Getting to know Grace

Grace and Mom, 1994

In my earliest memories, I lived in a small bubble of Chinese families in a Southern town. But when I was eight, my parents went off the reservation, and we started attending a large, mostly white church. One lady that befriended us all in that lonely transition was Grace Mutzabaugh. As a child, I thought she was old as dirt with her deep criss-cross of wrinkles, but she would have been 60ish when we met. She loved games and at a time when I threw temper tantrums if I thought I were losing, she helped me stay the course through rounds of Parcheesi.

I remember in middle school, she returned from a trip to South America with a gift for me, a bird made out of animal horn. I remember liking the bird, but really marveling that she had thought of me while traveling.

When I was in high school, she tutored my mom in English. I don't remember anyone else spending time with my mom like that. They were dear friends, taking walks and praying together for many years.

Miss Mutzabaugh was the never-married founder of the National Institute of Learning Disabilities which worked closely with the church and Christian school I attended. She traveled to other countries to help missionary parents with learning disabled children have the skills to help their child and stay on the field. She was my example of a woman doing big things outside of home life. But more importantly, she embodied the Jesus-life and showed me what it was like to see people and not projects, to see people and not see labels and expectations.

But I was thick and even though I grew up in a Christian home, in a church, with Grace in my life, it wasn't until I got to college that I understood God's grace. Somewhere between the lovely community of believers I met and the books I read, it finally sank in that there was nothing I could do to make God love me more (and nothing I could do to make God love me less).

As a black-and-white perfectionist, this was revolutionary and deflating. I could not try harder, collect more achievements, do anything to increase the love of God for me. But the primary orientation of my life up to then had been precisely doing more, doing better. So once you can't do anything to earn God's love, what do you do? The doing is what is called discipleship, it's training to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18).

Some time after I left home, Grace developed Alzheimer's and had to be moved out of her house. Many of her books came to our house, and maybe a dozen or so are with me now. Looking over those titles, I got a glimpse of how this friend chose to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in a lifeling process of letting God be Lord over all that she was, heart, soul, mind, and strength.

What Grace chose to read, how far she chose to travel, or how she chose to love my family did not earn her a place a heaven. But these were part of an ongoing habit in her life to entrust herself to God. This is discipleship; this is what we do in grace; this is what it means to say yes to Jesus. We apply the strength we have to move in the direction of the will of God and trust in the power of the Holy Spirit for the rest.

Incredible opportunity

When I was finishing university and looking around for what to do next, my internet searching brought up a professor doing work that I thought was interesting. So I applied to his department, and they flew me out to visit. It was a fun visit and I enjoyed sitting in on his class and office hours, but I decided not to go to graduate school straight out of college.

In the end, I wanted to learn from him so much, I re-applied to the program, moved to a big city I didn't like, and took his crazy 4-8PM courses for years. At one point, I was sick of that city and sick of the lack of funding in the department and looked to transfer to another program in another city. But I couldn't find a researcher I'd rather work under. And so I stayed in that expensive, crowded city, in that poor department, but with that professor. For all his faults and the surrounding difficulties, being his student was an incredible opportunity.

 [Jesus] must be clearly seen as the most important thing in human life, and being his apprentice as the greatest opportunity any human being ever has. ~Dallas Willard, "How does the disciple live?"

Being a student of Jesus is the most incredible opportunity. It is inconceivable yet true that the one who is right about everything invites us to learn from him. This learning doesn't consist of long-distance, over-the-internet lectures. This learning is an in-the-flesh, moment-by-moment, intimately-near and out-of-love experience. And from it, we can learn what is good, true, and beautiful.

This is really good news. It is a damaging half-truth to focus on our eternal souls when what we really mean is that we want Jesus to get us into heaven after we die. Indeed, it's a logical fallacy because eternity includes now. The good news of the Bible is not about later. The good news is about now and forever.

What Jesus actually says in "Great Commission" is this (which I've broken up for emphasis):

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
~The good news according to Matthew, chapter 28, vs 17-20

There are many points to make here, but what I want to push back against is our Christian cultural emphasis on just going. "Go means Go" I've heard pastors preach. And that's great. I agree. But what's to happen when we arrive? Making disciples. Introducing people to the incredible opportunity of learning all that is good, true, and beautiful with and from the loving Creator God.

What are we to be about? What does being a disciple look like? We'll keep digging into that next week.



  

He is right about everything

For the next little bit, I'd like to reflect on this article called "How Does the Disciple Live?" by Dallas Willard. 

Willard starts off this way:

As Jesus’ disciple, I am his apprentice in kingdom living. I am learning from him how to lead my life in the Kingdom of the Heavens as he would lead my life if he were I. It is my faith in him that led me to become his disciple. My confidence in him simply means that I believe that he is right about everything: that all that he is and says shows what life is at its best, what it was intended by God to be. “In him was life and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4 NAS)

The idea of apprenticeship has fallen by the wayside. Perhaps if you're in the trades it might not have, but among the people I spend time with we don't talk about and don't know about apprenticeship. The best we get is Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But the idea is that a novice learns from an expert by spending time with and being under the direct instruction of an expert. 

Somehow in the Christian-ese I grew up in the word disciple and follower came up frequently, but this idea that Jesus is a life expert from whom I should learn how to live life did not. And this is true even though the word disciple finds its root in the Latin word for student, discipulus, -a. 

Willard pushes this idea even further writing, "...I believe that [Jesus] is right about everything." Honestly, that rubs me the wrong way. I know that he's God, creator of the universe, etc. etc. blah, blah, blah, but "right about everything" seems so inflexible, so hard nosed. 

But then I ran into this other quote:

When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian. ~ Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer.

The goal is not to become a Jewish carpenter from two thousand years ago. The goal is to learn His heart because that is and can only be right about everything.

Our church has been going through the 10 commandments which my small group went through only a few months before. (That, by the way, is a lot of 10 commandments.) Why would modern, new covenant, post-Jesus believers spend that much time with the 10 commandments? It's not to live a small, legalistic life. It's to live a large and enlarged life. The tagline for this sermon series is "Set free to live free".

Jesus, the expert on life, the creator and sustainer of life, is not just a savior for the down-the-road judgment day. He provides the pattern and instruction for how to live our right-now life. And far from being a ball and chain, the Jesus way is the best, and freest way to live.

Resting, Secured, Shielded

Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him,
for he shields him all day long,
and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.
Deuteronomy 33:12*

I've been savoring this verse this week. Over the weekend, we hosted some friends while they packed out their house for a big move. They did the literal heavy lifting (and cleaning, and sorting, and details), all we had to do was watch 5 kids under 5 (with help) and provide 3 square meals a day. I know why they were exhausted, but somehow we were too.

And then this verse.

Like lemonade on a hot summer day.

I think about all the uncertainty of a move and am comforted that in God our friends are secure and shielded. And then I think about how tired we all were by the end of the weekend and that image of resting between his shoulders is so powerful. There are many cultures that tie their babies on their backs up between the shoulders. How safe, how close, how restful.

I also notice that the beloved in this verse does nothing but rest. The Lord provides the security, the Lord does the shielding, the Lord does the loving. I think we fail to take that seriously to our detriment. We're afraid that if we rest in our loving God, something important isn't going to get done. We're not going to be secure or shielded if we don't do something. But this verse says differently.

While you're thinking about that, enjoy this trailer about beauty from unlikely places.

*Moses' blessing to the tribe of Benjamin, read the whole chapter for neat blessings given to the 12 tribes of Israel.