A gospel that has as its chief message avoiding h.e.l.l or not sinning will never be the full story.

A gospel that repeatedly, narrowly affirms and bolsters the "in-ness" of one group at the expense of the "out-ness" of another group will not be true to the story that includes "all things and people in heaven and on earth."

And then, third, the cross and resurrection are personal. This cosmic event has everything to do with how every single one of us lives every single day. It is a pattern, a rhythm, a practice, a reality rooted in the elemental realities of creation, extending to the very vitality of our soul.

When we say yes to G.o.d, when we open ourselves to Jesus's living, giving act on the cross, we enter in to a way of life. He is the source, the strength, the example, and the a.s.surance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires.

Jesus talks about death and rebirth constantly, his and ours. He calls us to let go, turn away, renounce, confess, repent, and leave behind the old ways. He talks of the life that will come from his own death, and he promises that life will flow to us in thousands of small ways as we die to our egos, our pride, our need to be right, our self-sufficiency, our rebellion, and our stubborn insistence that we deserve to get our way. When we cling with white knuckles to our sins and our hostility, we're like a tree that won't let its leaves go. There can't be a spring if we're still stuck in the fall.

Lose your life and find it, he says.

That's how the world works.

That how the soul works.

That's how life works when you're dying to live.

___________________.

Did Eminem stumble upon this truth?

Did he, somewhere in his addiction and despair and pain, hit bottom hard enough that something died-the old, the hard, that which could never bring life in the first place?

Did he stumble into that truth that's as old as the universe- that life comes through death?

Did he in some strange way die, and that's why he's back?

Is that why he wore a cross around his neck?

Because we all want new life.

We want to know that the last word hasn't been spoken, we want to know that the universe is on our side, we want to know on Friday that Sunday will eventually come.

That is why the cross continues to endure.

It's a reminder, a sign, a glimpse, an icon that allows us to tap into our deepest longings to be part of a new creation.

Because that's how the universe works.

That's what Jesus does.

Death and resurrection.

Old life for new life; one pa.s.ses away, the other comes.

Friday, then Sunday.

You die, and you're reborn.

It's like that.

Chapter 6.

There Are Rocks Everywhere About a year into my first job as a pastor, I met a man who told me that he used to stay up all night every night, smoking pot and drawing at his kitchen table until going to bed at dawn. On one of those nights just like any other he was all alone in his kitchen smoking his usual pot and drawing his usual drawings, when he became aware of the kitchen filling with an overwhelming presence of warmth and love. The power of this presence was so strong and forceful that he was unable to remain in his chair. Struck to the ground, lying prostrate on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night, he said that he knew without a doubt in that moment that it was G.o.d telling him that he is loved absolutely and unconditionally and that the only possible path for his life was to receive that love and become a follower of Jesus.

Which he did.

And his life was never the same again.

Now, there are some who hear a story like this and say, "Isn't it great how G.o.d works?" There are others, of a more mystical bent, who smile in a Zen-like way and say, "Well, the spirit does move in mysterious ways . . ." And then there are others, like me, whose first thought upon hearing a story like this one is: "Must have been some some weed." weed."

And then there are still others who would point out that the story is crazy and highlights how religion naturally draws the unstable, odd, and weak-minded among us, who claim to have experiences that then support their pathologies and dysfunction.

You turn the light on, you get all kinds of bugs.

The problem with his story, though, is that I've heard countless stories like it. Bizarre, strange, weird-unexplainable. And yet real.

For every one I dismiss, I hear ten that can't be as easily denied. Even in their kooky oddness they contain something strangely true.

Several years after hearing that story, I went to the hospital to visit a man who had survived a terrible accident at work. He'd been repairing the ceiling of a ma.s.sive warehouse, high up off the floor on a lift that had tipped, pinning him against one of the support beams. He was essentially crushed between the lift and the beam, with his feet dangling there, a hundred or so feet off the ground.

He told me that as he blacked out he saw a white light.

(Doesn't everybody? Come on, at least make up some details we haven't heard a thousand times!) He said that he knew instantly that the white light was powerfully good and right, but it produced in him a profound sense that he wasn't that good and right. That there were things in him that the light revealed, things he didn't want revealed, and so he kept repeating, as fast as he could get the words out, as if he couldn't help it, "Please forgive me, please forgive me, please forgive me, please forgive me," and then he came to, in the hospital.

What kind of universe are we living in?

Is it safe or dangerous?

Is there a force, an energy, a being calling out to us, in many languages, using a variety of methods and events, trying to get our attention?

Or are we alone in the world?

Should we dismiss those experiences that come out of nowhere, the love that creeps in, with no explanation, at the strangest times, the quiet grace that grabs hold of us in the middle of the night and a.s.sures us that we're going to be fine?

And what does any of this have to do with Jesus?

To answer that, another odd story.

This one is an old one, from early in the Bible, Exodus 17. Moses and the Israelites have left Egypt, and they're traveling from "place to place as the LORD commanded." commanded."

It's not going well. The Israelites are thirsty, they can't find water, and they're angry with Moses, demanding to know why he brought them out of Egypt only to make them and their children and livestock "die of thirst." Moses cries out to G.o.d, "What am I to do with these people?"

G.o.d tells him to strike a rock with his staff in front of all the people.

He does, and out of the rock comes . . .

water.

What an odd story.

What an odd rock.

The story goes on, telling us about their continuing journey, the obstacles in their way, G.o.d's patience with them, and Moses learning how hard it is to lead people and not lose your sanity in the process.

But the rock-we don't hear any more about the rock.

Until more than a thousand years later.

In a letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul refers to this story about this rock, saying that those who traveled out of Egypt "drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10).

That rock was . . . Christ? Jesus?

Jesus was the rock?

How is that? Christ is mentioned nowhere in the story. Moses strikes the rock, it provides water, and the people have something to drink.

Story over.

Paul, however, reads another story in the story, insisting that Christ was present in that moment, that Christ was providing the water they needed to survive-that Jesus was giving, quenching, sustaining.

Jesus was, he says, the rock.

According to Paul, Jesus was there.

Without anybody using his name.

Without anybody saying that it was him.

Without anybody acknowledging just what-or, more precisely, who-it was.

Paul's interpretation that Christ was present in the Exodus raises the question: Where else has Christ been present?

When else?

With who else?

How else?

Paul finds Jesus there, in that rock, because Paul finds Jesus everywhere.

To understand why, it's important to understand how the first Christians thought about the world.

___________________.

There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, zoe, the mystics call it "Spirit," and Obi-Wan called it "the Force." the mystics call it "Spirit," and Obi-Wan called it "the Force."

How does the sun give off that much energy and yet still regenerate itself at the same time?

How do bees know to take that pollen from that flower over there and put it over here in this one?

Why does my lawn have brown patches where I can't get the gra.s.s to grow, while five feet away gra.s.s grows through the cracks in the concrete in the driveway, gra.s.s much like the gra.s.s I wish would grow in those brown patches?

This energy, spark, and electricity that pulses through all of creation sustains it, fuels it, and keeps it going. Growing, evolving, reproducing, making more.

In many traditions, this energy is understood to be impersonal. Much like the Force in Star Wars, Star Wars, it has no name or face or personality. It's a.s.sumed to be indifferent to us. Our joy, meaning, and happiness are simply irrelevant. It does its thing; we do ours. it has no name or face or personality. It's a.s.sumed to be indifferent to us. Our joy, meaning, and happiness are simply irrelevant. It does its thing; we do ours.

This is not, however, how things are explained in the creation poem that begins the Bible. In this poem, the energy that gives life to everything is called the "Word of G.o.d," and it is for for us. us.

G.o.d speaks . . . and it happens.

G.o.d says it . . . and it comes into being.

Before, it's chaotic and empty and dark. But then G.o.d speaks into that dark disorder radiant, pulsating life with all of its wonder and diversity and creativity.

Order out of chaos.

Life and light out of darkness and emptiness.

Here's where the claims of the first Christians come in. They believed that at a specific moment in the history of the world, that life-giving "Word of G.o.d" took on flesh and blood. In Jesus, they affirmed, was that word, that divine divine life-giving energy that brought the universe into existence. The word that gave life to everything and continues to give life to everything, they insisted, had been revealed "in its fullness." life-giving energy that brought the universe into existence. The word that gave life to everything and continues to give life to everything, they insisted, had been revealed "in its fullness."

John begins his Gospel by claiming that through Jesus "all things were made." It's written in Hebrews 1 that Jesus is the one "through whom also [G.o.d] made the universe"; in Colossians 1, "He is before all things"; in Ephesians 4 he's "the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe"; and in 1 Corinthians 8 he's "Jesus Christ," the one "through whom all things came and through whom we live."

This is an astounding claim, and one that causes many to get off the bus at the nearest stop. Too out there, too mythic, premodern, or superst.i.tious to be taken seriously in our modern world. Haven't we evolved past such nonsense? G.o.d became a man?

It's a common protest, and it's understandable.

It is, at the same time, unavoidable.

It's the heart of the Jesus story.

If you find yourself checking out at this point, finding it hard to swallow the Jesus-as-divine part, remember that these are ultimately issues that ask what kind of universe we believe we're living in. Is it closed or open? Is it limited to what we can conceive of and understand, or are there realities beyond the human mind? Are we the ultimate orbiter of what can, and cannot, exist?

Or is the universe open, wondrous, unexpected, and far beyond anything we can comprehend?

Are you open or closed?

The insistence of the first Christians was that when you saw Jesus-the first-century Jewish rabbi who taught and healed and called disciples and challenged the authorities to the point of death-you were seeing the divine in skin and bones, the word word in flesh and blood. in flesh and blood.

Jesus, then, wasn't a new idea.

Jesus wasn't something G.o.d cooked up at the last minute to try to rescue us from what happened when we were given the freedom to truly make a mess of things.