A Home for the Holidays

I find the whole "home for the holidays" thing a bit ironic.  The main themes of the biblical Christmas stories are anything but, "home for the holidays"...

Jesus left his Father's home and was found as a homeless refugee baby, born on the streets of suburban Jerusalem.  The first ones to find him were a group of nomadic (read: homeless, "they were living in the fields" [related Greek words meaning: trapped, caught, or plain and uneducated]) sheep herders.  There were mystic worshipers that left their homeland as they packed up and set out on a quest across the desert.  Also Jesus' parents were uprooted from their hometown of Nazareth, only to return years later, after seeking political asylum in Egypt.

Like I said, anything but "home for the holidays".

So again I find it ironic (defined: outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected) that while our family was uprooted a year and a half ago, and has been searching for a home ever since, that God brought us a home for the holidays!

The house has been abandoned and is in pretty rough shape (missing a furnace, hot water heaters, electrical service, has a hole in the roof, and a couple rooms that need to be totally gutted), so the first week of the new year we begin rehabbing the place.  It is currently owned by a ministry that has been a key partner with the Church on Potomac Ave, and they rehabilitate abandoned homes in the area, while also employing folks from the neighborhood.  We'll be volunteering with them to work on the home until it is livable, at which time we'll be able to actually purchase the house.

Though the house currently lacks pleasing aesthetics, it also has a lot of good things going for it.  There are two units, so the Schenks (whom we rent from now) will also be moving with us to the new home, and thankfully helping us with the work as well!  It is two blocks from the Church's building on Potomac Ave.  It is on the street where we bought vacant lots to start urban farming.  And, a number of friends that have relocated into the neighborhood, live nearby.

It will be exciting to be a part of working on making this house our home.  As we've come to the West Side of Buffalo to experience and share the redemption Jesus offers, it seems only fitting that even in finding a place to call home we'll be participating in the work of redemption!

Wherever home is for you, may you also experience the work of redemption in your life this Christmas season.

Light on a Dark Night

We were asked this year how a group of Jesus' followers could participate in such a dark holiday as Halloween.

Well All Hallow's Eve, like Christmas and Easter, does have roots in a pagan holiday. However, again like Christmas and Easter, it is a time when the Church has also made an attempt to try and redeem the day. We see the evidence of this, with all three holidays, in the pagan symbols mixed together with Christian ones (ghosts and martyrs, evergreens and mangers, bunnies and crosses).

So, what would it look like for Church to try and redeem this day again?

Well at the House of Grace Ministry Center, the doors were open, and people were available to play games, sit across the table and eat with, and even take you on an educational scavanger hunt through the "Cemetary of Saints". What better place for teens, single moms, and scores of kids to spend this night. Opening our doors and ourselves to the community we tried to be light on this dark night. This was the second year we held a party at the church building, and we were overwhelmed this year with easily over 200 people. Our sign-in sheet revealed addresses that were almost entirely from within a 2-3 block area around the church. I am again grateful for the folks from the church (many of whom also live right in the neighborhood) who were on hand to help us bless our neighbors.

St. Paul, one of the many saints we remembered and celebrated in our "Cemetary of Saints", told us, "shine like stars in the universe..." Whenever we find ourselves surrounded by the darkness of night, may we all find ways to shine bright.

Lots

God has provided us with lots!

The fall harvest seems to be the time I most recognize this reality. Recent visits to the garden yeild tomatoes and peppers, squash and beans, carrots and collards, onions and beets. Land, which a year ago lay as an overgrown grassy lot, now provides such bounty and goodness.

At the farmer's market a few weeks back, I bit into my first fresh Honey Crisp apple of the year. It sent me into an immediate moment of praise and worship; our God is the Provider of lots of good stuff!

Well, this week God literally provided us with lots! At the city auction I bought four vacant lots in the neighborhood near the church.
These lots make up a quarter acre of land, which leaves us with lots of space for the kids to explore, lots of space for growing our own food in sustainable ways, lots of space to offer our neighbors room to grow their own food, lots of space for enjoying the abundance our Creator, Sustainer, and Provider gives us. Three of the lots are adjacent to each other at a corner two blocks from the church. The 100'x85' block that they make up will be used to offer plots to others in the neighborhood that want to grow food for themselves, or for a profit.

The other lot is a few blocks away (close to the house we hope to buy) and will be used primarliy to grow food for ourselves.

So as we enter this harvest and Thanksgiving season, we have lots to be thankful for; the abundance the land provides, and the provision of abundant land.

May we all experience the abundance God offers.

Twelve Days of Christmas

With New Year's weekend now behind us, many homes have already packed up all the Christmas decorations, and the fickle focus of our commercial culture has moved on to what's next (who's seen Valentine's gifts being marketed already?).

However, at our home we're still celebrating the Christmas season.

A few years ago, as kids were added to our family, Jess and I had a burning desire to pass on to our children a Christmas tradition that differed from the materialistic tradition we were all too familiar with.

Often attempts to escape this kind of Christmas culture can lead to a lot of negativism. We all had that kid in our class that spoiled Santa for everyone because her parents didn't buy into all that. But Christmas is a time to truly celebrate. So how do we take a step away from all the commercialism, but still find a way to celebrate?

Well, looking back into church history we discovered the tradition of the "Twelve Days of Christmas". These twelve days begin on Christmas Day and extend to the Christian holiday of Epiphany, on January 6. Epiphany is a celebration of light, mainly Jesus being revealed as the light of world; the one who illuminates the way to a life that is truly life.

"In him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

So our Christmas tradition consists of a nearly two week celebration of how in Jesus, the light has come. God's hope, peace, joy, and love have invaded this broken and hurting world. Each day we light a candle and read from the Scriptures. As a family we take time to reflect on what these words and stories really mean. How is Jesus coming into our personal brokenness and the hurting world around us? How is His light confronting this darkness and providing the hope we need to resist being overcome by it?

We also share simple gifts each day. Instead of going into debt to provide a mountain of presents under the tree on Christmas morning, for twelve days we give presence: a date night out with my wife, bringing goodies and singing songs at a local nursing home, building snowmen and sharing hot cocoa with the kids.

We still have celebrations with our extend families, where there are mountains of presents, and gifts marked, "From: Santa" for the kids. And that's OK. Rather than focus on what Christmas isn't, we have found there is so much to Christmas that it couldn't possibly fit into just one day.

So for a few days more, continue the Christmas celebration, and may we all see that the Light has come!

Tabernacles

What an outdated religious word - tabernacles. THE Tabernacle was literally a tent, God's temporary dwelling place among His people while they were camped out in the wilderness.

God camped out in a tent in the wilderness.

So each fall for the past five years we have too. It's our family's way of remembering the biblical festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles). The Hebrew people were called to camp out for a week each year, to remember what God did for them during the Exodus, especially how He provided for them in the wilderness. Its main themes are very similar to those celebrated by Americans during Thanksgiving.

Some in America see Thanksgiving as a time to be "home for the holidays," celebrating with family and friends. Others see it as a time to reach out to those with material needs and include them in the celebration. This same dichotomy exists in the Sukkot celebration.

A common parable told during Sukkot, is one of three poor sojourners. They came upon the sukkah (camp) of a rich family. The sukkah was decked out with expensive decorations, decadent foods, the finest produce of the season, and those celebrating inside wearing the finest fashions. They wanted nothing to do with these filthy poor panhandlers.

So on the three travelers went, until they came upon a modest sukkah. The decorations and food sparse, but the hospitality of those celebrating inside abundant. As they were welcomed to table it was revealed that these three strangers were none other than Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! It is said that each year God sends the patriarchs in this way, to remind His people of what the celebration is all about.

It reminds me of the writer of Hebrews (whoever she is) saying: "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it." Or Jesus saying: "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Last year during our Tabernacles retreat, along with our friend Japhet we welcomed his new friend Alexi, who had been in America just weeks. As we ate and celebrated with them around the campfire we learned one was an ethnic Hutu, and the other Tutsi. One had been a refugee his entire life because of the violence of the Tutsi, and the other had is family killed by the Hutu. Yet here at this table of celebration there was forgiveness and friendship. Often when we include those that seem to be without, it is revealed that they actually have so much to offer us.

So, may we entertain strangers and include them in our celebrations, and may we see that they are indeed the most esteemed at our table.

Fall Celebrations

This week marks the beginning of fall. To celebrate this, Jess took the kids from our house to Tifft Nature Preserve, an urban nature center here in Buffalo. In the fields and forests they explored and celebrated the changing of the seasons.

In upstate New York we are sure to make the most of this time. Each weekend from Labor Day on into November, you can find an apple, pumpkin, harvest, or some other fall festival. These festivals play an important role in our current culture. Before the cold winds of winter bar us inside, these festivals give us a chance head outside. We soak up autumn's beauty and bounty, as well as the last bits of warmth the sun sends our way. However, these celebrations are also important because they link our current culture back to an earlier time, when our dependence on the harvest was more tangible and serious.

If we go back early enough in time, we find another set of fall festivals that serve as a link to our current culture; the biblical festivals of Trumpets, Atonement, and Shelters (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot). These festivals serve as tangible and serious reminders of our dependence on God and the redeeming work He is doing in our world. Check out what they're all about in Leviticus 23 & 16.

So this fall let's celebrate the beauty and bounty of the harvest, but let's also make time to seriously consider the Source of that beauty and bounty. As we do this, may our hearts be filled with true thanksgiving.

Welcome to Lent

Saying, "Welcome to Lent," is like saying, "Welcome to your root canal," or as in my wife's case, "Welcome to your appendectomy." No one likes surgery, it's never fun. However, the ancient scriptures tell us there is a time for everything. Lent is the time for tearing up, throwing away, killing, mourning, silence.

Like surgery, though not fun, Lent is where we can experience healing by removing the things that are injuring us. We cut ourselves off from the vices that control us, we express remorse for letting something other than our loving God lead us, and we take time to silently reflect upon how God is leading us into freedom.

There is pain in cutting these things off, in drilling out the rot, but in the end there is also relief and wonderful freedom.

So, welcome to Lent!

"And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." - St. Paul's Letter to the Church in Rome

Witnesses to the Light

"There was a man sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light... The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world."

Today is Epiphany, the day that Christians, since ancient times, have celebrated the coming of the Light. Those of us who have met Christ, the Light, like John have been called to be witnesses testifying to the light. John came with a very specific message, and he went to a very specific place, and in a very interesting way delivered that message.

Jess and I believe God has given us a specific message and called us to a specific place to deliver it. We are in the final stages (hopefully) of obtaining a house in the northside neighborhood of Syracuse. This is one of the more ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Syracuse, with one in every six of our neighbors being foreign born. Yet it is quite homogenous when it comes to socioeconomic class; one in three live below the poverty line, and the per capita income is near $13,000 (half the per capita income of the suburban town I grew up in).

Most of us would agree that racial segregation is wrong. However, the socioeconomic segregation that we participate in today is still racial segregation. People of poorer minorities are abaondoned to impoverished neighborhoods with decaying infastructure and educational systems, while the rich (and white) majority retreats to the suburbs to build their safe neighborhoods with first rate schools.

Our churches mirror this segregation. It was nearly 50 years ago that Martin Luther King Jr. commented on how Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America, but still today less than 7% of churches are considered ethnically diverse (check out this article from this week's TIME magazine). There is a darkness, or as my favorite author Richard Foster puts it, evil principalities and powers that divide us.

My family wants to be a light in this darkness. A light to our suburban church, a church that before God brought 40 African refugees to our doorstep was completely white. But also a light to the northside neighborhood in Syracuse. So often desegregation looks like minorities joining the majority, or the have-nots joining hte haves, however, Jesus modeled something different for us:

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich."

This is what we have been called to be witnesses to, the good news that the light has come to all people, no matter what your race or socioeconomic status.

As we seek to be living witnesses to this it may seem strange to some; that we would sell our nice home in a safe neighborhood to make this move. Many people from both communities may misunderstand us, and look at us as extreme. But then again, was it not the same for John, a fellow witness to the Light?

He Has Come

At Sojourn we hear each week, "We are on a journey towards life change w/ Jesus." It has been our spoken goal to be a people who are more like Jesus at the end of 2009 than we were at the year's beginning.

Jesus has come to our community in 2009! He is changing lives as He announced He would in the mission statement He gave while teaching in Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has annointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners..."

Amoni -
Amoni shared in our gathering today how he is grateful for all God and the Church have provided for him this year. Specifically he gave thanks for gaining his drivers license and a car to drive in. Good news: those who are poor in our midst are less poor!

LaVonne -
My friend LaVonne shared through a letter today that she has been crying out for God to transform her life. She longs for her life to be an example of love in action. LaVonne has given herself as a dedicated volunteer tutoring the African refugee students at Sojourn. While at first she felt inadequate to help them, she has been freed from that insecurity and has become an example of love in action. Good news: the prisoners are being set free and are enjoying that freedom!

And God has set me free! All my life I have struggled with my wieght, spending most of my adult life 30 or more lbs overweight. This summer I encountered God while in relationship with my friends from Africa, being accountable to my wife, and engaging in spiritual disciplines. My life-long struggle with food is not over, but I can give thanks to God today for the victories He has given me this year.

July 2009

December 2009

Good news: Jesus is spreading through our community, and lives are being changed!

Christmas Eve - He's Coming

Growing up, my cousins would often bring along a cousin from the other side of the family to our holiday gatherings. Tony was mentally disabled, and whenever he came, he would enter the gathering and come up to each one of us and enthusiastically proclaim, "Ho Ho comin'!" He was half looking for our affirmation of this statement and half wanting to make sure no one was ignorant of this. You couldn't help but nod and assure him that Ho Ho was indeed coming.

I wonder what reaction the shepherds got as they enthusiastically went around proclaiming that the Messiah was coming.

Everyone had missed it. The very Master of the universe had come to Earth, but He came to their small village in an occupied country on the fringe of the Empire. Both the religous system and the government, symbolic leaders of God's people, had missed it. Only a couple of kids who were supposed to be out doing their chores were clued in. So they ran up to everybody making sure they knew, "Messiah coming!"

Did their hearers patronizingly nod and affirm them, not wanting to be the kill-joy that exposed the myth?

It seems that today so many still miss the Messiah each Christmas, and I'm not talking about the secularists or pluralists, but our church culture today, and a government that still clings to a Christian facade. Jesus never told us that we would find Him in elaborate buildings, decadent feasts, and holiday rituals (the prophets actually tell us God even hates those things). Instead He said we would find Him in those who are hungry, prisoners, sick, homeless.

So let's proclaim enthusiastically, "He's coming!" All who have missed Him by looking in cantatas, candles, and cookies, look over here - this is no myth! He's with those who are hungry, prisoners, sick, homeless. To all those whom our culture, including our church culture, has labeled as far from God, let's proclaim this good news, "He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty." Most people who've missed it will just smile and nod affirmingly, all the while discounting us as over optimistic idealists. But let's never stop proclaiming:

Joy to the world, the LORD is come.

Advent Conspiracy

Give as God did this Christmas; give presence. Share gifts that set us free and present others with hope.