film, sitting, stewing, stirring, waiting, wishing, wondering when the light will expose the glimpses. Solitary glimpses, seemingly isolated from its past and future. A moment in time only revealed by the light. What is seen represents what once was, yet flickers the imagination to know that its present intimate participation in the glossiness is a light in and of itself – its white and blacks contrasting, not clashing, working together to reveal what the darkness intended to purify.

Darkness does not necessarily equate to sin, as light does not necessarily equate to Christ. For the Word experienced darkness so that the world could be the light. His terrifying darkness consistently and unceasingly purifying, provides momentary glimpses to be remembered, dwelled upon, and praised.

These moments of darkness memory reveals to be moments of light; stories of darkness that expose the Light of man. The darkness of Russia veiling the light of the purpose of unveiling it in the reconstructed memory of the transfiguring soul.

Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t have reflected on the trip with grief, but an opportunity for memory and darkness to purify.

“When one looks inside at a lighted window, or looks from above at the lake, one sees the image of oneself in a lighted room, the image of oneself among tree and sky – the deception is obvious, but flattering all the same. When one looks from the darkness into the light, however, one sees all the difference between here and there, this and that.” – Ruthie, Housekeeping

The Perfection of Jesus is Irrelevant

Jesus being perfect does not matter.

 

I think we probably need to stop here. We tend to react strongly to a statement like the one above. The social gospel folks, the ones who reject the orthodox view of Jesus, shout for joy when they read something like this. The conservative branch of the church, on the other hand, violently slaps the heresy sticker on this short and simple sentence. 

But, before we judge merits of this particular statement, we must define the essential term – perfect.  

The highly reliable, hilarious, and usually inappropriate urbandictionary.com defines the adjective “perfect” flawlessly according to our culture. Multiple users on Urban Dictionary define a perfect person as someone without flaws. These people have accomplished a fullness of being in a particular aspect of their life. They live a flawless moral life; they live a flawless professional life; they live a flawless relational life. While we consciously know perfection is unattainable, we subconsciously hold ourselves and others to the standard of perfection. We even tend to characterize peoples actions as perfect – as flawless. If we were to think of an individual who embodies of perfection, we can instantly think of something or someone in our immediate life or at the very least, on the periphery of our current experience.  

Maybe it is a friend or pastor who is squeaky clean morally, never transgressing against God’s law or the law of the Christian subculture. This person may or may not even consider themselves a Christian, yet they live perfectly within clear, perfectly acceptable moral standard. This perfection, at least in our minds, might be attributed to them because they humbly recognize their imperfection. Their humbleness only further validates the way we view them.

Or, maybe it is your office mate who fills out their paperwork without error, every time, never late, and in their uncanny joy of the monotonous, corrects the items you overlooked because of your disdain for the mundane. Now, I have no doubt, that these latter folks actually have reached the pinnacle of perfection! But, that is merely an aside…

For they have obtained perfection in every sense of our cultural definition – they are without flaw. We all know those who seem to be spotless in one way or another. You are probably thinking about them now. They come in all shapes and sizes; they are Christians and Muslims, atheists and agnostics. Within the construct of our society, they are perfect, and we view them as such. They are perfect in our eyes. We lift them up as the standard of how we are to live our own lives. “See how they fill out their reports. It is perfect. I must replicate their work!” They receive a plaque, and probably a semi-awkward picture, with the title of “employee of the month,” hanging on a wall in plain sight so all the others can be motivated by it. They would probably win the award every month if it wasn’t against company policy.

This mindset on the nature of perfection has become the telos of salvation. We have taken sanctification and marked its finality as flawlessness and being without moral blemish. Every moment of our life, every progression in faith, is a movement toward sinless-ness. We work to rid ourselves of all sins, real and imaginable, in order to be marked as righteous, not only by our Father, but also by those we live life with. We abstain from certain pleasures because of this desire to be perfect. If we were to indulge ourselves, we might accidently cause someone to stumble and our witness would be ruined.

But if we really thinking about it, what is our particular witness? What is it that we are witnessing to? Is it the hope of a flawless life? Is it even, teleologically, the primary hope for a life to come?

I’m not so sure that it is any of those things. Instead, I tend to gravitate toward another hope – a hope containing the former, but only as a byproduct of something else. The hope? A life filled with the Spirit, given to us as a beautiful, free gift because of Jesus’s perfection.

So with that, we come full circle, back to Jesus’s perfection. What perfection then did he obtain? Why does Jesus’s perfection not matter if it is the very thing which brings us the Spirit?

 

While Jesus was not doubt flawless, without sin, those around him did not see him and think he was “employee of the month” material. The CEOs of the time, the Pharisees, the ones who doled out the ancient awards, did not turn to their followers and say, “See this Jesus guy? Emulate him.” Instead, as we all know, they took offense to his radical understanding of perfection.

As my friend Kolby Kerr preached today at church, the Pharisees, in legislating new aspects of God’s covenant to the Israelites, intended to keep God’s people in communion with the Father out of fear for what God might do to them if they transgressed again. All too often the Israelites followed their own passions and desires, leading them to break their end of the bargain. In turn, God’s love revealed itself in the form of exiling his people – a form of discipline to grab the attention of those who sinned.

So, the Pharisees logically deduced the reasons for their problems and applied the following “if, then” syllogism to correct their past mistakes: If they follow this covenant flawlessly – perfectly – then God will stay his wrath. The original covenant, and the new bylaws ratified to create an extra level of security from God’s loving hand, must be scrupulously followed – or else, for Israel and the sinner.

Then, out of heaven, this perfect being comes into the picture and begins breaking the extra-covenantal rules and claiming, in the process, a supernatural relationship with the one the Pharisees were hoping to satiate. And people began listening to him. They began following him. You can imagine the fear welling up in the leaders’ hearts. A deep, multilayered fear predicated upon the remembrance of the past. Would Israel’s new desire to follow this radical new leader lead Rome to turn against them and ruin their fairly stable relationship with the Empire? This threat of God using his paddle on his people once again led to the eventual death of the perfect one.  

Other than those seeking a right relationship with the Father understood that Jesus’s perfection did not rest in a flawlessness according to the culture’s standard. Jesus, in only a handful of ways, actually lived a perfect cultural existence. Society as a whole, religious rulers and their followers, probably saw Jesus as a terrific sinner and heretic.

Because of this, we need to qualify the type of perfection we refer to when we talk about Jesus being perfect. Naturally, we correlate his perfection with the actions he did and did not participate in since that is our cultural tendency. But, the perfection Jesus actually obtained was much different.

If we were to define the term “perfect” in connection to Jesus, it would be defined as such: a nature shared flawlessly with the Father. Jesus and the Father were perfectly one. Their souls were intertwined in such a way, you know, since Jesus was God incarnate, that his life fully represented the life of his Father.

As we seek perfection, I pray we (I!) begin to seek communion with the Father through the grace of Jesus the Christ instead of an outward perfection celebrated by our different subsets of secular and Christian societies. I pray, by God’s mercy, we begin to share more and more in his nature -- a nature filled with his Spirit, making us more like his Son, on the earth as those are in heaven.

Humbled by a Six Year Old

When my niece Conley (my oldest niece or nephew out of 6) was around two years old, I used to go with her and her parents to the pool. It was just as she was beginning to swim. Her dad would place her on the edge of the pool and encourage her to jump. As the first born, you can imagine she wasn't keen on the idea. She shuffled her feet every so slightly and ever so slowly to the very edge. Once again, her dad called out to her, "Go ahead and jump. I will catch you. Trust me." She dragged her feet a little bit closer to the edge, so much so that her toes hung over and clutched the rim. She didn't have to tell anyone she was afraid -- her toes told the whole story.

While Conley is a first born, she has two older cousins who are fearless. Coming from the far corner of the pool, her cousins egged her on impatiently, "Jump Conley, jump!" With her dad's hands up in the air, waiting for his only daughter to make the plunge, Conley released the death grip and splashed into the water, arms flailing as if she was in a Harlem Shake video. Interestingly enough, her dad didn't catch her. He let her sink just enough to create in her a helpless panic, a striving to escape the tortures of the zero gravity so strangely experienced in the depths of a vast unknown. Unbeknownst to my initial observation, his hands actually surrounded his daughter -- they sat waiting to reach down to his sinking girl in order to pull her out of the all encompassing fear. As her father, he knew best. He knew what she lacked in that particular situation -- trust. Trust in the elements and trust in her father. When she emerged from the water, gasping for air and blinking furiously to remove the beads of water from her stained red eyes, she cried out, "Again Daddy, Again!"

And off she quickly waddled, to the same edge as before. But instead of latching on to the edge of the pool, she latched on to the trust she learned from her father. She is free -- free to love the water (and boy does she!).

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On Easter Sunday, Conley, as a beautiful 6 year old, was baptized. As I made my way out to Aledo, TX for the ceremony, the story from above resonated in my memory. Yeah, I could analyze the whole water motif, but that is obvious. I want to go a different direction with it all -- a more personal direction. 

I am typically cynical to the idea of a child being "saved" -- to a child with the intellectual wherewithal to grasp the heights and depths of justification, grace, the gospel, and the kingdom on earth and in heaven. If I am completely honest, I'm not sure if middle school students are capable of the necessary spiritual and intellectual aptitude to understand these complex theological axioms. I mean, I am 25 and I wrestle with the particulars of Truth, so how can a six year old understand it!

God created me a melancholy. While the term connotes something negative, I do not mean it as such. Its a particular state of being that one is naturally disposed to. Some are naturally joyful -- in Christ or out of Christ -- for it is the state of being God gave them. As a melancholy, he granted me certain gifts and certain weaknesses. One of grave weaknesses is a tendency to sadness. When I encounter these states, oftentimes the question I pose God is, "Why me? Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't I been sad long enough?" 

On my quiet and peaceful ride to the baptism of my niece, I was struck, not with a cynical attitude to the actions about to take place, but a humbled spirit. Flashed in my mind was the often quoted verses from Luke 19:

¹⁵ People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. ¹⁶ But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinde

r them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. ¹⁷ Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

Oftentimes we attribute Jesus's words to mean that we should never examine the intricacies of our faith. Instead, we should live a life of dull intellect, only loving God with our heart, soul, and strength. The mind be damned! But, I'm not sure that was Jesus's intention...

Our understanding of this passage hinges on our definition of faith. If we believe faith is merely this ethereal, cloudy connection of heart to soul to the divine, then the passage will be viewed through the lens of the previous interpretation. But, if instead, we see faith as trusting in an ever present God, a God who cares not only about our eternal future, but our current state, one bound to the kingdom on earth, then a spiritual freedom is gained through the blood of Christ. 

My struggle in trusting God usually doesn't revolve around money or vocation. It revolves around my personal holiness and brokenness -- does his grace really extend to me? can he really make me whole in the midst of my melancholy-ness? Usually, my heart screams emphatically, "No!" But as I saw my beautiful niece, in front of the whole church, explain her trust in the father, and be buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life, I realized that I was also on the edge of the pool, toes clinched and synched, only needing to trust as a child -- trust that my father's hands wait for me as I plunge into the pool. While I sink, he is there to bring me out of the depths, but it occurs in his timing, and not my own. 

My Father knows whats best for me. I only need to trust. 

A Fond Adieu

I was standing in the middle of an empty house -- in the living room. Light sauntered in through the windows, ever so discreetly, reflecting off the planks that demarcated the outside from the in. The walls, formerly stroked with greens, and frames with pieces jauntily assembled by tiny appendages unknowingly guided by the voices above, beside, behind, and moments frozen in time marked in pen as if to scream, "Yes, it happened" -- they all hung so delicately and undisturbed on the wall.

But no more.

I stood there in the dark. While light enveloped me, it didn't do much revealing. Light gives clarity to the unseen edges, gives form to the formless, gives order to chaos. The light that wrapped me only revealed the bareness to the reality once known -- a pure reality predicated on light. No, no, this light was no light, not the light that I had come to know, but a mere phantasm masquerading and parading.

I stood there in the dark. My soul confided with my spirit -- do you remember those times you soared in the air, pining for the football your dad launched from his chair? do you remember the mini knee hockey games? do you remember waking up in the mornings to mom reading the word and praying for you? do you remember your bear-like, invincible dog, laying motionless in the corner, wide eyed, as if to say, "No, no, the light will not give way." you said good bye, and so did he.

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When you sell a house, and you have your last moment with it, soaking up its barrenness as memories overwhelm your consciousness, you experience a sense off loss. Your final solitary moment, the one where you stand alone and entrenched in the fading memory of the past, in no way encapsulates the memory of your former home. You stand alone -- physically and emotionally. This loneliness is accentuation because the capsule that ordered an entire period of  your life is stripped away and you stand in recognition of that. You know a new life stands ahead and is ordered in a new way. You will never be able to go back. Only a vague memory remains.

This is a powerful picture of the soul, and how God moves in the soul. St. John of the Cross refers to the moment when the soul stands alone in the darkness of its house as the dark night. What is the dark night?

"The dark night is an influence from God upon the soul, which purges her of her ignorance and habitual imperfections, natural and spiritual...wherein God teaches the soul in secret, and instructs her in the perfect love, all act on her part being limited to fixing her attention lovingly on God, listening to his voice and receiving the light he sends."

God purges the intellect and senses to leave the soul barren and only able to progress through the perfect love of Christ infused by God himself. You stand alone, left alone with the faint light of God, stripped of all you used to hold dear. Its the moment when Jesus calls his disciples, and they drop everything to go and follow the light directed toward them.

You can imagine the possible thoughts that flooded their minds in between the call and the actually releasing of their nets. All the fish they caught from the Sea of Galilee flashed before their eyes, the fillets they grilled over an open fire on the sea's banks, the storms that rocked them near to death, the days the sun shined meekly upon their dark skin -- all of it for naught -- all stripped away -- for the call of a Carpenter. You can imagine a darkness overwhelming the soul. What am I doing? Am I really thinking about following this guy?

But, it was only a mere flash, similar to the flash the man had as he stood alone in his living room. It was not a darkness similar to the darkness of evil, but instead, a darkness intended to illuminate the dwelling place of the most high.

In actuality, their darkness would be similar to the darkness experienced by the one who searches for a house to purchase. They have moved out of their old house, and they stand in a new house -- barren, but full of potential. The light reflecting off the fence and into their living room sharing with the buyer new nooks and crannies never noticed before. You can only notice them when the sun is set at certain angle in the sky. Yet, there they stand. A stop motion-like image interjects itself into the mind (from an outside source) of the potential buyer, placing himself in those nooks and in those crannies -- the glistening yellows protrude out of the previous greens, the new frames envelope the reds smeared with pristine whites, there is lack of signatures needed to validate the past. The present clearly marks the past.

The purpose of the dark night is to lead the soul out of the darkness and into the light of union with the father. In this union, the father recreates the soul to be more and more bound to him -- in heart, mind, spirit, and strength. God infuses the vision into the soul of the potential buyer.

After some back and forth, the buyer relents, and he settles into his new home. New memories are made in the house designed by the designer. The old house, the old memories, occasionally come back, but the buyer would rather be curled up by the fireplace, warmed by the radiant yellows and whites of his new reality.


In honor of the home which is no longer mine.

The Response of the Anointed: A Listening Guide

"Since it appeared impossible to save the Jewish people who were being methodically annihilated by the Nazi-organized killing process, a sense of obligation grew among Jewish record-keepers (they say so explicitly and repeatedly) that they must at least preserve the evidence of the very process of destruction.

"We should read in these efforts an intuition that one could effectively oppose, indeed frustrate, the Nazis' plan of annihilation of the Jews if only a record of the Nazis' evil deeds were preserved. Victims of the Nazi crimes apparently believed that engraving the whole story in memory and preserving it for posterity effectively canceled the very essence of the Nazi project." -- Jan Gross, Neighbors.

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As Christians, we have been called to do the work of Christ. In the Greek, the word "Christian" is Χριστιανός (Christianos). It is simply defined as someone who is a "follower of Christ" -- a follower of Christos, the anointed one. 

In 1 Samuel 9 and 10, Samuel anoints Saul with olive oil, recognizing him as the first king of Israel. Similarly, this process continues for those subsequently placed on the "throne" of Israel. The original anointed and the anointed descended from less than ideal kingly situations and ancestry. 

Saul and his predecessor David were the most unlikely of kings -- Saul a Benjamite "from the smallest tribe of Israel...the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin" and David, the runt of Jesse, "the youngest...[who merely] tends the sheep.”

But in the same vein, Jesus, the anointed one and "son of David," became king over all -- the physical and the metaphysical -- from the womb of a woman seen as an adulterer and into a trough for slop.

The way Jesus performs his kingly duties correlates with the degrading manner in which he was born. He reaches out to the marginalized and degraded. The opium of the evangelical church, the cliche that resonates from youth pastors and pulpits, is, "since Jesus hung out with the prostitutes, the homeless, the tax collectors, the adulterers, etc., as followers of Christ, we must too." And to that, I completely agree. 

Oftentimes though, the implementation of this spiritual exhortation manifests itself with the lay person enacting "preacher" mode. Preacher mode is the systematic way in which you construct a good for the teleological end of justification. The actuality of it comes in various forms -- actual preaching, feeding the homeless, fighting for the rights of the wronged, etc. Another way of saying it might be, and this is probably a subconscious reality within the minds of Christians, "In order to do X (glorify God), I must do Y (preach in order to justify)."

The impression of "preaching" from the "congregation" could possibly be complentarianism in a philio-like relationships. The preacher is greater because he has all the answers, and his people are below him and need to assimilate all that is said into his own life in order to obtain a state of salvation. There is definitely truth to the idea -- God, in his love and grace, poured out his spirit on me, so I want others to experience it as well. But, we don't attribute our grace to our messenger, our Apollos or Paul, but to the spirit himself! You can boil it down to this -- we view the Gospel as completely soteriological and my actions directly influence the soul of another.

But, there is another mode. Some might view this distinction as splitting hairs or merely a debate of semantics, but the distinction needs to be made. This other mode you can call "pastoral mode." The word pastor derives from the Latin pastorem (nominative pastor)  which means "shepherd." King David, the man after God's own heart, was a shepherd. Christ himself is the "Good Shepherd." What does the pastor, the shepherd, do?

"I know my sheep and my sheep know me— ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." -- John 10

The beauty here is the fact that the sheep and the shepherd know each other and the shepherd guides them back to the flock when they stray. Jesus, the king, the anointed one, stepped down from heaven to serve and to know those who wandered away. To know someone implies the transfer of experiences, love, and knowledge to another. To know is to cut to the core of another, and carry whatever you find their on to your own shoulders. To know assumes pain. 

When the blind man calls out to Jesus, and Jesus guides the man to himself in Mark 10, he doesn't instantly preach the gospel of salvation to him, but instead asks him a simple question: 

“What do you want me to do for you?” 

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

⁵² “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Before any sort of restoration occurs, a transfer of knowledge and experience occurs. As soon as he is healed, Jesus, in a way, takes on the pain of the one he know. Because of this, with his new found sight, he saw the anointed one, his salvation, and followed him. The man was not thinking justification. His end was not soteriological but christological. Now, eternal salvation and justification comes to a man who follows Christ, but that was not the point, it is a byproduct (and a great one at that!), and I also don't think that was Christ's aim. He longed for his people to be with him now -- in the present kingdom that he reigns over on this earth. And by being with him in the present, he is with him in eternity. The anointed King and his kingship manifests itself through his pastoral ministry of leading his sheep to himself through the act of knowing the ones he loves.

By lowering himself and making himself like those within the created order, the relationships with his brothers and sisters is similar to "the core of Vygotsky's theory...the sense that children must be actively involved in teaching/learning relationships with more competent others who both learn from children and draw them into fuller membership in their cultural world" (J. Tudge & S. Scrimsher, "Lev Vygotsky on Education"). Jesus, while God, is also man, and he walks beside us as the "more competent other," the shepherd leading his sheep, the pastor guiding his flock.

Because of this pastoral mode, a mode so often employed by Jesus, one of the true gifts a Christian can give to another is the gift of listening to another's story, just as Jesus listened to the blind man. It can be a greater material gift than food and shelter while also being a greater gift, at times, than the explicit gift of sharing the notions of the soteriological gospel. 

The quote at the beginning of the post shows the Jewish mindset during the Shoah. While their suffering undoubtedly caused them to cry out for their pain to cease, they believed that by recording and passing down the horrors done against their people, that in some way or another the Nazi project, in all its deviance, would be cancelled out. The art of story telling and the reception of the story by their listeners could lead to the destruction of the German's grave sin.  Thanks to those who documented the destructive nature of the holocaust, man is more in tuned to the capabilities of man in his depraved nature.The power of this story cautions us to certain actions and presses us to treat all of mankind as image bearers of the father.  

The act of listening, of walking along side the broken (which we all are), leads people first and foremost to the blood of Jesus, the anointed one. This is an act of service -- one that takes all of us -- our heart, mind, and strength. It frees us to love the person as they are and not as an object to preach at for the sake of justification (which is something we can't even control). It frees us to be a guide, a shepherd, a pastor, a Beatrice (so to speak) and not a knight perched on his towering white horse on a crusade to conquer souls for the heavenly kingdom. 

It frees us to be more like Jesus. 

I pray that I can be more pastoral. For I am neither a preacher nor pastor. I pray to shepherd those to Christ, in all humility, as Christ did for those who he called and those who called out to him.

"Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" 

Live

"You don't choose a life, you live one." Emilio Estevez -- The Way


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I tend to break life into categories and subcategories. As I sift through them and test them against our spiritual and moral mores, I begin to place them within a hierarchical structure. The "king" category for Christians is two fold: living within and for God's kingdom here on earth and in his eternal and heavenly kingdom. From this point on, things get messy.

The subcategories are endless. Based on our experiences, relationships, and denominational influences, we categorize what it actually means to fulfill the qualities of kingship. Some of the subcategories might be sacramental, missional, or moral.

Subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) I believe that my posture can only reside in one of the subcategories of life. Never, I mean never, can one foot be firmly planted in one category while the other foot is firmly and equally planted in another. Now, I commonly state that my life's focus is the "king" and the subcategories are ways in which I, in my God-given uniqueness, manifest kingship. I say, just as St. Augustine said, "unity in the essentials, liberty in the non-essentials, and love in all things," but in reality, I cement both feet into a subcategory.

In doing so, I make a choice about life. I view all possibilities, well, at least the ones I presently see, and choose which one fits my personality best. My mind, heart, and soul get wrapped up in this choice. Am I living by the choice I made? Is the choice I made the right choice? I see all these other people, ones who are esteemed in their subcategories, and judge myself (and them) based on their categorical choice. I mean, one  of us have to be in the wrong subcategory...right?!

I think Emilio was on to something.

Obsession with the choices you make, their rightness and wrongness, cause you to lose sight of the King. "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." This is the King's promise and purpose. Those who rest in this truth, whose two feet are firmly planted in the category of the king, lose themselves in the rest and love of the good shepherd and live a life. 


I pray God gives me the grace to forsake the subcategories of experience for the category of the King -- to never choose a life, but to live one. 

It's all about the Father

Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious
favor, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our
works begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify
thy holy Name, and finally, by thy mercy, obtain everlasting
life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Prayer of the elder son)

A few years ago, multiple people I love told me to check out Tim Keller's book The Prodigal God. They said it was short (my favorite kind of book!) and succinct. They said it would shed some light on my nature -- a nature planted, tended, and cultivated within the confines of a faith based greenhouse. They said, "you are the elder son from the Prodigal Son story! Isn't it refreshing to know that?" I said, "Maybe, but who is the elder son?" And they replied, "exactly!"

Ok, I guess I should read it to figure out the meaning behind their cryptic advice...and I did. 

I went in with false expectations. I believed the book would radically alter they way I looked at myself. But in reality, and I am thankful for this, it just gave me a story to flip to when I needed to remember that I am not alone in my struggles. "Ah yes, the elder son. That is definitely me. Thank you God for giving me company as I carry this cross." This was no ah ha moment. No radical change occurred in my heart. The information was interesting, but that's about it. Now, my blasé attitude was not the fault of Keller. Many have been touched and enlightened by him bringing awareness to the elder son's part in the story. My heart just wasn't ready. I needed a different voice at a different time...

As I was perusing Half-Price Books a few months ago, you know, the behemoth you can get lost in off of NW Highway, I came across Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son. I picked it up, examined it. I mean, Rembrandt's artistic rendition of the parable graced itself on the cover so I must look at it, right? It was even the picture on my computer's desktop at the time! Fate or Providence?

I almost left it there to be purchased by another elder son, or even possibly a younger son. But I think it was $5.00, and I had heard many good things about Nouwen, so I splurged and purchased it. 

If you are an avid reader, very rarely does a book move you utter helplessness and vulnerability. Those moments of extreme revelation and destruction necessitate a collision between two forces: a tender heart and a life giving text. Over the years, Crime and Punishment, The Scarlet Letter, Blue Like Jazz, The Ragamuffin Gospel, The Problem of Pain, and The Cost of Discipleship have produced that kind of effect on me. Most recently, Nouwen's exposition of Rembrandt's painting and Jesus' parable tossed my heart up like a Livan Hernandez eephus pitch that Giancarlo Stanton was sitting on -- boom!

As much as my soul cried out "yes!" to his description of the elder son, and as much as my soul gave thanks to his honest reflection of his own heart bound to the darkness of the elder, he gently asks us, both the younger and elder son, to become something more -- the Father himself. 

"If the only meaning of the story were that people sin but God forgives, I could easily being to think of my sins as a fine occasion for God to show me his forgiveness. There would be no real challenge in such an interpretation. I would resign myself to my weaknesses and keep hoping that eventually God would close his eyes to them and let me come home, whatever I did. Such sentimental romanticism is not the message of the Gospels. What I am called to make true is that whether I am the younger or elder son, I am the son of my compassionate Father. I am an heir...Being in the Father's house requires that I make the Father's life my own and become transformed in his image."

Being the elder son, I normally take this to mean that I must continue to follow the law and moral decrees that God gives his people. Transformation often means the sanctification of my bad choices into good ones. But sanctification connotes much more. For the Father's goodness rested not in his personal morality, but in the extended arms of grace to his wayward son who returns home and his dutiful son who's heart steers clear of the hearth overflowing with the Father's joy. 

Before either son can become the Father, they must relinquish their own perception of sonship and rest comfortably in arms of the Father. The younger son, full of shame, tries to redeem himself by placing himself as a servant in his Father's court while the elder son only loves the Father when it benefits himself. Yet, the Father is there ready to offer his joy freely to both sons.

Many times in scripture, this joy manifests itself in a party or feast; "I am not used to the image of God throwing a big party. It seems to contradict the solemnity and seriousness I have always attached to God. But when I think about eh ways in which Jesus describes God's Kingdom, a joyful banquet is often at its center."

The fattened calf has been prepared in your honor. The best wine has been set at the table. Friends and neighbors have come to celebrate. The younger son, in all his passion and fervor, has discarded his desire to be a servant and has accepted the joy of the Father. The elder son resents both his Father and brother, but the offer of joy is there for his taking. The Father leaves the celebration to give his elder son the same opportunity of joy. If he rejects, he loses the beautiful gifts of sonship. If he accepts, he joins the Father in his household. 

To accept his joy is to be an heir to the Father, to claim fatherhood as your end desire. As an heir, I must now, like my Father, "dare to stretch out my own hands in blessing and to receive with ultimate compassion my children."

"As the Father, I have to dare to carry the responsibility of a spiritually adult person and dare to trust that the real joy and real fulfillment can only come from welcoming home those who have been hurt and wounded on their life's journey, and loving them with a love that neither asks nor expects anything in return."

I am called to recognize my elder brother-ness and pray for the grace to strip them from my heart in order to accept the joyous gift of love that God gives me. In doing so, I am freed to love like my Father loves -- with arms extended, full of grace for those in need of it.