Field Notes On The Jesus Way

Sometimes you hear a television reporter interview a celebrity asking if they have any regrets in their life. I am always astounded that without hesitation most celebrities say no, that if they had to do it all over again, they would do their life the same way. How can that be? Have they never made any mistakes?

I talk to plenty of folks that assure me everyone who lives in the real world has regrets. The question is: how do we live with them?

Some pretend they don’t have any. I imagine this is the way of the shallow celebrity or professional athlete. They allow that any minuscule mistake really only contributes to the larger mosaic and milieu that made them the artist they are.

Another strategy is to let our regrets define our identity. You see this sometimes in those in recovery.

“Hi, I’m Joe. I’m a regretter.”

“Hi, Joe. Welcome to our meeting and thanks for sharing, Joe. Cookies and Kool-Aid will be served after tonight’s meeting.”

There is no daylight between who they are and what they have done that deserves their regret and remorse. It is a permanent scar that disfigures their soul. Their regrets are a calling card to gain them some street cred to talk to and ostensibly help other regretters. It takes a regretter to reach a regretter is their mantra.

At the risk of simplicity, I want to ask if there is a third way. Is it possible to live with regrets as a contributing part of your life without those same wounds marking your identity in such a way that others are not put off by your scarlet wounds?

A Beautiful Mind tells the story of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician whose career and life was crippled by schizophrenia. Nash taught at MIT until schizophrenia and delusions took over his life. After years of struggle, he began teaching at Princeton and went on to win the Nobel Prize for his theory of the dynamics of human conflict as it relates to economics.

In the film, there are three characters that support Nash in his struggles in life. One is a roommate from Princeton. A second is a little girl who is his niece whom he adores. And the last is William Parchment who is a top-secret government operative. All three of these characters are integral to Nash’s view of reality. The only problem is that they are not real. They are delusions. They certainly seem real to John Nash whose greatest strength is letting him down: the beautiful mind.

Toward the end of the movie, Nash is invited into the professors’ lounge by a man who has just told him he’s being considered for the Nobel Prize. Nash is uncertain of how he should respond; he wonders if his mind is fabricating a dream. He even asks a student whether the man is real or a hallucination. When Nash is convinced that the man and his invitation are genuine, he still resists, feeling unworthy of the exclusivity of the professors’ lounge. He never enters this lounge, aware that his episodes of psychotic behavior are well known by faculty.

As the messenger from the Nobel Prize committee strolls with Nash to the faculty lounge, they engage in an awkward conversation as to the stability of Nash’s mental state . . .

The awards are substantial. They require private funding. As such, the image of the Nobel is…

I see. You came here to find out if I was crazy? Find out if I would… screw everything up if I actually won? Dance around the podium, strip naked and squawk like a chicken, things of this nature?

Something like that, yes.

Would I embarrass you? Yes, it is possible. You see, I…I am crazy.

I take the newer medications, but I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I choose not to indulge certain appetites. Like my appetite for patterns.

As they have this conversation, the three characters, Charles, the niece, and William Parchment, all walk in pace with Nash and the messenger from the Nobel Prize committee, but off to the side like distant shadows. He glances at them, but he doesn’t engage them. They are a part of who he is, but he is defined by something that transcends those ever-present delusions.

That’s what I choose to do with my scarlet regrets. They are always with me, but I choose not to indulge in the appetite of self-pity. I choose not to be identified by my regrets. I choose, instead, to live in the light of a transcendent reality: I am a favored son of the Most High God. I am an heir and joint heir with Jesus Christ.

Nash walks warily through the gothic entrance and sits at a table. Unexpectedly, the professors begin to walk over to John’s table and lay down their pens in front of him. This is a tradition Princeton faculty use to honor highly esteemed colleagues. One by one, the professors acknowledge their love and support for the troubled man who, despite difficulties, stayed the course: “It’s an honor, John.” “It’s a privilege, John.” “Congratulations, John.”

One day I will be allowed entrance into a great hall and sit at a table and the King will say,

To him who overcomes I will give him…a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.

So long, regrets.

Then Pilate asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” He answered him and said, “It is as you say.” So Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no fault in this Man.”

But they were the more fierce, saying, “He stirs up the people…”

My faith claims that Jesus of Nazareth is King of the Universe. Part of me hates that idea.  It forces me into an “all or nothing” decision. If He is King of kings, what does that make me?  A subject, that’s what.

If Jesus were just a teacher pointing the way to a better life or a way to God, we could debate the philosophical merits and logic of his arguments.  But He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  (John 14:6)  You can’t be neutral about that.  Either it is true or He is a liar or a nut job. We cannot “like” Jesus as if He were a Facebook comment. You have to dismiss and attack him or fall on your knees and call him King.

Earth is on the outer edge of the Milky Way. Light from stars on the opposite edge take 100,000 years to reach us. That is fast. Our sun is one among 200 billion stars in our galaxy. Yet our galaxy is only one of 100+ billion galaxies in the observable universe.

In the constellation Aquarius one galaxy is believed to be 12 billion years old. That means it was born a relatively brief 2 billion years after the Big Bang. By comparison, our own solar system is quite young at 4.5 billion years old.

If you believe Jesus created all of that, you don’t invite Him to be your assistant when life gets too messy.  Jesus is not and never will be your life coach, helping you achieve your life goals. He is King.  And what do you do for a King?  Kneel.

I can’t kneel now because of cartilage trauma.  But before that I struggled with kneeling because of a hard heart.  So do you. Ever see fingerprints around a Wet Paint sign?

Something inside of us does not like anyone telling us what to do.  At the core of our hearts, something says, “Nobody tells me how to live!” If Jesus is just a teacher, I can weigh whether or not to receive His teachings.  But if He is the third person of the Trinity, if He is the Creator-God, if He is King, well, then I must do something altogether different.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child;

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to Thee.

That’s a nice children’s prayer, but there comes a day to put away childish things and as a full-grown man bow my knee and pray, “I will follow You the rest of my days, my Brother… my Captain… my King.”

He doesn’t leave another option.

My wife loaded up the compact car already full with two 6’3”grown men and we set out to tour prospective colleges with our son Clinton.  Ten hours later we found ourselves in a high desert ranching community in Montana.  I have had a romantic attachment with Montana for many years and that only intensified with the epic and Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry.  It is safe to say I vicariously hoped my son would land in this mythic place of hope and rugged beauty.

Clinton has wrestled with church since his days at a private Christian high school.  The idea of attending a large gathering of people who emote during praise songs, weep, and clap to the beat of bubble-gum Top 40 type tunes is tortuous to him.  It gets worse when a talking head at the front of the room moralizes about how a person is supposed to live when that speaker does not even know the person to whom he is speaking.  Add to that the incongruent behavior of many Christians he knew in high school and the increasingly influential impact his non-church-attending friends have on his world view, it is safe to say that Clinton has not exactly been warm to faith in conventional ways for a long time.

But on this day in Montana, we were going to find a church for Clinton, dadgumit.  So we looked up a few churches to scout out.

After a breakfast of stale cinnamon rolls and a bowl of cereal at the Days Inn, we set out to find the churches in time for worship.  If we didn’t like the looks of one, the town was small enough to quickly find the others and be on time.

We drove by the Southern Baptist church first, because, well—it’s what we are.  We drove into the gravel parking lot slowly, taking it all in.  It was a cute, little brown faux log cabin building.  Only six or eight cars were parked.  As we made a turn to exit the lot, we noticed an open upstairs window. Faces were smiling and arms were waving at us.  It felt creepy to be honest, like they were stranded on a deserted island and were waving at a passing search plane.  They seemed a little too desperate for attenders.

I didn’t mean for the car to spin gravel back at them when I accelerated out of the parking lot.

Next, we went to the other Baptist church in town.  The parking lot was full of pickup trucks with a few cars here and there.  A full parking lot was a good sign, right?

The music had begun; we could hear it as we approached the front door.  It had a marching band cadence and rhythm.  The greeters wore polyester suits and ties and—cowboy boots.  Okay, we’re in Montana after all.

We thanked the men for the bulletin. They opened the door for us and the staccato rhythm of the hymns almost pushed us back out the door.  They were singing full-throated as if to yell the devil back into the abyss.  We found a place on the back pew and stood—because they were standing—and tried to sing along.  Even though my wife and I had been in the church all of our lives, we didn’t recognize the hymn.  We three stood stoically, eyes darting furtively around at the polyester clad congregation.  I leaned over to Clinton and said, “Walmart must have an outlet store in this town.”

About that time a stern looking man pushed a smile up from the corners of his mouth and thrust an open hymn book at me.  I’m not sure this was an act of kindness or an effort to get us to conform to the collective and sing.  I took the hymnal and nodded at the man.

The song ended and the man at the front of the room called, with a military clipped voice, “Jonathan Jacobs, do you have song for us this morning?”  It wasn’t a question.  A man about four pews away stepped out into the aisle and made his way to the pulpit, cleared his throat and shouted out, “Number 378!”  The piano began to thunder the same tempo as the other songs we had heard.  I looked at my wife as if to say, “Do you know this hymn?”  She shook her head.  I looked through the hymnal to see if I recognized any titles.  Not a one.

I holstered the hymnal into the rack on the back of the pew.  Someone across the aisle noticed we weren’t singing and brought us an open hymnal again.  I took the book, nodded sternly and when they turned to go back to their seat, I leaned over to Clinton and said, “Let’s get out of here while we can.”  I grabbed my wife’s hand, who looked scared, and we made our way to the exit.

As we filed out robotic heads turned and plastic faces watched us leave.  I wanted to say, “You can come too!”  But the blank faces seemed to have lost all interest in doing anything but shout their songs to the front of the church.

Two men followed us out the door, bibles drawn.  I told Clinton we had to protect our women folk.  He and I turned to face the polyester proletariat.  One of them said in a high pinched voice, “You can’t leave before the pastor preaches!”

“Get your mom and get in the car, Clinton,” I said.

The men took a couple more steps toward us. Standing as tall as I could with a stern look I stamped my Keens and said, “You shall not pass!”

Clinton pulled the car around and I dove in while he squealed the tires.  Nette and I watched the men standing at the edge of the parking lot, hands up turned and spread wide as if pantomiming a message of, “How did you slip through our fierce love?”

“Can we just go to Subway for lunch?” Clinton asked.

Teaching some management courses on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation for the Little Wound School District a few years ago, I was impressed by their spirituality.  Before one of the courses was about to begin, the leader asked one of the elders of the tribe, who happened to be the Athletic Director of the school, to lead in prayer.

They pushed back from the tables and we all stood, the elder Arlo Provost began to pray— in Lakota.  It took my breath away; I had no idea what he was saying but I had never heard anything like it.  He said, “Amen” then sat down and we all sat down too.  I was stunned.  Then they all turned their heads to me.  I opened my notes and began to teach them about managing multiple priorities.  I felt like the foreigner that I was.

It reminded me of a story I read somewhere that I hope is true about one of the “rites of passage” of Lakota boys.  A father would take his son out into the wilderness at age 14 and leave him there by himself over night with scant provision to survive the day and night.  It is said that the boys would spend most of the night sitting up listening to all the wild sounds of the night, the owls hooting, the rustling in the brush, the snorts in the dark, and the wolves howling.  A very restless and frightful night for the young brave.

But in the morning when the dawn broke over the eastern horizon—off about a hundred yards—the boy could see a lone man standing beside a tree.  Then the man started walking towards him and the boy would recognize the walk of this warrior-father.  He had been there all night watching his son.

God’s kind of like that with us.

Sometimes I cry out to God, “God, where are you?  I just don’t see you!”

And in that still small voice God says: “Remember the Sunday School class when the teacher, Mrs. Peggram, made you leave the class because she couldn’t get you to shut up?  That was Me. How about that time when your head hurt so badly that you cried yourself to sleep and your mom came to your room to rub your neck?  That was me.  I was there.  Remember when your dad came to give you a ride home when the meanest kid in school wanted to beat you up? I was there.  I was caring.

“Remember when you were in high school, and you were gangly and awkward, and nobody wanted to be around you, and you felt all alone?  You weren’t.  I was there. Remember when you were in college, and you were so empty because you thought I had gone away?  And you even doubted that I existed?  And you walked around that campus crying out, “If you are here . . . show me”?  I was there.  I was right beside you. Remember when you were working construction and couldn’t pay your bills, and they came and repossessed your truck?  And you cried yourself to sleep that night?  I was there.

“Remember in your forties, when you lost your job, your friends, your sense of purpose and you thought you were going to never see light again?  I was right there.

“Remember when you stopped and ate lunch at that Burger King in Vernal, Utah and told your oldest son why you lost your job and were leaving Colorado?  I was there at the table with you and the next two hundred miles of silence that hung between you and your fourteen year old son. Don’t ask me where I’ve been.  I’ve been close the whole time.”

I want to paraphrase and personalize a famous passage of scripture in the Old Testament for my own edification, if not yours.

When Joe was a child, I loved him,

And out of sin I called My son.

But the more I called him,

The more he ran from Me.

He sacrificed to the gods of this world,

And burned incense to carved images.

“I taught little Joe to walk,

Taking him by his spindly arms;

But he did not know that I healed his wounds.

I drew him with gentle cords,

With bands of love,

I stooped and held him.

God is always near, redeeming, guiding, forming, mending, and protecting us.

Today, my oldest son celebrates the seventh anniversary of his marriage to my daughter-in-love, Ashley. And none of that, including the four subsequent grandchildren, could have happened had God not taken an active and sovereign role in the life I was trying to live.  I don’t understand how God uses past mistakes to make beautiful art, like a wonderful marriage of seven years for my son and four red-headed angels, but He does.

As we live our lives, fretting about what goes bump in the night, keep your eyes on the eastern sky.  One day, maybe not too distant from now, we will see our Warrior-King returning to wipe away every tear from our eyes, heal our wounds, and set things to rights in this sorry dark world.  We are not nearly as alone as we think we are.

In a word, it’s called hope.

“Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus,” I say.

The Old Testament tells about a time when David danced before the Lord. (2 Samuel 6:14) David was so passionate that he could find no other way to express his passion, and he danced before the Lord with all his might. His wife was not real happy about him doing that. But God loved it!

When was the last time that you danced before God?

There are some people, in some churches, who take pride in knowing a lot about God. They may fill their minds up with a lot of information, but when it comes to worship, no one has ever been so moved that they actually—moved.

I grew up knowing a lot about that kind of church. I grew up Southern Baptist, who are very vocal but not a very demonstrative people.  We didn’t move much. (Easy to confuse that with dancing.) If you raised your hand in a service an usher would come and escort you to the bathroom.  He just assumed that was your question.

A few years ago during the congregational singing, while I was sitting on the front chair getting ready to preach, I looked back at my wife and gave her a wink and a smile with my eyes.  It was one of those moments where many years of commitment, shared experiences and love compressed into a look of deep love. It wasn’t a lingering look—just long enough for both of us to know how the other felt about us.

I turned around and sang the rest of song and then the worship leader had us do the meet and greet.  I sat down and looked over my sermon notes when I felt a tap on my shoulder.  I looked around to see a middle-aged woman sitting down on the edge of the chair behind me.  She said something I have never forgotten, “Pastor, I noticed the way you were looking at Lynette and I just want to tell you that I would give anything if my husband ever looked at me like you just looked at your wife.”  Then she got up, gave my wife a hug, and went and stood beside her husband.

It amuses me that we will look at each other with deep looks of love and longing and we will applaud and high five each other while watching a football game and hour after mind-numbing hour watching American Idol yet be as still as a statue when we worship the living God.  I wonder if God ever is tempted to say to us, “I would give anything for you to look at me the way you look at a football team or your wife or your new-born baby.”

Tens of thousands of people crowded St. Peter’s square on Wednesday to witness the introduction of Pope Francis before millions of people on a worldwide stage.  They were enamored and deeply moved by the presentation.  I have to admit when he asked for the people to pray for him and then bowed at the waist to receive the blessing from the people a tear came to my eye at such a display of humility.

We are moved when mere men show that kind of selflessness.  What about when the God-man voluntarily allowed Himself to be brutalized on a cross for my sin and yours?  Does that act not deserve our longing look and tear-stained face?

This Saturday evening would you consider preparing your heart for worship?  All it takes is a few quiet moments alone with your God asking him to cleanse you and fill you with His Spirit.  Humbly bow and receive that blessing and then Sunday morning go to Church and do the Baptist Two-Step before the Lord.

We want to help restore ministers and their families to spiritual wholeness and marital hope.

When my sin of unfaithfulness was discovered back in 1999, my family had no affordable place to live that made sense to us.  My brother’s church in Sumner, WA brought us to the Pacific Northwest and enfolded us into their lives.  They gave me a job razing a house next door to the parsonage for $10 an hour. They paid for Nette and me to go to counseling for over a year.

As much as the leadership of the church tried to help us (and they did more than I can ever repay), there was a threshold they couldn’t cross due to lack of experience.  I remember going to the bookstore looking for hours for specific help on how a pastor and his wife come back from this kind of thing.  What I found was either shallow or condemnatory. The counseling we could afford was fine as far as it went; retreat centers were too expensive.  What we ached for was a brother and sister who had been down the same path and not only survived, but who were now thriving.  I knew of no one like this.

Nette and I were praying one time and felt that if the Lord would have us, we would love to be that couple, to spend our days ministering to ministers who are broken, frayed and in need of a safe place to be spiritually restored. We see an all too prevalent need and feel called to fill it.  We offer over a decade of restored marriage and hearts longing to help.  We feel strongly that we have the bandwidth and calling to minister in this way.

The ministry of restoration has been around a long time.  Without restoration, Moses would have been a shepherd the rest of his life.  Without restoration, Elijah would still be pouting under a broom tree, David would never have written some of his best Psalms, and Jonah would have been fish poop on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Without restoration, Peter would have finished his days fishing and John Mark would have never written one of our Gospels.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  2 Cor. 1:3-4

I shudder to think what would have happened to the Chambers family had there not been a safe place to land back in 1999.  Today, I have a healthy marriage of 31 years, a son going into the ministry and another one who just returned from a mission trip in Mexico.  Life is great—-praise be to God.  We want to pay it forward.

The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make His face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,

And give you peace.

 Joe and Nette

He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.  Luke 5:27-28

Simple call.  Simple obedience.  This meant that he was apprenticing himself to Jesus.  All of his decisions are filtered through the grid of the relationship with Jesus. Levi is now attached to Jesus.

When we are called to follow Christ we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person.~~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship

Following Jesus means having an exclusive attachment to Him.  That is the defining relationship for the Christian.  Following Jesus is now the functioning control center of your entire life.  Every other relationship is now transformed because of your relationship with Jesus.

When I married my wife three decades ago, I made a decision to have an exclusive attachment to her and that attachment informed all future decisions.  She influenced my career choices, how I spend our money, what I did for recreation down to what I wear in public!

It works no less with Jesus.

Notice Levi left his past behind.  He thought about his vocation differently.  He thought about relationships differently.  Everything changed when he apprenticed with Jesus.  Jesus refuses to be a fashionable accessory to a life that you are still in charge of.  If you are a follower of Jesus it means that you are not in charge of your life anymore.

See, Jesus will be of supreme importance OR he will be of no importance, but he will not be of some importance to you.

How is Jesus saying to you, “Follow Me”?  I suggest we carve out some time with Him to let him shape our minds and souls.  Further, I think it would be helpful to select a specific aspect of His teaching and press it into the depths of our hearts until it becomes an integral part of our lifestyle.  That might be his teachings on conflict management found in Matthew 5 and 18.  Or his teaching on forgiveness found in Luke 7.  Or his teaching on worship found in John 4.  How about giving found in Luke 19?

Where in your life is Jesus saying, “Follow Me”?

The Jesus attachment means we go on mission with Jesus. Levi never got over this encounter with this Rabbi Jesus on that hot Palestinian day.  He demonstrates it by throwing Jesus a party and introduces his friends to Jesus.

We also know he went on to a best-selling writing career.  His named was changed to Matthew and he wrote the first Gospel of the New Testament that bears his name.  He was so moved by his attachment to Jesus he literally wrote the book on Jesus.  He desperately wanted people to know that through a relationship with Jesus they could be accepted and loved into the Kingdom of God. According to Church tradition Levi/Matthew lived out his apprenticeship in such a way that it cost him his life.

And when we “get grace” it will have the same effect on our lives.  I should never “get over” the grace Jesus offers ragamuffin me.

I wonder who in my world is sitting at a tax booth waiting to have an encounter with Jesus and Jesus is just waiting for me to be his hand, eyes and voice to tell them they are welcome in the Kingdom?

Anne LaMott is an author and self-described hippy who lives in San Francisco.  When you read her work she can be profane, funny and profound often in the same sentence. Throughout her adult life she became addicted to drugs and alcohol.  She made many mistakes in relationships and ended up raising a son without a father.  To the great shock of all of her family and friends she converted to Christianity.

In her book Traveling Mercies she describes her encounter with grace and conversion to Christ:

“I do not understand the mystery of grace only that it meets us where we are, but that it does not leave us where it found us.”

Jesus is ready to meet you where you are but He will never be satisfied to leave you where He found you.

What are you going to do when He calls?