Category: CHRISTianity

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Good Friday

I am fairly sure that my celebration of Easter weekend is defined by singing all but the last verse of “Were You There” during our Tenebrae gathering on Good Friday or Maundy Thursday and then singing the final verse  (the resurrection verse) on Resurrection Sunday. The video above is from Tapestry singing the song a few years ago at one of our normal worship gatherings.

“The God of freedom, the true God, is… not recognized by his power and glory in the history of the world, but through his helplessness and his death on the scandal of the cross of Jesus”

Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology

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Maundy Thursday – Place of Peace Meal

It doesn’t always work out this way but I do love it when it does work out for Tapestry to do the Thursday night Place of Peace meal on the Maundy Thursday of Holy Week. This year it worked out, so tonight we made, served, and the ate the Place of Peace meal with everyone who was there. Maundy Thursday is when the church traditionally commemorates the Jesus washing the disciples’ feet (the Maundy) and the Lord’s Supper. I simply can’t think of a better way to remember our Lord’s service and death until He comes again than to be a part of the PoP meal.

It was a wonderful night and a great way to lead into tomorrow night’s Tenebrae Gathering. If you don’t have a Good Friday service consider joining us for the evening. We’ll be at the Smith Scarabocchio Art Museum.

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For those of you who may be curious, the guys who were the focus of Protect Tuna Casserole were there tonight and they were thrilled by the tuna casserole that the Glaze’s brought. Also Project Memories has been initiated.

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InterVarsity God & Science Discussion Tonight

I stole this photo from Jamie M but I am fairly sure she won;t mind. If you do Jamie I’ll gladly remove it.

If you are in the Point area I encourage you to go to the InterVarsity God & Science Discussion tonight.

I’ve been to this many times before and it always seems to be enlightening and enjoyable. Tonight Tapestry‘s own Conor H will be a part of compiling and organizing the questions that the professors will address. I find that the professors involved in this always do a great job of grappling with the discussion and they do so in a very humble and open manner.

The God & Science discussion will be held in the Dreyfus University Center (DUC) theater (1015 Reserve St, Stevens Point) from 6 to 7:45 pm.  I plan on being there.

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2nd Sunday of Lent Collaborative Message Prep


Last week I posted concerning doing some collaborative message preparation during the Lenten season. Here’s the link to the Google Doc I have set up for sermon research and thoughts for this Sunday’s (February 25th) message.

Sunday we will be talking about Mark 8:31-38

31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

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Discipleship = Being With Jesus

Every now and then there is some small, cool point within the passage that I am studying for Sunday’s message at Tapestry that I am fairly sure will get lost in the rest of the message but I feel is fascinating. Tomorrow’s passage (Luke 8:1-15) has one such element that I thought I would quickly post concerning.

In regards to verse 1b-2a of the eight chapter of the Gospel According to Luke “The Twelve were with him,  and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases” Joel Green writes in his New International Commentary of the New Testament “The Gospel of Luke“:

As a summary, this text also introduces more blatantly what has only begun to be apparent in the narrative—namely, the ongoing presence of traveling companions “with” Jesus. Being “with Jesus” connotes “discipleship” 3—an implication immediately born out by the identification of Jesus’ companions as “the twelve” and as women who (as we will see below) embody the meaning of discipleship for Luke. (emphasis mine)

I love this description of discipleship (the process of growing as a follower of Jesus Christ), being with Jesus. Far too often discipleship gets turned into a program. Do this for this, then this, then this. I’ve discussed my struggle with discipleship program before here. When these programs work properly they are a means to helping us to be with Jesus. When they aren’t working properly they become a end themselves, rather than being something that helps us to be with Jesus. We just have to always remember that “being with Jesus” is the means and the end of discipleship.

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Everyday Gnosticism

I was perusing one of a  Christian writer’s books recently when I read this statement:

God created us to be spirit beings temporarily inhabiting a human body.

I seriously try not to be overly picky about words and give people the benefit of the doubt when they are trying to communicate. Therefore, I’m not going to name the author or the book because I respect much of what he has done and said. Just not the above sentence.

Apparently Gnostic jesus looks something like this.

I want to be generous in communication, but this is a sentence and thought that I believe needs to be called out for what it is. And what it is is unChristian. Specifically it is Gnostic thought, one of the first, and still most continually dangerous, heresies that the church faced.

There is a lot to Gnostic thought but I will briefly summarize it with this statement: Spirit = good, matter = evil. There is much more to it than that, but you can usually use the spirit=good, matter=evil as a good rule of thumb for understanding Gnostic thought. Gnostic thought teaches that the goal is to free the divine spark/spiritual from the material emanation. Your goal is to escape the physical. It influences how you act and what you value.

Christian thought, on the other hand,  is that God created the world and all that is in it as “very good“, and yes it and we have fallen, but Jesus has done all that is necessary for it and our redemption, and we are looking forward to the finalization of that redemption.  Thus the Christian goal is to be a part of the redemption of God’s fallen creation.

Gnosticism was considered incredibly dangerous to true Christian faith by the early church (i.e. why it was labeled heresy) because the church knew Gnosticism would lead to a non-incarnate Christ and therefore a faith that was divorced from the real life around it. That is why it still matters that Christians today understand the difference. Knowing and understanding the difference shapes how we respond to life and the world.

An excellent book on modern Gnosticism in Protestantism.

Gnosticism leads to a faith that is merely spiritual and doesn’t affect this world because it is trying to escape this world. Christian faith is an incarnate faith (an en-fleshed faith) that is involved in the world as a part of God’s redemption. The Gnostic Jesus, from what are known as the Gnostic gospels, just talked about spiritual things that would lead to one escaping from the world. Gnostic Jesus makes you feel very spiritual but he doesn’t change anything. There is no need to change anything when you follow Gnostic Jesus because your only goal is to escape.

The REAL Jesus talked about the spiritual and physical in the same breath. He is God incarnate so how could He do otherwise? He preached a kingdom that fed and healed people.

The resurrected Jesus didn’t, and still doesn’t, preach a gospel of bodiless spirituality. Unfortunately many times evangelical Christianity does. Just look and listen and you will see a bunch of bodiless spirituality preached in the name of Christ. The horrible thing is that such teaching leads to a faith that has no impact on this world because it is just trying to escape this world. The message of the incarnate Jesus doesn’t. The incarnate Jesus doesn’t cause us to fly away, but instead He resurrects us to a transformed, redeemed, new heaven and new earth where the new Jerusalem comes down (Revelation 21).

We are not “spirit beings temporarily inhabiting a human body”, we are creatures who bear the Imago Dei who need to be redeemed and resurrected.

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Forgiveness & Rachael Denhollander

Forgiveness is not a passive act. The first step of forgiveness is actually recognizing and declaring that something is evil. After all, if an act isn’t wrong there isn’t really anything to forgive. It might be a cultural faux pas or a stupid action, but those things don’t need forgiveness because blunders in etiquette, clumsiness, and ignorance don’t purposefully hurt someone. Forgiveness on the other hand deals with actions that result in harm. This harm might be societal, relational, physical, or any number of other ways but it is still harm.

As a follower of Jesus I am called to forgive because and as I have been forgiven by God. “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13). I believe the reason for this is not just for the restoration of relationship but also for the destruction of evil. Forgiveness defeats evil by not allowing evil to have the last word. Forgiveness starts with either the victim, the perpetrator, or both recognizing that real harm was done by the perpetrator. Evil was done and that needs to be acknowledged.

Unfortunately I know of which I speak in regards to being hooked.

This is why forgiveness isn’t just “letting someone off the hook” as we so often use the phrase. Actually I think often what people want in forgiveness is to forget that the “hook” is there at all and pretend like everything is ok. Unfortunately i have experienced a few hooks in my hand. Taking care of the issue is a very painful event. Forgetting the hook is there doesn’t solve the problem. Since there is a barb in the hook you have to push the hook forward through the skin. You can’t pull it back out because the barb will continue to catch your flesh as you pull it backward. So you push the point all the way through the skin and then cut the barb off so you can remove the hook. Removing the hook hurts like “a big dog”, but it is the only way that you’ll ever be free. That’s what true forgiveness does, it frees both the victim and the perpetrator from the evil that has been done and that only happens when the evil is “pushed” into the light. And boy does that hurt.

I think this is where we, as those needing forgiveness, often struggle. We fail to realize or don’t want to realize that an initial part of receiving forgiveness involves acknowledging the harm and evil of what we have done. We don’t want to actually confront what we have done as evil. We just want to be able to ignore it and have it forgotten. That’s not forgiveness though.

Forgiveness is removing the power of sin and part of that is done by acknowledging the action for what it was … evil. For the perpetrator this might sound like , “when I broke our family apart that was evil.” “When I hurt you that was evil.” For the victim it might sound like “what you did to our family is evil.” Those are powerful confessions that actually begin the process of freeing both the victim and the perpetrator from the evil that was done. That’s not a passive. That’s not being a doormat.

Yesterday we were given a good example of this during the sentencing hearing of Larry Nassar. Rachael Denhollander’s statement during the sentencing hearing part of Larry Nassar’s trial is a powerful example of calling evil what it is as a part of forgiveness. Her statement can be found here. I want to quote part of it:

Rachael Denhollander reading her statement. She is one brave person.

In our early hearings. you brought your Bible into the courtroom and you have spoken of praying for forgiveness. And so it is on that basis that I appeal to you. If you have read the Bible you carry, you know the definition of sacrificial love portrayed is of God himself loving so sacrificially that he gave up everything to pay a penalty for the sin he did not commit. By his grace, I, too, choose to love this way.

You spoke of praying for forgiveness. But Larry, if you have read the Bible you carry, you know forgiveness does not come from doing good things, as if good deeds can erase what you have done. It comes from repentance which requires facing and acknowledging the truth about what you have done in all of its utter depravity and horror without mitigation, without excuse, without acting as if good deeds can erase what you have seen this courtroom today.
If the Bible you carry says it is better for a stone to be thrown around your neck and you throw into a lake than for you to make even one child stumble. And you have damaged hundreds.
The Bible you speak carries a final judgment where all of God’s wrath and eternal terror is poured out on men like you. Should you ever reach the point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet. Because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. And it will be there for you.
I pray you experience the soul crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me — though I extend that to you as well.
Throughout this process, I have clung to a quote by C.S. Lewis, where he says, my argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how did I get this idea of just, unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he first has some idea of straight. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?
Larry, I can call what you did evil and wicked because it was. And I know it was evil and wicked because the straight line exists. The straight line is not measured based on your perception or anyone else’s perception, and this means I can speak the truth about my abuse without minimization or mitigation. And I can call it evil because I know what goodness is. And this is why I pity you. Because when a person loses the ability to define good and evil, when they cannot define evil, they can no longer define and enjoy what is truly good.

Every now and then as a pastor and chaplain I talk with people who think forgiveness means pretending that their evil act didn’t happen. “I just want things to go back to the way they were.” But they can’t because, to use the hook analogy again, pretending the hook is gone doesn’t actually remove the hook. Such pretending doesn’t defeat the evil. Forgiveness does defeat evil by acknowledging what our actions were, selfish, hurtful, evil. Still for both the victim and the perpetrator it hurts like a big dog.

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Being the Church

Pretty frequently I am told of a “thread” being involved in some act of service that has nothing to do with Tapestry. A few times I have learned of a group of “threads” establishing a small group Bible study that I didn’t know anything about. Let me make this blatantly clear, I LOVE WHEN I HEAR ABOUT SERVICE AND STUDY INVOLVEMENT THAT I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT.

Seriously it is one of my favorite things because it means that the “threads” aren’t being dependent upon Tapestry as an organization setting up ministry opportunities. Instead they are being the church. Here are a few examples, but I could list others.

Elizabeth – She and others saw a need while they were on various international trips and they decided to do something about it. Together they started Disability Support International. As a group they “advocate, support, and empower to improve the lives of children with disabilities in developing countries so they can live life to the fullest.” She didn’t think to herself “Gee I wish the church would start something like this so I can be a part of it.” Nope she jumped to it and has since asked the church to be a part of it.

John – I go to the Place of Peace meal each week where I pray for the meal and just make myself available for anyone who wants someone to pray for them. Do you know who I see there every week? John. Pretty much every week he is there making himself available to do whatever is necessary and much more importantly eating a meal with and talking with anyone he believes could use some comradery for the evening, which I believe is the most important thing that happens at the PoP meals. I didn’t ask John to start doing this. I didn’t set it up for him. He just did it.

Conor – I don’t know what day of the week it is but Conor goes to the ECI Warming Center during the period  of the evening that I am told from Tiffani is the most difficult for her to get someone. He is the worker that is there to make sure everyone’s needs are met and that it is a safe place for people to sleep off some of our very cold nights. He said something a while back about wanting to be of service to the homeless population in our area. I think I pointed him to ECI but I’m not sure I did. All I know is that Conor didn’t wait for Tapestry to start something with ECI that he could serve within. Nope he just jumped to it

Natalie & Eric – If you were at Tapestry’s Sunday morning worship gathering this past Sunday you may have noticed that Eric & Natalie weren’t there. This would have been obvious with Eric since instead of him leading us in singing Sarah & Fawnda were doing so (thanks for doing that ladies, you were wonderful). The Glaze family was gone because as a family they play roles in the wonderful Special Olympics of our area. They are following in a family tradition of saying a few Sundays a year “we are going to skip church to go and be the church with some wonderful individuals who ho can do some amazing things with a little help”, and since they are bringing their girls with them and getting them involved they are setting up a new generation to do this too.

These are only four recent stories. I could write about others in the church fostering kids, reaching out to “at risk” kids, helping people make it through things they couldn’t make it through on their own. The reason I bring these four stories up is because of a statement I once heard. The statement is “Churches end up doing what is praised from the pulpit.” Whether this is a good thing or not is another discussion but regardless I think there is a great deal of truth in the statement. I believe that churches that brag on people doing church activities tend to get more people to do church activities. I believe that churches that brag on people bringing guests to church typically get more guests to brought to church. Etc. Etc.

All these things are good things but I want to brag on people randomly seeing areas in which Jesus might want them to serve and jumping to it. I’m not worried about you serving in the church organization, I’m sure that’ll be covered. Actually I find that usually the people who are serving outside the church are also serving in the church. Of the 5 people I mentioned above almost all are already doing acts of service in the church from leading music, to operating our lyric slides, to taking care of the nursery.  The church organization will be fine because people who serve Jesus outside the church walls typically also serve Jesus inside the church (or in our case gym) walls.

See a need, fill a need.

I remember watching the movie Robots with our boys. In that movie Bigweld, the inventor/idol of the lead character has a catch phrase. It is “See a need, fill a need.” I think that is a pretty good model for the church. What I hope you hear from our “pulpit” (in our case that equals a music stand and my stool with all the stickers on it) is basically “see a need, fill a need.” Now let’s go do that. I can’t wait to be surprised by what I hear.

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The Imago Dei Calls for the Rejection of Racism

Every now and then at Tapestry I talk about my friend and former “thread” Joel. Joel studied soil science at UWSP. Some people may use the saying “as dull as dirt” but Joel finds dirt fascinating and when he speaks about soil I realize that I suddenly find soil fascinating too. He believes (rightly so) that soil is amazing and therefore he expects to find interesting stuff in soil and looks for that which is interesting.

I post fairly often on this blog concerning the Imago Dei. Genesis describes humanity as being created in the image of God, the Imago Dei (Genesis 1:26). If you are human then you bear the image of God. That image might be bent or smudged or scarred but underneath those scars, dirt, and deformities is the image of our Creator.

Jesus tells a story of people doing and not doing things for Him in the 25th chapter of Matthew. In the parable that Jesus is telling the King, representing the Son of Man (i.e. Jesus), says the following to those who have helped Him.

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. (34b-36)

Why were they helping Jesus by helping “the least of these brothers and sisters” of Jesus? Well because they were brothers and sisters of Him because they were image bearers. To see the image of God in them and to react to that image was to see and serve God. This is also why He curses those who do not help Him.

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. (v. 41b-43)

The image of God was right in front of them, they didn’t see it, and they didn’t respond  to the Imago Dei. Therefore, they have turned their backs on God Himself.

This is why racism has to be called what it is – evil. It is looking at someone who bears the Imago Dei and ignoring that image by considering that person as less than. When we look at others we should see our Father and our Brother Jesus because they bear image of the triune God. Regardless of skin color, culture, citizenship, or language, we are all image bearers.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that all of us live a life that reflects the image we bear.

So let me get back to my friend Joel. Since, he is looking for amazing stuff when he looks at soil he sees it for the amazing, life-encouraging substance that it is. He then helps other people to see soil as amazing. I’m not trying to put words in Joel’s mouth but I believe that if he saw some one seriously damaging soil he might say them them, “Hey, don’t treat soil like that because it is amazing and we depend upon it.”  When you see soil as an amazing, life encouraging substance how could you not respond?

As a follower of Christ I should be recognizing the image of my God in those around me and responding to the Imago Dei. When I see or hear someone treat another image bearer as less than I have to stand up for that person because he is an image bearer. “Don’t you see the image of our Creator right in front of you? That person right there bears the Imago Dei! To treat her as less than is to insult and hurt the One Whose image she bears! That’s evil! Your actions are evil!” When we see someone hurting the image of the God you love how could we not respond?

Discussing immigration is not a racist thing, but immigration discussions can be turned into a excuse to deny the image of God in people who are different than us. Such discussions can be used to declare others as less than us. My friend Scott, who is an immigration attorney, often posts on his Facebook page concerning how messed up the current immigration system can be. Improving the immigration system is a good thing. Treating those made in the image of our Creator as less than is evil. Those of us who claim to be followers of Christ should constantly be focusing our eyes to see the image of our Lord in those around us and we should  fight for the sanctity of life for ALL who were created in His image.