Lent

When we first moved into our house in Castlewood the bathroom needed some work. Instead of a nice wall of tile around the bathtub, we had massive mirrors that revealed more about me than I cared to see 😳.

For me, Jesus serves as a spiritual mirror that reveals more about my soul than I sometimes care to see. In the last 24 hours of his life we see humanity at its ideal in Jesus: humble, self-sacrificing love for others. We also see humanity at its worse: betrayal, self-centeredness, violence, deceit, and pride. The contrast between Jesus's self-sacrificing love and his followers' self-centeredness cannot be overstated. His refusal to conform to the way of violence, greed, and fear clearly revealed the hard hearts of everyone else.

It's much easier to see the faults of others than to see the faults within in our own hearts.

"This X-RAY at others is called 'naked truth,' 'unvarnished truth.'  In literature and art it is called realism.  But to spot it in one's self is not only difficult but painful, and no one wants to take the descending path to that naked, unvarnished truth, with all its unacceptable humiliations.  It is much more comfortable to stay on the level of the plain and ordinary, to go on being just plain and ordinary.  Yet it is to this path that Lent invites us."

-Edna Hong

Jesus's friends were on that difficult, descending path of seeing themselves as they truly were. It's hard for me to see the 'naked truth' about me, but it only serves to remind me how much I need God's grace. Lent shouldn't be easy, but the good news is that it ends in grace.

Neighborhood Focused

Wendell Berry challenges you to look at a globe and see if you can see your neighborhood. Of course you can’t; the only way you can see your neighborhood is if you actually go to your neighborhood and walk its streets.  He says, “If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your spaceship, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground.”

In our nation we are fed up with folks in power making big decisions with little regard for actual lives and communities that are affected. Many of our leaders are too far removed from common, everyday people that they have no clue what real life is like.

I believe in a God who walked our streets in our neighborhoods. He lived among us, listened to our stories, and led us to freedom. The Bible is a story of God's faithful presence among his people. Christ's presence can still be found in our neighborhoods through the local church living, working, and doing ministry with people in actual places.

"You are Christ's body...You must never forget this."

1 Corinthians 12:27 (The Message)

http://www.embraceyourcity.com/who-we-are/

Prayer in Uncertain Times

 Written by Caleb Buddemeyer

Oh Lord, we need You.

We have come to this place to find you.  We worship you with our voices and with our presence, and we seek Your great and powerful Presence, we long for Your words of life.  Some of us meet You rejoicing, feeling You close, seeing Your handiwork evident in our lives.  Some of us meet You in sorrow, broken down and confused in our circumstances, overwhelmed by how far off You feel.  Some of us meet You without knowing whether You really are here at all.  Yet we are all here, and we come to meet You.

Lord lift us up.  We are sinful people in need of Your righteousness.  We are violent people in need of Your peace.  We are ruthless people in need of Your forgiveness.  We are troubled people in need of Your calm.  We are lonely people in need of Your friendship.  We are chained people in need of Your freedom.  We are exhausted people in need of Your rest.  We are abandoned people in need of Your faithfulness. We are broken down, and the terrors and shame of the world will destroy us if You do not rescue us.

Lord make us strong. Our world is in desperate need of healing work that You have invited us into.  You have called us Your Body, so equip us mightily for acts of holy love.  Give us Your strength and courage to speak Your prophetic words, to embrace those others have cast aside, to love selflessly, to trample down every particle of death and darkness as we spread Your Light and Life.

Lord let us know Your love.  This love, we trust, is beyond our bounds, beyond our reckoning.  There is no shrewd comparison or clever metaphor by which we can wrap our heads around it.  We know that Your love is the kind that doesn't scare off, that doesn't account for worthiness, that isn't self-protective, that is more passionate than we can fathom; that is actually rather foolish.  Remind us that Your love for us is wild and unconditional.  Inspire us with this love, that we may love You with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we may love our neighbor as ourselves.

Oh Lord -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- we need You.  Yet in the end our words are not enough, so we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

Nit-grit Hood Theology

Tupac once said to a group from an older generation, "What I want you to take seriously is what we have to do for the youth because we comin up in a totally different world...I'm sorry, but you can't be more offended of my language than what's going on out here in the hood."

Kanye and Jay-Z, along with Frank Ocean, famously sang, "No church in the wild."

Too many churches are fortresses playing it safe, removed from the "wild" of the real world. In his book, "The Soul of Hip Hop," Daniel White Hodge argues that we need a "NIT-GRIT HOOD THEOLOGY." Nit-grit hood theology doesn't accept easy answers. It gets at the "real issues no one wants to discuss."

"The simple "sinner's prayer" is out because while I may be "saved" and feel tingly inside, if I live in the 'hood, the reality is that I still need to eat, sleep, love, and live in this place where I can grow in Christ. Nit-grit 'hood theology promises that we are with you--through the good, the relapses, the failures, the successes, the backsliding and the getting back up. This type of theology is designed for a lifetime and not just a program." (147)

This strikes at the essence of Embrace's value: Gritty Christ-Followers. Our goal is to be in the wild where life happens.

 http://www.embraceyourcity.com/who-we-are/

#embracevalues

Embrace Values

At Embrace we seek to be an alternative prophetic community that models another way of living with both our words and our actions. In 2016 we spent time reflecting on how we live out that calling in our unique faith community. We came up with six values that we believe uniquely define what we are about at Embrace. This isn't an exhaustive list, but comes pretty close at describing how we are being the church God has called us to be in this particular time and place. 

Our Values:
Jesus at the Center
Gritty Christ-Followers
Neighborhood-Focused
Comfortable with being Uncomfortable
Keep it Real
Church=Diverse Family

To Summarize:
We are a diverse family of gritty Christ-followers who place Jesus and His kingdom at the center of all we are about. We risk real life together sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with our words and actions in our community in North Lexington.

Over the next few weeks we will talk more specifically about each value and why they are important to us. You can find more info on our website at the link below:

www.embraceyourcity.com/who-we-are/

#embracevalues