Jesus

How To Solve Your First World Problem.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

Learning to live biblically, I think, is like losing a lot of weight, and the best way I know to describe it is to show you before and after pictures of myself.

I got some good snapshots this afternoon at Urgent Care, moments before the doctor stuck a needle in my foot, gliding it into the same hole occupied by a shard of glass, the size of a Tic-Tac, that I had corkscrewed into the ball of my foot.

That really wasn’t on my agenda today.

So naturally, waiting in the doctor’s office for 45 minutes, I got impatient and began to wonder what was taking so long. “I mean, what’s up, it’s not like they were that busy….Ugh, the American Healthcare system, especially in a small town…Are there even any doctors on duty? I mean I need some competent help and….”

That is snapshot A – Me exercising my considerable gift of criticism.

Snapshot B was taken five seconds later when I thought,  “I wonder how long it would take to get this glass out of my foot if I were Haitian.”

Would there be a doctor and a nurse standing by in Port au Prince with sterile instruments and anesthetics to numb the pain while they very capably dug the glass out of my foot? After their success, would there be a nearby pharmacy from which they could order a round of antibiotics for me; and if all this did exist, could I pay for it?

Repent has to be the most misunderstood word in the Christian lexicon. Before I read The Bible, I hated that word because it was the battle cry for every crazy, white-haired, bible-thumping fundamentalist in the world.

But the word repent in the Greek is metanoia and it means, to change your mind, to turn and go the other direction; and I think this is another way to look at Jesus’ teaching on the broad and narrow paths – something I talked about in a post called Two Paths.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. Matthew 7:13

In snapshot A, which used to be me all the time, I would have scarcely concealed my irritation when the doctor did get to me. That’s a broad path so often chosen that First World Problems are a meme. Who’s life am I improving with that behavior? Nobody’s. It’s destructive.

But because I have invited God’s Holy Spirit to invade me, Haiti popped into my head and helped me “repent” onto the narrow path where Jesus and his example live. As such, I thanked that doctor and nurse about 15 times for helping me and I meant it.

I’m not telling you this to excite you with my awesome holiness, I’m sharing it because I’m having some weight-loss success. The Bible is changing me from an occasionally sweet but mostly critical, impatient, eye-rolling, selfish American into something new and better. The work is ongoing and it’s often hard, but on days like today, I’m encouraged.

So, how To Solve Your First World Problem? Pack it up and mentally go to Haiti. How does it hold up there? Did it disappear and leave you feeling grateful instead? Repeat this every time you catch yourself complaining. It’s not easy or magic, it’s a narrow path practice.

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?