Humus...

To be close to the earth.  That is the title of this blogpost's definition.  A few different English words come from this Latin word.  One of those is humility.  I've often found it hard to define humility.  Over the last few years however, I've had numerous theologians try to define it by speaking about Philippians chapter 2.  Here we find the passage which speaks about Christ "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ^9"
Until I discovered the meaning of the Latin word humus recently, I still didn't fully understand what humility is all about, even after this awesome passage from Paul's writings.  How can a person comprehend what it means to be close to the earth?  They have to have nothing.  All the earth has is the soil, plants, etc., around it.  Christ came to earth empty.  he lived his life in such a sense as well.  He was a carpenter by trade for some of his growing up years; a living that would not end up providing him with too much of an income.  There weren't too many possessions to hinder his growth as the person that he was.  In a couple of weeks I'll be leading a mission trip with my youth group to an area of our city of Kansas CIty.  I've been thinking about this idea of humus quite a bit today as I prepare some devotionals for our trip.  The people we'll be with exemplify humus to an extent that most of the teens in our youth group have never comprehended, to no fault of their own.  Even I, as a pastor's kid, missionary kid, missionary, and no youth pastor, have had relative riches compares to most of the homes of the kids we'll be ministering to have grown up with.  Even where I was in Africa, whilst I had very little in American terms, I was a millionaire in Kenyan money.  And now I must ask myself, how can I be close to the earth?  How can I lower myself from the things tying me 'up' if you will?
The great part about humus is that we aren't alone.  We may have little to tie us down, but we have the community around us, the soil, to help us grow and find strength.  Jesus had his disciples with him, they provided companionship to him.  We need those around us.  At times they may be everything we have.

I'm groaning...

Lately I’ve started to come to understand Romans 8:18-30, and particularly Romans 8:23 more than I ever have before. The biggest theme of the Advent season is one of waiting with expectation for the day when we celebrate the coming of our Savior into the world in the form of a baby. I’ve definitely been focusing much more on such a theme of expectation during this season of Advent than I have ever done before. That entrance of Christ into the world was revolutionary.

There are those events that take place in our lives that we look to as category shifters. We look at them by saying something like: “there was life before 9/11 and life after,” or “life before colonization and life after,” or “life before the day I met you and after,” etc. The birth of Jesus took that to an extreme. No other single event in history has caused us to completely change our calendar to express life before and after an event. Isn’t that incredible? And so it is now that we eagerly await the day when we celebrate his birth; the day history changed forever. But, for those who are followers of that very Jesus, we eagerly await something else as well.

As followers we eagerly await the time when he will come again, when the kingdom of God is brought to complete fruition. This too has become all the more evident this Advent season for me. So many places in scripture we see prophecies pointing to this baby, even referring to the very way that he would come, as a child. For hundreds of years they had been expecting this Savior! And now it is the same with Christians. For hundreds of years we have been expecting our savior to return to us. Paul tells us in the aforementioned passage that creation itself is groaning out for the future hope. Think about that for just a second. Creation is making a deep, inarticulate sound, in response to the pain and despair it is going through as it eagerly awaits the finality of the kingdom of God.

So it is during this season that I pray that as an individual who has experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit, that I can groan inwardly because of the pain of all of creation, longing to be restored to it’s rightful purpose. Not only do I long to groan, but I long to respond the way that Jesus did. If my faith is not revolutionary, something is deeply wrong. Faith in Christ is something that should be a category shifter. Our faith as believers in the savior that came into the world as a baby should cause us to create those same events that we look to as life changers. People should be saying, “there was life before Roland and life after Roland.”

You see, Christ never separated the spiritual from the social. Yes, his salvation is personal in the sense that we must believe in him and allow him to change our beings. But there is something else that happens with belief. Belief leads us to social action. In all of Jesus’ miracles, the miracle itself either freed the miraclee (ya, I just made up that word) to live in society in ways that they couldn’t have before, or Jesus miracles directly impacted a social situation or social thought process. Salvation meant a complete shift in some sort of social understanding. This Advent, I’m groaning. That groaning isn’t a selfish groaning, it’s a groaning for change in this world we live in; a groaning for the moment when the kingdom has completely come.

Behold, I send my parcel before your face...

For my high school years, I attended a boarding school here in Kenya. At that school I became friends with a quality chap named Robert whose parents were serving in Zambia. They moved up to the town where our boarding school was. Many times in the two years they were in Kijabe I'd go down and experience their generous hospitality. I'm so thankful for people like that, who come into our lives and make it better! It's been six years since graduation from our boarding school. I'm still friends with Robert, and his family has still shown that same generous hospitality to me in various ways over the years. One of Robert's many brothers was flying back to the States a few weeks ago to share the Christmas break with his family. Robert's mom asked if I would like to send any Christmas presents to my family in the States. Naturally, you can't pass up on such a speedy courier service from here in Kenya when the normal postal service can take on average anywhere from 3-6 months to get your parcels to the States.

My family had no idea what was coming. Yesterday a parcel arrived at their post office in Utah with no name in the sender box, just an address from somewhere in Roseburg, Oregon. That box of presents would be heralding Christmas from a son thousands of miles away in Kenya. My mom is going to place the presents underneath their Christmas tree, signaling the coming of Christmas day when they can open their presents.

Two thousand years ago someone else was signaling the coming of a parcel the size of a baby from a far away place as well. "John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.... 'After me comes one who is mightier than I.'" Whilst that parcel which I sent to my parents heralds the coming of a certain day where they can open gifts, John's ministry in the wilderness was heralding something so much more significant.

We as humans can often get caught up heralding the coming of things that pale in comparison to the very thing that John was heralding. During this Advent season, I pause to think about the things that I point to in my life. Do I point to/speak of things that have such little significance to the kingdom of God, or do I point to the One who ushered in that very kingdom? John had a very important ministry; he prepared the way for the One who was to change history forever. We too are called to be messengers. We are called to prepare the way for the coming of our Lord for the second time. What are you pointing to today?

What does it take to be the hands and feet of Christ?

it takes courage.

recently, i think that God has been placing people in my life for a reason. as i noted in previous posts, i took a course called the gospel of luke as a module course here at seminary. in that class two of the biggest subjects we dealt with were the hospitality of God and liberation for the poor. well, low and behold a few situations have occurred in the past several days that have dealt exactly with this.

last weekend, my sister and i had just finished grocery shopping when a lady motioned at us and came walking up. then she began her story. generally i just start to tune them out when that story starts and look for some change to give to them. but thankfully, my sister helped me not to do that. the lady's name was rochelle. she worked on the side of town where we were shopping, but lived with her young children at least twenty minutes away. she and they were hungry and cold and she didn't have a way to get back to them. we offered to take her to the bus depot, and she didn't want us to bother. but she did want us to pray. there in front of aldi's we prayed with her.

then tonight after a week of reading more into the gospel of luke, where just this morning i read about the good samaritan, about helping to usher in the kingdom of God, about asking God for our daily bread; libby and i encountered another similar situation. a gentlemen named terrance came up to us in westport, kansas city and told us of his young girls who needed diapers and nutritional milk. again, i longed just to end the conversation with me sticking my hand in my pocket and taking out some coins i got at the tip jar as a barista today, but thankfully yet again my sister continued in dialogue with the man. we went down to the local grocery story and got him what he had asked. he didn't come in with us, because he said he was already caught stealing some diapers earlier. this man had said that he had come to kansas city in hopes of a fresh start. he'd been a druggie in chi town, and wanted to take proper care of his wife, azetta and his girls.

it's times like these that we're faced with decisions. we can either just say, sorry i've got to go, or look to the scapegoat of some loose change. or, we can physically try to help these people. sure, there are cons out there. maybe even these people were cons. but we cannot be the judges of that. we're called to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the least of these. it's something that takes courage. it takes courage to take that step of getting out of our comfort zones and helping strangers.

yet, i also know there's so much more that can be done. i hope that i can find some meaningful ways, and i hope that the church can find some meaningful ways to help the rochelle's, terrance's, and azetta's which are all over our cities, our world.

the way we experience church

first off, i don't want to title this the way we worship. worship should be our very existence. there should be no separation between our life and our worship as followers of Christ. so therefore i entitle this the way we experience church. for now, i just want to touch on the notion of music in church. there will forever be a battle between the generations as to how we partake in the said subject whilst at church. i'm reading a book about christian ethics, by a collaboration of authors, at the moment, and in it the author of a chapter talked about music styles and whatnot. basically he was concerned that music styles play too much to the current culture. i agree with this. i don't think that church needs to be some flashy place that caters to the desires of the cnn and itunes followers. however, the author did seem to advocate the hymns of the past as the way to go. hey, i enjoy hymns, no quibbles with that. but the fact is that those hymns are culturally relative in themselves. yes, many do speak a great theological wonder and biblical truth, but many of them do not as well. i think i am coming to the point where i believe wholeheartedly that theological significance should be the way we deem music suitable for the church. personally i'm a fan of hillsong united. i don't necessarily advocate everything the leader of their parent movement, brian houston, preaches, and i find a certain youtube parody of their church quite accurate in many regards. but, some of their songs speak of what the gospel is all about, and i wouldn't mind singing this in church sometime. this song is called solution. especially after this gospel of luke class that i was in, i think it sums up some key points we believe about Jesus, his love, compassion and hospitality:

It is not a human right
To stare not fight
While broken nations dream
Open up our eyes, so blind
That we might find
The Mercy for the need

Singing, Hey now
Fill our hearts with your compassion
Hey now
As we hold to our confession
Yeah

It is not too far a cry
To much to try
To help the least of these
Politics will not decide
If we should rise
And be your hands and feet

Singing, Hey now
Fill our hearts with your compassion
Hey Now
As we hold to our confession

Woah-oh-oh,
God be the solution
Woah-oh-oh
We will be Your hands and be Your feet.
Yeah, yeah

Higher than a circumstance
Your promise stands
Your love for all to see
Higher than protest line and dollar signs
Your love is all we need

Only You can mend the broken heart
And cause the blind to see
Erase complete the sinners past
And set the captives free
Only You can take the widows cry
And cause her heart to sing
Be a Father to the fatherless
Our Savior and our King
We will be Your hands, we will be Your feet
We will run this race
On the darkest place, we will be Your light
We will be Your light

We will be Your hands , we will be Your feet
We will run this race for the least of these
In the darkest place, we will be your light
We will be your light
We'll sing

Woah-oh-oh,
God be the solution
Woah-oh-oh
We will be Your hands and be Your feet.

what i've learned in seminary this semester: modules

so this semester started for me two and 1/2 weeks ago on january 17th. i was in a module class. a module class at nazarene theological seminary is a two week intensive course. they are just that, quite intense. my module class met every week night for 4 hours and 45 minutes. some people take two of these and so they are in class for 9 and 1/2 hours. most modules have pre course work, course work, and post course work. they are crazy.

i was in the gospel of luke. i was pretty excited for this class. the learning started right away. my favorite book before the course started (during the pre course work) was Jesus and empire by richard a. horsely. this book really gave me an in depth look at what the roman empire was like during Jesus' day. i really discovered how brutal the empire was. in fact this book helped me during my writing of a sermon that my sister Libby and i co-prought (past tense for preached) at our parents church, salt lake city first church of the nazarene, the day after christmas. it was entitled the refugee God. basically we talked about how Jesus was born into life as a refugee, for his family fled to egypt right after his birth because of the brutal killing of male babies which herod imposed on the people. maybe i will post our manuscript on here sometime.

during the class the biggest themes which we talked about were hospitality, liberation and jubilee. the liberation and jubilee themes were talked about in relation to leviticus 25 and how this chapter talked of the year of jubilee which would be practiced every 50 years by the people, where debts were forgiven, where land would lie fallow, and where basically everyone would have a new start (it's a lot more detailed than that, so you can go look it up if you like). liberation was highlighted in the fact that Jesus brought liberation to people who were oppressed, both spiritually and physically.

lastly, we talked about hospitality. i was in a group which focused on the book "the hospitality of God" by brendan byrne. this book focused on how luke highlights the fact that Jesus practiced the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers in the gospel of luke. this all started through God's gracious hospitality which he extended to his people through sending his Son Jesus to them. then we saw how Jesus extended hospitality to those he came in contact with and how some of those who came in contact with him did the same.

my friend Jared brought up a good point, that maybe as wesleyans we would refer to this as prevenient grace. i think that i tend to agree with him, because God was preceduous in his extension of his hospitality through his love, both throughout the old testament, but also through sending his son to us.

it was definitely an intense couple of weeks of study. i enjoyed learning from my peers and learning from our gracious professor as well. i'm really glad that i took the class. it's opened up my eyes to how Jesus lived his life and how we are called to replicate this.