jesus is cool

the cross, this year

Posted on Apr 6, 2012 in incarnational, jesus is cool, spiritual formation | 10 comments

every year for the past few years i’ve written about the cross & what it means to me. last year i just reposted the previous year with a few twists. this year, i decided to start over and reflect on where i am this year.

these are just some thoughts off the top of my head, where i am today in the midst of all kinds of life & refuge wild and craziness (what’s new?), in a season of my faith that feels free-er and more connected than it’s been in a long time, in a season where traditions & remembering-the-story seem extra important.

this year, 2012, the cross reminds me that:

God’s ways are always higher than my ways. crazier, too. and a lot less practical.

there are no shortcuts even though i keep looking for them, longing for them. even Jesus tried, asking for an easier plan.

“forgive them father, for they know not what they do” heals. these words continue to give me new eyes of compassion toward myself & those who have hurt me.

on the road to golgotha, Jesus had to receive help. someone else carried his cross. it symbolizes the power of receiving, not only giving.

it’s easier to live in “friday” and “saturday” of the easter story than “sunday.” at the same time, if we are always trying to skip quickly to sunday, we’re not really living because life includes pain & struggle.

shame must always be scorned.

the path of least resistance is usually to be victims or survivors instead of thrivers.

picking up my cross & carrying it is tough stuff. i like wearing crosses & talking about crosses & hanging crosses on my wall. carrying them is a whole other story.

“it is finished” continues to become more and more comforting to me as i expand my view of what that might really mean.

i need hope. without it, i’m toast.

my son asked me today why they called today “good friday.” he thought it should be called “sort-of-confusing friday” instead. for me, this year, it somehow feels less confusing than others years, maybe because i’m not caught up in trying to make sense of anything but just accept its rawness, weirdness and beauty with an open heart. it feels really “good”.

what about you? what does the cross mean to you this year?

happy easter weekend to all of you. peace & hope, kathy

kings.

Posted on Apr 2, 2012 in church stuff, jesus is cool, leadership | 16 comments

yesterday was palm sunday. i love the easter story; in fact, this week is my very favorite week of the entire year. like advent & the anticipation of Jesus’ birth, i love the upside-downness of it all. Jesus, the promised king, the messiah, all grown up, enters into jerusalem to a roar of “hosannas!” and the thrill of impending victory. people were excited, inspired, drawn, hopeful. they were ready for him to kick ass and take names, to topple the empire and restore justice.

he’ll make all that was wrong right.

but as the week progresses, things radically shifted. he had stirred the pot too strongly. he’d upset too many apple carts. he challenged the status quo far too deeply.

he started doing all kinds of un-king-like things.

he touched lepers.
he dined with sinners.
he called out religiosity on its hypocrisy.
he told everybody they needed to be last, not first.
he said that love trumped all.
that the way up toward God was to go down to the places of real life, real pain.
that God desired mercy, not sacrifice.

and then, next thing they knew he was washing feet, talking about dying, telling us we needed each other in all of this.

wait a second! this wasn’t the kind of king-like behavior we were hoping for.

things went bad to worse after the foot washing. he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to die. and then, instead of getting off the cross and saving the day that way he actually died.

right there in front of them.

he was sacrificed. he appeared powerless, defeated.

all that excitement for nothing.

some king he was!

sure, we know a few days later, the tides turned yet again and he wasn’t dead but alive. appearing to his friends. telling them some of the same crazy things he had been telling them before he died. the spirit of God, alive and well, at work in people’s lives ever since.

but the truth is that it’s always been a confusing story. one that makes us scratch our heads a little and wonder “why did God choose to do it this way when there were a lot of better, more clear, easier-to-understand, more really-king-like options?”

as i reflect on the beginning of holy week and our journey toward easter, i think so many of the same human dynamics are at play today. sociology is powerful. our demands for strong, powerful, charismatic, certain leaders is alive & well. just look around at big rocking churches. there aren’t a lot of people leading them who are washing other people’s feet, dining with lepers, and telling mind-boggling, confusing stories that has everyone shaking their head, going “huh?”

rather, what makes most of them strong is their certainty, their power, their charisma, their “king-like” qualities.

my theory is that even though we know Jesus is the real king, we are still desperately looking for one here that makes more sense than Jesus. pastors, leaders, podcasters, writers, speakers, someone to tell us what to do & think, what’s okay & what’s not okay, what the scripture says & doesn’t say, who’s in & who’s out.

we are drawn to power & charisma, not the beatitudes-infused kind Jesus embodied and preached, but a worldly power that keeps us underneath so we can feel more protected, comfortable, contained.

we are addicted to inspiration.

but the gospel was never supposed to be protected, comfortable, or contained. or inspiring in a sit-and-listen-and-feel-better-afterward kind of way.

what makes it the gospel is its wildness, rawness, unexpectedness, and challenge to us. that God shows up in the least likely places instead of the most. that he pierces the darkness with unexplainable light. that we should follow his weird & wild ways, not men’s self-serving ones. that in order to be born again (and again) we need to die yet again (and then over again).

when i was in el salvador this past week with my family i had a lot of time to think & write & read; one of the things i thought about a lot is how desperate we are for an earthly king. i am sometimes, too. i want someone to swoop in and tell me what to do and rescue me from my doubts & questions. i want someone to put me & God & the whole kit and kaboodle back in a box so my faith can somehow be more manageable.

but then the feeling always subsides & i realize i do have a king.

a humble one, who says that i’m blessed when i realize my spiritual poverty (not when i’ve got it all nailed down).

a gentle one, who whispers to me that he understands my pain & struggle because he was human, too.

a wild & crazy one, who keeps reminding me that his ways will always be counter-cultural & harder but also better.

a not-the-way-kings-usually-look king, who says he’s not here to boss me around and make all my troubles go away, but rather that he’d be present in the midst of them.

a counter-cultural king, who calls me to spiritual poverty, mourning, mercy, meekness, justice and love as the path to freedom.

my hope is that over time we’d learn to quit crowning earthly kings, giving our time and money and souls to them, thinking they will save the day.

rather, i hope we can pick up our crosses and follow the one who really can.

* * * * *

ps: i really love this post by sarah bessey that i think points to what we expect of ourselves, too, when it comes to this king-hero-strength-means-big-and-amazing issue: in which i have an evangelical hero complex.

replacing the “f” word with the “d” word (no, not those ones!)

Posted on Mar 20, 2012 in church stuff, dreams, equality, ex good christian women, healing, injustice, jesus is cool | 24 comments

* this post is part of the monthly synchroblog, different bloggers writing on the same topic. this month’s topic is around gender equality, an issue near and dear to my heart. check out the link list at the bottom of this post to read the other posts (i’ll add more as they come in).

* * * * *

“i have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” – martin luther king, jr.

feminist is a dirty word in a lot of Christian circles. it has come to be associated with anger and reverse sexism and all kinds of other things that were never the idea. i personally don’t mind being called a Christian feminist because it goes with the territory; i am a passionate advocate for the liberation of women and am grateful for those who have gone before us and will go after us to pave the way for greater equality. at the same time, i’m not crazy about the word.

like the word “church” and “pastor” and a lot of other loaded words, i think we need to try to reclaim them or at least come up with some better ones that describe what we mean without such negative connotations. for me, i am not a feminist for the sake of women’s power.

rather, i am for dignity-restoring-in-all-the-places-where-it-has-been-lost.

when people are thought of as less-than, no matter what shape, size, color, gender, or experience, their dignity is stripped. period.

when 1/2 the population of the world is generally thought as less-than and inferior somehow, we’re in some pretty big trouble.

i don’t feel a strong call to promote the “f” word of “feminism”.

but i do feel a deep & burning passion to promote the “d” word–”dignity”- for all people.

we are all made in the image of God and have inherent worth because of it. many complementarians will agree, saying that men & women are “equal in value but different in role” but i believe they miss the point and underestimate how powerful the “under another” theology creates a propensity to oppress, silence, limit, and reduce.

it strips us of our dignity.

women are seen as less-than in most cultures. they were in Jesus’ time, too.

but he, God in the flesh, embodied something radically important–restoration of the dignity of not only women but anyone who was thought of as less-than.

still, the church of Jesus Christ, which should be the free-est, most radically inclusive, least-oppressive, safest space in town has tossed out a lot of what he modeled and went on to perpetuate inequality toward women in the same old ways. we’ve used a few scripture verses and an already-deeply-grooved-against-women-cultural-system to perpetuate oppression instead of follow Jesus’ example of restoring dignity & setting people free–like really free.

i do not want to see women empowered so that they can then power up on others & create the same kinds of inequality we already have, only in reverse. that would not be reflective of the kingdom of God, which is what God has called us to participate in creating.

rather, i want to see women set free to step into who they were created to be without man-made limitations that strip their dignity so that the reality of God can be reflected in all God’s children, here & now. when that original image of God is uncovered, unburied, fanned into flame, all kinds of beautiful things emerge.

men’s dignity will be restored, too.

the systems we have perpetuated haven’t only robbed women of their worth. they’ve robbed men of theirs, too. they’ve reduced them to stereotypical roles that they can’t live up to. they’ve put men in a place of wielding power that they didn’t even necessarily want. the systems have limited the possibilities of finding equal, strong partners.

dignity restoration is contagious.

over time, the divides that usually separate us can be crossed.

over time, families, neighborhoods, cities, organizations, nations will be changed.

over time, beside each other together as equals, we can more freely reflect the image of God in every relationship and system we are in.

to me, there’s nothing more beautiful than dignity-restored.

yeah, i don’t think we need more Feminists.

i think we need more Dignity-restorers.

* * * * *

10 reasons why i’m an advocate for women’s liberation

Posted on Mar 9, 2012 in dreams, equality, ex good christian women, jesus is cool, women in ministry | 22 comments

yesterday was international women’s day. and like usual, i’m always a little late to the party. some people think i’m a broken record when it comes to women’s equality. i’m glad. i want to use my voice & hands & feet in any small ways i can to shift the tides of inequality & injustice that strip the dignity of women.

here’s why i’m pro-woman, pro-equality, pro-liberation-of-half-the-population:

1. i think Jesus was. every interaction Jesus had with women was to set them free and lift their burdens of bondage. and he said we were supposed to be like him. i don’t know why the church built on his name has done the exact opposite; it still baffles me.

2. women’s wisdom will make the world better. it’s said that the same way of thinking that got us into our problems can’t get us out. it’s time for some new minds & hearts to get in the mix so that more creative, peaceful, collaborative solutions can be considered in our families, cities, churches, ministries, and organizations.

3. it’s good for men, too. i don’t want things to shift to women on top & men beneath them, either. i’m pro-equality. our freedom is tied up together. when we learn how to be equals, alongside one another as partners, brothers & sisters, teammates, and friends, it reflects God’s image in all kinds of beautiful ways.

4. the church should be the leader of restoring dignity and equality, instead of dragging along behind. so i may not be able to change the whole big church but i can play my part in cultivating equality & freedom in our little one.

5. others need us to fight for their freedom. many can’t fight. we have liberties others don’t. our freedom is all tangled up together. if we stay stuck, others stay stuck. if we get free, we can participate in setting others free, too.

6. i have to look in my daughter’s eyes. i have a responsibility to do whatever i can to make sure she has every opportunity she deserves inside & outside of the church. i can’t tolerate someone telling her she is less because of her gender.

7. i have to look in my 4 son’s eyes. they deserve equal partners who will show up, and participate in relationship instead of remain silenced and diminished. they also deserve to be set free of the bondage of male stereotypes that limit and damage.

7. yeah, the next generation needs us. we can’t leave them hanging. we have to keep paving the way, like the brave men & women before us, to make their path less & less bumpy.

8. when we are silent, we stand on the side of the oppressor. it’s easier to play nice. it’s easier to follow the status quo. it’s easier to stick with the crowd and keep supporting churches & the media & systems that strip dignity and freedom. but when we do, we condone inequality and align with oppression.

9. we must be the change we want to see. i can’t sit around waiting for the church to change. the kingdom isn’t going to drop out of the sky. God uses people to change the world.

10. freedom isn’t just a bigger cage. liberation means full freedom in Christ, not just lesser-oppression.

happy international women’s day, one day late.

may we keep playing our part in liberation.

what about you? what motivates you to keep advocating for freedom?

* * * * *

i’ve got a couple of posts up this week at other sites that are more of this same song:

down we go: practicing equality at sheloves magazine
justice: what love looks like in public, part of christine sine’s 2012 lent series.

pain relief not pain removal

Posted on Dec 28, 2011 in incarnational, jesus is cool | 16 comments

*this post is part of the christmas synchroblog centered on Jesus came: did you get what you expected? i hope you all had a good christmas. ours was sweet & simple & really nice. i’ve been really unplugged all week and have enjoyed the quiet.

* * * * *

for advent, i wrote a post about hoping to be open: present, humble, vulnerable this christmas season. when i look back on it now, just over a month later, it makes me laugh. vulnerable is definitely the right word for the past month; i think i cried every day for a couple of weeks during advent! one of the hazards of this kind of living is when we risk our hearts, it will sometimes get trampled on. it’s part of the cost. and even though i’ve been in this place before and know the feeling, i can’t completely avoid the pain of feeling used and hurt, and doubting this is all worth it.

thankfully, the amazing Jesus-with-skin-on-people-in-my-life helped carry me through.

the past few weeks have felt a little more sane, a little more balanced, a little more clear. but at the same time, just as relief came, a new overwhelming feeling arose–the amount of needs in every direction. it’s nothing new, really, but maybe in my “open, present, vulnerable” season i felt it more. or maybe it’s because the holidays bring extra pain & struggle & need to the surface. the degree of poverty & pain & loneliness all around was just extra intense and caused me to question so many things. i found myself asking:

“does what we do even matter?”

“why even bother when the systems around everyone are so deeply grooved toward inequity and oppression?”

”maybe getting an inspiration high really will sustain people more than the little bit of tangible love we are able to pass on?”

“why in the %(#&!^!*!(! do people keep giving their money to church buildings when their money could help exponentially with basics like beds & dressers & gas & food & warm clothes to families who really need it?”

“God, you’ve got some people who really, really need hope right now. can you please help?”

the last one is the one that lingered. and i was reminded of what teresa of avila said:

“Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

even though Jesus came into the world as a human and knows our pain and suffering and promised us life would be hard & harsh but that in him, we could have hope & joy & peace & love in the midst, i often forget.

i think the trouble is i actually long for pain removal. the absence of pain. the abracadabra kind of pain removal that some parts of my faith experience once promised. pray harder, hope more, surrender more, and it will be “gone”. i know better by now, i really do, but still, if i’m really honest, i keep wanting (and in weird crazy ways still expecting) pain removal.

what i got instead was a reminder that hope this side of heaven is about pain relief.

maybe that’s a piece of what the incarnation is about. pain relief.

we can’t remove pain. God doesn’t seem to remove pain, either. in fact, he chose to enter directly into it to provide relief in the midst. hope, healing, love, joy, mercy, peace.

and it most always seems to come through a weird combination of flesh & spirit.

hope, mercy, and love don’t drop out of the sky. they usually come from experience. from interactions. from real in-the-flesh relationships. from presents that get delivered even though we know they won’t make one bit of difference next month. from a hug that might be the only human touch someone receives all week. from a kind word when harsh ones are usually the only ones heard. from a hot meal around a messy kitchen table. from simple hellos to long, drawn-out conversations about deep wounds. from eyes meeting eyes and hearts meeting hearts.

these little things provide pain relief.

they won’t take away reality. they won’t change systems that will keep working against people. they won’t pay the bills next month. they won’t immediately mend a broken heart or get someone a job or heal a chronic illness or reconcile a failed marriage.

but they will provide some pain relief, a cup of cold water, a healing balm, a sweet fragrance.

on christmas eve when we were singing o holy night (by far my favorite carol), i felt these words stir my soul:

“truly he taught us to love one another, his law is love and his gospel is peace. chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. and in his name all oppression shall cease.”

i have been thinking of this since christmas eve. i keep wanting big oppression to cease. i keep wanting all the chains to break that keep people stuck. i keep wanting freedom & comfort my way. really, i keep wanting pain removal.

but i was reminded this season, yet again and again, how the small things make a difference. that our hands and feet and hearts and eyes and ears matter. that when we intersect with each other in love, chains break and oppression ceases, if even for that moment. that Jesus is alive & well & moving & healing & transforming & revealing love in us and through us and with us.

yeah, in all kinds of ways, i got some pain relief this christmas. thank you, God. i hope i was able to pass some on, too.

* * * * *

other bloggers writing on the same topic, enjoy:

Glenn Hager – Underwear For Christmas
Jeremy Myers – The Unexpected Gift From Jesus
Jeff Goins - The Day After Christmas: A Lament
Wendy McCaig – Unwanted Gifts: You Can Run But You Can Not Hide
Christine Sine – The Wait Is Over – What Did I Get?
Maria Kettleson Anderson – Following The Baby We Just Celebrated
Leah – Still Waiting For Redemption

it’s a beautiful, messy story.

Posted on Dec 14, 2011 in incarnational, jesus is cool, spiritual formation | 25 comments

i do not like shopping. i do not like crowds. i do not like commercials and all of the nutty emphasis on buying stuff. and i definitely do not like cold december weather.

but i do love christmas.

i love christmas because i love the christmas story. i love the wild & crazy way God reveals himself to the world, in a way that most everyone would never expect. i love that angels announced Jesus’ birth first to the the shepherds & the pagans and they were strangely drawn toward this light from the very beginning. i love that the earthly parents God chose were basic people with basic jobs and a basic faith. i love the reminder that from the beginning of Jesus’ life, power was trying to destroy him but never fully prevails. i love that the story of Jesus is a beautiful, messy one not a clean & sterile one (even though that’s usually how the storybooks make it sound).

the christmas story wasn’t neat and tidy.

it was messy. and beautiful.

like ours.

for this season of advent at the refuge we have been focusing on our stories–God’s story, our stories, and how they all intersect. on the first week of advent my friend karl shared how “every Bible story is a christmas story.” i’ll add “every one of our stories is a christmas story, too”.

here are the elements i think are present in the christmas story and in our stories, if we look carefully:

1. pain and struggle

2. something that doesn’t make sense in our own or others’ eyes

3. some kind of redemption, hope, or healing

4. a reminder that somehow, someway, God is emmanuel, always with us.

when i look at almost every Bible story i can think of, these 4 things apply. when i consider the weird twists and turns in my own story & many others along the way, these 4 things are somehow always present.

i want to focus for a minute on #2 because i think it’s the one that might give us the most trouble–”something that doesn’t make sense in our own or others’ eyes.”

we humans have a desperate need to make sense of everything. we want it to “work” the way we want it to work. we want to understand things we’re not supposed to understand. we want to cram God’s weird & wild ways into our own boxes so we can feel more comfortable. we want neater, tidier, easier.

i know i do.

but the christmas story reminds us that some things just don’t make sense in our eyes or other’s eyes. the Jesus story sure didn’t.

two contradicting things can be present at the same time.

the christmas story is beautiful & ugly. filled with faith & doubt, peace & confusion, fear & courage. these things living together don’t make sense in our linear-little-brains. but part of redeeming our story and participating in God’s story more fully requires us to open our hearts to letting both exist at the same time. and like all things of faith, this is a heart-journey, not a head-one. our brains can try to rationalize “sure, both dark and light exist in me” but still do everything in our power to clean it up and make all be good, “right” or okay or go the other direction of leaning completely into only the dark side where everything is hard & ugly & painful.

we can easily become focused on the dark & blinded to the light.

or we can do an excellent job of pretending like everything’s light and dismiss the reality of our darkness.

a lot of our church experiences haven’t helped us to live more comfortably with paradox in our own lives, either. black & white thinking has often morphed into black & white feelings, too.

we did a little exercise a few weeks ago at our weekend gathering, to open ourselves up to remember that light & dark exist at the same time in our stories–and in all of God’s stories, too. part of cultivating hope this advent season is living in the tension of both existing but straining to see the light, the good, the beautiful because these are often more difficult for us to see in ourselves.

here’s the exercise we did:

choose one word from the left hand column that describes this season for you. then choose one word from the middle column. if the words that come to mind aren’t on this list, use them instead.

right now, my story is ________ & __________.

my two words are “strong & fragile” and those usually don’t make sense together. in my humanness, i only want to be strong or i only see my fragility & weakness. the beauty of the christmas story in me is seeing that both can exist at the same time, and they don’t have to make sense. and like most all of them, my story is one of pain & struggle and redemption & healing & God-with-me-in-the-thick-of-it.

yeah, all our stories are christmas stories.

i’d love to hear what words describe your story right now.