Be wary of blogs written after midnight, but here goes…

The poetic and the prophetic are related and the prophetic is best conveyed by poetry.

The Old Testament prophets were all poets to one degree or another and nearly all Hebrew prophecy is poetic in nature. Prose is the vehicle for inert information; but poetry is the magic carpet of prophetic imagination. Prose is the precise tool for telling what is; poetry is the mystical means of imagining what could be. Prose is the small room of fixed reality; poetry unlocks the door to infinite possibility.

The poetic and the prophetic are related.

This is certainly true with the book of Revelation. Approach John’s mysterious Patmos poem, not as you would a German theologian’s exegesis of Romans, but as you would a T.S. Elliot poem. Don’t “interpret” Revelation (we both know you’ll get it wrong), but hop on the magic carpet of poetry and let it take you for a wild ride and just see if you don’t come back different.

Here’s a new thought: The apostolic is related to the apocalyptic. The apostle operates from a motive of eschatology and not expediency.

(Mysticism trumps pragmaticism.)

Did I say Trump?

That reminds me…

American consumer Christianity has thought the Gospel is best communicated as a kind of business plan or investment prospectus; thus, deplorable books like, Jesus CEO.

But the Gospel is not a prospectus, it is a story.
And poets are the best storytellers.

You could tell the Gospel in the form of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but never as Donald Trump’s, How To Get Rich.

What am I saying? At least this: We shouldn’t try to turn prophets into corporate executives or imagine apostles as politicians!

But I digress…

Back to the poetic and the prophetic.

At the risk of sounding as though I’m being trite (I am not!), let me identify the essential element of happiness: It is HOPE. Hope by its very nature is prophetic. And prophetic hope is always best imparted through poetry. Hope is the magic carpet of prophetic imagination.

Walter Brueggemann says this in his book The Prophetic Imagination:

“The task of prophetic imagination and ministry is to bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know why they are there. Hope, on the one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question. Those who would be prophetic will need to embrace that absurd practice and that subversive activity. Hope is the primary prophetic idiom not because of the general dynamic of history or because of the signs of the times but because the prophet speaks to a people who are God’s people.”

Rock on, Brueggemann!

Eugene Peterson in The Contemplative Pastor says this about the poetic pastor:

The Apocalyptic pastor is a poet. St. John was the first major poet of the Christian church. He used words in new ways, making (poetes in Greek is maker) truth right before our eyes. The way a pastor uses the language is a critical element in the work. The Christian gospel is rooted in language: God spoke a creation into being; our Savior was the Word made flesh. The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information, but to make a relationship, shape beauty, form truth. This is St. John’s work; it is every pastor’s work.

Words making truth, not just conveying it: liturgy and story and song and prayer are the work of pastors who are poets.

I can’t tell you how happy it made me to read that from Eugene Peterson. It affirmed and vividly expressed some things I have intuitively believed about the nature of preaching. It encourages me to trust my instinct to be far less prosaic and far more poetic/prophetic. Poetry is the language of passion.

One more quote on the poetic and prophetic imagination. This is from Alison Morgan and her brilliant book The Wild Gospel (this hard to get book is now available in Solomon’s Porch!):

“Everything Jesus said and did pointed to a new reality. He came not with a manifesto of political reform, but with a new concept of kingdom. He came not with a new ethic, but with a new vision. The Sermon on the Mount makes sense only if we see it as a poetic text, as the prophetic imagining of an alternative world; for the kingdom of God is within before it is without, and must be looked for as inner reality before it can take shape as outer reality.”

The primary purpose of poetry is for the prophetic imagining of an alternative world: The Kingdom of God!

The poetic and the prophetic are related.

And Jesus is the greatest poet of all.

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemists, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy of that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Finally shall come the Poet.

Maranatha!

BZ

Transcendent

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ,
Act like it and seek the transcendent realities,
Where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your thoughts on transcendent realities,
Don’t only think about things here on the earth.

Your old life is dead.
Your new life, which is your real life,
(even though invisible to spectators)
Is with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is your real life, is revealed to the whole world,
Then you also will be revealed, the real you, the glorious you.

Subversive

Therefore, put to death the sinful and base things lurking within you:
Sexual promiscuity
Impurity
Lust
Shameful desire
The idolatry of greed

Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming.
You used to do them when your life was still part of this world.
But now you must put them all away.

Get these things out of your mouth:
Anger
Rage
Meanness
Blasphemy
Foul language

Don’t lie to one another — you’re done with that old self,
And have put on the new self,
Which is continually being renewed in a true knowledge
According to the image of its Creator.

In this new life it doesn’t matter if you are:
Jewish or Gentile
Circumcised or Uncircumcised
Sophisticated or Unsophisticated
Backward and Uneducated
Poor or Rich
Christ is what counts — all and in all.

(Paraphrase of Colossians 3:1-11 adapted from NKJV, NASB, NIV, RSV, ESV, NLT, The Message and Thayer’s Greek Definitions)

Transcendent and Subversive
Overcoming with the risen Christ.
Undermining the fallen world order.

I was praying in the Upper Room last week, praying through the Five Words.
I had this thought:

CROSS = a costly Christianity
MYSTERY = a mystical Christianity
ECLECTIC = a rich Christianity
COMMUNITY = a shared Christianity

But when I came to the fifth word, REVOLUTION, I was stumped for a moment. So I prayed, “What is revolutionary Christianity?” Immediately this shot into my mind:

REVOLUTION = a subversive Christianity

subversion: the attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or system by people working from within.

So is Christianity a subversive Kingdom?

Absolutely!

Jesus said:

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” (Matthew 13:33)

G.K. Chesterton said it this way:

“Christianity, even when watered down, is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world.” (Orthodoxy, The Eternal Revolution)

First John the Baptist, then Jesus, came making this startling and subversive announcement: God’s Kingdom is now invading the world! Jesus made it clear that this kingdom would upset the established order of the old kingdoms. If you really hear what Jesus was saying in its historical and cultural context, you will realize that Jesus was not uttering harmless pious platitudes, but what he was saying was incendiary, revolutionary and subversive. When Jesus said things like, many who are first will be last, and the last first, the Pharisees and Sadducees certainly understood this as undermining their power structure.

In his death, burial and resurrection, Jesus formed the new kingdom, the new covenant, the new Israel and the new humanity. In time, this new world that Jesus had formed would turn the old world upside down.

When the Apostle Paul began to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom in the Gentile world it was like a spearhead being thrust into the heart of the Roman Empire. After a few centuries the entire Empire had been undermined by the subversive message of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Authentic Christianity has always been a subversive threat to the Babylon of the established fallen world order.

Accommodating Christianity has always been an accomplice to Babylon; serving as a chaplain to the culture of the fallen world order.

Authentic Christianity is a danger. A danger to any system established upon the values of Babylon.

Accommodating Christianity is a whore. A whore selling religious favors for the price of public approval.

I refuse to be a chaplain to the culture of the fallen world order.

I refuse to be an accomplice in the deception called “the American dream.”

I refuse to be a priest offering peace offerings on the altar of the status quo.

I am a dangerous Christian. I am a subversive.

I believe the kingdoms of this world are doomed to destruction.

I believe the kingdoms of this world will be replaced by the Kingdom of Christ.

I believe that Kingdom is already at work, undermining the foundations of Babylon.

Alison Morgan in her brilliant book, The Wild Gospel, says:

“We stand, in the church, at the end of a long process of accommodation in which we have unconsciously sought to harmonize the gospel with the assumptions of our culture, a culture which in abandoning the quest for absolute truth has embraced a new set of values — rationalistic, materialistic, technological, and reductionist. The effect has been that we have gradually turned the gospel from something subversive and life-changing to something tamed, packaged and institutionalized; from something expressed in words of power to something conveyed, if it is conveyed at all, in words of information.”

The fallen world order of the decedent West is governed by three things:
MONEY, SEX and SELF (to put it positively)
GREED, LUST and PRIDE (to put it negatively)

I am actively at work to undermine these three pillars of Babylon. Not by protest or political means (those are not the methods of a subversive), but by influencing people to transfer their loyalty from Babylon to the New Jerusalem. When a person really does transfer their loyalty to the New Jerusalem, the controlling characteristics of greed, lust and pride lose their hold upon the person and they become a counterculture Kingdom subversive. This is how the world is turned upside down!

Mysticism and subversion go together.

Mysticism is seeking the transcendent realities of the risen Christ and the resurrected life.

Subversion is adopting the values of the New Jerusalem which undermines the demonic trinity of Babylon: Greed, lust and pride.

We must be both culturally aware and counterculture. Immersed in the culture as the yeast in the dough but distinct from it. Only in this way can we transform our culture.

Be transcendent and subversive!

Be mystical and revolutionary!

BZ

Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, “This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem.”

PS

What I’m reading:

The Wild Gospel: Bringing Truth to Life by Alison Morgan

Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life by Adrian House
(Thank you, dinosaurs!)

I’m working on my Friday night message:

More On Mysticism:
“Pulling Back The Curtain”
Mark 1:9-11

I thought I would share the introduction with you:

Heaven and earth is the primary division within creation (Genesis 1:1). The heavens are not a distant place within the material universe, but a different dimension. Heaven and Earth are not far apart, but near to one another, overlapping and even intersecting. Some places seem to become a point of common intersection. Ancient Celtic Christians called these “thin places.” A thin place is a sacred space that has become an interface between God’s space and our space. In one sense, the ultimate thin place is the human being. If earth is the domain of animals and heaven the domain of angels, then man, as a hybrid being comprised of both the clay from which he was formed and the spirit which God breathed into him, is suited for both heaven and earth.

But since the Fall man has been primarily confined to the earth, living as little more than a sophisticated, intelligent bipedal animal, or seeking to gain illegal entry into the heavenly realm through occult means. The Garden of Eden can be looked upon as the place where man was at home in both heaven and earth — enjoying the garden and walking with the Gardener. But with the Fall, the way to the garden was lost (Genesis 3:24). Fallen man, whether he understands it or not, pines for a return to the garden. But, sadly, human attempts to recover the lost garden always end in either disappointment (consider the arts) or tragedy (consider Communism).

But what man could not recover on his own, God recovered for us. Through the mystery of the Incarnation and the triumph of the Resurrection Jesus Christ has again opened the way to the garden. Consider the implications of these Easter events: The risen Christ first appears in a garden. He moves easily between dimensions, appearing physically in a locked room without going through the door (He is the door!). He breathes upon His disciples to confer the life of new creation even as the Gardener had done in the beginning. The first Easter was the eighth day of the new beginning, the first day of the new creation; it marked the dawn of the true new age and the recovery of the lost garden.

To walk again with God in the garden is the great desire of humanity and might properly be called the mystical aspect of Christianity (Christian mysticism being defined as the philosophy and practice of a direct experience with God). Christian mysticism is what will save our soul from the madness of the age — the frenzied life of technological tyranny — and enable us to again walk with the Gardener in His garden far from the madding crowd. But to do this we must learn the open secrets of Christian mysticism and put into practice the spiritual disciplines that enable us to part the curtain and step beyond the veil.

George Macdonald
(1824 – 1905)
Scottish author and poet

Ronald McDonald
(1963 – present)
Clown spokesperson for American fast-food chain

I like McDonald’s. I always have. An Egg McMuffin with coffee is common breakfast fare and I do indulge in the occasional Big Mac. McDonald’s: The Great American Success Story. Hamburgers made quick, easy and cheap. A great idea. That being said, I don’t want Ronald McDonald to be my spiritual adviser. Of course you say, who would? Those looking for quick, easy and cheap spirituality, that’s who.

Ronald McDonald is the iconic image of the fast-food culture; the high priest of that which is quick, easy and cheap and capable of being mass produced…all with a smile. That may be fine for hamburgers but it’s no way to make Christians.

If Christian spirituality is simply a set of religious rules and a kind of success seminar, then I suppose you can order it from the dollar menu. But if Christian spirituality is a direct experience with God in Jesus Christ, then I am absolutely certain it cannot be mass produced or obtained quick, easy and cheap.

There are no drive-up windows for a mystical experience.

It’s the madness of modern life that creates a hunger for the mystical. But hunger alone will not produce a mystical experience. We have to slow down, retreat to the quiet place and seek God in the secret place. We can’t just want a mystical experience like we want a hamburger and expect to have it. Ezekiel saw a wheel in a wheel and all we see are golden arches.

George Macdonald.

He was strange. Something of a mystic. A Christian poet and writer. Macdonald had enormous influence on C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis said that he was first led away from atheism when he read Macdonald’s Phantastes. Lewis even made Macdonald the guide who leads him though heaven and away from hell in his spiritual fantasy, The Great Divorce. As a literary critic, Lewis did not regard Macdonald as a great writer, saying, “Few of his novels are good and none is very good.” But Lewis also said, “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself!”

Sometime back I read Macdonald’s Lilith. It’s one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. I’m not sure I understood all of it or agreed with all of it or even understood it well enough to know whether I agreed with it or not. But it stuck with me. Especially this exchange between Mr. Vane and Mr. Raven:

Mr. Raven: This is the way.

Mr. Vane: I am quite content where I am.

Mr. Raven: You think so, but you are not. Come along.

I feel like a few years ago Jesus came to me as Mr. Raven.

The other day a friend sent me this Macdonald quote regarding miracles:

“The miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of His Father, wrought small and swift that we may take them in.”
—Unspoken Sermons, The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity

Calming the sea is no more miraculous than the existence of the sea itself. Calming the sea is simply a small and swift work that we can more easily perceive as a miracle.

Another friend asked me this question: “How does what we are calling the mystical correlate with the prophetic? Intersession? Moving and leading of the Spirit? — you know all of those so called Charismatic things?”

Prophecy, intercession, being led by the Spirit, etc., are the mystical aspects of Christianity. I believe in the charismatic more than ever. It’s the Charismatic that I’m not so sure about. I believe in the charisma (gifts) of the Spirit more than ever but I’m afraid much of the Charismatic movement has become a vaudeville. “Miracles” made quick, easy and cheap. The McDonaldization of the miraculous. Reverend Ronald McDonald as a healing evangelist. I’m convinced the vaudevillian aspect of Charismatic Christianity is not a demonstration of faith, but just the opposite: It betrays an underlying unbelief — a doubt that any of it is real. And if it’s not real…well, we might as well fake it.

But I believe in the mystical, supernatural, charismatic aspects of Christianity! I believe in angels, miracles, healing, deliverance and prophecy; I believe in dreams and visions, in signs and wonders, in the gifts of the Spirit. I believe in mystical spirituality more than ever! I also believe these experiences cannot be had quick, easy and cheap. But if we are willing to seek an authentic spirituality, we can find the door to a mystical world like Mr. Vane found in his library (and yes, it’s very much like the professor’s wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia and, no doubt, it’s where Lewis got the idea).

This world is not conclusion. A sequel stands beyond. –Emily Dickinson

Another thought:

It’s not: A leap of faith.

It is: A leap to faith.

Contrary to popular opinion, Soren Kierkegaard never spoke of a leap of faith, but of a leap to faith. Is there a difference? Yes. A leap of faith implies that you must have faith before you act. A leap to faith implies that one has made a decision to believe. There is an emphasis on volition.

A leap of faith is circular: You must believe to believe.

A leap to faith is linear: You choose to believe.

We are commanded to believe because we are capable of a choice to believe; we are capable of a leap to faith.

A leap to faith is necessary if we are to change.

A leap to faith is necessary to experience the mystical.

Go for it.

BZ

Bonus material:

This is my desktop image: Marc Chagall’s Three Angels.

I recommend Chagall’s beautiful and mystical art.

God has various ways by which He can lead a person and it seems as though I am frequently led by what I read. I take reading seriously and would even say that in recent years I have read myself into a new place. Eclectic Christian reading has taken me from the cramped quarters of a Charismatic niche, to the expansive vistas that belong to the whole Body of Christ. I think the writers who have influenced me the most over the last few years would be…

Saint Augustine
G.K. Chesterton
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Soren Kierkegaard
C.S. Lewis
Dallas Willard
N.T. Wright

Lately I’ve been thinking about Christian mysticism: The philosophy and practice of a direct experience with God (cf. my previous blog and my message of the same title from Friday, March 23). And it’s more than just thinking about it; I feel like I am being drawn (pushed?) toward Christian mysticism as the antidote for two soul-destroying maladies pervasive in 21st century America: Secular materialism and Christian pragmatism (and I do believe that the latter is in large part fed by the former). These thoughts on Christian mysticism seem to open a door of escape from the insane asylum that is the madness of this age. As I said in my previous blog:

“We are being driven mad by our harried, hurried, frantic, frenzied lives. And people instinctively know we were not meant to live this way…We long for the mystical experiences that are nurtured in silence and solitude. In the technological madness of the ubiquitous television, radio, cell phone, internet, Blackberry and iPod there is a means of communication that is not technological — it is communication with God; it is mystical. I’m convinced that a return to Christian mysticism is essential if we want to save our soul — not from hell in eternity, but from the madness of this present age.”

These thoughts about Christian mysticism came from nothing I had read, but seemed to bubble up from deep within me. But then I read something. I wrote my blog on Christian Mysticism on Thursday, March 22. I preached my message on Christian Mysticism on Friday, March 23. The following Sunday afternoon I was flying to Denver to preach that night. On my way out the door I looked at my pile of “Books To Be Read” — I picked two: a big one and a small one. The big one was Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writers Life by Geir Kjetsaa and the small one was Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton (which, by the way, Christianity Today calls “one of the top ten Christian books of the 20th century”).

While flying to Denver I was reading the second chapter of Orthodoxy (The Maniac) and I encountered this sentence: The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. I grabbed my moleskin notebook to write down this quote and when I opened it, the last thing I had written was: We live in an age of madness and mysticism is the cure. Whoa! Coincidence or Godincidence? I finished the chapter and then read it again. Then I made some notes on that chapter. Here are my notes on “The Maniac” from Orthodoxy. They won’t necessarily make complete sense, out of context as they are, but I think you will get the general drift.

MYSTICISM vs. MANIA

Mysticism is the philosophy of sanity.

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad; but creative artists very seldom…Poetry is sane because it floats easily on the infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion…The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

Great care and concern for detail causes madness. If the madman could become careless, he would become sane.

The mind of the madman revolves in a small circle of reason — his circle of logic is infinite, but small.

A man cannot think himself out of this mental evil. He can only be saved from this mental evil by will or faith (a leap to faith).

“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of today) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also…He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.”

“Another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing…that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name.”

Yes! Yes! Yes!

As an emailer said to me last week: GO MYSTICS!

It’s Holy Week. Be a mystic. Enter into holy mysteries. Walk with Jesus through the redemptive events of Palm Sunday through Easter. Sit with Jesus in the Upper Room. Try to stay awake at Gethsemane…an angel will come. Enter into the sacred mystery of the Cross. Let the “Gardener” speak to you in the Garden of New Creation. Have your own Emmaus Road encounter with the risen Christ.

May you live in the sanity of holy mystery.

BZ

PS

While writing this blog, Peri handed me this book:

Heaven on Earth: Capturing Jonathan Edwards’ Vision of Living in Between
by Stephen J. Nichols

Interesting.

At the beginning of this blog I said, Eclectic Christian reading has taken me from the cramped quarters of a Charismatic niche, to the expansive vistas that belong to the whole Body of Christ. And, These thoughts on Christian mysticism seem to open a door of escape from the insane asylum that is the madness of this age.

Now look at the cover of this book: Here.

That’s what I’m talking about.

The heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.

-The Prophet Ezekiel by the river Chebar (Ezekiel 1:1)

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.

-The Apostle John on the island of Patmos (Revelation 1:10)

I want to make the case for Christian Mysticism.

(And already somebody is freaked out. Mysticism?! Isn’t that Eastern religion or occultism or something like that?! No.)

Christian mysticism is simply the philosophy and practice of a direct experience with God.

The Encyclopedia Britannica begins its article on Christian Mysticism with these words: “Christian mysticism refers to the human being’s direct experience with ultimate reality, understood as God within the context of the Christian faith.”

Christian mysticism is the subjective, spiritual experiences a Christian has with the living God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Things like prayer, worship, hearing God, being led by the Spirit, spiritual impressions, divine revelations, dreams and visions, praying in tongues, etc. In effect, Christian mysticism can be summed up as the spiritual experience of the Christian life. Along with the practical, ethical and hermeneutical aspects of Christianity, there is the spiritual aspect. This is the realm of Christian mysticism.

The post Enlightenment world of modernity has generally looked askance at all things mystical, assuming that empiricism and scientific rationalism are the only acceptable epistemology (theory of knowledge) in the modern world and that revelation and mysticism can be dismissed as hallucination and self-delusion. But such an epistemology is incompatible with Christianity. At the core of Christianity is an implicit belief in the reality of the mystical. The realities of prayer, worship, revelation, prophecy and the inspiration of scripture are contingent upon mystical experiences.

Furthermore, in the postmodern world of today increasingly few people have blind faith in the ability of empiricism and scientific rationalism to explain all reality. Postmodernism is a mixed bag, but on the upside is the space postmodernism gives to human hunger for the spiritual and mystical. Something I’ve noticed is that postmodernism isn’t always postmodern…sometimes it’s actually premodern; i.e. a return to a pre-Enlightenment epistemology, which is the epistemology of the Bible.

The Bible is in no way nervous about mysticism, but is replete with accounts of mystical experiences. Think about the divine encounters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; consider Joseph’s dreams, Moses at the burning bush, the oracles of the prophets, the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel, the revelations of Paul and John. The Bible itself is the result of mystical impressions. And ultimately all conversions are mystical in nature. What is a conversion but a personal encounter with Jesus Christ? And this by definition is a mystical experience.

The Christian church has a long history of mysticism and mystics. Some of the more famous Christian mystics are Saint Anthony, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Thomas a Kempis, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Brother Lawrence, Blaise Pascal, George Fox, Madame Guyon, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Watchman Nee, Thomas Merton and A.W. Tozer. Tozer, a solid evangelical by all counts, compiled The Christian Book of Mystical Verse, an anthology of poems in the Christian mystical tradition.

Are there dangers inherent in Christian mysticism. Certainly. But there are also safeguards; primarily the church and the scriptures. No Christian can claim a mystical experience which in anyway contradicts the revelation of scripture and every mystical experience must be subordinate to the spiritual counsel and authority of the local church.

While there may be dangers with Christian mysticism, I don’t believe it to be any more dangerous than Christian pragmatism. And this lies at the heart of why we need an infusion of Christian mysticism in the American evangelical church. In our American compulsion to make all things practical and pragmatic, we are in danger of reducing God to a tool; making Him a means to an end. The vast majority of what passes for preaching and teaching in the American evangelical church is purely pragmatic. We have a glut of “how to” books and sermons. How to have a better life, a better marriage, a better job; how to have wisdom, success and prosperity. In and of themselves these teachings are fine, and the Bible does have much to say about these topics–but, when it becomes the totality of our message, we have domesticated God to something “useful.” We are not so much interested in God, as in what God can be used to do. God is made a tool. A means to some other end.

And this is the very thing we must not do! Our purpose, meaning and happiness are found in our relationship with God Himself and for Himself. We desperately need a serious shift from the pragmatic to the romantic; from the practical to the mystical. To know God Himself for Himself is the great goal and privilege of existence. Any other object made an end in itself will ultimately disappoint. God is the only perpetual novelty in the universe. Only the Holy Trinity has the capacity to eternally fascinate the soul of man. It is obvious that the etymology of mysticism implies a relationship with mystery. To explore the eternal mystery of the Holy Trinity is the great quest of every Christian mystic. This being so, you were meant to be a mystic exploring the great mystery of God through your own experience.

We live in an age of madness. Thomas Hardy wrote the famous novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. Hardy took the title for his novel from a poem by Thomas Gray…

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Well, good for them, but we are not far from the madding crowd. We live right in the thick of it! We are being driven mad by our harried, hurried, frantic, frenzied lives. And people instinctively know we were not meant to live this way. This may explain why there is a growing counterculture fascination among young evangelicals with monasticism and why books with titles like The Way of St. Benedict and How To Be a Monastic and Not Leave Your Day Job have become surprising bestsellers. We long for the mystical experiences that are nurtured in silence and solitude. In the technological madness of the ubiquitous television, radio, cell phone, internet, Blackberry and iPod there is a means of communication that is not technological–it is communication with God…it is mystical. I’m convinced that a return to Christian mysticism is essential if we want to save our soul–not from hell in eternity, but from the madness of this present age.

Let me encourage you to begin to employ some of the disciplines of Christian mysticism, especially between now and Easter. Disciplines like prayer and fasting, silence and solitude, contemplation and meditation. Contemplate deeply upon the events of Holy Week–from the Triumphal Entry of Palm Sunday through the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. I believe you will find this to be a doorway to experiences in God which you have always longed for.

I urge you to begin the process of becoming the kind of Christian the western world desperately needs: A fully engaged, culturally relevant, 21st century Christian mystic.

BZ

I did something today I’ve never done before. I wrote a fairytale. I call it The Gardener. I hope you like it.

The Gardener

Once upon time there was gardener. For six days he worked planting a garden. It was a good garden full of spices and everything nice. On the sixth day, it was a Friday, the gardener made a clay man and a clay woman. Then the gardener breathed into his clay man and woman and they came to life. When the gardener was finished with his work on that Friday, he looked at all he had made — his garden and his clay couple — and he said it was good. On the next day, Saturday, the gardener rested from all of his work.

For a while the gardener and his living clay couple lived happily in the garden of spices. But one day a snake crawled into the garden and that’s when things began to go bad…real bad. The snake was a talking snake and it told lies to the living clay couple — lies about the garden and the gardener. The living clay couple listened to the lies of the snake and disobeyed the good gardener. That’s when the clay man and woman died on the inside. Because of this the clay couple had to leave the garden. This made them sad.

Ages went by and the clay man and woman had millions of clay children. Even though these clay children could walk and talk, they were dead on the inside.

Then the gardener did something wonderful. He made another clay man, a clay man who had the gardener’s own breath on the inside of him. This was the gardener’s own son, the gardener made of clay. The son of the gardener did many good things and made life better for everyone around him.

But one day evil clay people hung the gardener’s son on a tree. It was a Friday. At the end of the day the gardener’s son cried out from the tree, “It is finished.” Then the breath left him and he died. Friends of the gardener’s son buried him in a tomb in a garden and filled the tomb with spices. On the next day, Saturday, the gardener’s son rested in the garden tomb among the spices.

Then came Sunday morning. The first day of a new week. It turned out to be the first day of a new age. Because early that morning the breath of the gardener came back into the gardener’s son and he got up and left the tomb. When one of the friends of the gardener’s son came to the tomb in the morning, she found the tomb empty. This surprised her. Then she bumped into the gardener’s son and thought he was the gardener. When she found out what had happened, that the gardener’s son was alive again, she ran off to tell her friends.

Later that day, it was a Sunday, remember, the gardener’s son came to where a bunch of his friends were. Then he breathed on them just like the gardener had done with the first clay couple a long, long time ago. When he did this the clay people came to life on the inside. This made them very happy.

The gardener’s son then told his friends to go tell all the other clay people how they could come alive on the inside. The gardener’s son also promised to make a new garden even better than the old garden. He told his clay friends that when the new garden was finished, they would all live happily ever after.

The End.

I got the idea for my fairytale from some other books I’ve been reading. One of them is called The Book of Beginnings (the first three chapters). The other one is called John’s Good News (the last three chapters).

BZ

PS

Until the Gardener’s Son breathes on you, you’re a dead man.

So, the Dylan-song-of-the-day is…

Dead Man, Dead Man

Uttering idle words from a reprobate mind,
Clinging to strange promises, dying on the vine,
Never bein’ able to separate the good from the bad,
Ooh, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it,
It’s makin’ me feel so sad.

Dead man, dead man,
When will you arise?
Cobwebs in your mind,
Dust upon your eyes.

One more P.S.

I’ve been eating macadamia nuts today. The responsible Hawaiian knows who he is.

Thank you!

I’m continuing to study the writings of N.T. Wright. Three books in particular…

The New Testament and the People of God

Jesus and the Victory of God

The Resurrection of the Son of God

(About 2,500 pages of serious theology.)

This morning my brain exploded and I wrote down some thoughts (in my eligible scrawl).

Peri offered to type them up for me (if I dictated them to her). Here they are…

KING JESUS
Election and Eschatology

In defending the deity of Christ, some have erred in the opposite direction, imagining a sort of superhuman Jesus who was not really human at all. The superhuman Jesus strides through the world wearing a halo and being God all over the place. This Jesus is not concerned about shaping the world, but escaping the world. The message of the superhuman Jesus is about how to escape this dreadful world and go off to live forever with the angels in a different place altogether.

This is not the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Jesus of the Gospels is fully God and fully human. The unvarnished Jesus of Scripture eats and drinks, gets weary and hungry, toils and sleeps, weeps and becomes angry and experiences the full range of human emotion. This is the Jesus who is one of us. This Jesus is intensely and primarily interested in transforming this world through the ushering in of the Kingdom of God.

But the superhuman, otherworldly Jesus, whose message is all about escaping to a spiritual world, is actually a reworking of Gnosticism — the first century heresy of secret knowledge and a non-human Jesus. Gnosticism has made a surprising comeback in popular culture evidenced in things like the New Age Movement, The Da Vinci Code, and the so-called Gospel of Judas; but neo-Gnosticism is also manifested in otherwise orthodox Christianity when we make Jesus and His Kingdom almost entirely otherworldly.

I’m not interested in the fairy tale Jesus of neo-Gnosticism, who only seems to be human and whose only real interest is getting people out of this world and into heaven. I am interested in the real unvarnished Jesus of the New Testament who is the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed King and rightful ruler of the world and whose agenda is to establish the Kingdom of God and thereby make right a world gone wrong.

What did Jesus mean when he announced the arrival of the kingdom of heaven?

To understand this we first we need to understand that the kingdom of heaven is not, as our culture has taught us, a Kingdom in heaven where Christians go when they die, but rather the rule of heaven on earth. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”The sphere of the rule of the Kingdom of heaven is the earth.

To understand what Jesus meant in announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God we must understand two things which Jesus believed about Israel.

1. Israel’s Election: Jesus believed that Creator God had chosen Israel to deal with the problems within His created world.

2. Israel’s Eschatology: Jesus believed that salvation and justice would come to the nations through Israel’s history reaching a prophetic zenith.

(Jesus believed that the purposes of Israel’s election and eschatology were accomplished in Himself.)

But the expectation of the Jewish people of the first century was very different from what Jesus intended. In Jesus’ day, Israel had endured centuries of pagan domination — first in exile, then by occupation. Their hope for the Kingdom of God (which they would have identified as the nation of Israel) was not a spiritual hope but a political nationalistic hope. The universal belief of the first century Jews was that the Kingdom of God would come through the restoration of the national glory of Israel.

Devout first century Jews, including John the Baptist and Jesus’ disciples, believed that the Kingdom of God would come through the political (and presumably militant) overthrow of their pagan oppressors (the Romans). This was their conception of the mission of Messiah, the King of the Jews.

As the Jews waited for the Kingdom to come, they belonged basically to four persuasions.

1. The Moralists — the Pharisees and their “take back Israel for God” movement.

2. The Zealots — who wanted to take up the sword and violently overthrow the Romans.

3. The Compromisers — The Sadducees and Herodians who collaborated with and adopted the values of the Gentiles.

4. The Separatists — Like the Essenes who escaped into the wilderness in order to create the Kingdom of God separate from the wider world.

But when Jesus came on the scene, He defied all of these Messianic expectations.

* Jesus was not a moralist. He ate and drank with sinners.

* Jesus was not a zealot. He taught His disciples to turn the other cheek.

* Jesus was not a compromiser. He called people to repent of their sins.

* Jesus was not a separatist. He was fully engaged with the surrounding culture.

An interesting and important aside…

Throughout history the church has been tempted to model the Kingdom of God after one or more of these four misguided models.

* To become moralizing judgmental Pharisees.

* To become militant crusaders advancing Christianity by the sword.

* To become compromisers, giving only lip service to the Kingdom of God.

* To become dualists, who separate the Kingdom from the world.

When Jesus came, though He claimed to be bringing the Kingdom of God as the fulfillment of all the oracles of the Jewish prophets and the hopes of the Jewish people, He embraced none of these models and endorsed none of these movements. Jesus was not a moralist, a zealot, a compromiser or a separatist. What Jesus did was something entirely new and different. Through prayer and searching the Scriptures, He discovered a different and true Kingdom model. Jesus believed that the Kingdom of heaven through which God would bring salvation and justice to the world was being unveiled and established through His own presence and work. Jesus believed He was the King, and that the Kingdom would come through Him. This is why the Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it is good news and not merely good advice. Jesus was announcing news — the new thing that was happening.

Jesus wasn’t primarily a teacher as we think of it — Jesus was primarily a doer. He was healing, casting out demons, and welcoming sinners. Jesus used the parables to explain what He was doing; e.g., in the parable of the prodigal son Jesus was explaining what He was doing in receiving and forgiving sinners.

The election and eschatology of Israel find their prophetic fulfillment in Jesus — the King of the Jews.

Tuesday and Wednesday I will be preaching at Church in the Word in Elgin, Illinois (Chicagoland). Church in the Word has a cool Irish Pastor — Patrick Hoban. Here’s Pastor Hoban’s blog.

This Friday night I will be preaching on casting out demons.

I will also be interviewing our good friend Taysir abu Sada who is ministering in Gaza. Read about Tass’s Hope for Ishmael ministry here.

Don’t miss Friday night at Word of Life!

The tune going into my head as a close this blog: “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac. Good song.

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Yes!

Blessings,

BZ

I’m back from my 30,000 mile journey to and through Russia. 30,000 miles in 13 days. I was in motion most of the time. Three nights on planes, one night on a train and one night stuck in an airport. It was a good trip. Word of Life TV is now carried daily throughout Russia and this has given me tremendous open doors all over the country. I ministered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Khabarovsk and Ulan Ude. I’ll post some pictures at the end of the blog, but here is my e-sermon for today.

Christ the Savior

We ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. -John 4:42

During our time in Russia we were in Moscow on four different occasions. On the third time we had a few hours between ministering in a church and a flight to Ulan Ude. Our hosts hired a guide to take us to the airport so that we could see a few more sights and gain some historical knowledge from someone thoroughly versed in the history of Moscow. This is when I heard the story of Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Construction of the original Cathedral began in 1839 and was completed over a period of 40 years. With the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin sought to implement the Communist ideology of Karl Marx. One of the primary tenets of Marxism is that there is no reality other than material reality and thus all spirituality is a fiction. But the irony is that Communism is itself a religion — a religion which replaces God with the State. In 1931, in a highly symbolic act of destruction, Joseph Stalin ordered the destruction of Christ the Savior Cathedral. On December 5, 1931, Christ the Savior Cathedral was dynamited and reduced to ruins.

Stalin’s plan was to replace Christ the Savior Cathedral with the Palace of the Soviets. This new “temple” was intended to become the tallest structure in the world, eclipsing the Empire State Building in New York, but the foundations turned out to be too unstable to support this new tower of Babel. What a powerful metaphor! The site was eventually turned into a swimming pool(!).

Of course, not only were the foundations of Stalin’s intended Palace of the Soviets unstable, but the foundations of Marxism itself were unstable. And after barely seventy years, Soviet Communism collapsed.

In 1995 construction of the new Christ the Savior Cathedral was begun and completed in 2000.

Today Christ the Savior Cathedral presides over Moscow as powerful testimony to the truth of the Gospel.

Jesus is Christ the Savior! Jesus is Lord!

Peri and me in front of Christ the Savior Cathedral.

An interesting side note: Many of you know that after the death of Lenin, Lenin’s body was preserved in the Lenin Mausoleum at Red Square. The Communists adopted the saying, Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin lives forever. A pretty lame attempt to mimic the resurrection of Christ. The truth is Lenin is dead. To make the claim Lenin lives, Lenin has to do what Jesus did and get up and walk out of his mausoleum! Jesus walked our of His tomb after three days. Lenin has been in his tomb for 83 years.

There is a movement in Russia right now to remove Lenin’s body from Red Square and bury it. In St. Petersburg I met a pastor who is organizing a rally at Red Square scheduled for July 7 (7-7-7) in which thousands of Christians will assemble for prayer with their backs turned to the Lenin Mausoleum. The removal of Lenin’s body from Red Square would be a powerful symbolic gesture and spiritual act akin to the removal of the idolatrous high places in ancient Israel.

Now some photos from the trip.

1. Conference in Khabarovsk

2. Some of the Khabarovsk crowd

3. With my interpreter and good friend Dmitri “Paul” Poliakoff.

4. Preaching

5. The Khabarovsk worship team

6. The conference speakers in Khabarovsk
L-R: Yuri (the host pastor), BZ, Sergei (a well-known Russian evangelist), Dmitri.

7. In front of some ice sculptures in Khabarovsk.

8. After spending all night in a Moscow airport
Along with Dmitri and me is my good friend of 17 years, Igor “Nikki” Nikitin. Igor is the Senior Bishop of the Association of Russian Churches with 600 churches across Russia. He is also the president of Trinity Television and the reason I am on TV across Russia.

9. Preaching in the Ulan Ude conference

10. Peri, Paul and me with the host pastor and his wife in Ulan Ude
The pastor and his wife are wonderful couple who converted to Christ from atheism just eight years ago.

11. BZ bootleg
I found this in the pastor’s study in Ulan Ude. He tapes my messages from the television.

12. Peri and me with Genghis Khan
Ulan Ude, on the Mongolian border, is the land Genghis Khan. His image is everywhere.

13. Visiting a Siberian village
Yes, it was cold.

14. My Russian voice
At the television studios in St. Petersburg I met the man who does my Russian voiceover for the television program. I have a way better voice in Russian than I do in English.

__________________________________________

Today I am four dozen. I don’t feel a day older than three dozen.

Blessings,

BZ