Even in the most difficult times in my life of faith, there’s been something about Jesus. Like those times when my jaw clinched against my will. From deep within my gut anger rose up like a kindled tinder bursting into flame. Rarely opened spickets in my eyes allowed the early stages of tears to form. Logic and reason left the building. My mind became a place of chaos. The lie sat in front of me and I no longer knew what to believe. All I knew is that there was no going back to the faith I once embraced. Even then, there was something about Jesus.
Moments that Change Everything
Since you are reading this, my guess is that you too have experience moments like this. Those powerful instances in time, burned into your memory as a defining event that changes everything.
Odds are, there were hundreds of smaller moments that cleared the path for that point in time. Questions that popped up but were then suppressed. Encounters with people deemed immoral yet seemed so good. The public failure of someone you perceived to be so righteous. Your own inability to let go of an undesired compulsion. The doubt that came after you did all the right things in the right way only to get the completely wrong result.
Some of my moments include following all the steps and checking all the boxes on the “Christian way” to date only to find the closeness of marriage plunge me into my own personal hell. Or the one where I was teaching students from across the African continent the history of Lutheran theology, only to see the political maneuvering that shaped these confessions I long believed to be purely pastoral. Then there was the time I sat down to write my doctoral dissertation on spiritual formation, only to look in the mirror and realize the faith I embraced deformed the image of Christ in me, keeping me bound to both self-contempt and destructive compulsive behavior.
There’s Something About Jesus
And yet, in spite of the horror of those moments, if you are reading this, my guess is that like me, you continue to think, “There’s something about Jesus.” That feeling has to be something like what the disciples felt throughout their years with Jesus.
It began from the moment they met him, whether it was John the Baptist pointing his disciples towards Jesus or a simple request from Jesus to follow him. There is something mysterious and yet magnetic about this man Jesus.
For the disciples, the feeling stayed even as Jesus’ behavior became questionable. Forbidden healings on the sabbath challenged everything the disciples learned growing up. Love, extended to the very people the world deemed unlovable, made a once secure world feel uncertain. Confusing teachings defied what they once assumed true. All of this stirred fear about how the religious leadership would respond. Yet, through it all, there remained something about Jesus.
Then, just when it all seemed like a charade, as if that “something about Jesus” proved to be nothing more than a mirage, as the body of Jesus lay in a tomb, he reappeared. He breathed on them and invited them to continue his work of freeing people from the chains that bind them … work that allows humanity to have not just life, but abundant life, in his name.
An Invitation to Journey With Me
The series of posts that you can subscribe to by email is an invitation for you to join me as I wrestle with how to interpret the Bible and take an uncomfortable journey with Jesus. It is not so much a quest for answers as it is an opportunity to be shaped by the experience. Along the way I will share the resources that help guide my thinking and invite you to allow them to tinker with yours. Much like the disciples had side conversations, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.
Flowing from this idea of abundant life, this newsletter will open with an ongoing series that seeks to understand John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (NRSV)
I have no idea how long the series will last. It is not mapped out. After all, this is me inviting you into my process so we can process together. I am certain any plan I might come up with will go out the window the moment the exploration takes an unexpected turn. Given that unexpected turns are constant when you walk with Jesus, there is no question they will come frequently.
And to be clear about my larger plans, the thoughts I share through this newsletter, while valuable in and of themselves, are my research while I write the book, Abundance Reconstructed. In the end, the newsletter will be more information, reflection and thoughts about interpretation moving towards application, while the book will have more of a creative narrative flow that feels more like spiritual reading.
Abundance Reconstructed and COVID-19
I doubt there is a more appropriate time to explore the idea of an abundant life, after all, as I write these words I sit in my basement office engaged in social isolation as part of my response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The economy is in shambles. Fear permeates the air. Consumerism is at a stand still. Even toilet paper is now a valuable commodity. Based on all of our traditional measures, life feels anything but abundant.
Given how hard it is to leave the familiar, let alone the comfortable, perhaps the unfamiliar and undesired discomfort we are feeling now will give us the push we need to act on that something we have always sensed about Jesus. Perhaps on the other side of social isolation, we will find ourselves stepping back into the world as people formed to live a different kind of abundance … one we found in the midst of what we once considered lack.
As a first step on this journey, if you have not already done so, I invite you to sign up for monthly newsletter. When you do, I will send you a copy of my ebook, “Connecting the Dots of the Bible.” In it I will share four shifts I made in how I read the Bible while working on my dissertation. It will give you an introductory look at how I think and my approach reading Scripture.
I look forward to joining you on this journey. Please feel free to drop me a line and share a bit of your story so we can get to know each other.
A Prayer as We Begin
As a final thought during this season of pandemic prompted questions, I would like to share something my dear Aunt Debbie passed on to me. She received it from a friend who didn’t know the source. It has quickly become my prayer during this chaotic season:
And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.
– Unknown