Jesus

Giving = Fruit

/ Erin Kirk / 1 Comment

Jesus said you will know my disciples by their fruit.*

King David said I’m a green olive tree planted in the house of the Lord.*

The Prophet Isaiah said believers were trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.*

Being a grower myself, I love the Bible’s agricultural metaphors. Not long after I started reading it, I drew this picture in my journal, just to fix the image in my mind. I want to be a fruit-bearing tree of righteousness and grow love, so that hungry people can come and eat.

Can it really be that simple? I think so; but I’m still a sapling. So here’s a piece of fruit from a more mature tree:

Susie Davis is a Christian author, blogger and church-planter from Austin who spoke at a conference I attended, last weekend. She told us she planned to give away something of hers – even expensive things she likes – to her blog readers, every day in October.

Photo Credit: Susie Davis

Yesterday, it was this Coach purse. Yeeeoowwwww!

She’s doing this in part because her pastor-author-husband just wrote a new book called Enough: Finding More by Living with Less, a book she said is sure to wreck her scented candle-filled life; but she’s also doing it because she wants to love people in a practical way.

Giving stuff away feels good and blessing people who would really enjoy a new Coach purse (Pick Me Susie! Pick Me!) feels good. So it’s a win-win.

I’ve already gathered some fruit from Susie Davis’ tree and it was tasty, that’s why I’m sharing it with you. Though I’m sure Susie is far from perfect, this kind of behavior – this kindness – is the mark of a follower.

When you bear much fruit, my Father is honored and glorified and you show and prove yourselves to be true followers of mine. Matthew 15:8

*Matthew 7:20 *Psalm 52:8 *Isaiah 61:3

Mary Magdalene & Lloyd Dobler

/ Erin Kirk / 5 Comments

A reporter once asked Mother Teresa why so many people find it difficult to accept the presence of Christ.

“It’s because you don’t know him,” she replied.

Mary Magdalene knew Jesus, and she was a demon-possessed prostitute when she met him. In first century Jewish culture, it was inconceivable that a celebrated Rabbi, like Jesus, would talk to any woman, much less one like her. Jesus didn’t just talk to Mary, and drive the demons from her, and restore her dignity, he loved her with a Lloyd Dobler standing under your window with a boom box kind of love – times a million. Not surprisingly, Mary followed him everywhere.

Mary was sobbing outside Jesus’ tomb on the third morning after he was tortured to death. There, Jesus appeared to her but she thought he was the gardener. He asked her why she was crying.

Sir if you carried Him away from here, tell me where you have put Him and I will take him away.

Jesus said to her, Mary!

Turning around she said to Him in Hebrew, Rabboni!

Can you hear the exclamation points? I didn’t add them, they’re in the text John 20:16. It’s hard to grasp the desolation Mary must have felt as the man she believed was not just her Messiah but The Messiah, was murdered. I can hear her astonishment and terror and joy in that one word, which means Beloved Teacher or Master.

Jesus told Mary not to cling to Him but to go tell the disciples he was ascending to his Father. Mary ran with the good news. Do you know what that makes Mary Magdalene, besides a formerly demon-possessed prostitute?

The world’s very first evangelist.

People love to argue about that of course, especially given what the Apostle Paul later said about women speaking in church, but we’ll talk about that later. Promise.

The point is Jesus treasures women – especially the marginalized, widowed, sick, poor, foreign, afflicted and wayward ones. He entreats us to appreciate how humiliating it is to stand under our windows with a boom box begging us to know Him and love Him back.

Of course that is a feeble metaphor for the humiliation and suffering Jesus actually endured, but when I was 16, John Cusack and Peter Gabriel defined eternal love for me. Today the Book of John does. It’s Jesus in his own words and those of the people who knew and loved him.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly.

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

Yesterday, I received a rejection letter from a company to which I have applied for five different jobs.

It was a Christian company.

The first time they didn’t hire me, I wondered if they found me online and didn’t like my “brand” of Christianity, because they never even called me back. In the weeks that followed, I found myself pulling punches, editing myself into something they might like better, just in case they looked again. Reading those drafts, which thank God I didn’t post, is painful. My voice is fractured, boring and meanders all over the place.

I made myself into someone I’m not, so someone I don’t know would like me. Guess what? They still don’t.

Maybe it’s just the economy, but the point remains: I am useless to the world if I am lying about myself. I have learned from reading The Bible that I shouldn’t be domineering or offensive or aggressive, but do have to actually like who I am and not apologize for it – a topic I mulled over in yesterday’s post.

So I’m a Democrat and a yoga-teacher, and a thinker and a skeptic, who’s in love with organic farming, food politics and Jesus; and I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Watering any of that down to be palatable to everybody, just makes me bland, and that, I think, is an insult to God.

Photo: TPSDave

Photo: TPSDave

That’s the problem I had with Christianity forever. I believed I had to be a pious, churchy version of myself, and hose down the fiery parts that actually fuel the things I care about, like girls from poor families
sold by the busload into sexual slavery. Lots of religious folk trade in such phoniness, but Jesus does not.

In the gospels, Jesus prizes poor, marginalized women and will happily put my energy into their service, if I allow him to direct it; and surely the mind behind the aurora borealis can be trusted to handle that.

I believe there’s a juicy sweet spot in America populated by tons of people who would delight in the gospel if they actually could hear it, but if what they hear first is hell, the Law and a six-day creation, they’ll keep rejecting all of it and never know what good news the gospel really is.

So today, I’m changing the tagline on this blog to: Going to the Sea: A Sassy Democrat’s Guide to Faith.

This is who I am. Who are you?