Christmas From God's Side?

My dad used to say, “Never criticize the Indian, ‘til you walk a mile in their moccasins.”  It’s an old saying, but the invitation behind it contains great wisdom, especially in a world that seems to reinforce self-centered perspectives on how we should be living life.  The meaning behind the old proverb is simple; until you can live and experience life as if you are inside of another individual’s head and heart, you will never know how they feel or think, nor why they do what they do.

For example, my old surfing buddy is ten years my junior.  One day, after a heavy day of surfing, I remember telling him, “just wait until you’re 40!”  Then, ten years later, on another surfing occasion, I said, “just wait until you’re 50!”  It’s funny how our perspectives can get turned back on us.  Now, as I near 60 years of age, and complain about the years of wear and tear on my body to those with a few more years under their belt, they often reply with the same phrase, “just wait!”  

What these more mature citizens mean is that when I reach their status in life I will begin to see things from their perspective and understand from a first person experience what it is like to be them and walk in their shoes.  In other words, my complaints are relative and only a glimpse of some others experience in a more profound way.

We are by nature, egocentric.  This is not a criticism, but more a testimony that we see the world through our eyes, our ears and our experiences.  It is very hard to step into someone else’s “shoes,” and gain an empathetic sense of the world and someone else’s life experience.  When these rare opportunities do come our way, we become open to epiphanic-type manifestations. It is in these moments that we may experience extraordinary empathy.

Take Christmas for example.  We all experience Christmas in a general way.  Yet, each of us also experiences Christmas in a subjective way through personal perspective.  In the real world this means living the season with both positive and less positive feelings based on your personal interaction with the influences that bear on your life. 

Christmas is lived and experienced for our side, with the perspective of humanity in all shapes, conditions, level of faith or sense (expectation) of the season.  No matter what our individual interaction and emotional response – even for people of faith in God through Jesus Christ – it’s always from our perspective.

I invite you to join me in a guided experiment. Let’s step outside of ourselves for just a moment. Now, I want you to imagine Christmas not from your experience, your history, your hurts and not even your expectations, but imagine Christmas from God’s side. What do you think or feel Christmas is like from God’s perspective?  If you did know, how might your experience of Christmas change or even deepen? 

I know it seems an impossible task given our nature to see life from the subjective side of things. However, we do have some solid evidence as to how God views Christmas.

During Advent, I am offering a sermon series exploring this idea of Christmas from God’s side.  Many of us have longed for Christmas to be not so much about us, but about what God did and is doing through Jesus’ entry into our world and our humanity. It’s a fair exploration, because if God, through His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ, was willing to “walk a mile in our moccasins,” in order to reach us in our humanness and bring wholeness, why shouldn’t we be willing to see “Christmas from God’s side.”  

Are You A Vagabond Or A Vision Vessel?

It's a good question.  I think all of us at one point of time or another experience a bit the vagabond life. 

Vagabond in the sense represented in “hobo-life.”  It is the term that has historically been used for a person who wanders from place to place.  It’s a bit like strolling around with no defined home or place to live.  Hollywood glamorized the vagabond with the hobo image – a person who lives a carefree life of riding the rails to where ever they may lead. In the 60’s we would call them “flower children.”  However, in real life it must also be an unsettling existence.  In a spiritual life, it’s the essence of lostness!   

Since my early twenties, I would not consider myself a vagabond but I did have seasons of wandering with no clear direction.  In my elementary years I saw a great entrepreneurial opportunity by creating a Dog Circus and charging the neighbors 15 cents to come and see the performance. 

 

In my early twenties, I built surfboard in the old office at my father’s cemetery.  It was a dead-end business!  I know my parents were wondering if I would ever find a “real job.”  Then I began to entertain the idea of ministry and that confirmed to them I would probably live the vagabond life forever!

  

 

I know some of us are still a bit vagabondish.  Even in our adults lives many of us are still unsure about who we are or what we are supposed to be “when we grow up.”  We may not be hobos, but it is nonetheless an unsettling existence.  Being vagabondish in our spiritual life is also living a sense of lostness by wandering around visionless. 

 

When I am without a vision I just sort of meander about without much direction.  When I don’t have a set known path, I can drive miles out of the way.  I just keep pushing where I am not focused.  However, when I have a focal point - meaning a clear focused vision on a future - I can really get energized and productive.  I think most of us are like this.

 

Rather that the senseless wandering vagabond, a more helpful image is that of a vessel. A vessel is a peson thought of as being the receiver or repository of the spiritual influence.  God calls us to a fixed faith, secure in His abode.  This does not mean will live at the same address our entire life.  In fact, following Jesus is an adventure to go.  However, Jesus doesn’t intend us to stroll about in our spiritual life, wandering with no fixed vision-point.  What we really are called to be are Vision Vessels!

 

Too many Christians today find themselves living a vagabond spirituality.  The hard reality is that without vision there is no future hope.  When there is vision, there is life - there is a future!   Faith has often been defined by believing without seeing.  From another point of view faith is vision! 

 

 So, is vision missing in our faith?  Is vision the secret to more fulfilling life a faith?  For the next four weeks at Markham Woods, we will continue with our new sermon series Living Vision Life.  Come and see - life visions are still possible.

 

 

Frozen In Time

For those of you with small children, the word “frozen” probably sends chills down your spine.  Just like frostbite, over exposure to the animated movie “Frozen” and its theme song, “Let it Go” may send you running for ear muff protection!  However, a few weeks ago, I was exposed to another kind of “frozen” that sent chills down my spine.  In this case, it was not a movie, but something incredible we experienced simply because it was frozen in time.

 

Mary Magdalene is a well known character in the Gospel story. She was among the group of women that supported Jesus’ ministry.  Names mean things in the Bible and in the case of Mary, it tells us were she is from – Magdalena, in Galilee. 

 

On our recent trip to the Israel, we were able to experience the results of one of the most recent and important excavations in the Galilee.  It was Magdalena!  Historians have known in general where Magdalena was however, until recently, no one had ever found the Synagogue.

 

Not to burst any bubbles, but most of the sites in the Holy Land are reconstructed.  In many cases, what you actually see is a newer structure built over the original first century site.  Rarely do you see or step into a first century building that Jesus personally entered, much less worshiped in.  Magdalena is the exception to that rule.  Certainly, Jesus would have worshiped in the synagogue at Magdalena! 

 

The reason we were able to stand inside the synagogue and see the seats, the table on which the scroll would have been placed, even see the red plaster designs on the synagogue’s walls, was because Magdalena had been frozen in time.  Israel is situated on a fault line which means it is vulnerable to occasional seismic activity. 

 

 

 

 

At some point there was a huge mudslide from a nearby hill which completely buried the Synagogue of Magdalena.  Now it is uncovered once more.  

 

 

 

 

 

It was surreal to walk through the first century

Synagogue and to realize we were experiencing a worship space that 2,000 years earlier, Jesus would have also experienced.  I can tell you, it gave me more than chills to be in a building where Jesus sat and worshiped.

 

 

I know the mudslide that preserved the Synagogue of Magdalena must have been devastating to the people living there, but it also was the reason we have the opportunity to see and experience an authentic “Jesus place of worship.”  In a strange way, this place that was frozen in time, made Jesus seem more alive, more personal -- more than a story.

 

It can be easier than you think to leave Jesus as a story that is inked on paper.  It’s safer and less costly that way.  Besides, 2,000 years was a long time ago and Galilee is on the other side of the world.  I guess, for some, Jesus may be like Magdalena – an image from the past - frozen in time.  My experience at the Synagogue at Magdalena was just the opposite.  It was further confirmation that Jesus is very much alive.  

 

Jesus is as active today as when he long ago walked into synagogues like Magdalena and spoke, taught, touched and healed people like you and me.  Our faith does have historic roots, but it’s not history.  We can walk with Jesus and talk with Jesus every moment of every day through his Spirit – the Holy Spirit.

 

 

You may not be able to walk in Magdalena, but you can have a similar experience.  For a spiritual exercise, ask yourself how much of your image of Jesus is frozen in time and how much more of him might become more active and alive in your heart?  The stones, pillars and colored plaster of the Magdalena Synagogue were amazing to see, but the voice of Jesus that speaks to our hearts is alive and present – anything but frozen!  

Beam Me Up

It’s funny how words come and go out of style.  Today it seems like you can almost invent any words you want.  And, if you can get enough people to go along with your “strategery,” your inventive word might be formally added into the lexicon of popular speech.

 It’s sometimes sad to see a word go.  Until recently the word “religious” was held in high esteem, but even that word is diminishing from our vocabulary.  

Very few folks under the age of 40 would be caught dead claiming that they are “religious.”  More and more people today will self identify as “spiritual,” but not “religious.”  Being spiritual is good, but being religious - not so much.

To hijack a famous line of Dorothy’s from the Wizard of Oz, words seem to “come and go so quickly here.”  I bet just about everyone would agree that there was a time when, “beam me up Scotty” would have had no meaning at all. 

Prior to Captain Kirk’s famous command to be transported into or out of the heavens, the phrase may only have referred to lifting up a piece of lumber to an awaiting carpenter.

For all you Trekkies out there, I have some disappointing news.  Captain Kirk was not the first person to be beamed up or to have their face turned sparkly upon being energized!

Moses may have been the first human to be beamed up and energized.  When the Israelite where in the wilderness of the Sinai, God called Moses to climb to the top of Mt. Sinai.  

This was the time and place where God established His great covenant with Israel, and where Moses received the Ten Commandments.  We all know the Hollywood version of the story, but Hollywood forgot about the beaming!

You won’t believe what happened when Moses ascended through the smoke and thunder to reach the top of Mt. Sinai.  According to Scripture, either Moses or the mountain was “beamed up” to heaven to be in God's presence, or, “God bowed down the heavens onto Mt. Sinai and Moses (Deut. 4:11). 

Whatever your stance on what was “beamed,” one thing is certain – Moses encountered God and that spiritual moment visibly altered him (For a scholarly look into this see The Bible As It Was, by James L. Kugel).

Here’s the strange part.  Moses not only was “beamed” back down from the heavenly realm, he was beaming.  It was like rays of light were beaming from his head.  The literal Hebrew for the phenomena emanating from his head can be translated as “horns of light” (Exodus 34:29-35). 

In fact, some of the ancient paintings and sculptures depicting Moses show him with horns!  One of the most famous is Michelangelo’s rendition.

Did you know that Moses had horns?  It may not have been a religious encounter, but you can’t get much more spiritual than this.  If you’re a person who identifies themselves as spiritual but not religious, I invite you to come and worship with us this Sunday as we conclude our series on the Kingdom of Heaven with “Looking Heavenly.”  Not even Captain Kirk was ever energized like Moses.  What about us?