Posture

Earlier this week, I learned a lesson in posture. It's one of those freak chance moments in the universe that I can't stop thinking about.

As most of you know, I am currently serving as a chaplain in a large hospital system in a diverse metropolitan area. It's not uncommon in this circumstance for me to come across patients whose language I do not speak...and who do not understand my language. My hospital has a fantastic solution to this problem. It's called a blue phone.

A blue phone plugs in like a regular phone, but instead of one handset, it has two. As a provider, I pick up the handset on the left, press a couple of buttons, and I am connected with a service where I need only tell them what language I need to speak. They then place an interpreter between the two handsets so that as I speak into one, the translator hears me and speaks into the other so the patient and I can have a conversation. It's a beautiful process; I love the honor it gives to an individual that they are able to be heard even in a place that doesn't always understand them.

The problem is that this week, just a couple of minutes in, the translator in the magic of the blue phone decided to leave the conversation, leaving me with a now-smiling (minutes ago, sullen) patient in the middle of a story about her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Energetic, joyful, hopeful...all in a language I could not understand. (The translator actually told me she was hanging up and thanked me for using her service, then clicked off before I could protest. She did not say goodbye in the other language, so I'm not sure how much the patient understood.)

So here I was with this woman looking up at me with hope and sparkle and life in her eyes, feeling engaged and jabbering away, connected to me as though I could still understand her. At that moment, the only thing I had to communicate with her was...me.

It was awkward for a moment. I'm sure you've seen comedians talk about this sort of thing, how when we're talking to a person who doesn't understand us, we slow down and say our words both slowly and loudly, as if that's going to suddenly make this woman understand English. She doesn't know what I said (which was: "I'm really sorry. I cannot understand you. I do not know your language," except of course, I used the actual name of her language. As if that mattered). But with my body, I think I was able to convey something.

I did my best to look apologetic. To bend slightly forward and over in humility and deference, to raise my hands a little with openness to acknowledge my short-coming, maintaining eye contact so that she would know at my heart, I was still engaged with her even though our conversation had ended.

It was the most powerful thing I did all day.

It's got me thinking about the way I carry myself, the way other people might see me, the way I use my body when I interact with someone. It's so important in our culture, and we are trained, that we need to show confidence and competence. As a chaplain, I kind of default to that. I want people to see that I believe in what I'm doing, I believe in why I'm doing it, and I believe in whatever is about to happen between us. I want them to see that I'm solid in my faith in God, that I'm not going to be shaken by their questions. There's a lot that confidence says.

What it never says, though, is I'm connected with you. Never. So as I think about what I was trying to say in that room, beyond words that were spoken in vain, I'm thinking about the other people in my life who don't need to see me confident and comfortable in myself; they need to see me connected with them.

Because the truth is there are some people who are never going to hear my words. I can scream them in their face, and there will be no recognition. There are a lot of reasons for that - broken relationships, general dysfunction, unforgiveness, or something as simple as a difference in personalities, relationship styles, or personal needs. And I wonder what I'm saying to those persons. I'm wondering if I'm showing them what I mean despite the absence of words. I'm wondering beyond the concept of language, what I'm communicating in the human language.

Isn't that what it is? Our bodies are the human language. Certainly, certain things have different interpretations by culture, but for the most part, if I were to show you by my posture what I was saying, you'd generally get the idea. You'd understand that I'm apologizing. You'd understand that I'm engaged. You'd understand that I'm sorry we're in this place, that there's a barrier between us that makes words impossible. I have found that across cultures.

I just haven't been using it effectively in my own. It's something to think about.

So how does the story end? After my physical apology, my posture of connectedness in disconnectedness, my patient began repeating one word to me in her native language, which also happens to be a loud language. I didn't know what she was saying. I didn't know if she was yelling. I couldn't tell by her face exactly what was behind this. I stayed connected with her for a few more seconds, though it felt like nearly forever. I hoped she felt the same sense of presence that I did, that despite our language barrier, we were still here with each other. Then with my apologetic posture holding, I smiled and made my leave from the room, repeating that one foreign word in my head.

I went straight to my phone and dialed a friend from church, who had been a missionary for us in that region of the world for quite awhile. I knew she would probably know what the word meant. I was trying to figure out what it was that this patient wanted from me, what it was I needed to do to respond to this word. Did I need to go back into the room and dial another interpreter? Had I left something hanging that the woman desperately wanted to say to me? Agonizing questions. Between the two of us - me not having any reference for the language but what I was phonetically able to take with me and my friend having a slightly different regional dialect - we were able to figure out what it was that was so important for this woman to say to me, what it was that she wanted me to hear.

It was "Thank you."

Rolling Stones

Can I ask you something about the Jesus story? My question this morning is this: who rolled the stone?

At the end of the Gospels, the Christ has been crucified and His body is placed in the tomb. A stone is rolled over the entrance and guards placed near the stone to ensure that the disciples don't try any funny business. Three days later, the stone is rolled away (as I have already suggested, likely from inside the tomb) and the Son of God walks out.

So I ask you again: who rolled the stone?

Every time I've heard this story, it's crafted in the way above, with periods and breaks in very deliberate places, whether written or spoken. And I've always had this impression that obviously, the guards rolled the stone. The stone was, after all, the primary barrier to keep Jesus in and the disciples out, so it must have been a construct of the Roman army. Mention of the stone, the way we tell it, always comes with the mention of the guards, so it's easy to assume this was an external obstacle, another pushing back between cultures, that God was going to have to overcome if He wanted to rebuild the temple in three days.

Then He comes walking out and we say Wow! They did everything they could to keep Jesus in the grave - including placing a giant boulder over His only escape - and He still walked the road to Emmaus. How awesome is our God!

Except...no. Such a stone was a part of every tomb, not just the Lord's. There are other Scriptures that talk about men in the grave and the stones rolled across the entrances there, too. I suppose on the practical side, this was so that any unsuspecting hiker seeking a little exploration or shelter wouldn't run into a decaying body...and also to protect the body from scavenging animals who might desecrate the man.

Sucks the life right out of the story, doesn't it?

Except...no. Although the stone would have been customary, a part of any traditional tomb burial, we are told something else about the Savior's stone. The Bible tells us who rolled it. It was Joseph. (Matthew 27:59-60)

Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple of Jesus who with a grief-stricken heart petitioned for and received the body of Jesus. With tears in his eyes, took that body and wrapped it in the traditional burial cloth. With sadness in his heart, placed his beloved Teacher in his own new tomb...it was this man who rolled the stone.

That makes the stone...an act of love.

That changes this story for me. A lot. And I'm not sure I can articulate all of the little ways that it does. We don't see anyone else asking for Jesus - those who have followed Him are mostly long gone, and those who are there (Mary Magdalene, for instance) would not have known what to do with the body had they taken it. Where is Mary, who lost years of her life to demon possession, going to put the flesh of the Messiah? She has no tomb. I am struck by the absolute aloneness of a Man who, when living, couldn't get away from the crowds if He tried. They praised Him in His living, bowed down before Him, deferred to His wisdom, begged for His healing, and now who will honor the crucified Christ? They all seem long gone.

What does it even mean to honor the crucified Christ?

We see this rich man give up his grave for the Lord. It's easy to say now that Joseph was content to let Jesus borrow the tomb, but that's not was Joseph was thinking. He didn't know Jesus was going to walk out of there. He gave His Teacher this gift freely, for no other reason than the customary honor of His body.

What of myself, or of my possessions, or of my riches, or even of my poverty, am I willing to give in the honor of the Lord? (Not in His honor, but in order to honor Him.)

We see this same man, no doubt anguished by his own grief, taking a deep breath, maybe a last wish, a last whispered prayer, and then completing the burial process by rolling a large stone over the entrance of the tomb, sealing off forever (or so he thinks) the dreams, the hope, the promise that he'd thought for sure would come from this man, the very things he'd spent the last few years of his life chasing as a disciple. All because that was where Jesus needed to be, whether Joseph understood or not that as the Sabbath approached, God's place was there were the man from Arimathea had placed Him.

It's probably this last scene that strikes me the most. I wonder how many of my dreams, my hopes, my plans, my promises that I am willing to close the door on even when Jesus says that's where He needs to be tonight. I'm aware of the heaviness in my heart just thinking about it, all of these things that I have worked toward, followed, prayed for, hoped for, all of these inklings that I have based my life on and gone after...what would it be like to roll the stone and shut them away, even with the promise that it had to be that way?

Or even more profoundly, more aching in my heart, I wonder if I'd have the strength to put my Savior there. This is the hardest part of faith for me most days, accepting that sometimes God has to be somewhere I wouldn't expect Him. And He asks me to let Him be there. And I wonder if God told me, I have to die, if I could be the one to love Him enough to let Him. If I could be the one to honor His plan. If I could be the one to honor Him. If God says to me, It has to be this way, and I don't understand, could I be the one to roll the stone?

Galilean Idol

I've thought it odd for quite a long time that we, as Christians, wear the cross around our necks. The cross, after all, is the mechanism of death of the very God we claim to be praising with the emblem. Had Jesus lived and died a criminal's death today, would future generations (or perhaps even this one) wear a little syringe around their necks?

It's easy to see how the cross may have become our idol. But maybe that's what it was always meant to be.

Let's look at some of the text from the book of John. From 3:14:

As Moses lifted up the snake on a pole in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. Then everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

Familiar with the story? You can find it in Numbers 21. The nation of Israel is in the midst of their wandering, and they are rebellious, not to mention whining and complaining. God's had enough. He sends poisonous snakes among them. Many are bitten, many die. The people run to Moses, repent, and beg for the Lords' mercy. God's answer is as follows:

The Lord said to Moses, 'Make a snake, and put it on a pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' (8)

It's kind of odd when you think about it. Here, we have an admittedly jealous God who has already told His people to have no other gods before Him, who has criticized and cursed idolatry, and He is telling the people to look not to Him for their healing, but to a snake. Not just any snake, but a snake made by human hands - an idol by every Old Testament definition of the word. And they were healed.

Flash forward a few thousand years, and here we are again with a people of God feeling bitten. There are snakes among them, and no man understands how to live. They are lost somewhere between the law and the Promise, just as the Israelites had been in the wilderness. On the one hand, they have the law and the teaching of Moses; on the other hand, Jesus continues to reform and remake that law in the image of the promise of the Messiah. But they aren't quite there yet. Nobody is. In the in-between, there is a treacherous trap and they are weary of trying to figure out which way to go. They whine. They complain. They feel bitten.

Then God raises up an idol - His own Son on a pole. Anyone, He says, who is bitten, can look at it and live. Anyone, He says, who is stuck between the law and the Promise can look to the crucified Christ for the answer. So we fix our eyes on Him.

It's a fine line, I know. It offends our sensibilities to consider the cross an idol. It's the cross, for crying out loud! But I think that's the point. The cross does not encompass the entirety of God, not by a long shot. It shows a large part of Him, but it's not the whole deal. And any time we are looking at something that is not the fullness of God, even if we connect it to the Holy Himself, it is less than He, and that makes it merely an image. And an image is an idol.

See, God is not defined by the cross. It shows us His undying love for us (in that dying sort of way). It shows us His sacrifice, His surrender. It shows us to what extremes He would go to reconcile us to Himself. But it doesn't show us either of the things we're dying to know about - it doesn't show us the law or the Promise. It is the life of Jesus that shows us the law; His resurrection shows us the Promise. This image...is neither.

This image is the wilderness. It's the wandering. It's the sight that's supposed to tide us over from here to there, in this place where we feel bitten by the world. It's this glorious show of God's tender care for us. Like the snake, this is the image of God made by human hands, hands that were content to crucify Him. He's given us this image to heal us, but by our hand, we created this God. We created the crucified Christ. To do any justice to the suffering of the cross, we must know that. We must understand, as God has laid out in His word, that this is an idol. He said it, not me.

Not all idols are bad things; it depends on what you're worshiping...and how. We have to remember this is God's healing for us, for now, for the in between. This is God's mercy in the desert. Between the law and the Promise, there is the crucified Christ. It's an idol, sure, but a holy one, and this image of God is our healing. That's how He planned it. That's how He gave it. That's how we made Him - lifted up, so that all who see the crucified Christ are healed.

The idol of Christ, for those days when we need an image of God to hold onto as we journey toward the Promise and the God who holds onto us.

Jealous of Jesus

Within the past week, an idea kind of seeped into my head and now, it's consumed my thoughts. I'm jealous of Jesus. It's not that the jealousy is overwhelming; it's why that has me thinking about my own life in relation to my God.

It's kind of an interesting thing to say, I know, and now that I've got you thinking, let me start by telling you why I find myself more than a little envious. It's not really the obvious things that your head might be jumping to right away. It's not that the Man was perfect. I don't sit around longing to be so perfect and sinless. (Sorry. I don't.) It's not the tremendous size of His following. (I have some encouraging blog statistics this year, but number still are not my priority.) It's not the closeness of His relationship with God. (Although, of course, that is admirable and aspiration-worthy.) It's not even how perfect His hair always looks in the portraits we paint of Him.

What makes me jealous of Jesus is His absolute confidence in who He was and the way He was so comfortable with that.

My mind goes to the scene when Jesus is about 12 and His family has ventured to the city for the Jewish festival. On the way home, they suddenly realize their emerging young man is not with them, and they set out in search for Him. They find Him in the temple, and His response is a confident, cool, "Of course this is where I am. Why would I be anywhere else?"

What were you doing at 12? Heck, what were you doing last week? What are you doing right now?

One of the reflections I have on my life, particularly in this exciting time of growth and change, is that I have spent a vast majority of my life asking for, and waiting on, permission to be the very thing that is so clear in my heart that I am created to be. I've been feeling things out, trying them on, waiting on someone to tell me whether it's ok or not ok to be this way. I have been harboring my heart, holding it close, protecting it from the idea that it just might not be ok to be fully who I am, although it's agonizing to be stuck just outside of the fullness of what God has put in me.

I imagine I'm not alone.

I think about little Jesus walking into the temple, taking a seat among the teachers and not expecting anyone to ask Him to move to the children's table. And not moving if they did. I think about how long He might have waited to speak, whether His holy humility would have given some deference to those for whom this had been a life, or if He was anxious to begin His riddles and revelations, to show them that this could also be a calling. I think about how there wouldn't have been one tinge of arrogance in His voice, because He wouldn't have needed it. I think about why He wouldn't have needed it, which was only because He never felt the need to prove Himself. 

I wonder what that must be like.

As much as I spend my life asking for permission, I think I spend equally as much of it trying to prove myself. Like I just keep digging holes that I then somehow have to fill. Like the world may be tolerably accepting of my desire to be here, to do this or that thing that God has put in me, but like if I have any hope of staying, I have to earn it.

But now, I'm thinking about my Savior's beautiful life and...I wish I had His confidence. I wish I had His comfort with Himself...with myself. I think about what it might be like to trust my heart, to lean into this keen God-sense inside of me and decide simply to be as I've been created to be and decide that it's perfectly ok to be that. I think about what it might be like to be such..without arrogance, without feeling like I have to defend or to prove myself in that identity. If I could be like Jesus and just know, and be ok in knowing, and simply live, and be ok in simply living.

It seems kind of a mild aspiration, I know. If you could be anything that Jesus was, why wouldn't you want His sinlessness? Why wouldn't you want His grace? Why wouldn't you want His teaching ability or His power to build a name?

I guess it's because I know I wasn't created for that. I'm never going to be sinless. I'm not sure I can imagine what perfect grace looks like; I have a hard time finding it even for the girl in the mirror. I have my own way with words, but I don't think much about big stages or small hillsides. And in the eternal scheme of things, my name is only a name; it doesn't have the power of the name of God.

But I was created to be me. I was created a certain way and of all the things that Jesus had and that He did so well, I think that's the one that we have in common - we were each created to be a certain way. That's the one thing we can both touch, and I'm longing right now to be able to touch that with the same confidence and comfort that He did. I want to know that powerfully who I am. It's the makings of a beautiful life.

And truth? I wouldn't mind His portrait-perfect hair, either.

Irrational

I'm struggling with today's post, the last in Fear Week. If you haven't been following along, I encourage you to go back to Monday and read this week's posts. They all have something to do with fear.

I began the week by saying that one of the reasons I wanted to write about fear is because it is so pervasive. That is, underneath every struggle you think you're having - insecurity, grief, doubt, growth, trouble, trial - is some measure of fear that is actually driving that secondary emotion. As I wrap up the week, I'm wondering what it is we're really afraid of.

Rhetorical question, kind of. I know the answer, and the answer is that we're usually afraid of the opposite of what we think we're afraid of. Fear's tricky like that. And the reason I'm struggling with today's post is because I'm trying to dissect this, but I can't get to a point where it's not ridiculous and irrational. So I end up just laughing - at my own fears, at human nature, at the seemingly-too-simple answer to a life afraid.

Here's what I mean.

Our biggest fear, I think, is not that things might not be. Our biggest fear is that things are. We're afraid of being "too competent" at our work, but at the same time, we're really afraid that we're actually really good at it. We're afraid of things being "too hard," but in fact, what we're afraid of is that this doesn't seem hard enough. We're afraid of being abandoned, but what we're really afraid of is that someone won't run away. This was working out so much better in my head.

But the same is true of God. I think we spend our time thinking we're afraid that God won't be what He claims to be, that He won't be constant and He won't be merciful and He won't be true. Yet what we're really afraid of is that God is all of those things. As much as we seem to prepare ourselves, in fear, that He might not be...we're actually kind of really afraid that He is.

As I write that, maybe one of my questions is answered. I've been trying for days (in reflection on this post) to figure out what it is about this fear of things just being the way they are that makes us so afraid. Every answer I've come up with is a dead end because when you think about it, it's ridiculous. As I write, however, I am aware:

Each of these fears, this paralyzing realization that something in life might be true, is a conflict with our paradigm. If God is Who He says He is, if we are who we are created to be, and if all of that is enough, it brings us face-to-face with our brokenness in the presence of unbrokenness, and we don't really have a paradigm for unbroken things.

We are a people who spend our lives as fixers. If not fixers, then at least adapters. We spend our days trying to figure out how to make this broken thing called life "work." We spend our time making concessions and amendments and adaptations to kind of fit things into our box. Yet when we come to the truth that some things simply are as they are, we become painfully aware that some things will never fit into our box. Most of us can't live with that.

We can't live with a Love that isn't merited, so we are afraid of a God who is purely loving. We can't live with a gift that is truly free, so we are afraid of a God who has given Himself. We can't live with the idea that doors might be open, paths might be cleared, that there might actually be a place for us because we're lived our whole lives trying to create our own place, so we're afraid of this thing that feels so right.

You've probably heard it said, and maybe even said it, that something is "too good to be true." But what if the essence of life is that things are simply true...and they are good? It leaves us with a lot of mess on our hands to figure out what to do with.

And a lot of time where it feels like we're doing nothing.

Think about the unbroken things in your life - tangible or intangible. What do you do with them? It feels like nothing, right? The glass candleholder on the coffee table that you only pick up every now and then to dust. (Right, like any of us dust any more.) The car that waits in the driveway for your next outing but is full on fluids, tires full of air, plenty of gas in the tank. When stuff works, when it's not broken, there's not a lot to do with it and we feel like we're spending our time just sitting around, doing nothing, waiting on the next thing.

That's why, I think, we're so afraid that things might be. Because our biggest fear (and I'm not going to qualify this with a why. I'm not sure I know) is that if things simply are and if that's ok, we won't have anything to do!

Heaven forbid.

But I want to offer an invitation, maybe. And I'm making this up as I go along. Think about those unbroken things that you're not thinking about right now. Think about the things that are working, so you don't have to think about them, so you don't have to do anything. Do you realize what you get to do when you don't have to make things work?

You get to use them.

You use that candleholder to create an ambiance, to put light in a dark room, to cover the odor of whatever that thing is that smells so bad and if you could ever find it, you wouldn't need the candle. You get in the car and drive to a place where you have the chance to encounter many other people. It gets you out and about and into the world. When stuff isn't broken and you're not spending your time fixing it, you get to use it.

The same is true of God. If God simply is and is fully what He is and we figure out how to be ok with that, then we get to use God. We get to use love and mercy. We get to use sacrifice and grace. We get to use goodness and holiness and purity. We get to use them without making them and without fixing them because they already are.

I think we were created for this. It feels too simple, too easy. I already want to make it harder. I don't have a paradigm for the unbroken things.

But I think I'd like to have one. Because I'm weary of being afraid that things might simply be. I'm weary of trying to do this life when really, I was created to use this life.

Just my ramblings on Friday of Fear Week. Maybe at least part of it made sense, but I'm not afraid to throw the question out there without an answer. Something for us all to think about. What are your thoughts?