outcasts

“One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”-Exodus 2:11-12

“But Moses said to the LORD, ‘Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”-Exodus 4:10

moses was a murderer and had a speech impediment. yet when moses expressed his concerns over being chosen to lead God’s children out of slavery and into the land that God had promised abraham, isaac, and jacob, God simply told moses that He would teach him the words to say.

a few years ago i attended a disciple now where the theme was “may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi”. in the past couple of weeks, this phrase has become vitally important. in Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell explains what this phrase means. he says that in the time of Jesus, education for a Hebrew boy began around the age of 6, where boys would spend 4 years memorizing the Torah, or the first 5 books of what Christians know as the Old Testament. at the age of 10 you went one of two places: to the next stage of your education, or home to learn the family trade. if you went further in schooling, for the next 4 years you spent your time memorizing the rest of the books in the Bible: Genesis through Malachi. theses boys had memorized, verbatim, 39 books. but memorizing the Old Testament was not the only thing you did; you also learned the oral tradition surrounding all of the texts: what other rabbis said about every single verse. mountains upon mountains of information. at this point, only the best students remained. the next step was to find a rabbi to be a disciple to. if a student applied to a rabbi, the rabbi would grill them with questions, and if the student was found insufficient, then the rabbi would send the student home to start a life doing whatever his father had done. if, however, the student made the cut, then the rabbi would say “come, follow me”. being covered in the dust of your rabbi means that a disciple would follow anywhere and everywhere the rabbi went, hoping to learn everything the rabbi has to teach, and at the end of a long day walking through the dust, would literally be covered in the dust that the rabbi’s feet had kicked up.

“While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he [Jesus] saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, an I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”-Matthew 4:18-20

“And going on from there he saw two brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.”-Matthew 4:21-22

peter, andrew, james, and john were all fishermen when Jesus offered them the chance to follow him as his disciples. these boys had all been turned away from the higher levels of education, and had gone home to learn the trade of their fathers which was fishing. they didn’t make the cut. they weren’t smart enough, or Godly enough, etc. but Jesus saw them, and made them part of the core of his revolution. a movement that has changed the world, and has lasted for about 2,000 years.

a couple of weeks ago i played rockband for the first time. i sang maps by the yeah yeah yeahs. despite 14 years of choir experience, despite having sung in countless concerts and on national television, despite the fact that i was only singing in front of about 10 people at the time, as soon as i was done my hands were shaking and i had broken into an intense cold sweat. i have irrational stage fright. and yet this summer i aired my dirty laundry in front of hundreds of strangers. where is the logic in that?

time and time again, God has called the outcasts. this blows my mind.

“Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity…”-Hebrews 6:1

God calls us all to be teachers. anyone who has experienced the transformation that acceptance of the Gospel provides should be sharing that transformation with others. none of us are good enough, wise enough, Godly enough in our own eyes, but we have been trusted with this task and we need to stop running from it. we are the outcasts, and God has chosen us.

if we know that God chooses the outcasts, then that also means that none among the church should be made to feel like outcasts. you and i need to stop criticizing what so-and-so wore to church on Sunday. we need to look beyond who this person hung out with on saturday night. more importantly, none among our potential brothers and sisters should be made to feel like outcasts. what is on the surface should not be how we define other people. we all matter, regardless of our faults and insecurities. the so-called “alcoholic” who sits next to you in lab could be the next billy graham. the “slut” on the bus could be the next anne lamott. go beyond the elementary and continue on to maturity.

food

today was a very hard day. i cried a lot. but then i ate my emotions in the form of a cheeseburger the size of my face, had a very heated (and one-sided) conversation with satan in my car, listened to john mayer, and i feel SO MUCH BETTER.

i’m not advocating suffocating your emotions with food. but i’m not gonna lie, this one time, i couldn’t believe how effective it was! and i normally don’t talk out loud to satan either, but i was definitely feeling personally attacked, and despite the fact that i might be insane now, it was very therapeutic. i don’t think i have to explain why i listened to john mayer, or why it made me feel better. but now i’m ready for a brand new day. mmmmmm that cheeseburger was GOOD.

my favorite word

i really like words. big meaty words that i can sink my teeth into. supercilious. serendipity. immutable. propitiation. but i think my favorite word is fortuitous, an adjective that describes something as happening by a lucky chance. this might seem like an odd word for me to like so much, considering that i don’t believe in luck or chance. i know that there is a Guiding Hand to life, who is much too invested in what is going on to leave anything up to chance. i can’t explain this anomaly, but i feel like so much of this past weekend was fortuitous. i feel like so much of my life has been fortuitous. this weekend i spent time with two people that i don’t see on a regular basis, and the visits were so fruitful and beautiful that it just makes me start to think of how God must smile with indulgence and a tinge of sadness to see His children down here talking about luck and chance after we have experienced something holy and ordained.  i think that God must love to surprise us with little things like i experienced this weekend and watch as we think back in awe: i could never have orchestrated or even imagined the wonderful things that just happened.