A Mekong Meditation

My last day in Phnom Penh was Saturday September 8. That evening I was flying out at midnight to Shanghai in route to Wenzhou China. My class had gone well and the students wanted to celebrate and send me on my way with a special gesture of good will and gratitude. At 6 o’clock in the evening we drove into the city center and parked along the great Mekong River. They had struck a deal with a boatman for a 2-hour cruise. Lugging chests of food and soft drink and a guitar to the upper deck we began to sing, play games and visit. Its was a perfect evening. As twilight cast its shadows the fading sunlight and the city lights began a magic dance with the water. I was feeling really good – so happy I had been invited to Cambodia. And I knew it had gone well. Students had told me. And one student herself a teacher – the young leader of the City Church had prayed at the conclusion of the final class thanking the Lord that to them – a new generation of Christian leaders in Asia the way forward, the way the Gospel could now be taught and preached had made its debut and “Lord please don’t let what we have learned slip from our grasp”. Whilst I was basking in these thoughts enjoying the verve and energy of these beautiful youth a sliver of angst crept into my mind. I was disturbed with a little twitter in my mind that refused to dissipate – I began to realize almost surely I was going to be called on to speak one more time. After all this was not only a going away party but a mission out reach. All of their celebrations and gatherings are! They had invited a few non-Christians – Phnom Penh up and comers.

Little by little more and more young people are distinguishing themselves developing their talents and starting businesses. Cambodia is changing and a middle class is emerging. Phnom Penh is a robust bustling city emerging from the shadows of its dark past. The long hoped for future is entering the present. English is well within their grasp more than in Thailand or Lao and new creative economic opportunities are irrupting left and right.

Sure enough teacher Mackal, leader of the City Church, a Malaysian, herself a wonderful force to be reckoned with, glanced over at me and I new instantly I had to leave the dream moment and if possible deliver words to my new friends one more time. The following are the gist of my thoughts spoken on the deck of our tour boat on great Mekong River around 8:30 pm September 8. I wanted to keep it clear and simple.

Crawling Out From Under the Down Side of Trouble:

Look and Live

The difference between good religion and bad religion is very simple and clear. The former directs the attention to the self  – its plights and pleasures, its short fall and /or its gains.  The latter directs the attention to something bigger than the self, something outside and above the self. David felt the power of good religion slipping out of his grasp and he cried out “lead me to the Rock that is higher than I”.  This prayer is akin to a popular refrain “Love lift us up where we belong, on the mountains high where the eagles fly”.  Its really this simple! The vicissitudes as well as the victories in life mix with a bent lodged deep in our natures and turns our minds inward so that we become self focused. Inside our subjectivity our experience of life whether good, bad or ugly become enchanted and magnified. Bad religion intensifies this proclivity and capitalizes on it. The feats and defeats of life become infused with an emotional weight causing us to lose our balance. The inward preoccupation is like a toxic romance we cannot extricate ourselves from.

Follow me as I play with this idea.  Consider Luther who was caught in the grip of bad religion which wonderfully focused his mind on himself and his failures. Once he turned inward there was no coming back. He went further and further inward searching after not only right action but purity of motive, what Scripture calls ‘the thoughts and intents of the heart” [Hebrews 4:11]. And try as he may he couldn’t get it right, couldn’t wrest any peace from his cycle of confession, absolution and acts of penance. No peace, scarcely a moment –why? Because he was looking in the wrong direction -to the church and to his struggle not only to do right but be right through and through heart and hand, body and spirit. Then something unexpected and ecstatic occurred. Because his job was to be a Biblical Scholar [rare even at that time Luther possessed an earned doctorate degree in Biblical Exegesis – a calling he did not chose but was saddled with by his superiors] he had to study and lecture on the sacred text. In doing so while at the same time caught in this religious quagmire just escribed he bumped into something bigger, something gracious, something outside, above and beyond himself.The name of this something was the “righteousness of God revealed in the Gospel”  Romans 1:16-17. In time he came to realize this righteousness wasn’t in him but for him, wasn’t on earth but in heaven, wasn’t spun from the webs of his goodness nor destroyed by his badness but derived root and branch from God’s passion in Christ.  Nor did the church possess and mediate this saving righteousness requiring poor sinners to look to them. Looking away from himself and the church to this bigger thing set him free – free from the inward gaze and free from the toxic religion that intensified and capitalized on the subordination of his spirit. Later Luther came to describe sin as “man curved in on himself”.

Consider Israel, a band of runaway slaves in the wilderness making that ugly trek from Egypt to Canaan. In one moment they witnessed the power of their new God Yahweh delivering them and were drawn out in praise [Exodus 15:1ff], lost in awe and wonder and in the next moment they turned down ward and inward and focused on the drudgery and scarcity of their journey. Follow me here because the retell you are about to read takes a surprising twist. If you have read the story as its scripted in Exodus you will recall the people fell under the grip of the downward inward gaze.

Loosing sight of the wonder of what had happened in the Exodus deliverance and the sustaining miracles that followed they began to focus on their deprivations.  Self pity overcame them. Everything they didn’t have grew in their minds eye until they became toxic and ugly.  Literally they got right up in Moses’ and God’s face and belly ached about all that was wrong with their lives and all that was lacking and all that was unbearably hard in their journey. Their dark downward and inward gaze heated up and over took them and seduced them into ugly self centered ingrates. At this moment poisonous snakes slithered out from every rock and bush in the valley and faster than grease lightening came on them and latched hold of their fleshy parts sending deadly venom surging through their veins. All this you most likely know full well but here is a fitting irony in this story most often overlooked. Their deadly plight now turned their minds even further inward. If they thought they had problems before now their problems were multiplied thousand fold. If they were focused on their problems before now they were wonderfully obsessed with themselves.

Staggering, eyes blurry, tongue bloated they were brought right to the brink of death. The experience sucked them inward so far that their minds were bursting with fear and trembling. And what was the cure? Mind you it was the same cure they needed an hour earlier swimming in their pity like a deer caught in a swamp. Before they needed to get out of themselves and the negative inward and downward spiral that they were caught but could not break because they would not. Now they were driven a thousand times deeper into themselves where dread and fear fuse into a nightmare. Crying out to Moses for help God instructed the cure.

Mind you the problem indeed was inside them. Poison was coursing through their veins. Surely the medicine would be in kind – a powerful potion cooked up from bitter roots and bark ingested?  If we cannot see the surprise and riddle of true religion in this antidote that God called for what hope is there to help us! God told Moses to put a serpent on a pole and lift it up and instruct the people to “look and live”! They were invited to look away from themselves and their problem (s), look away from their dying bodies. Look away from their diseases no matter their magnitude real or imagined. We are not going to get it right by going inward and a religion that proposes to go inward and clean us up and cure us will founder as well. All that God is to us and all that God does for us revolves on the axis of getting us out of ourselves by turning our attention to something bigger. This something is a gracious loving God that in Christ damned all that damns us releasing blessing and life forever more. “If I be lifted up”, lifted up like the serpent on the poll that Moses raised high above the people Jesus tells Nicodemus “I will draw all men unto me”. When we are drawn to trust something- some one bigger than ourselves – namely the God who has come into view in Christ this is called faith, and faith climaxes in doxology. .

One further consideration is required to bring this meditation to fulfillment. Not only the bad in and around us can subvert us but the good as well. The Pharisee that went into the temple to pray was seduced by the good of his life [ at least what seemed so good to him]. Looking upon and seeing it in his imagination, feeling it, comparing it with other’s paltry righteousness he was seduced – thrown of balance, pulled out of dependence on something higher and out of compassion and brotherhood with his neighbor [the one near by]. “I thank you God I am not like other men especially this degenerate tax fraud across the aisle. The Publican on the other had launched out into the deep in a wonderful attempt to rescue his soul. He was on a rescue mission in search of something bigger, higher and more merciful than anything found within his accusing conscience or his damning fellows. He needed a God size mercy to out reach and trump the damning voices within and around him.

Anything can suck us into the downward inward spiral. It can be the threat of poverty and want which baits anxiety and stirs up frantic all consuming attempts to get our material physical needs secure. It can be our solitude that at one moment we enjoy but then turning a corner in life stirs up feelings of loneliness and tempts us into a spiral of self pity and beyond to desert places where angels themselves fear to tread. It can be our love life gone bad. Life has a thousand tricks up its sleeve to subvert our doxology and turn us into miserable inward looking naves and ingrates oscillating between pride and despair, between anxiety and presumption. Thankfully the Gospel brings into view something bigger – something outside and above us. Without this bigger thing to trust in that has secured and will secure our lives in merciful love our predicament would be hopeless.

Balance a long broom on your index finger whilst looking downward at your navel or the finger on which the butt rests – it is nigh unto impossible but change your focus and look out and up to the broom’s head and its easy. So it is with life and religion. Bad religion takes you on an endless journey inward but good religion draws you out to something bigger where the freedom to trust, worship and serve become possible.

These preceding words are dedicated to my students Cambodian, Chinese and Malaysian:

Kuaxuan Jian (Daniel)

Lim

Nhean Sungi (Pastor John)

Kim Chi

Lun Seng

Loh ming Luan (Michal)

Ir Chhay Hout (Joshua)

Chee siew fen ( Natalie)

Sok Tha

Catherine

Xiao yan ( Ruth)

Yang lei (Mark)

And also to their friends like Anis who I morphed into Natalie, to Judges Joshua’s brother whose name isn’t Judges and other beautiful young people and whose names escape me but also last but not least the young designer who is seeking. [For the anyone seeking to mediate on the above devotion the following are a few verses from scripture to reflect on Hebrews 12:1-3, Philippians 3:17-21 (Especially vs 19&20) John 3:14-16 and 2 Corinthians 4:18]