Monday, December 26, 2011

He sees me... and I exist.

First few paragraphs are personal blurbs about "where I am with God/faith/life" right now, but it's disjointed and confused. Kinda like me right now, haha. If you don't wanna bother with that part, please skip to after the blocked off area.
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I recently discovered that I get to know God in the context of my problems. I have a very deep, solid relationship with God. But I don't relate to him on the basis of his love. I still fight against this belief that God loves me inasmuch as I am useful to his ultimate purposes. That I would be better to him as an empty, personality-less shell that could be moved and operated fully by him. read previous blogs on this topic. Cool insights in past entries.

Knowing now that this isn't true, I still find it easiest to relate to God by bringing him problems and/or by asking him to guide me into specific works for him. I don't know how to relate to him by just enjoying him and letting him delight in me. I have a close friend who really grasps God's love. If she doesn't understand his love or see his love on a given day, it shows. She really needs it to survive and to thrive. She knows what it is to know God's intimate love for her. So when she doesn't know/believe/trust it, she feels deprived and her day isn't "right". She knows something is off.

God is teaching me about his love for me. That he doesn't want me to come to him just for "marching orders" for how to deal with this or that. That he wants me to accept his love. I read a commentary on the Gospel of John and it spoke of how Judas was served by Jesus just as the other disciples were. Jesus washed his feet but he remained unclean. Jesus fed him the bread, but when he took it "Satan entered him". This commentator (Koester) said that Judas's issue lied in not accepting Jesus' love. Wow. That's a sobering thought.

God is teaching me how to accept his love. How to trust it, really. I have a deep love for God. But I often struggle to believe that He cares for me. So long as I "press right through", "tough it out", and take "marching orders", I can continue to serve and demonstrate my love for God without truly accepting or understanding his love for me. So God has not given me anything I can run forward with. In this season right now he is not telling me what I want to hear. He's not telling me how to serve, how to do this, how to deal with that. He's not letting me aggressively root up all these struggles I have.

He's been calling me to rest. He's given me images and words for what this season in my life is about right now. And it's about "playing" with God, resting with him, and coming away with him. This is all the intro to my actual blog.
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I was watching a movie the other day. It's winter break and I finally get to see movies I've been meaning to see since the summer. So I rented Super 8. I love the movie Stand By Me and I heard this one was similar. I still prefer Stand By Me, but Super 8 was pretty good.

I have been having a hard time hearing God lately. But out of the blue the main character Joe said a line that resounded. I knew God was speaking to me, reminding me of how he sees me. Any other time, the line would have been really amazing, but only within the context of the movie, not at all in relation to me. When I heard it, I almost began to cry. Not beca
use of what was happening to Joe. But because of what Joe's words revealed to me about how God and I relate. Now that I've built sufficient suspense, here's the line:

She used to look at me... this way, like really look... and I just knew I was there... that I existed.


God reminded me that when he looks at me, he really looks. He sees me. His eyes level all the barriers I've put up. His eyes see past all the crap that the world heaps onto me. His eyes shine through the lies I've believed to reveal what is true about me. In that moment, when I see him seeing me... I know. I know that I am here. That I exist. Not I as I perceive myself to be. But the I I am in God's eyes, which is the truest me there is. I exist because he sees me, and because I know he sees me, I can exist as I truly am.

Is that too philosophical? Is it just making sense to me because it's what I needed to hear? Let me put it another way.

Last year I was praying, asking God which people of the Bible I am like. I believe it was that very night that God gave me a dream. In my dream, someone told me that I am like Hagar and that there are five other people in the Bible who share my way of faith (I didn't find out who yet).

Excited that God answered my prayer, I turned to Genesis to read about Hagar. And I was deeply offended. Here's the basic premise. Hagar was Abram and Sarai's slave. She was an Egyptian. She didn't share their ethnicity and almost definitely did not share their monotheistic beliefs in the True God.

Abram and Sarai had been promised by God that they would have many descendants (even though they were well past child-bearing ages). They started to doubt, and Sarai urged Abram, "Look, just have a baby with Hagar." She didn't have to tell him twice! So Hagar became pregnant. Now Sarai got jealous and felt like Hagar was being cruel to her since she had become pregnant. She freaked out and talked to Abe. He just said, "Deal with her how you will." And Sarai treated her so badly that Hagar ran away.

Hagar got to a spring in the desert and an "Angel of the Lord" (which in the Old Testament means
God's very presence) came to her and spoke to her, telling her to go back to Sarai and Abram. He gave her a blessing and also made a blessing/promise/covenant with the unborn child. He even said, "You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery."

She then names God as a result of her encounter with him. Genesis 16:13 says, "She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me."

I thought to myself, "It's a cool story, God. But I'm still kinda offended. I mean, Hagar? What did she ever do that got you to see her?" With a patient response, he responded, "Nothing." I stopped short and asked, "What?!" He replied, "She didn't do anything to make me see her. I just saw her."

In an unexpected way, God overturned my entire way of thinking. I get caught up in the idea that I do things to make God see me. Some people think God turns away when they do things that aren't so good, since he supposedly can't bear to look on sin (which is untrue, by the way; it's a powerful lie the enemy uses against us, though). I tend to fall more on the side of the other false belief that God doesn't really see me unless I'm fighting for his attention. That he doesn't see me unless I'm willing to do the list of tasks he gives me. And all-too-often I think that once he "gives me a task", that I'm on my own and that I can only meet back up with him once it's completed.

In this comparison, God reminded me, No. No. He doesn't see me because of anything I do or don't do. Hagar didn't know God! She probably worshiped other gods! But God saw her and cared for her. In Genesis 21, another incident happens with Sarai and Hagar, and again Hagar ends up in a desert, but not near a spring this time. She was convinced that she and her little boy (who is a child at this point) would die. Ishmael cried and God
heard him. He spoke to Hagar and formed a well of water for them to drink. He proved to be the One That Sees yet again.

Just like Joe in Super 8... It takes Hagar knowing that God is looking at her, that he really sees her, to know that she exists. For me, to know that I exist as God looks at me is to exist wholly within his love. Existence without God's love is empty. Sure, other people looked at Joe. But only his mom could really see him in a way that affirmed the truth about the essence of who he was. Other things and other people may see me and make me feel understood. But existing in God's love, knowing his eyes and his gaze... That affirms the truth about the essence of me as I learn the truth and essence about God. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I'm glad God spoke to me through that movie. He's been surprising me by sneak-attacking me with little spurts of understanding of his love when I'm not looking for it. I love my God so much.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

"The man who told me everything I ever did".

Anytime I used to read or hear the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 I was always disturbed. Jesus seemed either cool and removed, or cruel and haughty, in my reading of it. There's a *lot* going on in this narrative that I would love to talk about, but in this blog I want to focus on one narrow aspect. Or two and how they relate. Cool?

Ok. So basically Jesus talks to a Samaritan woman at the well and mysteriously talks about Living Water. She doesn't really understand what he's saying but asks him for some anyways. He talks it up pretty good; it must be worth a shot. He tells her to summon her husband, to which she replies that she has none. He replies back, "No. You're right. You've had five husbands and the guy you are with now isn't your husband."

She affirms that he is right and that he must be a prophet. Then they go into a tangetial conversation about religion and whether the Jews and right or the Samaritans are right. Cool, cool stuff going on here, but not what this blog is about. Maybe another one. Eventually Jesus admits he's the Messiah and she goes off into the village telling everyone, "Come see the man who told me everything I ever did! Could he be the Messiah?"

The story disturbed me on many levels. It was always weird to me that Jesus called her out like that. She tried to dodge an awkward situation of explaining about the man she is living with by telling him, "Oh, I don't have a husband." And he calls her out. Straight up. No, Missy, you ain't dodging that bullet! Does it sting?

As a kid/teen/young adult, I always read that and felt that it was so unnecessary the way he did that. If that was me, I'd have been all kinds of defensive. Or offended. Or legitimately just freaked out. But she responds, "Oh. You must be a prophet." Knowing that he has special insight from God, she seeks his wisdom on the topic of worship. Astounding. And later she uses the story of him knowing all about her as a reason why he could be the Messiah. She doesn't keep it quiet (though her own story is involved and could be at stake), but tells the whole village! How unexpected!

Detour: Most people who grew up in the church have a serious problem understanding God/Jesus. They see God as the "bad cop" and Jesus as the "good cop". I always had the opposite problem. A real love for God and a real fear of Jesus. He was so unpredictable and so harsh in his judgments and words. Or that's how I'd always thought of him. That's the lens through which I always read this narrative.

But I had a crazy realization today in a very profound way. It unfolds like this: Jesus wasn't speaking to the woman to convict her. Unlike with other people he encounters (even in this gospel), he does not say to her, "Go and sin no more!" He doesn't address the issue more than just showing her that God revealed her situation to him. A prophet, as she called him, does not speak on his own, but speaks the words of God and the insights of God. The fact that he spoke of her story indicates that God himself saw and knew her intimately. The wonder she must have felt at knowing that she had captured the attention of the Almighty!

She was spoken to in a way that elicited trust and belief, not condemnation, defensiveness or fear. She responds not by explaining her situation, nor by ending the conversation and walking away. Knowing that she is known by God, she asks this wise prophet how to worship God truly. She opened herself to a vulnerable position knowing that he could, and probably would, say that her worship was false. As a Jew, of course she expected him to say that Jews were right, the end.

But he turns everything on its head. Jesus does not say that her worship is untrue. Only that she worships who she doesn't know. Ironically, God knows her, but she does not truly know him. The Jews, on the other hand, know God. But soon, he claims that the specifics of where to worship will no longer matter, because God will make it so that people could worship all over "in Spirit and in Truth". In a sense, that the Jews knew God more than the Samaritans did, but that both still had a lot more to learn as Christ himself was revealed (and God revealed through him).

She says that she knows of the Messiah and he tells her that he himself is the Messiah. At this the woman leaves her jar at the well and runs off to the town to talk about him and invite others to see him.

I had always read Jesus as brash and cruel, calling her out as a sinner/liar and telling her that her religion is wrong. I had always misread Jesus. This new insight makes this whole narrative make more sense. Pushing it even further, the understanding of this second half of her encounter even makes the first half make more sense.

This is a woman who has faced hardships. She was either involved in a life of sin or had many husbands pass away. Or both. She was hardened towards the very idea of a Jew talking to her, unwilling to interact with Jesus until she got the record straight about why he would even want to talk to her. But he saw her need for Living Water. He saw the thirst in her that could not be quenched. At first glance it seems like this conversation is never resolved. But we find that it is resolved throughout the text when Jesus talks about worshiping "in Spirit and Truth" (God doing a new thing in worship which, we readers find out, is actually through Christ), and when he reveals that he is the Messiah. He is the Living Water.

This is the God who sees us and knows "everything we've ever done" and tells us where we've been, who we are in Truth, and how to worship in Truth that we too would truly know God and worship who we know.

How amazing that God knows us but just wants us to know him. Ultimately, Jesus came to reveal to the world who God is. Later in the same gospel (John 14), Jesus and one of his disciples have this exchange:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

This is the God who desires to be known so fully that he came in flesh to a world that did not know him, though he created it, so that it could know him and his immense love and so it could have life. That is what Jesus was showing the woman at the well in Samaria. That what Jesus shows and offers us today. The reality of knowing God.