Golf

Golf

"Too often, it seems to me, we assume that ‘seeing God’ requires us to pass entirely beyond the material world. Or that we must move into a space so radically interior that the living world disappears from view."[1] …Douglas Burton-Christie, Weavings

I don’t play golf. I spent so much time as a teenager working on golf courses that I didn’t want to hang around after hours playing on them, too. Even now, when I see a golf course, I find myself wondering about how a particular low spot in the fairway is being drained, rather than considering how to make an effective approach shot. But I appreciate the game of golf as unique among competitive sports; it is one of the answers, I think, to the oft-asked question, What would Jesus do?

I really do think that. If Jesus were involved in an organized sport, I think golf would a top choice. In fact, I think he’s already been involved in playing golf and I’ll tell you about that in a few moments. First, though, here’s a few things I’ve observed about the playing of golf which makes me think it will be one of the few sports which will make into the Kingdom of heaven.

Golf is played in the middle of a place where humans are intimately involved in caring for the Creation God gave us. Even golfers with birdies or bogies on their minds can’t help but notice the blue/green palette they are walking in. They may curse the tree their ball has landed behind, then bend down and properly replace the divot dug by their iron in escaping that particular lie. Golfers are aware of morning dew, afternoon heat, and evening shadows in ways that few people other than farmers are. Their game is dependent on the human honoring of God’s good gifts.

Golfers enjoy, during silent hours on the driving range or putting green or during the course of a game, a real time of meditation and quiet intentionally enjoyed by few people in today’s society. God created humans to live in, if not a silent world, a world that is much less noisy than the one almost all of us inhabit. It’s easy to joke about television commentators and their extended whispered conversions, but there is something about a golf game that causes a quieting of the soul. Notwithstanding those occasional incidents of a favorite putter being thrown into a nearby pond, or an 8-iron being bent around an 8” oak tree, the scientifically measurable result of a round of golf is usually a calming of the emotional indicators. Golf is played like meditation is undertaken: as an individual. It is not like football where one player is dependent on the actions of others to achieve the desired results. And while a whole sanctuary full of people may be quiet together, it is still as individuals that people are interacting, immediately and intimately, with God.

Golf is usually played with others, either as competitors or teammates. The game itself involves trying to hit fewer shots than the other, whether the other is an individual, or a team. But the others who are playing with or against you, have no specific effect on your personal score. From beginning to end, from choosing a club to hitting the ball, the specific actons of golf are individual actions. There’s no headsets being shouted into or listened to. There is no team consultation or pep talks to be entered into along the course of play. There are no cheerleaders, airhorns, or fireworks. A great putt may inspire an collective audible gasp among the spectators; usually, however, the only sounds heard during a game are those of polite (and quiet) applause. Golf allows us to hear the world the way (I think) that God intended for us to hear it: gently, quietly, and with a minimum of harsh sounds.

The conjoined spirits of cooperation and peace are implicit in the game of golf to a degree they are in few other organized sports. To be sure, there are impartial judges to be called upon to make decisions about rules and particular lies of the ball. But there are no mediators necessary in the way referees are needed in football, or boxing, or racing events. The are no penalties for grabbing face guards because 1. there is nothing to guard one’s face against and 2. there would no reason to grab the opponent’s face guard if there was a reason to be wearing one in the first place.

After a round of competitive golf, the players retire to a brief meeting to sign and turn in their score cards. The players are as likely to rise from that meeting sharing stories of the game they’ve just played, seeking and giving advice, and making arrangements to play together again in other venues. There is a harmony at the end of the game that reflects the balanced point of view that comes from being with others in a quiet and serene place. Noone has ever seen a golfer growling at game’s end into a bank of microphones, “Next year, we’ll kill ‘em!”
The necessary equipment in golf lends itself to an egalitarianism in sport that is not always evident in other sports. Lee Trevino used to win holes using a Coke bottle as a club. Obviously, that’s an extreme example, but for most players there is not a lot of difference to be realized between a $50 set of used clubs from a pawn shop and a $1000 set of hand-polished titanium clubs from the pro shop. And- look around on any course- your score is not dependent on what you’re wearing. You can birdie in a pair of cut-offs or triple bogie in pair lime green polyesters. It doesn’t matter.


Jacksboro- State 2A High School Golf Champs

I observed all of the above- rather, I began trying to articulate it for myself- as a result of watching the Jacksboro High School boy’s golf team compete in the finals of the Texas State tournament on May 9 and 10. I hadn’t watched a golf competion in person for over thirty years, but we were invited by friends who are parents of one of the competitors and, for reasons I hope I am capable of adequately explaining in the following few paragraphs, it turned to be one of the best sports events I’ve ever observed. The following is from an article I wrote for the Jacksboro Gazette about that tournament:

Golf is a peaceful game. It’s a game of encouragement, cooperation, and civility played in the outdoors among the trees and hills of Creation. But this year, at this tournament, there was a great deal more happening which, in reality, was more important than any trophy or newspaper headlines could ever be.

Last year, the second day of play in Austin was stained for the players, their parents, and all who knew him, by the tragic death back home of Brantly Peterson. The boys decided to play that day only after agreeing that their friend would want them to. I heard that day described by everyone I spoke to, as one of the most difficult days of their lives. The boys played through and past their tears knowing that they would be returning to Jacksboro that evening for the terrible task of saying “goodbye” to a loved one.

This year, that friend’s parents were specially invited by the players to be a part of the fan’s gallery. Each boy honored Brantly, and Brantly’s parents, in various ways throughout the two days of play. They made sure their friend was present in all that was happening- his name was on written on hats, his rings were carried in pockets. And it was soon obvious, especially on the critical second day of play, that the boys were playing for Brantly and his parents, as much
as they were for themselves and Jacksboro High School.

Which made that second day of play a day for all involved to remember. I believe we saw one of those God-blessed days that were the intention of all Jesus taught, lived, and died for. No hymns were sung, no traditional church liturgies were observed, and no prayer books were passed out. (Although I know all kinds of wild and crazy prayers were being prayed!) In short, we got to witness firsthand a peaceful event in which gifts of love and community were evidenced through the sharing of individual skills and gifts. And as all that was happening, the healing of emotions through the shared memories of a beloved friend was also made real.

Jesus was being lived out, rather than merely talked about. People could see the Image of God in each other, without having to be reminded it is real. I hope this doesn’t sound overly dramatic, but it is true: the 2005 State 2A Golf tournament was really good church.

Thank you, boys.

[1] Douglas Burton-Christie, “Learning to See Epiphany in the Ordinary”, Weavings, Nov?Dec 1996, p. 8

Things that make no sense..

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13)

There are two groups of guys in prison who I purposely and intentionally try to put out of my mind for a few days after a Kairos ministry weekend. I put them out of my mind so I can breathe. They are the young guys who are facing life inside with no parole and the old guys who have been there since they were young and will die somewhere in the system.

I choose not to think about them until I’ve caught up on some sleep and done some deep knee bends with my emotions to get them back into a state of functioning normalcy. The young ones (who will be old) and the old ones (who once were young), are glaring examples for me of so much that is wrong about us human beings. From the inwardly generated perversities that caused these individuals to be removed from society in the first place, to the also perverse inclinations of a society to hide its human mistakes under a cement and barbed-wire carpet out there at the edges of nowhere, the young and old ones are like open societal wounds that never heal.

Jaime[1], clean-shaven, good-looking, 23 years old. A tiny tattoo in the intersection of his thumb and forefinger identifies a one-time gang affiliation; otherwise, his arms are clean. Why am I so sad all of the time? he asks. Forty years inside the walls of a Texas prison began last year, which means it will be 2023 before Jaime has a chance to sit in front of a parole board for the first time. He will be 43. If he is still alive.

Fred is 68. His many tattoos were scratched with a straight pin forty years ago. He smeared those bloody scratches with ink from a ballpoint pen and now they are nothing more than ugly testaments of faded blue-green hopelessness. Ten years before those self-inflicted wounds, Fred swore he’d stay clean and be out of prison before he was 30. He can hardly believe he’s still alive.

Jaime had a following outside, a new SUV, a girlfriend, a child, a methamphetamine habit, and a string of labs across South Texas producing more of it to sell. He got caught. I’m glad he got caught. I hate what methamphetamines do to people.

I have no idea what Fred came in here for initially, but I know he has stayed in because he couldn’t stay out of trouble. He became part of the Aryan Brotherhood sometime in the early 70s and 10 years became 30 years became 40 years became life with no parole. He is still alive because he hurt a lot of people to stay alive. Maybe worse, but I’m not asking and he’s not telling.

The reason I drive these men and others like them from my mind for a few days after I return from these Kairos events is because they push my faith farther than it is ready to be pushed all at once. My faith is not as elastic as it once was. It takes time to grow into the new positions it is forced at times to grow into. I can deal easily with the guys, old or young, who have a couple years left on their sentence, or who know they’ll be able to begin sitting in parole hearings in 5, 10, even 15 years. I may hate thinking about what they are facing in the meantime, but it is easy (relatively) to help them see the human light at the end of their personal tunnels.

But when it comes to offering hope to a 23 year old facing a lifetime of prison, or trying to find meaning in the life of a 68 year old who has spent his entire adult life inside prison, I am at a loss for words of hope or meaning. I cannot conjure a single logical coherent or comforting comment based on human experience.

And so it was for times likes these, in the face of that which makes no sense at all, that Jesus leaned over his disciples, breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” During the weekend just past, both Jaime and Fred were sitting with men, free and not free, who didn’t have logical or coherent or comforting comments either. What they did have was the residual effects of having been breathed on themselves by Jesus sometime in the past. They offered Jaime and Fred something far more important than humanly concocted verbal potions. They offered Jaime and Fred the ears of Christ, and the heart of God. They offered these men the presence of the Holy Spirit in the illogical communiqué of a homemade cookie, and in the encouraging crayola drawings of a small child.

Jaime has hope now he didn’t think it was possible to have. Fred has meaning where it has never before been. I can’t describe either of them to you, anymore than I can describe what physically happened in the jars of water at Cana or in the tomb of Lazarus. They are realities delivered by servants of God who had the good sense to stay out of the way of human logic. They are gifts of God made possible by disciples who prepared the way of the Lord, then got out of the Lord’s way.

I am so privileged to know people like Jaime and Fred and the men they were sitting beside. By knowing them, I am able to be there when Jesus made mud from spit and returned sight to blind eyes. By calling them my friends, I can taste the wine from those water jars in Cana. These are men who, with Christ, push and pull at my faith in uncomfortable ways and leave me with more questions than answers even as they affirm for me the reality of God’s goodness in the midst of human messiness.

[1] A pseudonym, as the rest of these names will be, too

Random Thoughts on Popes, in general and John Paul II, specifically

Summer, 1967, Castel Gondolfo, Italy

This is where Popes spend parts of their summers. Thirty-eight years later, my memories of the several hours I spent here when I was 17 are like a pile of assorted snapshots. They’re out of order, some are smudged, others are fading, and many have lost all meaning. Here are a few of them:

Sellers of rosaries- they’re everywhere! Old men walk with outstretched arms draped in dozens of red, yellow, and green wooden, plastic, and glass rosaries. Artisans work laboriously at little tables with magnifying lenses and tiny hammers on silver ones, edged in mother-of-pearl. They respond to curious eyes with words in Italian which translate to something like “3 billion lira.” All of the rosaries on display today- on racks, around necks, hanging from arm after arm- were blessed by the Pope yesterday, and will be again today, in just a little while, so buy yours now!

It took a long time to get here, and the road north from Rome was part of the Apian Way, which various Caesars rode chariots in and out of town on. An old, old road, in other words, the history of which was lost (wasted) on me and my fellow 17-year-olds. We were riding over hills walked on by people like St. Peter and St. Paul, Nero, Augustus, Seneca, the Huns, Martin Luther, the Crusaders, and Mussolini, but we napped in the bus on the way there, too tired from the previous night to want to be connected, even if it was just visually, to boring subjects like World History.

Now, this is amazing. Young people, people my age (then), some even in their early twenties (!), are acting excited and loud, like they’re at a football game. They are standing in the plaza outside the window where the Pope will soon be making an appearance and they are cheering. “Papa! Papa! Viva l’Papa!” They are excited, jumping up and down, and..there are more! This group is Irish, or English, because they are hollering, almost singing: “Holy Father, we are here..” Others: “Pop, Pop, Pop” and “Padre Paulo! Padre Paulo!” There were even Africans that I couldn’t understand at all but who seemed to be more excited than anybody with their singing and clapping.

This memory is the most vivid one and has stayed sharp and clear for these many years. These were young people excited about something..religious! There was nothing fake about their enthusiasm, either. They had come from all over Europe to this place, just like the rest of us, to see a man appear in a window about 100 yards from where we were standing. Some were dancing in circles, some wore clothes which identified the country they were from, and each group had a distinctive look: dark, or blonde, or swarthy, or apple-cheeked. And all- this is what I remember best- all were focused and excited on seeing their Pope, the Vicar of Christ on earth!

I’d never experienced that kind of specific, shared desire to experience something divine.

I remember hoping then that I someday would.

Pope John Paul II

For many years to come, the story of John Paul’s involvement in the unraveling of Communism’s lock on Eastern Europe will become more and more evident. Just in the last two days since his death, we have heard about $32 Million being transferred from Vatican accounts to Solidarity, the Polish labor union, in 1981, at John Paul’s direction. From the very beginnings of his Papacy, there was demonstrated by him, a consistently affirming approach to the dignity with which humans were created in their Father’s image. And, as he demonstrated in his support of Solidarity, there was also a consistent stand against those political, cultural, and religious factors which denigrated human worth.

It’s amazing- flat-out and alarmingly amazing- that John Paul was the first Pope to ever visit a Jewish synagogue. It is equally amazing that he was also the first Pope to visit an Islamic mosque. It is to his great personal credit that he did both. He apologized- publicly, loudly, and eloquently- for mistakes of omission and commission that the Roman Catholic Church had made during times of the Medieval Crusades and during the 20th Century holocaust. John Paul was, probably more than any Christian leader that any of us will ever see or know, willing to admit personal and institutional sin and shortcoming so that dialogue and healing could begin. When accolades inevitably flowed toward him from the doing of such things, John Paul effectively and skillfully deflected those accolades and praises onto the Christ he represented in the world. Outwardly, he would grab his shepherd’s staff closely as a sign of his Savior’s nearness. Even more obvious to his fellow believers, however, was the humility with which he heard the kudos and applause of humans. You just knew that he knew who was the true recipient of that praise and honor.

There are many images of John Paul II that will be, for various individuals and nations, defining images. I think of his kissing the tarmac of the airport in Poland when he landed there in 1979 on the first of his 100+ trips as Pope. I remember the joy he displayed at the Youth Gatherings he not only encouraged, but attended. Almost everyone has recollections of his embracing children and disabled people.

No image speaks louder for me, however, to both the kind of man John Paul was and to the source of his actions, than his visit with and forgiveness of …. . …… was the man who, in July 1981, shot Pope John Paul at point-blank range. The Pope almost died and, indeed, never fully recovered from his wounds that day. But in …., the Pope went to the prison cell of …. spoke with him at length, and forgave him.
Nothing of human honor or accolade could accrue to the Pope from such an encounter. It was, therefore, not the kind of action we would ever see most other world leaders publicly involved in. But for John Paul, the opportunity was one of presenting- demonstrating- the gospel. John Paul was Jesus that day to …. and, thus, to many others around the world.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who’ve trespassed against us.” Most of us carry wounds from others that are far less severe than two bullets in the gut while refusing to proclaim unqualified forgiveness for the infliction of those wounds. Pope John Paul demonstrated to Christians of every brand and flavor that the gospel of Jesus Christ is real, profound, and liberating. He demonstrated that in his life and, in this last week, through his death. This is a better world for Karol Wolyetja having lived in it. And the Church is better for John Paul’s having been Pope over part of it.

God bless him.

Passover

“When we are drowned in the overwhelming seas of the love of God, we find ourselves in a new and particular relation to a few of our fellows. The relation is so surprising and so rich that we despair of finding a word glorious enough and weighty enough to name it. The word Fellowship is discovered but the word is pale and thin in comparison with the rich volume and luminous bulk and warmth of the experience which it would designate. For a new kind of life-sharing and of love has arisen of which we had only dim hints before.” (Thos. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, 1941, Harper & Bros., p. 51)

It, of course, was not coincidental that the events of Jesus’ final week took place against the backdrop of Passover. The remembrance and observation of that time when the angel of death passed over the children of Israel, still in captivity in Egypt, was the highest of holy days on the Jewish calendar. At the time of Christ, when most Jewish people still lived in or near Palestine, Passover was a time of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a time of special sacrifice in the Temple. It was a time of redemption, as the people sought forgiveness for their sins according to the ancient laws of Moses.

Additionally, Passover, was and remains, a time of reunion and coming together by families, tribes, and- indeed- the whole nation. As such, it was a special time. Even people from different tribes and families who may not have known each other otherwise, had the events of Passover and their nation’s history in common. The language, customs, foods, and stories were common possessions among all Jews and they were shared again each year at this important time of festival and religious observances.

The sacrifice offered by Jesus of himself signaled the eventual end of Temple sacrifice. The Passover meal Jesus arranged for his disciples is the same meal to which he invites us each we participate in Communion. The establishment of Christian communities, the churches, mirrored the establishment of Jewish communities and synagogues during the Dispersion of the Jews by the Babylonians centuries before. Christians must never forget or ignore the Jewish basis of our faith. “The Way”, as Paul called the Christian movement, was a way within Judaism- a reformation of Temple Judaism. That others- Greeks, Romans, Africans, and more- were attracted to this new Way was because Judaism was the methodology God had developed for a relationship with his people. Judaism was a natural, God-ordained outward manifestation of the relationship between God and humans. It “felt” right because it was right.

The fellowship of Christianity began within the fellowship of Judaism. Human politics caused a separation to begin between Jews who acknowledged Jesus as Messiah and Jews who did not. The same kind of human politics also separated, and continues to separate, followers of Jesus from other followers of Jesus. All of those separations- Jew from Messianic Jew, Messianic Jew from Gentile Christian, Gentile Christian from Gentile Christian, etc., etc., etc.- are not the fault of God or errors in God’s planning. They are purely the results of human squirming for attention from God and other humans. Just as the disciples fussed at the Last Supper about who would sit next to Jesus, so humans have continued to institutionalize the ranking of believers and churches. It’s a people-thing.

On this Saturday of Passover, there were those believers and followers of Jesus who were walking around shell-shocked in every sense of that (then) non-existent word. They had staked their lives, their fortunes, and their hopes on a Messiah who was now dead, executed as a criminal. Despite all they had heard him say about this tragedy being within the plans of God, and despite Jesus’ many hints and promises that he would return to them, the fact is, on this day, he was dead. And all evidence and common sense said that he would stay dead.

Gradually, on this day, the disciples were coming together again. All they had at this point, was each other and the memories they’d shared. No doubt, there was much talk among them about the betrayal and suicide of Judas. One by one, along with Mary of Magdela and others of the women, they met together at a house (a safe house?) south of Jerusalem. I imagine the feelings shared there. Shame and embarrassment must have been paramount. Sadness and grief- numbing grief- would have shaded all conversation and thinking. Hopelessness, disappointment, and the feelings of resignation about returning to their former lives would have begun to be expressed, too.

It would not surprise me to have seen some of the disciples drinking too much on this day. I can easily imagine Peter leaning against a tree out in the yard, particularly ashamed of his actions the day before. John would have been being attentive to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the horrors they had witnessed together the day before would have not been spoken of. Not yet. Maybe, never. There would have some food, prepared by someone, setting on a table, untouched mainly.

As the day passed, and as the sun went down and Passover was coming to an end, the oldest of the disciples, Matthew maybe, would have begun the prayers to end Sabbath. On this evening also, we can be assured that the Kaddish was prayed- the prayer for the dead. It is a prayer which has been said by all Jewish people during times of mourning since the time of King David, 500 years before Christ. A leader begins the prayer, and others join in. Notice- even though it is called a prayer for the dead, there is no mention of death within it. It is a prayer about faith. It a prayer that affirms that, at times, faith is all we have. It is also a prayer that affirms that, at times, that faith is enough.

It must be.



The Kaddish

Glorified and sanctified be God's great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.
May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for usand for all Israel; and say, Amen.
He who creates peace in His celestial heights, may He create peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

The Thursday before the Passover

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. (John 13: 12-17)

The day before the day of Jesus’ execution, as recorded by the gospel writers, has given rise to literally thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of sermons, and uncountable and unknowable transformations and changes in human behavior, collectively and individually. From the Passover meal, celebrated a day early with his disciples, and all of the various events within that supper, to Jesus’ time alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, his betrayal, his arrest, and his being led away, the day was full far beyond the many lifetimes which have been spent in understanding it.

It seems to me, however, that the single incident of washing his disciple’s feet, before the Passover meal began, defined Jesus more than any other single thing he said or did. And because it was an incident that defined Jesus, it must also define us, his disciples.

I have written here before of the foul regard people of the Middle East had (and have) toward feet. Remember how the Iraqui people danced on the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein; how some of them removed their shoes and hit the statue with them? Feet are regarded as highly insulting parts of the body, with a whole mythos of insulting meanings attached to them. It’s far worse, I’ve been told, than the kind of insult Westerners try to conjure up with their middle fingers.

It wasn’t merely the really bad forms of dirt that Jesus was willing to wash off the feet of his disciples, then; it was the mystical debasement involved in doing so. To willingly touch, let alone scrub, someone’s foot, was to empty oneself of any trace of honor or pretension. As the Apostle Paul would later write to the Philippians, Jesus, in this act among others, was emptying himself of himself.

It horrified the disciples to see Jesus doing this. There he was on the floor, his upper torso bared, a towel at his waist, with a bowl of water, waiting. Pick the person you admire most in your life and imagine them kneeling in supplication at your feet. That begins to describe the feelings the disciples would have felt seeing such a sight. Peter balked at what Jesus was doing and certainly the other disciples did , too. “No, never!” he protested. But Jesus told him that unless he did this thing for him, Peter could have no share in the life of Jesus. To have one’s feet washed by Jesus, in other words, was not a choice. It was mandatory.

I think many of us forget that. I forget that. I forget that Jesus must have that most despicable, ugly, dirty, foul part of me- that part of me that I am so ashamed of that I hold it back from him, thinking I must hang onto it myself long enough to clean it up a little before I give it to him, and then only reluctantly. But, as Jesus emptied himself for us, for me, so must each of us also be willing to give to Jesus that thing which most disgusts us about ourselves. To hang onto it, whatever it is, is to maintain the illusion that there is something we can do about it, something we can do to fix it ourselves. And in so doing, we are betraying our own unwillingness to completely empty ourselves. We are keeping some part of ourselves for ourselves that Jesus cannot have.

God the son emptied himself the night before he would have to do the one thing that would demand his complete trust and obedience of God the father. It was a place on his journey for us that he had to spend time in. It is also a place in our journeys for others, done in his name, that we must make time for, too.

The Wednesday before Passover

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’ But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’ Matthew 26: 6-17

And he was right! Here we are- again!- talking about and remembering the act of a woman not named by Matthew who did something for Jesus that was so important we are still remembering her for it.

What is remarkable about this woman’s action is that she recognized, from outside the insider’s circle, what was happening to Jesus. These were funeral ointments, perfumes used in the preparation of wealthy peoples’ bodies for burial. The disciples were seeing the death dominoes falling into place, but they still were not fully realizing what was happening in their midst. The woman did. We don’t know how she knew; the important part of what she did is, as Jesus said, that she did it. She did what she could, which is all any of us can do.

And just as the woman experienced it, no matter what we might do within the Kingdom of God, there will be second-guessers nearby, ready to point out to anyone who will listen, what we could have done better, or differently. There are three questions to ask before acting within the Kingdom that I believe make it easier when to decide when to do something and when not to do something. I have stated these principles here before in the context of how a church or community of believers can choose to implement programming within their fellowship, but I believe they also apply well to individual action, too. Here they are:[1]

Does it glorify God?
Does it make disciples for Jesus Christ?
Does it alleviate suffering?

Being able to answer ‘yes’ to any one of these questions when contemplating doing a thing for the Kingdom of God, means that it is a thing that should be done. If the thing you are proposing to do garners two or more ‘yes’ answers, you should probably stop whatever you’re doing and begin doing that thing immediately!

Remember, it is Jesus’ opinion that matters. Like the woman with the alabaster jar, you may have insights about Jesus that even those who seem closest to him do not yet have. And, also like the woman with the alabaster jar, people might still be remembering you 2000 years from now as one who did what they could do.

Because- bottom line- that is all Jesus asks of any of us.
______________________________________________


Terry Schiavo

In the last few weeks I have gotten at least five emails (of the “Forward at once to everyone on your list!” variety) urging some action to be taken on my part to:

Save the life of Terry Schiavo, or
Stop the sanctioned killing of Terry Schiavo

Schiavo is the Florida woman, of course, who suffered a stroke fifteen years ago and has been diagnosed by her doctors as being in a “persistent vegetative state” since that time. The fact that we almost all know about her speaks volumes about the manipulative power of the media in our lives and the foulness of certain shameless politicians to ride even the most pitiful of horses into the spotlight of what they perceive to be the opinion of the majority.

Why don’t we know about the other fifty or so cases around the United States of people who are being removed today from their feeding I.V.s or other artificial means of life sustenance? Why aren’t Dr. Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Gov. Bush holding press conferences about the equally difficult ethical decisions being faced at this moment by hospitals and families in towns and cities in their own backyards?

I have a theory why that is. I know you didn’t ask, but here it is anyway:

Those who depend on Christians as a part of their power base, have successfully wrapped this case in the buzzwords of Christianity.

There are “good” people- her family. There is an “evil” man- her husband. There is even an “adulterous” relationship- her husband and the woman he’s lived with for ten years. There is “filthy lucre”- a fund that supposedly exists for Schiavo’s care. “Godless” judges, “Right to Life” advocates, and the easily gathered troops who love to protest from the comfort of their easy chairs and laptops all make for a major media event. Thus, newsroom executives and politicians have had the opportunity to produce their own Passion Play in these weeks before Easter. A crucifixion is taking place in slow motion- that is what we seem to be being presented with. It’s the Pharisees and Romans against the Christians..again!

Or, is it? Personally, I think not. I think we are merely being forced to witness the kind of “rubber meets road” decision that takes place dozens of times daily among good and decent people of deep and abiding faith who are forced to put that faith on the line and make decisions about loved ones about which there are no clear cut biblical guidelines.

IVs, respirators, anesthetics, and the vast array of pharmaceuticals we have today had not even been thought of in the year 33 A.D. If they had been, maybe there would have been something said about them that we could build our own present day decisions on. What we do have are the teachings of Jesus about love and grace and eternal life that allow us to use our God-imaged and inspired intellects to argue and come to some semblance of consensus on difficult issues concerning life and death. It’s not easy. It’s the reason why hospitals have ethics committees- committees made up of doctors, clergy, and academics- to create guidelines for families and help them in making medical decisions during times when it is very difficult to have to be making decisions. It is easy to stand outside of a situation and declare with certainty what is black and what is white. Up close, however, where the edges of the shadows of death and the aura of the lights of life intermingle, the gray areas are larger, and much more difficult to navigate.

When Dad’s third heart attack in two days was beginning to take place, the cardiologist told my brother and me that we had a choice to make. Let it happen, and Dad would die. Stop it at some other stage before it’s completion and he would have a 50-50 chance of surviving, even though he would probably be able to do little more than sit for however many months or years he had left. The doctor could not tell us how much brain function would be lost, but assured us there would be some damage. We chose to let God be God, and not interfere with his systems of life, death, and dying. We said goodbye to dad, and the three of us- my brother, Mom, and myself- were holding onto him as he became present to the Lord.

That’s what I pray for Terri Shiavo, too. I pray that she will be allowed to experience the presence of the Lord, and the beginning of her whole and complete life in the Kingdom of God, that she anticipated she one day would. I pray for her family who must, after fifteen years, make the difficult, heart-breaking decision to let God be God. I’ve been with other families who have had to make the kinds of decisions my family did, and the more difficult decision of withholding sustenance from those who are severely brain-damaged. I’ve watched; the withdrawal of nutrition and water is, with sedatives, a gentle way of dying. It is not anywhere near the category of “Mercy killing” that some are screaming in their ignorance about this case. It is simply the elimination of extraordinary, humanly dependent means of keeping another alive, in favor of the natural processes of God.

As it is with any decision of this nature, there will come to the minds of some of those reading this, many anecdotal and logical exceptions to what I’ve just said. And I would probably agree with all of them. That is what makes the ethics of life, death, technology, science, medicine, and God so difficult. The bottom line (for me) is this: I’d rather be whole in heaven for eternity, beginning as soon as possible, than trapped in a bedroom somewhere for years and years of emotional, physical, and financial dependency on others. I’ll take whole and complete life in the Kingdom of God over half-life in a tiny bedroom, anytime.

This world, I remind myself and anyone else who needs to be reminded, is not my home.

[1] I first heard these criteria used by the planning committee of Fraser Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, AL.

The Tuesday Before Passover

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23: 13-15)

Now, in this last week of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, he was letting loose with some final thoughts which, I think, he might have been holding in for some time. A crowd had gathered, along with some of his disciples. Because of the things that had happened the previous several days, the scribes and Pharisees were nearby, too, challenging Jesus more and more openly and caustically. Jesus, I believe, is fed up with them and their blindness about what he has been saying, teaching, and demonstrating concerning the Kingdom of God.

I’m going to relate a story here in very general terms, even though it is a story being acted out in the present among people I am in contact with daily. I’m changing some of the specific information so that no confidentialities are breached. But it is a story which illustrates very well why Jesus’ teachings, and his frustrations and anger, are relevant for all time and for all people.

There is a family in a nearby town with deep needs. They have no money, no friends, and no power. What most of us need in terms of information, or records, or services, they must work very hard to get. They are met, because of their inabilities to communicate well, their lack of education and know-how, and (regrettably) because of their sometimes unkept appearance, with belligerence, animosity, and rudeness. They’ve made many mistakes, that’s a given. They are trying, against huge odds, to fix some of those mistakes.

“Are you saved?” I’ve heard them being asked when they’ve asked for help. “Are your children baptized?” Yes. “Do you really know the Lord?” Yes. “Are you going to church?” Not yet. “Shouldn’t you be giving back what you have been given?”

And on and on. In return for the right answers, they receive someone’s cast-off clothing, and a box of someone else’s expired food. Like all people with little means, the few things they do have- phone service, electric service- costs them more in deposits and fees than it does someone who has the money to spend. Each day brings new challenges, new frustrations, and more religious hoops to be jumped through.
Don’t get me wrong, please. I am as frustrated by the difficulties of this family’s situation as anyone. But as I am beating my head against the wall one more time over their plight and being tempted to flush the problem into someone else’s holding tank, I am reminded of those people who Jesus said were locking people out of the kingdom of God. By making up rule after rule after rule for others to adhere to in order to be allowed to approach the Temple, the gatekeepers became impediments to the Kingdom. They got in the way of God’s love through their actions and attitudes. It became easier to run from the God those gatekeepers stood in front of, than it was to work their way toward that God.

How easy it would be for me to make this family flee from the God who loves them, with some sarcastic comment of my own, or some legalistic moralizing on my part. Someone whom God is calling closer to his son could so easily be tripped up on their journey toward him by some power-grabbing set of religious gymnastics concocted by me, their spiritual “superior.”

I am as guilty as those on whom Jesus is pronouncing “Woe!” when I fail to stand against this evil which exists at the edges of the Kingdom of God. If I look the other way while others are making up rules designed to keep others out of their “sacred” spaces, then I am
every bit as guilty as the rule makers are. And woe are they, and woe is me.

Jesus had every right to be angry at the unrighteousness of those who posed as God’s point men but who were, in actuality, in the words of Jesus, “children of hell.” I’m not nearly as upset with them right now, though, as I am upset with myself. And I’ve got some amends to make tomorrow.

Etty

I met a remarkable person earlier this week. In 1941, Etty Hillesum, then a 27-year-old Jewish woman living in Amsterdam, began to write a journal that I have been reading from all week. The journal covers the period from March, 1941, to October, 1942- not a very long time. But, given the background of Nazi occupation that was happening in Europe at the time, the journal records the spiritual transformation of a self-absorbed intellectual into someone in deep communion with God.

We have records of her writings from the time the Nazi oppression in the Netherlands began to worsen, through her family’s relocation to Westerbork, a holding camp for various "undesirables" being shipped weekly to Auschwitz in Germany. The last record we have of her writing is a postcard she threw from the train which carried her from Westerbork to Auschwitz. It was found by some farmers and mailed. It said, "We have left the camp singing." Odd words, one might conclude, to have been written by someone who knew full well what that train ride to Auschwitz meant. But they were words written after months of profound and wonderful discoveries about God, even in the midst of circumstances that were destroying the faith of many others.

As she watched the slow destruction of the Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam, she wrote:

"The jasmine behind my house has been completely ruined by the rains and storms of the last few days, its white blossoms are floating about in muddy black pools on the low garage roof. But somewhere inside me the jasmine continues to blossom undisturbed, just as profusely and delicately as it ever did. And it spreads its scent round the House in which You dwell, oh God. You can see, I look after You. I bring you not only my tears and my forebodings on this stormy, grey Sunday morning, I even bring you scented jasmine.. I shall try to make you at home always. Even if I should be locked up in a narrow cell and a cloud should drift past my small barred window, then I shall bring you that cloud, oh God, while there is still the strength in me to do so."

After several months at Westerbork, where conditions became more and more crowded and more deplorable as more and more Jews were passed through it, Etty wrote these words of almost unimaginable meaning:

"You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. .At night, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer."

Etty, her parents, and a brother and sister died at Auschwitz in November, 1943. The diaries and journals written by Etty before and during her time at Westerbork were not discovered until 1981. They have been published under the title An Interrupted Life-The Diaries of Etty Hillesum. The book has since been translated into 14 languages and deserves to be read by many others for years to come. Others, many others, need to know that, even in the worst of circumstances, it is possible to leave "the camp singing."
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Here are some other quotations from Etty Hillesum’s journals. They are part of a spiritual feast, served by Etty, and nourishing for generations to come:

"ALAS, there doesn't seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last."

"Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world."

"We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies."