Today’s Office of Readings includes from Psalm 31:

The Lord keeps his faithful ones safe,
heaps revenge on the arrogant.
Be brave, let your hearts be strong,
all who trust in the Lord

I can go into tomorrow’s meeting with one of three attitudes:

1. Fear. Rather than conquer or overcome, I can go in scared.
2. Pride. I’m smart enough to know there’s no reason to fear. I can lay all the logical reasoning in front of myself, build a bulwark against fear and plow through it.
3. Trust. I can confess the fear, admit that I need God’s protection. I can allow God’s strength to bolster my heart.

In the past, I have attempted all three. Only the third leads to real peace.

Guide me in your truth, Lord, and teach me; for you are my God and my salvation.

As I concluded today’s evening prayer, the well known line, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” stood out. No, I did not receive some major revelation which will change how we all hear the prayer. Rather, I saw a small connection that helps me better understand God’s love for someone who can screw up as much as I have. And do. And will.

I noticed this: Jesus was not giving his disciples a prayer to be prayed one time. At least, that’s not how they received it, or Matthew and Luke wouldn’t have given it to us in the gospels as they have. Jesus gave us this prayer to pray over and over and over. The same Jesus who tells us in the Sermon on the Mount to, “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Matt 5:48) goes on only a few verses later to teach his disciples to continue asking for forgiveness and to continue to forgive one another.

We westerners don’t like tension very much. We try to create a dichotomy between “grace Christians” who understand we continue to fall short of the mark and “holiness Christians” who take Jesus’ commands and promises of perfection and sinlessness seriously. Saint Matthew, in presenting these two teachings of Jesus side-by-side, asks us to hold both truths in tension.

As disciples of Christ – as followers of Jesus, as men and women desire the new life Jesus offers and wish to live according to his spirit – we know Jesus presents perfection as the standard for measurement. At the same time, he knows our limits and teaches us to give and receive forgiveness.

This tension is awkward. We aren’t very good at living it. We don’t know what to do with it. I don’t have an easy answer to it. But it’s there. It is what is.

Christ gives eternal salvation to those who come to God through him: he lives and intercedes for us for ever. Filled with this belief, we give him praise and honor and humbly beg him: Lord, remember your people.

God of pwer and might, all that is perfect belongs to you. Fill us with love of your name: increase our zeal and nourish what is good in us; watch over us and preserve what you have nourished.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

The Vertical Relationship: God and Self

At the beginning of the semester, I received clear direction from God in choosing disciplines to follow, setting goals, and making commitments. God clearly spoke to me the need to create time in my schedule for rest and recreational restoration. I blocked one day per week out on my schedule for a day of sabbath rest, blocked out all mornings for personal time and devotional reading, and marked two evenings per week for personal recreation. I shared these commitments with a small group of men from the class and three men in my community who would be most impacted by these changes. All were encouraging and I was excited to begin following my new schedule perfectly. It looked easy enough on the color-coded calendar, but didn’t translate nearly so painlessly into real life.

The next week, I made my first of two trips to the emergency room for a kidney stone which would take three weeks to pass. My entire life was upset by a little 5×7 mm rock. Between the pain and the pain medication, I was unable to complete schoolwork and had to cut corners on church work. As the pain continued and the work piled higher, I began to feel guilty at my inability to produce. One Tuesday – the day set aside for sabbath rest – I was feeling better and tempted to forego sabbath. I had slept all weekend; didn’t that count as rest?

As I began the day with Scripture, a commentary by N.T. Wright on the gospel of Mark helped me to see that as important as healing was to Jesus’ ministry, healing was not his purpose. The works done by Jesus were not his reason for living among us and he knew that. He knew when to stop and rest, even though sick people remained. I realized that morning just how much I define myself by the works I do and how harshly I judge myself when I do not do them. I also realized that is not at all how God looks at me. God was not telling me I needed to work to prove my right to existence. He was welcoming me into his rest, concerned about my health and offering his healing.

I did not “work” that Tuesday. I spent the day resting in God, in Word, in music, and in liturgical nap. I did not get all of my work done this summer. My summer reading list is largely untouched. My hiking boots are barely broken in. Part of me still struggles with this, but I am recognizing God’s grace. I am learning bit by bit that his love is not determined by my production and am becoming more comfortable with living as if that is true.

The Horizontal Relationship: Community and Accountability

As I mentioned above, I entered into these practices with others. I entered into covenant with three men in the class who were making commitments of their own. This was helpful in getting started. Knowing others were also making commitments gave me the courage to hear the spirit and obey. The larger role, however, was played by two men in my church: my pastor and my best friend. The first Sunday after making these commitments, I pulled the two of them aside and told them what I was doing and why. My initial motivation was that these commitments I was making would impact both of them – no more Tuesday afternoon meetings and no morning availability. In addition to asking them to honor these commitments, I asked them to pray with me and to ask me to give account.

Both put me to the test in the first couple weeks, calling me in the morning to see if I would answer and trying to setup Tuesday meetings. Throughout the past two months, I have continued to confess to them my struggles with taking rest and not being able to produce. In addition to affirming the boundaries I had set, they spoke to me the truth I was having trouble speaking to myself: that I was not being judged for taking time off to heal.

The Total Relationship: Relationship and Commitment

I am a single man with few long-term commitments. There is a freedom in this, but I am learning there is a danger in it, as well. Being “my own boss” comes dangerously close to being my own God. It is easy to become my own judge and, as the past two months have shown, my judgment is corrupt. More than anything, the practices have shown me the importance of making commitments for the sake of being obedient to something outside of myself and of making them in community, in covenantal relationship. Long term, the practices of the practices need to continue – daily devotional time, rest and recreation, and incarnational mission – but the commitment I make is to seek the a long-term relationship appropriate to my status and vocation and, when found, to make the deep commitment to which I am called.

Part 1 | All Parts

Admit it. You’ve thought the same thing. We might not think of it as quid pro quo – we know we’ll never do enough to equal out what we want God to do for us – but we picture Saint Peter tallying up a ledger sheet at the end our lives, weighing our good against our bad as he decides whether to let us through those pearly gates. We see other people who look good on the outside and think, “If my life looked more like hers, maybe these demons would go away.” The problem is, more than likely, she has demons of her own.

This is Luther’s point as he opens the Heidelberg Disputation. The first four theses read:

1. The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance man on his way to righteousness, but rather hinders him.
2. Much less can human works, which are done over and over again with the aid of natural precepts, so to speak, lead to that end.
3. Although the works of man always seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.
4. Although the works of God always seem unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.

Remember, intentional or not, Luther has created a huge stir in the church with the theses he posted the year before. Heidelberg is an opportunity to present his radically different theology. Luther wastes no time getting right to the point: The way we have been looking at this is all wrong.

We have this tendency to look at the outside things. We judge others and ourselves by outward actions. However, as Luther states in his defense of Thesis 3, “God does not judge according to appearances but searches ‘the minds and hearts’ [Ps. 7:9].” What truly matters is not the works we do. Looking back over our own lives, over our histories as members of nations, churches, religions, or peoples, we can hardly argue with Saint Paul who writes in Romans 3:10 that none are righteous. We may appear to do good things from time to time, but overall we’ve done a lot of really bad things and those bad things are enough to prove our inability to live according to God’s law – and the law’s inability to produce righteousness in us.

But Luther goes beyond this understanding. It’s not enough to recognize our bad actions as such, we must recognize even those works we think of as good are “nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.” The language of Theses 5 through 12 deals with this issue of mortal versus venial sin. It is terminology that has been left behind by most Protestants and isn’t always understood by today’s Catholics. The significance to our discussion and the Heidelberg Disputation is the question of what separates us from God. Our tendency is to rank immoral actions, often according to local cultural standards, from high to low and arbitrarily draw a line which is not to be crossed. As long as we don’t cross the line, we’re okay.

Luther’s response, again showing us we are looking at the wrong things, is that the real problem is that we are judging our relationship with God based on our actions. He writes in his discussion of Thesis 7, “To trust in works, which one ought to do in fear, is equivalent to giving oneself the honor and taking it from God, to whom fear is due in connection with every work.” If we seem to be doing the right things, either those things are God’s actions working through us, in which case we have no right to take credit for them (Thesis 6) or, even worse, we do good works without fear of God, thus showing our pride and lack of humility (Theses 8 & 16).

The first step of recovery is to admit we are powerless over our addictions and that our lives are unmanageable. Luther has pointed out what I know from my own experience. No amount of good works is going to fix what is broken. Attempting to fix myself through doing is only an avoidance of the real problem. We’re getting to that. And we’re also getting to the good news implicit in this message.

Forde, Gerhard. On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518. Grand Rapids,  Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997.

Part 2 | All Parts

Eight simple words in the liturgy of recovery. One complex mess of identity and theology. My name is simple enough. It’s the second sentence that has caused me – and many others – so many problems. I am an alcoholic. Not, “I suffer from the disease of alcoholism,” or, “I am in recovery from addiction to alcohol,” but “I am an alcoholic.” It is a statement of identity, a statement of being, encompassing my past, present, and future.

I fought against this statement for years. In my twenties, I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t want the problem to be something with me. I wasn’t broken, I just drank too much. Get rid of the alcohol, get rid of the problem. There was just one problem with this: I never could get rid of the alcohol. I could go months without a drink, but I always returned to the bottle.

By my early thirties, I had admitted the problem was in me and admitted the problem was alcoholism, but I still couldn’t accept it as part of who I am. Through Jesus, I am a new creation, right? If I’m a new creation, I can’t be an alcoholic. I can only be a person who once suffered under the bondage of addiction. It sounded like good theology and the inherent optimism was enough to keep me sober for a time, but not enough to break the chains of addiction.

I want so much to deny my addiction, to deny not only my addiction to alcohol, but to food, shopping, television, to the never-ending quest for “more.” I want to pretend there is nothing wrong with me, that North American consumerism is perfectly healthy, that it’s natural to be jealous of friends with bigger TVs and blu-ray, that my weakness to alcohol is a sickness – not my fault! – to be cured by medicine and psychotherapy. When denial of the fact of addiction fails, I turn to a denial of responsibility. I use my faith to make-believe the addiction has gone away. I say the right things and appear outwardly to be in control of my life, while inwardly I am a mess.

It can’t be my fault. It can’t be my state. If I can’t beat this, if I don’t have the power to overcome or a faith that restores me to glory, what am I? The only option left – that I am an addict who can’t clean up his own life – is despair. Why bother living if this is all that I am, all that I ever will be?

It’s been four years since my last drink, and yet it has only been four months that I have been able to speak the words, “I am an alcoholic,” and it took a document over four-hundred years old to teach me the hope in those four words.

Following the famous Ninety-Five Theses of 1517 Martin Luther wrote and presented the Heidelberg Disputation in April, 1518. An opportunity for Luther to present his new and controversial theology to his fellow Augustinians for debate, the twenty eight theses of the Disputation explains why our attempts fix ourselves will always come up short. But, in doing so, he offers a new way of looking at ourselves, the predicament we’re in, and a real solution.

Luther, Martin. “Heidelberg Disputation.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by TImothy F. Lull, 30–49. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.

Mercadante, Linda A. “Sin, Addiction, and Freedom.” In Reconstructing Christian Theology, edited by Rebecca S. Chopp and Mark Lewis Taylor, 220–244. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

I wrote the following passage a little over four years ago. I sent it by email to my mentor and a couple friends, but didn’t publish it until 1 year ago. It’s the last piece from the old blog that I’m pulling over here. It’s as true today as it was 4 years ago.

I enjoy writing. I communicate effectively through the written word. Yet, I do not think I am a writer. At least, “writer” is not the primary label. I expect (and hope!) writing will be a big piece of what I do, but writing is subservient to a higher master. It’s the same with pastoring and teaching. I enjoy both, but these too are secondary labels. They are skills/resources to be put to use by the primary label.

I am a missionary. This is the primary label. My great desire is to introduce people to this Jesus guy knocking at their doors. I want to help them see God is already working in and through them, that they are already known by God. While my heart aches for a particular cultural group in my area and I am connecting within this community, I think a big part of my ministry will be helping other followers/ churches learn to reclaim this missional perspective and relearn what it means to be Christ-followers in this world.

Some of this will be done through face-to-face networking and relationships, but much will be communicated through writing, whether that’s blogging, writing articles for other sites, publishing in magazines, or eventually writing books. I will write, but for the sake of mission, not for the sake of writing.

As I imagine what the dream might look like as we move from dreaming to doing, I see a two-faceted personal ministry. Two sides to the same ministry, feeding one another. The first side is roll up the sleeves, put a little elbow grease into it, urban missions. It’s connecting, learning, sharing, and growing in Christ and community. It’s feeding the hungry and teaching them to feed themselves with their native crops. Indigenous church planting. The second side is writing. Sharing what we have learned in our context.

I am already a full-time missionary, earning my living from the ministry. I can imagine a time and place where writing pays the bills, but right now, it doesn’t. Today, I work a job in a retail establishment, where I get to meet a lot of people in the community. I drive right through the heart of the community twice a day. It gives me an excuse to stop at my favorite grocery store, a central hive. It gets me out of my cozy little studio and into the mission field.

My mentor’s new job title is “Urban Missionary.” I like it. I know I’m not supposed to think too much about titles, but they do come in handy and this one fits my heart as well as any other I’ve heard. Yes, I’m a writer. Yes, I like to take pictures. Yes, I like to preach and teach and lead others in worship. But those are things I do; they are not the vocation, the call.

This is a repost from Creation Calls Out. In the process of moving away from that site, I may move a few old posts this way. In this case, it’s part of who I am why we are here and where we are going.

I was six years old, looking into the mirror hung above the utility room sink where I had just brushed my teeth and combed my hair on the way to school. The reflection was nothing new; I’d figured out mirrors years before and was used to the magic. I was use to seeing my reflection, but I was not used to my reflection seeing me.

It only took a moment – a minute or two at the longest. My reflection stared down hard at my six-year old face and pronounced its eternal verdict: ugly, with no chance for love. The reflection substantiated its claim with evidence I could not refute: too many freckles on too round a face; a brown mole the size of a half-dollar on my left cheek; hair that wouldn’t stay in place no matter how often I combed it; lopsided ears and a crooked nose; and finally, a velour shirt with lapels of a size only found in the 1970′s.

At that moment, my innocence was lost. I knew the truth. I was ugly. I was unlovable. I was worthless. In one great wave of culpability, everything I had ever done wrong in my short life paraded before my eyes. Sin entered and I knew my unworthiness was deserved. I had sinned against God and my punishment was to be a living death. I went to church and I prayed and I sang and I listened to the sermon and I devoured the Bible and I did everything asked of me, but it was never enough. No matter how much I wished to please God, it was never enough. Sin remained. The law convicted. It was only a matter of time until justice collected my debt.

As I got bigger, so did the sin and so did the consequences. Knowing that bigger consequences were coming wasn’t enough to stop sinning. I knew from all the sermons, prayers, and Bible, that God could forgive my sins, but would he? Knowing the depths to which I had fallen, would he really bother rescuing me? I was the unlovely one, the unlovable one. No, God would skip me over for those who followed his ways, for those who were created to be loved. And so I accepted my place and learned to walk slowly around corners, always expecting a piano to fall or a sidewalk to give way. The next shoe was ever ready to drop – and I confess I had done my part to deserve the dropping.

This was the only life I knew from age 6 to 33, when I read the words of John’s first epistle and heard the words, “My dearly beloved children.” I can’t tell you exactly what happened. It was as if I looked into another mirror only to see a face not my own stare down hard at my still vulnerable face and pronounce a new verdict: You are loved; you are dear to me; you are my child.

I believed that voice. I don’t know why. I had heard – and taught – those very same words countless times before. What made them different this particular night? Whose voice spoke to me with such a compassionate confidence that all the shame and guilt melted away? What could undo twenty-seven years of hearing how unlovely I am in four quietly spoken words? The words were written nearly two-thousand years ago by an old man to a group of people in a place I’ve never been, yet I heard them clearly that night as the person of God speaking his love into me.

Nearly three years have passed since hearing those words and I still believe them. I look in the mirror and know I am a beloved son whose Father is proud of him. This knowledge – this deep, experiential, earthly knowledge – has taught me to stand tall when I enter a room, to set appropriate personal boundaries, to speak up when I have something to say, to remain quiet when it is better to not, to have aspirations, to set goals, and to work toward them with confidence.

And yet, I still worry about that next shoe dropping. There is no logical reason for feeling this way; it is simply the lingering effect of twenty-seven years of listening to deceit. It is an old psychological tape that hasn’t been put away. Every missed phone call is bad news. Every request for a meeting is a termination. And the one phone call that delivers bad news or the one meeting that raises painful issues prove that final shoe that is going end it all is laying in wait just around the next corner.

No doubt, this is the deceiver working its way back in. The fear and anxiety produced are proof enough the voice I hear is not the one who spoke to me from John’s letter. So I turn to the voice who speaks love, whose love casts out this fear. And I listen. And I fight. And I hope. And I trust. I hope someday to move past this, to grow beyond it. I hope to walk smartly around life’s corners, knowing the voice who proclaims me loved is rounding the corner with me. I hope for an attitude – an emotional response – that, without denying suffering remains and pain will come, knows I am loved to such a depth that nothing, not death nor life, not angels nor demons, not fears for today nor worries for tomorrow, not even the powers of hell, no power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate me – us – from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is a repost from Creation Calls Out just last week. In the process of moving away from that site, I may move a few old posts this way. In this case, it’s part of why this site is here and where we are going.

My name is Caedmon. I’m an alcoholic and addict.

Five years ago, I knew I had a serious problem. I had tried to fix it on my own, but the problem was bigger than me. I knew I was lost and no simple solution was going to make it go away. In the summer of 2005, I posted a prayer request asking God to take some drastic steps. He did. In January, 2006, I began handing my web design clients off to others. Then, in July, 2006, I sent a short email to a few close friends and disappeared from public life.

The details of the next couple years will remain in the past. Where I was and what I did aren’t important. I spent two years in complete brokenness, hearing the word of God, praying, being restored. By 2008, I knew I had been transformed – renewed by the persistent love and grace of God. Life was no longer hopeless. I no longer fell asleep at night wishing I could drift off into eternity without ever waking up. I knew I was loved. I knew with the power and friendship of Jesus, I could face the day ahead of me. I knew Jesus had overcome what I could not. I knew battling addiction would remain a daily regimen of thanking Jesus for yesterday’s help and asking for today’s. I knew the daily asking of grace was not something to move beyond or be ashamed of, but was the real presence of daily working out my salvation.

What I did not know was where this new life would take me. Prior to 2005, I was a pastor. I held an undergraduate degree in Biblical Studies and was completing a graduate degree in Pastoral Studies. Being a pastor was part of what held me together. Knowing the brokenness of my addiction, I believed if I could just be good enough – if I could do enough good work for God – maybe God would have pity on me and accept me in spite of my sin. Brokenness – the admitting of my guilt and the receiving of God’s love – changed everything. I no longer need to be a pastor to know I am loved and valued by God. I no longer need it to give my life purpose or to be okay with myself when I look in the mirror. God provides all that I need.

It’s a good thing I don’t need to be a pastor to be okay with myself, because addiction and brokenness disqualify me from the role – or so I thought two years ago. I believed once people knew the things I had done in the past, once they knew I was ‘tainted goods,’ once they knew how far I had fallen, I would be no good to them. I believed the depth of my depravity barred me from proclaiming the good news of Jesus to others. I know now just how ridiculous that belief is, yet it is a belief communicated strongly both by our American culture and much of the Christian church.

I have come to learn two things. First, while there is nothing glorious about sin or addiction and there is nothing at all good about what I have done, it is only by the good work Jesus completed on the cross and the good work his love has done in repairing my self, that I have any ability to proclaim his good news! It is because I recognize my depravity and intimately know Jesus’ ability to overcome and heal that I can speak with confidence his desire to do the same for you.

Second, as much as I know I am a “new creation in Christ,” I can see that the new creation was always there, covered by a veil of darkness. Removing the old and putting on the new is less like flipping a light switch and more like pulling aside a curtain to reveal what always existed. The love I have for my neighbor is not new. It was always there. The ecstasy of knowing Jesus is not new. It was always there. The calling to speak the kingdom message of Jesus is not new. It was always there.

Those of you who have known me throughout this process are likely chuckling a little on the inside. Prepare yourselves; the irony is coming to a point.

I am a pastor. There’s no getting around it. As much as I wish I could toss the label, it’s too accurate to dismiss. My heart is urban missions. My desire is to speak the kingdom of God and in so doing see the oppressed set free. My charism (vocation) involves speaking the kingdom through acts of mercy, preaching, music, and writing. Along side the vocation, I am returning to web design, with a priority for helping churches and missional organizations use contemporary media as applicable to their particular missions. (Those who know me from the beforetime know just how familiar this sounds.)

I am in school with I have one year to go in finishing an M.Div. School is a piece of the overall vocation and an immediate priority, meaning some of the vocational acts implied above will be put into place slowly and patiently. I will be working on a couple websites, but am not hanging up a shingle as a web designer. I will be writing, but will not be seeking publication (Not this month, at least.).

I began blogging on a site titled “The Sakamuyo Log.” Sakamuyo grew out of a personal blog into a community of misfit preachers, then stalled as God led me through the wilderness. Sakamuyo – the community and the place – remains an integral piece of the vision God has given.

Change happens, yet so much remains the same. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, who was, who is, and who is to come. Amen.

It doesn’t have to be pretty, especially if it’s true. I encourage you to spend some time with Psalm 8. Hear the rhythm. Listen to voice. Then, pause and listen to your world. How would you write this Psalm? Then, write it and share!

You can share it in the comments. You can share it in the forum. You can share it on your own blog. If you do share on your own blog, please leave us a link so we can all share as a community.

Feel free to share the idea around. If you do, just please link back to here, again so we all share. Thanks!

I am being convicted of my American, consumerist lifestyle. Relative to the whole, my income is below poverty level, yet I still manage to buy and consume stuff at a rate that can’t be good for our planet. I talk about living “in the world, but not of it” and avoid the major sins currently condemned by conservative christianity, yet I recognize how much my thoughts and actions are conformed by this world.

What does it look like in contemporary America to reject the ways of the world and live instead according to the ways of God’s kingdom? Do the Anabaptists (and others who choose differing levels of physical separation from the worldly kingdom) have it right? Do we impact the culture around us by peacefully separating from them? That goes against mainstream evangelistic technique, but what are our techniques really evangelizing to? Do we need to follow the lead of St Francis and cast off all worldly possession? Is that even possible?

The whole story of Scripture seems clear that children of God cannot simultaneously live as children of the world. We aren’t given the luxury of living both lives; there is no “best of both worlds” paradigm. What does it look like to resist the ways of this world while carrying out Jesus’ mission to this world? Who are our modern-day examples living this life in urban, first-world settings?