Grace Leftovers

Legalism creates a mentality of scarcity. Grace creates leftovers.

This weekend at VCC I taught from two Biblical narratives that seem connected to me - John 6 and the book of Ruth. In John, Jesus feeds the 5,000 (something they didn't necessarily deserve). The result of this act of grace is that everyone eats and lots of food is left over. In Ruth 2, Boaz calls Ruth over to have what could have been her first real meal in months. He has no legal, or even ethical, responsibility to do this. He's fulfilled the law by allowing her to glean in his field. He goes way beyond the law and gives her more food that she can eat. Once again, grace begets leftovers. Back to John 6.

The crowds find Jesus the next morning and ask to eat again. He responds with anger and a controversial teaching ("Eat my flesh. Drink my Blood.") He offers the Bread of Life that comes only by feasting on him. The crowds leave confused and only the twelve are left. He says that leftover food spoils, but evidently, left over Jesus does not spoil. Somewhere in all of this lies the depth of the eucharistic lifestyle. We feast on Jesus, whom Spurgeon once called Our Glorious Boaz. We gorge ourselves on God only to find that there's way more of Him to go around than we ever imagined. Experiencing grace creates a leftover ethos. What we commonly call evangelism may rightly flow from this too. The beggar who finds bread that never ends would logically share the excess with his beggar friends. Especially once the beggar learns, by feasting with constant leftovers, that scarcity is a myth in his new reality. We have no reason to horde God's love because it never ceases to be re-created and re-birthed in every moment. All we can really do is feast and invite others to share in the excess.

Ruth got much more than bread. She got Boaz. Then she had his babies. We get much more than fish and chips. We get Jesus, our Glorious Boaz, and with him we are invited to birth love and grace into the world.

John 6:10-13

Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. Jesus then took the (five) loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the (two) fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

Ruth 2:14

At mealtime Boaz said to Ruth, "Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar." When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over.

John 6:26-27

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

Off to Africa

Several of my friends from The Vineyard left a few hours ago for Nigeria. We've purchased a drilling rig to help provide jobs and clean drinking water there. You can follow thier progress at www.missionsvcc.blogspot.com.

The Road Not Taken

Sometimes when so much goes on in my life it becomes harder to know what to write about here. I'm prepping to talk about fearlessness and Ruth this weekend. I have been strangely drawn back to the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. I suppose it is rather famous, and maybe you all know it already. I'm intrigued by poetry. I really like people who really like poetry. I don't know if I really like poetry or not.

Few poems actaully inspire me to think deeply, but this one does. I feel like this poem is the story of my life.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I'm Busy - And I have a question

This week was a whirlwind. Lots of meetings about lots of things on the horizon. I have 9 teaching times scheduled over the next 6 weeks. Vineyard Midweek starts Jan. 30 and I'll be teaching a four week class in the auditorium about discipleship and following Jesus. It's a little more prep heavy than normal, so I've been thinking about that. I'm also up the next two weeks for the Fearless series talking about Ruth and Gideon. Tomorrow I lead a session for the Growth and Healing leadership team retreat and I'm looking forward to getting to know them a little better.

I've been sucked into the election coverage in my spare time. I have never been very political, at least not as "being political" is traditionally defined, but I find election years interesting in a reality-show kind of way. I told someone earlier this week that presidential elections are kind of like American Idol, except that people generally don't vote for presidents the way they do for Idol. I wasn't trying to make any statement, but it felt like I was in the moment. I find the whole process interesting and still rather confusing. If anyone can explain what a delegate really is and how in the world entire states (Michigan, Florida) can be stripped of their delegates for moving their primaries a month earlier, I'd love to hear that. While you are explaining it let me know why the states that lost their delegates are still the states that the most highly contested now - thanks.

I'm going to go read Ruth now and wait for someone smarter than me to read this and explain the election process. I know you're out there.

New Year Maniac

I generally have a huge manic burst of energy at the beginning of a new year. Sometimes I even write down personal goals or construct some brilliant essay that will change the world. This year has been a little different. I've felt spurts of excitement and mania, but nothing like I'd have over the last five years. I think it might be because I have a real job. Five years of freelancing and piecing together a living does things to a person. When I was in LA, and my last year or two in Vegas, the new year meant that people might be looking for somebody like me to hire for their project. January was a time to get new headshots, to send out hundreds of e-mails reminding every producer, casting agent and director you know that you still exist, showing up at your agent's office to be visible, enrolling in the next session of acting classes to network and improve, working out to lose the extra five pounds, and all the new year auditions for commercials and tv.

Maybe it was the burden of marketing a product that raised my energy... it's an even stranger burden when you are your own product. There were parts I loved and parts I hated. Last year I sent out 300 e-mails - 20 people e-mailed back to let me know that I was bothering them and to never email again. One emailed back with an audition. One emailed back with a job. The thing I loved about that life was the thing I hated about that life - every single day was an adventure - unknown - anything good or bad could happen at any moment. Every phone call could change my life. It was hard on me as a husband and father - hard to not really know if I could sustain a living for my family. But it was intoxicating as an adventurer. I miss it a lot. And I don't miss it at all.

There is plenty of adventure here after all. It's just largely pre-planned adventure. More or less I can tell you what adventurous things I'll be doing next week, next month or next year. Sure, there will always be the unexpected, but the unexpected isn't an hourly reality. There's something to having a budget and a paycheck that is peaceful. Something to having meetings on my calendar for three months from now that makes my life feel safe adn grounded. I love it. And I don't love it.

The grass is always greener is a true and false statement. The grass is greener here - and there. Some people are wired to immediately desire what they don't have. That's probably a sin. Envy maybe. I've come to believe that envy is my root sin. (This from a study of the enneagram - I'm a "4" if you know what that means.) I'm so bad that I can even envy myself. Chew on that one.

I trust that a redeemed envious person becomes a peaceful content person. I've seen it slowly happen through my life. I used to envy my trash man because he knew everyday if he did his job well or not. I also envied the president for his influence, the barkeep for her community, the farmer for his simplicty, the martyr for his story. It never ends. Now I don't do that as much as I used to. Maybe this year will be the year when envy fully gives way to a life simultaneoulsy full of adventure and contentment. Maybe those two things aren't opposites as I have always believed, but two sides of the gospel coin.

I'd better go and pre-plan some adventure now...I'm teaching on Ruth and Gideon in a few weeks and maybe they'll teach me all of this stuff if I just listen to their stories....and all of sudden I feel like I might want to write that essay to change the world...

30 Days Until Lost Returns

Looks like they squeezed in about 8 new episodes of Lost before the WGA strike. I just saw the ads for the new season while watching football. In the future Jack has a beard. Because once you leave a primitive deserted island it only makes sense to grow a beard upon returning to civilization. I mean, that's the way Tom Hanks did it in Castaway...and if Survivor has taught us anything, it's that you do not grow a beard in the wilderness...you wait until you come back for the live finale.

Since my first blog of the year is nonsensical at best I will leave you with this thought. Future Jack looks like Kevin Rains, therefore Future Jack must become an urban monk/body shop owner.
Future Kate does not have a beard and looks exactly like actress Evangeline Lily. Therefore, using logic, the future will belong to beautiful actresses protraying bearded mechanic monks. Duh.

Comics.

Lots of people call me a comic. I'm not sure if I am. I'm certainly not a stand-up comedian...I can count on one hand the straight stand-up gigs I've had. I might have been good at stand-up if I had given it a serious run, but stand-ups have a strange neurosis that I've never been entirely ready to embrace. They are generally the most depressing people in the world. I might have fit in too well and gone over the deep end. I drifted toward improv vs. stand-up. Improvisers are usually a little more happy - at least they work well with others and laugh at each other more.

Most people don't care to know the difference in an improviser and a stand-up comedian. People under fifty years old often say that I remind them of Ray Romano. I think I might look like him a bit, but it's probably more of my delivery that reminds them of him. I take it as a compliment.



Older people often say that I remind them of Bob Newhart. We don't look alike. So I take that as a huge compliment. I've decided that he is my favorite comic of all time. People ask who my favorite comic is all the time, so I had to pick someone. He's a minimalist. He says the least amount possible to get the most laughs. His classic phone bits are my favorite, because generally he makes himself the straight man to the funny person on the other end of the line. He lets your imagination deliver the silent punchline. He trusts his audience to think funny...risky and revolutionary.

I'm going to work on the minimalist thing more as a storyteller. We'll see what happens. Here's one of Newhart's earliest bits where he considers what Abe Lincoln's press agent would be like. I think it was ahead of its time...

Merry Christmas

I'm waiting on my kids to fall asleep so I can bring their presents into the living room. It's a very "hands on" Christmas this year. Eli is getting a real workbench for the basement complete with real tools and a few things that could permanently injure him, like a hand saw and a starter drill. His Uncle Phaff constructed the bench and shipped it up from Indiana last week. Aidan is getting a working art easel and some heelies...so he will likely injure himself as well.

We did our first Donut outreach at The Vineyard tonight. For eight years the church has taken dozens of Krispy Kremes to people who have to work on Christmas Eve. We went to the McDonald's and Blockbuster by our house. They were both much more excited than I expected. The girl at Blockbuster gave Eli and Aidan big hugs and seemed genuinely thankful. Then we came home and I spilled coffee on our new couch. That brings us all up to date with me sitting here waiting for my kids to fall asleep.

For all the readers near and fear - from Vegas to So-Cal to the Midwest....and all you others everywhere you've ended up, have a happy and healthy Christmas. Be just sentimental enough to look forward to the day when this Christmas will be a distant, hopefuly happy, memory. And for you fellow rebel pilgrims, don't forget that this day is our D-Day, our Normandy - when the beachhead of the divine conspiracy was intially established in the DNA of an infant human being. That day commenced the battle of battles to emancipate the captives and destroy all evil at work in the world. Here's to another year of the Kingdom of Love forcefully advancing.

Gig.

I booked my first professional acting gig here in Cincinnati. I did a voice over today for a new video game. I'm not sure of the name yet, but it's an Iraqi war game. I played two different roles - a younger southern solder and an older major. I haven't done a lot of v.o. work and I had a blast doing it. The production company for the game is based in NYC and they normally book talent there, but this time they decided to lay down the audio here in Cincy. Pretty cool.

Bruce is going well. It's hard to believe that we close tomorrow night. A three-day run is about as short as they come.

The kids have 16 days off school starting tomorrow! I'm taking about five off myself after this weekend. It should be a welcome break.

And oh, yeah...Broomball Rocks!

Opening Night

A Cat Named Bruce opens tonight. It feels like a legit opening night...when you are so tired from rehearsing that you can't imagine going on in a few hours. I'm feeling especially blessed this week to be able to have a job that allows me to do most all of the things that I enjoy. Brad Wise and I conceived this play hoping to simply bring some joy and laughter to people., embedded in a very simple message. I think it accomplishes that. Any major collaborative creative effort evokes strong emotion in me. I can remember trying to explain to some of my castmates back in Las Vegas that our somewhat campy, casino-based improv show was actually a spiritual exercise because it demanded honest community and continual creativity. Those things mirror the Trinitarian Creator so closely that you can't help but sense the presense of God in a situation that is tapping into creativity and honest community simultaneously. I felt the same reality with Bruce at dress rehearsal last night. Hopefuly those who come will also be brought into the dance and sense what GK Chesterton claims is God's greatest and most fundamental attribute - his mirth.

Afterall, plays are called "plays" for a reason. If adults played more - authentically pretended - fought more dragons, saved more damsels, visited strange worlds and invented new creatures...if we all honestly embraced the awkward and beautiful creator child inside, maybe we would start to understand a Creator Father who invents aardvarks, zebras and human beings...a God who reproduces sunsets, ocean tides and baby ants....a God who likes colorful fish in the darkest ocean and monochloral planets flying around a magically suspended fireball in perfect eliptical orbit.

Or, as Chesterton puts it:

"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." -Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton

The Week of Bruce

Some teaser videos below. For you locals, showtimes are this Thu, Fri and Sat at The Vineyard. More info at www.acatnamedbruce.com.

Christmas Picture

Look at our cute kids here so I don't have to send you a Christmas Card that would look exactly the same, only made out of paper instead of your computer screen.

Alma matters

I visited the old alma mater on Price HIll today for the first time in a decade or so. I saw more familiar faces than I expected and had a very enjoyable lunch with Dr. Weatherly at the new Skyline. (The old Skyline in Price Hill was torn down...very sad. It was the first one ever.) I ran into my old friend Robb Faust in the bookstore...where he's been for the last 13 years now. Another professor (Dr. Shannon) was also at Skyline. It was a sentimental and rather therapeutic afternoon.

Talking with Weatherly made me wish that I could have known the right questions to ask him 15 years ago when I was studying under him. I left struggling with the irony that, for most any profession, we really need the education more after we start working in our field than before we start. I'm wired to learn things much better once I see that I need to learn them. It took me a few years of trial and error after college to be broken enough to want to learn the things that people were probably trying to teach me in college. I wonder if most everyone goes through that.

After the lunch I drove the 1.2 miles to the Garfield Park area of downtown Cincinnati for a voiceover audition. Then back to finish some loose ends at church. Somehow the last five hours have been a miniaturized version of my life story...without the good weather.

Yikes.

Got busy...what with Bruce coming and all. Tis the season to work 14 hours a day, I guess. It's all good though. The rehearsals have been a blast and I'm enjoying getting to know all my castmates better. I actually have a few commercial auditions tomorrow as well. I'm feeling my thespian oats.

There are some promo videos for A Cat Named Bruce at the website - click below to check them out.

Just another magi monday...

I spent the last few weeks reading in the neighborhood of 500 pages on the Magi from different scholars and commentators. I found Michael Molnar's book The Star of Bethlehem: The Legend of the Magi very interesting. I'd have to say that "interesting" is the best word to describe what I learned about the Matthew Magi event. Interesting stuff for someone like me - a closeted science geek and an outed history and theology geek. The problem is that sometimes the interesting things of life do not always translate to practical help for the masses.

My problem this week as I prepared to teach was to allow these interesting facts and theories about stars, astrology, Hebrew midrashic tradition, Roman politics and ancient customs to eventually evaporate away in light of the story itself. Matthew didn't set about to write a science book, and though I believe Matthew to be a competent historian, he wasn't trying to give a detailed history of the Magi event, per se. He actuallly seems to take the opposite approach, seeing value in clothing them in mystery and intrigue. He states plainly his plan in the first verse of his book- to tell the story of Jesus, as the son of Abraham and the son of David. (And, as he shows us in time, the son of God.)

There are, no doubt, shadows of the Moses and Balaam stories in the Old Testament woven into the account of the Magi. I believe that to the first century Hebrew mind these references would have been easier for them to see, and therefore, easier for them to interpret. I avoided them altogether in my weekend message for fear that opening the subject in such a constrained time limit might only confuse people. The Moses parallels are the most obvious, primarily centering on the parallels between Herod and Pharaoh. Matthew connects Herod's infanticide (a Moses parallel) with the holy family's flight to Egypt and their return. It all seems to point to God's redeeming his people again as he did with Moses. We will learn as the story progresses in Matthew that this redemption is actually one of eschatological significance - the beginning of the final redemption for all who would follow Jesus. So, if you want, he's not just the new Abraham and David, but the new Moses as well.

Interesting for me, I guess. But I still think the main idea surrounds the fact that strange Gentile astrologers find the Messiah and worship him before God's people do. There's something big to that. It's also a highly political story that sets up the central political conflict between Messiah Jesus and his Kingdom and Herod (and all he represents) and his kingdom. They tried to kill him from day one, until he finally allowed them to have their wish. Then he died. Then he won.

On a completely different note, I just heard that the Cat Named Bruce website is now live at www.acatnamedbruce.com. Click the icon below to be magically transported there.

More snow pics

Snow!

As you can see in this picture, it snowed here today. School was canceled. (They never canceled school for two inches back in my day.) The kids were trying to build a snowman and sled in our flat backyard when I left for work this morning. The snow is novel and interesting, but it is starting to feel extra cold now. I'm that annoying guy who moves to a new place and can't stop talking about the weather. I tell myself every morning that I'm not going to mention how cold it is and then it's the first thing I say when I see someone. I'd be annoyed if I was my friend.

Mount Vernon and back again.

I had a great time going up to Mount Vernon, Ohio this weekend to speak at The Vineyard Knox County. My old friend Paul Chandler is a member there and suggested to the leadership that I come up to speak. There was such a great vibe at the church and it was great be with them. I left very energized and excited to be a part of what's going on with the Vineyard movement in Ohio.

I was able to drive through my hometown of Worthington on the way there. It's the first time that I have been to Columbus since we moved here. It was strange to realize how close we actually live, probably about 90 miles to the old neighborhood from my house.

I also happened to be in Columbus when Ohio State backed into the national championship game via the WVU and Missouri losses. God is good.

From Elephants to Cats

The Elephant Revolution will continue as I get ready for A Cat Named Bruce, our Chirstmas Comedy at VCC. It will be fun (and probably very needed) to be on stage as an actor vs. a teacher. The two can seem very similar, but are really worlds apart. The best part of acting is that you don't have to be yourself. The best part of teaching is that you have to be yourself. Being able to live in both worlds for my whole life has been a fun ebb and flow.

We are developing a website this week for Bruce and I'll post it here when it is up and running. Show dates are Dec. 20, 21, 22 at VCC.

Beware of Nutcrackers.