Jesus - Enneagram - Moose

I grew up with hymns, with altars, with choir robes, with stained glass and giant crosses. The God we worshipped was Great and Mighty and Holy and we were invited into that Divine Presence.

Nowadays the place where I worship looks more ordinary, a house, a living room, children dancing to the music, food shared in a kitchen, sweatpants and t-shirts… and we are invited deeper into the relationship with a God who we also know as Human.

The Divinity and Humanity of Christ are both fully and equally who we are as the church and so reflective of how we worship. The moment we find ourselves worshipping a Jesus who is solely Divine… we’ve missed it. We’ve missed the Jesus who eats with others constantly, who takes off His robe and washes dirty feet, and who hangs out with all sorts of people in all kinds of places.

Yet likewise, the moment we try and worship a Jesus who is solely Human, we have equally missed it. Because Jesus is The Christ. The Messiah. God Incarnate. He is The King of Kings, The Lord of Lords!
He is Creator of the Universe. Alpha and Omega.

Jesus is fully God fully Human.
The moment we forget one or the other… the moment we become the dualist… we are no longer reflecting the God of the Bible…. But some other god made in some other image…

This is why the church has fleshed out in such a multitude of ways over the years.
Because we have to.
We must.

If we are going to reflect our God…We must be diverse, we must be colorful and different. AND we must be cohesively the church. 

I love how the Enneagram has nine points.  There are a variety of types of individuals out there!  And even among each number there can be different variations of each one. It reminds us that we are not created to be this one type of person… but created to be different from the other. To give a different angle and refraction.

One of my favorite kids books we have is called Morris the Moose, It’s a story of a moose named Morris who mistakes a cow for a moose because he has four legs, a tail, and things on his head just like Morris! Solid logic! Then they go talk to a deer and the deer thinks they are both deer! Because, naturally, they have four legs, a tail, and things on their head… You see where this is going…

They finally see all their different reflections in the water and realize though they are similar, they are each different. Morris made a Moosetake!    (so good!)

Francis de Sales, a sixteenth-century bishop in France wrote,

      “Each of us has his own endowment from God, one to live in this way, another in that. It is an impertinence, then, to try to find out why St. Paul was not given St. Peter’s grace, or St. Peter given St. Paul’s. There is only one answer to such questions: the Church is a garden patterned with countless flowers, so there must be a variety of sizes, colors, scents – of perfections, after all. Each has its value, its charm, its joy; while the whole vast cluster of these variations makes for beauty in its most graceful form.”

The Divinity and Humanity of Jesus Christ seems contradictory to our western minds. Its no surprise that we would find this a struggle. This is why every December we are once again baffled by the manger… It just doesn’t add up. Here’s the deal: The Kingdom of Heaven will never add up.

It’s not math its mystical. 

I see clearly a tension between a generation who came to know almost exclusively a Jesus who sits enthroned in heaven, and a generation who now seems to know a Jesus who sits at an ordinary table eating ordinary food with ordinary people.

There’s one who after 60 years of Sunday School seems to have mastered Personal Holiness.

There’s one who doesn’t go to Bible study at all and works with homeless and refugees in the name of Social Holiness.

Each one has concerns about the other. Honestly it’s a shame that we need further categories in what is all… Holiness. Indeed both… all kinds even, are required.

May the Person of Jesus the Christ remind us, as all of creation gives reflection of, that no ground is not sacred. That there has never been a this or a that. And that our worship of The LORD must continually take us to our knees and to our streets. Because as God said way back in Genesis, It’s All Good.

Ashes to Ashes and Candy Hearts

Ashes on your heart this year? Mortality got you down this Valentines day? Flowers looking a little wilty?
This February 14th our celebration of love seems to be overshadowed by the dust and darkness of Ash Wednesday. The day we might dress in pink giving giant teddy bears and chocolates stands in seeming conflict with ashes spread across our foreheads to remind us of our mortality. Yet of course if you happen to be single and wearing black anyway this really just works out for you!

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, our 40 day journey to Easter. It is the time we remember that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. It is the day we remember what it is that we are human...

It is the ashes that remind us that struggling is a part of the journey. That conflict is part of the story. Death finds us. Life is short. Skinned knees and bloody lips will happen. Things get broken. We break. We bleed.

With ashes on our heads and chocolates in our hands... how do we proceed forward then? Honestly it sounds like it could put are real damper on your Valentines date plans!

Have you ever noticed that every great love story are the ones that are dangerous? The ones that face down struggle and leave scars? And somehow the greatest ones are the ones that face down death...




Isn't it ironic that the most compelling love stories are the ones that break your heart?
Isn't it always the love that endures through the frailty of what it means to be human that we find most inspiring? Its why the Notebook will get you EVERYTIME!

(Just look into those eyes!)

Because in our aging... in our fragility... in our humanness... we enter into the narrative of love even more.

We learn even more what Hesed is... That love itself though beginning with a box of chocolate or some candy hearts is only fully received and understood fleshed out through covenant faithfulness... as we embrace the humanity of the other we are with and decided that together we shall until death do us part.