How do We Remember?

A few months ago my wife and I made a dangerous move for travelholics- we visited the “vacation package” page on Priceline. Four days later we found ourselves aboard a plane to Washington D.C. for an extended weekend. This was our first time in the nation’s capitol and we were excited to explore the suffocating humidity that is D.C. in midsummer. We donned our scuba gear- ok, maybe it wasn’t quite that humid- and headed out for a couple of fun and exhausting days of sightseeing. We visited great sites like the National Air and Space Museum and U.S. Capitol, occasionally got on the wrong Metro train and ate at an authentic Lebanese restaurant (I’ll stick with my beloved Chipotle).

Washington has a way of making you feel small, if not unimportant. Everywhere we visited we overheard conversations about world affairs, politics, and the state of humanity- and those were just the conversations in English. And then there were the monuments, memorials, and museums. From larger-than-life statues of former presidents to walls, fountains, and plaques of wars from days gone by, it was easy to sense that this city commemorated an idea greater than any one person.

As I reflected on the different memorials that I had seen, I wondered what a memorial to Christ would have looked like. What would he want us to remember him by? I presented this questions to a recovery group that I lead worship for. I started by showing pictures of different monuments that we had visited. We played “name that monument” and they did surprisingly well. I thought I would at least make them flinch when I showed the Korean War Memorial, but alas they were not fazed. So then I posed the question, “What does Christ want us to remember him by?” Truth be told I was setting them up. I wanted to see if they would answer the same way that I had at first. They took the bait and responded, “the cross”.

Our culture is flooded with crosses. There are crosses made of gold, silver, wood, metal, rope, candy, plastic, glass, twigs, beads, nachos… all right, I haven’t ever seen a nacho cross, but you can imagine. There are crosses with Christ on them, crosses with flowers on them, crosses with signs on them, or crosses with nothing on them. Crosses are dangled from ears, hung around necks, or mounted atop steeples. I mention this to bring up the point that were it not for the seeming infatuation we have with the cross it would be a very foreign and strange object to us today. I don’t say this to diminish the power or incredible importance of the cross, but just to remind us of how unique it is.

I put a picture of bread and wine on the screen after the group had answered the cross. Immediately someone blurted out “communion”. Now we were getting somewhere. When Jesus told us how we should remember him he used very simple yet incredibly familiar objects: bread and wine. 1 Corinthians 11 recounts the Passover feast when Jesus broke bread and passed the cup of wine saying “Do this in remembrance of me”. It would seem from the words of Christ that this was a very significant, if not the most significant, way He wanted us to remember him.

In most churches that I have attended we usually celebrate communion about once a month. I have to question as a worship leader if this is really placing the proper importance on remembering Christ in the way that He instructed. Are we remembering through the bread and the wine or merely the cross alone? I’m not suggesting we should think less of the cross, but perhaps we should think more of communion. There is no culture I know of that does not have some form of “bread and wine” that they consume on a regular basis to meet their daily physical needs (I’ll avoid the whole alcohol debate and take the liberty of assuming that “wine” is any drink that nourishes the body). If we remembered Christ more frequently through the bread and wine wouldn’t it help bring clarity to the idea of living a life of worship every day? Wouldn’t the familiarity of the bread and wine help us remember how close Christ is in the day to day? This beautiful symbolism can be a fresh reminder of how simple and accessible our relationship with Christ is. And this simplicity can then point us to the complex and mysterious work that was done on the cross.

I hope to make it back to Washington someday, maybe with my own kids in tow (it sounds like the grown up thing to do). And if I do I’ll be sure to help them learn about and remember all of the influential people that have helped make this country, flaws and all, so wonderful. But more importantly, how will I help them remember Christ? Perhaps your church observes communion more frequently than once a month, or maybe they place a greater importance on communion when it is observed. But I think there are many followers of Christ today who could benefit from a reminder of how to remember.

The Brows

My wife was having a spa night for the girls that live with us the other night. We had some major unibrows going on so she broke out the wax and tweezers. You could say it was a minor deforestation project. It was quite entertaining to watch the faces of the girls as they were mildly shocked by the pain of the wax paper being ripped off their faces. My wife would ask them if they wanted to stop but they must have been spellbound by the idea of having shaped eyebrows. I've learned to stop questioning such desires. When you live with all females you come to accept that there are things you just can't understand as a man and it's best left that way. So we had the unibrow champion in the waxing chair... and then she underwent the miraculous change (timber!). As she was leaving the room she said, "Hey, now I'm a bi-brows!"

Getting old(er)...

So I was playing raquetball the other day and I felt that uncomfortable feeling in my lower back... again. Sure enough, within a couple of hours I couldn't stand straight and had the ice out. I can't even tell you exactly when it happened or what I did, I just know I did something. I was talking to a good friend the other night and he was lamenting a pulled groin after playing soccer. He was telling me that he had his old soccer bag with him from 1987. It then dawned on him that some of the students he was playing with weren't even born in 1987. I shared that I too feel very dated when I have kids move in to our home that were born in years like 1993 and 1996. 1993? I graduated from high school in 1993. Ugh.

Now I'm not saying that I think I'm over the hill or can't do certain things anymore. But I do have to be more careful about what I do and how I do it. The upside of this dilema is that there are still new and exciting things happening in my life. Like having our first child, for instance. I would not want that to have happened in 1993, but today I feel very ready to experience it. And, of course, as you get older you experience more freedom and opportunities in your life, which can be exciting as well. I think it is a challenge to find that balance of accepting that yes, I am getting older, but that does not mean that there won't be new and exciting experiences in my life (did I mention we were getting ready to have a baby?).

So today I press on through the annoying back pain and continue to look forward to the new experiences that will come my way.

This is Worship

If you haven't noticed, and you probably haven't, I changed the name of the blog to "This is Worship". The reason is pretty simple really. It's true that I love to worship and I love leading worship, so occasionally some of my posts will be about... worship (of the musical variety). But I really do believe that worship is a lifestyle and the act of worship is lived out day to day- as much in the mundane as in the profound. Hence the name change for the blog. It is about life and choices and meetings and meals and teaching and learning and, well, you get the idea. So it's my intention that everyhting posted on here is worship, in one form or another. I hope that you can see it as such and realize that all of your life can be worship as well.

I Wanted a Dad

She was probably one of the most timid kids I had ever interacted with. Often looking down when you talked to her, very soft-spoken, curly hair sitting on her head like a mop, you could tell she did not like having to answer the questions in the meeting. It was hard to believe that someone so shy could produce such extreme behaviors; running away, throwing objects at people, even threatening to kill herself. Then came the question that everyone was waiting for: “Why?”

What would cause a child who seems so meager to act in such an extreme way? What could have happened to push someone this far to make these choices? Often times the answer to this has to do with past abuse, a cry for attention, or that somehow the person has been wronged. And even though some of these reasons would have been valid for this child, that was not the answer she gave. Her answer? “I wanted a dad”.

The room fell silent. It must have been one of the most honest, heart-wrenching confessions I have ever heard. She wasn’t blaming anyone. She wasn’t trying to get out of anything. It was nothing more than the hurt of her heart laid bare. It brought her to tears, and it was all I could do to hold back the sting of tears in my eyes. And then came the weight of responsibility, hitting me as softly as an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the interstate.

Here’s the catch- for a few months I will have the responsibility of being “dad” to this child. My wife and I work as house parents for “at-risk” youth- whatever that means. Never mind that I have no children of my own yet, have never been without a father, and at times still feel like a child myself. I found myself wondering how I could possibly fill this hurt. How could I understand this pain and then role-model what a dad should look like?

And then something in me started to resonate with her statement, “I wanted a dad”. Even though I have always had a dad present in my life, and a good one at that, I still know what it feels like to want to be closer to my heavenly “dad”. I want to be closer because I still have those times when it seems like other things will satisfy me, things that I know are bad for me. I find myself running away from where I should be, throwing judgments on people, and threatening to kill myself spiritually by my poor choices.

As long as I have this flesh housing my soul, I will always be at odds with being apart from God. As much as I can know and experience Him here, there is still something in me that longs to physically be with him, to know him much closer than I do now. I am thankful to have the faith that I do, but there are times when I don’t want to rely on faith, but on my own senses, to experience God fully with all of my being.

I was reading through Psalm 63 the other day and was thoroughly impressed with David’s desire to know God. Phrases like “my whole body longs for you”, “your unfailing love is better than life itself”, and “I lie awake thinking of you” seemed to pierce through me. It wasn’t that I have never felt a desire for God like this, but that I give up these desires for lesser things when I don’t find them fulfilled on my timeline. And then I realize, with the gracefulness of discovering you have had a chunk of broccoli stuck in your front teeth for the last hour, that I’m not nearly as mature as I think I am.

Where will my story with this child end? Well, hopefully in a few months she will have experienced love and family and a father figure like she never has before. And as she matures and learns healthier ways to deal with her emotions, hopefully I too will mature and learn how to deal with my longing for God in a way that brings me closer to him. I know that I can never fulfill the role that she is looking for in an earthly father, but I can show her the love that has been shown to me. And through this love perhaps she will find, like the psalmist said, the one who places the lonely in families and is a Father to the fatherless.