The Gospel is Bloody Business

I don't deal well with blood. When Eden, our then 2 year old, took a dive into the coffee table splitting her forehead open I was fine until we got into the room @ the ER and the survival mode, adrenaline rush wore off. At that point I got my own nurse when I turned pale as a ghost and nearly fainted. Manly. I know.

Good Friday is a bloody day. Every year I mean to go back and watch The Passion of the Christ again but I just can't bring myself to do it. It's too hard to watch. Intense, bloody business.

There are volumes and volumes worth of possible rabbit trails to explore this idea of blood and sacrifice and probably a need to rediscover and plumb it's depths for meaning for today. Consider this a call to the medical profession to explore the metaphor of the importance and weight of blood in light of what we know now medically and scientifically. But suffice it for this blog to look at these verses from Revelation and William Cowper's hymn There is a Fountain Filled With Blood.

“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”
            . . .
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!”  (Revelation 5:9-12 ESV)

Ransomed by blood. A payment made with blood that ought to have been mine. Innocent life given in my guilty stead.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains; And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away. Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away; And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more. Be saved, to sin no more, be saved, to sin no more; Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die. And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die; Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save, When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave. Lies silent in the grave, lies silent in the grave; When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.

Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared, unworthy though I be, For me a blood bought free reward, a golden harp for me! ’Tis strung and tuned for endless years, and formed by power divine, To sound in God the Father’s ears no other name but Thine.

I get a little queasy and sweaty from the images in this hymn but hey...the gospel is bloody business.  Thanks be to God on this good, good Friday.

The Listening Lord [SERMON AUDIO]

I had the privilege to preach at New City this past Sunday on Genesis 21.8-21. You can CLICK HERE to listen to the audio of the message.

A 10 Year Quest is Coming to an End with these Broomsticks

About 10 years ago I was at a show and the drummer was playing with these fat, natural grass broom looking sticks. I was enthralled and proceeded to try and find them. To no avail. I just figured he made them himself as percussionists are wont to do.

Last week Len Sweet posted a video of Sarah Macintosh's song Current. Fun instrumentation.

Lo and behold, one of the percussionists had my long sought after broomsticks!

After a cursory search of the world wide interwebs I found...nothing.

So I emailed my "sales engineer" at Sweetwater and he came through! They are on order and ought to arrive sometime this week.

"I don't want to work. I just want to bang on my drum all day."

Worship gathering as neither concert nor lecture but FEAST from the Gospel Coalition

A Wasteful, Beautiful Faith

Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper. A woman poured expensive perfume on his head as he reclined at table. The disciples were indignant at this act. They said, "Why this waste? This stuff could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor!"

Jesus' response? "She has done a beautiful thing to me. You'll always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me."

Jesus lauds this woman's wasteful, extravagant, prodigious act and says it will be told whenever and wherever the good news is told. And adds that it is in preparation for his burial. The burial talk took this wasteful, beautiful act to a very different place than the woman intended. She certainly didn't intend this as an act that would be attached to the gospel for thousands or years or mean for it to be a pre-burial rite. And yet this beautiful, reckless, wasteful act had significance beyond her intention.

The Christian faith is a reasonable faith. But it also ought to be a beautiful, reckless, wasteful faith.

In his book So Beautiful Leonard Sweet writes

We have so few resources in our experience for sensing the bursting forth of what God is doing. We don't have a sensing organism or discernment process that happens even in small groups of people. Sad to say, the only thing we know is a prayer meeting, which is all too often the corporate presentation to God of our list of things for God to do or get taken care of for us. 

Ouch.

We need to live out our faith with an eye keen to beauty for that will help us sense what God is doing.

Wasteful, reckless, beauty. Beauty is compelling. Beauty is magnetic. It's why we stare at paintings and drive to the Grand Canyon and get swept up in a powerful piece of music. If we can bring ourselves to waste some beauty on Jesus we might do something with significance far beyond what we intend and who knows, someone might be talking about our wasteful actions in a couple thousand years.

Spinning Anatomical Domo

HT: Jonathan Queen

Billy Sunday re: Sin

I'm against sin.  I'll kick it as long as I have a foot.  I'll fight it as long as I have a fist.  I'll butt it as long as I have a head.  I'll bite it as long as I've got a tooth.  And when I am old and fistless and footless and toothless, I'll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition.

This Describes Triathlon. But it leaves out "fun." From the wavier...

"I understand and acknowledge the physical and mental rigors associated with triathlon, duathlon, or other multi-sport events, and realize that running, bicycling, swimming and other portions of such Events are inherently dangerous and represent an extreme test of a person's physical and mental limits."

C.S. Lewis, Plainly, On the Church

People already knew about God in a vague way.  Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet He was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic.  He made them believe Him.  They met Him again after they had seen Him killed.  And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before.

            C.S. Lewis | Mere Christianity

Stomp, Paul Simon & @JimmyFallon [VIDEO] Fantastic!

Makes me wish I stayed up late every night to watch Jimmy Fallon.

Opening Day Cartoon

Pope John Paul II on Consumerism

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards 'having' rather than 'being,' and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.  It is therefore necessary to create life-styles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness, and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings, and investments. 

~from Centesimus annus

Sabbath (from Abraham Joshua Heschel)

“He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil.  He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.  He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man.  Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.  The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.  Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”

“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space.  Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.  It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

“Not only the hands of man celebrate the day, the tongue and soul keep the Sabbath.  One does not talk on it in the same manner in which one talks on weekdays.  Even thinking of business or labor should be avoided.”

“Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art.”

Uncle Jimmy w/ Brian & Meka

John Wesley on Spiritual Life (particularly of pastors)

Following Jesus may not be easy but it may very well be just this simple.  As trite as the daily "quiet time" might seem, there is absolutely nothing more vital for spiritual transformation than interaction/dialogue with God in prayer and the Bible every day.  Stop depending on other stuff to "feed you," feed yourself.  We don't live on bread alone, after all.

John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of the Methodists, wrote of his own spiritual disciplines and his daily time of solitude at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m.: "Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is here, in his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven." In the letter he wrote to a pastor 250 years ago on August 7, 1760, Wesley clearly stated the importance of soul care for pastors: "[This is] what has exceedingly hurt you in times past, nay, and I fear, to this day ... Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way ... Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer."  (From the article Soul Care & the Roots of Clergy Burnout by Anne Dilenschneider)

CLICK HERE to read the full article in the Huffington Post.  

Interesting thought re: Wesley's theology of the providence of God

"The coherence of Wesley's teaching on the omnipotence of God is questionable.  How God is the sole agent whose providence is responsible for everything except human sin is not clear.  Wesley protects human freedom, but even that is to be ascribed to God's grace.  One reason his thought is not very coherent here is that it is peripheral to his primary concern - God's saving grace.  It is God as loving parent he most wishes to describe, not God the agent whose existence explains causality in the physical world." 

| United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center by Scott J. James

Baseball Radio

Baseball is made for the radio. But the radio is pretty irrelevant, so I learned that these Podcast things are pretty cool. Not surprisingly, my favorite one is about baseball. It's by the main prospect guy from that beloved/reviled Baseball Prospectus. If you like baseball/the Reds/Steve Albini start with this one from last week:

"Green Apple Is Not Cool"

Meka vs. Eden in "Movie Hockey"?

Meka: Eden pushed me in the hallway!
Eden: Meka, I'm just playing movie hockey!

Super Slow Mo Slaps from Mythbusters [VIDEO]

Ed Helms (aka. Andy Bernard) on Fresh Air

Fun stuff on Fresh Air today.  Ed Helms & his band, the Lonesome Trio, play music. And talk & stuff.

CLICK HERE to listen.

motown

a remnant of detroit's golden days. check out the whole slideshow of detroit's fall on the link below. beautiful ruins.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,739986,00.html

Amusing Customer Service from theGameShop.com

This was in the email regarding my order:

After months of hard work, our senior toy maker has finally finished making your games. All the game pieces have been carved by hand to your exact specifications. The board was painstakingly hand-painted to be a glorious work of art. Then the contents were inspected by a team of 30 highly trained employees to ensure that your games would be perfect for the upcoming game night with your family or friends. Your games were then given to our packing specialists who placed your games into the finest gold-lined mahogany box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration when it was sealed, and the entire city of Philadelphia came out to wave "Bon Voyage!" to your package as it was loaded into our privately rented FedEx truck.

Grace E-Bike Proves Electric Transport Can Look Tough & Stylish (via @fastcodesign)

Love this description:

The ultralight Grace electric bicycle is greener than a car, less douchey than a Vespa, and looks amazing. 

How do you satisfy a bike snob, a sustainable urbanite, and a slightly lazy normal person at the same time? The Grace Pro E-motorbike, that's how. It's an ultralight commuter bicycle with a handmade aluminum frame and a lithium-ion battery to pick up the slack while climbing tough hills. But with killer styling from handlebar to taillight, the Grace Pro looks respectable enough to win over even a grizzled fixie-riding bike messenger.

See the whole post: http://bit.ly/fWg6ig

Social Media Venn Diagram (via Despair.com)

Cross to bear?

For quite some time I've been bothered by the way we folk often use the expression, "that's my cross to bear."  We say that to refer to our hangnails, difficulties at work, hard to handle children, or any number of life's miscellany that presents us with an inconvenience or challenge.  In the book From the Library of C.S. Lewis I came upon this passage from C.H. Dodd this morning.  He says what I've felt but been unable to articulate as well.

It has been taken to refer to habitual forms of self-sacrifice or self-denial.  The ascetic voluntarily undergoing austerities felt himself to be bearing his daily cross.  We shallower folk have often reduced it to a metaphor for casual unpleasantness which we have to bear.  A neuralgia or a defaulting servant is our "cross," and we make a virtue of necessity.  What Jesus actually said, according to our earliest evidence, was, quite bluntly, "Whoever wants to follow me must shoulder his gallows beam" - for such is perhaps the most significant rendering of the word for "cross."  It meant a beam which a condemned criminal carried to the place of execution, to which he was then nailed until he died.  Jesus was not using the term metaphorically.  Under Rome, crucifixion was the likeliest fate for those who defied the established powers.  Nor did those who heard understand that He was asking for "daily" habits of austerity.  He was enrolling volunteers for a desperate venture and He wished them to understand that joining it they must hold their lives forfeit.  To march behind Him on that journey was as good as to tie a halter around one's neck.  It was a saying for an emergency.  A similar emergency may arise for some Christians in any age.  In such a situation it is immediately applicable, in its original form and meaning.  For most of us, in normal situations, it is not so applicable.  But it is surely good for us to go back and understand that this is what Christ stood for in His day.  We shall then at least not suppose that we are meeting His demands in our day bearing a toothache bravely or fasting during Lent.