"And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem. And they were conversing with each other about all these things which had taken place. And it came about that while they were conversing and discussing, Jesus Himself approached, and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him." (Luke 24:13-16)

"If there is anything you own that you cannot give away, you don’t own it; it owns you" -Albert Schweitzer

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew 6:19-21

The late Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing, "I am a pilgrim and a stranger." O yeah? Well, I’ll bet I’ve moved more times than ‘ol Tennessee ever did! As many of you are undoubtedly aware, Gale & I moved this past weekend. In retrospect, it was another amazing "God event" that had more moving parts than a ‘59 Edsel or a Rube Goldberg ice maker. The week before it was time to move we still hadn’t found a place. Then God led us to a newer apartment complex where the managers just "happened" to be Christians who had been forced to leave the mission field and take up "tent-making" after suffering a huge investment loss and bankruptcy. They told us they had wanted to start a house church in the complex, but the opportunity simply hadn’t materialized. They said they also needed someone to serve as a part-time assistant manager to help with maintenance. To make an amazing story short, Gale & I moved this weekend into a modern apartment complex as assistant managers (which reduces our rent by roughly half) and resident house church planters. It’s been a few years since we lived in an apartment, and we are being forced to "downsize," which leads me to the theme of this letter: U-hauls on the road to Emmaus.

You remember the story of the two disciples walking the seven miles between Jerusalem and the town of Emmaus. They were so busy talking about Jesus that they didn’t even recognize Him when He joined their company and walked with them. In addition to being a true story, Emmaus is also a metaphor of the Christian life and of both our individual and corporate journeys, our "pilgrimages" if you will, into the Kingdom of God and greater intimacy with Christ. And our experience of moving over the past week has caused me to reflect upon how we allow ourselves to become distracted, even lost, on our personal roads to Emmaus as a result of the things which we have allowed to capture our attention and our hearts.

Moving is one of those rare opportunities God affords us to examine ourselves. It’s a humbling experience to see one’s life reduced to a pile of boxes and a truck load of furniture. It is also a time of discovering where our hearts and our treasure really lay. Funny how a scratch or dent on a coffee table or buffet can reveal the true condition of one’s heart. Moving is also a moment of "realization" as truth dawns that we are all basically pack rats by nature (I attribute it to one of the results of the fall, but I can’t find a word about it in any work of systematic theology. Don’t theologians ever move?). Some pack rats are very discriminating, preferring to pack around only antiques. Other pack rats are more intellectually oriented, hoarding books. There are Christmas ornament pack rats, tool pack rats, Barbie, cabbage patch and "they were gifts" pack rats, and then the general, all purpose pack rats whose homes & lives look like the returned-goods bin at the local WalMart. Regardless which species of pack rat you may be, the result is the same in the church.

The result is that too many Christians are pulling U-Hauls & trailers on the Road to Emmaus, fully convinced that God has, indeed, called them to pursue a lifestyle rather than a Kingdom. There’s a cultural reason for this, of course. We live in a materialistic society that measures personal success, importance and self-worth by the number and size of our possessions. As the bumper sticker says: "He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins". Consumerism is the official religion of our age. And we perform our acts of worship in those cathedrals of middle class consumerism such as WalMart and Costco, and a host of lesser shrines which promise existential - even spiritual - fulfillment at bargain sale prices. We’ve even created "prosperity theologies" in an attempt to explain, sanctify and baptize our consumerism and turn it into a form of Christian obedience and worship.

As a result, western Christianity has become the religion of "spiritual consumers," and our churches have become shopping malls where the responsibility of the management is to avoid offending shoppers while delivering a "positive spiritual experience" for people to "consume". Alan Hirsch, in "The Forgotten Ways" describes it this way: "In the modern and postmodern situation, the church is forced into the role of being little more than a vendor of religious goods and services. And the end-users of the church’s services (namely, us) easily slip into the role of discerning individualistic consumers, devouring the religious goods and services offered by the latest and best vendor. Worship, rather than being entertaining through creatively engaging the hearts and minds of the hearers, now becomes mere entertainment that aims at giving the participants transcendent emotional highs . . ." Here’s the ‘rub’. In such an age of Christian consumerism, intimacy with God becomes a group experience to be jointly consumed for the purpose of making us feel good about ourselves (and hopefully about God). The chief end of man becomes fulfillment and happiness, and it is God’s responsibility (along with the management of the local church) to make that happen. The Christian becomes a spiritual consumer shopping for the next experience to be consumed, and intimacy with God quickly becomes a parade of experiences: prophetic worship meeting this week, festival celebration next week, manna and gold dust meeting the following week, a gemstone meeting the week after that, and an apostolic training and healing meeting every Saturday (all true stories I don’t have time to unpack).

And the Risen Christ walks alone on the Road to Emmaus, being passed and left behind by a parade of U-Hauls and trailers driven by harried Christian consumers for whom the journey has become the pursuit of a lifestyle, rather than the pursuit of a Kingdom.

I am coming to the slow conclusion that Hirsch is right, and that "consumerism" and discipleship are increasingly incompatible. I’m sorry, but God’s ultimate goal is not our material happiness. Rather, His goal is our "Christ-likeness," and He is perfectly willing to set fire to our U-Hauls and to crucify our flesh if necessary in order to achieve His vision of "our best life now". His goal is to transform us from self-absorbed consumers in search of spiritual "happiness" into self-sacrificing servants willing to die to themselves so that others might live (see my e-letter for February 28, 2007, "Not For A Shirt And Ten Shekels" posted in our archives). Following persecution and an extreme beating, Paul and Silas found intimacy with God in a dank Roman prison cell, and the Philippian jailer found life as a result. God wants to teach us what He taught Jim Elliott on the mission field prior to his death, namely, that "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose." That is the heart beat of intimacy and discipleship, and the truth that the Risen Christ wants each of us to discover on our personal Road to Emmaus. But Christian consumerism turns this on its head and declares, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot lose, to gain what he cannot keep." If left unchallenged, Christian consumerism will have two disastrous consequences. First, it will crowd out and overshadow that intimacy with the Risen Christ which alone produces true discipleship, spiritual insight and genuine recognition of Who He is in the Breaking of the Bread. Our personal Road to Emmaus will become clogged with trailers and U-Hauls pulled by Christians who have traded a Kingdom for a lifestyle, the pearl of great price for a WalMart trinket. Second, it will threaten the house church movement by turning our house churches into mere way-stations for an endless stream of "tire kickers," Christian consumers checking to see if the spiritual experience we are offering is "better" than the manna and gemstone meetings down the street. They’ll hang around for a few weeks and then be on their way, convinced that they are "god-chasers" when, in reality, they are merely Christian consumers and "experience junkies". Quite frankly, my motto is "Don’t let the door hit you on the way out." No, I’m not being unkind. Indeed, I weep for what they have lost. But it’s either that or arranging for the Klingons to incinerate them . . . and the local constabulary tends to frown on unauthorized incinerations.

So, yes, we got moved last weekend, and the experience was . . . well . . . existential. But we’ll recover . . . and meet you at WalMart for worship. On second thought, maybe ol’ Tennessee Ernie Ford had it right after all. We really are pilgrims and strangers. And maybe he had moved more times than I gave him credit for. Wonder if he ever had to drive a U-haul?

Given my brain dead condition of late, I've completely spaced the fact that our friends at House2House are sponsoring several regional conferences which you can learn more about at: http://www.house2house.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=79 

O.K., this is just hilarious. I laughed til I cried!: http://www.navone.org/Media/Movies/AlienSong_mp4.mov