Why do we stand looking up toward heaven?

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Acts 1:8

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

John 17:11

The disciples were staring up into the sky as Jesus was probably becoming more and more distant. Either that, or perhaps they were staring at some spectacular show. Today, I think that a cloud coming down from heaven to take up a person would look like a tornado, if not a full-on wall of a cloud like a hurricane. Whatever it was, it was certainly spectacular. And yet, the disciples hear someone telling them not to just look up. The gospel account doesn’t say whether the men in white robes said anything else, and I am driven to believe just that. They didn’t need to say anything else. They already knew what needed to happen.

While Jesus was preaching to his disciples, he spoke about different ideas, pertaining especially towards people’s behavior towards one another. Jesus explained one of the most difficult concepts to define: how to love. However, Jesus did not just stand at the front talking and yelling and pointing fingers, gesturing, or jesting. Jesus acted. In fact, he called all of his students, all of those people who were giving him anything of an ear, to action.

As Jesus was being taken up into heaven, he continued to preach, reminding his students, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And so, just as students today might be distracted by the barrage of lights before them—Chromebooks, ebooks, educational games—the disciples stood, staring into the sky. And, two men in white robes reminded them not to keep staring.

Today, it can be tempting to look back on the good ol’ days. We might even be reminiscing on the times we could just walk around and go to any restaurant without any concern. We might remember being able to travel to any destination around the world. We might remember just being able to get together with a group of friends for a chat throughout the night. I do this quite often, especially when I wonder what I can even do to pass some of the time that isn’t just occupied by my anxiety to continue producing content (“stop wasting your potential for unfettered creativity” my brain tells me).

As the disciples saw their teacher, their mentor, their friend departing yet again, what did they do right after? I would imagine after being told not to stare into heaven, they thought about all the other things they were called to do: bring people from all over the world together under the Good News of Love. After that, all the teachings must have come back to them. All of the practice, the examples, the lessons, the sermons, the poetry, the discussions, the debates, the overturning of all that they thought they knew must have come back to them. And then, we get the beginnings of the Church.

As we continue in different states of quarantine/staying at home, we have to remind ourselves to look at what tasks lie before us. We have communities to maintain. We might be involved in different businesses that need to figure out how to continue onwards. We have our own debts to think about. We even have our own health to take care of—our physical health, our mental health, our spiritual health.

And yet, it is so easy to think back to the times before this pandemic, the time before this ongoing Lent. It’s easy to remember the “large stones and large buildings,” or the “great buildings,” we had in the past. I love my church, with the newly constructed hardwood floors, which added a wonderful boost to the nave’s acoustics. I love the piano which projects without me having to press hard on the keys. I love the cozy community we have, especially with how it feels when we are all together, singing, praying, talking, being. I remember going out to eat at any restaurant of my choosing, with nearly every cuisine represented (except Russian, for some reason). I remember the ease of just ordering food rather than having to struggle through another recipe, waiting for our grocery order to happen to have the right ‘essential’ for the day.

But what do we get from staring back at those glittering times? When we just sit and stare at the calendar, looking at how many days have gone by, how many birthdays, funerals, anniversaries, memorials, graduations, fasts, or ceremonies we have missed, what do we gain? As I think about all of this, it just makes me upset at the current situation and wish that everything were over. I dwell on all the negative rather than try to work with what I have.

One of my all-time favorite games to play is bridge, especially duplicate bridge. The reason why I especially enjoy duplicate bridge is because the rules of the game eliminate the amount of chance. In duplicate bridge, rounds are played in different tables, and each table eventually receives the exact same cards dealt as the other tables around. Therefore, each time I play, I am working on making the best of the cards I am dealt. Sometimes, the round requires me to win, and other times to lose. However, the final score is calculated by how well I won or how badly I lost.

Nobody that I know has asked for this pandemic to come through. Nobody that I know has asked to make many everyday physical interactions to be potentially life-threatening. But, we are living through this situation, and we need to deal with the cards that we have been dealt. The good thing is that we are not being judged by how well or how badly we win or lose. We just need to get through this thing. In order to live out this Good News of Love, we need to remember what we have learned. Jesus calls us to love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves.

In this pandemic, much of this love for neighbors and self are intertwined. By practicing social distancing and proper sanitation procedures, we protect both ourselves and others from the risks of this disease. Of course, this means that we are spending much more time at home, and perhaps we are staying at home with other people. Our love for neighbors needs to be sincere. We need to give people the distance they need (think of the introverts), and we need to explain our own needs as well. We cannot just destroy our physical, mental, or spiritual health just for someone else to thrive. We need to balance things out.

Another thing we need to watch is our behavior online. As a kindergartener, I learned about how to act around others: no pushing or shoving, no yelling, use manners, among other things. And now, we need that same sort of attention online. As more and more people seek community through social media, especially those newer to the internet, we need to show love. We need to be true to others and (importantly) to ourselves. Perhaps we hear about the problems that a friend or acquaintance is going through. There, we need to listen (or read, probably). Just as we give our friends and acquaintances space to speak their truths, we need to offer that space. One of the difficult things might be on Facebook, where, especially in groups, people who write out more comments will be brought up to the top of the page, whereas a more reserved person might be drowned out. One way to overcome this algorithm is by limiting one’s commenting, or encouraging others to continue writing their comments. On the other side of this, we have to let people know when they are speaking in ways that are against our own being. We have to call out racism, homophobia, transphobia, and so many other forms of discrimination, for, unfortunately, the structures of discrimination are still alive and well on the internet.

When all of this is over (God willing), or at least when this is contained, we have to remember what Jesus calls us to do. We are called “to be witnesses…to the ends of the earth”. To be witnesses to this Gospel is also to “be one”. Jesus calls us time and again to love one another, to show compassion and mercy, to bring peace to the world, to pray for each other, to worship and break bread together.

One of the harshest things I have learned from being in this pandemic is that our world’s economies (or at least the ones connected in any way to that of the United States) are dependent upon something other than the well-being of human lives. In order for some food businesses to stay afloat, they have dumped tons of healthy crops. In order for other businesses to remain, they have laid off workers after workers, and they continue to demand more kickbacks from their governments. We still have the poor and the hungry with us.

Another issue is that we still have the evils of racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and so many other prejudices playing out in our communities. People are slaughtered day-in and day-out in the names of these ideologies, and we still have elected officials supporting them or playing things off as one-offs or flukes. Even in the middle of a pandemic, there are countless people without access to healthcare.

When we come out of this situation, we will still be tempted to look up into the sky at the romanticized image of our world we have created for ourselves. We will even have times when we will be staring rather than working on the problems that are all around us. But, our consistent devotion to God will be our wake-up call. That will be the tap on our shoulder.

Jesus gave us so many different resources to draw upon when he was on earth. He gave us ways to talk to strangers, to talk to loved ones, to debate with those who have different opinions, to resolve conflict, and to spurn change. Nothing was just left where it was. Jesus reminded his disciples to put everything they learned into practice. In our Gospels, we find that Jesus has sent out two large groups of people to preach. We find that Jesus fed more than one large crowd of people. We find that Jesus forgave sin after sin. We find that Jesus went deeper and deeper into the ‘over there,’ the ‘we don’t associate with them,’ the ‘I just don’t care.’

And so, we need to remember our calling that rings louder and louder each time we hear it. Slavery was abolished, but there was still indentured servitude and a nationwide institution founded on racism. The Civil Rights Act was passed, but we still have people murdered every day just for the color of their skin. The Supreme Court ordered same-sex marriage to be recognized across the country, but there is still rampant homophobia. Today, more and more rights are being taken away from trans people. Today, undocumented immigrants still struggle to make it in a world that seems to just want to push them out. Today, the poor are shoved aside during this pandemic, denied shelter and food when those two things are mounding up in an unforeseen surplus. Today, people are dying while politicians are playing everything off as some sort of hoax or plan to control those already in power and exercising control over the vulnerable. These are the reminders! These are our “men in white robes”!

As we remember the Ascension, let’s remember our calling, just as Jesus reminded all of us in the midst of ascending into heaven. We have communities to build, people to care for, a world to love. Let’s stop looking up and thinking back, and let’s look and think forward.

Materialism: An Accuser

“If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday.” Isaiah 58:9b-10

            Materialism has been at the forefront of my mind recently, and it seemed only appropriate for me to reflect on it when the reading in the Lectionary was the one above. Materialism has been showing its face to me in so many different ways lately, and I noticed that when I look into it, I see both the face of a menacing, demonic gargoyle and an attractive, well-crafted idol.

            For pretty much as long as there has been a Judeo-Christian culture, there has been materialism. It’s been something that comes up in so many writings, from Exodus and the Ten Commandments, all the way through Jesus’ teachings. In fact, it is such a common issue, yet, judging from the number of treatments of the issue, it has not gone away.

            In secular society, materialism is brought to the fore, with advertisements, product placements, jobs, and so many other aspects of our lives being governed by it. Even our relationships with one another are dominated by materialism: what’s the shiniest gift to give to my crush; what’s the best restaurant to take my family to; how can I impress my friends this time? However, even when we walk into our churches, we find the same problem. We have churches closing their doors to the communities of the poor, the sick, and the needy surrounding them. We have committees voting to buy the “newest trends in evangelism” while refusing to serve the person begging at their door. We have church staff members who have paychecks so much larger than the incomes of congregations combined, making me wonder if there is even enough there to support a community in need.

            In addition to the tangible manifestations of materialism, we also have an ideological issue in our churches as well. At the surface, we have people preaching a “prosperity gospel,” where all of God’s blessings are material blessings. Going deeper, we will even ignore what the Bible tells us about materialism. We shy away when Jesus says to get rid of all of our belongings to follow him. We try to reinterpret what Isaiah means when he says if we draw out our souls to the hungry and the afflicted then we will become light. We downright ignore the laws of Moses regarding the harvest, where leaving a bit of our crops for the less fortunate and travelers was mandatory, not just a thing to do if we happen to have a large enough plot of land to sustain a miniscule community garden next to our towering, gothic building. We have tolerated greed and materialism so long that we grow uncomfortable looking at what life would be without it. Going further into this notion of institutionalized materialism in the Church, we have people who start to look at congregations as small businesses. Rather than consider what it means to reach people who need to hear the Gospel, we look at the specific number of people in pews as figures in graphs. We turn down programs that are for spiritual enrichment in favor of events that serve solely to bring income into the church.

            Now, what happens when we look at the world through the lens of materialism? Our place in society becomes a competition. One day we are at the bottom; the next day we are above a few other people; and then a few days later, we are back down again. When we are at the top, we start looking at those who don’t have the same car, the same house, the same job, the same skill, the same talent with contempt and/or shame. We point fingers at them. We fabricate stories about them. They no longer are human. Instead, they are creatures who have failed their duties to God. The artist working for non-profits is blind and silly, unlike our careers in the sciences, which is filled with the culmination of intellectualism and wisdom. They are reaping the wrath of an angry God, and we, at the top, with our precious belongings, are near angelic in our existence. This most certainly is not the life that we are called to as Christians. For, when we propagate this sort of society, we end up hurting ourselves as well. Rather than giving ourselves a community of compassion and love, we turn into a society of ridicule and competition, one where, once we fail, we can no longer exist as functional beings in the world. When we bow down to this idol, when we bring our souls, our talents, our time to its altar, we descend into the darkness. Our vision vanishes, and we are left with a devotion filled with greed and selfishness until we too are consumed by all the negativity, unable to fulfil the necessary offerings needed to continue this cycle.

            Instead, we are called to follow Jesus, to show love to all of those around us. We are called to use our talents to glorify God, to show the world what the unconditional love of God is. We are called to bring the light into the world as it continues its flirts with darkness. We have to look around us and listen to the cries and groans from all of those around us, including our own souls. We have to realize our talents and how they fit into the Kingdom of God. We have to take our treasure and use it to bring others closer to God rather than distance ourselves from God. We have to heal the world around us from all of its wounds.

This Lent calls us to action. Let us follow Jesus; no turning back.

I am the BCP

I am prayer.

            I am community.

            I am God’s anointed.

I am the standing, sitting, processing,

            kneeling, genuflecting, all as able.

I am the gestures across the heart,

            the twiddling fingers tracing the Gospel cross

                        thrice.

            I am the stillness,

                        the stiffness,

                        the reverent,

                        the irreverent.

I am he/him/his,

            ally of her, zir, and singular them.

I am the erring and straying lost sheep,

            lost, because the resolutions rain down on me,

            the arrows of the hordes standing behind their high walls

                        their altar gates,

                                    their chasubles.

I am that oil running down Aaron’s beard,

            caressing his pomegranate skin,

                        knowing the ephod’s secrets,

                                    his cast of stones.

I am looking,

            searching for that love that endureth forever,

            searching for my “in sickness and in health,”

                        my “til death do us part,”

            searching for my dearly beloved.

Of those 1,000+ pages, where is my name mentioned?

Of the Rites, where am I a worthy partaker?

            Does not my history, 26 years and counting, give me authority?

            Does not my family of clergy and laity give me weight?

            Do not my education, my “thy before thee except after thou,”

                        my ἐκέκρικα, my experience,

                        my visions and prayers count?                      

μὴ γένοιτο!

            I am the μὴ γένοιτο.

            I am not Paul’s model:

                        the celibate man,

                        the polemical,

                        the God-damning

                        the eraser of false teachings.

I am not the good will on both sides—

            bearing torches and flaming crosses

            stabbing with my piercing tongue

            throwing brothers, sisters, siblings

                        from the rooftops,

            beating with chastening rods

                        leaving them to hang on fenceposts

                                    to give up their ghost.

I am the meek heart and due diligence,

            the people walking to the new creation,

                        el desamparado, el necesitado.

Wait, I thought I was a very well organized,

            very strategic,

            very well financed,

            very powerful hijacker—

                        then why do I get death stares?

                        Why do people want me behind electric fences?

                        Why do I have to work against the grain

                                    flailing my arms at policies smothering me,

                                                as I shout out to a panel

                                                            of men staring at each other

                                                                        while I throw the Bible right back at them?

If you know where that money is,

            show me, sugar daddy.

Nah,

I am the Texan, rising in support

            of my own voice.

I am treading the path through the blood of the slaughtered,

            facing the rising sun of my new day begun.

I am the weak theology,

            I am Te Deum, Hildegard, Bach,

                        Wesley, Willan, Price, Pulkingham;

            I am Montes, S and A’s.

I am solace, strength, pardon, renewal.

I am 高興歡喜

I am in print, featured in Church Publishing,

            not that other idea from long ago,

            left to collect dust,

            or suffer, scaffolded in irate and greedy beaurocracy.

I am página 284,

            las campanas,

            el órgano.

You can decide what you want

            in this ecclesia viae mediae,

But just know,

            I know how best to show God’s love in my life,

for I am the Book of Common Prayer.           

Lent, Day 2: Following Truth

"It is not so with the wicked; they are like chaff which the wind blows away."  Psalm 1:4

I have to admit, I haven't really liked reading Psalm 1.  I guess that comes from the fact that it starts with a beatitude about following God.  The whole Bible could be said to be about this message, so to read it just feels like hearing a broken record.  However, just as what happens when we read the Bible over time, a different verse jumped out to me: they are like chaff which the wind blows away.  It spoke to me today because of what it implies.

Jesus taught us that the main message of the Gospel is love.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Love yourself.  That's the Gospel.  That is the truth.  Love.  When we walk in the ways of the Lord, we walk in love.  When we follow God, we follow love.  We show love to others when we live righteously.

So then, the flip side of that is whatever isn't righteous, whatever isn't love.  And, it becomes more apparent with this verse.  You cannot root yourself without love.  When you start to discriminate, you make things very difficult for yourself.  You can no longer stand.  When you spew hate, you just start allowing for yourself to be taken by others.  Soon, that hate will grow into worse things.  It becomes habit.  It becomes distance.  It becomes everything that separates you from your neighbor.  It separates you from God.  It becomes sin.

And so, when we are trying to find the best way to live life, the best way to make the world a better place, there is only one answer: love.  Love will keep us strong in the midst of our challenges.  Love will conquer all that is wrong.  Love will protect us while everything is crashing down on us.  Love will help you push forward when things seem impossible.  Love is Truth.

Day 163: God's Control

When Jesus heard that, He said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it."  John 11:4

Here's a message that we need to hear in every struggle in our lives.

One thing about illness is that it always brings about the prospect of death.  As soon as we hear about any ailment, be it cancer or a boil, we start to think about death and what it means to us.  We might start to think about what will happen to our family and friends when we depart.  We might think about our own faith, is there life after death?  Does death hurt?  Now, John is not explicit about the illness that Lazarus had, but it definitely was something that assured his family and friends that his death was eminent.  As a way to reassure Martha and Mary, Jesus tells them the above quote.

For me, death is a rude idea because it means that everything comes to an end, whether things are finished or not.  Taking this into consideration, I can think about how to apply Jesus' reassurance to other aspects of my life.  As I grow up, I see that things start to settle into routines.  I have observed different people among my family and friends who have jobs that they stick with for so long, doing the same things every day.  I find people doing the exact same exercises, never gaining or losing weight.  I see people playing instruments but never seeming to get better or worse.  I find many people looking at things that must have been their dreams at first and finding those same great feats to become mundane and even annoying or boring.

Anytime that I read through the Gospels, I quickly realize that Jesus was not one for stagnant routines.  Jesus calls us to take up our things and continue to work preaching the Gospel.  Jesus demonstrated this by being on the move, never settling in one place, and working constantly.  In the same way, we have to be prepared to continue on with our lives, learning new things, going into new environments to preach the Gospel.  The reassurance we need for these situations is that Jesus is going to be glorified in everything that we do, so long as we believe.

Taking on a new job or learning something new, or going through a new struggle is something that we will face, and it will be frightening.  However, when we know that God is in control, we will succeed, for God will be glorified through our courage.

Day 161: Following the Prime Example

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.  But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.  To him, the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."  John 10:1-3

This passage spoke to me while I was reading today.

It made me think about all the different scams that we encounter these days.  It reminded me about the adage: it's too good to be true.  Just at its base value, the above passage can be applied to almost everything in life.  When we take shortcuts, we will not get what we want.  When we steal and lie to get to a position of power, the people under us aren't going to listen.

As I read further, I started thinking about how this passage applies to our churches today.  It reminded me of the fact that a life of faith isn't meant to be easy.  It's not about self-harm, but at the same time, it's not going to be a walk in the park.  But, at the same time, we have many out there who preach that everything is going to be easy, that to have money is to be blessed and to be poor is to be cursed.  There are some who have continued the rude tradition of preaching that to be sick or to be disabled in any way is to be cursed by God for any number of reasons.  Once again, the above passage shows us that it's not about breaking through the window or going through the open back door that will bring us to salvation; it's finding our way to the door that will.

Again, I realized another important fact by reading this above passage: we have a savior who is our true shepherd.  For the longest time, I didn't feel much whenever people would repeat the phrase, "Jesus is the good shepherd."  What does that have to do with me?  I certainly don't work on a farm, and I don't see myself doing that anytime soon.  Even more, nobody would care to explain that to me.  I'd just hear that same phrase over and over again.  In my reading today, I learned that Jesus is our good shepherd not because he rules over us and oppresses us with his supreme authority but because he has gone through everything that we will face in life, and he continues to go through all of that with us today, right now.  This passage is a great explanation because it uses a metaphor that is so good for us.  Jesus, the shepherd, walks through the same door that we walk through.  Jesus walks with us.  Rather than just appearing out of nowhere in the sheepfold, Jesus walks the same way we do, and he leads us.  It's up to us if we want to follow the person who has gone through that door and knows what lies beyond or the ones who just appear there for a moment and then jump the fence to escape.

Day 160: Guidance

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.'  Therefore your sin remains."  John 9:41

I find that the use of blindness as a metaphor is quite harsh.

We have other metaphors in the Gospels that are much easier to understand.  We are sheep that are not too good at living on our own, but we can be led in a direction and can be taught.  We are children who are innocent and willing to learn.  We are salt to give good flavor to the bland world.  We are light to illuminate the darkness.  But, are we blind?

I have to wonder, does blind in the New Testament mean not being able to see anything at all, or does that mean to be just visually impaired (nearsighted/farsighted)?  The metaphor would be easier for me to grasp if the latter because I have to wear glasses in order to see well.  At the same time, though, am I just being so prideful that I need to say that I can see?

I interpret Jesus' saying above as being against judgment.  We as humans have no right to take God's place and exercise judgment on the world.  When we judge, we claim to be seeing while we ourselves are blind.  After taking that into account, I can start to understand that blindness in this sense truly is blindness, where we cannot see a single thing no matter how hard we try or how thick of lenses we wear.  This makes Jesus' power that much more glorious, though, for Jesus not only teaches us, but he also transforms us.

As I consider blindness more and more, I think all about our stumbling around in the world without direction or help.  When we wander around, we will find it very difficult to get anywhere.  So, why should we take it upon ourselves to cast judgment on all of those around us?  Can we really lead others without Jesus?  Do we even know where we're going?  We can sure try to get around, but then, what if there's a hole right in front of us that we can't even feel our way out of?  What if there's somebody chasing after us?  A car?  That's what this world is to us.  There are so many unknowns, and we can't just wander around without any direction or guidance.

The most important fact for us to consider is the fact that we are truly blind.  We need Jesus to guide us through all the difficult places.  We need that strong hand to guide us at all times of the day, not just during the daytime.  We need someone who won't abandon us, and that's what Jesus is here for.  When we acknowledge that we need Jesus, Jesus will start walking beside us and in front of us.  With Jesus, we will find ourselves walking in infinite grace.

Day 159: Who Sinned?

And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him."  John 9:2-3

 Jesus has told us the same things in many different ways, yet we still fail to accept the message.

This above passage talks about judging.  We are called not to judge.  We should accept this as the end of the story, but we always want more.  At least, the actions that I observe both around me and even in me show that we all want more.  We want a better explanation on how not to judge.  We want things to be made plain and simple enough.  Or so we say.

In this event, Jesus adds an important detail: our judging prevents us from seeing the works of God.  When we judge, we start to place ourselves on a pedestal constructed of pride.  In fact, we attempt to build a throne that equals God's with our own pride.  However, we end up being the blind people whenever we do so.

Whenever we decide to judge, we put our minds and our whole bodies' resources into judging rather than helping and loving.  The disciples, rather than trying to heal the blind or help him at the very least, decide to judge, forgetting everything else that they had been taught.  In the same way, we abandon everything good, everything loving, when we focus our attention on judging.  Rather than going out and helping others, we end up hurting both ourselves and those in need.  Whenever we don't show love to those in need, we divide the Kingdom of God and destroy it.  That's not what we are called to do.

We are called to unite.  We are called to love.  We are called to be God's Kingdom on earth.

Day 158: Active Faith

"He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not like his father and mother, for he removed the sacred pillars of Baal his father built.  But still he persisted in the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin; he did not depart from it."  4 Kingdoms (2 Kings) 3:2-3

I don't know why I don't see passages like this used to explain how faith and actions work.

This passage shows that faith isn't just about a one time confession, and it also shows that one action doesn't make a person faithful.  Perhaps another example I can think of is how the gym works.  I can go to the gym every single day but not do exercise.  Of course, there's the simplest explanation: I just walk in and talk on the phone or to others the whole time rather than exercise.  There is, though, another, and that is I can go into a gym and do exercises, but I might not be doing them correctly or in a constructive/productive manner.  One can spend hours in the gym and come out no different or worse, even.

In the same way, we can walk into church and come out unchanged.  We can go through the motions and not engage with God.  I see this with many musicians who work in churches.  I know many people who do church music just to perform and/or just to get a check.  Those people can spend hours upon hours either in the church for rehearsals or even just with the music and still come out not having taken a single word to heart.  King Jehoram is an example of this apathy to faith.  He removed the idols in Israel, but was still evil.  If this took place today, I'm sure many of us would accuse him of having done so just as a publicity stunt.

As Christians, we are called to action at every moment, and our goal is the same one as always: show love to all of those who need it.  Jesus came into the world to show us love, and he has called all of us to show that same unconditional love to each person.  We can't just live our life on the sidelines.  We need to be active in our faith to love. 

Day 157: Witnessing God

Jesus answered, "You know neither Me nor My Father.  If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also."  John 8:19

Although this response is quite negative and condemning of the Pharisees, it's a great revelation to us as Christians.

I have just finished reading From Sin to Amazing Grace by Dr. Patrick Cheng and have been starting to take many of his ideas into my own understanding of the scriptures.  One of the things that Dr. Cheng writes about is the Out Christ, who serves as our revelation of the Godhead.  The Old Testament God is difficult to understand many times, and that particular manifestation of God was never seen face to face.  Jesus, on the other hand, came down to earth so that we can see God face to face and live (I love that song, "Come O thou traveler unknown").  In one sense, God came out of the heavenly closet in the form of Jesus Christ.

And this is where things are important with the above response.  The Pharisees refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah for many reasons, but none of them explained away their intentions.  They hated Jesus.  And Jesus was honest (if not blunt) with them.  He told them like it was.  What Jesus told them is what he tells us all, that God is love.  We are being called every day by God to show our love for one another.  That's where our understanding can get to be difficult.

God will never be what we envision.  God is so amazing, so transcendent, so great that we can never truly fathom or comprehend God.  Yet, we don't need to be doing that.  Despite the fact that we as humans are creatures of patterns and habits, we don't have a need to be putting God into a box or a drawing or a writing.  God's love transcends all of that.  What's even better is that we have all that we need in order to understand right in front of us.  Jesus has spoken to us in so many different ways to explain all that we need to know.  When we read the Gospel, we will come to understand love just a little bit more.

Yes, Jesus might make us uncomfortable because he calls us to come out of our closets made of prejudices and selfish pride, but to come out and embrace love is so much better!  When we make that step to receive and internalize love, we will see that the world all around us will become a better place.  When we learn to embrace one another, seeing the image of God in each person, we will be able to see God and know God better than we ever have.

Day 156: Putting down the Stones

So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first."  John 8:7

I always find this story to be one of the most intense in the bible.

I'm sure there are many LGBT people who have heard this same accusation placed on them, that "the sin for this punishment is death by stoning."  The idea of stoning to death is so heavy for me as a gay man, and it's something that I fear every day I live.  I fear that my expression of who I am is threatening my very existence here in the United States.  We can talk all about those other countries, the ones where they speak differently, believe differently, and look differently and how they have so much intolerance, but I find much of that hatred to be mainstream here in a country I'm sometimes reluctant to call home.  On top of there being this sort of animosity from the outside, I also feel uncomfortable (although not as much as to fear for my life) among people that I would love to call family: gay brothers and sisters, transgendered, non-binaries, people who don't fit in with the rest of the mainstream culture.  Yes, as a Christian, I have felt much animosity, such as the questions, "Why do you associate with them?" or, "Why do you pray to their God?"  or, "Isn't that just contradictory?"

I feel pelted, at the very least, by pieces of gravel on a constant basis.  Sure, I'm not being killed nor tortured physically, and I pray that I never will be.  Yet, I find the contradictions to be the same from two (supposedly opposing) sides: love is all, unless you're different.

If we look to the beginnings of Christianity, we find ourselves a man who was radical and odd.  He opposed the teachings of the day, challenging the highest teachers.  In fact, he would end up teaching them, and many would even be foolish enough (seemingly, at least) to follow after him.  He claimed to know more than all the teachers from before - a man who doesn't even seem to have left us a written book.  Yet, his message was the same: love one another.  Jesus teaches us every day that we need to love one another as he loves us.  He teaches us that we need to be there for all those in need, not just the ones who look and act as you do.  He teaches us that we need to build up a community with love at the center.

As I have been getting more familiar and involved with the LGBT community, I have learned a few mantras that keep the community together, and the biggest one is: love.  Yet, on the inside, I feel that many of those in the community have forgotten the first days of our revolution, the riots at Stonewall Inn.  Trans women cried for all of us to love one another without judgment.  But, today, gay Christians cannot be trusted nor respected.  The color of your skin determines where you belong, whether top or bottom, masculine or feminine, skinny or fat, young or old.  I find that our own community is hurling stones towards one another rather than making the world a better, more welcoming place.

This change, of course, doesn't happen instantaneously.  In the story above, the people leave gradually, not all at once.  I wonder how long the departure must have taken.  How awkward was the situation?  Where was the pile of stones?  We may never know, but we do know that love prevailed in the end.  Loving unconditionally requires each one of us to reexamine our lives, figuring out what things we have learned and/or taught ourselves are harmful to our community.  It's only whenever we get rid of all those prejudices that we actually start to build up a meaningful community.  When we focus our lives on love and not on judgment we start to forge strong relationships with one another, for those are manifestations of our love that we have.

Day 155: Living Waters

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  John 7:37-38

I feel like these days there are people who are walking around with earplugs when they go to church or listen to the Gospel.

While we are in the midst of praising God and proclaiming God's name, Jesus invites us to come and drink.  The next part of the invitation is key, though.  Those who come to Jesus to drink will themselves become fountains of living water.

Of course, when we read this statement, we need a definition.  What are living waters?  John gives us a good answer, saying that this is the Holy Spirit.  But even then, we can have issues with understanding this because of the fact that we might not know what the Holy Spirit is.

When we think of the Spirit, we should always remember the breath of life, for spirit and breath are one and the same word in Greek and Hebrew.  And the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life.  And what is life?  Life can be anything that we make of it, but Jesus has been clear from the beginning that eternal life comes from our faith in him.  Therefore, life is following Jesus.

So, if we are coming to Jesus for a drink, should our fountain of living water look like an outpouring of judgment based on the law of Moses?  Certainly not!  As Paul has said, the law reveals death.  Jesus, on the other hand, shows us life.  Jesus, the preacher and manifestation of love, is life.  We cannot forget that fact.  Jesus is the fulfillment of everything we do.  All of our worship, all our prayers, our reading, our preaching, our listening, our learning, our understanding points to Jesus.  Everything points to God's unconditional love for us.

When we go to Jesus for a drink of water, we will begin our transformation, much like a detox diet.  We will start to drink of this life giving water which will cleanse us both inside and out.  Then, through our transformation, we will start to become a fountain of love.  We will know that we are drinking of this fountain, for that will be when we are showing our love forth throughout all of the pain and suffering that exists in the world.  As Christians, we can only claim to be followers of Jesus Christ if we are becoming fountains of Jesus' love.  Otherwise, we are just pedants, proclaiming and sealing ourselves in hatred that closes in on us until we die both in body and spirit.  We need the Holy Spirit.  We need life.  We need love. 

Day 154: Using the Light of God

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths."  Psalm 118:105 (119:105)

This is an important message that many of us prefer to ignore.

I will admit, the bible as a whole is pretty scary.  There are so many books, and there are so many versions (even in the original languages).  There are so many different authors, so many different theories and interpretations, and so many words.  The book is quite heavy to hold, not only in physical weight but also in terms of ideas.

It's a testament of God's word revealed to people over a long expanse of time.  It is also a reflection of which people thought which books were important enough to consider truly sacred versus apocryphal or heretical.  In it, we can find a constant thread of meaning, expounding upon God's love in its many manifestations.

This metaphor of light is important for us to consider, for it suggests much more than just illumination.  When I think about a light for a specific purpose, I think of the many lights in our lives that have directions: flashlights, headlights, camera flashes, lamps.  These all have a light source, but then they are directed and magnified by mirrors or other tools.  The important thing about this, though, is that each of these lights serve their purpose, and they need to be put to that purpose specifically.  When we use flashlights, we need to point them to wherever there is darkness.  Headlights point directly ahead.  Camera flashes are directed to wherever they need to go in order to make a picture more clear.

In the same way, we need to learn to use the bible.  It is a bright light for the darkness that covers our lives.  One caveat, though, is that we don't know where the darkness is in everybody else's lives.  We can only point the light of the bible effectively towards wherever we need it to point.  It will guide us as we walk closer to God.  We need our light to be pointed forward always.  We don't need it to be pointing left, right, or even behind us.  We need it to be pointing us straight to God.  When we put the bible, our light, for the purpose of revealing God's love in our lives, then we will find God on our paths.

Day 153: The Sweet, Good Words

"Good words are a honeycomb, and their sweetness is a healing of the soul."  Proverbs 16:22

This metaphor is so full of imagery.

The honeycomb is something that represents many things, and in the wisdom literature of the bible, it represents God's word.  Today, in my reading plan, I just so happened to read "How sweet to my taste are Your teachings, more than honey and the honeycomb in my mouth." (Psalm 118(119):103)  And, whenever I come across this metaphor, I have to wonder, why is it used?  I mean, in the developed world today, we have rampant obesity, especially in the United States, and sugars are a major cause (I would dare to say the leading cause).  So why would God's word be like a sweet that spurs more lust than discipline?

To start, as I think about honey, I can't help but remember all of those "nature doctor" posts that make their rounds on Facebook, the ones that say that honey can cure any disease, even cancer.  Perhaps honey was seen as something more medicinal in the biblical age, but, then, the metaphors talk more about the taste than the healing properties (although the verse I want to talk about has both).

What I think about the most for this metaphor, though, is that the honeycomb is a result of so much work.  If you ever study or read things about bees, you'll come to know that they are hard workers.  The hive is an intricate layout of a home for the queen and the larvae, so that there can be more bees.  We have also come to rely on bees to pollinate our plants, which also help to nourish the bees.  Yet, after all that hard work, the bees lose their honeycombs to whichever consumers are brave enough to extract them.  Whoever ends up being able to take those honeycombs and extract honey from them has to face the bees.  I know that I could never become a beekeeper for fear of getting stung even through protective wear.  But, the end result is quite delicious.

In the same way, many wise people have pondered over so many concepts.  We have the fortune of having many words that have been dictated or said by God in our bibles, and we can continue to meditate and feast on them whenever we'd like.  The best part of this is that we can be healed by all the good words that we read and learn.  Whenever we learn all of the things that Jesus has taught us well, we will be healed.  We will become better people.  We will make the world around us even better, for the good words of Christ come down to one command: love.

Day 152: The Real Deal

"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven - not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead.  He who eats this bread will live forever."  John 6:57-58

As Jesus explains the concept of feeding on him, the imagery becomes more poignant.

Aside from the direct command to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood (which is quite shocking enough in itself), he also begins to draw the connection to the consuming of manna in the wilderness.  And, when he describes that, he says that all of their ancestors died regardless.  That's quite harsh.

The thing is, though, that the manna was given to the Israelites almost as a concession.  The Israelites were complaining to Moses about being in the desert, so God sends down manna for them to eat.  And, although they ate the manna, they continued to complain against God, and they even turned away from God.

But now, Jesus comes into the world on his own divine accord, offering us this heavenly bread of life.  Jesus comes to us in peace, offering us this life, offering us his love.  We have a choice.  Either we can take the offer or leave it.  When it's like that in plain words, it can seem ridiculous for us to turn it away, just as how the Israelites were ungrateful for food that had appeared miraculously in the middle of the desert.

Yet, we allow for many other things to get in the way and blind our view of Jesus.  Rather than seeing Jesus' love for us, we start to see our own lives, which are marred by things such as doubt, pride, anger, and hatred.  When we reexamine our lives, we start to think, in our pride, that we don't want to lower our guards.  We don't want to give up our grudges to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus means to leave our own lives behind, the lives that were defined by society and not so much by God.  We've become so attached to our society-dictated lives that we think that anything that is simply divine is not real.  We start to think that it's too good to be true.  So, we feel comfortable pushing Jesus' hands aside.

We need to listen to Jesus in our lives, and that will only happen whenever we give Jesus our time.  We need to pray in silence, where we hear neither the sounds of the outside world nor of our minds.  We need to listen to God in our prayers and in our bible reading.  We need to see Jesus before us.  When we do that, we will be able to taste and see that the Lord is good.  Of course, once we taste that perfection, we will never want to turn it away.  We will forever feast on the good, life-giving bread.

Day 151: Feeding on the Word

"Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him."  John 6:27

This is a great command, but it does require us to think a bit.

Of course, we need food to live.  We get hungry and need to fulfill that need on a regular basis so that we can continue to be healthy.  However, we can't let that pursuit take over our lives to the point we can't do anything else.  When we devote our lives just to the pursuit of money, we begin to lose our soul.  We no longer have the time to contemplate the beauty of God, and we start to turn towards other riches in order to fill up our spiritual hunger.  We will turn to other speakers, other books, other gods, other idols, just to satiate our hunger for the moment.

So, Jesus is telling us to follow him at every moment so that we can continue to mature spiritually.  We need to grow stronger by nourishing our souls with the good bread that comes from Jesus.  And what is that bread, exactly?  Well, to start, it is feasting on every word that Jesus proclaims, since he is, after all, the word incarnate.  Now, that can seem to be quite a bit for us to do, since we would have an entire bible to keep up with, learning every single word.  When I was pursuing my English degree in particular, I had to spend lots of time with the pieces of literature I had to discuss and/or write about.  I had to make sure that I understood what the author/poet was communicating to me, and I had to be sure that I was aware of all the things that were going on, particularly with the language.  This took quite a toll on my ability to focus on other things, particularly my music, which was my other degree I was pursuing simultaneously.  I can't imagine how hard it must be to learn all of the bible well enough to say that one is full off the word.

But this is where the earthly and heavenly food come together.  Just as Jesus united both the heavenly and the earthly through his incarnation, he does the same in his preaching.  He has taught us all about the Kingdom of Heaven, and he has even told us what it's like.  The neat thing is that it's something that we can bring about on earth, today, right now.  When we dedicate our lives to following Jesus, we learn how to become more loving towards God and towards everybody that's around us.  Each time that we learn to grow in this love, every piece of scripture will serve as a reinforcement rather than a new command.  As we continue on our journey towards Jesus, we will be able to focus our whole lives towards him, not abandoning all of those around us.  We will be the ones to prepare the world for the Kingdom of Heaven.  By feeding on the word of Christ, we will be able to serve that same word to so many others, so that they can start joining us in the greater community of heaven on earth.

Day 150: Calming our Storms

"Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum.  And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them.  Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.  So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid.  But He said to them, 'It is I; do not be afraid.'  Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going."  John 6:16-21

This is a story that works quite well as a metaphor for us today.

I can't imagine going out on a boat into the sea when it is dark, in an age with no electricity to produce flashlights or motors.  Yet, that's what these disciples did, and it's apparent that it was dangerous, since the detail of darkness is included.  Even more, the sea was an unexplored world, and it still is today, for the most part.  So, anything could have sprung up in front of them.  How scary!

At the same time, there is so much symbolism in this story.  The hearers of Jesus wanted to take him and proclaim him as king, kind of the way how the Jews did in the past, against God's will, by proclaiming Adonijah as king rather than Solomon, who had been appointed.  So Jesus went away from them because of their misunderstanding, and it even seems that the disciples went out to sea to look for him, continuing in their seemingly selfish ways.  But, as their ways start to become like the sea that begins to rage, Jesus comes and meets them, walking on the water as if it were still.  They were afraid, not recognizing his face or form, as if they'd never seen him before.

That's what Jesus does for us.  Even though we stray from following him, letting our lives get so messed up that waves are about to break our firm ground and drown us, Jesus will come to us and make himself known.  Jesus will remind us what our duties are as he calms the seas for us.

While the followers wanted to have somebody who would end up killing all of their oppressors, someone who would end up stirring up the waters and storms even more than they already were, Jesus came to change their views.  We stray from Jesus when we turn to ways of hate, following the very evil that scares us.  And as things get so terrible around us, Jesus will remind us that love is the way.  Jesus, in his unconditional love and abounding mercy and forgiveness, will calm the storm, turning us from hate and bringing us to firm land, so that we can continue our journey spreading peace and love.

Day 149: Searching for Jesus

"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life."  John 5:39-40

This reprimand from Jesus is pretty harsh, but there is an important message that will bring us closer to him.

A page from the Cordúa cookbook

This reprimand reminds me of how cooking works.  There are countless cookbooks in circulation.  Even some high end restaurants will put out books full of their own recipes, some of which must seem to be secret.  And they'll even be in plain sight, where somebody could turn to a specific page and take a picture and have the recipe, for free!  But, no matter the number of resources available, there is still a thriving restaurant industry, and many restaurants that have their own recipes out there are still in business.  Why is that?

Well, none of us are using those recipes!  None of us are taking the time to actually cook them.  Even worse, we don't even know how to do half of the things that are described in them.  Blanch a chicken?  Stir-fry?  Julienne carrots?  Sous vide cooking?  If we learned how to do all of these things, we would no longer need cookbooks.  We would be chefs, rendering both restaurants and cookbooks useless.

But that's where Jesus' reprimand comes in.  We can comb through every single page of the bible, read every single commentary on the bible, learn about every single tradition, but we'd be nothing if we don't go to Jesus ourselves.  The bible testifies of Jesus.  We have so many things to learn about Jesus.  And, all the scriptures point out a focal point of Jesus: Jesus is love.  We have to love if we are going to follow Jesus.  We can talk all we want about the bible, but if we don't put any of the words into practice, we're going to have to keep going back to the same chapters, the same verses, hoping that maybe another time we will learn ourselves.  Our bible is our recipe, our instruction manual.  And there is a lot in there!  We might not be able to put every single thing into practice in our lifetime, but if we continue to put more and more of it into practice everyday, then maybe, just maybe, we will start getting closer to Jesus.  It will be difficult, but Jesus has shown that every step of the way will be glorious.  We will see miracles happen, we will see joy, we will see the Kingdom of God materializing in our midst.  When we love, we will have the eternal life that is promised us by God.

Day 148: Doing Good

"Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.  He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God."  3 John 11

From our earliest days of childhood, we have learned what is good and bad.  And, for the sake of childhood, it was pretty straightforward: treat others nicely, for that is good; anything else is bad.  In the same way, we should look at things that are good versus evil.

Perhaps a great starting point is the golden rule, or the second greatest commandment: treat others the way you want to be treated.  We want to spread good into the world, because that will help build up a better world out there.  We won't have to face so much hate when we spread the love around.

As Christians, we have heard so many times from Jesus about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, the chief being to love.  When we love, we are showing God to everybody around us.  When we love, we live our faith.  When we love, we are accepting God into our hearts.  When we spout hate, though, we stray from God.  When we hate, we do evil, which is a sign that we have not seen God.

In fact, people will only know that we our Christians by our love, as the song goes.  We will only be able to claim to be followers in the light of God when we love.  When we love, we unite our wills with the will of God, for God is love.  When we do good, when we love, we begin to understand that we are of God.  It gets pretty difficult to be part of God when we choose to hate or put down other people.  It gets really difficult to understand everything that Jesus talked about whenever we hate, especially because Jesus corrected his disciples and followers so many times whenever they wanted to show hate.

The Devil has made many attempts to stray us away from our path of love.  The Devil has also shown us that his way is one of hatred, one that will trip people up from following the light.  Rather than imitating the Devil by causing others to stumble because of our willing ignorance or our prejudices, we need to continue to do good, to love.  We need to follow God in every situation, and we need to minister God to others by means of our love.  We can only introduce God to others when we show God's nature acting in us - by love. 

Day 147: Reaching Out

Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your bed and walk."  And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.  And that day was the Sabbath.  The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, "It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed."  He answered them, "He who made me well said to me, 'Take up your bed and walk.'"  John 5:8-11

This story is filled with so many ugly details that it fits right into today.

There's a pool with healing powers only for the first person who makes it in.  One paralytic has been waiting thirty eight years to get into the pool, but is always too slow.  Jesus sees him and heals him.  The Jewish leaders tell the man that he is sinning because he is able to walk and take his bed.

When this story is written down on paper, or even read aloud in church or even on our phones (or whatever audio device), we can see how things are messed up.  What gave the leaders the audacity to call out that man from walking with his bed, which was probably stained from his underside and all of that sweat, smelling and probably falling apart?  They had come up with different interpretations of the Law of Moses to the point where things were getting ridiculous.  A man who wanted to celebrate that he was made well, a man who went straight to the temple to worship God after having encountered God Godself, was accused of breaking the Sabbath.  That's just messed up!

Yet, what do we do when we're walking around on the streets, or driving around, and see people begging for money?  The people walking around with their shopping baskets filled with empty cans or clothes or blankets?  The people who shout Alleluia in church?  The person not dressed up enough for an occasion?  What do we tell those who aren't making as much as we are?  What sort of rhetoric do we use when we're talking about the politics in our countries?  How do we treat the people of different genders, race, sexual orientation, creed, or anything else?

We can judge people as soon as we see them, making our decision based off a second of an encounter.  Yet, each person has her/his story.  We can't just dismiss everybody into our own boxes.  What if they had encountered Jesus for the first time that day?  What if they are Jesus?  What if we are Jesus for them?

We have no right to judge.  We only have one thing that we must do, and that is to show love.  We can show everybody around us love, for that is what God has shown us.  God is healing us every day.  We should be thankful for that by showing that same love for those around us.  We need to get excited when the family of God grows, when a new piece of God's Kingdom is built.  Instead of judging those around us, we must always be thankful.