Brandon Woosley

Stop Making Sense

On Sunday morning, we talked at St. Paul Church about how Chuck Colson after his prison conversion was an example of what 1 John 3:1 was talking about: The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. (1 John 3:1 ESV) The man who came out of prison didn’t look like the man who went in to prison, and rest of his life told a different story than the one that landed him in federal prison: it told the story of Jesus, the King who invites us into the family of God even while we are his enemies. The link below is to a piece talking more about how this changed life is being wrestled with in obituaries.

What is the story that your life is telling? Is it a story of self-service, or the story of Jesus?

Chuck Colson and the Conscience of a Hatchet-Man | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

What Only God Can Do

The Spirit of God showed up in our worship gatherings yesterday in a manner which I have seen occasionally, and which still always catches me by surprise.

Our focus in worship was celebrating the love of God, in particular through the lens of 1 John 3:1-3, which shows us how God’s love causes God to call people his children, and to make it so. We are made part of the fellowship (koinonia)of God and of Jesus the Son, which begins the process of changing us into something entirely beyond our imagination – the image of Jesus himself. We talked about the joy of being adopted by God into his family, and the way adoption is such a beautiful human way to emulate God. We even remembered the joyous adoption of a little girl into one of our families in the last two years.

But what I did not remember – until Tony and Cristina reminded me after worship – was that yesterday was the two-year anniversary of that blessed adoption of Alicia. Totally unplanned on my part.

We also talked about the power of God to set us free from the brokenness of the world in changing us into the image of his Son, which begins now but will be completed when we see Jesus:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2 ESV)

Celebrating being set free and changed also came up after the service, when Fred Stockmeier pointed out to me that yesterday was the 67th anniversary of the day he was set free from a prison camp near the end of the Second World War. Again, I had no idea – but the Holy Spirit of God knew what a perfect day this was to celebrate being set free, and to give thanks for being adopted into the family of God.

The most high-minded plans I ever make to try to craft worship with movements and coherence and thematic unity can’t hold a candle to the movement of God beneath it all, gathering us into this place together, young and old, to let the Word speak into our lives and bring us into his story.

May I never forget it.

Rescued From Life

Note: this is an adaptation of part of the preaching from our Easter worship gathering. Sorry, if I’m irritating you with recycled content. Oh, and if you want to see the entire worship celebration, with loads of music and celebration and lifting up Jesus, you can go here.

Jesus didn’t come, and live, and die, and rise, just to save you from hell.

He also did it to save you from an ordinary life.

It’s true. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” That’s Jesus, in John 10:10

He wasn’t talking about the future, about heaven. He was talking about right now, in this lifetime.

Because Jesus is the Risen King, and you can believe it and act on it, you can have a life that is above the ordinary.

What characterizes our ordinary lives from which Jesus sets us free?

Bondage to Sin. We church people talk about how people who don’t know Jesus are trapped in sin, but how many of us who have said we believe in Jesus still fall into the same traps again and again? Eventually, we might not even be bothered by our failings; we tell ourselves that “nobody’s perfect” and this is our personal proof. I’m just giving Jesus something to perfect at the end.

But Jesus wants you to be free. Do not doubt that. How will we be free from sin? Francis Chan illustrates the solution in a great way in his book Crazy Love: “Imagine going for a run while eating a box of Twinkies. Besides being self-defeating and side ache-inducing, it would also be near impossible – you would have to stop running in order to eat the Twinkies.

“In the same way, you have to stop loving and pursuing Christ in order to sin. “

If we know Jesus the Risen King, we can pursue him in love, and as we run to the one we love, we are free!

Ordinary lives are also Burdened by Circumstances. Jesus told us “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”. Some people come to Jesus hoping that the trouble in their lives will go away. But Jesus basically guarantees that even when we follow him – and maybe especially because we are following him – we will have trouble. But because Jesus is King, we know two things about our troubles.

First, Jesus will be a Righteous King, and will pay us back or reward us for our frustrations, our hardships, even our persecutions. In Luke 6, Jesus says “”Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven;” and Second, Jesus our King uses our trials to shape us into his image. As Paul put it in Romans 5, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Finally, ordinary lives are Beholden to Self; that is, we feel the need to create our own meaning, our own impact on the world, our own legacy and purpose. Sadly, even the most high-minded of these efforts are prone to devolving into self-centeredness and ego-maintenance. But in following Jesus the Risen King, we are invited to give ourselves to his purposes, and to enter into the greatest Story in the world, in which the Holy Spirit moves in us to enable people to see Jesus for who he is, and invite them into the community of his people, and love the people in the community so that they may be transformed and made whole by King Jesus. We get to enter into the Story of people made whole, and we ourselves are made whole as we let go of our agenda and accept Jesus’ agenda.

Set free, in all circumstances and situations, to be strengthened, healed, and made whole by Jesus and his family – that’s the way more than ordinary life that Jesus offers to you and me.

Why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that, today?

Beyond Aware

It’s World Autism Awareness Day. I have two sons with forms of Autism. At least one of their doctors along the way thinks I “could have been diagnosed”, if they were diagnosing Asperger’s Syndrome in the 1970’s.

I don’t feel like I really have anything to say, though.

Do you ever think about a segment of time and come to the conclusion that the segment of time seemed to have gone by very quickly, and yet in another way, very slowly? I feel that way sometimes about the 7 years that have gone by in which my family has had autism as part of our identity. I feel like I still know very little about autism, and yet I know a great deal more than I did then. What I did not know was how large the field of experience and understanding related to autism is: what I thought was a field (to use the same word a different way, which is endlessly amusing to some with autism, and endlessly irritating to others) is a prairie, far bigger than I ever imagined, and more diverse.

I know a lot about my kids. I understand Zach better than I used to, and am able to enter into life on his terms much more easily than when we started. I’ve always understood Josh much better – he and I are very much alike (and perhaps are on the same end of the spectrum, if we are there at all), and his reactions are often self-evident to me. However, this also means, increasingly as he gets older, that I am more frustrated with him when I see him doing less than he is capable of – especially if it is a way of failing that I, too, struggle with. I know this is common for parents of neuro-typical kids, and this is something we share.

What do I know about Autism, though? That’s less clear. I know Autism is real. I know Autism looks different in every person, but that after a while, you can recognize it pretty quickly. I know that Autism tends to dominate whatever relational space it inhabits, and it takes a lot of work for that not to be the case. I know that Autism requires the people who interact with it to be flexible. I know that people with Autism can be as smart, as funny, as kind, as athletic, as loving, as fragile, as human as anyone else.

And I know that Autism is not going away. So, while a day like World Autism Awareness Day is a quaint idea, if you live in America and aren’t aware of Autism by now, you’re probably every lawyer’s dream juror. It’s time to go past being aware of Autism, and on to figuring out how to integrate the people and families with Autism who are part of your social networks. They need it, and its likely that your life is going to be richer, if not neater and easier, for it.

The Old Man and the (2012) Season

My favorite baseball player for 2012 is going to be Jamie Moyer. In fact, for every remaining season of his career, Jamie Moyer is going to be my favorite player. What can I say, I love my Cubs prospects!

Jamie Moyer is coming back from Tommy John surgery (reconstruction of one of the ligaments of the elbow); he missed all of the 2011 season, but he has made the Colorado Rockies Roster, and is in their starting rotation.

Jamie Moyer is 49 years old. Jamie Moyer had elbow surgery to allow himself to continue pitching at the age of 48. The list of pitchers in all of major league history who even pitched at age 48 or older is 4: Satchel Paige, Hoyt Wilhelm, Jack Quinn, and Phil Niekro. That was Niekro’s final season, because he’s lazy, obviously. Wilhelm and Quinn each pitched as 49 year olds (25.1 and 15.2 innings, respectively), so if Moyer can make 5 or 6 starts, he should pass both of them for innings pitched at that age. Satchel Paige didn’t actually pitch between ages 47 and 57; he made a 3 inning comeback as a 58 year old. So Jamie Moyer is trying to have the first legitimate season by a pitcher at this age.

The list of hilarious facts about Jamie Moyer’s career can go on and on (most of these from my friends at Baseball Think Factory):

He was drafted, and made his major league debut, during the Reagan administration.

Jamie Moyer was born before the Second Vatican Council happened (to connect back to another recent post).

When Jamie Moyer was born, the Beatles were in their second month of getting used to their new drummer, Ringo Starr.

When Jamie Moyer made his major league debut, there were only 26 major league teams (now there are 30). Of those 26 teams, 20 of them have built new stadia during Moyer’s career.

Since the start of Jamie Moyer’s career, Roberto Alomar and Barry Larkin both made their debuts, played their entire careers, retired and were elected to the Hall of Fame.

Jamie Moyer made his major league debut on a Monday; the preceding weekend, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off opened in theaters.

One of Jamie Moyer’s first teammates was Chris Speier. Chris Speier has a son, Justin Speier, who has had a 12-year major league career and retired three years ago.

Jamie Moyer is old. But he is still a major league pitcher, and is 33 wins away from 300 for his career. I want to see him get there. That would make him the second of the Cubs 1984 draft picks to get to 300 wins (the first was this guy). In fact, other than those two guys, all of the other Cubs draft picks from that year played in a total of 243 major league games.

In summary: Jamie Moyer is old, and he still loves baseball, and I love him for that.