Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Poemas -or- being missed

Today I thought about how bummed my roomate was when I told him I might move to Maui. Everyone else to that point was just saying, "You should go for it." I didn't expect it to effect him so negatively. I certainly didn't want him to feel bad, but I was moved by the fact that anyone cared about that. I had to think about it.

As I was walking the snow covered road, over a curb I couldn't see, to a house full of stuff I didn't want anymore, I remembered how Rob, the River pastor, has been calling us as a church to be the kind of church so valuable to the world that if we weren't there people would be worse off. That had a lot of positive, liberal, volunteer-istic feeling to it but it was lacking any kind of personal connection. With my housemate I'd found that. I had a story that made it more than just an altruistic ideal to feel good about.

I was touched, but very humbled. I'd never expected to be missed. I was puzzled because I didn't really do anything out of the ordinary. I was myself with this guy which is to say messy, flawed, honest, too loud sometimes, selfish other times. I tried to be a good friend/housemate/landlord, but I didn't think I'd done much that was as deep as the emotion I saw on this brother's face and heard in his voice. All I could think of was "I was just doing what I had to do. I was just being me." This, in turn, was reminding me of the passage Jesus spoke about being a slave (Luke 17:7-10). The joy and love of being a person someone could miss felt almost like a reward and if that's what it was, I knew I didn't deserve it.

Later that night I was doing laundry at Todd's and talking to Matty, his housemate. We were talking about Greek and Hebrew words and the nuances of the words that we translate as "humble" (This is a part of my Michigan life I'd miss). We moved on to the word "poemas" which is translated as "workmanship" in Ephesians 2:10. This is what I wrote about it in my notes:
"Workmanship - Poemas
"We are not equal to poetry. Don't think of yourself as poetry in the sense of a literary category. Think of a poem you love because it expresses your heart, because that's what we are. We express God's heart and this is connected to "good works" which are to become, not good deeds, but our poetry and the expression of our hearts so that we as children of God bear the image of our Father."

The connection for me was that, had I not been who God had made me to be, I could not have impacted Justin's life the way I did. It was part of the poetic expression of God's love for the guys in my house, not to mention me and the world.

So that personalizes the expression of church. In response to what Rob was saying, to be a Christian or a church that will add to this neighborhood in a dramatic way we must be who we were made to be. It doesn't seem so hard until you realize that someday that kind of church or person will no longer be in fashion the way it seems to be right now. Bono will die someday. Brad Pitt will start to care about something other than AIDS in Africa. Who knows what Oprah might do. But we still have to be who we are in Christ. It may not be at all like who we are today -- because God is so creative -- and it certainly won't be boring, but it may not be popular. Jesus was killed, in a way, for who He was.

Jesus was a poem too.

John 1 describes Him as the Word of God. I know there is a lot of meaning in the word "Word" as it's used here, but right now I'm being drawn back to that word "poemas" from Ephesians. Jesus is the "Word" of God in that He's God's description of Himself. He's a poem or a short story about who God is.

That story has evidence of the righteousness, power and intelligence of God. It shows how objectively good He is and all the things you'd expect, but it's also about the humility and foolishness of a love so crazy as to choose to die so that an unfaithful lover can live. It's a love story and a poem that we're called to live in along side Jesus, but without a script or any acting talent. We play the role of ourselves and we don't even get paid for it. Being in the story is it's own reward.

posted by Scott # 9:56 AM

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