Understand

My pastor said on Sunday that the Greek word for "understand" means "to know experientially and intimately." Wow, that's really cool. He was preaching on John 3 and the whole story of Nicodemus and Jesus talking about being born again. I guess the word was in there somewhere, but that was the only thing I wrote down.

It made me think that to understand the Kingdom of God and to understand who Jesus really is takes knowing him experientially and knowing him intimately. To be intimate with Christ and to experience him is really what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus.

Then I was listening to this old CD of Shaine Claiborne speaking at Axis at Willow and I was blown away by this guy who just bailed on the USA and went to live in India with Mother Theresa and serving the poor. She told him to go home because there are plenty of marginalized people in America. So he did and he lived with people on the streets of Philadelphia and he still serves them there.

Then I'm watching TV tonight while Bea was typing a final for her students and I start to watch "Ghandi" with Ben Kingsley. I didn't really connect all that stuff, but it's so cool how he serves his people. I'm only an hour into it, but I'm loving the radical message of peace, nonviolence, and firm conviction.

I started to write the whole, "It's kind of sad that other people do this and evangelicals don't line" but that's crap. There are lots of people that do this stuff - evangelicals, Catholics, mainliners, emergents, hindus, muslims, mormons, atheists. Religious groupings aren't the issue. I'm the issue. I'm not doing this stuff. I wanted to hang out with homeless people in Hart Park and work at Juvenile Hall, but both didn't really work out. The juvenile hall thing had reasons, but the Hart Park thing was fear. It freaked me out going down there. I didn't know how to act. I need to do something, but I don't know what. I'm going to Kenya this summer for two weeks to work with people with AIDS, but that's not what I mean. I mean something more regular. It's so freaking hard because I have a pregnant wife and a three year old daughter. They have to be my priority, but I have to do something. Man, this stuff is messier than it seems.

But living that kind of life seems to be what it means to "understand" Jesus. To know Him intimately and experientially.