Welcome to a Soulstice Christmas.  If you’ve never been here before, this might seem a bit different from the average Christmas.  We still have lights and candles and all the seasonal paraphernalia that goes along with Christmas, but we are choosing to deviate from the status quo.  Allow me to explain.

The Christmas story emerges in the scriptures against the backdrop of the Roman Empire and more specifically, the Roman Caesars.  Beginning with Julius Caesar and shortly thereafter the Caesar of Luke’s gospel, Augustus.  Around the Roman Empire during the time of Jesus you could find sayings like, 

• “Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus”
• “There is no other name given to men in which they can be saved “
• “Caesar is Lord”
• “Augustus has been sent to us as Saviour…the birthday of the god Augustus has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel.”

With the entire Roman Empire and believing that salvation & peace on earth will come through Caesar, it’s no wonder that the first Christians were quickly executed when they rebelled and conspired against the empire to say that Caesar is not Lord but in fact Jesus is Lord.  When the angel told Mary that unto her a child would be born who would rule the world and whose kingdom would have no end, you have a classic conflict of interest. 

Right there in the middle of the Christmas story is rebellion, and conspiracy against the empire, power structures, and Caesar’s of their day.  And the Christians would not bow at the altar of idolatry, but rather would only bow a knee to Jesus. 

The question for us this Christmas, we who live in the most powerful empire the world has ever seen (some may still argue Rome was, but either way), is will we bow to the altar of hyper-materlialism, consumerism and overconsumption?  Our Christmas in America is more about what we will buy and what gifts will make us happy than it is about a God who showed up to unlikely people in an unlikely place to plant the seed of salvation for the whole world.  How about you?  What will you do this Christmas?  How will you respond?

Tuesday night I was driving home from my brothers house with all three of the girls in the van.  While driving, we plugged in my iphone and were listening to our fav tunes from the new Crowder album.  The two younger girls were in the front seats of the van, while Hadley was asleep in the back row.  My favorite tune was playing, “Oh How He Loves Us” and I was belting it out much to the enjoyment of Linden and Dahlia. 

It was at this point that traffic in front of us stopped!  Nothing but brake lights!  Immediately I hit the brakes and slowed down in time to avert disaster.  This is when things went from real time to slow motion.  I saw a pick up truck in my rear view mirror that was barreling down on our van and had not realized that everyone in front of him was stopped.  I saw smoke from his tires as he locked up his brakes, and then the driver veered towards the shoulder because he was not going to stop in time.  I watched in my rear view mirror and side mirror as this truck spun out and missed the back end my van by about a foot and came to rest on the shoulder right behind us. 

I can see the red brake lights moving slowly, the truck with smoke from his tires, and his tailgate in my side view mirror, and I can hear David Crowder, “Oh, how he loves us oh / oh how he loves / how he loves us oh” . 

It’s at this point I began to ask some pretty significant questions.  Does God love us so much that He intervened in that moment and kept the truck from hitting the back of my van which carried all of my children but more specifically had my oldest in the exact place this truck would have hit us?  Was that a miracle, or was it just lucky?  Was that God’s plan?  What if he had hit us…would that have been God’s plan too? 

A friend in my small group last night asked me “What do you lose or gain by believing that it was in fact God’s hand who protected us from disaster?”  To which I responded, “my entire system of understanding evil and suffering in the world and how God interacts in the midst of it all.”  If I say yes, that was God’s hand and part of God’s plan, and was a very real experience of His love towards us, what do I say to the person who did get hit and who lost their child in the process?  Sorry, but that was God’s plan and I’m sure he’s up to something even though it took the loss of your child to bring it to light. 

Wrestling through these types of issues are more often than not the place where people get stuck and cannot move to a place of faith in a God who “plans” things like tragic car accidents and sickness and death.  I guess I’m curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this?

True confessions: I have been terrible about keeping any information on the blog that is worth anyone stopping by to read, which is precisely why according to my nifty little tool that shows me how many visitors we’ve had has flatlined. So many times I’ve thought, I really ought to blog and get back in the swing of things and then I go to chipotle or something. So the only real way to start blogging again is to actually start blogging. That’s what this is. I will start with some information that is applicable to the Soulstice community and use that as my platform to begin writing again. November 22nd, we are inviting you to “set the table” at Soulstice. We are about to participate in week 2 of this series and last week I invited people to sign up for a table that they could “set” on the 22nd for our worship gathering that night. The Setting the Table series is the Soulstice teaching series connected to “Greater Things…extending our legacy” which is the capital campaign here at the church. We wanted to use the metaphor of hospitality and setting the table to explain what and why we thing “Greater Things” is important. We see it as an opportunity for us to set the table for the future generations of this church and for us to be hospitable with the gospel message of Jesus by investing in the spaces that we worship in weekly. So the night of the 22nd, our hope is that you all will sign up for a table and be creative, invest youreslf and your creativity into the table in such a way that the people who sit at your table will know they are loved, cared for, welcome, and special because of the effort you’ve put into “setting the table” for them. It could be as simple as a very nice dinner setting with the traditional elements of plates, forks, centerpieces, etc. Or, it could be as creative as a really sweet kids table with a toy train going around the table and lots of fun stuff to do for the kids who sit at the table. Somehow, we want you to try to communicate to the people who sit at your table that they are valued and loved because of the time and effort you took to create the space for them. As an added bonus, we are moving Carbone’s Pizza Night up to the 22nd instead of having it on the 29th because it seems like a no brainer and with the holiday weekend on the 29th we thought this would be a better move. So there you have it. Please sign up for “Setting a Table” and then roll out the red carpet for your friends who might sit at your table.

My wife and I went to an open house for my daughter’s kindergarten class a few weeks back.  She is attending  RDLS which stands for Richfield Dual Language School.  It’s essentially a spanish immersion school for kids where eventually they will be bi-lingual with the difference being her teacher only speaks in spanish instead alternating between the two languages. 

While we were there it was impossible for us to miss the obvious.  Do you remember Sesame Street?  Where they would sing that song about “one of these things is not like the others?”  My wife has red hair.  All three of my daughters have red hair.  With red hair typically comes fair skin, and then there is me.  I tan a little bit in the summer, but it’s mostly just my freckles getting bigger from the sun.  I’m not sure I have ever felt the way I did in that room.  Everyone speaking a different language than me, and almost everyone looking very different from me and my family.  I was, if for only a few brief moments, THE MINORITY in the room. 

I am a white male.  Which means that pretty much my entire life I have had a better chance of success than anyone on the planet.  My life has been one of priviledge and opportunity in every direction.  Even my kids, while they are all girls, in this day and in this age have such incredible opportunities to do just about anything they want with their lives if they work hard and have gifts in that area.  But while Hadley is at school, she will be one of two white girls in her classroom of about 25 students. 

My wife and I talked about this.  What it felt like to be the minority in a situation.  While we recognized this is nothing close to what it feels like to be the minority your ENTIRE LIFE in every situation you find yourself in, still it was a good experience for us.  It allowed me to access emotions that I had never felt before and strangely I saw the kids who are usually living in the minority status in a very different light.  I felt like I could relate at least a little bit to what they might feel and experience on a day-to-day level.  I think I felt compassion.

We talked about whether or not this would be a good experience for our daughter and what the effect of it might be.  While we are still sorting out the details of just how this plays out in our lives, I am grateful for the experience I had and the experience my daughter has every day at kindergarten.  I hope and pray that she/we are stronger, more compassionate people who are aware of the different perspectives that people live out of every day.  I hope and pray that it shapes our character to the point that we are more loving, more caring, and more sensitive to the needs of others.  Maybe even a little bit more like Jesus.

This past week I taught from John’s gospel on the implications of Jesus weeping at the tomb of his friend Lazarus.  In a nutshell my thoughts could be summed by answering this question; What do we learn about God and Jesus as Jesus weeps for Lazarus?

1.  We learn the kingdom of darkness and the power of satan at work in the world is absolutely real.  The bible teaches that the world we live in is the grounds for a cosmic battle between satan and the forces of evil/darkness and God and the forces of good/light.  Lazarus’ sickness, and ultimately his death is an example of this, and Jesus is clearly upset and moved deeply by this reality.

2.  God is not the author of this or any other sickness, death, destruction, decay or evil in creation.  God is the source of good/light.  A combination of satan and our own free will/choices are the source of anything that oppose the will and purpose of God for creation. 

3.  We learn that God is with us.  As Jesus weeps for Lazarus we see Philippians chapter 2 in living color.  This is the passage that makes clear the incarnation of God as a human being named Jesus.  Jesus enters the experience, pain, emotion, heartache that this situation brings to bear, and he voluntarily makes all of this his own experience.  God, in this sense, is with us, among us, and one of us. 

On sunday, I wasn’t able to really get to the next step of “so what” because of time and wanted to offer some thoughts on what might be next.  In light of these thoughts, how now shall we live?  This is of course the great challenge for followers of Jesus.  How do we take what we know in our heads cognitively and let live and breathe in our lives as truth?  A few thoughts for this week as you consider what this means.

1. 1.  If Jesus is the light of the world and the manifestation of light in the world, who is constantly working against the reality of darkness and evil in the world…so should we!  Being a follower of Jesus is not a cognitive exercise alone!  Orthodoxy (or right belief) is important.  It is valuable for us to think “rightly” about God and the revelation of God in Jesus.  This of course is the source of our salvation.  But there is more.  James says that faith without works is dead.  Jesus calls anyone who will follow Him to continue the work that He started at resurrection.  This is the work of demonstration and announcement.  The announcement is that the God of the universe has overcome death, sin, evil at the cross, has resurrected from the dead and will bring His mission and the world to completion when he is Lord of all.  We are to announce this reality wherever we are in word, with gentleness and respect (1 peter 3.15).  We are also called to demonstrate this reality by the way we live our lives.  We are to be “bringers of this coming kingdom” in this respect.  As the Spirit of God empowers us and lives in us, we reflect the light of God into the world where there is darkness.  I love David Crowder’s song lyric on this point.      

“Where there is pain
Let there be grace
Where there is suffering
Bring serenity
For those afraid
Help them be brave
Where there is misery
Bring expectancy
And surely we can change
Surely we can change
Something”

2.  When we encounter tragedy, evil, death, etc. we have a two responses.  First, we pray that the God who has conquered death and now endwells the followers of Jesus would heal, restore, and redeem whatever the situation is and we trust that God is in fact sovereign and loves us.  Our second response is connected to the response of Jesus.  In his humanity, Jesus weeps with those who were mourning the sickness and death of their friend.  This is what the God of the universe who became human does.  There is power in presence and solidarity.  I can’t remember any of the things people have said to me in the midst of my own encounters with tragedy/darkness, but I can tell you WHO was there.  When we show up in the midst of dark situation, we bring LIGHT!  We need to be aware of this, and intentional about the way we act, love, and give of ourselves to friends/family in difficult situations. 

Paul’s prayer for the Philippian church was that they would live blameless lives as the children of God amidst a broken world in which they would shine like stars in the universe as they held out the word of life…Christ.  This is my prayer for you.

Spent a lot of time in the John this week preparing for Sunday’s message.  Can I just say that there is about a billion things in this little story that one could focus on and dig deeper into.  I wish that more scholars were writing with narrative theology in mind and also with the symbolism.  I think we miss half of what the Gospel writers were doing as they wrote because we don’t pick up on the subtle nuances that are littered throughout each of the gospels.  Let me just highlight a few things.

1.  11:9-10 Jesus makes some seriously odd comment in the middle of this story to his disciples about walking around in the middle of the night and the benefits of being in the light.  If you take it out of the story, the story actually is tighter and flows a lot better.  With it, it’s like a Shakespearean “aside” when one of the characters comes to the front of the stage and speaks directly to the audience to try to help them understand.  A few questions…whose gospel do we hear more about light and dark than any other?  John’s!  Was there any connection this kind of light and dark talk with the world of the first century?  Yes!  This was all about the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.  If satan is the ruler of this age, and the darkness of sin and rebellion is present because of him and his minions and our inheritance from Adam, then there is a constant struggle between light and dark, especially in light of the fact that Jesus himself is now in the story. 

2.  11:4 and 9:3 Jesus meets a blind guy, the disciples ask who has sinned?  Jesus says (and I think this is the best translation)…Neither he or his parents have sinned…but let the work of God be on display in his life.  To the Lazarus situation Jesus says “This sickness is not unto death, but rather God’s glory, let the Son be glorified through it.”  This is very different rendering of the passage than what we get in our translations.  We get “SO THAT GOD IS GLORIFIED”.  When I read that, it appears that God is the author of the malady, and it needed to happen SO THAT God would be glorified.  Since when does destruction, death, and the decay of God’s good creation NEED to happen SO THAT God can be glorified?  It seems to me that those things ARE NOT the will or plan of God.  These things are ultimately a result of sin, free will, humanities rebellion against God, the reality of satan and the cosmic war taking place as we speak in the heavenlies, and specifically not the decision of God.  That’s just my take on it though.

3.  The humanity and the divinity of Jesus.  The first 1/2 of the story, Jesus answers, speaks, and functions as the Son of God.  His interactions are often about the glory of the Son for the glory of the Father, or things happening in a particular way so the disciples see him as being sent from the Father.  And then in verse 33 when he sees Mary crying and the Jews around her, he just loses it!  It’s like he “bursts into tears” and the floodgates can no longer hold back the well of emotion that Jesus, the human friend and brother, is feeling in the situation.  It’s like Phillippians 2 is being watched on a black and white television screen here as Jesus voluntarily accepts, assumes and makes his own the emotion and experience of humanity, and in this case his friends, from which it is HIS purpose to deliver us from.  The paradoxical nature of the incarnation all right here!

What a great story.  I could on and on but for now, I encourage you to take a stroll through John 11 to see what you see.

check out this video from Donald Miller and something he is passionate about called the “The Mentoring Project”

Over 150 people gathered on the lawn of Lakefront Park this past Sunday night to be challenged to think about hunger in our community.  Most of us don’t realize that there are people in the suburbs who live down the street from families for whom financial stability is a given, who are struggling to feed their teenagers.  There are kids who can’t concentrate in the classrooms of our schools because they are hungry. 

The 2009 Hunger concert was an incredible night of music, community, challenge, and coming together to say something as a community about the issue of hunger.  I’ve heard the saying “you can’t do it all…so do you what you can and start where you are.”  I think that’s what was happening on Sunday night in Prior Lake.  A bunch of people gathered to say, we know we can’t do it all and certainly not by having a concert, but we want to do something so we’ll start where we are.

In total, almost 600 pounds of food was collected and almost $2,000.00 was donated to purchase 2.5 rice 2000 pound rice bags for Feed My Starving Children.  This of course was not the point of the night, but it is a significant amount of food that will be given to people who are hungry. 

It was our hope as musicians that people would leave more engaged in the issue of hunger in our world than when they came.  That there would be a bit of “cognitive dissonance” in the spaces of their minds that would require them to think about and process this issue at a deeper level than before.

Music they say is the language of the soul.  It crosses cultural, racial, and spiritual boundaries and touches people at a place that the written word or spoken word cannot access.  We hope and pray that the music that was heard on Sunday night continues to speak to the hearts of those who were in attendance.

I don’t claim to have the worst life.  In fact my life has been pretty good compared to some.  Be that as it may, like every other human being that has lived on this earth, I have experienced my fair share of let downs and hurts.  People who were close to me and then made poor decisions that affected me.  People who were supposed to look out for me and take care of me who weren’t there when I needed them to be.  Like I said, if you’ve lived long enough, you too have experienced the pain and scars and reality of the fact that often times we choose to look out for ourselves instead of others.

This blog post is not an attempt to dredge up my past and point fingers at people who have let me down, but more a couple of thoughts on something that I am learning that has deep and profound implications on my life and my future.  When someone lets you down and hurts you, you really have two options.  You can hang on to that hurt and bitterness, clutch it and refuse to let it go the way of forgiveness, where ironically you are the only person living in that prison, or you can forgive and set that person free and ironically again set yourself free.  Forgiveness is hard work!  It’s really painful and difficult to relinquish your desire to make that person feel what you felt and to let God deal with justice.  It’s really hard to move on and not play the victim card at every turn especially when no one would blame you for it.  It’s really hard to heal and move beyond what happened and engage in the future and what could be. 

In my case, through God’s grace and lots of close friends who walked with me, I truly believe like I had come to a place of forgiveness with the people in my past who have hurt me.  I had let them go, given them to God, prayed for them and truly wished them well.  BUT NOW THEY ARE BACK.  I have recently been challenged in a new season of my life with some things that have tapped into my ability to trust God and truly rely on Him in a way that I never have.  I was really angry to find out that deeply connected to my inability trust God and believe that He wasn’t going to let me down and that He has my best interest at heart, are the same issues I have already waded through once before.  My initial response was something like…”I’m done with you and I’ve forgiven you so #@$@ you for hanging around and effecting my life like this.”

Scars are scars.  They never go away.  I will always carry them.  Forgiveness is not a one time deal.  There were some “chords” that were struck in and through my pain that will be played again and again in life, over and over again based on the new and different seasons of life and the challenges they bring.  I am learning that while “I have already done that”, it’s my story, my life, my history, my pain, and my hurt.  These are MY scars!  I’m watching, learning, praying and trusting that God will AGAIN make beauty from my ashes and create a beautiful mosiac with my broken heart.

Did you know that one of the most pressing issues facing city officials in the Dakota County area is hunger?  Kids that are so malnourished they cannot concentrate at school.  Mom’s and dad’s not eating so their kids can eat.  Families not paying bills because they have to eat. 

Keep in mind that Dakota County was at one point one of the fastest growing counties with an average income that was well above the norm.  Things are changing in Dakota County, and hunger, poverty, low income housing, struggling families, and immigrants are now becoming the norm. 

The question we must ask ourselves is this: What does the Gospel message of Jesus have to say about this?  How, in a community of so much, can so many have so little?  I’ve heard statistics that it would cost the world $10 billion dollars to get everyone clean water…while Americans spend well over $10 billion on things like ice cream, cosmetics, and potato chips.  I think this might be cause for concern.  Or at least greater awareness.

This is why Soulstice is partnering with River of Joy Lutheran church, The Nexus Community at Prince of Peace, CAC, CAP Agency, Feed My Starving Children, and Project Food Stock on August 16th @ 6pm.  Our hope is to raise awareness among our communities that hunger is right around on the corner and across the cul de sac.  It will be an evening of stories, music, and collaboration centered around the issue of hunger. 

Your part is this:  come at 6pm to Lakefront Park in Prior Lake with a dish to share and eat a meal with people of different faith communities and non-profit orginizations, neighbors and friends.  Bring a bag of non-perishable food items to donate to Project Food Stock whose goal is to keep the food shelves of Dakota County stocked with food.  Stay and listen to a collaborative musical effort from Ben Rosenbush, Heatherlyn Hamilton-Chronis, and me (Micah) along with our friends and band members.  And don’t forget to bring a neighbor or family member along with you.  It’s going to be a great night, I hope you can make it.