Moving. I once helped a boss of mine move when I worked at a university. It was a pretty awesome day. I was working for him. It was an awesome day. He treated me like an equal... I liked that. I was "Jason his friend", not "Jason his servant". I liked that.

People treating people like they are people.

God is in that.

That is communion. The eucharist... being one in spirit while in the flesh.
Being a companion

an equal.

a friend.

The Church.

In the scriptures, Jesus talks all about this. He tells his followers that they should love God first and then love one another as He loves them.

I love how Jesus teaches. Just when people think they have what he is saying down, he'll thow in a total zinger. Bam! Kick it up a knotch.

You see, he throws his followers for a loop. They expect power and strength, they get weakness. This is not weakness as we think of weakness. Jesus knows exactly what he's doing. There is a weakness that is truly weakness, that has nothing else to it- no depth, no intention, no greater purpose. But Jesus is intentional in what he's doing. His vulnerability is for a purpose. What he is saying and doing is packaged in the deep nature of who God is and who we are as humans...as image bearers of God.

There is a weakness that is actually a strength.

And there is a strength that is actually a weakness.

You want to follow me Jason? Love God, then love other people like I love you.

That

is

that.

Now we could spend hours talking about all the creative and awesome ways different churches and congregations (people) have thought to demonstrate in some communal way their devotion, appreciation, laments, care and ultimately- blind love for a god they have never actually seen or heard, touched or tasted...

But that is not the end of the story. It's like sitting down at a buffet and just sitting at the table. Smelling. and with all that smelling of all that food, you know it is there...you sense it...you can smell it, is only part of the buffet. If you just sit there...at the table, talking about how good the food smells...you are going to get very hungry, and will never be fed.

God is bigger than worship songs, sermons, liturgies and hymnals.

God is bigger than talking about how good he smells.

I mean, salvation, grace, love, life...it all smells good. don't get me wrong.

God is God.

This brings us to the second part of what Jesus said... love each other as I have loved you. bam. there is that one again.

So wait a second Jason, does this mean that just going to a church gathering for worship is not all there is to this Christian thing? You mean, that all that stuff people do down at church, that takes up all of their free time each week after week, those people don't get what Jesus is saying here?

Take, for example, a parent who yells at their children and holds them accountable for all sorts of random tasks they were supposed to have known to do and who allows their mood to dictate the mood of the whole house. This kind of parent dominate their family with manipulative behavior and petty punishments that create chaos and insecurity for those around them. This kind of partent is using their strength, but they are actually weak. They do this because in truth, they're broken, confused, and insecure. They have no idea what they're doing, as a parent or as a person.

The same is true for managers and bosses and teachers and anyone who uses their position of authority to coerce or manipulate of bully others- even when the intentions seem good. They can get people to do what they want, but it's only because of the position they hold. Their authority is rooted in nothing larger or stronger ofr higher than the idea of good to the people that put them in charge. And that can be taken away tomorrow. Corporations: good = maximized earnings, Religious places: good = maximized law following, Universitys: good = maximized acclaim, Classrooms: good = maximized test scores. They may appear strong, but they are actually weak.

Contrast this with people who appear weak but are actually quite strong. It's when someone says something mean or cutting about us and everything within us wants to one-up them with an even nastier comment in return, thus winning the exchange, but we hold our tongue. We "lose" the round, but what we did took tremendous strength. And it would take even more strength to forgive them and then maybe even love them. It would all appear quite weak to the observer, unless they understood that what they were witnessing was actually strength in action.

"love each other as I have loved you."

Well, how did Jesus love his followers? This is a good question. Without answering this question, it is difficult to appreciate the hugetasticness of what Jesus teaches.

Consider the Jesus story just for the sheer poetry of it. Jesus is born to teenage peasants under questionable circumstances. His mother gets pregnant before marriage. He's born amid the dung and straw of a stable. He's placed in a feeding trough. His brothers and sisters think he's out of his mind, and after his first sermon in his hometown, the people he grew up with form a mob and try to kill him.

So who does Jesus identify with? He chooses the outcasts, the people of the land who aren't good enough, clean enough, wealthy enough, and pure enough to be a part of the establishment. He chooses the Jason C. Staas' of the world. He's invited to dine with the elite and the rich, which he does numerous times, but he also eats with the lowest of the low - and he enjoys it. He enjoys them.

He touches people with infectious skin diseases, he lets questionable women touch him, he lays his hands on dead bodies, and he engages in conversations with promiscuous women alone in the middle of the day.

His entire life is about the stripping way of power and control. Jesus always chooses the path of love, not power.

Inclusion, not exclusion.

Connection and solidarity rather than rank and hierarchy.

Touch rather than distance.

Compassion rather than control.

He comes on a donkey, not a horse.

Weeping and broken, not proud and triumphant.

This path Jesus has chosen, which he continues to choose day after day, takes on some ominous overtones. He finds himself at odds with those in power. Partway through the Gospels- the accounts of his life- he states dropping hints that this path he's on is going somewhere. Somewhere that involves suffering and even death. His hints, which start turning into predictions, are about a conflict that he sees as inevitable. A conflict between love and controlling power.

As we read the Gospels, we find Jesus' message putting him more and more in conflict with the religious and political leaders of his day. He's threatening their power. This is what love does, it threatens the empires of power and control and wealth and manipulation.

He's eventually arrested and put on a sort of trial, at which he's asked to perform miracles. He refuses, knowing that a display of his miraculous abilities would not be true to the path he's on. He's eventually beaten and flogged. When he doesn't fight back, he's mocked, and he doesn't say anything in return. He's hung on a cross and says, "I am thirsty."

Naked.

Bleeding.

Vulnerable.

Thirsty.

He even quotes a well-known prayer of the day, which includes the haunting line, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

It was explained this way in a poplular first-century hymn, recorded in the book of Philippians: "[Jesus] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equity with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing."

anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
40"He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.