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Here we go again with another “Five Minute Friday” post!  To learn more about “Five Minute Friday” (FMF), check out the linked image here.  Basically, each week there’s a word given for you to write about.  You start writing, no back-tracking, editing, etc.  At the end of 5 minutes, you stop.  Then you post it, and share in the community of words that were birthed during these 24-ish hours.  It’s cool stuff.
So here’s this week’s response to the word: “ again  ”

I’m pausing for a moment at the top of a twisty slide.  I’m not sure what will happen on the way down, but I know when I get to the bottom, I’ll stand up and scream in triumph.  Then I’ll go kiss my wife (and our lips will “shock” from the static build up on the way down), and we’ll laugh as we grab our kids and go home from the playground.  Except it’s not a playground, it’s a weekend senior high winter retreat known to those who attend as “Frostbite”.

It’s my 6th?  7th?  year of directing, planning, facilitating, etc….this retreat in the dead of winter.  Over 100 teens and their leaders attend, and I never know what to expect.  The bands change.  The speaker changes.  The teens change.  And yet, it’s happening “again”.  And…..it never gets old.

At some point this weekend, more than one teenager will find the strength they need to decide to follow Christ in a renewed way for the remainder of the school year.   Someone will decide, perhaps for the first time, to accept what God has accomplished in Christ.  Someone will hear the Word of God in a way that brings life and freedom like never before.  Someone will be freed from the chains of sin and hopelessness or anxiety they’d been bound by in their world.  Or maybe, someone will think to themselves….”hmm….it’s not so hokey after all”, and they’ll come to camp this summer where they’ll meet Jesus for the first time.

There are moments that I’m dead tired.  Moments where I remind myself, that no matter what – Sunday afternoon will come.  The bottom of this crazy twisty slide ride.  But I’m not there yet……here we go, again…..:)

Sidenote: Whisper a quick prayer for us this weekend…the Kingdom is on the move!  Thanks!!!

I remember watching the movie “Alive” when I was a young teenager, the true story of a rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972.  Stranded in ice cold temperatures and snowy mountains for 72 days, the survivors were forced to unimaginable situations of eating the recently deceased in order to make it.  It’s an emotional story, and there are some very raw moments throughout the film. (no pun intended)

One such moment I remember, comes when several of the survivors are contemplating the situation they’re in.  They wonder if they’re showing disrespect to those who have passed by using them as food.  It’s a very heart-felt moment where they face each other, and one at a time begin to say to the rest of the group, “If I die, I want you to eat my flesh to survive.”

I doubt I would ever use the film in youth ministry, and it probably wouldn’t make a great “Middle of an all-night lock-in” entertainment anyway.  But the connections between this type of sacrifice, and our experience as the body of Christ is hard to miss.

People observing the growth of early Christianity probably had some of the same questions our children have today, when we talk about “eating the body of Christ”, and “drinking his blood”.  It sounds like cannibalism, and I’m sure it gave those against Christianity plenty of fodder to use.  But Jesus was making a very important statement – we are to literally become those who are alive as part of what He is doing – only as we accept Him as our source and foundation of being.  To put it simply, “you are what you eat.”

As Craig Keen as written, “One of the peculiarities of (communion) is that we become the body of Christ by consuming it.  Unlike ordinary food, the body does not become assimilated into our bodies, but vice versa… The fact that the church is literally changed into Christ is not a cause for triumphalism, however, precisely because our assimilation to the body of Christ means that we then become food for the world, to be broken, given away, and consumed…”

Will we use such language with our children?  Probably not.  But it’s helpful language for us to be conscious of, especially as our children grow older.  May we form our family in such a way that we are consistently feeding on the bread of Christ, joining in becoming His body, for the purposes and activity of existing for the “coming to new life” of the world.

In that regard, how is your family already involved in “feeding the hungry”?

I remember watching those “Back to the Future” movies growing up, and always getting lost in figuring out what would happen today if _____ happened or changed in the past.  Or how cool it would be to know certain things about what would happen in the future (sporting events, investments, etc.) and be able to benefit from that knowledge.  My love for time travel continued with my imagination, until more recently I was duped into reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife” even before it became a hit movie.  I was well into the book before realizing how sappy it was getting, and I’ll just confess that yes, I enjoyed it.

So in my reading recently, I was caught by this notion of Sabbath as a sort of “time traveling”.  I’ll try to explain.

In scripture, we see the people of God observing Sabbath on the 7th day.  The day marking “completion”, the day that follows 6 days of work/activity.  This is transformed when Jesus is resurrected on the first day of the week, and followers of Jesus began to gather not on the Sabbath, but on the “first day”.  Eventually, as the movement became more and more defined by these “First Day” gatherings – Sabbath gradually became observed on that day also.  There was never a “meeting” or a “council” that determined…it just happened as a community of people became increasingly centered on receiving all they were from Jesus and this “new thing” God was accomplishing.

But when we gather on Sunday, the “first day”, we aren’t simply gathering to “sing songs, learn Bible lessons, and share space together.”  These are all good things, but they are all things that do not require the Spirit of God to take place.  We gather to share in the liturgy, that is, the “work of the people” and declare Jesus as Lord in a trans-formative way.  We gather as one community, celebrating the body of Christ we are being as we join together in the work of the Kingdom.  But that Kingdom is not one of occupying space at this point, but of redeeming time.  This Kingdom of God is of “The Age to Come”.  Yet, when we participate in declaring the reign and rule of God – that Age breaks through into today.

It’s as if our gathering happens not only on the 1st day, but simultaneously the 8th day as well.  A day that exists outside of our regular rotation of hours and days.  That comes after what has happened, at the same time launching something utterly new each time it occurs.  As Craig Keen writes, “Christ is raised not on the Sabbath, not on the last day of the week – but on a new day that exceeds the old order of a seven-day cycle.  Resurrection joy irrupts as the dawning of an unprecedented first day – a first day that will not stand in competition with the old order, but penetrates it, saturates it, and folds it into the new.”

This also forces a dependence on the Spirit for what happens as we come together.  As William Cavanaugh writes, “Because the church lives from the future, it is a thing that is not.  The church inhabits a space and time which is never guaranteed by coercion or institutional weight, but must be constantly asked for, as gift of the Holy Spirit.”

If you’re a parent of a young person who gets geeked out about time travel, there are some cool potential conversations to be had there, for sure.  If you’re like me, and have young kids who have a hard enough time understanding how “tonight” relates to “tomorrow”…..you may want to wait a few years….:)