Lord Of Grace

Imagination of the Place

I first encountered Ignatius of Loyola at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. while taking a class there entitled, Lay Spiritual Formation. In it we studied such things as mimetic theory of Rene Girard, Walter Wink’s theology of creative non-violence and engaging the powers, as well as Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercizes. Being a Lutheran, I was never exposed to the writings of the founder of the Jesuits, though I had heard his name. It became for me a sort of awakening, a spiritual breakthrough, where you feel like you’ve been searching for something for years, and you didn’t know it, and then you find it, and it’s an instant fit. Ignatius was this for me.

Ignatius of Loyola

While not being a Roman Catholic myself, the writings of Ignatius struck a chord with me. For too long I had been struggling with prayer as it had been presented to me. There was either the “extremely heart-felt” prayer, complete with raised hands, squinty eyes, pained expression, improvised words interrupted (repeatedly) with stock phrases (“dear Lord, Jesus Christ, I just, just, just, just pray to you today that you’ll just, just, just, just, just, just, just ……”.), or with the purely scripted prayers, which worked somewhat better, or with the “inspiration devotional” prayers that came with an anecdote from daily life and a picture of a waterfall or scenic-sunset-over-wheat-field-with-red-barn-picture. None of these prayer methods are bad, of course; it’s a matter of what works for each of us best. There is no right or wrong. But I had never been able to connect well with any of these, myself.

Then, of course, there was always silent meditation, finding God in the pure absence. This was a dead end for me. My mind moved too fast, and within minutes I was either talking to myself in my head or falling asleep. I’m not a contemplative.

But Ignatius was none of these. In his Spiritual Exercizes he proposes a simple method for reading through scripture in prayer that’s often called “the imagination of the place”. In it you begin with a time of prayer to focus your thoughts, and you ask the Holy Spirit to guide your heart and mind. Then you read through the scripture passage carefully to make sure you catch all the words, all the details. Then, you step back again and imagine yourself in the place of Bible story. It works best for passages from the Gospels that narrate events – like the birth, or a healing story or the trial and crucifixion. I wouldn’t try imagining yourself in the writings of Paul, as that’s too abstract most of the time. So you picture yourself, for example at the trial of Jesus. You imagine the sanhedrin sitting on their benches with their fine robes, and the chatter among them. You picture the crowds outside, the poor, the rich, the angry, the chaotic mob scene that’s being held in check by Roman guards with their long pole-arms and short swords. Then you imagine yourself seeing Jesus there, being brought in, questioned, while the people sit outside at the barrel warming their hands. And so on ……

You imagine each part of the scene, the sounds, the sights, the smells, and you imagine yourself in them. Then you read through the text again, with all this in your mind, and you watch it come alive. The Spirit can guide our minds, and the scriptures can come alive in ways even we can’t control. It’s very powerful. And it’s great for people who are highly visual like me. You don’t have to put effort into clearing your mind. Instead, you put effort into filling it up. The focus on all the senses is what takes you away from the distractions, and it brings the text alive.

The exercize then concludes by saying the Lord’s Prayer.

This Advent, for mid-week services, I’ve been using the Ignatian imagination of the place in lieu of a written sermon. It isn’t just to make things easier for me in terms of prep time (though that doesn’t hurt), but to provide a way for us to do something different: to engage the scriptures our selves, have them come alive in our own minds and hearts. Worship can be, too often, a sort of spectator event, where you have a liturgy and music and sermon put on for you. Your place is to sing along or read along, take communion when it comes. All good stuff. But that’s only part of the story. The other part has to do with encountering God in a meaningful, personal way – one that isn’t at a safe distance, and that does not allow me to hide behind my carefully crafted self-image or public exterior. But how often do we do that?  My hope for Advent was to open a new door for those, like me, who need more to engage God, not less.

All Saints

All Saints Day comes around every year, and I will admit that it’s one of those ancient holidays in the Christian church that I’m in no hurry to get rid of. I know there is the push to be “relevant” with all things, especially sermons, and I appreciate that, especially in a world where the need for Christ is not a given in our culture. But, every now and then, I think it’s important to focus on things just because they are good things to do – and not because they are of any particular practical use to us. The feast days in the church year push me to do that, and All Saints Day as much as any. It’s a time to step back and remember the works of those Christians who’ve gone before us, and the sacrifices they’ve made for the world and for our faith. It’s a chance to honor the dead, and pay our respects – something we don’t do as well in America. While in many cultures ancestors are worshiped, here there’s the opposite pull, to forget about things once they’re done. And this does a disservice to those who’ve made sacrifices. You like to think that your legacy will live on, that what you do will matter in the future, that it will not have been in vain and that people will remember. It’s part of what motivates us to do greatness, having a sense that it will make a lasting difference.

But with our short memories, the past is quickly forgotten. It’s not useful anymore. It’s just history. And, with so much information coming at us so quickly, I have all I can do to keep up with what I have to know, let alone taking time out to remember the dead.

One of my first funerals as a new pastor was for a man named Chuck Graff. He lived in Wilmette, Illinois, and was a marine in WWII. And not just any marine, he stormed Iwo Jima, and made it to the top of the hill with the guys who raised the flag. He showed me his case of medals – tons of them – and well-deserved. Here was a man who lost 1/3 of everyone he knew in the morning by the end of the day. He’s part of the reason our country is still standing. Yet, when I say Iwo Jima today, how many people remember?

But the Marines, being Marines, remember their fellow soldiers. I did a memorial service for Chuck at church, then we went out to the cemetary in interred his ashes in the mausoleum. Outside stood two marines from the Great Lakes Naval Training Base, in full uniform, to pay their respects. I wish they would have had an actual bugle (they used a large boombox), but the sentiment was there. Chuck, in his old age, was no longer going to be fighting our enemies. In his death he would fight nothing. But, that did not mean that his work would be forgotten, or his sacrifices not honored. I’m sure there are other things those marines could have done, than to show up that day. But honoring the dead is a priority, something with value beyond usefulness.

I wish, sometimes, that we in the church would have the same respect for our lost loved ones. It’s not that we aren’t good at supporting one another in grief. I’ve seen the members of Lord of Grace do a phenomenal job of that. It’s in relationship to Christianity at large, as a whole church, that we tend to be so focused on the relevant and the practical and the bottom-line that we forget to honor the dead. The past doesn’t help me today (or so I may think), so let’s forget it. It’s part of why I refuse to give up All Saints Day. I can’t find a ton of practical advice in it, not at least in terms of giving instructions on how to deal with problems. Remembering the saints who’ve died in our Christian faith, many of whom have been brutally killed for it – the martyrs – will not necessarily make my marriage better or help me find a job. But it does help us become better people – teaching us humility and respect on honor and gratitude – things that form character and that make us better people. Maybe that’s the practical value. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to it, because I want to reinforce those values today.

For the All Saints Day sermon this year I took a look at the painting by Hubert and Jan van Eyck from 1432 in Ghent. It’s a massive altarpiece, that fills the front of the Cathedral, the focal point of one’s attention at worship. It’s an incredible work of art, filled with layers upon layers of symbolism and meaning – some of which is obvious, such as God the Father and the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist in the middle – and some is more esoteric, like why are there only virgin women martyrs in the procession towards the lamb in the upper right corner of the bottom center panel? Why not all the women who’ve brought the faith? And why are Adam and Eve in the top corners? But either way, it comes from Revelation 7:7-19, where John the Evangelist has a vision of the new heaven and the new earth, and in it all the Saints of before are bowing in adoration of The Lamb, which is the symbol for Jesus Christ – the one who was slain for our sins. All these people, both Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles, all the bishops and saints, and even a hodge-podge of people from all over on the outer panels come marching in to do something completely unpractical – to give adoration to God. They’re coming to give Christ, the Lamb who was slain, the honor and respect he deserves for the sacrifices he has made. It’s an act of total giving, and yet they’re piling on to do it with great joy.

Worship is, fundamentally, just this: giving glory to God for who he is and what he has done. It’s an act of adoration that’s at the center of our faith. And this passage from Revelation has been the passage used for All Saints Day since it was first instituted in 373 AD in Syria.

Spirit-led Living

I’m going to be starting a sermon series this week entitled “Spirit-led Living”. It’s an offshoot of the visioning process of the church, where we sat down as a council and determined that this was one of our top four short-term goals as a church. We’ve had an ad hoc group working on coming up with ideas to be more intentional in operating from a more Spirit-driven center as a church. This is going to be an on-going process, of course, where we learn and grow and adjust over time. But it’s always good to have some intentionality to getting started.

This whole discussion is, of course, a little uncomfortable for Lutherans historically. We’ve always liked the idea of the Holy Spirit moving us, both as individuals and as a community, but we’ve always preferred to have it move us in ways that were a little more controlled. Partly that’s a liturgical sensibility that likes having worship structured and prayers scripted out (which is a perfectly valid way to connect with the Holy Spirit – don’t get me wrong), and so is suspect of things that seem overly “Pentecostal” or “holy rolling” by nature. But, like so many of our rebellions, there’s an easy danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, and becoming Spiritually dry in the concern to not be out of control.

And yet this gets to the crux of the problem: trying to keep control and maintain a viable Spiritual life. At their basic level, these are incompatible concepts. If I am insistent on being control, then I am setting the terms for my experience of God, which will limit how God can work in me. On the other hand, if I give up control, and let God send the Spirit as he wishes, then I am open to a whole new world of experience and living.

This is the paradoxical nature of the Spiritual life. It’s a phrase I feel like I beat to death some times, but I can’t seem to get around it. The more we try to control our Spiritual encounters, the more we try to define them ahead of time (what some philosophers would call a priori) the less we will experience. On the other hand, a state of abandonment or surrender or openness, where we strip away our preconceived notions of God and allow the Spirit to be, then we are going to find more.

So, to try to unpack all this, I set up a three-part sermon series to explore the issue, hopefully lay some good groundwork for getting started, or renewing our existing journeys, as individuals and as a church.

Week 1 (October 9) – We Do Not Know Where to Begin; We’re Not Supposed to Know Where to Begin
Romans 8:18-27

Week 2 (October 16) – The Spirit Shows Us
1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Week 3 (October 23) – The Spirit Activates Its Power in Us
1 Corinthians 12:1-13

I also plan to explain some practical ways to get started being Spirit-led, drawing from Spiritual traditions of Christianity over the centuries. Too often the idea of being Spirit-led as a church conjures up images of shaking in the aisles or dancing, both of which are fine – if that’s your gift, but for most of Christianity that has not been the experience. Instead, our encounters with God have been through exercizes and rituals that are more structured and subtle, which open our hearts to the overflowing of joy and amazement at the wonder and glory of God.

Christ Pantokrator - Christ the Ruler of All. Russian Orthodox Icon

I am reminded of the Eastern Orthodox “Jesus Prayer” prayed by millions of Christians throughout the centuries in the Eastern half of Christendom, places like Greece, Byzantium (modern Turkey), Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Syria. Here one simply sits back, sometimes in contemplation of an icon, and repeats the words, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, have mercy on me, a sinner” over and over. The repetition brings focus, like practicing the chords on an instrument over and over until they become second nature and the mind starts to drift to higher places.

But I am not advocating only an Eastern, contemplative spirituality. It is only one way among many that we need to discover for ourselves on our paths. For those, like me, who are not good contemplatives, and who are more likely to encounter God in the noise and exuberance of worship, or in plunging the depths of the scriptures, Spirituality takes on a more active meaning. For each of us, God has given Spiritual gifts, and the ability to live lives led by the Spirit. It is a question of discovering those and having them “activated” as it says in 1 Corinthians 12:11.

Men’s Retreat

For those who’ve been wondering, the men’s retreat in Pinetop was a great time again. Lord of Grace has the fortune of having an active men’s group that meets weekly for Bible Study (Saturdays at 7am at the IHOP on Cortaro at I-10) as well as doing more active things like service projects and feeding the homeless through the Salvation Army’s Project Hospitality.

This is the fifth year for the retreat, and the second for me. We had great food, Bible study, golf (for those who were interested) and I had time to get in some good hikes in the White Mountains. I couldn’t get up Escudilla because the Forest Service closed it after it got burned in the Wallow Fire. However, the Pinetop-Lakeside-Show Low area has plenty of trails to enjoy that were left untouched.

As always, the pictures are on flickr.

As always there was plenty of fishing, good food, and fellowship. If you went hungry, it was your own fault. Always a good time.

Bug Night at Kids Club

Every first and third Friday night, throughout the school year, we host a children’s night at Lord of Grace we call “Kids Club”. Designed for K-6th grade, it alternates between nights of movies and fellowship, and nights with games, crafts, and some Bible-based activities.

This last Friday we were supposed to watch a movie, but we changed the format to one of exploring insects and bugs. Led by two graduate students in evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona, the kids got a chance to not only see the bugs in cages, but to take them out, hold them, and answer questions about them. By the end of the night, they were outside under the blacklight looking for insects hidden in the dark. My kids came home with several bugs, including my son who had this giant green beetle, which we had to let go because, as cool as it was, we don’t have the right kind of place to take care of it.

My son holding his giant green beetle

The next night we do is going to be a regularly programmed night, running from 6pm-8pm as usual. We’ll have crafts and games and dinner provided. As always, all kids K-6 are welcome to attend. You don’t need to be a member of Lord of Grace to participate.

However, if you’re squeemish about bugs, don’t worry, we will probably not have another bug night again, at least for a long time.

Minnesota

Just got back from Minnesota. Got to spend a lot of time at the lake with the family, go to a 20th high school reunion, and enjoy some cooler air, most of the time.

I also got to visit some different churches, including this one: Bear River Lutheran. It’s literally out in the middle of the woods, right next to The Bear River, about 70 miles from Canada. It’s been there since 1915, and still has a small, but vibrant worshiping community.

The rest of the pictures are on flickr, in a few different sets.

Northern Minnesota

Duluth

McCarthy Beach State Park

Split Rock Lighthouse

July 4th BBQ and Fireworks

We had our annual Fourth of July BBQ and fireworks watching again this year. This is one of the best fellowship events we do over the year. My family and I love it for several reasons. First, the food is awesome. Lutherans do potlucks better than anyone, and last night was no exception. Second, the fellowship team here at church does a great job setting up games and activities for the kids. This year we borrowed a jumping castle again from Catalina Methodist, and, because of the rain that came all afternoon, we decided to put it up inside. You forget how high the ceilings are in the fellowship hall until you blow up a giant 15foot inflatable Noah’s Ark, and you still have plenty of space left over. Outside they had all sorts of water games (and some water balloons, which I stayed away from).

And, by 9pm we got to pull up our chairs in the east end of the parking lot and watch the Marana fireworks. For me it’s the perfect spot, being far enough away to not have your ears blasted, but close enough to see everything clearly. Plus, and this is a big plus, you don’t have to fight the traffic on Silverbell and Cortaro.

I put up my camera on my tripod and took a whole bunch of these really long exposure shots. At least half of them were worthless. There’s a trick to following the firework’s trail as it rises, and then when it’s going to explode, you tighten the screws and fix the camera in one place, while pressing the “shoot” button and letting it take. It’s an imperfect art, but a fun challenge. Then, I cropped a whole bunch of them more like abstract designs. The shots have a lot of neat details that I found way more interesting when zoomed in on.

The whole bunch of fireworks pictures are on flickr.

Most of the pictures from the potluck are on the church Facebook page.

Dinner with the Picture Rocks Fire Department

A couple days ago (July 3rd) a bunch of us from Lord of Grace went out with our kids to the Picture Rocks Fire Department to cook dinner for the firefighters. The idea came through a connection from one of our members, who knew someone on the department. This year’s been an unusually difficult one, with the record-setting heat and drought causing more fires locally, as well as the wildfires all across the state taking local firefighters away for tours. So, we decided to give back a little to the community by doing what we do well (among other things) which is to cook large meals.

We had a great time there, and all the staff were wonderful hosts. We got tours of the new building, got to look at the equipment (which still looks cool, even when you’re not a kid anymore) and share a great meal. By the end of the evening we were talking about coming out again, maybe quarterly. There’s also talk of starting make some contacts with ways Lord of Grace can be of better service to the Picture Rocks community. Fire departments are one of those local groups that will often see problems on the ground level that the rest of us might not notice just driving through.

The new Picture Rocks Fire Hall on Sandario Road

New Testament at Pima Community College

I’ve been teaching at Pima Community College-Northwest Campus for the past 3 years now, and as I’ve mentioned earlier, I have always thoroughly enjoyed it. I started in fall of 2008 teaching REL 200 – Religion and Popular Culture, which I’ve taught continuously through this spring. In fall of 2010 I also taught one section of a philosophy class called PHI 122 – God, Mind and Matter. And while I enjoyed dabbling again in analytical philosophy and philosophical proofs (or criticism of proofs) of God, religion is really my first love.

So, I will finally be switching to a new class this fall, REL 221 – New Testament. I’m looking forward to getting to teach the NT from the perspective of scholarly criticism and analysis – different from the way one leads church Bible studies or sermons. The class is Monday and Wednesday from 11:40am to 12:55pm at the Northwest Campus.

The class is primarily an introduction, so I’ll be using Mark Allen Powell’s Introducing the New Testament as the textbook for the course. Feel free to register.

Vacation Bible School 2011

Had another great year of vacation Bible school at Lord of Grace, June 6-10. As usual, we filled enrollment to capacity (75 kids). It’s one of those things where we probably could go way higher, but we have a finite amount of space in our building and a finite number of teachers, and we didn’t want to get so big that our quality would suffer.

This year’s theme of “Pandamania” came from the materials supplied by Group Publishing. You probably have seen the signs for this VBS curriculum all over town, as it’s very popular.

We had a blast. I played in the skits at the opening, as well as helping out around. It’s been a great experience each year I’ve been here – especially seeing everyone come together to make it work – and there were a lot of people who put in some good time for it. A big “Thank You” to everyone.

You can see a few of our pictures on Facebook.