Selling Water by the River (5) - Gardeners, Not Guards, Needed in the Society of God

This will be the last of a series from Shane Hipps' book, Selling Water By the River. 

In the chapter about gardening Hipps contrasts the special treatment that the famous Mona Lisa painting receives (encasement in a temperature controlled glass box and security guards, etc) and the treatment that a good gardener gives to plants in a botanical garden. These are both very different kinds of jobs.

"Trees don't take kindly to small sealed glass cases that prevent moisture and the sun from getting in. An ancient painting would not take kindly to a whole lot of tampering, touch, and exposure. The key to selecting the proper method of care is understanding the object so the wrong methods are not applied...The same is true when it comes to our relationship to the message of Jesus - the gospel. We must accurately understand the nature of the gospel if we are to treat it with proper care..."

In Acts 8 we read one of many conversion encounters found in the book of Acts; this one is particularly fascinating. Obeying God's direction to head to the Gaza desert from Jerusalem, Philip comes across the "treasurer of Ethiopia", a eunuch, who was in his chariot reading from the book of Isaiah.

In the ancient world there were a number of reasons why a man was castrated; in this case it was because he served in the queen's service and had to become a eunuch so as not to "cause trouble".

"Some eunuchs would develop feminine characteristics because they no longer had as much testosterone coursing through their bodies. Many dressed in women's clothes with women's makeup and adornments, so they could serve powerful women without too many questions asked. They were considered a third gender and were often outcasts in society. People didn't know where to put them..."

The fact that this man had traveled all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship and had acquired a scripture scroll indicates courage on his part since eunuchs were prohibited by Jewish law (Deuteronomy 23:1) from entering the assembly of God.

"God told Philip to go and share the gospel with a person who is not acceptable according to the Bible. He is from another land, another religion, and has chosen a lifestyle that is both irreversible and strictly prohibited in the Bible. And yet, God sends Philip far out of his way to share the good news with this person. Then Philip baptizes him without any precondition other than the eunuch's desire. So while the eunuch might be excluded from the religious assembly of God, he is welcome in God's kingdom."

Another fascinating thing is going on in the midst of all of this related to scripture - Isaiah (56:3-5) directly contradicts the law of Deuteronomy. This shows the trajectory of the Bible - it's a story of ever-expanding love that moves beyond the original established boundaries.

And there's more that is not recorded in the scripture about this story...now 2,000+ years later, "over half of all Ethiopians are Christians and a number of them trace the origin of their faith back to this first convert."

Shane Hipps finishes this wonderful chapter with words about the nature of the kingdom of God, proposing that perhaps when Jesus compared it to a mustard seed in Luke 13, He was suggesting that not only would the kingdom grow numerically, but that its nature includes change and reshaping...

"Perhaps  the kingdom does more than transform us; it also transforms itself for our sake. There may be dimensions of God's love that have yet to be revealed to us...it is possible that the gospel takes shapes necessary to better penetrate the hearts of people. A mustard seed in no way resembles the look, feel, or function of a mustard tree...

"Like a seed that becomes a tree, (the gospel) changes, grows, and is renewed in each culture, context, and generation. The good news began as a message to Abraham of the blessing of land and descendants for an ethnic group. But through the course of history it became the blessing of an abundant life beyond land and children, beyond ethnicity. It became good news for anyone who wanted it...The good news grows and in that sense, changes. And yet...its basic DNA does not change. It both changes and is somehow unchanged."

Finally, Shane Hipps suggests that the kingdom of God is more like a plant than a painting. It's not an ancient artifact that needs protecting: "The kingdom is a lot more like a tree. God is looking for gardeners, not guards. A guard is trained in a defensive stance of fear and suspicion. A gardener is motivated by love and creativity...A friend, who is a landscape architect, once told me about a special kind of cell in plants that is called 'meristematic.' It's a cell that is ever-growing, ever-changing, ever-living. Jesus proclaimed the meristematic kingdom of God. Are we prepared for this never-changing kingdom to change? Are we open to the ways we might understand it anew?"

Selling Water By the River (4) - Paralyzed or Pathological Because of Fear

I've become aware over the years that we who claim to be the most ardent Christians are some of the most anxious of people, fearful of making mistakes or wrong decisions or of not believing the right doctrines or not being spiritual enough, etc, etc. In the chapter on "touching the stove" in Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps says the following:

"Those of us raised in Christianity often live with a lot of fear. Fear that we are doing it wrong (whatever 'it' is). Fear that some unfamiliar idea might hurt us. Fear that God may not like who we are, or what we've done, or what we think. Fear that a particular interpretation of the Bible is hurting the Bible or even God. Fear that we, or others, might be offending God, who apparently has quite fragile feelings and a hair-triggered temper. Some religious people are even afraid that other people are not frightened enough."

Hipps goes on to say that fear has a legitimate initial role in our early formation in that it teaches us what is needed in order to stay safe. He uses the illustration of teaching his small daughter to fear the stove with the instructions to not touch the stove. However, as we mature we must "leave the fear behind or we become paralyzed or pathological. If a 20-year-old is frightened of stoves in the same way he was as a 2-year-old, we have a problem.

"Fear is a developmental ingredient in the life of faith. It is useful in learning to prevent harm and nurture wisdom...and helps us develop basic impulse control...But fear also has some serious limits...

"The first stage of development is a much safer place to be...But as we grow, we are more and more moved and opened by Love, or God...we could say that fear is about closure and contraction, whereas Love is about opening and expansion. Love by nature is free from fear. The process of becoming open by Love can be unnerving, and is not for the faint of heart. Doubts emerge when what we thought were solid foundations begin to feel like shifting sands beneath our feet. Love opens us more and more to a freedom that moves us beyond self-justification, self-protection, and self-preservation..."

"If we are to access the Living Water Jesus promised, ultimately Love must become the only thing that governs behavior, not fear...Love does not do away with all boundaries; instead, it makes use of them in ways that serve the purpose of Love. 

"As we grow, the question we learn to ask moves from 'What is right or wrong?' to 'What does Love require?'"...fear is actually the absence of Love, not the opposite (of Love)...ridding ourselves of fear is as simple as letting Love in."

Selling Water by the River (3) - Jesus Does Not Bind Himself to any Religion

In his chapter about "wind and sails" in Selling Water by the River, Shane Hipps shows how Jesus went out of His way to disregard the boundaries that religion had established. In His first miracle of turning water into wine Jesus "sets the stage for his way of operating in the world. It frames his entire ministry."

In this miracle what's astonishing is not only that Jesus changed the chemical composition from one liquid to another but that he flagrantly broke the ceremonial rules which insisted that wine not be put into vessels that were dedicated for ceremonial washing. This is exactly what Jesus did - he had the servants use the jars that were for ceremonial cleansing rather than use the empty wine jars. By doing this, he was mixing wine and water thereby defiling both and causing the people to be unclean.

Why would Jesus do such an offensive thing (and continue doing this sort of thing throughout His ministry)? Hipps contends that it was because He was always trying to get people beyond the banks of the river and into the great expanse of the river of God's love. "He kept moving people toward the vast ocean, beyond the narrow confines of the riverbanks."

"Religions have a tendency to get stuck. Institutions aren't made to stay limber...Thus the trajectory of any religion is always to become brittle. A basic law is at work in most things we humans create: whatever the intended purpose of our creation, when overextended, it can reverse on itself...when it (Christian religion) becomes overextended, the impulse is to preserve the institution rather than the message...Jesus consistently undermined the natural inertia of institutions. He was the embodiment of pure, unbridled creative force. Creativity is often disruptive. It has little interest in preservation; it is about making new things and making things new."

Jesus is not against religions. The author says that Jesus is the wind while religions are the sails. His own conviction is that the Christian religion is the sail that best catches the wind but adds the following, "Just because Christianity claims Jesus as its own does not mean that Jesus claims Christianity as his own. Christ does not bind himself to a religion any more than wind binds itself to a sail...We must never make an idol of the sail and thereby miss the wind. But it is also a mistake to say the sail doesn't matter. Without a sail, the wind is difficult to catch..."

We must continually be reminded that it is not the "sail" but the "wind" we are after. Jesus continually broke the rules and boundaries established by religion so that people could get to Him. To live and move in this reality as his followers will cost us...

Selling Water by the River (2): No One Comes to the Bible without a Lens

In the second chapter of the book, Selling Water by the River, Hipps talks about the lenses through which we read scripture and life:

"No one comes to the Bible or life without a lens...A lens can be a set of assumptions or beliefs that we have...When it comes to the Bible, religious authorities usually tell us which lenses we should use. We learn what to believe about the Bible as a way to help us understand how to read it. We are also taught what to be afraid of or angry about..."

The author goes ahead to list the first set of biblical lenses he was given, which included such things as: 

*The Bible is flat; no teaching or doctrine in the Bible is privileged above another...

*The Bible is unified in its message...

*God doesn't speak outside the Bible...

(Authority figures also taught him what lenses he should NOT look through at the Bible.)

"Our lenses - our assumptions, our way of seeing the world - shape the way we interpret the Bible and how we relate to God and those in the world around us...When we see our lenses, we can evaluate them consciously...An examination of our lenses is not a process of changing the Bible, the world, or truth; it is a process of changing ourselves. 

     "The most limited Bible interpreter is one who claims to have no lens." 

        "Even Jesus, the Son of God, made deliberate use of a lens..." 

Hipps goes on to illustrate this by showing how Jesus elevated certain scriptures over others. The Pharisees tried to trick him by asking which was the greatest commandment, believing that the only correct answer could be that all of the commandments are the greatest. But Jesus didn't hesitate to respond in a way that shows his understanding that some commandments carry more weight than others and that all of them should be understood in the light of the two commandments to love God and our neighbor.

"The implications of what Jesus says here are enormous and often overlooked. He is actually showing us that he has a lens - a set of assumptions. He doesn't see the Bible as flat...

"We all have lenses, but not all lenses are created equal. Some help us see more, some cause us to see less...Perhaps this Jesus-centered lens is one we should adopt. One that elevates love of God, and love of neighbor and self as the interpretive keys to the Bible."

Selling Water by the River

In the coming weeks I will share quotes from parts of Shane Hipps' book, Selling Water by the River, "a book about the life Jesus promised and the religion that gets in the way".

This book had a significant influence on my early years of unlearning and relearning and reworking much of what I was raised to believe about God and Jesus and Christianity. 

The summary on the book jacket says of this book: "Work, sex, ice cream, religion - they all promise fulfillment. But what they deliver is fleeting...We want something that lasts, that doesn't rise and fall with the fate of the stock market. Jesus understood this quest. He came to show us that peace is possible in this life, not just the next one. Yet Christianity, the very religion that claims Jesus as its own, has often built the biggest barriers to him and the life he promised."

In this book Hipps shows how available the water of life is; it's a river available to all, but we have built our institutions next to the river to sell the water. In so doing, we often create hindrances for people to get directly to the river of life - Jesus.

"...problematic are the beliefs we are taught to adopt that truncate our imagination of God...Then there is...fear. Fear is one of the great barriers to this river...Ironically, religious Christianity is often the purveyor of the very beliefs and fears that get in the way of the water.

"...What we believe matters, but not for the reasons we may assume. Our beliefs (or lack of beliefs) do not qualify or disqualify us from the river. Instead, they determine how clearly we will see the river...Some beliefs clear the way and give us high visibility, while others create a thick fog..."

Uncontrolling Love (4) - When God is a Child, None Shall be Afraid

In the chapter, "God is a Baby", of Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, Ricardo Gouvea speaks about the coming of God as an infant from Luke 2:12. He challenges us to take seriously the manifestation of God in a baby and to realize that it is as much a part of God's story as is the crucifixion. It matters greatly that God manifested himself in this way if we are to better understand who he is and what he is like. 

He argues that by bringing Easter themes (personal salvation) into the Christmas story (which American evangelicalism likes to do) obscures and takes attention away from the message of the birth and infancy of Jesus, and that message is that God is revealing his true nature. Gouvea says the following:

"...The inferences we can take from this are astonishing...first of all, a reconsecration of matter itself ...Matter becomes sanctified. It means the sanctification of time and history...time and history became the abode of God...it also implies the sanctification of the human condition...the annulment of the curse...

"That the Eternal Word became a baby also points to something even more shocking that goes against the grain of our accustomed theological conceptions: it denotes the sanctification of tenderness and fragility...God was revealed to us as fragile and tender.

"...The incarnation and the theophany (manifestation) of God in Christ speak to us, therefore, of God's own frailty, fragility, and...of God's interest in taking risks; for the tenderness of babyhood is very risky, and God took that risk, out of love.

"...When we see with the eyes of faith that God is a baby, we see God's love in its utmost depth...and we are absorbed by God's love and we love God back with the deepest love possible, and this perfect love drives out all fear, including all fear of God and of judgment and of punishment, for God is love (I John 4:8)...driven by the power of love, we can become disciples of Jesus Christ, followers of Jesus in his love...

"God is a child, and as such God calls for our help, for our tender love and care...God has revealed God's own being, nature, and character to us in Christ as a poor little baby who needs and wants to be tenderly embraced, who needs and wants to be loved, and who wants to become our friend and play with us. God is not a menace...

"...when God is a child, the last shall be first and the weak shall be strong, and none shall be afraid."

I will close this post with a quote from Leonardo Boff which Gouvea includes in this sermon: 

"...every child wants to be an adult, and every adult wants to become rich and important like a king, and every rich, important person wants to be a god; but God wanted to be a child."

Uncontrolling Love (3): Earthquakes that Break Open Closed Minds and Hearts

Continuing this series on the uncontrolling love of God (Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God), I'm   quoting from Patricia Adams Farmer and her sermon on Matthew 28:1-10:

"I have always associated earthquakes with fear and destruction...in this passage in Matthew, we discover another kind of quaking -- the kind that wakes us up, gets our attention, jolts us out of our everyday assumptions about the world. These are the earthquakes that break open tightly closed minds and hearts--the kind of quake that issues forth new life and fresh possibilities.

"The Easter story in Matthew begins with this kind of earthquake: a quaking of pure wonder, awe, astonishment...(the text says that) 'they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy.'

"With this astonishing news (of an empty tomb), we are jolted out of our limited vision of ourselves and our world...This is the earthquake of Easter: it shakes us out of our everyday world with its heartbreaks, injustices, and might-makes-right philosophies; it cracks open an astonishing world of divine possibility and spiritual treasure...

"When the world values brute force and violence, we are astonished to see that, after all the destruction and suffering, it is love that survives -- love that triumphs. Love is the greatest power in the universe because God is love...

"But moving from death to resurrection, from darkness into light, from the world as it is to the world as it might be, is not as easy as it sounds...when fear becomes the master of our lives and lodges itself like a boulder inside our psyche, our worldview, even our religious life, it keeps us prisoners inside tombs of spiritual darkness. Such intrenched fear leads to depression and despair or mutates into hate and us-vs-them worldviews. 

"Twice in this passage in Matthew, we hear the words: 'Do not be afraid.' Radical transformation can be a scary thing. Fear is more familiar so we cling to what we know best. But in order to meet the risen Christ...we must, like the two Marys, muster the courage to move past that heavy boulder of hard stultifying fear, and accept the divine invitation to enter a world of fresh imaginings..."