The Lamed Vov, Just Men

I was first introduced to the idea of Lamed Vov by Len Sweet. Since then, I have traced this fabulous myth through texts and pop culture, online wiki sources and photographic essays and come to find that herein lies a powerful truth for all followers of Jesus Christ.

The Lamed Vov are thirty-six Just Men who though their deep love and devotion help the world go forward. No one knows who they are. They don’t even know who they are. …this is similar to those Jesus described who lived lives of such service to others that at the Last Judgment they have no memory of having ‘clothed or fed the least of these.’”[1]

The Lamed Vov represent what is noblest in humanity. Theirs is a spirituality of engagement that brings the presence of righteousness into a world of diminishing rectitude. They set an example for us to “partner with God in the redemption of the world”[2] and demonstrate the freedom to “claim the good, the true, [and] the holy wherever and whenever [they] find it.”[3] This is crucial for us if we are ever to go beyond sin management into a faith that has meaning for our lives, a faith that can make us care.

This kind of spirituality requires that churches and Christ followers abandon a doctrine of behavior modification. Instead we ought to embrace holiness that “is not primarily defined by what we don’t do, but rather by what we do in our hallowing of the everyday.”[4] This translates to a fundamental shift Left, especially for Evangelicals. We need to embrace Justice and world help; creating Heaven on earth, not just making attempts to escape earth and claw our way past St. Peter. This is a step away from concerns about piety and towards concerns about activism. It is the kind of attitude Tony Campolo notes when he remarks that no one ever called Jesus “pious” because he was “was too busy expressing compassion to measure up to the expectations of piety.”[5]

The Lamed Vov are people remembering how to care. They are a vaccine of care. The absence of care is pestilence, and it infects everything from our hearts and our clergy to the world and the marketplace. “We don’t believe what we’re saying anymore” says Doc Searles about this heartlessness “[and] we know that no one else believes it either, but we keep saying it because because because [sic.] the needle’s stuck…who would we be if not the people who say these things?”[6] Searles’ powerful text on the voice of online interactivity, The Cluetrain Manifesto, sparked an uprising of the hyperlinked business community in response to this societal blasé. This text would also serve the church well; for we must disavow ourselves of the notion that our beliefs and intellectual assent are sufficient. Meaning is the commodity of choice in a spiritual world, not intellect. We must understand that our deeds are not only sacramental, but “they are themselves relevatory [and reveal] God in His goodness.”[7] Where once we flouted our spiritual freedom, we must now also brag of our engagement in the world; for “there is no freedom of God without the politics of justice and compassion, and there is no politic of justice and compassion without a religion of the freedom of God.”[8]

When I think of the Lamed Vov, I cannot help but wonder who they would be if they really existed. Yet in spite of our immediate reflex to consider great and noteworthy people as possible members of this ongoing legend - people like Mother Theresa or Bono, John Paul II, Desmond Tutu and Thomas Merton - we may do well to consider that God has often looked to the simple to find His reflection. It is the humble offering of the widow who gave her two mites that reflect Him most, and it may very well be men like Dave Midkiff - who daily pulls recyclable material out of my trash and teaches school children about ecology - in whom God has found resonance. It may be people like Maria – whom I met while in Juarez, who gave all she had to an orphanage and died in the city dump - who truly embody the truth of the Lamed Vov.

Regardless, we can be certain that this mythology expresses a far different manifestation of Christianity than the high-gloss book store themes so prevalent among WWJD wearing teens, or the pop theology offered in “how to” texts in church lobbies. Instead, The Lamed Vov are more likely to be with Jesus in a gay bar in San Francisco, “working with people who have aids…the new lepers.”[9]

Jesus will always be with the lepers, and so should we.


[1] Sweet, Len. Out of the Question…Into the Mystery, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 182-183.
[2] Frost, Alan and Michael Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Auckland: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 115.
[3] Bell, Rob. Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 80.
[4] Frost, Alan and Michael Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Auckland: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 132.
[5] As quoted in 21CC, November 1990, p,27.
[6] Locke, Christopher and Rick Levine, Doc Searles, David Weinberger. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual, (New York: Perseus, 2001), 179.
[7] Frost, Alan and Michael Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Auckland: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 137.
[8] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2001), 9.
[9] Frost, Alan and Michael Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Auckland: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 25.

iMagi

Astrolonomy is the science and study of space. Astronomy is the magical practice of reading the position of stars in space. For as long as mankind has been on earth, we have been fascinated with what lives up in the stars. As a young boy I can remember looking up into space and wondering what it would be like to battle darth vader, or fly the enterprise or shake off cylons.

But these fantasies derailed a bit on january 28, 1986 when the challenger shuttle exploded shortly after take off from the kennedy space center. The explosion of the challenger made me realize that, with all the knowledge we have, we really don’t know very much at all.

But we know so much

We are students of the stars, like the “three wise men.”

The magi, as they are commonly known in the bible, are the three wise men whom we see gathered around the manger of the baby Jesus in the stable in christmas tradition. They followed a star.

matthew 2.1,2 and 7-12

1After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east[b] and have come to worship him."

7Herod then arranged a secret meeting with the scholars from the East. Pretending to be as devout as they were, he got them to tell him exactly when the birth-announcement star appeared. 8Then he told them the prophecy about Bethlehem, and said, "Go find this child. Leave no stone unturned. As soon as you find him, send word and I'll join you at once in your worship."

9Instructed by the king, they set off. Then the star appeared again, the same star they had seen in the eastern skies. It led them on until it hovered over the place of the child. 10They could hardly contain themselves: They were in the right place! They had arrived at the right time!

11They entered the house and saw the child in the arms of Mary, his mother. Overcome, they kneeled and worshiped him. Then they opened their luggage and presented gifts: gold, frankincense, myrrh.

12In a dream, they were warned not to report back to Herod. So they worked out another route, left the territory without being seen, and returned to their own country.


Now, before we get back to the magi, let me make a few observations about the gospel of Matthew. The gospel of Mattew was written to a primarily Jewish audience. As such, Matthew writes with the intent of showing Jesus as the Messiah, the savior and king of the Jews. So his gospel, unlike the other 3, follows the story of Joseph not of Mary.

Joseph, a descendant of King David – the royal family of Israel, like the Kennedys to the USA – is noticealy silent in his own tale, but is visited three times by angels who herald the supernatural coming of the Messiah. When these three wise men enter the story – the story of the king of the Jews, the Jewish messiah – they enter through supernatural means consistent with the revelation and terror of angels – they follow a star.

They are astrologers.

They are magi, wizards and sorcerers, diviners and readers of the stars. They are foreign priests and soothsayers of the religious caste in Persia. The book of Daniel talks about Daniel as a rab mag, or “chief magus” which is the same connotation used for these men. Daniel was “skilled in interpreting dreams” and was entrusted with a messianic vision – he saw one coming like the son of man – whose birth would be heralded by a star.

Stars were seen as portents, as signs, of royal births. These wise men knew they were coming to see a king, and though they didn’t arrive in time for his birth – sorry, nativity set creators – they arrived when he was just a young boy, maybe two years old, to pay hommage.

The magi were led by the stars, and by their dreams

They were warned in a dream not to return back to Herod.

Now there’s a lot going on here. Court sorcerers and royal priests from Persia came to see the birth of a king in Bethlehem. But en route, they encountered the “King of Jerusalem” Herod, who was a Roman puppet that made a living out of oppressing his own people. This “King of Jerusalem” heard about the birth of a new king, and recognized immediately that this new king could bring in a new kingdom, a kingdom that would threaten his power and structure.

These royal, Persian, priests – undecieved by Herod – went on their way to find Christ, the annointed one, the newborn king, and when they found him they worshipped him and gave him gifts befitting a king. This was the gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

In case you’re wondering, frankincense and myrrh were always gifts for kings – they were aromatic spices, made from dried tree sap, often used as incence, that were given at coronations, births, and funerals [Nero once burned myrrh in commemoration of his late wife for one year]. We must ask ourselves what it means that these foreign priests came to honor the baby Jesus, and not Herod, the King of Jerusalem. We must ask ourselves what it means for a baby to be honored above a king. We must ask what it means for a foreigner to worship the new king of the Jews, instead of his own people.

Why shepherds and foreigners and angels? Why not priests and families, and business owners? What does it mean when our expectations are pulled down? Why is the world and kingdom to which we belong not the world and kingdom that God seems to be honoring?

And isn’t it interesting that God chose to warn the magi in their dreams? These were men who communicated in dreams, who made their living from dreams, and God chose that medium to communicate with them. And not just with them, with Joseph and Mary and a host of other characters.

God is the god of our dreams, and we must ask ourselves if we are being led by our dreams, and if He is the lord of our dreams, and if our dreams are steering us correctly towards Him and what He values.

The psalmist wrote, May He grant you according to your heart's desire, and fulfill all your purpose (Psalm 20:4). We also know that psalm 37.4 says that if we delight ourselves in the Lord He shall give us the desire of our hearts. Now, when I was young I always thought that meant God would give me whatever I wanted; but at this point in my life, I’m rather tempted to think it means that He will govern my desires, that He will places desires in my heart and teach me to want good things, that my mind will be set on things above.

Because I know that I am led by my desires. I do everything I do because I want to. Even if I do something I don’t want to do – something selfless – I do it because I want to be good, or obedient, or selfless.

We do what we do because we’re led by our desires, and because we’re led by our dreams.

At Westwinds we’re led by our dream to cultivate a community centered around Jesus Christ, expressing a faith that is both ancient and a faith representative of the future at the same time. We’re led by a dream that we can be a church that matters to our community – that we can innovate ourselves into oblivion, trying every exciting and wonderful new thing so we can live in love, so we can live in Christ, so we can experience the presence of God and the power of community in our midst. We’re led by a dream that church doesn’t have to keep people away from experiencing God, but can lead people into his heart, so that we can know Him. And so that we can love Him and feel Him and sense that He is with us.

We’re led by a dream of becoming new prophets and messengers, we’re led by a dream of revolution – of throwing away a mindset based on consumption and embracing a life of passion and fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

But people always wonder about us.

Not just our church, people wonder about us as Christians.

Because we’re flawed, we’re messed up. We’re crooked sticks, not straight, not perfect, and people wonder if God can use a crooked stick to draw a straight line. The magi were crooked sticks, foreigners, pagans, sorcerers, but God used them to point to the Christ.

Westwinds is a crooked stick, but God is using us to lead people to him. I am a crooked stick, and you, and my family, and yours, but God can use us to foster community to facilitate love, and to embrace the world. God can use you to draw a straight line, no matter how crooked you are, if you will let him.

The trick about drawing straight lines has little to do with what stick you’ve got, and a whole lot to do with who’s holding on to it.

Will we let Him guide us? Will we be used to draw lines running back to Him? Will our lives point to God, or to something else? Will our dreams point to God, or to something else?

Do we even care?

Bricolage, put it together

A bricoleur is a person who creates things from scratch. They take raw materials like broken pots or garbage and old bikes, and make art. A bricoleur is also a person who collects information, from equally varied and wide flung sources, and pieces them together in creative and resourceful ways to articulate something new. In information technology, bricolage is an open source content management system[1] similar to Linux. In biology, it is a term used in reference to the evolutionary history of an organism.[2] Culturally, Claude Levi-Strauss used the term to understand the American poor living in ghettos. Bricolage was a term for their strange dress, rituals, bizarre attitudes, and public art they used as rhetorical challenges to the law.[3] Similar examples exist outside of the USA, Lypton Village, for example, was made recently famous through the memoirs of U2’s Bono.[4]

Christ followers in the 21st century must become bricoleurs, engaging in cultural exegesis and pop theology with verve equal to the intellectual requirements of a world that grows smarter every day. We must understand “life as ministry, work as mission, and play as worship”,[5] and see that what is true in art is also true in spirituality, that “genius has to do with convergence.”[6] The Church must once again become the meeting place for architecture, theatre, literature, and conversation. She must reclaim her true self from the sanitized and sterile model she has become in her modern manifestation. She must overcome her fear of cross-pollination, of being polluted. Towards this end we shall acquire objects and symbols from “across social divisions to create new cultural identities”[7] and create a new punk[8] to rediscover creation with God.

For many, this has already begun. Dave Tomlinson notes that post-evangelicals (his term for Christ followers in the postmodern era) “are more at ease with a box of components that can be constructed into several different pieces of furniture”[9] than with a strict plan and set of materials. As bricoleurs, we must employ this ease to escape the silliness of Christian subculture and folk art. We must again explore beauty as an attribute of God.

Our theology of beauty is frequently represented in our church services, for better or for worse. “Everything in the service needs to preach” says Pastor Mark Driscoll “[from the] architecture, lighting, songs, prayers, fellowship, the smell, it all preaches…to experience God is often the highest form of knowing.”[10] This thinking recalls the biblical examples of the musician King David and Bezalel, the son of Uri, who was filled with the spirit of God and had skill, knowledge and ability in all kinds of crafts.[11] It is the thought of beauty and an offering. It is a thought of love given.

We were created to be creators. If this were not so, then why didn’t God create everything for us? If we are to live on bread, why did He not create a bread tree? God takes pleasure in our imitation of Him and of His creative ability. He would rather we partner with Him than simply mope after Him, for we are made in His image and likeness.[12] He is a craftsman,[13] a singer,[14] a weaver,[15] and an architect[16] – how could He expect any less from us when we are motivated to follow Him?

The time is ripe for bricolage. We must recover a spirituality of creativity, resourcefulness and clever frugality. We must embrace the path of the bricoleur and find meaning in the “mysteries, ambiguities, and paradoxes of faith.”[17] We must put it all together so a broken world can know what it looks like.



[1] Cf. http://www.bricolage.cc/
[2] Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage
[3] Ibid.
[4] Cf. Assayas, Michka. Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas (London: Riverhead, 2005).
[5] Frost, Alan and Michael Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church, (Auckland: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 127.
[6] LePage, Robert. Connecting Flights (Quebec: Theatre Communications Group, 1999), 67.
[7] Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage
[8] Bricolage is used to mean the processes by which people acquire objects from across social divisions to create new cultural identities. In particular, it is a feature of subcultures such as, for example, the punk movement. Here, objects that possess one meaning (or no meaning) in the dominant culture are acquired and given a new, often subversive meaning. For example, the safety pin became a form of decoration in punk culture. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage
[9] Tomlinson, Dave. The Post-Evangelical (Grand Rapids: EmergentYS, 1995), 87.
[10] as quoted in “Out of the Box: Authentic Worship in a Postmodern Culture”, Worship Leader (May/June, 1998), 25.
[11] Cf. Exodus 35.30-32.
[12] Cf. Genesis 9.6, Acts 17.28
[13] Cf. Psalm 102
[14] Cf. Zephaniah 3.17
[15] Cf. Psalm 139.15
[16] Cf. Psalm 102.25
[17] Tomlinson, Dave. The Post-Evangelical (Grand Rapids: EmergentYS, 1995), 30.

koru: the unfurling fern

In New Zealand, the indigenous Maori culture places a certain importance upon the imagery of life and death as understood through the koru, or “unfurling fern.”[1] The fern begins as a tiny frond which, over time, unrolls providing it has a clear path to the sun. In order to encourage the growth of the koru, the Maori burn off the surrounding undergrowth so the fern has access to light. This enables the cyclical nature of life and death to continue; the death of the undergrowth and the life of koru. In his book, The Out of Bounds Church, author Steve Taylor uses the botany of the koru as a way of understanding the rhythm of death and decay and its role as “the compost of the new.”[2]

Too often in our spiritual lives we refuse to see the value of burning refuse. We allow things to grow in our lives that need to be destroyed, that need to die in order for other things to survive and grow. Death is an irreplaceable component of compost, however, and if we understand our spiritual lives organically we can also understand the value of rich soil fed and aided by decay.

Flowers, after all, grow best in manure.

When we realize this, we let go of the compulsion to keep alive those things that surround our spiritual koru and keep us from the sun. We burn off the undergrowth in much the same way that Jesus prunes us,[3] so that we may bear more fruit. Though this is not always a pleasant process, it is a necessary one; without it our old habits and hurts, old successes and triumphs, would hinder our new growth towards God. We must face these things and deliberately burn them away, or the “old order [will] go on a while longer, dead though it is”[4] causing us great harm in our spiritual lives.

This is a difficult reframing for many people, because we are constantly bombarded with a specific deception, that of eternity. While, on the one hand, we understand that there is such a thing as eternity and put our faith in a God who exists eternally, we are also deceived if we think that other things must also exist eternally, including governments and world powers, kingdoms, churches and empires. This is the reason Walter Brueggemann calls “forever” the “word of the Pharoah”[5], from which Moses and YHWH liberated Israel. “Forever” is the way that kings legitimize their empires, but nothing lasts forever and this ultimately reflects an absence of perspective.

Everything dies.[6]

Every empire, every church, every person will ultimately be overcome by the Clock and we are forced to choose how we will pitch ourselves towards the future. This is a choice between imagination and nostalgia, between “facing the future and backing into it.”[7] It is the way we embrace the complexity of life, the inherent paradox of death, and are able to participate with God in a via dialectia[8] in which the extremes of positive and negative are held together in a response of faith.[9]

Herein the beauty of koru is revealed. It is the invitation to discover the possibilities of who we will become, not the fantasy about who we used to be. It is the perspective that birth is the obverse blessing of death’s curse, and that Christ demonstrates the miracle of new birth for us. God is exemplified in scripture through several images that recall birth, including that of a nursing mother,[10] but our trouble is not that we ignore the milk of God, but that we also ingest a host of unhealthy things along with it. We eat these things because we refuse to remove or destroy them. So, instead of our spiritual lives being like a mother and her child, they are frequently like a distopian factory where chemically enhanced mother’s milk is fed to babies through tubes that cause cancer.

We have spent too much time as people and churches of palliative prayer,[11] praying only for those things that are almost dead, and not enough as people and churches of new life. Now we must burn off our undergrowth and “limit our non-growth conditions”[12] so that our faith can be robust. We must inspire a “spiritual journey that prioritizes transformation”[13] and looks for moments of awe.

God promises to be with us in this, both in our pain as well as in our newness, but it is our responsibility to ensure that that new life is not inhibited by our reluctance to let some things die. This becomes easier with an understanding of koru; for what is true of horticulture is also true of spirituality: “fruit only grows on new wood.”[14] Let us embrace the death that would kill us, so instead we can live in light.


[1] Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koru
[2] Steve Taylor, The Out of Bounds Church. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 48.
[3] John 15.1-2. Unless otherwise stated all Scriptural quotes will be taken from the New Living International Version.
[4] Bruggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 93.
[5] Bruggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 42.
[6] Rick Chromey, a fellow student, posited the interesting notion in a conversation once that since God limited the number of man’s years to 120 in Genesis 6.3, shouldn’t we also allow for Him to have limited the life of our churches?
[7] Toulmin, Steven. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 203.
[8] Karl Barth coined this phrase to advance the notion that we “know” God through dialogue. Cf. Tomlinson, Dave. The Post-Evangelical, (Grand Rapids: Emergent YS, 1995) pp.92-96 for Tomlinson’s discussion on Karl Barth and via dialectia.
[9] Ibid, pp.92-96.
[10] Cf. Psalm 131, Isaiah 49.15.
[11] In Canada, a palliative care unit is where cancer patients who are beyond hope are treated until their death.
[12] Dale, Robert. Seeds for the Future, (Danvers: Lake Hickory Resources, 2005), 33.
[13] Barna, George. Revolution, (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 2005), 14.
[14] Dale, Robert. Seeds for the Future, (Danvers: Lake Hickory Resources, 2005), 48.

voxpop: towards globaletheia

Voxpop,[1] or “voice of the people”, is British slang. It is a term used to reference the collision of high culture and folk culture. It is the creation of pop culture. Voxpop is both a deconstruction and a combination of class division. Bono singing with Frank Sinatra, and Baz Lurhman’s offbeat take on Romeo and Juliet, are cultural examples of the increasing prevalence of voxpop in our world and we’re only going to see more of it as the globe shrinks. And the smaller the world gets, the easier it is to get around, and the more we get around the more we learn an unalterable truth about our small world: travel affects us.
Whether it’s Gulliver on the island of Lilliput, Alexander entering India, or the British occupation of Hong Kong, humanity is altered when confronted by another, alternate humanity; and, sometimes, it is within those alterations that we learn what is common about man, and what is uncommon.
So it is with faith.
Whether it began with ancient Hebrew proselitization, or the missionary travels of the Apostle Paul, and, later, David Livingston, or the unfettered zeal of the Crusades, the journey of Christian faith around the globe has both pruned and funded the growth of faith itself. It is the preferences and spice of other cultures that temper the iron of western militarism, and the language and devotion of new worlds that have sweetened the expression of an Anglo-Germanic faith long taught and transmitted hierarchically. It is the beauty of Eastern mystery and myth that warms the intellect of the West and its mind for capital.
Having traveled extensively, it has become increasingly apparent to me that a truly global church must not merely be a collection of different ethnicities and nationalities, but a representation of all people before the very God who dwells within them. To this end, I have begun a collection of foreign figures of speech and transliterations that I believe are a beginning – only a beginning – towards a world theology. This globaletheia[2] lives beneath the surface of the 21st Century, but stretches backwards for thousands of years.
On the one hand, these words and phrases are just words and phrases, but on the other hand they are so much more. These are representations of cultural milieu, of shared history and journey, of a search for the divine across the globe and across time. These words and phrases are like icebergs, showing a little text to represent a giant, hidden truth. We must learn to incorporate such truth in our search to approach God as one people.
I have chosen seven examples of voxpop for this text. Each have been chosen from a different region, each expressing a different perspective on faith and ecclesiology, and each one leading us towards the new rites and rituals of our global village and worship of the Creator.



[1] It is also one of the terms I have rejected [see Appendix A] for use in this paper, as I felt it was too “Anglophonic” and “western” to be of use in this specific context.

[2] From globe and Gr. “aletheia”, which means truth. Cf. Strongs’ # 225. http://www.biblestudytools.net/Lexicons/Greek/grk.cgi?number=225&version=kjv

The Terror of Angels

I remember reading a story when I was young about a magical sword that had the disturbing power to tell you the truth about yourself. It was a science fiction novel, The Sword of Shannara, and all the way through the story the hero travels distant lands to try and get a hold of this magical sword in order to defeat the Warlock King and his evil minions.
T owards the end of the story, the hero finds the magical sword – not yet knowing what sort of magical sword it is – and crumples as he tries to hold it in defence. The hero was a young man, brave and pure hearted, who was virtually sinless in the story but the sword revealed all of his mistakes and wrongoings to his mind the moment he picked it up. He was almost crushed by the weight of his imperfection. Ultimately in the story, the hero was able to confront the evil of the Warlock King, who was himself destroyed by the magical sword and its truth.
I always found this to be such a compelling and imaginative tale because most stories are about how terrifying evil is and how scary monsters are. This story was about how scary we are, how terrrifying it would be to be confronted with the evil inside of each of us. I thought long and hard as a boy about what this magical sword would reveal to me if I were to hold it in my hands. I wondered if I was strong enough, as a 12yr. old, to be able to stand up against evil with full awareness of my own corruption.
I mean, could you face the truth about yourself? Or would you be terrified?
Truth is terrifying, but what makes it so?
You’ve heard the old adage about whether or not you could withstand the shame of having all of your family and friends sit in a room and watch of video projection of your unmitigated thoughts in real time? (I think I I’d rather face Adolph Hitler than have my grandmother or my mother-in-law watch all of the ways in which I think like a complete jerk)
Well, I started asking myself these kinds of questions once again when I noticed a strange trend in the bible. It seems to me that almost every time somone in the bible meets an angel or has an encounter with God, their first response is terror. In fact, God tells his people 106 times in the bible not to be afraid which is so weird because of all the things I imagine happening when I meet God, I so rarely imagine fear being one of them
In Luke chapter 2.8-20 we see one of these encounters happen when the angel of the lord appears to the shepherds to announce the birth of Christ. “There were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God's angel stood among them and God's glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, "Don't be afraid. I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: Savior has just been born in David's town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you're to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger." At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises: Glory to God in the heavenly heights, Peace to all men and women on earth who please him. As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over. "Let's get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us." They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the sheepherders were impressed. Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they'd been told!”
Have you wondered why the angel chose to appear to shepherds? Shepherds were poor, simple, marginalized folk for whom news of the Messiah would have indeed been good news. Humble servants who look after sheep hardly seem the appropriate heralds for the king of the universe, right? But I think God was demonstrating to us once again how the very ordinary people are the ones who most often host the Holy - how it is in ordinary places, like fields, with ordinary people, like shepherds or mechanics, that God chooses to appear in an extraordinary way.
Extraordinary ways like the appearance of angels.
We know angels, by the way, are celestial, heavenly, beings which in-and-of-itself is a bit frightening; but, with a little historical study and some research into the use of words in the bible we also know that angels came in a variety of forms, many of which were absolutely terrifying.
For example, we often think of angels as kind-of looking like cupid, but in reality one of the order of angels, the seraphim, don’t look anything like a cute naked baby at all. Now, when some of you hear the word “seraph” you might think of this guy from The Matrix, but some of you might know from certain Old Testament passages that the seraphim are angels with 6 wings clothed in fire. Futher, the word “seraph” actually means, “fiery, flying serpent”, which is sometimes used extracanonicaly to speak about Lucifer who Jewish mystical literature identifies as the chief worshipping angel. Seraphim were the host of angels surrounding and worshipping God with whom devout Jews would’ve been familiar.
So now, instead of cute naked baby, we get an angel that looks a little more like a giant alien or monster, which is pretty terrifying. To be accurate, most of the time angels are listed in the bible they are said to come “in the form of a man”, but I think it’s probably very likely that something of their true nature shone through and that’s where the terror comes from. It was a moment akin to the story I mentioned earlier, where the shepherds were confronted with truth.
Angels are terrifying, then, because of their nature. The terrifying part of them is their glory, their representation of God’s own holiness. It is truly His holiness that is frightening.
Holiness is a terrible thing to behold because it makes us so aware of own own Unholiness.
I met a woman named Maria once, when I was in Juarez, Mexico working at an orphanage. Motivated by her extreme love for children, Maria gave every single penny she had to found an orphanage, L’Agua de Neuva Vida, in Juarez where my good friends Mark and Pansy Benny were the directors for several years. When I was in town, Maria heard that the group I was with had come to visit the orphanage and asked that we come to meet her. Honored, I climbed into our truck and drove with our group to see this amazing woman of faith.
She lived in a dump.
She literly made her home in the city’s dump and lived among the trash because she had given everything she owned to begin the orphanage.
As we began to talk with Maria, she shared with us that she was very sick and needed an operation that was going to cost thousands of dollars without which she would die. It just so happened that an offer had been made from a government organization to buy the orphanage in just that same amount of money. Mark, despite what it would mean for he and pansy and for the children living there, offered to accept the offer and sell the orphanage but Maria wouldn’t have it. She said the most important thing was for the children to have a home and she was willing to die to give them that.
As we left this remarkable woman she pulled on my hand and brought me close to her. There, she kissed me on the mouth – this elderly, diseased, holy woman kissed me as we parted.
That kiss wrecked my day
I was torn between the anxiety of illness and the incredible sense of transferance that I felt. That night I dreamed that with that kiss this woman had somehow imparted to me some of her goodness. I couldn’t take it. It bothered me for days because she was so amazing, so wonderfully good, but all I could think about what whether or not I’d need dialysis because of possible fluid transfer. My own corruption sickened me, as if I’d missed the truly holy moment in the middle of that city dump in order to focus on whether or not I’d need shots back home.
That was when I realized how terrifying holiness really is.
Holiness is frightening because it reveals to us that we really aren’t all that holy. It’s like the closer we get to light, the more we’re able to see our imperfections. So, when we get close to people like Maria, we see how crummy we truly are, and when we get close to God we realize more and more just how much of a debt we owe to the God who has forgiven us.
It’s those moments where we look into our proverbial truth-telling sword and know for sure where we stand.
And it’s scary
It’s scary to think that we’re not better. I mean, I spend most of my time trying to better myself, and not even just get better at behavior, I try and be more generous with my thoughts, gentler with my opinions and certianly with the expression of my opinions, I try and be more kind and considerate. But I’m reminded how far off I am.
What about you? How are you doing? Who are you becoming? If you don’t change a thing about the way you’re living your life right now, who will you become in ten years? A quitter? A deadbeat? Someone who takes their spouse for granted, or whose kids don’t talk to them? Who will you be in your job if you don’t better yourself? What kind of father will you be if you don’t make any more effort than you do now?
This is the problem of holiness, the absolute terror of goodness – that we don’t measure up. Of course, this is also the good news of Christmas! None of us are good enough, so Christ makes up the difference. It is His love for humanity that allows us to be present with God’s great holiness and not be destroyed by the truth of our inadequacies and our sin. It is Love that permits us to go on living
This is the Love that not only He has for us, but that begins to live in us as we follow Him. It is His Love that causes us to be transformed, and teaches us to Love our neighbor. It is His love that compels us to Love the world
Love the world!! Save the Earth!
This kind of great passion is typified by the tradition of the Lamed Vov. The Lamed Vov are 36 Just Men who through their deep love and devotion help the world go forward. No one knows who they are. They don’t even know who they are. They’re like the guys whom Jesus rewards at the last judgment for doing all these good things that they can’t remember doing – they have no memory of clothing poor, or feeding starving, they just do it, and this is what I think is required of us: a spirituality of engagement.
We partner with God in the redemption of the world because holiness is defined primarily in what we do to make everyday holy. So as we think of Christmas, of the immense love that God has for the whole earth, we must also think of how we can participate more in that love. We must be willing to embrace the terror of holiness, to be able to be confronted with God’s incredible nature, be ashamed of our own sin, and still find the freedom in Christ to love the world recklessly
It’s all about love.
It’s about loving the world.
It’s about dying women in city dump’s giving new life to orphans. It’s about holding up a sword of truth in defiance of evil. It’s about you and I partnering with our creator to love more, to give more, and to die more.
Figure out what Christmas means by living it, not just by hearing it.

how many times do i have to tell you?

Do not be afraid. I am your shield, your very great reward

Do not be afraid. For I am with you

Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you
today.

Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to
keep you from wrong doing.

Do not be afraid of any man, for judgment belongs to God

Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged

Do not be afraid of them; the LORD your God Himself will fight for you."

Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; He
will never leave you nor forsake you

The LORD Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor
forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.

Do not be afraid. Be strong and courageous

Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able
to withstand you

Don't be afraid. Have not I given you this order? Be strong and brave, and do the work.

Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD God, my God, is with you. He will not
fail you or forsake you

Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD
will be with you.

Do not lose heart.

Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather
you from the west

Do not tremble, do not be afraid

Do not be afraid. You will not suffer shame

Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong. Since the first day that you set your mind
to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.

Do not be afraid. Your prayer has been heard.

Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom

Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last

Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Be faithful, even to the point of death,
and I will give you the crown of life


But if you do wrong, be afraid