MBCC Blog

Lent Meditation--Day Twenty Four

I've always had this thought in the back of my mind about the miracles of Jesus and maybe this gets by us, since we read about them over and over our whole lives, but think about this:

-Not only does the man in the example from the other day instantly have the ability to hear, but if he can speak clearly, does that mean that he also instantly knows how to form words and say them through his mouth?  And understand the answers through his new found hearing?  A child takes months and years to be able to speak clearly.  People with cochlear implants take years to use them well.

-A lame man is lowered through the roof of a crowded meeting place and is healed and told to pick up his mat and go home - which he does instantly.  Not only is his body given the ability to move, but the physical, neuromuscular ability to stand up, balance himself, bend down, pick up a mat, turn and work his way through a crowd of people and then pilot his way home.  Ask a college engineering team to do the same with a robot and they'll get back to you in a few years.

-A person with a shriveled hand is instantly given a normal hand.  A hand he can use, right then.  Try using a limb that has been in a cast for a while and tell me it's easy - it's not.  And we went into that cast with a completely usable limb; it was just 'out of commission' for a while.

-A blind son is given sight and is so completely healed that the religious officials that have to rule on his state of being can't seem to get it that he had always been blind and have to be convinced by his parents and friends.

And the list goes on!

Jesus' miracles are astoundingly miraculous because they are WAY more complex than even the unbelievable healing of an affliction - the results seem to be that people are more than restored to health, but catapulted to a state of being that then makes it hard to believe the afflictions were ever there.  They not only are healed, but have complete knowledge of how to use some part of their body many of them have NEVER used before!

And in our sinful state, we are likewise healed and propelled to a state of being that is so far from 'afflicted' and 'crippled' that the world stands around and needs convincing, blind to the facts of the miracle that brought us back to our heavenly Father.

Makes me cry to think about it.

Ben Vincent

Lent Meditations--Day Twenty Three

When I’m asked the question of “Who do you say that Jesus is?” I’m often
brought to the gospel according to Mark chapter 7. At the end of the chapter
there is this story of Jesus healing a man who was deaf. He pulls the man
aside, embraces him, and heals him.

I often imagine the life of this man in the gospel story. I imagine how he
must have felt so separated from the world around him. How he could see
people talking and laughing but he couldn’t even hear the jokes. Even the
times that he might have tried to speak and join in with the others, all
that came out were grunts and mumblings. Where there should have been noise,
there was only silence. Where there should’ve been joy, there was pain.

But Jesus is the one who changes all that. Jesus takes this man aside and
holds him close, like a mother with her sick child, and calls out for
healing. Jesus takes away the pain and replaces it with joy. He takes away
the shame and replaces it with confidence.

So today I say that Jesus is…an intentional incarnational healer.

Mark 7:31-36
    Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to
the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. There some
people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they
begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

    After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers
into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue.  He looked
up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means "Be
opened!").  At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened
and he began to speak plainly.

    Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the
more they kept talking about it.  People were overwhelmed with amazement.
"He has done everything well," they said. "He even makes the deaf hear and
the mute speak."

Nick Larson

Make Jesus Happy

As we here at MBCC continue our transition from "Me to We" we are introducing a new organizational tool called Stafftool. Stafftool was created by our very own Toby Sterrett (who you may know from his cute baby Paisley or him playing the drums in worship). It is an easy way for MBCC to herd all of you and manage our people, events, and communications in one location that is all online for easy access. MBCC is in the process of transitioning our entire contact information, groups, and event calendar off of Bruce's laptop and  into Stafftool so we need your help. If you would like to help us by maintaining your own information just email Nick [nick@missionbaycc.org] and he'll send you a login account (This would make Jesus very happy). This way the lowly interns don't have to manually enter everyone’s information and then help to maintain it when you all decide to change your email address. Also if you opt-into Stafftool then you can set your own profile of information including what you want to be available to other church members or only to staff.

If you were with us on Sunday and filled out "new" communication card that information is being entered into Stafftool. But you can still get an account (and remember that will make Jesus happy) by emailing Nick. Stafftool doesn't just help staff but also lets you look up other people’s information in the church (that way you can call Tammie to help baby-sit Simona). Plus with Stafftool we can now offer you a subscribe-able calendar that works both with google calendar and iCal [webcal://mbcc.stafftool.com/pub/events.ics]

So make Jesus Happy and sign up with Stafftool [nick@missionbaycc.org]

Lent Meditation--Day Twenty-Two

"Gradually it became obvious to me that God--the sacred, the holy, the numinous--was 'real.'  God was no longer a concept or article of belief, but had become an element of experience.

This transformation in my understanding of God began to affect my understanding of Jesus.  I now was able to see the centrality of God (or 'the Spirit' to say the same thing) in Jesus' own life.  I began to see Jesus as one whose spirituality--his experiential awareness of Spirit--was foundational for his life.  This perception became the vantage point for what I have since some t understand as the key truth about Jesus: that in addition to being deeply involved in the social world of the everyday, he as also grounded in the world of the Spirit."

Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time:The Historical Story of Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith. (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 15.

Lent Meditations--Day Twenty-One

"This is a glimpse of the Jesus whom I have met over the years on the terrain of my wounded self, the Christ of my interiority.  There is a beauty and enchantment about the Nazarene that draws me irresistibly to follow him.  He is the Pied Piper of my lonely heart. It is not the pious prattle to say that the only valid reason I can think of for living is Jesus Christ.  Paul puts it so well.  'There is only one Christ, and he is everything.' (Col. 3:11). 
     In order to be free to be faithful to this sacred man and his dream, to other and ourselves, we must be liberated from the damnable imprisonment of self-hatred, freed from the shackles of projectionism, perfectionism, moralism/legalism, and unhealthy guilt.  Freedom for fidelity demands freedom from enslavement.
     It's a tired cliche, a battered bumper sticker, an overused and often superficial slogan, but it's the truth of the gospel: Jesus is the answer.  Is there any price too exorbitant, any cost too extravagant to pay for the privilege of being able to make your own personal response to his haunting question: Who do you say that I am? 'I believe that nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... and I look on everything else as rubbish if only I can have Christ."

Brennan Manning from A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self-Hatred (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 49-50.

Lent Meditation--Day Twenty

"Jesus Christ puts confidence in me. 
He must enjoy the learning process.

                              

              mistakes must not scare Him.
He is not threatened by all we must go through
     to grow in His Name."

Ann Kiemel, in "theology" from I Love the Word Impossible (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1971) pg. 48.

To know that Jesus has confidence in me when I cannot even see to put a foot forward, yet have to keep walking into the dark
To know that Jesus will still love me when I fall is to have a sustaining, trusting faith.

This is the kind of confidence, the kind of faith that I hope, pray and practice for.

Abby King Kaiser

Lent Meditation--Day Eighteen

I'm not much of a pray-er.  I tend to be more of a complainer.  If you know me, you might know that I'm especially adept at complaining about MUNI.  When the T-Line first started running last April, the folks who answer the phones at 3-1-1 knew me by name.  In any event, it is perhaps part of my nature that I don't spend my mornings doing devotions and I pray at night only rarely.  After all, I spend the rest of my day griping which crowds out time to praise God, thank God for anything, much less pray for anything.

Last Friday, for the first time in a long while I found myself in a state of almost constant prayer.  I was observing a hearing for a client I care very much about and unjust and aggravating things were happening right under my nose.  I couldn't say anything to complain or object and I felt completely impotent.

What could I do?  Finally, I realized I could pray.  I just kept repeating phrases from hymns and trying to pray for strength for my client and compassion and wisdom from the commissioners in charge. Although things at this hearing did not turn out the way I think they should have, I left with a greater sense of peace than I would have thought possible. 

Reflecting on this experience today, a co-worker shared the following verse with me:

If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. - Ecclesiastes 5:8

My fighting spirit causes me to see injustice in a lot of places and I get pretty worked up about it a lot of the time.  Typically, my anger gets me nowhere.  (Especially with MUNI.)  Recognizing the simple truth in this verse, that everyone answers to someone higher than themselves - ultimately God - provided me with some much needed perspective.  Even when advocacy fails and no one seems to be listening for the truth, greater things are at play.

So, "Who do you say I am?"  An advocate who listens and understands.

Katina B. Miner

Lent Meditation--Day Seventeen

Who do I say Christ is?

Home.

A place I can always return to, where I will be welcomed with open arms. 

I'm not proud of the number of times I've forgotten the fact that Jesus is my home. I'm even less proud of the number of times I've blatantly refused to acknowledge that fact by believing that other things were better suited to be my home. But every time I re-realize the truth of what Christ is and turn back to him, broken and exhausted and ashamed, he lets me back in. No matter what.

And it's not that Jesus just reluctantly comes to the door when we return to him, peering at us suspiciously through the peephole. He runs from the back of the house, he jumps over the coffee table instead of walking around it, he flings open the door, and he actually welcomes us in, with bells on.

I'm awed by this every time it happens. It's pretty unbelievable, this unconditional love, these second, and third, and millionth chances. I don't deserve any of it, and I'm more thankful than I know how to express.

The truth is, the only thing that keeps me from Christ is my own unwillingness to acknowledge what he really is -- my home.

"And I'll trade being your spine with another one who thinks that he can keep your bones aligned, and I'll watch until he finds that I'm your home. You will come home; you will come home." - Page France, "Spine"

Megan Dunchak

Lent Meditation--Day Sixteen

I used to own a car. I used to deal with road rage. I mean, I can go
on and on about how people in California cannot drive. But I
shouldn't. I've given that up for Lent.

Now that I am a pedestrian, in the truest sense of the word, I find
myself with strange pockets of time. I walk to the bus stop, I walk to
the back of the bus, to the MUNI trains and then to my work place. I
have always been a bit spacey when I am in the midst of travel. I
don't like to talk in moving vehicles. I stare out the window instead,
watching people busily going somewhere, kids standing around doing
nothing, homeless sitting on steps, chinese grandmas collecting cans
out of garbage cans, delivery men hauling packages, students mobbing
at street corners, stressed commuters, and  other really ordinary
people doing really ordinary things.

God, Christ, Jesus, the Lord, Father, whatever you want to call him,
to me he has always been "that guy who is always looking out for me."
It's always been a very casual, everyday relationship between us.
Whenever I need a chat, I talk to Him, a quick, "hey, how are you
doing?" usually quiet moments in the week.  And lately I have found
myself filling the odd pockets of time thinking about His relationship
with people, mainly the people I have been watching while walking and
while riding the bus. What do these people think about, do they every
stand back and see themselves in the midst of this crazy city, or are
they lost in the shuffle? I mean, God must be pretty busy if he is
looking out for me as well as everyone else. But He must be in all
those people's lives, working little things in and making sure stuff
gets done. And that kind of amazes me.

No matter what all those ordinary people do, God is watching out for
them, through their commutes, their struggles, their small joys and
sorrows, and hardships. Whether they see Him or not, life goes on. I
just think how lucky I am to know that He is there and that things
always happen just the way He wants it to happen for me. I just have
to go along for the ride.

Debbie Yoon

Highlights from MBCC 2.0

One of the things that I appreciate about MBCC is that all this techno/geeky stuff is not just HOW we do church, but for many at MBCC it IS how we exist.  People from other churches see blogging, social networking, etc. see all of this as a luxury rather than a reality.  Sure, there will always be a spectrum of peoples interaction and comfort levels with all of this, but at least here, no one thinks it is weird.

So to help grease the interaction machine that is MBCC 2.0, periodically I will give a few highlights from places I have seen MBCC'ers hanging out from Blogs to Facebook to . . . we're everywhere ;-)

And oh yeah, I will only include names if it is obvious on the selected profile.

R. blogs over at TwoSmall Coins . . .

Back in October, 2007, I began this experiment. I set aside $10. Each time I encountered someone on the street who asked for money, I gave him a dollar. I didn’t like giving to beggars. And my hypothesis was that I’d feel happier about giving towards the end of this experience.
Find out what happened . . .

J. has pictures of himself here, but be sure to subscribe to Postings from Misfit Island if you want to feel like a smart PhD student time in Italy without actually have to deal with visas or be able to think real good.

I should really get down to studying Italian, but frankly, I feel like doing other things instead, and I’ve never been good at studying from the fetal position. Or while lying down dead. Just kidding. Mostly. Sort of. About the dead part, anyway. At this rate, I’ll probably break down and buy the 60€ guitar I saw in the store window the other day so I can sit at home and teach myself to sing the blues.

Then there is L. is over here at We Are Never Being Boring where you get a little of everything flavored with wit and flare.  Bonus: one of the best blog category lists ever.

I’ve been completely remiss in grammar posts lately. Let me fix that.
The following excerpt is from an email written to me by the fine folks at Seller’s Market, who have bad judgment the best intentions:  [READ ON]

MBCC just got a new YELP REVIEW from Mark R.  Thanks for helping to keep MBCC at the top of the Religious Organizations page.

From the second you walk into this place, you immediately feel comfortable and right at home.  Although this place does have pews to sit on, the majority of the furniture is couches and tables.  Plus, there is a welcome table in the back that has coffee and snacks for everyone, and, yes, its free! :-) [READ ON]

Enjoy!