Bring the Pain!

“The very greatest things – great thoughts, discoveries, inventions – have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length with difficulty.”
Samuel Smiles (1812-1904)



Ezekiel 1:1-
1 In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.
2 On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin— 3 the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the LORD was on him.
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.
15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
19 When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. 20 Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21 When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
22 Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. 23 Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. 24 When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty,[b] like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.
25 Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. 26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.
I know…I know…you are thinking to yourself, “This kids, is why you should not do drugs.” This is how Ezekiel 1 begins. So if you are like me and think, A) How did this book survive over the past 2500 years and B) It is 2010 and what is there in this book for me as a “sophisticated modern”?
Before I get started on what I want to write about, I would like to point out to you the creature Ezekiel is describing a Cherubim, or what is known as an Angel. When we picture angels, do you picture them like 4 winged creatures with 4 faces of different animals or do you imagine a pretty woman with 2 wings and a halo? I just want to say that the image you hold of an angel is nowhere in the Bible. Your Christmas card is wrong as is all those paintings from renowned artists of the Renaissance. If you crack open your Bible a little more, you too might wonder where all these false images are created. Cherubs aren’t cute, fat little naked babies with tiny wings. Cool? Ok…I am done, just a small pet peeve of mine.
We read of a man named Ezekiel whose father is Buzi by a river somewhere who has this “sci-fi vision in 3D” and his response is he falls face down. Then there are all these fantastic over the top elements. There is a wind, a really ferocious wind, and there is lightning. It is bright and powerful. It involves the elements. It involves nature. Then there are these creatures. These creatures have 4 faces. One of them is a human face and it also has a face of an eagle. And one like an ox and one of a lion. You can try to track this in your mind with all sorts of images but it becomes really hard to see. Then my personal favorite verse in all the Bible is verse 18- “Their rims were high and awesome.” If you are like me, I know exactly what you thought of.

We know what rims are. This is how the book of Ezekiel opens. I don’t know if that is exactly what Ezekiel had in mind but for us we may see it that way. So in the middle of all this is a throne that is amazing with an unimaginably rare stone on it whose appearance flashes blinding light. All of this causes Ezekiel to fall face down and worship God. How does that work? Why did he?
As we have learned before…there is generally a story behind a story. This is why the Bible too often gets confusing to readers, or misinterpreted. The question you have to ask yourself is, “Is there some other thing going on?”
First off, in order to get at that we discover in verse 3, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel The priest. A priest in the Hebrew Scriptures worked in the Temple which was in Jerusalem. There are many artist renderings of what the Temple would have looked like. Just Google it and you can see for yourself. First, understand that in the Jewish consciousness, spirituality was oriented around geography. For you and I as Christians, the question of where is God would have been answered very differently than a priest in Ezekiel. The Jewish consciousness in this time was that God had a geographical place where God was essentially more present. God resided in a particular place, namely the Temple. Their sense of spirituality had a sense of geography. Where is God, oh…He is in the Temple there in Jerusalem. When Ezekiel is identified as a priest, Ezekiel’s job is to run and organize and facilitate the work of the Temple which was to create a place where people could come from all over the world and make sacrifices to make peace with and be connected to God. The priest had a code, a law, and a set of rules that they were to follow.
Like the book of Leviticus that describes the regulations and commands for the burnt offering. Leviticus 1:14 14 “‘If the offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, you are to offer a dove or a young pigeon. 15 The priest shall bring it to the altar, wring off the head and burn it on the altar; its blood shall be drained out on the side of the altar. 16 He is to remove the crop and the feathers and throw them down east of the altar where the ashes are. 17 He shall tear it open by the wings, not dividing it completely, and then the priest shall burn it on the wood that is burning on the altar. It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

This is just one, but there are tons of them in there just like this. Read them for yourself one day. So when you hear Ezekiel is a priest, you should immediately understand the regulations that he follows are strict and precise. This is how he is commanded to run the Temple. Now if you went to the Temple one year and came back the next and wondered if it was ran the same way…you would not hear the priest say, “Well, we just thought we would spice it up a bit. We added a horn section to the band.” No! What does the priest do? The regulations. Year after year after year. To be a priest is to be about order, repetition, and symmetry. A priest is the ultimate company man. The priest has some TPS reports to fill out. The priest will do the paperwork on that one. As we get into the psychology of Ezekiel and we learn that he is a priest, we learn that a priest is somebody that did the same thing, year after year, creating a place where people could come to worship God. The world was chaotic. The world can be very dark. The world can be disorienting, and profoundly unsafe, but if you come to the Temple, there is order, stability, consistency, and this is what God is like.
In another part of Ezekiel we learn that Buzi, his father, was a priest as well. So this man is second generation Temple man. This man is a company man. Then in Ezekiel 8:1 you read 1 In the sixth year, in the sixth month on the fifth day, while I was sitting in my house and the elders of Judah were sitting before me, why do the elders sit before him? That is because he is respected and has earned a reputation. It points out that this is a man who functions well within a set system that has been established for the worship for God and even others that have the same role come to him for advice. But then, what happens to Jerusalem? A foreign empire conquers Jerusalem. Notice what happens in 2 Chronicles verse 17 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians,who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and did not spare young men or young women, the elderly or the infirm. God gave them all into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. 18 He carried to Babylon (700 miles across a desert) all the articles from the Temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s Temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. 19 They set fire to God’s Temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.
When the book opens Ezekiel is by the river Kebar, the river Kebar is in Babylon. There is no Temple left. And he, along with those who survived have been enslaved and been hauled 700 miles across a desert to a foreign land. That is why the story begins by a river. Oh! And we also discover in Ezekiel Chapter 24 18 So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. So not only has he lost his job, possessions, freedom, he also loses his wife.
When the book of Ezekiel opens, it jumps around a bit in time. This is a man who has lost everything. He is extracted from the world that he knows and is considered an authority. He has established this presence where people can come to him for wisdom, but that seems to be lost now. He has lost his family, and his Temple, his vocation, his homeland and he is now enslaved so he has also lost his freedom. This man has lost everything. It is not that he is distracted from everything that is familiar around him, it is because he is in Babylon.
The main god that is in Babylon is a goddess known as Ishtar. There was a massive Ishtar gate that when you were hauled into the city as someone who was conquered, you would be brought in through the Ishtar gate as a sort of way to say you are no longer home. You are in our house now. You are in Ishtar’s house now.
In the early 1900’s they dug up a portion of the Ishtar gates. These foreign slaves would have been dragged through it. This is a picture of the gates, it is now located in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

They would have brought them through these gates and said symbolically, “You are not in Kansas anymore. You are in Babylon. You are in the goddess Ishtar’s house.” This man Ezekiel, the company man, knows one God, his God. The God of his people in Israel. His temple has been destroyed. Where is his God now that the place his God resides no longer exists? It is not just that though, he is now in another god’s place.
A little background on Ishtar real quick. She was the divine personification of Venus, the goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. This is a quote from the Epic of Gilgamesh (which is one of the great classics) “If you refuse to give me the Bull of Heaven [then] I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts”. This is like the heavy metal goddess. She is ready to rip it up. This is not a kind loving god. This is Ishtar, and this is where he finds himself. And it is here by the river where this broken man receives this unbelievably fantastic, pulsating, vibrant, creative, imaginative, sci-fi, over the top vision in which he realizes God is present. It is here where he falls face down and worships not in the Temple in Jerusalem, but 700 miles away in Babylon. Do you now see why this book has survived? It is one of the first realizations that God is no longer locked inside this Temple but is amongst us everywhere.
Now, here are a couple of insights. Sometimes, God goes around the mind and goes directly to the heart and imagination. Some pain is too hard for our minds to comprehend and so God sometimes has to go around our mind and speak directly to our hearts. What you find in this vision is Ezekiel experiences something that blows his mind but it speaks to his heart. One scholar, John Taylor, says it this way, “This is how God revealed himself to Ezekiel, not by propositions regarding his character, but in personal encounter.” He says God does not show up by the river and say is a soft sweet voice, “Do you not recall that I am A) omniscient, B) omnipotent, C) good, D) nice?” God shows up in power and explosive creativity that says, “I am here!” Sometimes God has to go directly to your heart.
There is this great moment where Jesus is interacting with his disciples and they ask Him, “Why do you speak in parables?” Ya, why does Jesus speak in parables? Because a parable has a way of going around your mind and sneaking in and grabbing hold of your heart. All of a sudden you don’t really understand what is happening but you somehow identify with others at that moment. You are at that very moment seized with this idea that I am the Pharisee with all that judgment. You see yourself as others see you because the parable allows you to relate and see things in a different perspective. Do you know what I am saying? You don’t have a cognitive thought, but at some deeper level you can relate to a character flaw you see in yourself that is told in the parable. How about some song that you hear that captures you in your heart?
Think about the things that we say when we suffer. Think about the things we say to our friends. “But it doesn’t make sense. Someone please explain to me. I just don’t understand.” How many of you heard this? IN THE FACE OF GREAT SUFFERING YOU OFTEN HEAR PEOPLE SAY, “I JUST NEED TO UNDERSTAND. I NEED MY MIND TO GET THIS” But this pain is too great. Our mind is never going to get it. God does this because He understands how we are wired, and understands that for many of us, our mind is our God. With God realizing this He knows that if He just tried to reason with you, it won’t work. He then goes around your mind and gets into your heart. He uses the parable to get into your heart to give you peace, to give you calm, to give you hope, to give you a vision of the future, and go right into your heart and give it to you there. Because if He gave it to you in your mind, you are just going to try and figure it out and you are going to screw it up. Are you following what I am writing? Do you see why this genre of literature in Ezekiel we read and think this is crazy? This is absurd. What the hell is he smoking? That is unless, you really really suffered, and then you totally get it. What happens to us is when we get spoken to; in some profound way we find there is life there. We meet somebody who is going through something that is horrible and you hear them say, “I can’t even begin to explain why it happened but all I know is there is I was given this picture of a calm body of water, and it somehow is sustaining me.” Why is that? Because, sometimes, God has to go to our imagination or go to a picture, or go to a vision, because that is where we really live from.
For Ezekiel, what easily happens by the river when you are 700 miles from home after everything has fallen apart is you make decisions about how things are going to go. It is never going to get better. It is never going to improve. It is always going to be bad and I am going to be here for the rest of my life. It is over. There is no God. Jerusalem will never be rebuilt. The God of Israel is a hoax and it is in those moments we have figured everything out and we have decided how it is going to go. But God says, “Really? I don’t think so because I am here now.”
Secondly, I would say this about Ezekiel. What you see here in chapter 1 is that some things can only be learned in exile. Before this happened, Ezekiel was at the top his game in the Temple with the elders asking him for wisdom, doing his tasks with great skill and expertise. If you would have said to Ezekiel, “You know what? The God of Israel is just as present in the Temple as He is in Babylon.” Ezekiel would respond, “What? Oh that’s BS. Come on. God is in Jerusalem. Our God dwells with us here. That is how it works.” I would assume Ezekiel would argue with you to the end. But he ends up in exile and it is there by the river he discovers the truth. To me it is as if God says to Ishtar, “I am in your house now.” God shows up in Babylon. Would Ezekiel have ever understood that until it happened? Some things you can only learn when everything falls apart.
In John 4, there is this fascinating discussion between this woman that Jesus runs into and Jesus. Our ancestors, she says, worshipped on this mountain but you Jews claim that the place that we must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus begins to talk about her personal life and her choices in regards to this whole series of men she has slept with. Then SHE changes the subject. That is because women were totally different back then. They don’t do this anymore right? Not really…but that’s another topic. Moving along… She essentially says we worship on this mountain and you Jews worship on that mountain. Meaning, we think God is on our mountain and you think God is on your mountain. This is a huge difference, and how are you going to reconcile that? Jesus responds, “Woman, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” She is like; you say God is there, we say God is here so let’s argue about it. Jesus says there is going to come a time when you’ll worship God on neither mountain. Now here is why this is so important and profound and why I would argue this has incredible implications for 2010.
There is a tendency among religious people to localize their God. “Our God resides here.” Too often people territorialize God. Too often people tame their God and fit Him into their place. This God is my God. We are terribly advanced but there are also baffling ways in which we are terribly primitive. We localize our God. What happens in the exile is God shows up in Ishtar’s house in a blazing, radiant, luminous, explosive way. Ezekiel realizes, yes I have spent my whole life in the Temple, but God apparently is just as much by the river as He is in the Temple. This God cannot be localized. Wherever you go there this God is.
This is the fear. This is the haunting fear that the action of God is somewhere else. Take whatever it is that you do each day, that haunting fear that God is somewhere else…He is not in this cubicle, or in the back room of the warehouse where we put things in boxes to send them around the country. God is not here in this bathroom cleaning the toilets with me. God is not in this classroom. He is not in this task. He is not in this apartment complex. I have been doing this job for 17 years and I will tell you, trust me, the divine action is somewhere else. There is no divine presence in this factory. There is no divine presence in the hallways of this school. No, you have got to understand, this is a dark secular place. God is over there or on Sunday morning, or in that school, or in that building, or…if I was just over there in that hospital I would be able to be closer to Him. If I was just at another base, or in another job. Sometimes we localize God in places that we aren’t. That fear that haunts us that the action is somewhere else. If anybody ever believed that, it should have been Ezekiel who is ripped from the Temple that is then destroyed and He finds himself by the river where God shows up with rims that are high and awesome. This is blowing his entire consciousness into pieces. “Ezekiel, I can show up wherever I want, whenever I want.” Can you imagine for a good company man whose company has just been burnt to the ground, a man who has done the repetition and followed the regulations every day of his life, can you imagine how this would have affected him? I would say this, for Ezekiel, God is that which comes after the Temple, after Jerusalem, after the alter, and after religion. That is what happens in Ezekiel 1. Ezekiel meets the God hanging around after Ezekiel’s “religion” has been blown into a thousand pieces. GOD IS THAT WHICH CAN SURVIVE EVEN YOUR RELIGION BEING BURNED TO THE GROUND! He had his construct, his paradigm of spiritual and religious beliefs about his God and it gets blown into a million smithereens. Who does he meet on the other end of all that but the God whose radiance shines with such beauty that he falls face down.
How does chapter 1 end? It ends with a priest falling facedown by a river in Babylon. Wow! This is not just about Ezekiel. God is that which is after our words, God is that after our theology, after our doctrine, after your view of the Bible, after Christianity as you understand that. God can survive even that. Because what will happen, and I have seen this happen hundreds of times, is that somebody was born, raised or taught, or picked up along the way a particular conception of God, Jesus, Bible, Salvation etc. and they encounter experiences and relationships in which that no longer works the way it used to. And so what immediately happens is, well maybe there is no God, maybe there is no hope, maybe there is no truth, maybe there is no grounding or center of my being. Maybe this is all just a man made lie. No…no…no…whatever it is you are taking apart, whatever doesn’t work like it used to and you are poking holes in it and you are realizing that pieces of it don’t work any longer. Whatever that process is and you find yourself on the other side; the one’s whose rims are high and awesome will be waiting for you.
There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to be concerned about. There is nothing to tremble over. The divine is just that. It is left over after everything else has failed you. We take great passion with our words. We love theology and uphold doctrines. We obviously open the Bible all at the same time and must say the scripture together out loud. For what? Knowing that if all we thought were true burns to the ground what would that mean to you? Because that is what happened to Ezekiel. He still found God on the other side holding him in His embrace. Leading us in our hearts and speaking to us with wild imagination is what we need to hear.
One last thought. The invitation in exile, this God that Ezekiel encountered doesn’t need a religion, doesn’t need an alter, doesn’t need a theological system or a statement of beliefs to show up in order for Him to have His power, glory and beauty. Our invitation is to let the pain be our teacher. Ezekiel is in great pain. He is miles from home. His whole world view has been shattered. His wife died. He is 700 miles across the desert from anything familiar. He is in Ishtar’s house. And there, in extraordinary pain he meets a God that is free from geography. That God assured him you are going to be ok. The pain of his exile becomes his teacher. The pain opens him up to all new realities about God. Is there any pain or exile you are feeling? Has anything been turned upside down? Has anything been lost or burned to the ground? Often when this happens, our temptation is to figure out how to avoid it, get around it, ignore it, or how to just get through it. But the pain can be our teacher. What we see with Ezekiel is a man that goes from deep despair to worship. Meet God by the river, in the disorientation, dislocation in the foreign land, after what you had clung so tightly to is lost. When there is no hope for you, open your eyes because God meets you there.

Don't be a fad

"Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength."
Betty Friedan (1921-2006)

I would like to explore a way of understanding age and particularly time and the ways in which time is connected with and is disconnected from our growth.

This is a picture of Joshua Slocum.
Joshua Slocum was a merchant sailor that traveled extensively. With the invention of the steam powered boats, his craft of sailing eventually became extinct and he was soon out of business.

In 1892 Joshua Slocum was given a sailing ship the owner did not want. The boat was called The Spray.




Here is a picture of The spray.

This boat was in horrible shape. Joshua went out to the woods with an axe, chopped down some trees and out of the trees made new planks and rebuilt this ship.
In 1895, he got in the boat harbored in Boston, and sailed around the world, 46,000 miles. He figured out how to rig it so it would sail by itself while he slept. He was often attacked by pirates. One of those stories he wrote about is once, he saw the ship preparing to attack so he himself visible to them, then ran down below deck, changed clothes, ran back up and made himself visible again. Ran back down below, changed clothes, ran back up and repeated this several times. They thought there were multiple people on the boat and decided to not attack. This was the brilliance of Joshua Slocum. Before bed, he would pour nails all over the ship so if anybody tried to board while he was sleeping they would injure themselves. He at one point had a whole family of dolphins for hundreds if not thousands of miles trailing him. One day a shark came behind the boat and was going to eat one of the dolphins. So he took an iron skillet and tied it to a rope. He knew the shark would think it was something it could eat, so when the shark got close, he held the rope with his foot and pulled out a shotgun and killed the shark. This was Joshua Slocum. There are many stories about him. He wrote am amazing book about his journeys. On the week of my birthday, I think back to it and inspired me to write about aging. The book is called "Sailing alone around the world."


When he left Boston in The Spray that he built by hand from logs he chopped down himself, he was 51. When you think about your life, do you think, wow, when I am 51 that is when the adventure is going to start? When I am 51, I am going to be in the woods chopping down trees, sailing the world, and shooting sharks with shotguns, all alone? When you think about your life, when will you peak? When does your adventure begin?


This is Sue Oldum


When she was 61, she became the oldest person to swim the English Channel. 16 hours and 3 minutes. She did it again last month, Aug 2010, at 64. When you are in your 60's is that when you say I am going to put on a swim suit and swim to a different country?




This is the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Much of his work was trying to create the most seamless integration between which humans build and what nature creates. So for him, the highest form of architecture was one that seamlessly blends into its natural surroundings. One of the places that really inspired him was on the prairies of central Wisconsin. Then, after spending years on the the open flat spaces of the Midwest, he took a group of his students to the desert in Arizona. He bought hundreds of aces of land from the government East of Scottsdale at the foot of the McDowell Mountains. This area back then was very harsh and had extreme weather. Today it is now a utopia of sub-divisions, but at his time it was not that at all. He took tools and spent hours upon hours of digging into the rocks. Think about this, back then there weren't public water fountains there. So, he had to get water in the middle of the desert. They lived in tents, and built a compound called Taliesin West. It is beautiful. One of his students is quoted as saying, "For a number of years we spent all day just digging rock." When FLW did this, he was 70. When you are 70, are you going to go out in the desert with a shovel, without little electricity and dig for years to build a compound? It now has water and a pool, electricity, and a massive dinner theatre area. When you are in your 70's, is that when you will start new adventures?


This video is of John and Polly Lewis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzlT5Obmsdo


They are in their 80's! Almost 90's!!! Do you think to yourself that when I am 89, that is when I will be at the top of my parenting game?


This is Georgia O'Keeffe.
She died at 98. One of America's most wonderful painters. Her friends say that up until the the weeks before her death, she was still painting at 98. Still painting at the top of her game. Have your best years gone by?



Is life a sort of explosion of youth? You hit your peak of relevance, connectivity, importance, and then from there a tapering effect occurs as you get older and older and then you die? How does the arch go?
2 Cor 4:16, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."
It may look like crap on the outside, but on the inside God is not wasting a single day and is making new life. Not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.
The phrase lose heart in the Greek language is the work KaKa. You might have learned this word in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." KaKa is a negative word. Paul is saying to the church in Corinth that there is no KaKa here. There is no losing heart here. What God is doing is renewing us every single day. This word renewing is derived from the Greek Ana Kanu. Ana means again, Kanos or Kanu means new. This is used most of the time when speaking of a freshness. So together, Ana Kanu, is used to mean God is making us new and fresh again every day. And the next day, new again. And the next day, new again. That is why there is no KaKa here. God is making us new again.
Here is why it is significant to me. In the Greek, there are two words that literally mean new. The first is neos, or neo. That word is used when referring to something about time. For instance, when you are gone for a while and you return home and want some milk, and you question is it a new carton? That is the word used there. New, neos. By this you mean how old is it? This passage does not use that type of new. Kanu is the kind of new that has nothing to do with the relation of time. Somethings can be new in relation to time, and yet be very stale right away. It can be newly created and yet it is nothing new cause we have seen that hundreds of times before. The word kanu is something else, which is very old, and yet some surprising way new in regard to the redemptive unexpected life giving of God.
I am just feeling a strong pull to go away from the things we think are new because right now, I am in a place of life where an idea that is very old, feels so fresh and new. My new goal in life is to avoid becoming a fad, and attempt to bring new, and refreshing life to friends in an old fashion sort of way. I mean the small little details of time we desire to spend with each other. The cards, the letters, the phone calls, and the small concept of listening and caring what occurs in peoples lives. Why is that people are surprised that I remember what you told me last week? That is truly what our society needs right now. The popular cheerleader aint so popular as an adult. Do you understand what I am saying? Yet, we always knew this would happen. We have to understand that our time and how we spend it with others is what makes life amazing. Stop the Kaka and show your friends that you care. Bring new life in an old way.

Bring Me A Bowl

"If you can solve your problems, then what good is worrying about them? If you cannot solve your problems, then why worry about them?"

-Shantideva

"Worry goes down better with soup than without."

-Jewish Proverb

Have you ever read a story in the Bible and thought, “I don’t get it.”? Short and to the point. I am going to cover one of those here by one of my favorite sections of the Bible. The first 4 chapters of 2 Kings.(My first being the first 4 chapters of Galatians)

2 Kings 2:19The men of the city (the city is Jericho if you didn’t know) said to Elisha, "Look, our lord, this town is well situated, as you can see, but the water is bad and the land is unproductive." 20 "Bring me a new bowl," he said, "and put salt in it." So they brought it to him. 21 Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, "This is what the LORD says: 'I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.' " 22 And the water has remained wholesome to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken.
I don’t get it. Hey, our land is unproductive because our water is bad so bring a new bowl with some salt in it. Throw in the salt…there, God says everything is taken care of. And that is the story.Here is a picture of Jericho.

As you hopefully read in a previous blog, there is always a narrative behind the narrative. There is always a story behind the story and a history behind the history. Jericho had a very complicated strange history. All this that happened with the salt, land, spring, water, Elijah, and the people is riding on top of another story. What we are going to look at is a story rooted in what I would call a pre-modern consciousness. Today, we have cars, computers, and massive technology which forces us to see ourselves as hyper sophisticated moderns. What happens when you read the Bible due to this pre-modern consciousness is that you have to realize the way they did things and how they thought can seem very strange to our modern minds. They had not yet been to the moon. So, as we go through some the history of Jericho keep that in mind and remember it is a pre-modern consciousness, which was strange and weird. Don’t try to dissolve it or make it sanctified. Just let it be weird. That may help bring some insight into this. Cool?
The history. Jericho had first off been conquered by a man named Joshua.

Joshua 6:26
At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath: "Cursed before the LORD is the man who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho: "At the cost of his firstborn son will he lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest will he set up its gates."
So way back in the history of Jericho, it had been conquered and the conqueror had essentially said, “Anybody who tries to rebuild this city will be cursed.” Now to us moderns, cursed is like voodoo, witchcraft sorcery crap. And the curse was specifically if anyone tries to do this, their firstborn (which is important to carry on the family name, legacy and bloodline, basically a huge problem) won’t survive. Fast forward a bit in the cities history.
In 1 Kings 16, 34 In Ahab's time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, in acordance with the word of the LORD spoken by Joshua son of Nun.So Jericho has a history, it is a history of a curse that if you try to rebuild this city, it will not go well for you.

The idea of a curse was something these people were familiar with, as strange as it sounds to us. Now look at Deuteronomy 28 and you see how many curses and blessings come from following and obeying versus not. Things go well if you follow God. Or you turn away and things will fall apart.

1 If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: 3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

And so on…skip to verse 15. 15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: 16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. 17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. 18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. 19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. 20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. 21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. 25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.

And finally in verse 29 if you don’t obey you God you will be forced to watch reality TV for life.

What I find interesting is the blessings are 14 verses and the curses just go on and on and on. But then in chapter 30 1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes.

Now it is fascinating that we read the curses and think this is just craaazy sort of pre-modern superstitious horrible stuff will happen to you but, in the end, if you read that far, at any point you return to God you will be fine. When you return everything will be restored. You walk away and there will be all sorts of consequences but at any point you return, everything is fine. Hanging in this sort of consciousness at the time of Jericho with Elijah is this history they would have carried with them about Joshua, Ahab who tried to rebuild it, first born sons and youngest sons being stricken down, blessings and curses and all this crap swirling around this town of Jericho.

Example. How many of you have went to a new job and went into someone’s office space and wondered why is this person acting like this, or that person looking like that and not talking to them or…how about a friend’s family reunion and felt something strange in the air and someone says to you, “Well, let me give you a little bit of background.” Then you realize the history and are like, ahhhh…that is messed up. There is a history floating around the place. Jericho has that sort of history floating around. Elijah charges in. He is told the water is bad and the land is unproductive, which is language from the curses of Deuteronomy, “Bring me a new bowl.” He says.

Now let’s get into it. The word new is the Hebrew word Hadash. Hadash has all sorts of meanings. Sometimes it means to renew and can be found used for renewed heart, spirit, kingdom, life, youth. Sometimes it means to rebuild. You can find it used to rebuild a city, temple, or an alter. Sometimes it’s used to repair. It refers to new songs, new covenants, and new mercies. The word has all sorts of depth and meaning to it. Somebody bring me a new bowl and put salt in it. So they brought it to him.

Salt you find again and again in the scriptures as part of their ritual and sacrificial system. Salt had symbolic value. Notice the reference in Leviticus. Do not leave salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings. What was the covenant? The covenant was, no matter how bad it gets, no matter where you find yourself, no matter how complicated things get, no matter how hard your heart was, you can always return to God. No matter how much you have screwed it up. No matter how many destructive choices you have made. No matter how seriously you have lost your way. No matter how many other gods you have worshipped. No matter the regrets you have accumulated. You could always return and He will restore you. So you screwed up, the salt is symbolic of the restoration. You can always come home. You can always turn and say oops…and God will say, “Come on back, come on back.”

In Numbers it is an everlasting covenant of salt. People back then were just like us, textile-kinesthetic. We need physical things to remind of us of far larger realities. In the ancient world among these Hebrews, salt, had this symbolic power to remind you that no matter where you found yourself, this God says, that at any point you can turn and come home. Elijah steps into this very complicated system where the land is unproductive because of disease and he simply says bring me a new bowl and put some salt in it. Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt in and he said, this is what the Lord says, I have healed this water. Never again will it make the land unproductive and never again has the water been impure to this day. This is a picture of the Spring

Elijah steps in and says give me a new bowl and put some salt in it. He takes the bowl and throws it in and basically says we aren’t going to bother with that anymore. Let’s get on with it. And that’s the story.How do we begin to unfold it? First, let me give you a couple of insights. For Elijah, history does not decide, it merely describes. For Elijah, the history of the city does not decide the present or the future of the city; it just describes what happened, not what will happen. Your history describes what you’ve done, where you have been, what you’ve been involved in, who you were with at the time. It describes your past, but it does not decide your present or your future.

How many people let their history a confusing blend of describing and deciding? All this has gone on, so obviously this is where it is going to take me. Really? Well, I challenge that. I say that is not for sure. Elijah steps up says, “What? Curses? Oh come on, come on…give me that bowl and give me some salt. Game on.” Did he sit down with the city and say, tell me what your sin is. What have you been dealing with and how did you wear your clothes and how could have you been so dumb…no…it’s like he is saying, “give me some salt, come on, new day.” One scholar even says what Elijah does is simply usher in a whole new era for these people. “You are still bringing that stuff up? Come on, new day. Game on. Bring me some salt, and a new bowl. Here we go. God says everything is cean and taken care of. Let’s get on with it.”

You could perhaps look at it this way. According to Elijah, curses are meant to be broken. “I know the Bible says, but ya ya ya, come on people, no more.” What does Elijah think of Joshua’s curse? “Ahhhh whatever, bring me some salt. God’s everlasting covenant says that kind of stuff? Ahhhh *shrugs shoulders* I don’t know” New things can happen that break the patterns and cycles of the old. Can you imagine somebody being there saying, “No no no! The Bible says!” Well, actually no, God says. Or my favorite way to look at it. According to Elijah, new word can always be spoken. There is always space for a new word. You have told me situation is this? Ahhh…I think a new word can be spoken about that. You are describing things like this? I think a new word can be spoken about it. You are telling me no future is inevitable here? I think a new word can be spoken about that.

Now, when we as moderns read a story with a pre-modern consciousness about curses and people suffering their first born, there is a part of us that says ok, seriously? And for many there is the feeling like, see, this is why the Bible is ridiculous and this is why I don’t follow church sorts of things and don’t believe it. It is because we live in a new reality were these sorts of things don’t really have anything to do with our world. Unless, you think of the phrases people use…”I just can’t get a break. This kind of thing always happens to me. Just my Luck! Like I expected anything else. Always the inevitable.” How modern are we? How many people with a great sense of sophistication, enlightenment, education and a modern consciousness actually speak terribly pre-modern superstitious curse sort of language without even realizing it? How far have we come? Think about the phrase “Just MY Luck!” What? You have luck? Or you have a particular version of luck? Did you keep the receipt? Take it back! Think of the ways people are seduced into the thinking that it is just inevitable. How is it inevitable? “Well, because of what happened.” How in your mind did what has happened determine what is going to happen? This type of stuff always happens to me. It does? Is it documented? Is it tangible? You have evidence of the future? You have taken bits and pieces and selectively picked the parts out you have experienced and created a narrative based on that, but we could have just as easily picked out different parts of your story and crafted a narrative.

To what degree under the myth of objectivity is a terribly random and subjective way in which we guide things? And what Elijah does is charges in the midst of all of it and says bring me a new, “Bowl, bring me some salt, it is a new day.” And he ushers in a new era.

Perhaps you can look at it this way. What we think and believe matters. And often times with spirituality, or with communities of faith, what we believe people immediately go to big issues of doctrine and then you get into discussions, and then you end up with different churches on each corner. When you say belief, for many people immediately veers dogma sort of crap about these people are right, there people are wrong, they have their eleven statements and these folks have their 4 and they have their own pool for baptism and blah blah blah. For many of us, your exact stance on supralapsarianism isn’t something you probably think about much…but you do have narratives and scripts and patterns of thinking that actually determine the choices we make, each and every day of our lives.

When we talk about belief, the truth is we live from a very deep seed of sub-conscious belief systems that actually determine the way we live and move every day. It is those patterns, cycles, and rhythms of thought that actually determine your actions. If you have deeply viewed somewhere in your psyche “this kind of thing always happens to me” that is going to deeply shape the way you interpret events. If you believe deep in your bones, just my luck, then when things come along that is going to color and shape the way that you read the events of your life. Things that reaffirm, “see I have bad luck”, are going to get elevated at the expense of things that don’t confirm that. How you believe deeply shapes the way you interpret the world and the way that you respond. If you have decided somehow that you are unlovable then when you interact with others and are given opportunities to give and be loved by others, it will deeply shape at the everyday level how you interact with people.

Jesus comes along and he simply makes a statement by saying repent. Do you know what the Greek word for repent is? It is metanoia. Meta means change like a metamorphosis, a change of form. Metanoia means to exercise the mind. To think. To comprehend. The word has lots of nuances, but the literal word for repent in the Greek simply means to think about things in a whole new way. Phew. To think about things in a whole new way. Jesus says, leave from that, and see it in a whole new way. The first Christians took this idea and understood that they needed to take their every thought captive. They would realize what they just said when they would announce “Just my luck!” Wait! Did I just say that? What do I mean by that? Has that been shaping the way that I live?

Here is what Jesus wants to do. Jesus wants to break in to your mind. He wants to take the superstitions, the curses, that crap and those stories, and those messages you were sent, and drag them out into the light and create a whole new era where you don’t live by those thoughts and patterns. It happens in this inner dialogue that happens with us. If you were abused or were told abusive sorts of messages and that stuff is in there and it plays a role, Jesus wants to enter into that and invite you to repent, to change your thinking, in a whole new way.

Elijah charges into Jericho. The people say the land in unproductive and the water has a disease. He simply says bring me a new bowl, with some salt in it. Let me remind you of what God is like. Some of you have bought into the notion of a violent God who is just waiting to hurt you with vengeance. Some of you have bought into the God who is the God of the curse that puts spells on places. Apparently the history of this place has decided how the future is going to go. I want to get you some salt to remind you that God has said for a long long time, return to me and I will renew it. So anyways, he takes the salt in the water and says it is a new day. Enough of that. We are starting over. The water has been cleansed. Away we go. Game on. What Elijah does is a powerful message that we can always start a new cycle and that our toxic beliefs are dangerous and it is time to repent of those beliefs.

One of the gifts we do to each other as humans is interrupting one another. Sometimes that is the best thing you can do to someone. On a regular basis I meet people and loaded in their language is unbelievably destructive verbiage that they have bought into. Sometimes we need to be interrupted in the middle of our thoughts with a fresh new word that simply says no, you don’t need to live with that. You don’t need to carry that around. Sprinkle some salt in that water.