movement one
I own a Velvet Elvis.
A genuine, bought-by-the-side-of-the-road Velvet Elvis. And to say this painting captures The King in all his glory would be an understatement. It's not the young Elvis, the thin one with the slicked back hair in those black-and-white concert photos where he's playing a guitar that's not plugged in. And it's not the old Elvis, the big one in the shiny black cape singing to old women in Hawaii. I call this one the Pre-doughnut Elvis. A touch of blue in the hair; the tall, white collar, which suggests one of those polyester jumpsuits; and those lips-if you stare long enough, you'd swear you saw them quiver.
But I think the best part of the painting is in the lower left-hand corner, where artists usually sign their names. On my Velvet Elvis, the artist simply wrote a capital R and then a period.
R.
All I can figure out is that when you're this good, you don't even have to sign your whole name.
But what if when R. was done with this masterpiece, which is now hanging somewhere in my basement, R. had announced that there was no more need for anyone to paint, because the ultimate painting had just been painted? What if R. held a press conference, unveiled his painting, and then called on all painters everywhere to put down their brushes? What if he insisted he had painted the ultimate painting and there's simply not a need for any of them to continue their work?
We would say that R. had lost his mind. And we would say this because of what we instinctively understand about the nature of art. Art is about endless possibilities and infinite arrangements, and there is no end to what can be painted. This is true of all creative work. There is no end to the ways melodies can be sung or played or written or clay can be shaped or a house can be designed. At the core of creativity is an awareness that we are engaged in an endless process of exploration.
A journey into depths that previously haven't been experienced.
There will always be something new to make. To create. To bring into existence. Central to this understanding is a humility that is aware of the simple fact that we are only scratching the surface of what's out there, waiting to be created.
And so the artist keeps going-making things, exploring, creating, learning.
In the same way that there will always be more songs to create and more sculptures to shape and more things to name, there will always be MORE to discover about God. The spiritual life is a journey into greater and greater connection with the God who has no end.
movement two
The Israelites leave the kingdom of Egypt where they are slaves, and God brings them out into freedom.
It happens.
Every day.
For many of us, that is our story. We were in darkness and God brought us out. And we continue to identify areas of darkness in our lives, and God continues to bring us out. So the Exodus is their story, but it is also our story.
In fact, in a synagogue to this day, you'll probably hear kids taught the story of Exodus as their story. A friend of mine recently heard a Jewish kid explain, "WE were slaves in Egypt and Moses led us out, and WE complained in the wilderness ..."
That's why the scriptures are still so powerful: these ancient stories are OUR stories. These stories are reflective of how things are.
This is why the Bible loses its power for so many communities. They fall into the trap of thinking that the Bible is about things that happened a long time ago.
But the Bible is about today, and these stories are our stories. They're alive and active and teaching us about our lives in our world, today.
The rabbis speak of the text being like a gem with seventy faces, and each time you turn the gem, the light refracts differently, giving you a reflection you haven't seen before. And so we turn the text, again and again, because we keep seeing things we missed the time before.
movement three
Last year some friends asked me to be the pastor for their wedding ceremony. They've been together for a while and decided to make it official and throw a huge weekend party, and they invited me to be a part of it. They said they didn't want any Jesus or God or Bible or religion to be talked about. But they wanted me to make it really spiritual. The bride said in her own great way, "Rob, do that thing you do. Make it really profound and deep and spiritual!"
On the morning of the wedding, we met to plan the ceremony. It was a stunningly beautiful day, and we were on a cliff overlooking a lake in the midst of a thick forest. The wind was blowing the tops of the trees way up above us, the sun was coming through in these yellow and white beams, and at one point a bald eagle flew overhead. I kept waiting for someone to cue the orchestra.
Anyway, I asked them why they wanted to be married in such a natural, organic setting, since it was four hours from where we all live. They talked about the beauty of nature and its peacefulness and how they fell in love in this part of the state. Then the groom said something I will never forget: "Something holds this all together."
Something holds this all together.
So then I asked them if they thought it was a mistake that they had found each other. They said, no, no, they believe that they were meant to be together, and it's no accident that they met and fell in love. I then asked them, "Do you think that whatever it is that holds all of THIS together is the same thing that has brought you two together?" They said yes.
Same thing.
"So maybe," I said, "what makes your relationship so meaningful is that it's a picture of something much bigger. The same force that brought you together holds the whole world together."
I then added: "So today, your wedding is about something far more significant than just the two of you becoming husband and wife, isn't it?"
They said they would call this glue, this force, "God."
I tell you all of this to point out that my friends already intuitively believe certain things about the universe and the way the world works. All I was doing was asking questions about things they already knew to be true. When they resonate with the peace and harmony of unspoiled nature, I believe God made that unspoiled by speaking it into existence. And Jesus is the life force that makes it possible. So in the deepest sense we can comprehend, my friends are resonating with Jesus, whether they acknowledge it or not. And when they look into each other's eyes and there is love there-real, passionate love, the kind that would lay down its life for another. I believe that love is made possible by God in Jesus. Their laying down their lives is a picture of God doing the same for every single human being in Jesus, whether we affirm it or not. Jesus was up on that cliff with us that day. It's not that God is over here and real life is over there. If it's real, then it's showing us God.
In affirming and celebrating all that they did that day on the cliff, my friends are closer to Jesus than they could ever imagine.
And so are you.
movement four
I could feel my car keys in my pocket, and all I could think about was how far I could be by 11:00.
How much gas was in the tank?
How fast could I drive?
Sitting in a chair in a storage room behind the sound booth, I could hear the room filling up with people and all I wanted to do was leave.
How did it come to this? Because it started out so great ...
My wife and I and several others started this church called Mars Hill in February of 1999 with dreams of what a new kind of revolutionary community could be.
I was twenty-eight. What do you know about anything when you're twenty-eight?
But anyway, we did it. We started a church.
And the strangest thing happened: people came on the first Sunday.
I remember like it was yesterday. A few people came to get me five minutes before the first service and said I had to look out the front windows. I was not prepared for what I saw. Cars and people everywhere! They proceeded to tell me there were huge traffic jams in every direction, they had run out of chairs, and people were giving up trying to get through the traffic and just pulling over on the side of the road, parking and walking the rest of the way.
Chaos.
I loved it!
Now I am going to give you some numbers. And I hesitate to do this because few things are more difficult to take than a spiritual leader who is always talking about how big their thing is. But it happened and it's true and it's part of my story.
There were well over a thousand people there the first Sunday.
People in the aisles. People on the floor. Packed. No more room, not enough chairs.
... Two years into it there are around ten thousand people in the three gatherings on Sundays. I think by then there were forty or fifty people on paid staff. It was taking around a thousand volunteers to run the children's programs.
And in the middle of it was me, Superpastor. I was doing weddings and funerals and giving spiritual direction and going to meetings and teaching and dealing with crisis and visiting people in prison. I can't begin to describe what it was like because it was happening so fast. One minute you have these ideas about how it could be and the next minute you're leading this exploding church/event/monster. All of a sudden there are all of these people who know who you are and want something from you and think you're a big deal and you're the same person you've always been. Everything has changed and yet it hasn't. It's hard to explain, but I found myself asking, "Where is the training manual?"
I think of people who never before cared if I existed who suddenly wanted to be my friend.
I tell you all of this because there's a dark side. It's one thing to be an intern with dreams about how church should be. It's another thing to be the thirty-year-old pastor of an absolutely massive church.
And that is why I was sitting there in the closet thinking about how far I could be by 11:00. The next service was starting then. I had just finished the 9 a.m. service and I was done. I escaped to the storage closet where I could be alone and try to collect myself and figure out what to do next.
I was moments away from leaving the whole thing. I just couldn't do it anymore.
People were asking me to write articles and books on how to grow a progressive, young church, and I wasn't even sure I was a Christian anymore. You need to understand this: I didn't even know if I wanted to be a Christian anymore.
What do you do when you can hear the room filling up with thousands of people who are expecting you to give them words from God and you don't even know if it's true anymore?
I was exhausted.
I was burned out.
I was full of doubt.
I was done.
I remember saying to myself, I have nothing more to say.
And so I sat there with my keys in my hand, turning them over and over, listening to them clink against each other, hearing the room getting louder and louder and more and more full.
And it was at that moment that I made some decisions. Because without pain, we don't change, do we? I could talk about the dangers of megachurches and life in the spotlight. I could write pages about what's wrong with Church Incorporated and the flaws of institutional Christianity, but I realized that day that there were things wrong with the whole way I was living my life.
If I didn't change, I was not going to make it. And it was in that abyss that I broke and got help, because it's only when you hit bottom and are desperate enough that things might start to get better.
I decided I would walk away from Christianity. What I discovered later is that I was actually taking steps INTO the faith, but at the time it seemed like I was walking away.
I decided to leave it behind and trust that there must be something else out there. And if there wasn't, at least I would have been honest with myself.
This, of course, left me with all sorts of difficult decisions to make about Mars Hill. This community was alive and people were being transformed and the stories never stopped coming. Who would leave all that? And so I got some help.
I decided to be honest about my journey, and if people wanted to come along, great. But I was still going to have to go. And a new journey began, one that has been very, very painful.
And very, very freeing.
It was during this period that I learned that I have a soul.
movement five
One of the earliest sages of the Mishnah, Yose ben Yoezer, said, "Cover yourself with the dust of their feet."
This idea of being covered in the dust of your rabbi came from something everybody had seen. A rabbi comes to town and right behind him would be this group of students doing their best to keep up with rabbi as he went about teaching from one place to another. By the end of a day of walking in the dirt directly behind your rabbi, you would have the dust from his feet all over you.
And that was a good thing.
So at the age of thirty, when a rabbi generally began his public teaching and training of disciples, we find Jesus walking along the Sea of Galilee. "He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen."
They are fishermen because they weren't good enough. They didn't make the cut.
Jesus calls the not-good-enoughs and, as the story continues, "at once they left their nets and followed him."
This is strange, isn't it? Why do they just drop their nets? And those Christian movies don't help. Jesus is usually wearing a white bath robe with a light blue beauty pageant sash and he has blow dried hair.
And he's Swedish.
But given the first-century context, it's clear what's going on here. Can you imagine what this must have been like-to have a rabbi say, "Come, follow me"?
To have a rabbi say: "YOU can be like ME."
Of course you would drop your nets.
Jesus then comes to James and John who are fishing with their father, Zebedee. They're apprentices, learning the family business, which in this case happens to be fishing.
If they are still with their father, then how old are they? How old were the first disciples? Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen? Twenty?
Jesus took some boys who didn't make the cut and changed the course of human history.
At one point, they are riding in a boat and Jesus comes walking by on the water. And one
of Jesus' disciples yells out, "If it's you, let me come to you on the water."
Continues...
Excerpted from VELVET ELVIS by ROB BELL Copyright © 2005 by Rob Bell. Excerpted by permission.
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