Dust and Resurrection

A resurrected blog on the theme of resurrection... Most of this was written one Sunday afternoon in a hostel common room in Malaysia... Amazingly I chose this very evening exactly one year to the day later to log back in and find this draft. In my new anti-perfectionist resolution to resurrect this blog I have only tweaked it a little since it's original outpouring at that hostel computer! 

How do you feel when the testimony is about a golden handshake - "all glory to God"? How do you feel when the woman says she made 7 million in one day for her real estate company, "all glory to Jesus"?

How do you feel when she tells of her daughter's straight A passing of exams, "all Glory to God", of course?

Are these the successes that are testified to in the name of giving glory to God?
It's not impressive. It's embarrassing. Becoming a Christian is not an invitation into middle class, first world, good health and education.

Is this what we are to glory in? Is this what the church is to testify to?

Pity me as a Christ-follower if that is the case. I don't want to live a Faith that breathes out "Glory to God" in such painful tones.

Painful it must feel to the man who just lost the job he has loved and poured himself into for many years. "Where is the testimony of the blessing of God in my life?" this man may ask, after hearing these gold-leaf testimonies of financial gains and career-ladder climbs breeze out over the church.

Painful it must feel to the woman whose son with dyslexia is really struggling through certain subjects in school. Would she be welcome to give testimony and glory to God for her son?

Communion time comes and the man tells us Jesus died to defeat failure and sickness. If we have any of these things in our life we can get rid of them now as we partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Painful it must feel for the man with MS who can feel his muscles failing him more and more, week by week, prayer by prayer.

Painful it must feel for the man who buried his wife three months ago after a ten year battle fought joyfully and painfully with the disease that ate up her energy but not her beauty in Christ. Can he stand up the front also, his face lit up by the theatrical lights, and give Glory to God?

Becoming a Christian is not drinking an elixir to guard from all sickness and death. There is none of this sickly sweet success-juice in the recipe for resurrection. In the narrative I know, there is a cross and a death before a resurrection.

Pain can be beautiful.

She was the most beautiful I had seen her two weeks before she died. She knew she was dying. She was radiant, her face was glowing. The doctors thought she was in denial because she didn't show signs of fear or sorrow at the cancer overtaking her body. "I am getting a new body", she reassured them. 

They thought she needed counselling. She knew resurrection.

Pain is grotesque and messy.

His body was bloated and dried blood congealed around the dialysis lines in his neck. The tube feeding him air was sticking to his lips, causing bruising and sores. His eyes were wide open but not seeing. Standing at his bedside, reminded me of Mary and Martha at their brother's tomb saying "Jesus, you are too late". 

Thankfully, I knew what happened after their disgruntled greeting of Jesus.

There is no resurrection without death.

Thankfully, I could draw on that evidence to fan flickers of hope in the face of pain and fear. 

I believed in God's power to heal. 

But that is not the only cause for testimony.

He will die some other way, some day. I will weep then like Jesus wept at the graveside of Lazarus.

Yet then too, there will be testimony of God's goodness and glory.

He miraculously lives now, yet lives with pain and trauma.

The church is sick to think all is well.

I watched her coffin being lowered into a grave the day after my wedding. 

I got the call to tell me she had died while I was decorating the church, using lace she gave me from material used in making her wedding dress.

We followers of Christ are glorious, believe it or not. We are the radiant Bride of Jesus Christ as described in Revelation, but we are not there yet. We hold the invitation to the Feast but we have not arrived at the wedding just yet. We are and we are not yet.

Can we hold this tension?

Can we glory in achievements, skills, financial gain but even more so in God's presence and love found in the midst of pain and failure?

This sublime beauty in the midst of a thousand stabbing knives of pain tells us things are not as they ought to be. We ought not to be standing at this graveside. This doesn't feel right. And in that there is hope for something that ought to be different. Jesus was right to cry. Jesus knew there was something wrong.

But why did he weep if he knew he was about to conquer death?

Why did he not just call forth Lazarus and, as the man walked out of the tomb, give a flashy testimony about his followers overcoming all sickness and death (and making lots of money in the process)?

Jesus knew that there is no resurrection without death yet he called himself the resurrection.

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die." 

God in flesh calling forth his own death. God of the Universe breathing life into us dust creatures.

Dust to dust... and Life!

This glorious paradox; read at Christian funerals as the coffin is carried in, shoulders born down with grief and sorrow literally bearing the weight of death and loss. It's the disbelieving look on faces as the coffin is born down into the ground. We are haunted by the image of eternity imprinted upon us by our Maker.

This is not how we wanted it to end... not now, not yet...

I believe this is the Kingdom of God now on earth...

Now, and not yet.

The church can and needs to be an antiseptic in a world full of puss and grimy infection. The church does not need to be a sickly sweet antidote to pain and failure but a genuine anticipation of healing to come and a reflection of the healing that has come in Christ.

It has come, and it is still to come

It is now, but it's not yet

It is a beautiful mess

I am a follower of Christ in this Kingdom come...

Mark Driscoll's School of Manliness*

Applicant Number: 4055649

 

A great start. Clearly, a manly man. A full bottle of Extra Hot Tabasco downed in 5 seconds.

Showing serious potential. This guy is an animal. What you don't see: seconds later this dude swallowed the toilet roll whole.

Manly men take note. This is the stuff we're looking for. True masculinity displayed in this act of rock-chomping.

Owch. This guy was doing so well. His manly performance here is compromised by an air of femininity. The wearing of pink, seen here in the applicant's slippers ruins what would otherwise have been a beefy display of strength. If this brother doesn't wise up and man up he won't make the cut. 

Oh dang. The dude's been chickified. This is a real let down. I didn't think a man of this calibre would ever exhibit such symptoms of feminization. This is the toe-jam of masculinity. 

Grade: FAIL

Additional Comments: This man is anatomically male but he is showing symptoms of an effeminate nature. Influence of sisification detected. Immediate intervention and disciplinary action advised. 

* This is a fictional rendering of a fictional School Test. Mark Driscoll's School of Manliness may not actually exist. The content of this blog may not actually express words spoken or views held by Mark Driscoll. But the author regrets that it could be a frighteningly accurate rendering of the same.

Left-out Right-brain

"I think that the church is afraid of right brain people." 

"You ask every five year old ‘how many of you sing?’… and they all raise their hands… We're all born artists, but then something happens..."

The above quotes are from a video my scribbling apprentice discovered months ago on a great visual liturgy website, called the work of the people. Check out the video here:

http://vimeo.com/12268112 

I started to cry when I first watched this because it was as if this man had spoken the words my heart had been crying out for years. I had a "YES! YES! someone else gets it, I am not alone" moment. Unfortunately these moments feel few and far between in my Christian walk. Sometimes I feel that I am speaking and feeling a foreign language which others around me just don’t understand. Even more strange and troubling is my experiences of feeling more at home as a creative Christian in the company of pagans than in the family of my Creator. Lately, I have been able to explain these feelings through an understanding of some very basic neuroscience! 

The right hemisphere of the human brain is mainly responsible for intuition, creativity and metaphor. The left part of our brain deals generally with logic, words and reasoning. In general, artists rely more heavily on their right brain. I am aware that our brains are not split as simply as this and I am not trying to fight for one side of the brain to be used more than the other. For surely at our best we are employing all aspects of our brains for the glory of God. For instance, recent research has shown that abilities in subjects such as maths are strongest when both sides of the brain work together. That is exactly what I am longing for in church… both right brain and left brain functioning together to the glory of God. I am simplifying this for two reasons: 1. Because I don’t know all the science behind it. 2. I want to make a specific point about the relationship between Christianity and Creative expression.

Consider for a moment your experience of church, whether you are a believing member of the body of Christ or someone who on occasion darkens the door of church. Has your experience been made up of intuition, creativity and metaphor or has the church service been largely constructed through logic, words and reasoning? 

“Nobody should be closer to the Creator than us... We ought to know the creator better than anybody... That ought to be the church’s claim to fame: We know the creator! What does the creator do? CREATE.”

You see the thing is, and this is where it gets tricky, I don’t think creativity is optional. The christian church should not be like the average irish primary school where art, PE, music and drama are done at most once a week, if we have time and all the other ‘more important’ subjects like maths and english have been properly covered. God forbid we might know how to paint and dance better than, or even as well as, we know how to read and multiply. I believe there are some who are reading this and struggling to agree with my argument. Surely it is more important in the world for a child to have skills which they can ‘put to good use?’ 

We say the same in churches. Surely God wants us to be serious children and knuckle down studiously and reverently under his Word through Bible preaching and teaching? I have no problem whatsoever with preaching and teaching from the Bible in church but I query the perceived need for it to be, by and large, carried out through left brain activities which are controlled and predictable. Predominantly, we use logic, reasoning and words to preach and teach despite the fact that Jesus employed the use of metaphor, intuition and creativity in his teaching and preaching.

Of course, if we have time, after the ‘serious’ work is done, we could maybe put on a little drama, sing a new song or play a short film? These are seen as more ‘creative’ acts and are not weighted with the same importance or centrality but are given a place in the introduction or appendices of church life rather than being at the heart of our Christian identity where they could be encouraged to seep into all aspects of our congregational teaching and worship.

“The Bible does not only give us permission to be creative but a mandate to be creative. If we are not being creative we are in fact disobeying God.”

- Ellis Potter

I want to emphasise here that there is immense creativity in preaching a sermon. I am married to a preacher who is also a gifted writer, painter, poet and storyteller and I see the glory of the Creator at work in him as he crafts and delivers his sermons week by week. Whatever anyone might say, I believe there is performance in preaching and I see that as a God-glorifying rather than egotistical use of the concept performance.

The thing is, we as Christians can be far too timid at not recognising and reclaiming what already belongs to God. On Friday afternoon, I spent hours in a dingy classroom in Maynooth learning about the seven chakras in my body. BEEP BEEP BEEP yes I hear it - the alarm resounds in the Christian readers’ mind and heart - NEW AGE HERESY ALERT… Pass judgement on me quickly and return to the safety of your left brain.

… or venture further?

God made my body and yours too. He tells me that He knit me together in my mother’s womb and that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and that my soul knows it full well (Psalm 139) 

Let me try again without the phraseology which has new age connotations… 

On Friday afternoon I experienced how God has created my body to hold and express emotions in different ways. As I focused on different parts of my body I realised how my body feels different things in different places and different parts of my body can represent different things to me as a human being made in the image of God. Through movement exercises I was able to understand and celebrate better my connection to the God who made me and saved me through the body of his son Jesus Christ and has now filled me with the Holy Spirit to live and work to His praise and glory.

Now, do you feel like I am just putting Christian language on a New Age phenomenon or do you see that it should be the other way around? Our bodies belong to God, whether we acknowledge Him as Lord over them or not. The Universe belongs to God, whether we acknowledge His Creation and Sustentation of it or not. What humans call something should not be the final word. Christians need to be reminding the world and its people that God was here first, that God owns truth whatever shape and form and phraseology humanity tries to skew it into to glorify their own egos or even just sell books or courses. That should not mean as Christians we need to throw out all things that smack of another religion or philosophy or just is not explicitly from the brand of Christian culture which we have been a part of all our lives. 

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” 

How does this relate to creativity and the right brain?

The thing is, sometimes I feel more free to express myself creatively in my secular dramatherapy training course than I do in my Christ-loving church. And that makes me sad. Then it makes me frustrated cos I think, “How come those who don’t even acknowledge God as their Creator are more buzzed about creative expression than those who say they know and serve their Creator?” If you serve a Creative God you have to be creative. It is not an extra-curricular activity, it is an an exam subject. It is central to your identity as a child of the living creator God. 

I believe there is a biblical mandate to be creative. And I believe that mandate is not just for artists, musicians, Sunday school teachers or women. It is for preachers and pastors, engineers and brick-layers, farmers and mothers, accountants and consultants, film-makers and solicitors, pharmacists and therapists... it is for everyone and anyone who says they are made in the image of God, in the image of the Creator. It is not about our career choice but rather our commitment to our Creator. To be living as one made in the image of the one who creates you must know your own creativity is valid and needed in this Universe. 

I take full responsibility for the sadness and frustration I feel. It is not anyone’s fault but it is something I want to change. It doesn’t feel right that I feel more freedom to express myself creatively in my dramatherapy course than I do in my church. The problem is I am afraid. I know that if I stepped out in church I risk the judgement of others. Sometimes it feels easier to just go with the norm. Don’t rock the boat Claire. Keep your creativity under wraps. 

But then I hook up with the dramatherapists and my right brain screams HALLELUJAH! I experience an environment where people support and encourage me to express myself and my relationship to God and to others through every way possible. I dance and I move, I sing and I improvise, I feel and I speak

Except there is a missing link. I love my fellow trainee dramatherapists and I love their freedom and zest for creative expression and their belief in its innate presence in all people. But most of them don’t attribute their creativity to God the Creator. I love my brothers and sisters in Christ and I love sharing in their joy in knowing Jesus and experiencing their sacrificial love for me and others. But most of them don’t see or express themselves as creative beings.

So I come away wondering “Why can’t the two go together?”

Then I realise God is bringing the two together in me. And so I get scared again cos I don’t want to be the one they all look at, the one who says in dramatherapy : “Jesus is Lord of all Creativity!” Or the one who says in church “God is creator so let us be more creative in our expression!”

2nd Samuel Chapter 6 verse 16 says this: "As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart."

When David comes home Michal calls him a “vulgar fellow” but David says “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.” 

I admit that I fear humiliation if I was to act the same way in church as I do in the experiential workshops on my dramatherapy course. This creates a tension and a disconnection in my life at the moment which I am seeking to resolve. Unfortunately churches can unwittingly have the same attitude to creative expression as Michal had towards David’s ‘undignified’ dancing. The likes of leaping and dancing should be left to the charismatics (too often have I heard that word used in a derogatory way) while we get on with the business of being 'serious' about God. Was David not being serious about God when he physically embodied and expressed his praise for God? Where is the place in church for physical embodiment and expression? For original creative expression in service to God and others?

The problem, as identified in the video, is that right brain activity involves unpredictability… “anything can happen!” That is how the world began, God the Creator spoke and things happened; light, sound, action, breath...

God created man and woman in his image. God invited man and woman to get creative with Him. Come into the garden, name the animals, work the land, eat the fruit…

Then things got messy.

Creating can be a messy business. Ask the Mum who decided to spend the morning finger painting with her child or the Dad who makes pizza from scratch with his kids. But God didn’t stop us. God asked us to create from the get go. Creativity doesn’t mean replication or imitation. Creativity is bringing something new into being. God asked Adam to name the animals, inviting a subjective point of view within an objective Creation that God has made.

The fact of the matter is that Church ought to be the most creative place in culture. We should be birthing artists of all sorts like there is no tomorrow. I feel whole-heartedly that there is eternal significance in painting and pottery as well as pastoring and preaching. I feel this not because of who I feel I am but because of who God tells me He is. We love because God first loved us and likewise we express ourselves creatively because God first expressed himself creatively. 

“Christ entered our world, the Creator translating heavenly existence to earthly... all art forms attempt to translate what is unseen into what is seen.” 

- Makoto Fujimura

For those of us who are treading carefully and collecting courage on this journey to be pioneers of creative freedom in Christianity, I put my voice out there in the hope that the tears of encouragement I shed upon hearing and seeing the video above, will be yours too as you realise you are not alone. 

In closing I share the words of another voice who encouraged me to believe in God the Creator, Calvin Seerveld says: “Your redemptive task as artist is not to convert people or to be apologetic about following Jesus Christ. A Christian artist simply needs to give away your imaginative insights to whoever crosses your path, and the Holy Spirit will take it from there.”

Holy Spirit, please take it from here.

Worthy to be Unworthy

A while ago I heard a young woman express concern over hearing her mother recite the words in the Roman Catholic Mass before receiving the Eucharist;

 “I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed.” 

She feared that it wasn’t good for anyone to be saying “I am not worthy” on a regular basis. 

I can understand where she was coming from, but it frustrated me that she seemed to be misunderstanding words that were being said in a specific context of a ritual. It frustrated me more that I didn’t have a ready baked response to flow out from my mouth in cohesive language. So, I stayed silent.

Months later, I’m only at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to thinking this through, but here is my response-in-progress to this young woman’s fear. 

It is my impression that her comment arose from a misconception that Christianity requires one to lose all self-esteem and that this breeds a low or negative view of self which is in turn detrimental to the health of the self. I have recently come across a book by a Christian author that perpetuates this notion that self-esteem is a dirty word amongst Christians. I do balk at the cult of self-worship, leading to the delusion of self-perfection and self-salvation, in our world today. But I felt a fiery opposition within me towards this author’s conclusions that a Christian sense of self equated to an annihilation of self. Bear with me here.

I write in light of the presumption that God is who He is. The very presumption of God immediately means that God exists in and of Himself and that we exist in relationship to God. We did not think up God, God thought up us. 

I am not worthy does not mean I am worthless. God by His very nature is not worthless and so if we are made in His Image then we are not worthless. A few really important verses in the Bible come to my mind when understanding self-image and self-esteem in the radiant, truth-light of Jesus...

Genesis 1 verse 27 

“So God created mankind in his own image,
   in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

 and…

 Psalm 139 verse 14 

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

As well as,

Romans 3 verses 23+24 

“Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence. But by the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free.”

And…

Romans 8 verses 1+2

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”

So...

Saying “I am not worthy” in this context is not, and should not be, condemnation of self. 

Let’s remember the context for which these words of liturgy were designed.

The eucharist. The remembrance of Jesus’ death on the cross. 

Romans 3 verses 24-26 set the scene for this:

“But by the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free. God offered him, so that by his blood he should become the means by which people's sins are forgiven through their faith in him.” 

What makes someone worthy of something? Dictionaries tell me worthiness is about deserving something, being suitable for something.

So who deserves to share the blood and body of Jesus? 

The only thing that makes me suitable, or worthy, to share in Jesus' blood is my sin, my totally depraved, self-seeking human nature! Ironic, in the context of this discussion.

Regardless of whether you believe in the eucharist being the actual stuff itself or the symbol reminding us of it, this is the stuff of rather intimate sharing. 

Permit me to get graphic for a moment: When are bodies and blood ordinarily shared? Sex, Pregnancy and Birth are three that come to mind. In sexual intercourse we share our body, and sometimes  our blood, with another person. In pregnancy a woman allows her body and blood to be shared with her growing child and in birth her body and blood mixes with the child’s body as it enters the world. 

These graphic images are the things in life with the power to initiate and build blood related families. 

Partaking in the body and blood of Jesus Christ is about acknowledging family ties.

It is about FAMILY! Are you part of the family? Then share with us, God says, welcome in, come and celebrate the means of your inclusion into this Family of God. 

But did YOU start this family? Was it your idea to make it open to all?

If I become pregnant and after nine months you come to me and say “I want to give birth to your baby”, I would have to say, “No, you are not worthy.” 

Like a car that is not roadworthy, you are not worthy to give birth to the baby growing inside me. You are just not made for it, there is no way I can move the baby from my womb into yours, without damaging you, me or the baby. 

I am not worthy means I am not God.

This is where the ‘but’ is vital… But only say the word and I shall be healed.

In saying this last part we are in essence saying “I am not worthy but I shall be made worthy.”

In his first letter to the church at Corinth Paul writes: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

“I shall be healed” … “I shall become the righteousness of God”

The ‘I shall’ is important because it shows confidence and belief, not in ourselves but in God to heal. These are the words of a person who is confident in who they are, not down-trodden or lacking self-awareness of self-esteem. “I shall be healed.”

Yes it implies that healing is needed and yes it implies that we are not the ones who control the healing but we do need to allow it and partake in it. It doesn’t negate our presence, power or importance but it shows us our right relationship towards God.

Eugene Peterson’s raw translation of Paul’s letter to the Romans puts if like this: 

“Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.” (chapter 3 verses 23+24)

And I suppose that is where the problem remains for the woman whom I know, and for the multitudes of others who see Christianity as a threat to self-esteem and control.

Why would we want someone else to make us worthy if we can put our faith in our ability to make ourselves worthy?

We did not plan, decide or choose for Jesus to be born onto the earth and to be crucified and to rise from the dead. So how are we deserving of taking part in the celebration of this event in History?

‘I am not worthy’ is not to do with value or self-esteem. It is about identity. 

To say ‘I am worthy’ in this context is to misunderstand who you are. Paradoxically, it is a denial of true self-worth, because your self-worth is in the fact that you were created in the image of God. To say “I am worthy” in this context is saying “I do not need God”, it is to hate the Image you bear in your very being. 

If we are to say in this context, ‘I am worthy’ we are ultimately saying, ‘Jesus, get down off the cross, I’ll get up there myself!’ 

This is where the problem lies. We really do want to be bigger or at least as big as God. That is why it feels easier, and more natural, to put our faith in the belief that there is nothing greater than ourselves in existence. Then Jesus really does become a stumbling block on our journey to being God. 

If we want to be God in this life we have to face up to the reality that sooner or later we are going to get crucified. 

“I am not worthy” is a reality check. It releases us to be who we really are, children of God who are loved madly and deeply and who have been adopted, through the blood of Jesus, into an eternal Family.