The Margins

We were driving home from the airport today, and after a stop by Fuller to visit Doug, a drive-by visit to the Troll, and a brief playtime at Woodland Park, we were close to home when I turned on the radio for the last minutes of the drive. The Mountain was playing INXS and I started singing along. The song was “Need You Tonight”, and the chorus goes like this:

“So slide over here, and give me a moment. Your moves are so raw, I’ve got to let you know, I’ve got to let you know.”

And the song ends with this: “So slide over here and give me a moment. I’ve got to let you know, I’ve got to let you know . You’re one of my kind.”

As the song ended, a voice piped up immediately from the back seat: “Mommy, why does he have to let us know?”

When we were deciding what to name our first child, Doug and I had a funny experience where someone made a joke about a name we could use and then commented that the nickname for that name could be “Mercy”. Neither of us said anything to each other in the moment, but later we both commented to the other that we thought “Mercy” would make a really cool name.

I have known a lot of Faiths, Graces, Hopes and Joys, but I have never met another Mercy. I have enjoyed that Mercy’s name is unusual. I have enjoyed the way it makes people stop and think about the word and what it means, because it is not familiar. I have loved how her awareness of her name has so often reminded me of this central, shaping theme in our life of faith. And I have loved how she has journeyed in her own understanding of what her name represents.

As I sat in the ER on Saturday, I noticed a little news item scroll across the bottom of whatever news channel was playing in the room, and there was a word that leaped out at me: Mercy. The announcement had to do with Madonna and her pursuit of adoption of a Malawian girl whose African name translates into English as “Mercy”.

So now with the celebraddiction that dominates our culture, I expect that Mercy’s name will have lost a bit of its novelty, and now instead of a discussion about our faith with people who comment about her name, we will instead likely end up talking about Madonna.

Rather than use a video feed for the many Mosaic campuses like most multi-site congregations who use a central pastor on video, Mosaic has opted for using speakers from individual sites. This allows many people to receive training in both sermon preparation & presentation. [emphasis added]

Imagine that. A really live preacher. In a real live location. Dang. What will they think of next?

From Bill Kinnon

But, let’s not fall for the idea that being more biblical than the Bible is safe ground. Extremism is not righteousness; extremism is zealotry. Trust that what God says is what God wants.

Aaron has been walking around this past week singing the worship song: “This is the Day…” I thought it was a bit curious that he was singing it so much until I found out that the kids have been rehearsing the song during Sunday School in preparation for Palm Sunday when they will walk through our sanctuary waving their palm branches and then gather to sing “This is the Day” from up front.

I was commending Aaron for his great singing on the way home from a church pancake breakfast Saturday morning, and I made some comment about how God loves to hear our worship. Mercy, of course, wanted to know why, so we got into a more extended discusison of worship and God’s relationship to all of creation. At one point I explained to her how the Bible tells us that if we were to stop worshiping God, if we were to stop singing God’s praises, the rocks would start to sing in our places.

There was a very long silence from the back seat.

“Mommy, is that true?” Mercy finally said.

“Yes, Mercy. That’s what the Bible tells us,” I replied.

It was quiet once again until Aaron began a new chorus of “This is the Day”. Mercy immediately turned to her brother: “Shhhh……Aaron, don’t sing! I want to hear the rocks!”

For those who are praying for my friend in L.A.: she does not have West Nile as they initially believed. Her paralysis remains, and she now has pneumonia as well. Please pray for the Lord’s full healing and grace to be upon her and her loved ones.

One of the things I am really enjoying here at Shoreline Covenant is the opportunity to be involved with pastoring our youth. There has never been a season in my adult life that I have not, in some capacity, served young people, and while the youth ministries of our church here are not one of my areas of focus here in terms of job description, I am involved in working with all of the other adults who serve our youth in seeking together how we can serve our young people and walk alongside them in their discipleship journey.

This morning I came across a discussion at Scot McKnight’s blog that I will definitely follow that explores what kinds of shifts have taken place culturally for youth, and how the church is or is not responding.

The post suggests that maybe 25% of youth who participate in a church’s youth ministries will grow into mature disciples of Jesus. Do you think that is accurate? Why do you think that is true?

One commenter writes:

The fact that there is a “their” culture is largely “our” doing. Who worships youth? Adults. Who makes the shows, the songs, the technology, etc. forming/facilitating “their” culture? Adults. Who made even ‘big’ church into something that ‘entertains then entertains some more?’ Adults. Who made following Jesus into something you can supposedly do while remaining loyal to consumerism? Adults. Youth groups are just amped up versions of big church, trying to ‘reach’ a more media sophisticated, less religious, more energetic group.

Grace also has a post up this morning that speaks to these questions on a much broader level in defining what discipleship or Christian formation really is. She offers a series of quotations form an article by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. These are well-worth the read. I will offer some of Willard’s thoughts as a concluding word here:

“Spiritual formation is the process of establishing the character of Christ in the person. That’s all it is…Forget about perfection. We’re just talking about learning to do the things that Jesus is favorable toward and doing it out of a heart that has been changed into His.”

A dear member of our church family in Los Angeles was just diagnosed with West Nile Virus and is undergoing risky treatment for this as we speak. Pray for her husband and for their baby (she just found out she is six weeks pregnant); for God’s protection and for complete healing. She is currently experiencing paralysis form the neck down and is having difficulty breathing. We are joining our friends in around-the-clock prayer for her, and I am asking anyone willing to carry this burden with us to intercede for her.

Thank you.

There is a couple in our church here that I have known for as long as I can remember. Keith and Florence have devoted much of their life to ministry and training and advocacy for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I am privileged to sort of share some office space with Keith (who travels regularly to the Congo in his ministry role for our denomination) in our church building. Keith and Florence have been role models and examples to me my whole life, and I appreciate the ways that their presence in our congregation here reminds us regularly of what our sisters and brothers in Christ are experiencing in the Congo. Looking at Keith during worship, I can sometimes almost physically see his concern, the ache of his spirit, for a people he knows and loves.

I came across this at Brad Boydston’s blog this morning and while I can’t figure out how to post the graphic here, I want to post the link here and encourage you to take a look.

My friend Christine writes with great beauty and depth about journeying with pain and loss as ever-present companions. Christine lost her beloved son one year ago, and she wrote the following reflection on how her grieving mother’s heart will journey through Lent this year:

Last year at this time, I had a strong sense that I ought to abstain from meat for 40 days. It was odd because I only tolerate meat in minuscule amounts. I’m partial rather to shellfish and dessert. Hence, the high cholesterol.

I wrote something then about abstaining from the stuff of life rather than the fluff of life. It was a prophecy uttered unknown to myself for now until forever in this mortal habitation we call time. For what is the stuff of life more than children? They are evidence that one isn’t just going through the motions “long after the thrill of livin’ is gone,” to quote John, not the Cougar, Mellencamp.

This is how I know that God was not absent last March 28th at nine-o-something in the evening. It was his Spirit who inspired me to abstain from the stuff of life—the blood and muscle and sinew of my days—instead of chocolate, too ordinary a Lenten abstention, but one much more challenging for a frivolous fool like me.

The Almighty was preparing me for who knows how many years of abstention, of hope deferred, of evidence unseen…

So what this year? Am I excused from abstention because I do without already. Every day. Every hour. Every heartbeat and break. From the stuff of life, by half.

No. I think not, because life does in fact go on in this interminable Eternal Now. The flesh still needs its training in abstention. Abstention from excessive grief. Abstention from wallowing in the bitter cup. Abstention from fear and morosity…

Perhaps I’ll feast on joy for 40 days…

This past week she offered this comment on a spiritual retreat she had just attended:

Here’s the verse I brought home to meditate on through Lent:

He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

(Psalm 126:6, ESV)

Our speaker reminded us not to surrender to our wilderness experiences, but to God in them. When we surrender to God in our difficult circumstances, we gather seeds to sow for the nourishment of others.

I had the privilege yesterday of sitting for a bit with a woman who, with her family, has walked through a simply life-shattering experience as a result of the actions of Christian sisters and brothers. She is on a journey of healing from the events that injured her and her loved ones, and I do trust that God is with her as she passes through this place of abandonment and affliction. But it is that: a dark place with more questions than answers.

I am reminded today how many of us need Lent to remind us to consider places of pain, sobriety, and grief. We need the ashy mark on our forehead because it is not our heart’s inclination to mourn and weep. But there are others in our midst who are already living among the ashes.

In the earlier centuries of church life, the forty days of Lent were the season when new believers prepared to be baptized into the church community. The members of the faith community joined these new believers in this special time of preparation and reflection on the death and new life that Christ gives. Lent and baptism were, for many years, intimately linked together (and still are for the Catholic Church). Lent was something the church did together, to identify with one another and with those being welcomed into their family.

My thought today is that we would do well to consider this season as something we do as a community. What would it look like for us to consider the places of suffering and death and isolation and grief that are present among us, and exercise intentionality toward joining our sisters and brothers there? Could we spend these days fasting, as a community, from the isolation that falls too quickly and easily upon those in pain? Could we see Lent as an invitation to come together as a body and identify with one another in some new way?