Ears to Hear

He is not silent;
He is not whispering;
He is not quiet -
We're not listening.
Out of the Grey

Imagine, with eyes wide open, first century Jerusalem dwellers watched as Jesus Christ was betrayed, tried and crucified. They held their breath while he died and after picking themselves up off the ground after a 9.2 shaker they scratched their heads and walked away, not knowing that he was about to be temporarily buried in the earth only to be raised back to life on the third day. Over the next few weeks, the risen Christ took his time, appearing here and disappearing there, spending intentional moments with various friends and family. What kind of therapy would a friend or family member of Jesus Christ need after those weeks of spiritual whiplash? And just over the horizon was his ascension…what could possibly be next!?

It's in the in-between times that we need to make ourselves ready for revelation. After his resurection, Jesus friends hid themselves, prayed and waited. After his ascension, they did the very same thing. Teachings may wow the listeners ears. Visions and dreams may explode in the imagination. But both take years, even generations, to learn and accomplish. Only those who have eyes to see and ears to hear find their way and willingly stoop down and put an ear to the ground to hear the rumblings a hundred miles away.

Earlier today, amidst my normal workload I was listening for God through various things: The Message was open to Psalm 119 and read with sticky notes being inserted here and there. The NIV was opened to Hosea 11 and freshly marked in Zechariah 2. A copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philisophicus was open and face down on the last page. Paul Hattaway’s Back To Jerusalem was cited and referenced. Belden C. Lane’s The Solace of Fierce Landscapes was to be opened briefly...and never was. Best Practice looked good sitting there...I've already read it three times. The Economist, March 12-18, 2005 was opened to an article about an MDMA (Ecstasy) case study linking the substance to depression. Over lunch, my laptop was downloading GreenDay's "Jesus of Suburbia" while I was playing 8-ball pool with a buddy on MSN Messenger. A bit later, I was Skype-ing someone on my laptop while talking on my cell phone and cancelling a friends invitation to download Napoleon Dynamite. "Download the whole movie? Are you nuts. No thanks. It's ok that I still haven't seen it." Read Bruce Springstein's recent speech inducting U2 to the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. In between various documents, phone calls and e-mails trying to land some east-coast friends a music gig in Calgary. I was on CNN, BBC, and various local media checking on Asian earthquake headlines. And, as I listened to Pete Greig of 24-7 Prayer on an 30 minute .mp3 I wrote down one line he said: "God speaks to the hearer more than he speaks through the speaker."

Hanging around Jesus, John saw and heard a lot of things. His Gospel is a wonderful masterpiece and his letters are full of love. But, as an exiled old man left on a rock to die, Jesus comes to John and asks him to be his personal secretary and write some things down, and one thing Jesus repeats over and over again and John writes down over and over again is, "He who has an ear let him hear..."

Youth On a Hill

:: the kingdom of heaven has a centre :: Jesus Christ ::
:: where is the circumference :: Zechariah 2:5 ::

Kathleen Luk, co-founder of Youth on a Hill, recently wrote this poem:

Ready

I stand at attention.
Fired up with excitement and passion.
Reminded of glory's past.
I weep for the memories.
Yet, I cry for things to come.
I await the call; ready to move at moments notice.
Something is stirring up.
Stirring up again.
Jesus, You’re the vision.
You are the Cause I live and die for.
Though I am meek; it's Your Kingdom I seek.
For Yours is the Kingdom now and forevermore.

© Kathleen Luk. 2005.

90 degrees of wood

It started sometime during Lent 2002. I was in Vancouver, bumping along Broadway in an Isuzu Trooper, listening to an overplayed Collective Soul that had been a gift from a good friend whom I hadn’t spoken with in months. As I reminisced, I gazed through glazed soupy eyes at the world in that semicose of the between important places driving experience. Shaking off a chill of loneliness and rubbing my left eye I noticed a building I was sure wasn’t there a day before. When it comes to perspective, lighting is everything.

I got thinking about focus, perception, light deflection, refraction and angles – My eyes were constantly drawn to different things along the road. I asked myself why this was. Mundane things like sidewalks, windows, lines on the road, curbs, lights, billboards, vehicles. It was one of those moments when I caught myself not noticing people.

I concluded that everything humans construct are full of right angles – a symbol of power and control. My eyes were continually drawn into corners. The edge of that building chopping into the sky. The sidewalk. Bombastic advertisements over every shop constantly cutting into my line of vision. Crisp right angles everywhere. That day I tried to stop looking into right angles. It became this personal test…a self-inflicted conspiracy. Everywhere I laid my eyes. The keyboard in front of me; hygienically colored appliances in the kitchen; paintings on the wall; ceiling; hardwood floors; tiles; stairs – everywhere.

Since my battle with the ninety degree denominator I’ve been thinking about human made things in the Bible. Four come readily to mind: The tabernacle and the temple. But, God does not dwell in these things made by human hands? He visits them…occasionally. The structures became negative strongholds. Then there was the tower of Babel. Nothing but a conglomeration of self-righteousized right angles built up into the thinning air of a misunderstood heaven. And the traditional cross. In a three dimensional cross made with two pieces of rectangular wood there are 24 right angles.

To me, the cross is the most visually demanding thing ever humanly conceived. The swastika is a close second. The swastika’s bent arms at least denote movement. The cross is just there – as ugly and consuming as it can be. Since I was a kid, if I have ever been in a church with a cross in its auditorium I have sat staring at that thing for half the worship service. Something of my humanness is drawn to the cross. It is such a complete and controlling structure, in a demonic way.

In spite of such demonic power and control, there is not a single right angle in the entire body of Jesus Christ. Not a single physical mathematical attribute to measure or manipulate Him. But, the cross of Jesus Christ stands up stalwart and repulsive against the spherical beauty of Creation and the slender fragile curves of his human body.

All of Creation was pierced and pulled into the horrid hush of Jesus’ last moments. The sky fled from his piercing eyes and twisting bones. The earth quaked as his blood poured down into the ground. On the cross, the sphere of the Trinity was nailed to earth. A sphere that first opened at his birth. At his birth, the Morning Star burst forth from the throne room of the Father. At his death, that same star gave up its gravitational field and a supernova of glory filled the earth.

See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;
the one who trusts will never be dismayed.
I will make justice the measuring line
and righteousness the plumb line;
Isaiah 28:16-17

So friends, we can now – without hesitation –
walk right up to God, into “the Holy Place.”
Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice,
acting as our priest before God.
The “curtain” into God’s presence is his body.
Hebrews 10:19-20

Contemplation

Our hell is ceaseless, passionate, fruitless, hopeless, gnawing prayer.
It is the heart churning, churning, grinding itself out in misery.
It is life’s passion and struggle surging back on itself
like a barren, salt, corroding sea.
It is the heart’s blood rising like a fountain
only to fall back on us in red rain.
It is prayer which we cannot stop,
addressed to nothing, and obtaining nothing.
P.T. Forsyth

I've written this post listening to Tom Lockley's See My Love.
Listen: www.passionforyourname.com/images/SeeMyLove.mp3
Lyrics: www.passionforyourname.com/newsong.html.

I suggest listening to it while reading this post. I've listened to this song at least 30 times today.... Yes, in a row. It's about contemplation. Like Gavin Bryars' looping symphony Jesus Blood Hasn't Failed Me Yet... Beautiful to hear running quietly in the background of a communion service. See My Love is that kind of song....one that grows into your spirit through the repetition.

Being still before the bloody cross and holy throne of God is to navigate the bridge between meditation and contemplation. Meditation is the focus of attention on the things of God. Contemplation is realizing and responding to the very presence of God himself. In Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton wrote, “Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy.” To Merton, the great enemy of contemplation is something he called “spiritual inertia”. Proverbs 28:1, “The wicked person flees though nobody pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”

I remember sitting through The Passion of the Christ on opening night. When the film was over, nobody moved or said a word. People were shell shocked. And then it happened. A teenage girl one row in front of me, and two seats in, quietly stood to her feet and said just loud enough for 400 people to hear, "I know the rest of the story. Get a Bible. Read a Bible. Read the rest of the story." People started moving for the exits...but this girl just smiled, held up her Bible and kept speaking, "It's here, all of it...there is so much more he wants to tell you."

While people scattered, I approached her and asked her for her Bible. With a big glowing smile she asked if I was a Christian. I told her I was a servant. I opened her Bible to Proverbs 28:1 and handed it back to her.

Many people run away from the holiness and stillness and silence that linger like incense around the contorted body of God. Most people are not terribly comfortable with a God that suffers. Some are not comfortable with latex-body-suit-versions of suffering either...and sometimes a recut is better because no amount of editing or cinematography could ever grasp it.

Regardless, those who want to be truly human and fully alive must approach the death of God quietly, humbly, and yet boldly. Quietly, like a doe and her fawn moving meekly over newly fallen snow toward a fresh stream of water; humbly aware, that every being in heaven and hell and some on earth are standing at attention - in this very place and time; and yet boldly, knowing they have been invited to this dreaded place by this dying God himself.

God has always invited people to meet him at the place of sacrifice.