bleeding out loud

In college, I played guitar constantly. Everyone seemed to play guitar in the dorms so there was always someone to strum along with, and we’d spend hours sitting in dorm stairwells playing. Back then, playing guitar was a kind of therapy. It did something deep inside me that felt healing or true. There were moments when I’d be almost drawn to the guitar with the deep sense that if I simply picked it up I’d somehow be able to put expression to all the longing, beauty, sadness, or profundity that I found in the world. But then one day, whatever that magnetic force was that drew me, it went away. Nowadays I’m lucky to pick up the guitar and make it through a song start to finish before I start to get bored.

Then in 2004, my sister’s newlywed husband was killed in combat in Iraq. His death was a wrecking ball that swept down through our family crushing everything in its path. It leveled my sister, driving her into alcoholism and depression. Sometimes the suffering of loss is nothing compared to the suffering of presence. Standing by and watching her daughter suffer left my mother feeling completely helpless. My father presented himself as strong but I know him well enough to know what his weaker moments were like. He lived with his own kind of helplessness. I suspect that in the course of a lifetime there are a handful of experiences that completely destroy your worldview, and Rich’s death was one of those moments for Trisha and I.

Relief came in the form of writing. I’d sit in front of a computer for hours on end pounding out my questions, trying to sort out the shards of my worldview to see what could be salvaged. Looking back, I think both Trisha and I came closer to walking away from our faith than we knew at the time, but thankfully the writing was a relief. Over the past 6 years, I’ve come to have the same sense for writing that I used to have for the guitar, and I’m sitting here writing this, not knowing if I really even have a point in mind other than that I was standing in the kitchen just now and felt the longing and the ache and the pull. I’ve come to trust whatever that force is. Is it creativity? Is it the Holy Spirit as so many of the people I know would suggest? I’m not sure what it is. I just know it’s there and that I feel compelled to follow it.

I’ve never really understood the Holy Spirit (and I’m a pastor for God’s sake!). Maybe it’s because I grew up as a Southern Baptist and we seemed to leave about as much room for the movement of the Spirit as we did the third verse of any hymn. Besides, we didn’t call it the Holy Spirit. We called it the Holy Ghost, which was a name that only complicated things as far as I was concerned. People who were “prompted” by the Spirit were weird.

And even though I wouldn’t say I know a ton about this mysterious presence that is somehow the gift of God to his people, my gut tells me that the Holy Spirit isn’t as strange as I’ve come to think it is. For instance, there are always people coming into the church wanting to talk with a pastor. They’re usually in the midst of some kind of crisis and really just need someone to listen more than anything-someone to sit in a room with them and keep his or her mouth shut long enough for the healing space that’s already inside them to open up. So I do my best to ask simple, honest questions-the kind of questions with no hidden agenda or right answer. Somewhere in the midst of our grieving for Rich and a world that no longer seemed right, I came to believe that we don’t need to give each other answers as much as we need to give each other our selves.

So that’s what I try to do in those moments, and one of the only ways I know to do this is to pray for whoever it is that’s comes in, and I’ve started to notice a strange phenomenon. There are moments when I find I have an incredible spatial sense of nearness to whoever is sitting there. We’ll be sitting several feet apart, but when this happens I have the overwhelming feeling that they’re invading my personal space, like we’re being drawn close to one another as a magnetic force. Weirder still is that there are other times when I sense just the opposite. As I pray, I might feel a spatial sense of distance as if we’re miles apart and traveling in opposite directions even though we happen to be sitting in the same room. It’s an odd sensation, and I’m only ever mildly aware of it because it only happens when I’m praying for someone. Then there are other times when I don’t sense anything at all.

But my guess is that the pull, whatever you may choose to call it, is holy, and in that way, my gut tells me that whatever it is that has happened inside me as I’ve written this just now is holy even though, at the moment, it only seems like senseless jabber.

Two weeks ago we hung a message board in our dining room. It’s half cork board and half whiteboard. Trisha has family pictures pinned all over it. Being the wordsmith in the house, I’ve taken it upon myself to keep the whiteboard portion updated. Trisha, Braylen, Clara, Jesus, and myself all have quotes there on a weekly basis.

It’s mostly funny stuff that we’ve said during the week.

Clara: “Mumm, Mumm, Mumm!”

Trisha: “You are so dumb. You are really dumb.” (Trisha lifted this from a viral youtube video, and has felt the need to say it to me all week long.)

Jesus: “What do you want me to do for you?” (I once read through the gospels and amassed all the questions Jesus asked people. So each week I put up a new question.)

Me: “Your breath stinks. It smells like your mouth is farting in my face.”

And then last night Braylen had a zinger, one that caught us all by surprise. We’d just gotten off the phone with a dear friend who had miscarried earlier in the day. Braylen was standing on a little green chair in front of the bathroom mirror while Trisha combed snarls out of her hair. She was looking into the mirror but asked, “Is the baby gone?” Trisha and I exchanged glances. “Yes,” I said.

“Where did it go?”

Another glance at Trisha. “Heaven I think.”

She turned around, finally looking away from the mirror, and said, “Heaven is a dying thing.”

It didn’t come out sounding like a question. It was half statement and half wondering, her four year old attempt at sorting it all out. Then as quickly as she had entered the conversation, she left again and turned back to look into the mirror.

She has reason to be wondering. There’s been a lot of death around her lately. Both of the dogs that she loved to play with at grandma’s house died within weeks of each other (I once heard Stephen Colbert say that not all dogs go to heaven, just the dogs that have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. I remember nearly spitting whatever it was I was drinking out of my mouth when I heard it.) But then last month some friends of ours lost a child, and yesterday came the news of the miscarriage. Somehow through all of this she has come to associate heaven and death, and I was immediately reminded of our responsibility to help her envision a different picture of heaven, not as just some place people go after they die, but any place where life is as God intends it to be. It could show up in the dining room or at preschool or on the green chair in front of the mirror while snarls are being combed out.

Today was a monumental day in the life of the Nelson family. It was Braylen’s first day of preschool. I was dropping her off on my way to work. So, naturally, I was in a rush trying to get her out the door. And, of course, Trisha insisted on a small scale photo-shoot in the front yard before we could leave.

One of the advantages of being a parent now as opposed to thirty years ago is how easy it is to capture moments. We’ve got a digital camera, cameras on our laptops, and cameras on our phones. No moment goes undocumented [Though sometimes I wonder if the obsession with capturing moments sometimes keeps us from participating in them].

The best photos are the ones that tell stories. One such photo is the iconic image of JFK standing in the oval office. It was taken in 1961 by George Tames. Shortly after the photo was taken, the Cuban missile crisis happened and the photo was dubbed “the loneliest job in the world” because of the way it looks like Kennedy is standing there with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Actually, he was just reading a newspaper while standing up, but I love the way we intuitively pair images with ideas. I didn’t have a camera today when I dropped Braylen off, which was just fine to me because I took a picture with my mind, one that I’ll never forget.

When we got to the school we put her backpack and coat on a little hook with her name on it. The teachers had asked the kids to try and use the bathroom and wash their hands before coming into the class, so we walked over to the bathroom. I always feel a little helpless as a dad when I have to send Braylen into a restroom on her own. But she’s super smart, so I just waited on the far side of the hallway. The bathroom door was open and looked down a long corridor to all the sinks. Each sink had a little stepping stool for the kids to stand on as they washed their hands, and beyond the sinks on the far wall was a massive schoolroom window, the kind that are frosted so you can’t see out or in. The window was blinding in the morning light.

Then it happened.

Braylen walked out from her stall and stepped up on a stool and started washing her hands. She was so deliberate and meticulous. And for as long as I live I will remember her tiny silhouette, completely dark against the blinding light of the frosted window. It made me think of the JFK photo and the fact that for the first time in her little life, she was about to do something all alone.

I don’t normally cry over these kinds of things. Our wedding, the birth of our children, watching HD for the first time, none of these things moved me to tears. But when we left the bathroom and walked into her class, the teacher knelt down to greet her and Braylen asked, “Do you let daddies in your preschool?” What killed me was that there was a whole world behind her question, and I realized that in some ways a world was coming to and end for her and a new one was beginning. We were standing there waiting for the teacher’s answer, together, holding hands in the space between two worlds.

It was just preschool for God’s sake, but I saw it all unfold before her right then and there. She was entering a world of formalities. She now needs to be up and ready to get rolling by 9 am three times a week. She has a class to go to. She has things to do. She was entering a world of being entrusted to people she didn’t know, of being entrusted to people her parents didn’t really know. A world where the new people will either accept her or be cruel to her. A world where she will soon learn the game of holding herself up against others, comparing her performance and image with those of everyone else.

I stayed for a few minutes and then told her that I needed to go to work. She looked up from the train she was playing with and said, “You don’t have to go. My teacher said daddies can stay in my preschool.” But when I told her that daddies could only stay a few minutes and that I’d be back to get her soon, she said, “Okay.” She went back to the train and didn’t even notice me leave. When I got to work, I went to my desk and bawled like a baby thinking about all the other thresholds we would cross into still other worlds and how every one would carry her a little farther away from me. And no matter what new world she enters into-graduation, college, marriage, or children of her own-I will cross every one of those thresholds thinking of the little girl whose tiny silhouette stood out against the frosted glass window. The image brings me to tears even now.

This is an excerpt from the writing I’m doing at Mars Hill.

The Treasure & The Pearl | Matthew 13

One of the themes running throughout Jesus’ kingdom parables is the theme of hiddenness. Despite the fact that Jesus was constantly telling people the kingdom had arrived, few people saw it because they were looking for something else. The hiddenness of God is one of the greatest frustrations of a life of faith. Where is God when you need him most? Why does God speak so freely and clearly when things are just fine, but suddenly go silent when things blow up and we desperately need to hear from him? Yet as Jesus points out in these two parables, the kingdom, although hidden, can be found-stumbled over, in fact, if you aren’t careful.

Some people discover the kingdom at the end of an exhaustive search like a merchant looking for pearls. You know the experience. You search and search for something, and the searching goes on for what seems like an eternity. Maybe it’s something you lost. You rack your brain. You retrace your steps, and when you don’t find it, you wonder in exasperation, “Where could it possibly be?”

Or maybe it’s something you never possessed to begin with and your entire life has felt like a searching after you don’t know what. Only you have a deep sense that whatever it is, you’ll know it when you see it. Then, after weeks, months, or even years, you find whatever it is you’d been searching for: your keys, your phone, an old friend you’d lost touch with, a community of people you feel that you can finally belong to, or maybe the one person in all the world you can belong to. Whatever it is, the experience of discovering what you’ve been searching for is pure relief and indescribable joy.

Not everyone has to search for the kingdom though. Others simply happen upon it by accident like a man stumbling over treasure in a field. Maybe it’s better to say that it finds them.

Sometimes you find the kingdom. Sometimes the kingdom finds you. Either way, the result is the same: pure joy.

Joy is an interesting word. In Greek it’s the word chara. It means a state of joy, gladness, or great happiness, but in many languages, joy is expressed by action: “My heart is dancing” or “my heart shouts because I am happy.” That’s because joy is active. It wells up. It overflows. No one ever simply possesses joy and stays the same because it does something to whoever possesses it. You know joyous people when you see them. They either delight you or annoy you because it’s impossible to be around them and not get some of their joy on you. It’s parasitic. It jumps off of one and onto another.

In both of Jesus’ stories the joy comes because of the discovery of something incredibly valuable. In the ancient world, people buried treasures in the ground as a way of safekeeping. Likewise, pearls were one of the most sought after commodities. Finding these things was like hitting the jackpot.

What’s ironic is that most people win the lottery and start spending. Even if they choose to invest their newfound fortune, the end goal is still to put the money to work in order to acquire more. There are endless stories of people whose lives have been ruined by winning the lottery. More money. More problems.

The joy of discovering the kingdom leads the characters is Jesus’ parable to do the exact opposite. Instead of buying, they start selling. They hit the jackpot and start getting rid of everything. Why? They behave as though they’ve found the one thing that matters most. Like they’ve finally found what they were created for. Life as it was meant to be. Ultimate reality.

Sometimes we have the privilege of catching glimpses of this ultimate reality. There are moments when a window opens up and we see, ever so briefly, the world as God must have imagined it. We catch a flicker of the same beauty and possibility that God must have felt when he spoke the world into being.

A few years ago, some very close friends moved to China. We were sad to see them go and knew that things would be very different no matter how we tried to stay in touch. After a year or so, we got word that they were coming home for Thanksgiving. So we managed to plan a meal with them and ten or eleven other very close friends. It was a meal I will never forget. We sat together at the table and ate and drank and laughed and cried. We caught up. We told stories. Conversation floated along. It went on for hours, and we all lost track of time, and at the end of the night no one wanted to get up from the table. There was a real sense that we hadn’t just shared a meal, we’d shared life. I walked away hoping that every meal I would eat for the rest of my life would be like that one. That was what God meant for meals to be like. But this wasn’t just about a meal. This is what relationships were supposed to be like. This was heaven. Only it had just taken place in my friend’s dining room.

The odd thing about catching glimpses of the kingdom of heaven is that it’s easy to begin thinking that the kingdom is random. It may show up here or there in a momentary flash, so you’d better pay attention. Paying attention is good, but the kingdom of heaven isn’t random. Paying attention assumes that the kingdom is something happening external to you. But as Jesus points out in Luke 17:21, “people won’t say, “Here it is!” or “There it is!” because the kingdom of God is within you.” Jews used the phrase kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God interchangeably, but Jesus’ point is that the kingdom isn’t somewhere out there-It’s somewhere in here-not beyond your reach but within your grasp.

A kingdom is about rule and authority. Each of us possesses a degree of rule and authority in our own lives. There are certain things we have say over. The philosopher Dallas Willard calls this “the range of our effective will.” We can choose to do whatever we want with our possessions, our bodies, our behaviors, and our relationships. The things we have say over are our kingdoms, and we are free to do with them as we wish.

The kingdom of heaven refers to the rule and reign of God, which is any place where things are as God intends them to be. And the reason we only catch glimpses of this kingdom rather than long, uninterrupted views is that it is in constant competition with all of our individual kingdoms. There is what God intends and then there is what we intend. What God intends is right relationships between God and people, between people and one another, between people and creation, and between people and their own selves.

Every time we make the choice to align our intentions and actions with God’s intentions, heaven shows up. Not randomly, not magically but as the direct result of partnering with God and allowing his rule and reign to be the guiding force behind all of the things we have say over.

So the kingdom isn’t hidden after all. Maybe it’s better to say that it is hidden in plain sight like a person who searches for their keys only to realize that they’ve been in their hand the whole time. The kingdom isn’t in some distant future. It’s here and now, in living rooms and cubicles and checkout lanes and minivans and family reunions and difficult conversations and broken social systems. And it’s not random. It’s deliberate, brought about by a dynamic partnership between God and people.

Excerpt from Kingdom of Heaven curriculum at Mars Hill.

The Mustard Seed & The Leaven | Matthew 13

In Jesus’ day, it was dangerous to talk about kingdoms. It was dangerous because there was really only one kingdom: Caesar’s. The Roman Empire dominated the world, and it dominated the world through brute force. History books talk about the Pax Romana, or Roman peace. It was a period of relative peace in the world during the 1^st and 2^nd and Centuries when Rome was at the height of its power. But if you look into the lives of 1^st Century Jews, you get the sense that Roman peace came at the tip of a sword. It was Rome’s way or it was no way. In fact, the Romans specifically designed something for people who got in their way: crucifixion. Rome crushed people. It slowly squeezed everything people had out of them with its endless taxes. It was a kingdom of power, a kingdom of the sword.

That’s the setting in which Jesus was telling stories about a different kind of kingdom, a kingdom not of the sword but of the seed. Both of these kingdoms hold power in their growth, but one uses death to accomplish growth while the other uses life

One of the central ideas Jesus communicates with these parables of the mustard seed and the leaven is that the kingdom of heaven is growing. By its very nature, the mustard seed is invasive. The plant was and is known for it’s resilience and it’s tendency to keep on growing even when it is unwanted. Farmers fear the mustard seed because the plants can get into everything. It invades every nook and cranny, like weeds growing up in concrete cracks. In fact, there are modern day accounts of mustard plants growing in the cracks of boulders and splitting them in half. The seed itself is less than a centimeter long, yet is has the potential to split a massive boulder through it’s growth.

The same is true for the leaven that the woman hides in the dough. Most Bible translations refer to it as yeast, but the leaven is actually a fungus that expands when given moisture, heat, and sugar. Like the mustard seed, the leaven is alive. It moves. It bobs. It weaves. Even though it’s small, it is constantly expanding.

Most of the people Jesus spoke with were poor and powerless. They were tiny in the face of massive Roman Empire. Wealth and power were the dominant values of the day. The people who possessed them were the ones who shaped and changed the world. If you didn’t have them, you were nothing. You didn’t matter. You’d never change the world.

Yet Jesus challenges this assumption. He looks into the faces of the poor and powerless and tells them that they have resources of a different sort. They are still capable of changing the world. He speaks to them of a kingdom whose strength is in its smallness. It’s interesting that the kingdom Jesus spent so much time talking about started with just a bunch of poor people in Israel, but within a hundred years it had spread like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire. Now, thousands of years later, all that’s left of Rome are piles of broken rocks. Not so with the kingdom. The kingdom is still humming with life, finding its way into cracks and crevices and darkness, reminding the weak, the small, the hurting, the powerless that they have vast resources within them, and that they can shape and change the world in profound ways.

But Jesus doesn’t say that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. He says it is like a mustard seed that has been planted. A seed sitting on the sidewalk is nothing more than potential unmet, but when that seed is planted and cared for Jesus says, “it will grow into a plant upon which others may rest”. Because this kingdom is alive, it must be planted, it must be cared for, tended to and nurtured or it won’t grow.

There are seeds just sitting inside of us-seeds we’ve neglected or assumed would grow on their own. We don’t get to be neutral in it all. We don’t get to sit this one out. We each will have an impact on the world around us through our actions or inactions. When we nurture the seeds that have been planted inside of us, the kingdom of heaven has a field day. When we fail to nurture those seeds, our inaction creates a world where Roman Empires flourish.

For centuries people have been caring for their seeds. Standing up for the rights of the oppressed, feeding those who are hungry, caring for those in need, and bringing praise to God. The seed is like a legacy that is passed on through the generations, one that we each get to care for in our own way. The seed is growing and therefore always changing. It looks different to different people.  It never looks exactly the same. But the one thing that Jesus says always remains the same is that it will grow and it will provide rest for others.

The mustard plant grows up into a tree with branches, and the birds of the air come to rest on it. The leaven expands to create a massive batch of bread to nurture people. When the seeds grow inside of us, there are always implications for others.

Some friends of mine recently lost their eighteen-month old daughter. Her death has been excruciating for everyone. So a handful of us got together a few nights ago to love and support them. We cried, we prayed, we hugged, we sat silently, and we looked at pictures. At the end of the evening our friends said to us, “we just want to thank you for sharing this weight with us.” Somehow our presence had actually lifted a little weight off their shoulders. They were able to stop for a moment and simply rest on our branches, to feed on the loving presence of those seated around them. Every corner of that living room was filled with the kingdom. It was a tangled mess of branches and bread, and it gave them rest.

This is the kingdom of heaven. It is within you. It is not far from you or beyond your reach.