Jesus in a rainbow afro wig

I love Young Life. I’m passionate about it. Young Life has the reputation of being a little wild and crazy. When I was growing up, I remember that people in our church looked at it a little cautiously because: the party kids went to Young Life. Sure, they’d say, they learn about Jesus at Young Life club, but it doesn’t seem to affect what they do on the weekend. I was curious. I read about Jesus in church, and how he was accused of hanging out with the sinners and the prostitutes, and I thought: maybe Young Life is on to something.

I’m not really known to be wild and crazy. Not even a little. I always thought I was the most unlikely candidate to be a Young Life leader. But I had seen the way that Young Life reached out to kids that were lost, lonely, and hurting. I knew that the leaders spent a lot of time building relationships with kids, sharing in their lives, and how they were able to be examples of Christ’s love to those kids over time. I felt like this ministry was an authentic example of the ministry of Jesus. Going to where kids are. Loving them no matter what. Offering them truth, love, forgiveness, and relationship. I wanted to do that. I can coordinate the wacky people, but let me do something that matters for eternity.

I believe that we will have a giant Young Life club in heaven. Everyone that became a Christian through Young Life will be there. There will be music, and ridiculous games, and Jesus will be down in front dancing in a rainbow afro wig. And I will know a lot of people there.

I’ve been thinking about Young Life a lot lately. I’m on the support committee in our area and there have been a lot of amazing things happening: 50 to 60 kids are packing area basements each week to sing songs, play games, and learn a little about the love of Jesus. We doubled the amount of our volunteer leaders who spend time each week hanging out with kids: over coffee, at the football game, at the movies. We’ve also doubled the amount of people on our adult support committee, in part because parents want to get involved in something they can see is changing the lives of their kids.

These things are incredibly exciting for me, because I know that there are lost and hurting kids that are being impacted for eternity. What could matter more than that? When I was at seminary, one of the professors stopped me because I was wearing a Young Life sweatshirt. He told me: I became a believer because of that ministry. I remember driving around Naperville and thinking in the morning how I loved my job, in the afternoon how I hated my job, and at night driving home how much I loved my job. I remember giving a ride home to a girl in high school who made fun of my old car and asked why I didn’t have a real job. I remember gritting my teeth and thinking: I am determined to love you. She’s married to a youth pastor now. I could go on with lots of stories about all of my old kids that I treasure in my heart. Kids who are grown ups now, many of them married, some with kids of their own. I think about them when I worship at church. I think about that Young Life club in heaven and how we’re going to party with Jesus.

I just need you to know that I love this thing called Young Life. It matters. It’s more than just silly games and wild people, it’s about people being silly and loving wild people for Christ. For eternity.

Lessons from church history

I've been doing research for an adult Sunday school class on church history. I admit that I am not an expert in the field of church history--my education on the subject includes one seminary class and a handful of books I've edited for work--but I find the subject fascinating. I am interested in the way our modern faith has been shaped by the experiences of our forebears. There are faith lessons to be learned from our spiritual mothers and fathers.

The first session will be on the early church (from Christ to Constantine). So I've been reading about persecution under Nero, the Jewish Wars with Rome, the early liturgical practices of the church, martyrdom, the fall of Jerusalem, heresy, creeds, and missionary endeavors. I get forty-five minutes to try to explain the context of the early church and to draw out application for our own experience.

I'm basing my research on a two-volume work entitled: The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez. I highly recommend these books. They give a great account of the history of Christianity and they are very readable. I've also turned to Wikipedia for a pretty thorough description of the Jewish Wars. I'd like to say I've read Josephus's full account, but that just wouldn't be true. I'd like to read his work someday.

My five-week lesson plan includes:

The Early Church

The Institutionalized Church: the impact of Constantine

The Reformation

Vatican II

The Global Church

Home

Thomas Wolfe said that you can never go home again. The ancient philosopher, Heraclitus, similarly said that you can never step in the same river twice. Everything is in flux, change comes to the places we love best, and nothing ever stays the same. In a way, this is what keeps us moving forward. But I can't help feeling sad about the places I remember.

My mother once told me that she had no idea where she should be buried. This is not an immediate concern, barring some sort of tragic accident we've got plenty of time before she needs to figure it out, but I understand her underlying concern. We are a transient family--gypsies who have followed the American dream. She left home at eighteen. Moved from a sleepy, small New Jersey town to a suburb of Chicago. She lived in the fringes of suburban life until she was twenty-eight. I was three when my father moved our whole family to a college town in the middle of Indiana. We were supposed to stay two or three years tops. Twenty-two years later, my parents moved to Ohio. By then my sister and I were both married and living our own lives back in suburban Chicago. Now my parents are back in a college town on the other side of Indiana. So where is home?

My mother was raised in a family that could trace its generational heritage within a ten-mile radius. Her grandparents lived a few blocks apart. She stopped at her aunt's house on the way home from school on a regular basis. My grandfather is buried in the family plot at the Dutch Reformed Church. Several of the streets near my great-grandmother's house were named after my ancestors.

We have no ties to the Indiana town where I was raised. The only family home I ever knew has been sold to strangers. The school I attended for much of that time was gutted and rebuilt my senior year. I remember returning to see the changes at my old school and getting lost. There were hallways that didn't exist anymore. Places that burned in my memory could not be found. It was disconcerting. I've tried to go back to visit, but it feels like there's no there there. The there that I remember isn't there.

Odd as it is, I sometimes feel like there's a conspiracy to systematically remove the places of my memory.

I live in a house that is a hundred and fifteen years old. Old houses need constant upkeep and we are perpetually changing the fabric of this old building. At some point, not much of the original will remain. So will it be the same house?

Second Corinthians 5:1 tells us that: "we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."

Paul is talking about our bodies as our earthly tents. Because of the second law of thermodynamics, we know that while the quantity of matter/energy remains the same, the quality of energy/matter deteriorates over time. Nothing stays the same, everything is in flux, we're all headed for entropy. Maybe it doesn't matter that you can't really go home again. Maybe it doesn't matter where your earthly body is buried. We have an eternal home in heaven...and it is built of stuff that doesn't break down or change.

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Hiking blindfolded at midnight

Hiking at midnight is an unusual experience. So much so that you might think it would a one-time experience in a lifetime. Not so, I've done it twice.

The first time was on a college wilderness trip in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our goal had been to hike through the woods to the beach along Lake Superior. It was getting late, and our hope was to spend the night on the beach. But it got dark, we got lost, and one of my friends twisted her ankle. From where we stood, we could hear the waves hitting the sand and it seemed that the beach had to be very close. Two of the others volunteered to push ahead to the beach, drop their packs, and return to help the girl with the twisted ankle. It seemed to be a sound plan, so off they went while the rest of us waited...and waited. Finally, when it seemed obvious that they weren't coming back any time soon, one of our guides made the decision that she would hike to the beach. She asked for a volunteer, and for some reason, I volunteered. Maybe I just didn't want to stand around in the middle of the dense brush in the dark.

In order to make our way to the beach we had to bushwhack. The kind of hiking where you push through the brush, without a trail--it's a slow and tedious process. We were bushwhacking in the dark. I followed behind our guide, holding onto her pack. She held a flashlight and a map. We inched our way forward. All I could see was the ground directly beneath my feet and the back of her pack in front of me. The ground was uneven and I kept losing my balance. There were rocks to stumble over and the brush was scraping my arms and face. We finally made it to the beach around daybreak. I helped gather wood for a fire. I filled my canteen with water from the lake. Then I fell sound asleep. Within a few hours, the various parts of our group emerged from the woods and we reassembled. They were all drawn by the signal fire.

The second occasion was a few years later. I was spending a summer in Colorado studying sculpture. Jeff, our professor, was a little bit crazy and a lot of fun. He was big on experiential learning. And he had a penchant for surprises.

One afternoon at the end of class, he told us to meet him that night around eleven. He instructed us to dress warmly and to wear good walking shoes. Our small class gathered that evening, all a little excited to see what new adventure was in store for us. Jeff showed up in his pickup truck and told us all to jump in the back. We did and he drove us up the mountain. We were joking in the back and telling stories. After a while, Jeff pulled the truck over to the side of the road. It was dark out and we didn't seem to be anywhere particularly special.

As we got off the truck, Jeff handed each of us a blindfold and told us to put it on. We all obeyed. Jeff told us to hold hands and form a line. Then he led us up the mountain. It was dark, and even if we tried to cheat we really couldn't see anything. We were all tripping on the undergrowth and so we soon developed a system. The people at the head of the line would call out each obstacle they encountered so those in the back could be prepared.

None of us had any idea where we were going. We couldn't see what was ahead. We were depending on the person who was leading us. But we were traveling together as a group, each of us looking out for the needs of the others.

This went on for a while. In the end, we made it to the top of the mountain and Jeff had us remove our blindfolds. It was June, but there was still some snow on the ground. We were looking over a valley and across to where two different mountain ranges met. There was a full moon and lots of stars and it was totally silent and beautiful.

There are times in our lives where following God is like hiking at midnight. We don't know exactly where we're going. We don't hold the map. The ground may be unsteady beneath our feet. We have to hold on to our guide. We travel with others and we are responsible to care for each other. In the end, we will find something beautiful.

God called me a jackass (and he was right)

It was early morning, the air was full of fog, and I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. I stood on the porch of the a cabin by the lake, the screen door partially open. There, at the base of the stairs, stood a burro. I could almost feel the Holy Spirit smirking inside my head--and I had the distinct feeling that God was calling me a jackass.

I believe that God communicates with each of us differently, taking into account our personalities. Sometimes he is gentle and subtle with me, other times he is pretty obvious and not adverse to using sarcasm. In that moment, I felt God saying to me: You know, you're kind of a jackass.

We were both in places we didn't belong. We had wandered away from perfectly good homes in order to follow our own desires. Both of us would have people looking for us soon. And neither of us would fare very well left on our own.

I pondered all of this as I headed back to my room, bracing myself for the raised eyebrows and the knowing glances of my roommates. I'd love to say that this was a turning point for me, that this moment of epiphany changed my ways, but it took a while for me (and I'm sure the donkey too) to stop wandering away.

That donkey and I were in places we didn't belong. The fact was we both had nice places to stay where our needs were met, but the lure of the unknown proved to be too strong. We had lost our way following our own desires, and had made ourselves vulnerable to all kinds of danger. What had led us away from our homes? It was the thought that maybe there was something better, more interesting, just beyond the boundaries of what we knew. We were safe and protected in our places, but we wanted to know if we were being denied something. Like Eve in the garden, there was temptation in the unknown. The lure of knowing more proved to be too strong.

Eve gave in to her temptation. I merely danced on the fringes and then made my way back home. That donkey and I doing our walk of shame. I hadn't done enough to be truly shamed, but there was enough ambiguity in the minds of others that I felt like a jackass all the same. What I love most, is that God calls it as he sees it--and he's not afraid to say it. Like Balaam and his donkey (see Numbers 22 for another jackass moment), sometimes we need to be reminded that we're all just jackasses in need of a savior.

Christ or the sub-culture?

Which do I love more, Christ or mocking the evangelical sub-culture? I was steeped in the evangelical sub-culture at birth. I was also raised to be a critical thinker. These two things in combination mean that I am adept at picking apart the Christian sub-culture. So much so that sometimes I have to stop myself and ask: Which do I love more?

Part of adolescence is the attempt to separate one's identity from that of your family. The evangelical kid might try to learn more about the larger culture outside of the church. Depending on how fundamentalist your church is, this could lead to a variety of interpretations and responses. My youth pastor kept trying to get me to listen to Christian rock and I kept telling him that it was lousy music. I didn't believe this made me less of a Christian; it just mean I had a more discriminating musical taste.

When I was growing up there was a large-scale attempt to create a culture-within-a-culture for the Christian. We had Christian alternatives to almost everything "the world" had to offer (this is still largely the case). If you named a secular band, there was a Christian band that offered an almost identical sound. Christian books, Christian board games, Christian alternatives to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. My family felt that this sort of alternate culture was unnecessary and unscriptural. My parents hadn't been allowed to go to movies, play cards, or listen to rock and roll when they were growing up. They felt that, instead of trying unsuccessfully to isolate their children, they would be better off trying to educate us to live in the culture, but not to be "of" that culture. So I learned that most of these culture-within-a-culture attempts are misguided, and usually pretty silly.

As a result, I became skillful in mocking these aspects of the Christian sub-culture. In most cases they are quite comical and it's not difficult to find things to ridicule. It was done in fun; a sort of teasing from the initiated. But sometimes I get carried away.

The Pharisees were also very skillful at creating a culture-within-a-culture. They created "hedges" around the religious law. They set the boundaries really far out so that they wouldn't come within miles of breaking a law. They were honored by their peers for their holiness. But Jesus saw the whole attempt as a bit ridiculous. Humans sin. We break God's law all the time. There's something a bit self-righteous about trying to add on to God's law in an effort to prove ourselves more holy.

It is all too easy to poke fun at the Christian sub-culture. I think I do it because it makes me feel separate (or better) from the "Pharisees" of the church. This makes me a Pharisee of the Pharisees in my own self-righteous smugness. Do I mock these things because I love Christ or because it makes me feel better?

Sometimes I get angry about things that are happening in the evangelical sub-culture. I think we look ridiculous to the outside world. In a non-Christian were to describe what they think of the typical American evangelical, I think they would say: they hate gay people; they hate abortion and the people who have them; they are self-righteous hypocrites; and they are white, middle-class Republicans. We are known for what we don't do and what we condemn. This makes me incredibly sad. I wish we were known for the positive things we do that make us the hands and feet of Christ. I want the non-Christian to say: those people are so committed to life that they adopt unwanted children, they fight poverty and its causes, they care for those who have been decimated by AIDS, they are stewards of nature, they offer forgiveness and grace to those stuck in sin.

I catch myself because I am part of the problem. I would rather mock the latest fad in the church. I would rather point out our irrelevance--and this is what makes me a Pharisee. I'm not going to campaign for the government to legislate my morality. I think it's good and important for Christians to be involved in politics, but I want to start by making changes in my community. I don't want to feel like I need to apologize for being a Christian anymore. Christ doesn't need me to defend him. He needs me to represent him.

Baby Jesus Cookie

It's the Sunday after Christmas, the first Sunday of the New Year, and our church is celebrating Communion. We do not have Sunday school for children this first Sunday so the teachers can have a break. So I am sitting in church with my two-year-old son on my lap. Owen is still basking in the after Christmas glow.

It has been a magical season of Christmas lights, music, and lots of special treats filled with sugar. Only a few days ago we had left a plateful of sugary treats out for Santa, and my son had been full of questions about this ritual. I think he wasn't convinced he wanted to share his cookies with Santa. Finally, he began to catch on to the importance of bribing the person responsible for the gift-giving. Then he was very eager to load up the plate with goodies. He talked endlessly about the cookies we were leaving for Santa.

Back to Communion. The plate is coming down the aisle, and I try to head off inquisitiveness by whispering a brief explanation of the sacrament. I told him that this was something special for the adults to help us remember the gift that Jesus gave us. Owen asked me what was on the plate; I told him it was juice and a cracker. He thought for a moment and then responded in the sort of stage whisper that a child of two can only really master in public: Baby Jesus Cookie? Giggles were stifled all around us. Yes, I replied. It's a baby Jesus cookie.

I'm pretty sure that somehow the cookies we left for Santa and the blessed elements of Communion were now combined in his two-year-old mind into some sort of mystical gift-giving, snacking gloriousness. Leaving cookies for Santa gets you presents. We remember Jesus' gift by eating a special cracker and drinking juice at church.

I was remembering this story this week because the after-Christmas-Sunday-school-hiatus-Communion-Sunday convergence occurred again recently. It's been a year, but I thought I'd try to stifle snack whining when I saw the tray being passed. Again, I emphasized to both my kids that this was just for adults: to remember the gift of Christ. At lunch, we were peppered with questions. We tried to explain the sacrament of Communion to no avail. The juice represents Jesus' blood, the bread represents his body, we eat them to remind us of the gift of salvation Jesus gave us when he died on the cross.

As a parent, I'm constantly humbled by the task of trying to explain things to my kids--particularly in the area of theology. We did our best with Communion, but I think it will be many years--perhaps when they are trying to explain it to their own kids--before my kids are able to begin to grasp the gift that Jesus gave.