Following Jesus is not about going to a place or accomplishing a task. Foxes have holes and birds have nests. Men build homes, businesses, cities, and kingdoms, These become identifying places and even come to own their makers. People become slaves of their gardens, workaholics, have streets and cities named after them, become absorbed in the preservation of their places and possessions. Following Jesus will probably require leaving a place. “‎For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14). Neither is following Jesus about getting things done. Not to say that Jesus never leads us to do anything, but that we run the risk of getting left behind when the task becomes primary. The disciple who wanted to bury his father turned a task into an excuse. Following Jesus is all about responding continually, listening to the leading of his Spirit, following him on his mission. Jesus accomplished many tasks in his earthly life. He traveled widely, often into foreign cultures, but built no businesses, had no home, no city bears his name. Only one task consumed him and he calls us to join in the task of the cross. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27). Jesus likewise left one living monument, the church, his body, and calls us to find our place in it, that we might become joined to him, partners in ministry and mission, redeemed, heirs of God, and recipients of his Spirit (Gal 4:5-7). Following Jesus is all about joining the person who opens heaven to us and makes our lives meaningful and significant. We will utterly fail if we aim for heaven or good deeds rather than the person. Follow Jesus.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” (Mk 1:35–38)

I don’t think Jesus just went to the desolate place and told God what he was going to do. I don’t think Jesus just went to the desolate place and delivered a monologue. I suspect that he talked to his father, had a conversation. He may have asked whether he should stay in Capernaum. He may have asked his father whether he should continue teaching in the synagogue. Regardless of what he said to his father, I’m sure he also listened to hear what the father had to say to him. The text tells us that Jesus had a clear sense of direction and purpose after he spent the evening in prayer. “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” Is this not what we need too? Don’t we also need a clear sense of direction and purpose?

I’m convinced that God wants to give us the direction and sense of mission we desire and need. This is why we seek God in prayer, and since we are a community and in this journey with Jesus together, this is why seek God in prayer together. Since we need to hear from God, this is why we should not fill up all the space with words, so that God can also speak words to us. Let us have a holy conversation, a dialog, with God. Let us do this together as a community.

I watched the movie Becket recently. The story is strong and the acting compelling. Burton and O’Toole were both up for best actor. An amazing story indeed. Thomas Becket, murdered December 29, 1170, was a most unlikely candidate for Archbishop. It was a political appointment that backfired on King Henry II. Becket is portrayed in the movie as finding his purpose in life not in political power and privilege but in defending the glory of God. The movie is a study of the transformation of Becket’s values and character. He became a man willing and able to stand up to the king and paid for his convictions with his life. Four years later the king submitted himself to public humiliation at the demand of the pope, being whipped by the monks of Canterbury as penance for the part he played in the Becket’s murder. Based on a true tail, though retold with a degree of historical liberty, the movie is a reminder that character matters.

My used mac came with a copy of VMware Fusion, ver 2.0.5. This is not the latest so the current version may even be better. I created a vm of winxp, updated to sp3, and installed BibleWorks 8. This works fine as-is and enables my favorite bible program on my mac. But coolness is still coming! VMware Fusion has “Unity” mode. This integrates the windows apps into the mac desktop environment. You can even lock the BibleWorks icon in the dock. Now I can click the dock icon for BibleWorks and it first starts up the winxp guest and then BibleWorks. This same trick could be used for any windows software. The user experience is very close to a native mac app. There is a performance hit, but this is acceptable for me. I am running out of reasons to avoid switching to a mac. I still have one issue – flash. Why macs have to heat up when watching flash videos is a mystery. Maybe Adobe and M$oft have something going on.

For a tongue-in-cheek video on why someone might abandon mac’dom and return to pc’gehenna, see this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Apc0Zh9JU

http://www.SeminaryScholarship.com

Put my name in the “other” section of the “How’d you hear about the scholarship?” If you win, I’ll win too. Share the wealth!

apply for the Logos Seminary Scholarship (www.SeminaryScholarship.com).

Scholar George Forell put it more succinctly: Zinzendorf was “the noble Jesus freak.”¹

Imagine my surprise to find this terminology used and applied to someone from so long ago. I have not been able to find the actual citation even though the quote is often repeated. Since Forell wrote throughout the era of modern day Jesus Freaks, the phrase is not so surprising after all. But why apply it to Zinzendorf? Probably because of his commitment to community and rejection of church as institution. Zinzendorf was more interested in people living together well than people agreeing on how to think.

Zinzendorf was first a nobleman and politician and for a time took up government service. After about a year of this, he decided to abandon the life of the elite and rather build a community where people were free to worship God without the trappings of institutional structure. He hoped that people could live together well without hierarchy and without focusing on doctrinal division. His emphasis on relationships and genuine concern for the well being of others provoked a response to a converted slave’s request that someone go and preach the gospel to slaves in the West Indies. A movement of missionaries was born.

The idea of living well together, as a community, and caring enough about others to go and tell of the good news, were characteristics of many of the Jesus Freaks of the era I grew up in. Of course Zinzendorf was not the first “Jesus Freak” but he does stand in that tradition and leaves us an important testimony about “religion of the heart.”