Reclaimed

This past Sunday I referred to an artist named Vik Muniz, and his 2008 work with professional trash scavengers (or catadores) at Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho.  At the time, Jardim Gramacho was the highest-volume landfill in the world, and was home to 13,000 people who scraped out a living salvaging recyclables.  Muniz went to Jardim Gramacho looking to meet these catadores and incorporate their stories into some kind of art installation.  His project is chronicled in the 2010 documentary Waste Land (it’s available through Netflix, and probably your local library and video store.  Watch it.  Seriously.).  At the beginning of the film, Muniz says, “What I do with my art is take people away from where they are and show them a different world; then give them a chance to look back at where they are differently.”  Muniz proceeds to explore a corner of the world that is home not only to the detritus of an enormous city but also to a community of discarded people.  Muniz asks these people their names.  He befriends them.  And he starts taking their pictures.  He goes on to stage photos modeled after famous masterpieces, with a group of catadores as his subjects.

After the photos have been taken, Muniz invites the subjects to join him at a warehouse, where he projects their photos onto the floor.  They bring in barrels full of materials they have scavenged from the landfill.  And they use the materials to outline and fill in their projected images.  The end results are warehouse-sized masterpieces rendered in trash.

And for the first time in their lives, the subjects of these masterpieces – the professional trashpickers – see themselves not as rejects but as objects of beauty. Muniz goes on to do much more with the images they’ve rendered, and opens frontiers for his subjects they wouldn’t have dreamed possible. 

What Muniz does at Jardim Gramacho is what God offers to do with each of us.  In 1 Peter 2:4-10, the Apostle talks about us as “living stones” – discarded building materials that become a masterpiece in the hands of the Creator.  At the end of the film, one of Muniz’s subjects says, “When I became a trash picker, I was so ashamed.  But then I met Vik.  And I became part of his art.  Now I’m not ashamed anymore.”  God seeks out those of us who are imperfect.  Or incomplete.  Who may have been marginalized or rejected.  And invites us to become part of his life-changing project of reclamation and redemption.    

Born Again

This past Sunday our message was based on 1 Peter 1:13-2:3 (you can listen to it here).  The passage is a meditation on new life in Jesus Christ – a life of being purchased from slavery and born again as new people.  As these are the central themes of the Christian life, there’s no end of available material for illustration.  That being said, here’s a tremendous story of rebirth and life transformation that one of my favorite theologians, Ann Voskamp, referenced on her blog.  Check it out.

I'm Changing My Diet

Peter says the following in 1 Peter 2:1-3:

Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Peter's telling the church to stop consuming spiritual foods that malnourish us.  In my message on this passage, I highlighted the fact that our life before Christ is driven by the conviction that this life is all we've got.  This in turn forces us to prioritize two things:

Survival – the need to extend our lifespans using any means necessary;

Success – the need to acquire for ourselves everything we can using any means necessary.

Peter identifies spiritual “foods” that serve these two priorities:

Malice –advancing our ends by hurting others.

Deceit – distorting the truth for selfish purposes.

Hypocrisy – falsely representing ourselves as better than we really are.

Envy – wanting to possess what someone else has.

Slander – making others look bad to make ourselves feel good.

When we resort to these, we may in fact extend our lifespans; we may even derive maximal enjoyment, prosperity and security for our 70 plus years of life.  But our lives will become self-fulfilling prophecies – there will be nothing left for us when our days on earth come to an end.

Jesus Christ offers his disciples a source of life that cannot be extinguished – the Spirit of God.  Peter reminds the church that they have received this life source, too.  The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in them.  This being the case, says Peter, don’t malnourish it.  Don’t consume spiritual junk food.  Feed on “the living Word of God” (1:23), and live.  

What are you worried about?

Passage: Matthew 6:19-34

This week I’m preparing a sermon on 1 Peter 1:3-9 (as part of a series on the letters of Peter entitled “Holy”.  Find out more here).  Peter’s focus in this passage is “an inheritance that won’t spoil or fade”.  My preparation has brought to mind Jesus’ two-part exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount.  In this passage Jesus both reminds us of the fleeting nature of life in this world, and invites us to trust in a God who knows our needs and loves us immensely.  Above all, our faith directs our focus not to the worries of making today the best it can be, but preparing for an eternity that’s better than the best we can imagine.  Francis Chan, one of my favorites, puts it way better than I ever could.  Take five minutes to listen to what he has to say.

Why Pray?

Passage: James 5:13-20

In this passage, James says some things about prayer that, I’m sure, will spark contentious debate until the end of time.  At first glance James seems to issue a simple exhortation to pray.  “Pray when you are in trouble; pray when you’re happy; pray when you’re sick…”  As Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray continually…”  It’s what James says next, however, that inevitably raises difficult questions:

…the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.  Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. 

James mentions that prayer will save the one who is sick.  Is James talking about physical healing, or ultimate soul-salvation?  Christians who conclude the former have applied “healing prayer” in the assumption that, issued with the proper attitude and fervency, prayer will sustain the life of the afflicted.  When the affliction is not lifted, the conclusion has to be that the faith or persistence of those praying was inadequate.  This in turn leads many of us to conclude that James is talking primarily about salvation and the promise of resurrection through Jesus Christ.  This is certainly a safer conclusion that explains why those for whom we pray still get sick and die.  But then James goes on to say,

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.  Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

The apostle unapologetically argues that the prayers of the faithful have a real-life impact on imminent realities.  To understand this we have to appreciate what James and his fellow apostles have seen and heard.  James, the brother of Jesus who became a follower of Jesus, witnessed water being changed into wine; crowds being fed; sick people being healed; the dead being raised.  This in response to the words of the Savior and the prayers of his disciples.  Were these miracles invasions of earth by heaven limited to the time in which Jesus walked the earth? 

In Early Christian Letters for Everyone, NT Wright argues otherwise.  Wright points out that Jesus’ life and ministry marks the advent of an ongoing invasion of earth by heaven – an era in which “the Kingdom of Heaven is not far off.”  When the reality of Heaven breaks into our current reality, miraculous and unexpected things happen.  Because we live in a world corrupted by sin, we’ve been conditioned to think of weakness, sickness and death as normal.  In fact, these are deviations from the way it’s meant to be.  The sign of the Kingdom of Heaven is restoration – the restoration of bodies, spirits, and relationships.  Wright goes on to argue that when we live in Christ, we live at the intersection of Heaven and Earth.  This is an intersection at which all things are possible.  The invitation to prayer is an invitation to appeal to a God who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.  A God whose priority for us and our world is restoration, new life, and reconciliation.  When we pray for these, we do two things: First, we trust God’s timing and methods in answering our prayers; second, we trust his ability to fulfill his promises.  Our prayer, in turn, serves the purpose not of persuading God to do what we want, but of realigning our wills so that we begin to want – for ourselves and our world – what God wants.  

James and the Poor

Text: James 1:19-27

A couple of weeks ago I preached on this passage.  If you want, you can listen here.  Throughout his letter James repeatedly addresses matters of wealth and poverty.  He warns those who enjoy affluence or success in this world.  And he persistently exhorts Christians to humble themselves, befriend the marginalized, and care for the poor.  At the end of his first chapter, James goes so far as to say that the only kind of religion God is interested in is tending to the needs of the vulnerable.  His message is difficult to receive.  It's even harder to live.  One of my favorite contemporary Christian writers published a recent blog post that does this topic far more justice than I'm able to do.  I strongly encourage you to read it.  You can find it here.

The Superorganism

Passage: James 4:1-12

So far this has been an exceptional summer in a number of ways.  One is the heat.  And related to the heat, at least in my neighborhood, has been the proliferation of ants.  Every morning there’s a new ant mound somewhere in our yard or along our sidewalk.  Any scrap of food or discarded popsicle stick is, within minutes, alive with a seething mass of shiny brown bodies.  Only the diligent placement of ant baits and the use of various folk deterrents (some more effective than others) has stemmed the potential tide of insects just waiting to pour into our house. 

This morning my oldest daughter and I were watching ants forage and build in our driveway.  I said, “Ants are what some scientists call ‘superorganisms.’”  I went on to explain that ants (as well as many other insects, and some animals of other classes) live their lives in intense community.  So much so that each individual ant operates less like a single creature and more like one part of an enormous creature.  Each ant has its own specific job to do within its colony.  Individual ants who search for food or defend their colonies often do so at the cost of their own lives.  Each one exists for the whole.  And as a whole they can do amazing things.  They consume detritus and carry away trash inordinately larger than their bodies.  They tunnel the earth, pile up mountains of dirt, and undermine sidewalks and buildings.  They change the landscape. 

The authors of the New Testament repeatedly talk about the church as a kind of superorganism.  In several letters the Apostle Paul describes the church as a body consisting of many parts – each member of the church plays a role that serves the whole.  With each others' support, Christians can not only thrive in their faith, but they can change the landscape.  In his exceedingly practical book, James confronts behaviors that undermine the collaborative power of the church.  He challenges Christians to stop fighting, coveting, and slandering.  He identifies pride and self-centeredness as poison that destroys community.  Ultimately, says James, God cannot bless Christians who oppose the fellowship and unity of the church:

You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

In our super-individualist society, we are called to be a superorganism.  To commit ourselves to the well-being and submit ourselves to the will of the Body of Christ.  At times this feels like death.  In fact it’s the opposite.  We weren’t made to live in isolation.  God in his mercy reconnects us to a community that supports us, challenges us, and keeps us alive.  And it’s only as members of this greater body that we realize our capacity to change the landscape.