Tod Bolsinger

Give Up the Yoke of You.

So, what are you “giving up” for Lent?  What is the focus of your spiritual attention for the rest of this season of Easter preparation?  Are you giving up chocolate, fasting from television, repenting of your tendency to gossip?  Are you giving up alcohol or swearing or golf?  What is the “fast” that you are choosing for lent?  What are you giving up in order to have more space for the Spirit, more attention to Christ, more awareness of God’s presence.

Let me suggest something pretty radical.  Let me offer you an invitation and a challenge that will literally re-orient your entire life.   Give up the yoke of you.  Give up the burden of walking through this world alone, trying to follow Jesus on your own terms or trying to live as an “individual”.  Instead accept Jesus invitation to walk alongside him, yoked to him, and receiving—surprised?—rest of our souls. 

When we consider all of the potential Lenten scriptures, I am going to guess that many have never considered this one passage of Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (NRSV)

Yesterday we began Lent as a season of repentance, a season of “reconsidering our strategies for living based on the good news of God’s available Kingdom in Jesus Christ.”  (Dallas Willard)

And as we take our first steps of “reconsidering our lives”, I want to suggest that what most of us need to reconsider is how much of our lives, especially our spiritual lives, we attempt on our own steam, with only our inner reserves, resources and wisdom for assistance.  We believe that to seek God is a solo striving for sainthood.  We think of Christianity as an individual sport.  And many of us are growing weary under the weight.

So, here is where I want to encourage you to begin: Repent. Repent of individualism and independence, repent of the burden of carrying your yoke yourself.  Instead take on the yoke of Jesus, whose Spirit is within you and whose “body” of companions are around you and find rest.  Instead of carrying the burdens of life yourself, be yoked to the spirit of Jesus found in the body of Christ.   Yes, like all new yokes, it will chafe a bit at first.  It will likely feel awkward and even constricting.  We have become used to the yokes of our own making, the burdens we have long borne.  But there is an invitation to a life for which many of us long: a life of true refreshment and spiritual depth.

Repent of the yoke of you, dear friends.  Let others who are yoked to Jesus with you know of the burdens that weigh you down.  Learn from Jesus how this life is meant to be lived as part of his “body”, his “kingdom”.  What would that mean for you? 

More tomorrow…

Dirty Foreheads, Right Minds

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

With these words, a small bit of ash is rubbed in the sign of the cross on the forehead of each person.  A mark of humility, a sign of mortality, an acknowledgement of repentance. 

While for many protestants the idea of imposing ashes or even attending an “Ash Wednesday” service is too, well, Catholic, for them, the truth is that what we acknowledge on this first day of Lent is nothing more or nothing less than being human. 

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a forty day period of “fasting” and spiritual attention that is intended to commemorate Jesus’ own forty day wilderness period of preparation at the beginning of his earthly ministry.  During Lent, Christians prepare for the sublime feast of Easter by spending a protracted time in the fast of Lent. 

At San Clemente Presbyterian Church, we will begin Lent with a dinner together in our fellowship hall.  Then after dinner, an Ash Wednesday Service where two invitations will occur: 1) Everyone, young and old, whatever age and stage of life will be invited to come and receive the imposition of ashes, and 2) Every Christian, young and old, whatever age and stage of life, will be invited to come forth a second time and receive the Lord’s Supper. 

By coupling these two moments—one a tradition, the other a sacrament—we wish to convey a clear message: the starting point for all spiritual progress, all spiritual attention, all spiritual discipline, is in the acknowledgement of our own genuine humanity and receiving God’s generous mercy.  Like two blades of a pair of scissors both are needed: humility and grace, the truth of our mortality and the gift of eternal life, remembering that our bodies were fashioned of the dust and that the God of the universe took on the same creaturely form in order to bring us to life eternal.  And in receiving both the ash and the sacraments, we complete our first act of repentance. 

The focus of Ash Wednesday and Lent is repentance.  Again, many of us are confused about repentance.  Some of us think of it as “penance,” that is, atoning for our sins with acts of contrition.  But that is not repentance.  We can’t atone for what we have done and need not try.  Jesus’ work on the cross is our atonement.  Some of us think of repentance as sorrow and shame for what we have done, but that is also inaccurate.  Indeed, as I will explain in another post, the bible has a different Greek word for sorrow. 

Repentance is literally to “change your mind.”  In the famous words of Dallas Willard, “To reconsider your strategy for living based on the news of God’s Kingdom that is available in Jesus.” And that is what Lent is for, to reconsider your strategy for living.  To begin a new process of deep consideration and reflection about your life.  To reconsider what it means to follow Jesus, to plumb the mystery of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  To reconsider what your strategy for living should be, based on this good news.

And it all begins with this:  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  You are not an angel.  You are not a mere soul or disembodied spirit. You are human, you are mortal, you are deeply dependent on the God who formed your body from the humus of the earth and breathed life into you with his kiss.  God has come to you, in Jesus, O Creature, and called you to have life eternal with him.  And so, with ash on our foreheads and the taste of bread and grape on our tongues, we begin a holy lent.

Tomorrow: The First act of Repentance--Getting Over Yourself

Forget 40 days of purpose, try Lent instead

Link: dulcius ex asperis ? Blog Archive ? Forget 40 days of purpose, try Lent instead.

Forget 40 days of purpose, try Lent instead

A post well-worth reading for all Lent-phobic Evangelicals...

Sneak Preview #2: Doing Lent Together

Today is "Fat Tuesday", affectionately know in some parts as "Mardi Gras."  Mardi Gras is a day when many people party til they drop all in the name of getting in the last bit of revelry before the Lenten fasts of Ash Wednesday begins.  (Would that all the Mardi-gras-ers were actually that aware of the spiritual roots of such, admittedly shameful, debauchery.)

Tomorrow, I will begin a series on "communal spiritual disciplines" that is, spiritual disciplines that require us to live out our faith with someone else.  Like all Lenten series, it will begin with a day of repentance...but you may be surprised at what I suggest we repent of. (Poor grammar, notwithstanding.)

In the meantime, consider getting ready by recalling this series of posts about the spiritual discipline of hanging out.

Oh yeah, and since it's Mardi Gras and the day where we prepare for the "fast" by "feasting", consider "feasting" on some solitude before the big "communal fast" gets started tomorrow.

Until then....

With My Body, I Thee Worship

This last post before lent brings the conclusion to my recent sermon series through the Song of Songs. Tomorrow, I will start a new lenten series on communal spiritual disciplines.

In the movie, The Story of Us, Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis play a married couple’s whose marriage is unraveling in painful disappointment. There is a scene in the movie, when Willis’ says “No matter what we went through, I knew we’d be alright if at the end of the day, we could just find each other’s feet under the covers.” Then one day, we see the perspective just from their feet, when he reaches his foot over, she moves her's away. And the effect is devastating. At that moment of the movie, it seems as if there is no hope for them.

Marriage experts like John Gottman have said that most enduring marriages are simply those where both partners continue to turn back toward each other, usually with simple gestures and gentle words. My friends, let us be a community of people who develop the character to continue to endure.

Our marriages depend on it. Keep turning toward each other. Keep reconnecting, keep building the bonds of affection, respect and forgiveness. And above all, if things are going badly, get help early.

Let me give you a frightening statistic that I have mentioned before. In science, there is something called “the delay effect”. That is the amount of time from when a person sense that there is something wrong in their lives and they seek help. The delay effect for heart disease is 4 weeks. The delay effect for cancer symptoms is 6 weeks. Do you know what the delay effect is for people who have sensed that there is something wrong in their marriage? Do you know how long people wait before they seek help for the one relationship that makes the greatest difference in life? 6 years. We have built our entire approach to pre-marital counseling on interrupting the delay-effect.

When a couple comes to us to get wedding, the single greatest expense is mandatory marriage counseling with our Parish Associate and pastoral counselor, Charlie Campbell. Now, not only does the couple learn a lot of good stuff about themselves, their partners and marriage, but they also develop a relationship with Charlie.

As I tell every couple, the single greatest mistake couples make in their marriages is trying to do it alone. If you know Charlie, then when things get tough, and they get tough for everyone, you won’t have to say, “Do you think we should go to a counselor?” But instead you’ll say, “Let’s go talk to Charlie.” And believe me that’s a lot easier.

The pleasure of love, as God intended it, reveals a simple, shared pattern for a lifetime of love; he adores, she invites, they endure.

Conclusion: Nat was right.

My friends, as we bring this series to a close we can see that God has great interest in our love lives. He made us with bodies that delight in the good things of the world and feel pleasure and crave intimacy. He made us so that we could bond for a lifetime through good times and bad. He gave us his word to guide our living and right in the middle of it is a whole series of erotic poems to guide our loving.

All because he wants us to have love for each other that looks like his love for us. A love of promises, protection, passion and a shared pattern.

At our wedding, the first song that Beth and I danced to was an old song by Nat King Cole. The first line was then a promise and is now a reminder. “When I fall in love, it will be forever, or I’ll never fall in love.” Nat was right my friends, love is meant to last.

Throughout this series we have been trying to learn what means to fall in love forever, for a lifetime, until death parts us. In the old English marriage liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, in addition to vows of love, honor and cherish there is another line, that maybe we need to recover. It is a line that makes the explicit connection that what we are doing when we give ourselves to another, is inextricable to what we are doing when we offer ourselves to God.

“With this ring, I thee wed, with my body, I thee worship…”

And in essence that is what we have been learning to do through this series. We are learning that love and passion, romance and affection was never meant to be expressed to casually, given to cheaply. Our bodies so tender, our emotions so fragile and our hearts so vulnerable are meant to be protected and honored. We are learning to give our bodies as an act of worship, of devotion, love and service to one person until death parts us.

This is what the wisdom of the Song of Songs is trying to display for us, to show us. This is the instruction for those who have yet to marry, it’s the correction for those of us who have taken wayward paths, its encouragement for those of us in the middle of marriage where kids and carpools, and climbing the corporate ladder can pull us from each other, and it’s the affirmation for those who fulfilled their vows and loved another until death parted them.

It is also, my friends, the great gift of God for us. The God who created us with souls that hunger for him, also created us with bodies and emotions that hunger for healthy touch and honest affection. May we be a community that together helps every person enjoy the kind of love that God intended.

Updated my Photo Album

Anybody who wants to see some sweet pics of snow covered Sierra peaks, look to my photo album.  I took the new shots at June Mountain while pausing from logging several thousand vertical feet skiing on my Atomic Beta Rides.  My wife, Beth and our 11 year old son did a double-black diamond together--his second (ok, now I'm bragging), my seven year old, daughter cruised the blues and found a love for skiing the trees.  Life is good.

The babe with me on the "photo album" cover is Beth. The picture was taken at the top of Half Dome in Yosemite last year. 

Sneak Preview: Doing Lent Together

Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, which (for the liturgically-challenged) is a day of repentance and reflection to begin Lent, which (for the above-mentioned-people--aka "evangelicals") is the 40 day period before Easter.  (And no, Rick Warren did not institute "40-day periods".)

During Lent, many Christians "fast" or give something up as a means of spiritual discipline.  Starting Wednesday, I will be taking the discussion in a different, dare I say, communal, direction.  (I know, no surprise there.) 

I will be posting on a different set of disciplines than we usually consider, because these are intentionally, disciplines we do together.  To get a sense of where I am heading, it might be helpful to peruse an old series of posts called, "The Spiritual Discipline of Staying Put."

Tomorrow, one more post from the Song of Songs, and another sneak peak at the new series for Mardi Gras (lit. "Fat Tuesday" or the day before "Ash Wednesday").

Song of Songs #4: The Pattern of Real Romance

This post and a conclusion tomorrow brings this mini-series on the Song of Songs to a close.  I have said all along that it really is a worldview series.  And it has been. I have been trying to demonstrate that the key to a life of sexual pleasure is having it the way God intended.  All along the key lesson has been: What touches your body, touches your soul.

Today some thoughts especially for the married folks.

The Six Most Destructive Words for Real Romance

It is tempting to feel with all of this emphasis on sex and love and passion and purity this past month that we have been reading a romantic fairy tale and not the word of God.  Let me assure you, that this series really hasn’t been about trying to prepare you for Valentine ’s Day or make you feel like you have been caught up in an Andre Bocelli song.  Indeed, it’s not a fairy tale at all.   

Indeed, if this had been a fairy tale, it would have ended after chapter 5, verse 2.  The lovers would have come together on their wedding night, the friends would have sang, “Oh lover and beloved…drink deeply of this love!” 

The violins would play, the screen would go black and the final words would say, “And they lived happily ever after.”   

But that’s not what we have here.  You know why?  I think it’s very likely that “And they lived happily ever after” are perhaps the six most destructive words for real romance, for genuine love, for happy marriages. 

Since childhood we have all grown up expecting that someday regardless of our problems, situations, or backgrounds we would get married to Mr. or Miss “Right” and would go off into the sunset leaving all of our past issues, family of origin problems, insecurities and brokenness behind to “live happily ever after.”  Psychologists call this the Cinderella Syndrome. 

With the exception perhaps of Shrek 2, we rarely have seen the rest of the story,  the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the pain and the deeper bliss that comes through a lifetime of love.  And so, when pain hits, when problems come, when disappointment occurs and when the ordinary obstacles of real life occurs, we are unprepared for what it takes for love to last a life time, for passion to be permanent, for pleasure and promises to both endure. 

For the rest of the sermon click here.

Or Download song_of_songs_4_pattern.doc

Song of Songs #3: Passion Fierce as the Grave

This is the third of four sermons offered to you from my last sermon series: Divine Romance: Lessons from the Song of Songs.  If you try to look up sermons on the Song of Songs, you'll find that most of them are really old...and allegorical.  It seems to me that as scholarship improved and pastors had to acknowledge the graphic reality of erotic literature in the Old Testament, the sermons slowed to a trickle. Way too bad.  These passages are proof that Hugh Hefner had nothing on God.  And true sexual pleasure is found only in the most radical of souls (that is "radical" in the sense of "going back to the root.")  Here is the teaser for sermon #3...

My favorite old movie is Casablanca.  A classic film with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, where Bogie owns Rick’s Café American bar in Casablanca, Morroco.  It takes place during World War 2 in Casablanca, which was then a French territory that was under German occupation.  One of my favorite scenes when a group of Nazi soldiers gathered at Rick’s start singing German songs loudly and without consideration. 

It is a rude gesture.  Here they are in occupied territory, a conquering army and they are spitting in the face of the French citizens.  The down cast French people sit glumly.  Then Victor Lazlo, a brave resistance fighter, stands, walks over to the band and says, “Play La Marseilles” the French National anthem.  The band members are tentative, they fear the German officers. 

But Bogie nods his approval and Lazlo begins to sing at the top of his lungs.  The band comes to their feet, playing their instruments with gusto.  The music soars, and the crowd comes to life.  They do not protest the Nazis.  They do not shout them down in anger.  They just simply so loudly this song of their hearts, that they drown out the German soldiers who then close the bar in disgust.  With that one strong positive voice, they drowned out the destructive voices for that brief moment.

In many ways, what Victor Lazlo did in the midst of the destructive voice in that nightclub in Casablanca is what I believe we are doing through this series in the midst of a culture where so many voices are proclaiming a view of sexuality and passion that is also so powerfully destructive. 

We are raising our voices in a positive proclamation of love, sexuality, and passion that gives life and pleasure the way God intended it.  We are trying to restore the idea and practice of romance and commitment that lasts a lifetime and offers us fulfillment and pleasure.  Love and pleasure the way God intended it.

By learning the Song of Songs, we are seeking to affirm those who have the character to commit their lives to the teachings of the Scriptures when so many around them compromise so quickly.  To appreciate and hold up married people who are attempting each day to keep their vows, to encourage single people who are living with integrity and so often feel so alone, and to cheer on those who are attempting to recover, or rediscover the way of God after wayward steps.

We are not trying to protest or picket or condemn, but instead trying to hold up another way. 

To read the rest of the sermon click here...

Or Download song_of_songs_3_passion.doc

Song of Songs #2: Delighting in a Walled Garden

For the next of couple of days, I am offering links to my most recent sermon series called "Divine Romance: Lessons from the Song of Songs."  Many people have never heard a sermon on this passage because pastors aren't sure what to do with it.  Believe me, even with cleaning it up for a bunch of Presbyterians, it's still PG-13.

Delighting in a Walled Garden

One day, some years ago when Beth and I were in Prague, we were told of a wonderful garden that we had to visit.  So, we headed off in the direction that we were pointed until, confused, we figured we were lost.  You see, the address was correct, but we were nowhere near a place where one would expect a garden.  There wasn’t a tree or bush or plant in sight.  We were in an urban neighborhood of streets and buses and old buildings and the address we were given took us to a large door in the middle of a huge imposing compound wall that lined the street.  But we weren’t lost.  The garden was right in front of us.  It was just on the other side of the huge wall that lined the street.  When we sheepishly opened the gate and walked through, we found it: An old beautiful garden protected from the urban blight by the large wall.

The garden needed the wall as protection from the city around it, and the garden, once through the door in the wall, became a wonderful little edenic spot in the city.  And all throughout it on benches and under shade trees were lovers enjoying a moment together, children running and playing, and old friends just sitting and being.   

In the movie, Notting Hill, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts play a young couple out on a date. Roberts, herself a famous movie star, plays a famous movie star in the movie, Grant plays a simple book shop owner who meets her and through a strange serious of events ends up having dinner with her.

As this budding romance begins to take off they realize that her fame, and the constant paparazzi that follow her will make it almost impossible to find any privacy at all.  In what seems like a chance encounter, but becomes a metaphor for what they most need, Grant and Roberts come to a locked gate of a garden wall.  And that wall becomes their refuge.

(And a walled garden becomes the best description of the kind of sex life God intended us to have.)

For the rest of the sermon, click here.  Or you can download it here: Download song_of_songs_2_protection.doc .