Living in joyful and abundant opposition

I snapped this at Pt. Reyes National Seashore. One of the thinnest places I know of.

Here’s one (of many) opportunities for the Christian church if we dare to engage in it…

To make sacred space
for an alternate reality
where we live joyfully¹ in direct opposition
to the most toxic aspects of our predominant culture.

Our predominant culture senselessly caters to the parts of us that are the least life-giving. It is a culture with ingrained narratives that feed on the vulnerable and constantly remind us that we are not enough. It tells us in all kinds of subtle and directly nefarious ways that we need to perform and produce at higher levels (and to do so publicly on social media so that our friends can see how good we’re doing). Our culture holds the carrot out in front of our noses and moves it further and further away the faster we run toward it.

This is the royal feast of our culture.
It is a gluttonous one
where the fuller our bellies get,
the emptier we feel.

It is a feast of scarcity
and lack
and desperation.

In church, Jesus meets us in our tired and weary state.
It is there -
it is HERE -
that he invites us
to a radically different kind of feast.
A feast of life-giving abundance
and an endless well of water
that only the living God can provide.

In this feast before us at the Eucharist,
in the bread and wine,
word and bath,
the God who created the cosmos from nothing
feeds every single one of us
from nothing
physically and spiritually
with leftovers aplenty

Amen.

Grace + Godspeed,
Jonas

1. This really is the keyword here. To live ‘joyfully’ in a counter-narrative to our predominant one. There are a lot of organizations that do incredible work in the world that the Christian church would have a hard time matching. But it is in our joyfulness and love for each other, ourselves, and the incarnate world that they can tell we are Christians. To learn more about what I mean when I say ‘joyful’ give this a watch.