The MosaicXn Church in Everett Washington

“Why do ‘born-again’ people so often make you wish they’d never been born the first time?  ~Katherine Whitehorn, British Journalist, The Observer, May 20, 1979

       Here’s an old write up I found from a couple years ago about a group of people who used to meet once a week at a local restaurant in Marysville.  I wrote this one evening after attending one of the groups meetings.  The best part about it is that I am now good friends with the person who captured my attention that evening (Hahn, you’re the man and you taught me a lot that night).  Although the group no longer meets, the message behind that evening is a very important one, and one that came up last Sunday at Mosaic as we looked at the Church at Smyrna in our series on the Book of Revelation.  So here’s a blast from the past and challenge to all of us to learn how to “Live The Pain.”

(March 2008)

       “The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through.  It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them.  The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your wounds to your head or your heart.  In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them.  But no final healing is likely to come from that source.  You need to let your wounds go down to your heart.  Then you can live through them and discover that they will not destroy you.”  ~Henri Nouwen
     
       Last night I hung out with a group of people–some friends, some aquaintences, some I did not know–in the back room of a little restaraunt in Marysville, WA.  There were probably 25 people crammed in the small room.  The group has named itself the “Armchair,” and is a place where people can come together once a week to discuss topics ranging from philosophy, theology and anthropology to history, art, photography and the like.  Once, I even entered into a discussion about architecture–something I know absolutely nothing about.
       This group was started by a couple of Christian men whom I have the pleasure of calling friends.  We are part of the same Christian community (Mosaic) and have similar hearts to live incarnationally.  If anything, we hope God will give us the grace to add some sort of beauty into the world around us.  While I fail at my task all too aften, these guys – Moses and Neil – have started something that is a sure depiction of beauty.  
     The Armchair is open to Christians and non-Christians alike.  Last night, the room was about equally split.  The discussion centered around the 4th chapter in the Book of Ecclesiastes–the issue of injustice even for the righteous.  Not to be outdone by Koheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, who makes some startling observations about injustice, the people of Armchair decided to make some startling observations of their own.  Where Koheleth used words to depict injustice, the people at Armchair used pictures.  They passed around two laptop computers with extremely graphic photographs depicting injustice around the world.  We were then each asked to describe our feelings.  Some felt obligated and motivated to action, some simply cried.  I, myself, felt what Koheleth must have felt when he wrote the words, “Meaningless, Meaningless, all is utterly meaningless.”  I felt hopeless.  All the pain in the world; all the suffering;  all the injustice.  How is one supposed to find meaning (much less hope) in a world with so much pain and suffering?
     And then the meeting ended in a powerful way.  After many of us (myself included) tried to rationalize our feelings towards these grotesque images, one young man (a non-Christian) began to cry almost uncontrollably.  When asked to share his feelings, he explained that he usually uses one of two “shields” when facing serious issues–He either makes jokes to lighten the mood, or he just decides to ignore the problem.  As he sat there crying, realizing that he could tell no jokes to ease the pain captured within the pictures, and realizing that the only other option within his arsenal of “sheilds” is to ignore the problem, he came to the simple conclusion, “There’s something seriously wrong with me.” 
     Like Father Nouwen wrote about in the quote above, this young man stopped trying to think through the issue of pain and suffering and instead allowed himself to live it.  Even if only for a brief moment, he allowed the pain of others to enter his own being.  Only then did he come to the realization that something within him was broken… a necessary step if one hopes to work through the healing process. 
     Now imagine what would happen if he (and the rest of us) would allow our own pain to be felt rather than simply rationalized.  We all have pain.  We all suffer loss.  And, like the gentleman from last night, we too make jokes to lighten the experience.  We too choose to ignore the pain.  We too choose to rationalize it so that we can find the words to discuss it; yet all the while we never find the place within our own being to experience our falleness, to realize our brokeness, and to ultimately find our healing.  
     Remember, the first step is to realize our brokeness (“There’s something seriously wrong with me”); only then can we experience the next step–that is, a showering of love from God and a declaration that our pain will not be the end of us.  He is the hope for humanity.  He is the one who can rescue us from us.  His didn’t ignore our pain.  He didn’t make jokes about our suffering.  He is the one who suffered pain on our behalf–taking on our humanity, our sin, our punishment, our cross–so that through his heartfelt pain, he might add hope and beauty to our world.  He is the solution to our dilemma – “We are all broken.”
     Now go and do likewise.
  
1 Peter 2:20-23 (Endure Suffering as Jesus Did)
     If you endure [being beaten] when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

     When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threated; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” 

Self-fulfilling prophecy–”a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself.”

       A woman told me a story about a time when she and her husband were on vacation. They were walking down the street window shopping. As the wife pauses at one window display, the husband crosses the street ahead of her to look at a different store front. Suddenly, the wife is approached by a frantic woman who asks, “Are they talking about me?” The wife responds, “Is WHO talking about you?” The paranoid woman persists, “Are they talking about me? I know they’re talking about me. Everyone’s talking about me.” The wife tries to calm the lady down by assuring her that nobody is talking about her and that everything is going to be okay. This seems to work and the woman walks away. The wife then hurries across the street, meets her husband and tells of the strange encounter with the paranoid lady. The husband asks, “Which lady are you talking about?” As the wife turns and points across the street and informs her husband, “That lady over there,” she feels her heart sink as the paranoid woman turns around just in time to catch the wife pointing at her and talking about her.
       This is a classic case of what sociologists and psychologist call self-fulfilling prophecy. The wife became everything the paranoid lady was freaking out about. But had the lady not been paranoid and not assumed that everyone was talking about her, the wife would not have had any reason to talk and point. It was the self-fulfilling prophecy that turned the wife into someone she wasn’t–a talker and a pointer.
       When I heard the story, it reminded me of my first psychology class I took at college, where we discussed self-fulfilling prophecies. We fall victim to self-fulfilling prophecies more than we probably realize.
       Sometimes we are the frantic lady. We are paranoid about something which somehow actually brings about in others the very thing for which we are paranoid. An easy example would be if I constantly accuse people of being argumentative. Others would either agree with me (proving me wrong–which is a self-defeating arguement but fits in nicely in this discussion) or, most likely, they will deny my claim and insist they are not argumentative. But the second they begin to argue with me about my assessment of them, I have made them into the very thing I assumed them to be in the first place–argumentative. Another simple example might involve me continually telling a friend that the one thing I hate in life is when people raise their voice or yell at me in conversations. Assume I keep repeating this mantra over and over again and perhaps even warn my friend that he or she better never raise his or her voice or the friendship will be over. After enough times of talking about it, my friend may finally raise his or her voice in utter frustration and say, “I don’t yell at you! Stop it already!” And, you guessed it, the self-fulfilling prophecy has claimed another victim.
       At other times, we are the on the flip side of the coin. Rather than being the frantic woman who thinks everybody is talking about her, we are the wife who is helplessly transformed into the presuppositions of somebody else’s paranoia. We become the person who points to and talks about the frantic woman, argues with the person who claims we’re argumentative, or finally yells at the person who won’t shut up about how bad it would be if we raised our voice to them, and so on. We unwillingly become transformed by another person’s self-fulfilling prophecy. And, like the wife who got caught pointing across the street while talking to her husband, our hearts sink even though it’s not our fault that the prophecy was fulfilled by us.
       All that to say, try to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies of this nature. Don’t cause others to be transformed into something they’re not by means of this stupid, but very prevalant, psychological phenomena. And don’t allow your heart to drop or your self-esteem to lessen simply because you get caught in the self-fulfilling prophecy of another person.
        I love psychology, but I hate it as well.

“It’s not wrong to feel afraid, it is most unfortunate to live in fear of something that doesn’t exist” ~Gary Smalley

The Self-Looking Glass Image states that we view ourselves the way we think other people view us.

      Have you ever shown up to a birthday party without a gift?  It can be extremely embarrassing, especially when the party is for a child who is bold enough to ask you in front of everyone, “What’d you bring me?  It’s my birthday!”  When you are then forced to announce that you didn’t bring the child anything, the look on the child’s face says it all–eyes of sadness cut through you as you watch the child’s excited expectations held only moments earlier dissipate into thin air.  I must admit, I have shown up giftless to parties too many times.

      Now, before you judge me too harshly, I wonder if I might inquire of you the last time you showed up to a birthday party without a gift?  We’re all getting ready to celebrate a very important birthday on the 25th of next month.  I know this won’t be the first time somebody showed up without a gift.  I go to this party every year without fail, and each of you is always there.  So I’m sure we’ll all attend this year as well.  But what will we say when the birthday boy asks each of us the same question, “What’d you bring me?  It’s my birthday!”

      I know what some of you are thinking.  Some of you know which birthday party I’m talking about.  You know this is no ordinary person in whose honor we will be celebrating.  He is royalty.  He is the king who rules over the royal nation to which many of us pledge allegiance.  And he’s not really a young boy anymore either.  In fact, in the scheme of eternity he’s actually much, much older now.  So what gift will you bring to the party this year?  Perhaps this is the most perplexing of all birthday gifts, because the king already has everything.  And so the age-old question lingers luminously, “What do you get the person who already has everything?”

      This is the reason I’m writing.  If you’re looking for the perfect gift for the king who has everything, I know just the thing.  You.  Often the only thing we hold back from Christ is the one thing he has never held back from us–His very self.  He gave his life for our sake, and now all he asks is that we give him ours in return.  To be honest, it’s really the only thing a person could possibly give him for his birthday.  There’s nothing else.  And, like all gifts given at a birthday, the gift you give will be his forever more, to do with as he pleases.  You can’t take a gift back when you getup to leave the party at the end of the day.  The gift is really gone.  It is not yours anymore.  (Perhaps some of you have already given the king this gift at some previous birthday party, only to snag it back at the end of the night when you thought the king was preoccupied with other peoples’ gifts and so would not notice your grab-n-dash escape.  Trust me, that guy notices everything!)

      So there are only two options: 1) Offer the king your very life.  After all, it is the only gift you have.  It is the only gift he wants.  So let him now dictate your life since it is no longer yours, but his.  Or, 2) show up to Dec. 25th without a gift.  You keep yourself for yourself.  You live your life as you please.  Try to forget the fact that the Messiah gave his own life in order to purchase yours for himself.  Try to convince yourself that He died simply for the sake of you being free to live however you so choose.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, he is a great and good king and does desire you to be blessed.  In fact, he himself promises to bless you.  You don’t need to worry about blessing yourself, but only discover those blessings that are already there, that are hidden all around you. 

      Please, this Christmas, when you unavoidably find yourself at the Great King’s birthday party on Dec. 25th, don’t show up without a gift.  Choose option #1, for the only alternative would break his heart.

      “What makes you tick?” -  I heard somebody use this phrase the other day.  It’s a funny little phrase.  Isn’t it?  It makes us sound like a bunch of stupid little alarm clocks walking around on two legs.  For some reason I always imagine that little clock-dude on Beauty and the Beast (don’t laugh… you know who I’m talking about, which means you watched Beauty and the Beast also).  Anyways, clocks tick.  That’s just what they do. 

      Here’s my point. “Ticking” is not what we do – we’re not clocks.  But we were all created to do somthing.  What is it that makes you do what you do (“tick”)?  What winds you up and gets you going in the direction that you know you need to go?  Simply stated, “What are you passionate about?”  You see, passion is a God-given gift that excites us and focuses our energy in a single direction.  Passion directs the heart, captivates the mind, and even overcomes many of our fears and insecurities.  Passion is the stuff in life that wakes you up in the morning.  It’s what you think about all day long.  It’s the very last thought to escape your mind as you drift off into a world of dreams.  In a very real sense, passion is what motivated Jesus to sacrifice his life for ours – we are his passion; YOU are his passion.  Passion is powerful! 

      I’m often asked by people, “Matt, how can I discover God’s purpose for my life?  Is there a such thing as destiny?  If so, what’s mine?”  If you have ever asked these questions, let me share two simple thoughts:

1) As a Christian, your purpose in life is always the Great Commission.  Show the world the love of Jesus Christ. (Matt 28; Mark 16:15-18)

2) Do whatever it is that you are passionate about.  The thing that keeps you up at night, the thing you write about, the thing you sing about, the thing you just can’t live without… THAT is your passion (and most likely your purpose).  

      Are you an artist (e.g. painter, singer, musician)?  Are you a teacher?  Are you a public speaker? Are you a care giver?  Are you a writer?  Do you dream about being a mother or a father?  What makes you tick?

–Matt