Stu's Blog

Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. 19 And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 21 Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” (Mt 8:18–22).

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.

Slovak violist Lukáš Kmit performs with great poise!

Prayer ought to be a holy conversation, a dialog. Often we try to fill the silence with too many words. There is also a time to be still and listen. God may want to answer our prayers right on the spot if we will be still and listen. When Jesus had just begun his public ministry, had just called Simon, Andrew, James, and John, had begun to preach the gospel and heal people, we have a story of Jesus praying in Mark 1:35-38. There were important decisions to be made. Where should Jesus and his followers go next? Where should they focus their efforts? Where was the mission leading them? What did God want? Jesus prayed to find out. He needed clarity of direction and purpose. Listen to Mark’s gospel:

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.

I bought a used macbook about a year ago. I’m a diehard pc guy – there are ten pc’s vs one lonely mac in this house. Actually, I really don’t like pc’s except for Thinkpads, and the vast majority of my consulting has to do with Linux servers, but I am in the habit of using a pc to connect to the server, do email, browse the web, keep the books, study, etc. I’m a big fan of Logos and the mac version is almost up to snuff with the pc version. I use Finale which is available on both pc and mac. I’m weaning myself off of MS Office by forcing myself to use Open Office and Thunderbird. The one stickler is BibleWorks. There is no mac version nor is there any likely hood of a mac version ever emerging. I decided to try something and I am pleasantly surprised how well it works.

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:

If you’re already in or contemplating starting seminary, you could win some money and a logos Scholar’s library. It’s just a random drawing but only takes a few minutes to apply. Go here:

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).

The phrase “Jesus Freak” generally catches my attention. I always thought it to be a modern term referring to the radicals of the 1960′s or so who found Jesus and “freaked out” on this new way of life that is every bit as counter cultural as whatever they might have been pursuing. Having grown up in that era and experiencing the ultimate freak out of finding Jesus, or perhaps being found by Jesus, in my quest for the newest and best and most exciting and most fulfilling freak out, I tend to notice this phrase. I was reading about Count Zinzendorf this morning and read this:

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.”

You never know what might happen if you engage the culture. I’ve been thinking a lot about why evangelical conservative Christians don’t engage the culture more. I think there’s a lot of fear that holds us back. It might be dangerous. Others might disapprove. We might have been trained to avoid possible morally compromising situations. We were taught to “abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thess. 5:22). The NIV renders it “avoid every kind of evil,” KJV says “abstain from all appearance of evil,” and for some of us it has morphed to “avoid every appearance of evil,” or “flee from the appearance of evil.” This is what I was taught. The last two are not a proper translation as far as I know, but none the less became guiding principles for many of us. The meaning becomes: “The world is a dangerous place. Stay away.” From this it’s an easy step to: “Come into the church. It’s safe here.” The only problem is that it’s pretty hard to be missional if you’re bound tightly to the institution of the church. You actually have to get out and engage the culture.

I’ve been making forays into the culture. It might look a bit wild to those inside the Christian sub culture. See this video of an evening on the terrace at University of Madison.

The fellow dancing is one of the professors at the university. He was not a hippie nor was he at all inebriated. He was definatly having a good time. We had a nice chat after the set. I also chatted with another professor, a hair stylist who enjoys hang gliding and sky diving, and a bunch of other people who I’d never meet inside a church. There were about 1500 people out on the terrace that night. I’m thinking more and more about how I must be more missional and must therefore intentionally make forays into the culture. By the way, it was a lovely evening.

Couldn’t help myself… Today’s reading has Thomas à Kempis imagining a conversation between Christ and a disciple.

I shall teach you those things which are right and pleasing to Me. Consider your sins with great displeasure and sorrow, and never think yourself to be someone because of your good works. You are truly a sinner. You are subject to many passions and entangled in them. Of yourself you always tend to nothing. You fall quickly, are quickly overcome, quickly troubled, and quickly undone. You have nothing in which you can glory, but you have many things for which you should think yourself vile, for you are much weaker than you can comprehend. ¹

And so on, etc., etc., etc. I am determined to get to the end of this book, but this is pretty depressing stuff. I question how helpful it is to engage in extended self scrutiny and abasement. This is essentially omphaloskepsis in search of sanctification.