God's Radical Presence

This coming Sunday, Christians will begin the season of Advent, as we spiritually prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas.  Christmas is the celebration of the way that God was incarnate (in-carn-ate: literally “to make into flesh”) in Jesus Christ.  It is the proclamation that God took human form in Jesus.

That is to say:  Christmas is the announcement of the radical presence of God. We are saying that God is radically present in our lives and in our world.  The incarnation is the Christian belief that God is NOT aloof from us, NOT distant and remote from our creaturely existence, NOT far removed from our troubles and problems and successes and joys.  God is radically present, right here and right now.

Christmas is the announcement that God is radically present, completely present, fully present to our lives and our world.  God knows our human experience from the inside out, because God has taken on humanity for himself.

A first level of the meaning of Christmas is that God is fully present with you.  No matter what you are going through, God is with you.  God chooses to be with you.  God is not distracted, God’s attention is not too busy elsewhere to pay attention to your troubles, God is fully present with you.

The implications of this are enormous.  You can always talk with God about everything. God considers you completely worthy of God's complete attention - God is delighted to give you God's complete attention.   God is ever-ready to hear what’s going on in your life, and to provide you with guidance and direction for the decisions you need to make. 
 
When you are feeling lonely, you may take solace in the fact that God will never leave you.  When you are feeling bad about something you may have done, you may take solace in the fact that God will never leave you and is present with you for forgiveness, re-direction, and comfort.  When you are angry about something that has happened in your life, you may share your anger with God as explosively as you can.  God can handle it, and God will never reject you.  God is fully present with you.  

A second level of meaning of the Christmas season is that we may, in turn, become more

present with others.  The blessings of the incarnation are completely for us, but they are not exclusively for us.  We are blessed ourselves in order that we might become a blessing to others.  As we come to know and trust the presence of God with us, we will be more fully able to be present with others.  Christian writer Richard Rohr has written that true wisdom “is precisely the freedom to be truly present to what is right in front of you.”

How easy is it for you to believe that God is present with you, in every situation?  Do you find this hard to believe, or easy to believe?  Does the promise of God’s presence stay with you, or do you find yourself forgetting it when you get into a stressful situation?  What helps you to remember that God is fully present with you?

How easy is it for you to be fully present with others?  When you are sitting with another person, is it easy for you to give that person your full attention, or do you get distracted easily?  Do you find your mind wandering, thinking about what you have to do later in the day?  What might help you to be more fully present with others?  What might help you to be less distracted when you’re spending time with someone?


Being present with others sounds like it should be very easy (all you have to do is just be there!), but many people find that it is actually one of the most difficult things to do.  It is much easier to follow rules, or to complete a To-Do List, or to try and make people happy.  But the gift of our presence and our full attention is one of the most beautiful gifts we can give someone else.

Turning the Question Around

A lot of people have observed that the question "Who am I?" is one of the most important questions we must ask during our lives.  There are times in our lives when this question is energizing and exciting.  These are times of discovery, when we are uncovering our identity and becoming more clear about who we are and why we're here.  We may find ourselves saying, "Yes!!"  There are other times in our lives when this question can be more haunting.  These can be times of anguish and trembling, as we wonder whether our lives are off course, whether we are going down a wrong path, or whether we have wasted a lot of our time.

Margaret Marcuson, in her outstanding book, Leaders Who Last: Sustaining Yourself and Your

Ministry (click here) offers an interesting way to pursue this question.  She suggests taking Jesus' question to the disciples about himself - "Who do you say that I am?" (Mark 8:29) - and turning it around.  Marcuson encourages us to ask Jesus the same question about ourselves: "Jesus, who do you say that I am?"

Our own truest self is who we are in God.  We can, therefore, turn to God and ask God to reveal our own true nature to us.  God, who accepts us completely as we are right now and who calls us to be more than we are right now, can lead us to know ourselves more deeply.

We can ask God (or, if you are more comfortable addressing this question to
Jesus or to the Holy Spirit or to Life, then do that), "Who do you say that I am?"  And then we can let God answer, revealing to us new dimensions of our deepest, truest identity.  The answers that come will resonate deeply within us, and there will be a feeling of "rightness" about them.  And then we will begin to feel more solid and more secure in knowing who we are.

It's OK not to be OK

We live in a time when there is enormous pressure on people to do well in life.  "Achieve, perform, and succeed" is one of the key, unwritten mantras of our culture.  Our culture tends to value only those who can produce and perform and win.  "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" is not only applied to professional sports teams.  It gets applied to all of us.

And this can be very, very hard on all of us.

This is not to encourage us to engage in self-pity.  This is to recognize that "achieve, perform, and succeed" is a deathly formula that runs counter to the gospel and to any message of humane living.

As a counter-formula, I would like to propose, "It's OK not to be OK."  My wife Laura taught me this saying, and it strikes me as exactly right.  It's OK not to be OK.

This message means, "You are accepted.  Just as you are, right now.  Whether you're successful or not.  Whether you've messed up or not.  Whether your life is falling apart or not.  You are accepted.  Do not beat yourself up."

When followed, our culture's brutal, driving formulas of achievement may yield a competitive edge for some people.  It may push some people to maintain a competitive edge.  But that competitive edge comes at a deep cost.  Those who are successful at this game of achievement can never pause to rest, because if they do, they might be overtaken by someone else.  They've always got to keep running to stay ahead.  And those who are not successful, those who cannot meet society's expectations, those who do not conform to society's formulas, these folks get pushed aside, rejected, and are told that they are no good.

But that is not true.  You are accepted.  Just as you are.  It's OK not to be OK.  God embraces you, accepts you, and can work through you just as you are, with all of your faults and foibles and quirks and failures.  You do not need to beat yourself up when you mess up, or when things fall apart on you.  It's OK not to be OK.

The name of God and your breath

What is God's name?

People will occasionally talk about "the name of the Lord," or about "taking the Lord's name in vain," but what are we talking about when we talk about God's name?  Does the God of heaven and earth have a name?

Turns out this is a question that people have been asking for a long time.  In Exodus 3, Moses asks God directly, "What is your name?"

In response (or at least, one of the responses), God uses the name "the LORD."  In English translations, this word is written in capital letters.  But this all-capitals-LORD stands for four letters in Hebrew.  The Hebrew letters look like this:

Since Hebrew is read from right to left, these are the Hebrew characters yod, heh, vav, heh.  Roughly speaking, these are the Hebrew letters for Y, H, V, and H.  Some people pronounce this name "Yahweh."  Many other people refuse to pronounce the name out of respect for the name.  They consider the name of God to be too sacred, too holy to be uttered by a human mouth.  So out of respect for the name, they will simply write YHVH (or YHWH), or they will say "Adonai" or "the Lord."

But there is another tradition about these letters.  I have learned about this tradition through Rob Bell's Nooma video "Breathe," as well as in Richard Rohr's book The Naked Now.  This tradition says that these letters, the letters of God's name, are essentially the sounds of breathing.

This tradition suggests that every time we breathe, we are saying the name of God.  Yod.  Heh.  Vav.  Heh.  Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

The more I have thought about this tradition, the more I am blown away.  What if God's name is the sound of breathing?  What if we are saying God's name throughout the entire day, as we inhale and exhale approximately 20,000 times?  What if God's name is on the lips of every person who has ever lived, every time we breathe?  What if God's name is the first thing that a baby does upon being born, as it takes the first gulp of air?  What if God's name is the last thing a person does, when we take our last breath, before dying?  If God's name is the sound of breathing, then, as Rob Bell asks, is it that "when we can no longer say the name of God, we die?"

There are many, many implications of this tradition that God's name is the sound of breathing.  And as far as I can see, all of those implications are beautiful.

Start with obedience, finish with praise

Continually, I am learning that life is always moving.  Life is dynamic, changing, on the move.  Life does not stand still and is not static.

This may sound obvious.

But if you're anything like me, this is a tough learning.  I like it when things stay the same.  I like it when things are predictable, controllable, stationary.  And as long as we bring these sorts of static expectations to life, we will experience continuous frustration, annoyance, and a diminished ability to enjoy the flowing nature of life.

Life is always moving.  And so is the life of faith.  Faith is not something that stands still or never moves.  Faith is all about our relationship with God, and by definition, relationships are dynamic.  Sometimes the partners move towards each other, sometimes they pull back; sometimes things are going smoothly, sometimes they are very difficult.  Life within any relationship, including our relationships with God, will be dynamic and moving.

But that does not mean that the relationship is chaotic, or out of control, or without direction.  There is a direction to the life of faith.

And if we take the book of Psalms as a model for our lives of faith, the direction of faith may be from obedience to praise.

Psalm 1, at the beginning of the Psalter, reads "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked...but their delight is in the law of the Lord."  According to Psalm 1, the life of faith is embodied in those who center their lives on God's teachings, who follow God's path, who are faithful and obedient.

The life of faith begins with faithful obedience.  We teach our children, "Do this...Don't do that."  Life begins in obedience and doing what's right.

But along the way, we realize that "doing what is right" is not, by itself, a fool-proof plan for a happy life.  We have all known people who were exceedingly scrupulous about following the rules, and who made themselves quite miserable.  Suffering comes, to all of us.  Suffering comes to us, whether we follow the rules or not.  Life is hard.

And so the Psalms wander through the full variety of emotional experiences -- joy, relief, anger, rage, horror, sadness, grief, thanksgiving.  As you read through the Psalms (not necessarily all at one sitting, but over the course of a month), you will experience the full range of life's experiences.

And then, at the end, you come to Psalm 150.  The last psalm in the book.  Psalm 150 ends in an explosion of praise -- nothing but praise.  "Praise the Lord!  Praise God in his sanctuary; praise God in his mighty firmament!  Praise God for his mighty deeds; praise...praise...praise...praise...praise... praise...praise...praise...praise...praise!"

The book that began with a commitment to faithful obedience has led to a complete abandonment of the self in utter praise of God.

That's where we're heading.  We can't force ourselves to praise; we must go through all the levels of emotional experience, from high to low.  But in the end, when all is said and done, what we will find is that life is all about praising and glorifying God.  As someone wise wrote long ago:  "The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever."

"Three chords is closer to God"

I would encourage you to check out a WONDERFUL interview with Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, aka the Indigo Girls, on the NPR show "On Being" with Krista Tippett.  To hear the interview, entitled "Indigo Girls on Music and Finding God, in Church and Smoky Bars," click here.  If you are a fan of the Indigo Girls, you should really do yourself a favor and take a listen.  I laughed, sang along, and wept while listening to the interview in my car.

Their song "Closer to Fine":  BEST. SONG. EVER. (In my humble opinion.)

The title of this post ("Three chords is closer to God") is a funny line from the interview, when Emily was speaking about her childhood experiences of music.  She joked that she grew up as something of a musical snob, growing up in a household with lots of classical music and jazz playing.  Amy, on the other hand, was into music that was more raw and closer to the ground.  Emily said that, while she believed that music needed to be sophisticated to really be good, Amy had taught her that "Three chords is closer to God." 

As someone who can only play about 4 chords on the guitar (G, C, D, and sometimes B minor), I loved that line.

Enjoy.

Power of the Breath

Everyone breathes.  (Always good to start with the obvious...)  Breathing is a fundamental part of being human.  Little children will sometimes hold their breath as a way of protest, but eventually, the protestor has to take a big gulp of air.  Sometimes, when adults are in a very stressful or fearful situation, we may - unconsciously - hold our breath.  It is as though, in the presence of a perceived threat, we just shut down.  We may hold our breath, until the situation resolves itself.  Then, we let out a big exhale.

Breathing is fundamental.

That is why it is such a delight, such a powerful delight, when we learn that the word for "breath" in both Hebrew and Greek (the two primary languages in which the Bible is written) is the same as the word for "spirit" and "wind."  In Greek, the word is pneuma (pronounced noo-mah).  In Hebrew, the word is ruach (pronounced roo-ach, kind of like you're spitting).  These words mean "breath," "spirit," and "wind."

Breath = Spirit = Wind.  The biblical languages are giving us a HUGE GIFT.

In the Genesis 1 creation story, according to the New Revised Standard Version, "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters."  It could equally read, "God's breath swept over the face of the waters."  Or, "God's Spirit swept over the face of the waters."  In John 20:22, we read that the resurrected Jesus breathed on his disciples, and told them, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

Breath.  Spirit.  Wind.

What is so powerful about this is that we breathe all the time.  That means that we may imagine - with every breath - that we are breathing in the power of God's Spirit to us, and breathing out the power of God's Spirit to others and to the world.

Some people complain that they have never had an experience of the Holy Spirit.  They long to have a personal experience of the Spirit of God.  The powerfully great news of the biblical language is that you can have a personal experience of God's Spirit anytime, as long as you're breathing.  With every inhalation of breath, you can draw in the comfort, guidance, clarity, forgiveness, strength, mercy, kindness, power, and all other gifts of the Spirit.  And with every exhalation of breath, you become a missionary, sending those same gifts out into the world.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  How great is that?