A Superimposed Good Friday!

I've been slipping a bit in terms of blogging these days. I have been spending so much time in some key areas of Watershed and life that I have been limited in both time and thoughtful reflection for this page. Movies in the Park, our smaller communities called Blocs, on top of all the other normal routines of my Watershed responsibilities have been a little more involved these days. On a personal note, I've taken some much needed down time recently AND... the adoption of our future son Bennett, who is 5 years old and currently in Ethiopia, has taken up a great deal of time and energy for both myself and Donna.

I say all that to say that much of what was causing me to put on hold my blogging, seems to be passing. I'm confident I will rediscover some traction in this area in the very near future, that future being today for example. I just finished sending an email to a group of leaders at Watershed this morning and I thought an excerpt may be timely and appropriate to use for today's blog. To our leaders I wrote....

"... today I was reminded of who we are to be and the disposition we are to embrace that sets us apart from so many people and dispositions that exist throughout our world. Paul says in Philippians 2...

⁵Your attitude (Jesus follower) should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
⁶Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-
even death on a cross!

I think it's SO EASY to SUPERIMPOSE our attitude onto the attitude of Jesus instead of what Paul suggests. I think it's so easy to turn Jesus into mini-versions of ourselves instead of allowing his attitude to become ours. When we SUPERIMPOSE our attitude onto his, how we live our lives begins to blend in with the rest of the world. It loses the capacity and power to be a breath of fresh air, salt in a a tasteless world, or light in a dark and fallen humanity and creation. We become no different than who we were, before our lives intersected with Jesus.

However, when his attitude of humility, sacrifice and servitude become pervasive in our hearts, our lives take on dimensions that are radically different from how much of the world functions and radically different from what they used to be. We truly become, "set apart". Not in a "holier than thou", condemning or judgmental manner but in a beautifully obscure, gracious, creative, peculiar, yet resolved fashion.

As leaders, the more we are seen, the more we move towards people, the more we lead and create conversations and entertain questions throughout our relationships and community, the more this becomes paramount for our life. On the flip side, the more the attitude of Jesus is resisted by the church, the more it's resisted by those who declare their allegiance to him, the more confusion it creates for those who are looking to the people of Watershed (or the church at large) for direction and examples of what it means to live this life. It is SO IMPORTANT!

So on Good Friday... a couple of questions for you as a leader.
In your life and in this community, if you are really honest with yourself, do you have the tendency to SUPERIMPOSE your attitude ON TO Jesus or are you growing in your awareness and willingness to allow his attitude to BECOME your new attitude?

• Is your attitude about how you spend your time a SUPERIMPOSE attitude where Jesus' attitude looks strangely like yours? Or are you making way for His attitude to become your attitude?
• Is your attitude about how resources are received, spent or given away a SUPERIMPOSE attitude where Jesus' attitude looks strangely like yours? Or are you making way for His attitude to become yours?
• What about your attitude towards your marriage, your sexuality, your parenting, your friendships, your dating relationships? What about your ideals involving career, entertainment, values, character and conversation, (including social media)? What about your attitude towards poverty, suffering, wealth and injustice? Are your attitudes SUPERIMPOSE attitudes where Jesus' attitude looks strangely like yours. Or are you making way for his death and resurrection to TRANSFORM your attitude so that His attitude looks more and more like HIS than anyone or anything else?
  
  

As a community of leaders, may Good Friday remind us that, as lovers of God and followers of Jesus, at the core of our attitude should be humility, servitude and sacrifice.

⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-
even death on a cross!

Let Good Friday remind us that we are invited, called and beckoned to make his attitude ours verses our attitude his. May we be reminded that we live in a world that longs for and desperately needs, (not our attitude) but the attitude of a Jesus that was willing to go to unfathomable extremes so that in humanity and creation, "all things" could be made new! May Good Friday challenge us and challenge us to challenge each other on this front. May it challenge us to set high expectations in our attitudes as individuals an as a community. And may our lives then become marked by the peculiar, profound and revolutionary love that we have experienced, observed and discovered in Jesus himself.

Happy Easter! "