Passion Week

This week, this week called Passion Week, started off at the wrong end of the righteousness spectrum. And the kicker is, I'm 25 and I finally, officially don't care to be "righteous." I think that the temptation is always in our lives to chase a quality of God's people, or God Himself, and not chase God. The temptation is to LOOK like someone who knows God intimately, without actually being able to recognize Him if He were to ask you for a cup of cold water. He knows this, and I know this is why He came in the personhood He did, blue-collar, ignorable, overlookable, even scoffable if attributed divine status. But the Garden was a fresh memory to Him, and not us. The Garden was a long lost dream for humanity, a never fading reality to God Himself, and He wanted the walk back. I think we just want most often for someone else to walk for us and we'll claim we walked ourselves. Even in light of that, our identity crises and all things trivial about who we want to pretend to be and who we'll actually take the time to become, the Passion Week forces us to look at a long list of human beings interaction with God-in-flesh, and boy... we totally screwed this up. The King who was paraded into the capital amidst shouts of "Hosanna" and "Blessed be"'s will end up this week democratically judged worthy of death, ridiculed by the soldiers that fell to their faces at His voice, rejected by His friends, and all so without questioning His love for them, and us. Confession time... if I'd have been Him- I'd have stayed dead. I take rejection HARD, and if they don't want me around so bad that they'll kill me... well, I can enjoy my Father's presence without them. And yet in true not-what-Greg-would-do fashion, He blesses the crowd gathered to be entertained by His execution, asks for their forgiveness, makes sure His mom is taken care of, makes a new friend on the cross next to Him, and embraces a state of being wholly unjust for a God to know. That story in itself is worthy worshiping this man over, and yet He goes further. He overcomes death, overthrows Hades, and steals the keys to both, that ANYONE who does want to believe now (and why would anyone not?) is welcomed as if this was the plan all along! Here's' the song that's been on repeat in my head for the past three weeks.

In the Year 2013...

It may indeed be time to dust this old steno off a bit and have a thought-storm. Life is different here on the other side of college classes, marriage, and failure. I've continued on this long road of getting to the bottom of it all for most the time, the others, pitying myself for lost causes, relationships, and the life I thought I wanted. Here though, on this second day of 2013, I can look around and accept that, at 25, life is not over, not beginning, but is rather now, and what I understand and believe readily enough to live in this moment, is in fact what matters most. If I live long enough to discover any "why's" behind the passions of my heart or the hopes in this life, then so be it, that moment will be gladly liven in as well, but this moment is upon me as blitzkrieg, and I have less than the time it takes to acknowledge it to embrace and walk in it.

The past year was excellent for learning. Perhaps it will be the one where I can return to formal education somewhere, but this casual learning has been beneficial without question. I rediscovered the beauty and depth of Anabaptism because of Bruxy Cavey via Greg Boyd, and am so very glad to see that God is moving many eyes of influence upon it as well. It seems every day someone else posts a new article or makes reference to a different core teaching of the Anabaptists, and if we can do something more than just read them or acknowledge them, but if we can live them out, it may well be the cure for post-modern rejection of Christ in America. Here is just one example:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2013/01/01/from-the-margins/

This past week I challenged the church in sermon to approach 2013 with one resolution- to forgive as often as presented the chance. I wonder if my Anabaptism isn't leaking out beyond my control anymore, because there were also some references to peace teaching here and there ;) But I wonder if approaching an ENTIRE YEAR isn't just a bit naive to begin with, what if we just approached the coming day with the intent to forgive as often as presented the chance? The coming hour? The present moment? I feel that it must all start there anyway, that if we do not live in the present moment of forgiveness, accepting it and presenting it, then the moment is hell- distant from the presence of God, void of Jesus' sacrifice, a barren moment.

How fantastic!!

Let's go.