Mosaic Church Of Bellingham

How many of us grew up with the phrase, “your word is your bond”? What do you think about that saying? Now days, we have a side-bar on the google news homepage called, “Fact Check”. Why? Because we are never quite sure if what is being said is actually true. Can you imagine if we used that one phrase as the standard through which we evaluated our politicians? What if we used it to evaluate ourselves?

We live in a very private society. Our homes become places of sanctuary, where we retreat from our work and our world. This isn’t a bad thing, but it can become uncomfortable to let others “in”. They might see our mess or who we really are, which is not easy. But, letting others in, is right at the core of what Jesus did and who Jesus is. It's also at the core of what it means to "be good news".

It's always an interesting question to ask people in a church, "What is this church about?" We took some time to try and answer that question this week, then looked more closely at Jesus' mission as described in Luke 4 (Is. 61).

In order to see the way forward, sometimes we need to look back at where we've been and how we got to where we are. If community is rooted in three basic things; common place or geography, common story and common way of life, then knowing what those are is critical to being able to sustain the community.

I love the story in the NT where Jesus heals the blind man in Bethsaida. Mark 8:22 “They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” 24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into[a] the village.” I don’t have any idea why Jesus did this healing in two parts, but I love it. I love it because I relate to the incompleteness of the initial healing and the mans experience of only partially seeing. I have felt that way many times.

Sometimes, when I am watching a show or a movie, or even just driving down the road, I find myself thinking about what is being communicated to me, not so much by what is being said, as by what is not being said. The message behind the message. More often than not, the subtle or not so subtle message is that we are not enough. One of my friends likes to describe himself as “not good enough” or “not quite enough”. It’s usually said in humor, but most of us live our lives teetering on that edge all the time.

This week we went spontaneous as our good friend, Rod Janz was in town. As a result, we took the opportunity to search his heart and mind regarding his own journey in centering prayer and how it has helped him on his road to freedom and growth.

The word “perspective” comes from the Latin word, “perspectiva”, which is the science of optics. The word literally means “through gaze”. “Per” meaning through and “spectiva” meaning look or gaze. Often, in our own experience, we think and act like perspective and truth are synonymous, though if we stopped for a few minutes, we would see clearly that they are not.

The prayer of examen is a spiritual practice. Stop and listen to your thoughts right now. How do you respond to the word, “practice”? Does is speak to you of meaningless repetition? Forced behavior? Routine? What will it take to recapture that word in a meaningful way? Over the course of history, spiritual practices have come to be understood as a way to posture ourselves to grow. They do not automatically produce growth, but they put us in a posture where growth can happen.

One of the challenges within our Western version of Christ-following, is the fixation on external forms. The focus tends to be on doing, methods, systems, quantity and the like. As a result, we have often taken what the Bible defines as “fruit” and turned it into “methods”.

What is Spiritual Growth? Not an easy concept, but one with lots of opinion; many of which are strange. Not only are they strange, but in many cases, one group sees spirituality in a way that results in them seeing other views as un-spiritual or even heretical. Shouldn't that tell us there is a lack of spiritual maturity? So, take a minute to try and answer this question: What does it mean to grow spiritually?

In my mind, the ascension is one of the weirdest events recorded in the Bible. It is right up there with 2 Kings 13:20-21. Check this out. "Elisha died and was buried. Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet." Now that is weird! And then there's the ascension.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we are in a period weirdly known as “Easter-tide”, which is really just the 7 weeks (50 days) between resurrection Sunday and Pentecost Sunday (Passover and Pentecost). In my own mind I am just calling it 7 weeks. One of the few sources we have for what Jesus taught the disciples during this 7 week period comes from the book of Acts. In just a few short lines, we are left to wonder just how much of what the Gospel writers wrote about the kingdom of God came during this 40 day period.

Our good friend and leader, Heidi Price, takes us on a journey in celebration of women and mothers.

7 Weeks. 50 Days. That's the time between the resurrection and the day of Pentecost. It's probably the time that most influenced the gospel writers, yet it is also the time that we know the least about.

We have this precious treasure in vessels of ordinary life. No matter the outside, we have the inside that lives through the cracks of our brokenness.

Aaron Walters, Pastor of The Table Bellingham, brings the good news of Easter and the answer to the question that rocked the leaders of Jesus' day and continues to change the world today.

Have any of you ever dove deep enough under water that when you started to feel the need to go up for air, you start to realize you were deeper than you thought? If you have, you know the feeling of not being sure you have enough air in your lungs to make it to the top and when you get there, you instinctively suck in a huge breath. That feeling is what Easter is supposed to feel like. After the long season of Lent, culminating in a week of meditation on the sufferings of Jesus, Easter should feel like a breath of fresh air when you weren’t sure you were going to make it to the surface.

In my mind, this may be the most difficult direct answer to a question in all of the recorded answers that Jesus gave. As someone who has prayed for hundreds if not thousands of people, the times that nothing visible happened are too numerous to count. I really don't know what I would say if I asked Jesus why and his answer was, "you lack faith".

As I said when we first started this little journey through the questions Jesus actually answers; of the eight questions that he gives direct answers too, four of them are related to the law or Jesus’ interpretation/expansion of it. One of the things that seemed to confuse a lot of people who interacted with Jesus while he was on the earth, and still confuses people today, was Jesus' view of the law. Great conversation...