Week 2 (Peace): Wrap Up

I am reflecting on the idea of Jesus ushering in Peace. Tying together the individual messages from each day into a broader understanding of the elements that bring together God’s Peace.

Jesus was Born to:
(1) teach us to walk in God’s ways
(2) seek and save the lost
(3) reign as king
(4) bring God’s kingdom to earth
(5) defeat the enemy

And what came to me is emotional exchanges that lead to a comprehensive and ordered approach to finding True Peace.

(1) Exchanging confusion for clarity. Jesus teaching us God’s ways ends the hypocrisy and dissension regarding HOW to live as God commands. His teachings and manner helping us to understand what is sin and what is not. We exchange chaos, confusion and disorder for clarity and vision.

(2) Exchanging despair for hope. Once we understand clearly the nature of sin, we are immediately confronted with our hopelessness to overcome it. We are lost and helpless to heal ourselves. Jesus mission to seek and save the lost ushers in the peace of knowing we are being sought out, actively saved from our position. We exchange helpless, hopeless rejection for vibrant, worth and hope. 

(3) Exchanging fear for security. When we understand clearly our personal position as the recipient of God’s love and grace, we then become aware we live in a hostile climate. We are foreigners in a strange land. Jesus position as Sovereign and Eternal King gives us the peace of knowing that all injustice will be set right. God can be trusted to execute perfect justice and has the authority to do so. We exchange terror and outrage for confident security.

(4) Exchanging meaninglessness for purpose. When we understand clearly our position with God and His sovereign authority we the can be crushed by the idea that our lives are without meaning. God does not need me... I have no role in this. But Jesus role as ushering in the kingdom of heaven to the earth provides us a new and immediate identity and purpose. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. On mission to live out Gods kingdom here and now. We exchange purposelessness for significant contribution and stewardship. 

(5) Exchanging defeat and death for victory and eternal life. When we fully understand our position, security and purpose the last obstruction is death... doesn’t the enemy hold the final card? Our last exchange is in knowing that Jesus along with our efforts has defeated sin and death and he will raise us all to eternal life.This is the final PEACE! We have complete peace.

 #Jesus#DarknessZero

Week 2 (Peace): Born to Defeat the Enemy

Check this out.. The Church makes a big scene about Jesus paying the price of salvation on the cross. This is true... we had no part in salvation or reconciliation with God. He paid it all.

However... defeating the enemy is a WHOLE OTHER story!

Do you see that? How is the enemy defeated??

“By the blood of the Lamb AND the word of our testimony”

We play a part in the defeat of the enemy. We have a role. God does not ask us to sit and watch while He does it all - we PARTICIPATE.

I did not realize this until today. Our words about Jesus and God are our responsibility! Our weapons against darkness, sin and death.

Week 2 (Peace): Born to Bring God's Kingdom to Earth

So I’m super jazzed about today’s reading! It's from the book of Daniel and covers a prophetic dream about the rise and falls of all of the kingdoms between Daniel and the birth of Jesus. 

I studied Daniel in depth about 10 years ago and then again less than a year ago, so I am familiar with the dream and I know the story pretty well. All the scholars I've read are super interested in the dream and the story because it's demonstrates prophetic accuracy. That's cool but prophecy has never really been my jam. Too much of a skeptic I guess.

What DOES fascinate me today is the contrast between the materials that make up the kingdoms of this world (gold, silver, bronze, iron) and Gods kingdom (a mountain).

Get this, in the dream all of the human kingdoms represented by minerals you mine, refine and forge. Minerals generally excavated from a mountain. God’s kingdom, in contrast, is whole, complete, unrefined.

And what has me joyous and slack jawed is this... isn’t this what we see?? Gods ideas mined, refined and forged into monolithic religions and institutions! God created beauty, we get the fashion industry. God created order, we get institutions filled with rules and regulations and red tape. God created sensuality, we get porn and the sex trade. All of these ideas separated from their source, mined and refined by human hands, fashioned as we see fit. Each human process taking the beautiful further and further from the source material; making things harder, shallower and brittle.

But Jesus, represented as a rock that becomes a mountain, is whole and complete. He introduces a kingdom not mined, refined and forged but naturally comprehensive and complete. All minerals collecting and acting as one. Including those we’ve idolized and those we’ve ignored, edited out or devalued.

Isn’t the Bible SO COOL!

Week 2 (Peace): Born to Reign as King

Jesus as King is another difficult metaphor. Not because I dislike it in this case but because it is so unfamiliar. Kings are the stuff of history books and fairytales.

Fortunately I’m married to a closet historian who is happy to explain the role of kings and tell me all of his thoughts about good kings and bad kings.

All kings held tremendous authority and responsibility. The underpinning idea of feudalism being that the King basically owns everything. Kings own all the land, all the belongings, all the labor, all the money, all the people (including you, your wife, your children). EVERYTHING, your very life, all assets at the disposal of the king. The king says we go to war - you go to war. The king says he wants your wife - bye wife. You get the idea.

Good kings ruled in ways that allowed their people to prosper and be happy. The people lived in peace: without fear from within or without. Bad kings ruled in ways that allowed their people to be disadvantaged and to suffer. The people lived in fear: fear of their enemies or their officials or the king himself.

I don’t think it’s an accident that God uses this metaphor to communicate our relationship to Him. That He narrates Jesus as “The Forever Good King.”

It’s reflected in everything Jesus promised and required. He promised us peace and joy and prosperity (to live without fear from within or without) but also he required complete authority (to give everything we are and everything we have over to Him).

But unlike every other king our membership in the kingdom is entirely voluntary. We can choose to be citizens or not.

In my mind this makes Jesus the ultimate good king - He does not presume ownership of your life, you are asked to surrender it if you believe He is a good king.

Week 2 (Peace): Born to Seek and Save the Lost

This is probably the role of Jesus with which I am the most comfortable. It’s so familiar to me it’s like sliding into my favorite pair of jeans. They’ve gone so many places with me, been through so many things and I feel good when I put them on, a little more like myself.

I grew up knowing Jesus was about the sinner, the crestfallen, the outsider, the sick, the confused, the injured, the outcast, the black sheep. I have never one time seriously considered that God could stop loving me or even wanted to. God loves me and everyone else and I knew that because of Jesus.

This belief has undoubtedly shaped me in the most intimate and defining of ways. I hold nothing back from God. Nothing! I share my Fury. Pride. Lust. Idiocy. My Bitterness. Successes. Confusion. Doubt. It’s all on the table because everything is safe.

I can earnestly say God is my best friend. There is nothing between us. I may get a concept or a law or circumstance stuck in my craw but I completely trust God to talk to about it. I literally never worry it’s unwelcome or will cause me rejection.

I will not say it is sufficient to end my sin but it is the fertile soil of opportunity out of which it grows.

This simple fact has driven me into any shred of righteousness or holiness or sacredness I possess or understand: I can’t undo God’s love for me (and neither can you).

It is from this place that I have found my footing to pursue a whole and holy life.

Our question for today was: Then how should we respond? My answer was this:

  

Week 2 (Peace): Born to Teach Us to Walk in God's Ways

Today we focus on Jesus as our Teacher. And like the best teachers, His most powerful lessons were in his lived expression.

For me this has meant a growing awareness of a dance with God that underpins my entire life, every moment. A dance that is at once an adventurous excavation of Truth, a rhythmic application of Disciplines, and a continuous co-creation of the Fruit of my behavior, thoughts and character. A dance between myself, my circumstances and God where these Truths, Disciplines and Fruit are in dynamic motion: each leading and following, shaping and yielding to the other.

I can only do this because I first watched Jesus do the dance himself and then invite me in. Slowing the rhythm and pace, so that I could learn and not be swept away or crushed. My missteps accounted for, included but not ruinous. The gravity of the dance mounting and my skill and familiarity growing.

Advent 2020 - The Second Week - Peace

Isaiah 9:6 

For a child will be born to us,

a son will be given to us,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. 

For me the part that leaps out, is that in The Kingdom of God everything is brought together... A Child, A King, A Counselor, A Mighty God, A Father, A Prince of Peace.

That is NOT human peace. 

Under human rule the best way to keep the peace is separation.... BOUNDARIES. This applies from the personal to the political. From our households to our neighborhoods to our world. We can exist as a family in peace, as long as we have boundaries around TV control and food and sleep hours. We can exist as a neighborhood with different ways of life as long as we have separate houses and often fences. We can exist as citizens of one nation of diverse religions and political perspectives by separating church and state. We can exist in peace with other nations that hold antithetical governmental structures or broadly accept different levels of human rights if we acknowledge physical borders to countries.

Peace = The Ultimate "You do you, Boo"

This division = peace is why we broadly accept ideas like divorce, making your own family, charter schools, gay bars, ratings on movies. It's why we bumper sticker our cars, go to makers fairs and farmers markets, join the NRA, wear or don't wear masks, follow or unfollow this or that person on Twitter or Instagram. We long for the peace that comes from similarity, agreement. We long to look around and nod and say "all is right with the world." 

God’s Peace, on the other hand, is defined by a coming together, a making whole, a reconciliation. King AND Father, Counselor AND Mighty. There is no separation between church and state, state and family, family and healer.

This pull toward unity immediately brings up the wars that remain within us. The wars we have sought to silence with boundaries. 

“That means agreeing to one morality... what if I don’t like those rules?”

“That means accepting and loving people I am angry with!”

“That means submitting to authority!”

It does. It means all of those things. 

Our divisions never ended the wars. The wars remain in us. They remain in me.

May we come to understand and love God's Peace. May we be willing to acknowledge and address the wars that remain inside of us.