Foolishness?

There is a lot of foolishness around us. Do you sense it? Have you experienced it? Sometimes we might find ourselves acting and behaving "foolishly". But foolish behavior is all in the eye of the beholder, is it not? Foolishness can be countercultural sometimes. Foolishness might just be the key to discovering something deeper about our own expectations of the world and God's place in it.

So, let's reflect about this a minute. When we are passionate about something, some might see our focus as being rather foolish. We might be passionate about eating wheat grass, for example, but some would look at that as silly. Why? Well, the first hurdle is trying to figure out why anyone would actually eat grass. It is not like we go outside cut a few blades off the lawn every day and then go in a cook up some soup or drink with it. Already in that semi-explanation there are many misconceptions. First, the grass we have in our lawns is usually not the same grass we would buy at a health food store. Second, if we had discovered a personal health benefit that made adding wheat grass to our diet important, it no longer seems foolish to eat it. Third, others may not know the process of preparing the wheat grass for consumption and because of that look upon the whole idea as foolish.

Is it any wonder then that God often takes what is foolish and turns our expectations upside down? The group of Jesus' followers are often confused by his actions because they seem outside the realm of acceptable behavior. It rarely matters what the situation is, but Jesus just keeps moving on from person to person, from town to town, stirring things up, changing the way we think God is revealed to others. Jesus comes to people like you and me, the ones down in the dirt of every day life, struggling along trying to make sense of the world and finding often that there is none in it. And yet, once we have that encounter with Jesus, the world takes on a little different shape.

I always used to wonder about that whole idea of making the weak stronger. If you read through the Bible, there are many people that God uses to wake up others to a new way of living. Often, these are not the top of the rung folks. They are not the Donald Trumps of the ancient world. But God finds a way to engage peope through the most unlikely means. God takes a cross, a symbol of utter failure and turns it around to become a symbol of triumph. Weakness is redefined in God's kingdom in a way that no one can understand. The more we try to understand it the harder it becomes to make sense of it.

However, we can live in this seeming paradox without having to lose our minds. It means bending toward God to gain strength while being pushed by other forces away from God's calling on our own lives and loves. It means discovering ways to unite our passions with God's joy in seeing our discoveries along the way. It also means that it will look a little foolish to hose who just have not tasted this new way.

I'm sure it looked pretty foolish to the parents of the disciples who watched as their young men left good jobs to follow Jesus around the country. I'm sure it looked foolish for Jesus to take a break once in a while to just rest in God's presence. I'm sure it looked foolish for some that he did not amass a huge army and attack the predominant political system of Rome.

Here at By the Way, it sometimes seems we revel in foolishness. I'm sure it looks foolish to hang out at Barnes and Noble each week, talking to one or two people, or sitting there wondering if there will be a group that night. I'm sure it looks foolish that we hang out drinking a beer or two at Unos discovering things about the people who come each Thursday night to take a break from their busy lives. I'm sure it looks foolish to be available for spiritual conversations at Panera every week.

Yes, all these things look foolish. But there is something inherently amazing about the encounters that happen in these places. They are encounters unlike any one experiences in those normal churchy, set-aside sacred spaces. There is something foolish perhaps in pointing to God's presence in each of those places, and many more around Nashua. There is something foolish in seeing the joyful face of the server whose job it is to wait your table each week and enters into a conversation with you about life and faith......or is it?

The encounters we experience reconnect us to one another and to God in ways that are different from what we come to expect only if we have packaged God and set faith aside for a few moments a week. Instead, the challenge is to discover, or rediscover, God in everything we do, in each place we find ourselves, and with each person that comes our way. Foolish? Come and see.