Reconisdering Lineages

I was recently working with a student on the Ellis Island website.  He was doing some work for history and was getting quite excited.  He’d found records of his ancestor’s immigration to America.  This child had been born in Russia and adopted in the U.S. as an infant.  The records were not those of his birth family but those of his adopted family.    And the child– normally a very unmotivated and hard-to reach student– was fascinated.

As I began reading Mark 1 today, this student came into my mind.  As you may know, Mark 1 begins with Jesus’ lineage.

It’s almost a stereotype: long lists of who sired who is the very definition of what some people find boring in the bible.  I’d be a liar if I claimed that I read them with same intensity that I’d bring to Jesus’ words.  But I think there’s a lesson floating around in my student’s excitement.

I didn’t ask him, but I suspect what might have been fascinating for him is the idea that he was confronted with the reality that there were people who came before.  Abstractly, we all know that we had great grandparents, and great grand parents, and great grand parents.  But it’s hard, I think, for any of us, to really recognize that this nearly endless string of people were real people with flaws and talents and dreams and fears,  until we are confronted with evidence for their existence.

The mere fact that our ancestors exist is not nearly as interesting as the realization that they made decisions which impact us today.  If we are not adopted, they even carried some of the genes which we carry today.   Their is this unbroken line, this invisible cord that links us.

I wonder if the people at Jesus time, and the generations after, I wonder if those lineages impacted them in the same way.  I wonder if the lists of names, dates, and marriages in Mathew and everywhere else in the bible were a way of not only making the figures seem real but of also connecting them to the people reading.

To the best of my knowledge, I have no Jewish ancestry.  At first blush, it might seem that the lineages are therefore irrelevant to me.

But that student I mentioned before?  He was adopted.  He had no biological ties to the records he was discovering.  Yet I don’t think he could have been more excited, even if he had been born into his adopted family.

And so it is with me: I’m adopted, too.  I’m adopted into Christ’s family.  And if you follow him, you are, too.

We may not carry the same genes as those people, listed in those lineages.  We may not be closely biologically related.  But we are family anyway.  They are interconnected with each other, and also interconnected with us.  They made decisions which impact us, they changed the world.

And maybe this isn’t motivation enough to do an exhaustive reading of every lineage in the bible.  But it gives me pause to read them a little closer than I might.  These people are my ancestors, after all.  They walked the earth, and they breathed the air, and they had hopes, and dreams, and fears…  and that’s a pretty amazing thing.

 

On Our 13th Anniversary

I thought once

that you would spelunk my soul.

Find this undiscovered country in me.

Reveil these hidden places that had once lain dormant.

 

I didn’t see how radical it is,

being married.

It’s so much bigger

than just turning a light into the dark places.

 

I am not who I would have been

if you’d never come into my life.

Sharing our lives is not an act of discovery.

We are not explorers.

 

Instead, we are inventors.

We are inventing our lives together.

We are inventing ourselves together.

You

have created

me.

My day-mare

As I was laying half awake, this series of scenes played themselves out in my head.  I’d call it a day dream, except it wasn’t all peaceful and happy.

It resolved around my current health struggles, and the impact they are having on my career.  The drama in my head ended with me out of work, on disabality or unemployment or something.  The feeling of being that way was really tough.  I had this sensation that to be that way, to get money that way, would be a terrible place to be.

Please hear me out.  I’m doing quite the opposite of judging somebody who is not able to enjoy gainful employment, for whatever reason.

I had this feeling that if I ended up that way, it would be my illness, my brokeness that is providing for my family.  I had this sense that to mantain that way of being I’d have to almost nurture my sickness, that it would become the center of who I am.   It would be like I’d be a professional patient: my way of providing for the family.

(I hope it doesn’t feel this way to people who are recieving disabality.  Again, this is a system we all pay in to and are all entitled to.  I’m thankful that it is there.  But none of this makes it any fun.)

On the heels of this was the realization that it’s an awesome thing to be able to provide for my family through the better parts of me, through my skills and through my hard work.  It’s a pretty awesome system, for all it’s problems, that allows us to make the world a better place and care for our families at the same time.

If you’re somebody who is working hard, making the world a better place, and taking care of your family, I hope you’ll share with me a sense of how blessed it is to be able to do this.

Grieving for those we’ve never known

In the amazing, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”, Don Miller describes how he grew up with out a dad.  He eventually decided to investigate, to try and find his father.  Eventually, he gets information that leads him to believe that his father has passed away.  He writes, “… to be honest, I missed him.  I grieved the death of my father, I suppose.  And it’s an odd thing to grieve somebody you never knew.”

I had to stop reading then.  This just hit me somewhere so deep I don’t have a name for it.  I wasn’t effected for any sort of obvious reason.  My dad is alive, has always been part of my life, and I have a great relationship with him.  It was something else.

Without quite knowing why, I thought about how my wife and I lost a child while the child was still in the womb.  She was just out of the first trimester.   This child would have been our second.  We were so ill equipped to be parenting a second child at that point: I was unemployed.  Our marriage was a bit of a mess.  We were still new to the whole parenting thing.  We were young, which isn’t a problem, and we were immature, which is a problem.

And yet: I grieved.

I grieved for a being, who by in reasonable definition, I didn’t know.  I still grieve a little bit today.  I wonder what it would be like to be the dad of four children instead of 3.  I have this real sense of loss.  Whenever the thought or subject comes up– in conversation or just in my brain– I gasp a little bit.

Miller is right.  It’s an odd thing to grieve the loss of somebody you never knew.  But it’s built into us.  It’s hard for me to imagine growing up with out a dad.  But even if I did… if I was in his shoes, I’d feel the same way.  I’d grieve.

There is some element of grief and loss that is personal.  My grandmother used to make me laugh.  I miss her ridiculous and vulgar sense of humor.   We don’t have these connections with a person we never met.  We don’t know what we are missing.  In this sense, it is odd to grieve over a person we’ve never met.

I think that isn’t the whole story though.  I think that there is something more to grief than just the personal.  This is why we grieve for those we’ve never really known, despite the oddness.

I think that we are constructed to be in certain relationships.  We are made to be sons and daughters.  We are made to be brothers and sisters.  Many of us are made to be parents.   We have these holes inside of us that can only be filled by these relationships.

I wonder if when Don Miller felt grief over the dad he never met, if it’s coming from this universal element of grief.  I wonder if when I think of the child we lost, if it’s the idea that I could have been a dad to somebody else and I lost that oppurtunity.

I guess I’m supposed to wrap up with some pithy and optimistic thought… but I just don’t have it in me, right now.

Wine, blood, and Prosperity Gospel

There’s a part of me that wishes that Jesus’ transformation of my life was like one of those info-mercials.  I wish that there was some prayer that was as easy as an 800 number.  I wish that if I would get a bunch of stuff, I wish that if I order now, they’ll double my order, and rush it to me with some sort of other irrelevant bonus gift.

Of course the best parts of me don’t feel this way.  I work at being more mature than all that.   But it’s a temptation.  And I’m not alone.

There are people who believe that Jesus brings about an increase in our physical situations:  Wealth, or health, or stuff.

There are of course, many problems with this belief.  One is that it’s really an act of idolatry.  It’s taking our cultures shallow materialism and pretending that this is not only consistent with Jesus message, it’s going so far as if this is what Jesus actually said.

If somebody were of a rather knuckleheadish mind set, they might say, “Look, Jeff.  Jesus transformed the water into wine.  And you’ve been all focused on how this is a metaphor for what Jesus wants to do.  It’s a transformation outside of us.  Therefore, the transformation that Jesus promises is an external one.”

If somebody said that, I would tell them that they are of a rather knuckleheadish nature.  And then I would say that they aren’t looking at the bigger picture.

Because the wine is Jesus blood.  It comes from his inside.  And it’s meant to be taken into our insides.  It’s about inner transformation, not outer accumulation.

It Only Looks Like We Agree

Sometimes we think we are agreeing with people because we are using the same words as them.  The problem is that these words don’t mean the same thing to both people.   As a result, there’s this hidden disagreement.  This fundamental schism.  Sometimes internal conflicts within a group became so nasty and are so characterized by mutual sense of betrayal because this disagreement suddenly comes to light.  Both sides feel like the other has been hiding, or lying, or suddenly changed it’s mind.

Consider, for example, this idea that I’ve been bandying about for these last umpteen posts.  I’ve been saying “Jesus wants to transform our lives.”  But I haven’t really explained what I mean.  It’s possible that somebody could have been reading along, and thinking that we were in utter agreement, because they might also believe that Jesus wants to transform our lives.  But this person might have a very different idea about what that sentence means. 

If you only look at the fact that Jesus turned water into wine, you could stop there.   Even if you agreed with me, that this is a metaphor for what Jesus does to our lives, you might end up believing some very different things than I do.

Because Jesus says and does more than this.  He relates wine itself to his blood.  And he says that he is the source of living water.  You don’t have to read very deeply into his words to come away with the idea that living water is almost like Jesus blood itself.

I think it’s important to realize that we started with water and we end up with Water.  I think if you start with water and end up with wine, you end up with some dangerous ideas about the sort of transformation that Jesus has in mind for us.  But more on that next time.

There is water, and then there is WATER

When I try to bring to mind the biblical uses for the idea of water, a few things pop into my mind.

The first is the importance of water in several stories: The parting of the red sea, Jesus walking over the water, the flood in Noah’s time, Jonah’s near-drowning, Moses bringing the spring out of the ground…

Then I think about the times and places that water seems to be important.  Jesus says that he is the living water.  Revelations promise about the river of life. 

It takes a little more thinking  to realize that sometimes water is just ordinary.  I’ve been fixated lately on how it’s water that gets turned into wine.  But there is also the time where Jesus says that those who bring even a glass of water to his followers will be blessed.  (I probably killed the details of that quote, but hopefully you get my point.)   John The Baptist’s statement that he baptizes with water, but Jesus baptism will be bigger and greater.  (Feeling tired tonight.  I’ll have to look it up later.  What was it he said “I baptize with water but Jesus will baptize with fire?  Or was it with the Spirit?)

The interesting thing about these is that you could put the word, “just” in front of the water.  Even if you just bring a cup of water… Though I just baptize with water.

I guess I’m trying to establish the idea is that there is water, and then there is Water.  Their is boring old H20, and then there is the water of life.  I think recognizing this is an important thing.

From Blood back to water…

I think I’m into the home stretch on this series of posts about water, wine, and blood.

And where I’m ending up is kind-of where I began.

I began with water.  And that’s where I’ll end.

Many great spiritual journeys are kind-of circular.  We come back to the place where we began.  And the place is exactly the same.  Except that we are different, and no it’s not at all the same.  We begin journeys thinking that it’s a new external world we end up with.  But we return to the place we began, having been changed by the journey.  It was never about the outside world at all.

And so Jesus turns our world from water to wine.  And the wine, he turns into his blood.  And his blood…

his blood is water.   Back where we started.  But everything is different, now.   Because our worlds have been turned to wine, and the wine has been turned into Jesus blood, by the time our worlds turn back into water, nothing is at all like it was.

I have this really clear picture in my head.  But I’m trying to say everything all at once.  So maybe next time, I’ll start a little slower.

The questions within The Question

Vampire chic not with standing, the idea of drinking someones blood is gross under most circumstances.

I can only imagine how much more this would have been the case thousands of years ago, when Jesus held that wine glass up.  The people he was speaking to lived by a strict code.  They had instructions about not touching dead flesh.  They had expectations about not drinking blood, whether it be human or animal.  And here was the guy, who claimed to be the continuation of that code, declaring that they remember him by drinking his blood.

When Jesus said that, he new his time was growing short.  He no longer had the luxury of soft pedalling the issue.  He no longer had the time to squander on social niceties.

(But really, He had all the time in the world… It’s more us, his followers, who are running out of time.)

In inviting them to drink Jesus blood, he’s asking his followers several powerful, mind-shattering questions all at one:

Do you trust me?

Do you realize that I have to bleed for you?

Are you willing to throw away everything your tradition tells you if it contradicts what I tell you?

Are you prepared to choose me over your instincts and common sense?

The thing is, we’re still faced with those very same questions today.

In order to get the blood, you have to bleed.

Why did Jesus have to suffer?

Because we needed his blood.

And in order to get his blood… he had to bleed.

He was a grape in life.  And then he was turned into wine: Smashed.  Made into something else, bigger, in a way, greater.

 

Anything else would have been only a covering.  Cosmetic.  Skin deep.  Jesus way was to come within us, and to transform us from the inside out.  We had to drink him in.

I’m trying to edge at a truth that can’t be expressed head-on.  But there’s also something else in the midst of all this.

In Jesus invitation to drink the wine in remembrance of him there is this challenge.  This wierdness.  But wierdness is too mild of a word.  It’s a perversion that we’d drink somebody’s blood.  And that, in a way, is the whole point.