Novitiate Rants

I have been resisting poverty. And for that I am ashamed, and hopeful.

When amy and I had our ceremony with our family gathered, we read the words of brother Juniper, my favorite friend of Francis. We put this passage in our ceremony because we knew it was important, but we did not know how important, someday we might.

LADY POVERTY IN THE EYES OF JUNIPER, FRIEND OF FRANCIS, FOOL OF GOD

“
If I am truly poor, then I am dependent on others for everything, and I feel useless and worthless, and I realize deep within that everything is a gift from the Father. Then in this attitude of complete dependence, I become useful again, for then I am empty of selfishness and I am free to be God’s instrument instead of my own. In poverty I begin to value everything rightly again. I see how little really matters, and I see that only that which glorifies God is of value.
I write these words in pain, Lady Poverty, for I have wept bitter tears because I was poor and had to beg from others, and I felt like a burden to people and to God … And I have grown weary of Christ’s words not to worry about tomorrow. But in His grace I have surrendered to God’s sovereignty and providence, and it has made me free …
Lady Poverty, I love you. You, my Lady, take all the sting from being poor. In your embrace I am rich indeed, for I have someone to love. I have you. Perhaps, my Lady, that is why I keep submitting, surrendering my desire to control my life, my need to provide for the future. You have stolen my heart and made me happy, and your love makes up for all the pain that loving you involves … and we know it is all worthwhile because when we look into your eyes, we see Christ Himself.”

So Lady Poverty, I am sorry for trying to fool you. Trying to say with my lifestyle that I am poor, while my actions and motivation push for more. Taking little things, more than I need. I live in two worlds, reaping the benefits of neither.

I went to India. Summer of 08’. The year prior was rather difficult. Stuck. Tired of not connecting to a culture and worldview I was supposed to be a part of. Somehow always feeling like a stranger around people who looked like me, and lived like me.

When you are a stranger in a familiar yet strange land, it becomes increasingly hard to listen to your heart. Every time it speaks up to tell you what is right and you turn to the person on your left or right, you may get a blank stare. A tree in the woods. After a while you stop speaking.

Let me tell you about the heart. It is crafty. It will have its way. When you release in emotional outbursts that don’t make sense, the heart is trying to get out. Listen deeply to those emotional outbursts, some truth lies in there.

In and amidst depression or lethargy or whatever you would call it, there were two things that would consistently bring me to tears.

Every time I read Mother Theresa’s words or watched this cheesy movie about her.

She has taught me to see the incarnation of Jesus not as a one time event, but as a continuing process. One carried out by God’s people, as they bind the broken, and break bread with the poor. Which is especially true as everyone comes to realize their own poverty. We are all poor, and in need of the Body of Christ to come and share in our poverty, as Jesus did when He lived on Earth. Embracing His own poverty and breaking bread and sharing in ours. I think there is a poverty that exists inside a Being that loves His creation so much yet rarely sees it returned. How poor is our God, and how inexhaustibly rich.

Sometimes I wish my poverty were far gone. That it would be taken away, but what would I have to share, my abundance? I think part of being whole is having a lack.
Breathe in, breathe out. Poverty and abundance. The practice of Sabbath.

The reason I cry when I hear Mother Theresa is because I see my home. I see where I was meant to be. Among a people who are broken and know it, and I hope to be loved by a body so hellbent on loving, that they would accept my poverty and invite me to sit down and eat, unveiled.

The other reason…

Whenever I hear beautiful music. Particularly a scene from Copying Beethoven at the premier of his 9th symphony. Every time I watch that scene, I think to myself. There is no way it will still bring a tear to my eye. And of the ten or so times I’ve watched it, it has never failed.

I know what this music meant to him. It meant everything, it was the full expression of an endlessly complex soul, which we all posses. For a deaf man, he spoke with clarity and precision, through his music, in a way words or discussion could never do.

The reason I cry when I hear music is because I see what I was meant to do. Speaking through notes, ideas, moods, and layers of subconscious meaning. Weaving together stories and tones with emotion and life.

Presently, both of these things are converging. The great poverty I posses is an inability to finish a musical theater project, but it goes deeper than that, it has to do with my hopes/thoughts on Grace, Providence, Failure, Acceptance, and Communication with God, as well as His existence. It won’t be terribly difficult to finish, yet I still pull everything else I can in my path. I avoid it, and I have tried every thought to understand why; for five years now. I still have no real answer, but many little ones along the path.

Maybe its not important to know why. Maybe it is more important to sit with my poverty, accept it, and breathe out. Breathe in and finish the musical. Breathe out and let my souls expression be seen on a stage. Breathe in and accept the fellowship and let their acceptance wash over me.

I hope.

have you ever experienced a musical moment. im sure you have.

discovering a new band that really hits the spot. check out mumford and sons, btw. a band that is able to take lyrics, melodies, and harmonies, combine them at just the right time in the right way.

or putting in an album where every song is worth listening to, for different reasons. and you can feel your heart beat, and your feel cant keep from moving.

bob marley said the thing about music is, when it hits you, you feel no pain. i would add to that, when it hits you, you still cry, but from joy.

before i left for india, there were two things that kept bringing tears to my eyes. every time i watched Gandhi, and a Mother Theresa film, which was about twice a week. and every time i watched Ed Harris as Beethoven conducting the 9th. when it got the the Joyful Joyful bit, my eyes watered, invariably.

when i watch things like Into The Woods, and other Broadway masterpieces, and i hear a punchline, in the music or the script, there is a rush, happiness, and smiles that go deeper than mere conversation ever can go.

the reason i write is because i believe that an audience is only capable of experiencing a fraction of the joy i partake in from creating a truly wonderful musical moment. as an audience member, i laugh, my spirit is lifted, sometimes more so than others while watching something wonderful, but as a composer, when i get it right, i dance around the room for minutes and my spirit lifts to a place i seldom visit.

of course, with great joy comes great effort. the 20$ it cost to get into a show may have taken 2 hours of work to earn, but for me, a 5 minute song takes 20 hours of work, and a 40 minute song cycle takes a year to create. maybe less if i worked a lot harder.

that is where i am at now, i get to work on this song cycle, coming out with moments that make me smile, and moments that make me buckle down and write. but i love it.

so here is to sacrifice and hard work, for they breed a joy that 20$ just can not buy.

a friend and i were catching up after a long time away. she asked me how mission year changed me and i responded, “it didnt really”. well part of that is true, but part of it is not.

what i wished i would have said, is that mission year was a great time to do a lot of the things that God had been changing in my heart. (that was the non changing aspect of the year) i was able to exercise a lot of beliefs and refine them. but also i was changed, of course, change happens, so in that sense, i was changed. learned a lot, grew a lot, you know, that ol’ chestnut.

the point is now i am back. back here in this same situation and my heart is hard again. in mission year i was able to live in a situation i found brought life out of me, one that aided my heart in the act of living. lately i find myself doubting God’s goodness or ability to effect change, the sincerity of believers, and just generally being cynical and unloving.

its shown up in a number of situations where my gut reaction is hopelessness. which is, i think, counter intuitive to my situation.

i have comfort, a house, food, people around, yes. then why is it that i am only filled with hope while surrounded by the visible poverty of the streets. after coming back from Kolkata, i was so hopeful driving around UC’s campus, looking at all the young college kids, dreaming what their lives will unfold. now all i see when i see young white college kids is their privilege and subsequent misuse of it to gain shit for themselves that they dont need, will not bring them joy, and damages the world.

what an unfair judgment to make. i do not know how much longer i can live here. by the grace of God i will be done with school by mid fall. but more important is finishing this semester, then i can look again at what i need to do, and where and how i need to live. i just know i have never been good at life like this and never will be.

wincingly hopeful,

chris smyth

As I started typing out another comment on my status about glenn beck, then I realized it was too long and I would just blog on it then have facebook import that. So you can read this on my blog or facebook. Ummm, here it is…it is a little long, sorry, but its worth it.

im amazed at glenn beck and others who change the radical things they are shouting based solely on how profitable it is for them.

they are almost like other folks who have shouted against government for years, except they lack anything resembling integrity.

 they will call government big brother, but they wont denounce TV because that keeps the money rolling in.

 they say “dont force redistribution of wealth” after they force it out of the poor’s hands. you cannot become as rich as america without redistributing a lot of money from the poor to the rich. i.e. slavery, companies that use cheap labor in other countries, all the various consumer products that after you live in a poor area in america are easy to see the cancer they are to our inner city. hostess, tasty cake, doritos, beer. all these beautiful things intended to be enjoyed are now the crutch that keeps the poor poor monetarily, bodily, spiritually, and other “allys”

not, of course, that these are the only causes of poverty, i simply mean to point out there is an obvious redistribution of the wealth that takes place under our brand of capitalism and, in my opinion, to say socialism is a danger because it seeks to redistribute wealth in some ways while failing to see the other ways wealth is redistributed is a great folly and a great poverty held on to by only a small number of people. (this ends my response to the status, now I will go on with the thought)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God establishes a tradition called the year of Jubilee. That means that after 7 sets of 7 years, aka 49 years, there would be a year of Sabbath, a year of Jubilee, and not that crap chick from the X-Men. That means a year where you set your slaves free, give the land that you obtained back to the original owner, and you let the land experience sabbath as well by letting is rest.

This was to be a time of release. Sometimes called the year of release. The rhythm of sabbath looks like breathing in, taking in, working the land, toiling, receiving. But for the form to be complete, one must remember to breath out. Set slaves free, give, rest. The problem for us today is that we have truly forgotten sabbath, and we hoard any and everything under the sun without any time to give back.

There is an interesting tale that Jesus tells in matthew 25. Usually called the parable of the talents that I would like to rename the parable of the wicked master.

Long story short, a master tells his workers to take some money and make it more. 2 of them do this and 1 of them chooses to bury his money in the ground. When the master returns, he is a little pissed.

24″Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26″His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

In an agrarian society, with a some mercantilism, how does one achieve copious amounts of wealth? The answer is provided by this wicked servant. All you have to do is take where you do not sow, reap what is not yours. Does this sound like God? Is this how God treats His Kingdom? Taking where he does not sow? Then why do we read this text as if this servant were truly wicked? The answer is because we are from a capitalistic society. We see a servant not making his money work for his master and assume he is what the master calls him, wicked and lazy.

What is happening here is the servant is refusing to partake in an unjust system. At the end of the time he delivers to the master “what belongs to (the master)”. When looking at a parable of Jesus, it is important to find the good or godly character, in this case, it cannot be the master, the master is obviously a thief, so we look to the servant. All we can accuse him of is not putting money in a bank which is a sin I have never heard of in the rest of scripture. Then the master says something we Christians quote often, but I fear we do not look at closely enough.

28″ ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

So the poor become more poor? Where else have I heard this? Nowhere, thats the problem. We quote the first half all the time, do well with what God has given you so that he will give you more. You can make a case for that showing up in the rest of Scripture, but I dare you to find a place where God says he will take from the poor. This master is obviously not God. Be like the “wicked, lazy” servant, stand up to the systems of abundance obtained through exploitation.

Because truly, oppression and poverty are not just for the oppressed and impoverished. The rich oppressors live under a dark oppression. They have forgotten how to breath out, how to release. And one can only hold their breath for so long before they pass out.

Glenn beck is poor, my homeless friend quinn is poor, i am poor, desperatly. We are all poor, in different ways. a proper redistribution of wealth takes care of the rich and the poor. it allows the rich to breathe again, because they have forgotten the sabbath year, the jubilee when everything starts over. they have taken part in the system that benefits from the suffering of others and for that they are poor. they must learn to release, just as the poor must learn to take in breath. We must all relearn sabbath, every week, every 7 years, and every 7 of 7 years. If we do not, the poor will suffocate and the rich will go unconscious.

These thoughts brought to you by great heros of social justice. Mother theresa, Will O’Brien, Ched Meyers book “Sabbath Economics” and the greatest influence in radical social justice, Jesus or Nazareth.

May his people relearn sabbath, may they relearn the voice of their shepherd, and heed His words.

Father have Mercy

I think the road in between is an important place, a significant place, with worth in and of itself, not just for the destination it promises.

The road in between Nabu Jibon and Kolkata, when the city roads were totally stopped and I got out and walked the rest of the 30 minute drive. The tent cities, and all the people in that city I never got to meet. I can see the cobblestone, and I can see the people packed into the busses.

The road from the church in Anapolis, Brasil to get sandwich wraps late at night. Walking in silence trying not to disturb so peaceful a place, a place where I heard true silence for the first time in my life. Walking the roads with confusion as I saw the Americans play, and the poor suffer.

The walkway between my car and the Carnegie in Covington for Joseph rehearsals. Excited about performing with a group of people I didn’t know. Reaching for the door, feeling it was going to be different this time, I would open up, I would latch on to this thing called performance and the road till opening night.

The road I walked after Amy and I first said out loud what we were feeling. I felt a great weight, like my life was going to change from here on, I walked up to the Art Museum and back to the Subway. Nothing changed during that walk, my head was still swimming, but I needed the space, and the walk.

I loved looking up quotes when I was younger. They fill me with passion and direction.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
- Thoreau

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”
- Michelangelo

I heard these and others and thought I would try for something I really wanted, and set out on what I knew would be a long complex road of which I would only be able to see in bits and pieces.

My hope is that I don’t let the road between pass me by. I hear it a lot, “I am just waiting till this thing happens…” I say it a lot myself. I want the road to end in writing some piece of music, I want the road to end till Amy and I are close again, I want school to be over.

The value is not just in the ability to play Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu Op. 66, but the road to get there. The song cycle I am writing, there is a road there, and each song needs to be laid down with care.

I am talking about a shift in thought for me. Not being focused on the castle in the clouds, but the shovel in my hands, the cement, and the planks of wood. And after I’ve toiled and walked and smiled and sweated, if there is a castle, I will be glad, but if all I see at the end are the tops of clouds, I will still be glad.

Today is the 6 year anniversary of my commitment to follow Christ.

Commitment, that is a loose word.

My journey is a string of broken promises and distractions on my part from the things I say really matter.

He is ever faithful and good, always turning me to face the same directions and asking me to look out. Look out into the crazy dream of the Kingdom of Heaven, thinking it can happen.

My anniversary is after Valentine’s Day, which I think is important because I am always a day late to love. I always get distracted by things of no worth, and find myself lost the morning after.

Fortunately, God does not celebrate Valentine’s Day. Nor does he keep a long list, His list is short, and I am His Beloved.

This is my late valentine’s poem this year, from Hafiz

TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes get tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

I think we got something wrong.

Very understandable, I mean it says it right there, why wouldnt we accept it as is.

Jesus did not save us.

Provocative, I know.

First let me say I love movies. I love the method of story telling that it is. The problem with movies is that we get in and out and at the end there is a clear winner with no follow up. The problem with this method is that it never ever will happen like this, there is always tomorrow, and new evil rises, new problems.

I got to thinking about this when reading an article on Avitar. I loved the movie, I thought it had some great things to say about white invasion and extraction of natural resources, preserving a beautiful culture. The problem was, at the end of the day, the white dude saves the native people. Now to my white american ears, it makes total sense.

White invaders, white insider comes to the simple people and is able to lead them in defiance of annihilation.

OR

Supernatural invaders (Satan), Supernatural insider (Jesus) comes to the simple people(Us, the Jews) to lead them in defiance of annihilation(spiritual and 70 AD)

Of course I recognize that Jesus did save us, its right there in the text. The story is salvific. But at the end of any day, we can look around and easily see that we are not saved.

The disconnect from how we are conditioned to view story is that we expect the credits to roll in 2 hours, not 2000 years.

We in america think all another country needs is more of what we have. A message Avitar preached against. “They will never want anything we have”!

We have a messiah complex, that I am afraid the Messiah did not posses.

He came here for 3 years and did almost nothing in that time. In the way we measure success in ministry. He did create a huge following, and did heal many people, but he did not make any of those acts sustainable. All of those people could get sick again, and there were many more he did not heal. He didnt set up houses of healing where his staff would be and all you had to do was go touch the staff and you were good.

If He were in a movie, it would end with a blast of light from His eyes and all the people would be healed and the evil leaders would have their minds changed, and all would be well.

Now of course I realize that some movies, many since the 90’s have a deep sense of un-resolution, we are able to grapple with the idea that this story is not yet over and we are not sure where it is going, and that is okay.

The definition of story I go by is: A character, who wants something, and overcomes obstacles to get it.

Jesus, who wants (everyone to be healed and saved), and overcame (satan) to get it.
- this is not the story that happened.

This is the messiah complex we operate under. But Jesus never accomplished any of those things. So the question is, what does He really want.

That is a really lengthy answer I feel. So I wont try here. And I feel some of my other points were a bit muddy. It is hard to break away from my American reading of the bible.

I do know that as Rwanda rebuilds, it needs to be done by rwandans. White folks can come and volunteer, but they cannot run it. Race reconciliation must be done by the races involved.

I know that Jesus started a new kingdom, and is calling people to come and live in it. Ours, is not to build this kingdom. Ours is to remain in the Father (John 15) and let Him build His kingdom through that.

I know that the story is not over.

We constantly do things to reassure ourselves that we are not dying. We buy houses, cars, ipods, pets, wallpaper, dvds with the directory’s commentary that we are never going to listen to. We save up for these things, we get into debt over these things.

Or maybe its not material things, maybe its college, maybe its spending 10 years at a job you hate, so you can become a manager, and then you will be happy.

Immediate gratification isnt that great either.

Its hard to assign value to things without the context of a proper life expereince that always sets things into perspective. Like death, yes that will do.

I find it fascinating and lament the act of meditating on the broken bread as the broken body of Christ.

Lament the fact that we only celebrate this act once a week, when Jesus obviously wanted it to be central to who we are, not once a week, if we even show up for Sunday morning. He replaced the central story of a people with his own, we should be reflecting on the broken body of Christ with every bite of food.

I find it fascinating that the experience of food is an enjoyable one. God didnt have to make food taste good. But here we are, able to enjoy it. And even though I havent been told I have 3 months to live, I know how good a meal can taste when life feels more like death. When you realize this could be your last meal, last time in an open field, last time you smell incense, last rain, last peach, last time hearing a symphony, last kiss, things become better.

Ancient samurai used to imagine their own deaths. They would meditate on the scene of an enemy shooting an arrow at their face. Then when it came time to battle, they knew they were already dead, so they held nothing back, and usually won.

We are approaching advent, which is without a doubt, my favorite church season. It’s a favorite because it means Jesus is coming. This is one of the greater mysteries in the Christian faith. Advent, or escatology is a look at the coming of Jesus, not simply the end times, but any time Jesus is manifest on Earth in flesh and blood. With stuff like, wherever two or more of you are gathered, or Jesus saying the church is His body, it is easy to see we are in the end times, because Jesus is here. Now there will be some bigger event and I have no idea what it will look like, and neither does anyone else, so we should all stop trying to figure it out.

The point is that advent is a time when we remember the great tension we live in. The tension Paul speaks about with an incredibly present and realistic expectation, that Jesus is coming back today! soon, very soon, the story will end.

This is so odd for us, since we have seen Christians live for 2000 years, and Jesus has still not come back, yet we are supposed to carry on in the tradition that we truly expect it could be today, no…it is today.

How ridiculous right?

I guess the underlying question is…do we want Him to come back? Or do we want Him to come back in a few weeks? We all know what we should answer, but the fact is, we have forgotten that we are already dead. So our answer is we would like Him to wait, till we can go on that vacation, till we can marry that girl, till we find the job that really clicks with us.

I’m uncertain as to all the practical and theological implications of a statement like, “you are to die so that you can live”. But I do know that when we grapple with our death, and recognize its truth and inevitability, life takes on new and exciting meaning.

If we could sit for an hour and imagine an arrow coming at us, we would make many different choices, not ones to immediately gratify, long term things are good, but how we interact with the long term will look so different, and all our short term choices will look different, and finally, that bread which was broken for us, will taste so sweet. Especially if it is a delicious whole wheat bread that I bake over two days, instead of those lousy communion chicklets.

Remember lads, we are food for worms. Let every moment be worth living, be worth sharing with God when you get to them pearly gates, carpe diem, seize the carp, and for the love of a God who came and died, remember that you too have died, and are now free to truly live.

Marrissa asked me about what I had learned on purity, and this prompted me to go back to my notes from life of Jesus class with tom thatcher, so id like to share a few more thoughts which tie into our speaker at chapel. I’m sorry, this got really long. Break it up, make some tea, enjoy, or don’t. Ill still love you, but give it a try.

So…the original context for understanding purity comes from the Levitical law, correct? Correct. Our present understanding comes from doing certain activities, aka sin, that make us impure. I guess in this sense it just got a whole lot bigger.

Well, you did stuff in Ancient Israel that made you impure, like get leprosy, eat a certain animal, or get your period. Btw, women spent a lot of their life in a state of impurity that was uncontrollable. In Lev. 15:31 God points out that these impurity laws are to separate the people from their uncleanness so that they do not die by coming into contact with God, at this time coming into contact with things at the Tabernacle.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God, for only the pure since way back when, were allowed to touch him.

Now, Jesus comes along and rocks the boat on the Pharisees system of purity. He lays down a new definition of purity. “it is not what goes in, but what comes out that defiles a person”. In mark our Lord says, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile him”

Then my first question is why? Why does our system of understanding purity immediately look like the Pharisee’s? Having sex with someone, not your spouse, makes you impure, you lose your purity if you do this.

The speaker said he was approached by a prostitute in the MGM lobby. His response was a firm “no”, followed by a firm pat on the back for his faithfulness to his wife and God. Which I agree, not having sex with a prostitute = good thing. But his response looked more like a Pharisee than our Lord. A firm no and an “away with you”. Jesus knew that purity was an inner state so he stayed with prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, the most impure people of his time. By merely touching them, sleeping on their beds, eating their food, this would make Him far from God, but nothing outside defiles him. He eats without washing his hands and bowl in the ceremonial way, and that defiled food goes right down into his belly, but after a few days it goes out, because who he is, to the core, is one who is pure. Thus he can hang out with these “impure” people, who do impure things, and don’t all stop, though some do, and still remain pure himself.

Religion that is pure and unpolluted (a scripture that was quoted by the preacher) is, to be with widows and orphans in their affliction. How can we be with them if we think they will get in the way of our pursuit of God. This scripture clears up the mess, declaring that this IS the way to be with God, to be with the broken, troubled, and marginal. Because God has made us pure through baptism, through the workings of the Holy Spirit, we are pure and mobile to go to dark places and the dark things that go on there do not make us dark, but we as lights will shine.

And the other part to that verse is that pure religion is to keep oneself unstained from the world. 2 things on that. First, undefiled, or unpolluted. These are words which reflect a temporary state, we are to remain on the clean side of this sliding scale, because the more you get caked in this stuff, the harder it is to get out. This does not say do not touch, this says do not be stained when it touches you, it assumes you will get dirty, if you are living like our Lord. But we are not to let it change us, our inner being remains pure as the Spirit inhabits our body, and we remain mindful and discerning with our community.

Next is the “world”. When we hear the world we often think of the people who kill or steal, or maybe the people who cheat and stab each other in the back for some gain, or maybe dictators and crime bosses, or maybe porn peddlers, or smokers, or maybe any various folk who sins. But, I am troubled by what I read in Col. 2:8. There are principles that people live their lives by that are worldly. When I hear I first hear what paul was dealing with, which was gnosticism, as he immediately declares Christ’s deity and body, one can see these were the patterns he was calling worldly. But I think in this country, the heresy is one of materialism, and a lack of a Sabbatical understanding of life. A theology of enough, and that our God will provide without our need to hoard. This is something we need to find, and we need to reorient our understanding of the world to hear that this is the danger and evil that lurks, not the flesh and blood of a man with a gun, but the Spirit that says you will never have enough, if you just get a new car, if you just get that job, that iPod or, if your attendance numbers go up, if you can just give more, if you can just have more God. We have turned God into a commodity, and “He is all we need”. “God is not yours to own, we are His to love and make holy.” – Rich Mullins. I see this as such a complicated and urgent problem. We say that we need more quiet time, another worship session, better prayer. We have changed our focus from “worldly” desires and desire God in a worldly way. Not that desire for God is bad, it is good, this is a huge subject, with many words and life needed to get through it, I simply want to say that we start to turn our ferocious appetite that we learned in the Wilderness Wanderings, and try to control as much of God as we can, when we are no longer allowed to hoard other commodities so we turn to this somehow acceptable commodity called Spirituality and are allowed to go unchecked.

Sorry, that was a really long rant. And it’s still not a complete thought for me. But I digress, back to the world, then I will digress back to purity.

In Col. 2:20 he speaks about worldly people who put regulations on what to touch and eat, sound familiar? This is what worldly people do, they are often our very own brothers, as they were in the letter, people setting up rules of purity. They are worldly and they keep the work of God from happening, they keep people from seeing God by establishing a false purity which says they can no longer visit the impure, who in fact, are part of the actual plan for seeing God.

Of all the people groups in the world, God only identifies himself with 2. The church, and the poor. the broken, the orphan, the stranger, the marginal, the prostitute. These people represent something key about God. Spending time in India this summer, living and working with the outcasts, I can easily say that I saw God. I walked with him, I held his hand, and put bandages on his wounds. I could not do that if my religion were defiled from within. If I were polluted by the worldly principles that tell me I need to finish school to get a good job to get security, or the ones that say, don’t talk to the prostitute, don’t sit down and share a meal with her. These voices espousing the proper understanding of purity are keeping people from seeing God. Not that our chapel speaker specifically is one of them, I need some more shared life with him to discern that. The problem is I don’t even know the guy and he comes in using the most inefficient method of teaching, public lecture, trying to convince people who have no shared context of faith with him, that they need to act like he did, and not like Christ did.

It pisses me off enough to flip tables.