The First Morning

Golf

2005-05-21T10:12:00.000-05:00

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..

2005-04-13T00:35:00.000-05:00

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

2005-04-11T23:49:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-25T22:54:00.000-06:00

“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

2005-03-24T22:07:00.000-06:00

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

2005-03-22T21:03:00.000-06:00

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

2005-03-22T07:36:00.000-06:00

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

2005-03-19T14:56:00.000-06:00

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."

Faith

2005-03-18T07:28:00.000-06:00

“In the act of faith, the motive or moving force is God himself who has spoken both his external word to all and his internal word inside the will and mind of the believer. In almost all other judgments of truth that we make, the motive is our perception of available evidence. We gather in evidence, evaluate it, and gradually come to our conclusion. The process of faith is quite different. There simply is no conclusive evidence available to our minds. We cannot reason our way into faith as we reason our way to other conclusions. It is simply a conclusion that results from God’s attraction in the will and his enlightenment of the intellect.”
(John Powell, S.J., A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die)

I am watching something on television called the Creation Network. Apparently, there are several different programs that make up this network and they all share the common themes of being anti-evolutionary theory and pro-seven day creation theory. Now, if you’ve been reading this little newsletter even once in awhile, you know I love all theories of creation, find them all completely compatible, and have nothing of my faith invested in any of them.

My faith in God has nothing to do with the double helix structure of DNA or the literal meaning of Genesis, chapter two. Both the intricacies of the genetic code and the ancient truths of the story of Creation enhance and enlighten my understandings of God. I truly believe the magnificence of God can be found in both the digital images of the Hubble telescope and in the introduction to the gospel of John (John 1: 1-18).

I find the arguments being put forward by the host of the Creation Network to be illogical and not much more than scientific-sounding gibberish. He is going to great lengths to point out the completely fallacious argument that there have not been enough seconds since the creation of the universe to enable the number of distinctive connections found in human DNA to have been made, at the rate of one connection per second! If that makes no sense to you, don’t go back and read it; it will never make sense. The host is using attractive and complex charts and computer animations to illustrate the point, however. What he is saying sounds and looks good, on the surface. Beneath the graphics and jargon, however, there is complete intellectual emptiness.

Most college students of faith have experienced a similar kind of void at some point in their university careers. They are confronted with the Beauty of Logic and the Seductiveness of Cause and Affect. Many have had their assertions of faith greeted sarcastically by professors they have come to admire or even emulate. Just as the Creation Network host is putting forth a mindset devoid of true rationality, the young person of faith often encounters a mindset devoid of poetry and abstraction. One says there is no room for science; the other says there is no room for theology.

People of faith must, must, must NOT think they can ever “prove” their faith, or lead anyone logically into a profession of faith. If we were able to argue faith in a rational way, it would not be a true faith. God has given us the gift of faith; he has not made it the logical conclusion to a series of actions or stimuli. The belief that we can teach faith or ‘make’ someone believe as we do, is the kind of arrogant misunderstanding of faith that has led to any number of religious wars and crusades. If our faith could be broken down into a formula, their would be no need for God’s gift of it. If faith is something we have to embrace because of its logical nature, then there is no choice on our part to accept it or not.

No, we cannot prove our faith. We can, however, live in demonstration of its reality. The great missionaries in history, beginning with Paul at Mars Hill, were those who never argued for the superiority of their belief system over the inferiority of the belief systems of those to whom they were speaking. The simply presented the one, true God and allowed room for God the Holy Spirit to work. They demonstrated their faith by acting on it, and not in spite of it. They did not put down the faith or lifestyles of others; rather, they introduced a Messiah would lead them toward the very best God had for them.

Signs

2005-03-10T10:18:00.001-06:00

“Did you see some sign in the air?” Francis asked me, leaning forward, troubled.

“I don’t know, sir. Everything is a sign- my hunger, the moon, your voice. Better not ask me. I’ll begin to weep.”

“Everything is a sign,” Francis murmured, looking about him uneasily.

-a conversation between St. Francis and Bro. Leo in Saint Francis, by Nikos Kazantzakis
~~~~

We watch for signs, pray for them, hope for them. We bargain with God: “Give me a sign, Lord, and I’ll do what you want me to do.”

Stories from the Hebrew Bible have spoiled many people. They read about God’s interaction on a very personal and visible basis with almost all the characters of the Torah. In the book of Judges, Gideon has God responding to several kinds of tricks so that Gideon knows what kind of decisions he should be making.

I think that continuing to challenge God in such ways is both demeaning to God and to ourselves. Jesus not only revealed God’s love in unexpected and new ways; he revealed God’s presence in new ways, too. “Look at those birds,” Jesus said, “and those lilies, and this bread, and these vines, and the fig tree, and the fish, the water, the wine, the grains of wheat, and even the rocks!” Jesus used all kinds of examples from the created world of material things that would help us or enable us to understand God better. They were signs, which pointed to God. They were never defined as stopping places on our journeys toward God, but as signs that we were proceeding correctly.

St. Francis is remembered and celebrated today, almost 800 years after his death, because he recognized those signs of God in ways that they had not been understood before. His thinking about the created world in which he was a part, went something like this:

God is the Creator.
I, Francis, am a created being.
All things in the world have also been created by God.
Therefore, I am a brother to all things created.

That was, and is, a very radical notion concerning God. It is why Francis would at times preach to birds, or dogs; he saw them as brothers and sisters and was responding to Jesus’ commandment to go into the world and preach the gospel to all living things. It’s why Francis lived with no money; he knew he would be taken care of by God just like the Jesus said the birds of the air and the lilies of the field were. Despite the vow of poverty taken by those who joined his order, Francis also insisted that no one ever be called to task for having money or “dainty” clothes, as he called them. They were too beloved of God for Francis or his brothers to regard them with any less love.
Francis would write “Canticle of the Sun” in celebration of the signs and wonders he saw all around him, all the time. Here are a few lines of that poem:

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;
In the heavens you have made them, bright
And precious and fair.
All praise be yours, My Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
How beautiful is he, how gay! Full of power and strength.

Those contemporaries of Francis who wrote about him during his life or soon after his death, all spoke of what we today would call, his charisma. There was something exciting, humbling, mystifying, and very, very memorable about walking down the road with a man who saw God’s fingerprints and love on and in everything they passed. Francis didn’t need to challenge God to produce special signs just for him; he knew those signs were already all around, in abundance, simply waiting to be seen by anyone willing to see.

A modern Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, wrote extensively about the concept of “I and Thou.” If we see the world and other people as separate from ourselves, we think of them as “It.” If, however, we see the world- the trees, other people, rocks, flowers, birds, the sun, etc., etc.- as having been co-created by God, with different and similar attributes, we can regard the world as “Thou”, or, “You.”

Many Western Christians have reacted against philosophers like Buber and saints like Francis. Imagine trying to tell Francis why the mountains around his home in Assisi needed to be strip-mined, or why mink and sable are making a comeback on the fashion runways of Paris. It is easier to call some believers “kooks” than it is to see what they are seeing.

For me, Francis represents an ideal. I want to have my eyes, ears, and heart so wide open, so much of the time, that I am constantly and consistently responding to God. I want those times to be less and less that I respond to my own discomforts or desires, and be able more and more to hear God in the wind, see him in the eyes of all persons, feel him in the heat of the sun, smell him in the ocean’s waves, and taste him in the bread he has given us to remember his son.

I pray I have the courage to move each day nearer to the model of his life as Francis himself moved always in and toward the companionship of Jesus, his brother.

It’s good company. Come along..

The Desert Blooms!

2005-03-09T12:50:00.000-06:00

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. Isaiah 35: 1,2

Because of unusual winter rainfall in Southern California, Death Valley is, right now, experiencing one of the most spectacular wildflower blooms in a generation. Some botanists are finding flowers there that have not been seen in forty or more years! The very wet conditions that have been causing tragic mudslides in residential areas, have also been causing this hottest and driest of American deserts to blossom in ways rarely seen. Since December 15, in fact, it has rained 2 ½” on Death Valley, which is equal to a whole year’s normal rainfall!

Now here’s something I did not know ten minutes ago: the term wildflower (one word) refers specifically to plants and cacti that appear above ground only in wetter than average years. The term wild flower (two words) includes all of the wild flowering plants, including those that bloom every year regardless of the weather, and those that bloom only occasionally. Botanists watch deserts closely, as they are watching this one now, in hopes of discovering species that have never been catalogued before! Some of the wildflowers are less than an inch high, even in full bloom, and grow hidden beneath larger, fuller plants.

As I watched the report on the news about Death Valley, and as I’ve been learning about this phenomenon of seed dormancy in the desert, I am wondering about something else, too. Yesterday, I wrote about gemilut hesed- God’s lovingkindness that is to be shared with others. As the ancient rabbis and Talmudic scholars explored the biblical concept of hesed, in fact, they came to the conclusion that it was imperative for the sons and daughters of God, in order to be complete in their relationships to God, to intentionally do acts of lovingkindness in the world- to be God’s loving/kind presence to other people in need of God’s loving/kind presence. Therefore, what I am wondering is this:

How many spiritual seeds are lying dormant in the world, waiting to be rained upon by God’s lovingkindness?

All of us who have been called to be children of God, first heard that call through the lovingkindness of another child of God. I shared that viewpoint with a fellow one time who had discovered God while he was in a jail cell on a marijuana violation. He was Jewish and, for whatever reason, the book of Revelation in the Bible in his jail cell, spoke to him of God’s love in Jesus Christ in a way he had never heard about that love before. He argued that it was the Word alone through which he had been saved. How did the Word get in that cell, I asked? God put it there, he answered. Using whose hands, I asked again?

I don’t remember where that particular discussion ended up, but I am absolutely convinced of the truth of how God works in the world. He uses the hands, hearts, heads, feet, ears, eyes, and lovingkindness of his children to reach others. He uses it to touch that dormant seed inside of others that is aching to germinate and bloom. We- God’s children- are the carriers that Jesus has entrusted to carry his Living Water to the world.

Like the unseasonable, unexpected rains in Death Valley, each of us has within us the divinely given gift of hesed. We’ve been entrusted with it. We’ve been chosen as precisely the correct container for it to reach some person, some family, some community that God is waiting to see bloom and bear fruit in all the ways he has intended for them to bloom and grow. But he does not act alone. The dormant seeds in the lives of others might remain dormant if we are not willing to carry the life-giving presence of God to them.

Deserts are blooming. Be a part of making more of them blossom abundantly. And then, rejoice with joy and singing over the colors and beauty you have helped God unleash upon the world!

Gemilut Hesed

2005-03-08T22:34:00.000-06:00

The world rests on three things: the study of Torah, worship, and deeds of loving-kindness. (“Ethics of Our Ancestors” 1:2, from the Mishnah)

Sometimes, it’s good to see and hear the words Jesus would have used. Gemilut hesed is a Hebrew phrase he would have heard often and for which there is no one, complete translation possible in English. The pronunciation is something like jem’-ih-loot hkheh-sed’, the hkh being that back of the tongue sound that has no English counterpart. The translation of that phrase as loving-kindness is about as close as we can come to a specific word, too. But I think a description of it will remind of you something very familiar.

Doing deeds of loving-kindness demonstrate how well the Torah has been assimilated into one’s life through study and worship. It is the culmination of the other two activities. Just as God is believed to act in the world, so are people to act ethically and in a caring manner in the world. That is a basic Jewish belief and attitude; thus, it was a basic attitude and belief of Jesus, too.
Loving-kindness the supreme/best/highest/holiest form of action toward others in the world. It is even better, in a religious ranking of such activities, than charity! Charity is required by God’s justice; taking care of those less fortunate is mandatory in God’s laws. But loving-kindness toward others is the ability to identify with other people, to feel for them, to want to help them or ease their burden even if simple justice would not require it.[1]

Caring for others, even when it not deserved, or sought, or deserved- those are other ways of defining acts of gemilut hesed. Sound familiar yet? It is precisely the kind of care toward others that we speak of when we talk about grace. Grace is God’s gemilut hesed toward humanity. Jesus was God’s most perfect expression of his gemilut hesed!

Another commentary from the Talmud (the commentary on the Torah) says this: “Our masters taught: Loving-kindness is greater than charity in three ways. Charity is done with one’s money, while loving-kindness may be done with one’s money or with one’s person. Charity is given only to the poor, while loving-kindness may be given to both the poor and the rich. Charity is given only to the living, while loving-kindness may be shown to both the living and the dead.”[2]

Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan told by Jesus. The Samaritan acted charitably toward the victim by giving the innkeeper the money to take care of him and feed him. And he also gave of his person; he took the time to take the injured man to the inn, to tend to him, and then to promise to return to him. He acted charitably and out of loving-kindness because he lived that way in the world, unlike the other two travelers who passed the injured man by. Both of those who walked to other side of the road could have quoted the scriptures about taking care of others; they had an intellectual knowledge of those scriptures. But they were unable to act on that knowledge because it was not part of their hearts and souls.

Jesus lived out his life in loving-kindness. He spoke of it often, and then demonstrated it with his actions and his life and his death. He opened the doors to this truth in a way that it applied to all people, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. “You have seen me, you have seen the Father,” he said, affirming that God’s very being is one of loving-kindness for his Creation.
Gemilut hesed also means to understand that we all need deeds of loving-kindness to be done for us, too.”[3] Remember also, the woman who came to Jesus and poured costly perfume on him, as the disciples protested her actions. They saw the perfume only in terms of the money it cost. Jesus understood the act as an act of adoration toward him, AND as an act necessary for the wholeness of the woman herself! To live and act in God’s loving-kindness means allowing others the opportunity to live and act in that loving-kindness, too!

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[1] A Book of Life, Michael Strassfeld, Schocken Books, 2002, p. 207
[2] Talmud, Sukkah, 49b
[3] Strassfeld, 208

Broken

2005-03-07T21:57:00.000-06:00

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:24-25

There was a business management book written in 1992 that was both practical and prophetic. The title was: If It Ain’t Broke, Break it. It was by Robert Kriegle and was sub-titled, “Unconventional Wisdom for a Changing Business World.” Kriegle correctly theorized that the methods of doing business in the 1990s would change radically, though almost no one could have correctly guessed how much it would change. In 1992, after all, the word ‘Internet’ was still a foreign word to most people. It would be three more years before anyone had a browser to use with their computers. And Wal-Mart still had to prove itself against such retailing powerhouses as K-Mart and Montgomery Ward.

Kriegle warned that the old ways of doing business in a global, digitally driven, economy wouldn’t work. Stockpiling- of raw goods or finished products- was over. Customer and employee loyalty were rapidly fading concepts. (My dad had a 60 year pin from his employment with Firestone Tire and Rubber! It was probably one of the last such pins that will ever be earned.)

Maintaining the status quo- staying safe, avoiding chances- would prove to be deadly to many companies and businesses in the 1990s. Breaking with the old and established ways of doing business was a risk, Kriegle said, that would prove to be a necessity. There would be a risk involved; some companies would simply not be able to make it, even if they did try to fashion themselves in the new economy. But there was no chance of growing larger, or better (in a business sense), without making those changes.

Now, fascinatingly, I think, something similar was being said by Jesus long before that, too. He was responding to hearing that there were a group of Greeks in Jerusalem that wanted to meet him. Suddenly, Jesus was made aware that doors to the Kingdom of God, through his message, were wide open. These Greeks were simply the first of the non-Jewish, non-Palestinian groups and individuals that would be making their way to him. Even in his limited ministry of one-to-one contact with people, Jesus was being overwhelmed, and often had to make retreats for his own spiritual, emotional, and physical strength. Something had to change. And the ‘change,’ which was about to happen, was unlike anything the disciples or anyone thinking about life from a human viewpoint, could possibly have envisioned.

Jesus likened his imminent death to the death of a seed in the ground. When a seed dies, it produces new life. One grain becomes a new stalk, and a new stalk yields fruit of a hundred new grains. Those grains then produce thousands more plants, producing tens of thousands more grains.

Jesus was choosing to take the difficult path. If he had taken the “safe” way through life, the “loved but lost” life he referred to in the above quote, he would have begun speaking with less of an edge to his words. He would have shown more respect to the powers-that-be: the Romans and the Pharisees. He would have spent less time with riff-raff, and surely would have stopped drawing so much attention to himself. He might have written a few books, gone on a speaking tour of Israel and the Mediterranean, and retired to a cushy appointed office somewhere in the bureaucracies of King Herod. Jesus had those choices. He could have lived, but he would have died. No one beyond the second century would have ever heard of him again.

Instead, Jesus lived in a very ‘unsafe’ way, a way that guaranteed his death. He acted as if he hated the safe ways of life available to him. He was moving toward an inevitable end, but did nothing to stop it! But because he allowed himself to die, he was able to be resurrected by God! Because he took a chance, with an unsafe way of life, his seed was transformed into a wheat field. Because he allowed the grain of his one life to die, wheat fields took root throughout the middle East, then Africa, then the Mediterranean, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. There is infinitely more Bread of Life in the world today, than there was the day that first grain fell dead into the ground.

And it happened because one man, the son of God, didn’t live the easy way. Imagine what could be, if those millions of sons and daughters of God alive today, made the choice to live uneasily, in unsafe, daring, and eternal ways! What if only 10,000 of us, living lives of safe mediocrity, fitting in well with the world, and planning, hoping to die quietly of some infirmity of old age..what if just 10,000 of us from the whole world of millions of believing disciples, chose..

.. the other way? The ‘broken’ way?

The way that leads to new wheat fields, bushels and bushels of new grain, and unimaginable servings of the Bread of Life..

Piety

2005-03-04T07:52:00.000-06:00

“Remember, merciful Jesus, That I am the cause of your journey.” ……………………………………………..(from Mozart’s “Requiem”)

Some prayers are harder to pray than others. Thanking God for his blessings, his gifts, and his presence is a whole lot easier than praying about our own inadequacies, selfishness, and spiritual timidity. Asking God for his assistance on behalf of others, is much less difficult than having to admit to God our own desperate needs.

Part of the traditional observation of the season of Lent has been the practice of denial, or sacrifice. The discipline of fasting is one such practice. By voluntarily putting aside some one thing during the forty days of Lent, those who were fasting were giving themselves a physical reminder to pray and be conscious of Christ’s sacrifice for them. Some people give up sweets, or meat, or fried foods. In some countries, even today, the acts of sacrifice done by individuals are attempts to take on some of the actual pain of Christ. Pebbles in shoes, horsehair shirts, and self-flagellation are such practices that the producers of “Real Videos” and “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” seem to find many practitioners of.

Such spiritual disciplines that involve physical pain are based on a faulty assumption of what it means to suffer with Christ. There is nothing- NO THING- we can do to earn our approval by Christ. We can, like some of the disciples did at the Last Supper, jostle for position in the misbegotten idea that there is a hierarchy among disciples, that some are more important in the Kingdom of God than others. In doing so, we will be acting as foolish as they did.
Public piety is an ugly thing. Jesus said so himself, just before he taught his disciples how to pray, in private, with humility. He said that those who posed on street corners had already received the answer to prayer they sought- public applause. But that’s all they were going to get!

John Wesley saw true piety in action in a way that caused those of us who are United Methodists to be United Methodists! While on the ship he was aboard on his way to Georgia to be a missionary in the 1730s, a terrible storm blew up on the Atlantic. Wesley and many other passengers spent their time panicking and hanging over the sides of the ship, seasick. Wesley also noticed, however, that there was a group from Germany- the Moravians- who sat on the deck of the deck calmly singing and praying during the storm. Even their children were well behaved. This aroused Wesley’s curiosity and admiration so that he later traveled to Germany to meet the Moravian Christian Community there and studied with some of their leaders. He observed their methods of aligning themselves with God’s grace, and he made those means of grace part of his own spiritual disciplines. The quiet praying, singing, and community of the Moravians were incorporated into the personal worship of the young Wesley and the other Methodists.

Mozart’s prayer brings us back, when we need to be brought back, to a real understanding of our relationship with Christ. We are the reason for his having to come among us in the first place! That’s not something to stand on street corners showing off about! That is something to respond to with quiet and grateful acceptance. It doesn’t matter where we are sitting at the table in relation to him. It doesn’t matter what we have in our shoes or on our backs, or what we are denying ourselves or not.

It only matters that God’s grace has blown over us and brought us to the place, wherever it is, that we can pray such a prayer.

Getting Out of the Way

2005-03-03T09:43:00.000-06:00

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John the Baptist, to his disciples, speaking about Jesus. John 3:30)

John the Baptist’s disciples came to him with the report that Jesus, whom John had baptized just a short time before, was now baptizing his own followers. There is some concern being expressed by John’s disciples in reporting this. But John assures them that this is the way it must be. It was his purpose, he told them, to have been the one to announce the Messiah’s coming. Now, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Those were difficult words for John to say. He is stepping out of the lime-light and into, as far as he knew, historical obscurity. We know that soon after this encounter, he would be arrested by King Herod, and later executed, for daring to say publicly that Herod and his cronies were sinners. His historical role turned out to be anything but obscure. In fact, John the Baptist has been the favorite subject of many writers and painters through history.

One of my favorite paintings that involves the Baptist is one by Matthius Grϋnewald. Grϋnewald, a German, was commissioned by the monks of St. Anthony’s monastery near Isenheim, France. It was to be placed in their hospital chapel, and was completed in 1515. It is known as The Isenheim Altarpiece, and is painted on three sections of wood, which fold out into a triptych. Underneath the three panels, there is a fourth. When it is fully opened, it is quite large- 8’9” x 4’7”.

The hospital at St. Anthony’s was operated by the brothers there specifically for victims of a very nasty skin disease called, at the time, St. Anthony’s Fire. It is now known as ergotism, and is caused by a fungus- ergot- which grows on wheat. It was, at the time, almost always fatal.

Grϋnewald’s painting was startling when it was unveiled, because it depicted Christ in pain, twisted on the cross and his skin covered with many open sores. At a time when Renaissance painters had begun idealizing the human body, Grϋnewald had painted a very Gothic painting full of disproportions and ugliness.

The patients at the hospital embraced the painting. They saw and understood a Christ that was like them. He was not far away; he was not an ideal that was distant from them any longer. They knew this Jesus; he suffered as they were suffering. When they cried out to him in pain, they knew he could hear them.

Religious painters at the time were painting sermons for that majority of people who were illiterate. In this altarspiece, the patients at St. Anthony’s were given a view of Christ’s suffering by Grϋnewald very similar to Mel Gibson’s view of Christ in last year’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

Other figures also populate the central scene, including John the Baptist, who is seen standing to the right of the cross pointing to Christ with very long fingers. The words of the scripture at the top of this page are part of the painting, too (just behind his hand). His message of “decreasing, as Christ increases” became the central message of the painting to those who saw it. Their suffering, could be absorbed in the suffering of Christ. Their eventual relief from pain, had been made possible by his pain.

Other characters in the painting are Mary, the mother, in the arms of the Apostle John, and Mary, the Magdalene, at the foot of the cross. A small, wounded Lamb is at the Baptist’s feet, another symbol of the true identity of the suffering figure on the cross.

John the Baptist, of course, had been dead for several years by the time Christ was crucified. His role in the painting is more like that of a host or instructor, pointing toward the meaning of the scene. Interestingly, this painting was finished just two years before Martin Luther began his break with the Church. Both Grϋnewald’s and Luther’s messages were the same, however: all people have direct access to a Christ who is like them, who suffers with them and knows them, but who is also God.

A God who gives all people the freedom to become small beside him..

Love (His, not mine)

2005-03-02T12:31:00.000-06:00

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16

Said another way, by the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love,I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries andmaking everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to amountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake tobe burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere.
So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.Love cares more for others than for self.Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.Love doesn't strut,Doesn't have a swelled head,Doesn't force itself on others,Isn't always "me first,"Doesn't fly off the handle,Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,Doesn't revel when others grovel,Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,Always looks for the best,Never looks back,But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying intongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only aportion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooedlike any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peeringthrough a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears andthe sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearlyas God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things todo to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hopeunswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. (from 'The Message')
``
It becomes discouraging sometimes, challenging always: to live out the love of God as a verb, rather than merely talking about it as a noun.

Against the standards set by Jesus in his willingness to die, even for those who hated him, we fall very short. The doing of love- the active, difficult, frustrating doing of love- demands time, money, decisions, and commitment that very few people are willing to give. It is hard. There is no emotionally elevating soundtrack in the background when we are doing the real love work of God’s kingdom. The kind of happy endings or resolutions that we expect from watching television shows that touch our hearts, are rare.

It is easy to sing about love, write about it, and even to talk about it. We can keep the doing of love at arm’s length by talking about it. (doing the verb vs. talking about the noun) . We can be inspirational and emotional about God’s love with our words, our poetry, our jewelry, even our church architecture, and completely miss the mark in living out that love. We can accumulate awards and applause for the good sounds we make while, at the same, we sound like nothing more to God than the squeaking of a rusty gate, according to Paul.

Christianity has become equated, for many, in this early part of the 21st Century in America, with a particular strain of politics. It’s an easy connection to make, unfortunately. The doing of God’s love is difficult and hard to see, so many move away from it so neither their hands nor their political identities become soiled. They have learned to-somehow- equate the love of God with a particular politician, or to a proposed amendment in the legislature, or to protests over school prayer, evolution, gay marriage, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. I really believe that one day the greatest heresy of our time will not be identified as one of those things so many spend so much time protesting. The greatest heresy of our time will be seen as not loving the way God loves.

Republican/Democratic posturing is meaningless if there is a single family living in poverty in America whose home is within the shadow of a Christian church. Protesting and fussing about Gay Marriage, School Prayer, SpongeBob Squarepant’s sexuality, or the words to the Pledge of Allegiance are- I really do believe this- exactly what the enemies of God want Christians to be busy about. Satan- I believe- loves to see a crowd of people gathered and congratulating themselves over political achievements, while people at the edges of society remain skeptical and wondering over Christian’s responses to their suffering. Satan loves it when people talk about Love, without doing anything about it.

Uh-oh, I’m ranting. Stick with Paul’s words to the Corinthians. Those are the words we all need to allow to be burned into our souls. Living those words, living that kind of Love, is really the only option we have in truly being able to adequately respond to God’s love for us.

Darkness

2005-03-01T08:53:00.000-06:00

"He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."
John 3: 2

As John wrote his gospel of Jesus Christ, he made sure we could properly envision the various scenes as he recorded them. Light and Darkness are characters in his gospel just as surely as the human players are. In his very first chapter, John equates Jesus with Light: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (1:9) He continues in his gospel to present Jesus in the light, because he is the Light. Darkness, in his gospel, always accompanies characters who have not yet entered into the Light of Christ. Thus, Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus to learn more about him, takes place in the darkness, of night and of his own spiritual condition.

St. John of the Cross was a 16th Century Spanish mystic. His classic work, Dark Night of the Soul, was written long before scientific understandings of human psychology had been formulated, let alone understood in standardized language. He describes a particular ‘interior’ condition of the soul- the Dark Night of the Soul- in ways that we can easily understand as a description of deep depression. He relates one of the primary causes of that soul-state to not having entered into the Light of Christ.

"[It]...puts the sensory spiritual appetites to sleep, deadens them, and deprives them of the ability to find pleasure in anything. It binds the imagination, and impedes it from doing any good discursive work. It makes the memory cease, the intellect become dark and unable to understand anything, and hence it causes the will to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty and useless. And over this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud which afflicts the soul, and keeps it withdrawn from the good."

Winston Churchill called that same condition, one that afflicted him with some regularity his whole life, “the coming of the Black Dog.” We may know depression in more scientific and medical terms than either St. John or Churchill described it, but both of their definitions of it are valid descriptions of it, as anyone who suffers from it will agree.

Undiagnosed, depression may be perceived as a kind of unholy reality by the person suffering from it. They may not realize that there is something actually afflicting them, and see themselves only as different from the way they perceive those around them to be. Sometimes, oftentimes, the depressed person will find temporary alleviation of that ‘darkness’ by self-medicating themselves with alcohol or other drugs, or through compulsive or addictive behaviors of various sorts. Many people suffering from depression, whether it is a chronic condition or one caused by circumstances in the person’s life, will attribute the darkness they feel inside and around them, to an absence of God from their lives.

I believe all persons on the frontlines of interaction with other human beings (pastors, human resource directors, supervisors, teachers, etc.) should know the fundamental signs of depression, so they are able to make proper (sometimes life-saving) referrals to qualified professionals. Here is a very good place to familiarize yourself with the symptoms of depression: http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/depression/definition_2.asp#symptoms

But we should also be ready, as brothers and sisters bound together by the Light of Christ, to be the Light of Christ to those who are not now able to perceive it. Hackneyed old platitudes are not helpful. Don’t tell a depressed person to:

“Give all your problems to God.” (They’ve already tried that, a thousand times)
“Look on the bright side!” (They’ve tried that, too..it’s not there)
“C’mon, let’s see a big smile!” (Watch out! You might get punched for that one!)

Instead, listen. Listen for words, however quietly they may be being said, of hope. Then build, just a little at first on that spoken hope. Is a child coming home for a visit? Ask about one of the good things you know might happen on that visit. Is the person driving a new car, wearing a new dress, planting a garden, shopping for groceries? Comment on those things, the good taste being shown, or ask for advice from them on those activities.

Make a lunch date, play date, study date with them for tomorrow or sometime definite in the near future. Tomorrow is a very difficult reality for the depressed person. They need your light to look forward to, as they are usually unable to generate their own. Then, KEEP THAT DATE! Don’t ‘prove’ to them what they believe to be true- that they are without friends or people who care.

Nicodemus knew, even if he wasn’t aware of the particular vocabulary, that there was Light in the night. He went to that Light. Something (I believe it was the Holy Spirit) drew him toward that Light.

Others need help getting there. Each of us are called upon to be the tool of God the Holy Spirit in helping them to accomplish that journey. Most depressions are very treatable conditions. They do not need to place of seeming permanent hopelessness as St. John of the Cross described them to be. They do not need to be suffered through until they somehow go away. Without help, many depressions never go away, or, if they do for awhile, they almost always return, like Churchill’s Black Dog.

Depression has been described by some recent commentators, as a growing plague. It is so common, among believers and non-believers alike, that it may be one of the great mission fields for this part of the 21st Century. We should all (and you don’t hear me use that word ‘should’ very often), but we should all have some of the basic tools we need to be the representatives of Christ he needs us to be in this regard. Those tools are born of God’s Love and Christ’s Light, and no matter how inadequately you may feel you are qualified to carry them, they have been given to you for the purpose of helping others make it through their darkness.

Wind

2005-02-28T09:17:00.000-06:00

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. John 3:8

Jesus describes the transforming presence of God to the inquiring Nicodemus using the metaphor of wind. The Hebrew word for wind- ruach- is the same word used in speaking of breath and spirit. Those words are, in fact, interchangeable in the way Jesus is speaking of wind: The breath of God blows where it chooses..; the spirit of God blows where it chooses.

Wind is an apt metaphor for God’s presence. It is ever-present, even when it seems to be still. It is unseen; we know the wind’s presence only by its feel and by the results of its having blown. And it is utterly and completely beyond human control.

January 10, 1975. For ten hours that day, northeast South Dakota was besieged by one of the biggest and most ferocious blizzards on record. We were living at that time in a house given to us to use by an Indian woman who was not able to live there. It was a government-home, as they were known, built cheaply, according to minimal standards. Our new baby, Joshua, was just 3 months old. And for ten hours that day, from early morning until late afternoon, we watched a continuous 60 mph wind blow snow and ice sideways.

The house became colder and colder as the day progressed. We blocked off the side of the house being pummeled by the endless wind by placing a mattress in the doorway to that part of the house and hanging blankets over it and all the other places cold air and snow were blowing in. The rooms on that side of the house all had little snowdrifts in them after several hours of the storm, from snow blowing through crevices in the cheap windows. Later, I found a 50 lb. sack of potatoes I had stored in that part of the house to be frozen and ruined. The house creaked and moaned. The electric lines were down, the long driveway was impassable, and the road that ran in front of the house was impossible to discern. All we could see outside was the white rush of snow slamming into and around the house. It was the only time I’ve ever been in a place where the wind was life-threatening and, indeed, several people did die that weekend, trapped in their cars, or frozen when their roofs blew off- which is exactly what I had spent that day fearing most.

I’ve also stood on hill near that house in the summertime. It was a hill overlooking miles of bluestem prairie grasses, where one could watch the wind blowing those grasses like waves in a brown/green ocean. Native prairie grasses grow three to six feet in height and are anchored by equally long root systems. They have adapted to the winds and flourish in the winds.

Both winds that blow there, winter and summer, form somewhere high over the arctic regions of Canada. In the winter, they rush toward the warm air masses in the South, and in the summer they are pushed, in far gentler manners, by the warmer air forming over the Great Lakes.

Wind is powerful, life-giving, and, at the same time, when humans are in the way of it, living in ways they are inadequately protected from it, destructive. Wind, thus, became the perfect metaphor for Jesus to use in speaking to Nicodemus. Aligning himself with the ruach of God, as Nicodemus was by being near to Jesus, Nicodemus had the opportunity to be given life, to be born from above. Away from the protective haven offered by Christ, Nicodemus could miss the eternal, life-giving opportunity being provided by God’s ruach.

We know that Nicodemus left that encounter with Jesus, undecided and still confused by what he had heard. But we also know that he was one of the men who courageously stepped from the hostile crowd gathered around the dead body of Jesus on the cross and removed that body, lovingly, to a place they had prepared for Jesus to be entombed. Somewhere between that first and second encounter with Jesus, Nicodemus had both experienced and absorbed the breath of God across his life. Perhaps it was during the gentle warm breezes he felt as Jesus spoke during his sermon on the mountain. Perhaps it was during the harsh winds which blew down and across the courtyard of Pilate’s palace as the crowds turned their backs on the Messiah who stood silently in front of them. We don’t know for sure when and how Nicodemus was transformed or where exactly he was born from above.

But, then, as Jesus said, that is not for us to know, is it? It is only for us to be ready to experience it for ourselves, however it may blow over us. It is only for us to live in expectation of it, wherever it may come from. And it is only for us to respond to it, even though we do not know where it may take us.

Sabbath

2005-02-26T23:50:00.000-06:00

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.. Exodus 20:8

There is a Jewish take on the Sabbath day, which it do us well, as Christians, to understand. “The Sabbath is a foretaste of the Eden, and observing the Sabbath restores Israel to Paradise.”[1]

The institutionalization of the seventh day of rest among observing Jewish families and communities involves a definite negative framework: don’t work, do not pursue mundane concerns (cooking, driving, etc.). But the Sabbath is also adorned with abstract affirmations: one must rejoice, one must rest!

I grew up with “Blue Laws” both as they were formally enforced and informally observed. Somewhere in the 1960s, they seemed to kind of go away, at least in Ohio. I think the Blue Laws evaporated into the clouds of Green Reality, as chain stores, shopping centers, and that new phenomenon on the retailing horizon- malls!- began to appear. It’s no accident, I also think, that Blue Laws began to fall or be disregarded as the “Great American Revival” of the 1950s, thin to begin with, began to melt away in the heat of Interstate highways, and television advertising revenue demands. (Sunday became A Great Day to go car shopping, with all the attendant stops at the drug store, clothing store, hardware store, and restaurants on the way.)

I’d forgotten about Blue Laws until we moved to Texas in 1979 and found odd little curtains covering certain merchandise in the stores that were open. We could buy milk for Sarah, who was a baby then, but we couldn’t buy disposable bottle liners. I could buy nails, but I was out of luck if I’d misplaced the hammer. The whole concept of an institutional Sabbath in Texas had become kind of a Dr. Seuss parody of what it had once been.

Here’s how Jesus would have observed the Sabbath, beginning at sunset on Friday and ending when three stars appear in the Saturday evening sky. We know this is how Jesus would observed Sabbath, because Sabbath is a tradition which has remained intact for over 3000 years!

By Friday afternoon, the best food in the house would have been cooked and the table set. Everyone would have bathed, and cleaned their clothes, to the best extent both practices could have been done in days of no running or hot water. As often as possible, guests- people unable to prepare Sabbath meals themselves- would have been invited for a visit.

After a brief prayer, led by the father or eldest male present, the best meal of the week would have been enjoyed together. Then, everyone would pray briefly again, and go to bed. The next morning, there would be a Sabbath service- a public reading from the Torah, and, at the time of Jesus for those in or near Jerusalem, a trip to the Temple to participate in or watch sacrifices being made. Then home for lunch, and a Sabbath nap. Often, there would have been another public service in late afternoon, followed by Torah study, and a third Sabbath meal.

As the first three Saturday evening stars appeared, a Habdalah ceremony was observed. This ceremony marked the separation of the sacred from the profane, the end of Sabbath, and the beginning of ordinary weekday time. Wine and lamplight preceded the principal prayer of Habdalah:

Praised are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has endowed all creation with distinctive qualities and differentiated between light and darkness, between sacred and profane, between Israel and the nations, and between the seventh day and other days of the week. Praised are you, O Lord, who differentiates between the sacred and the profane.[2]

Jewish people saw, and do see, the Sabbath as the primary sign of God’s grace upon and among them:

For thou hast chosen us and sanctified us above all nations, in love and favor thou hast given us thy holy Sabbath as an inheritance.[3]

In several Christian traditions, the Sabbath traditions evolved into a series of fairly joyless practices that were full of the prior mentioned negatives without a lot of emphasis on the affirmative and joyous aspects of the Jewish observance. It was Calvinism, the 16th century movement in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, that spawned Puritanism and a Presbyterianism that was a very severe form of the Presbyterian church today. John Calvin ran Geneva in Switzerland like a church. There simply were no lines between church and state. Blue Laws in the U.S. grew out of the strict measures the Calvinists enforced in Europe, and came to these shores along with the brave souls on the Mayflower.

By the time all Blue Laws in the U.S. were dead, it was time for them to be dead. They were so cumbersome as to be silly, and very few understood what they were about anymore anyway. Stores that are closed now on Sundays, are closed voluntarily. Which is how, perhaps, Sabbath can best be seen again as a day of celebration and affirmation: by individuals and families voluntarily observing it, in accordance with the rhythms of God, rather than the coercions of humans.

So, if you’re one of those who feels a supernatural need for a nap on Sunday afternoon, and there is someone in the house who tries to stop you from taking that nap, ask them: “What would Jesus do?”

Because now you know the answer.

[1] Jacob Neusner, The Way of Torah, 2004, Wadsworth, p. 149
[2] From the Weekday Prayer Book, the Rabbinical Assembly, 1962
[3] A traditional prayer, Neusner

Dream

2005-02-25T08:36:00.000-06:00

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 2:8

I was dreaming about grace as I awoke yesterday morning. Now, that’s not a normal thing at all for me, to wake up thinking about theological concepts, which makes me believe I’d better pay attention to what I “heard” in those twilight moments between sleep and wakefulness. Here it is:

“Grace is not an ‘add-on’; it is not a reward made available to some and not to others.”

I both heard those words, and saw those words written. The words were hand-printed in the upper left hand corner of a piece of white paper and as I read them, I could hear them. As I saw their position on the paper, I also saw that there was room for more to be written. Maybe that’s what I’m doing right now.

Grace is like music that draws us toward God. As we get nearer and nearer to him, however, the melodies change. The common symphony we all heard at the beginning of our journeys now becomes more and more specific to us, to who we, as individuals, are. We heard great common chords at first, that caused us to turn our heads and wonder about their source. Perhaps we heard them in the wind, emanating from a sunset, or in the smiles of our firstborn. There is that shared yearning among all humans for an understanding of our place in the world, and in those initial harmonic sounds, we hear the basso-profundo of Truth touching our ears and hearts.

The music changes then, gradually, as we keep our minds open to it. Perhaps it is our souls that listen for it most intently. Now we begin to hear other instruments, the piano for some, violins for others, perhaps even drums or brass. The simple beauty of the music at the beginning- the music of the spheres- is shaded now, subtly blended and composed to appeal to us as nations, tribes, communities, and families. But there is more, still.

As we move closer to the source, entire compositions are written for us, each of us specifically. It is different groups and individuals, and different combinations of those same groups and individuals, caught in their own heard melodies, that bring us the chants, the ballads, the hymns, the freestyle jazz, the specific rhythms and sounds that heighten our individual sensitivities and attractions to the Source of them all.

And we continue hearing them, but still from outside of ourselves even as we occasionally find ourselves humming with specific phrases and melodies that seem to be somehow already written inside of us. We are drawn to know the Songs we are hearing, the New Songs that are- somehow- making us feel whole.

We hear them until we stand in front of the Source of the Music, and we know that we have been led now to that Source, for a specific reason. We are hesitant. We are ashamed perhaps that we have been chosen to be in this place and to do this thing we know we must do. We may not feel worthy. But we respond because there is nothing else we can do, and it is- somehow, we know this- everything we were ever meant to do.

So we open our mouths and sing with the Source, with the God of all Creation and the God of own individual journeys. The sounds we make are embarrassingly timid and thin at first, but we hear them immediately become a part of those angelic choruses we heard at the very beginnings of our quest. We hear them resound in the heavens and, encouraged now, we sing with greater fervor, and our Song becomes an integral part of God’s New Song, and- behold!- all of Creation is made new again.

That is how I am thinking- inspired?- about Grace this morning. It is not something given to some and withheld from others. It is not some special dispensation given out sparingly by God that causes some to escape a disease, or an auto accident, or a bullet, while others suffer, because God was stingy and selective about who God would “save.” That is not how Paul was using the word “save” in the scripture quoted at the top of this piece, nor is it the implication in any biblical verses or chapters that speak of God’s grace.[1]

God’s grace abounds because it is God’s greatest desire, the nature of God’s Love itself, that we sing with God in the harmonies of his Image and his Creation. We bring to those harmonies all of the specific gifts we were born with and that we have acquired on our journeys toward God. They are wanted by God, they are needed by God. Despite everything the world may be shouting at us about our insignificance and irrelevance, God demonstrated by the Music he created for us, composed in all of its wonder and specificity by Jesus Christ, that we are vital to his Continuing Creation.

Each of us. All of us.

[1] We often hear, even think, the phrase “There but for the grace of God, go I.” Implicit in that statement is the notion that God has withheld something from someone else that he has granted to us. And I think that is a wrong implication. We may see situations we can thank God for not being a part of, because of the gift of faith which enabled us to make correct decisions in response to the grace we had received, but that understanding almost compels us to insert ourselves into those difficult situations that we see causing suffering to others. We may be the ones- in fact, we probably are the ones- through whom God has chosen to reveal his New Song to those who we encounter who are suffering.

Scattershooting

2005-02-24T07:51:00.000-06:00

Blackie Sherrod, longtime Dallas sportswriter, would occasionally do “scattershooting” columns, articles full of little things he’d encountered or thought about, none of which was yet worth a whole column. I am taking permission from him to do the same today.

*Robbie and I saw the new National Museum of the American Indian last month when we were in Washington. It is part of the Smithsonian and opened last September. It was a breathtaking experience and could easily fill a week. The displays of artifacts are contained behind a long meandering glass wall, arranged chronologically. The first items are clay and stone figurines, primarily from South American sources of 2000-3000 years. Among those artifacts, then, begin to appear gold items: masks and various representations of deities. Then, iron items are seen- arrowheads and spear points- produced after the Europeans began to arrive. Then, something very interesting.

Just as rifles begin to appear in the displays, gold coins, and Bibles are shown. Gold had never been used by the natives of this country for monetary or trade reasons. It was sacred, in their belief. But the Europeans brought, along with the greed they had for the gold “Indian trinkets” they desired, the rifles necessary to forcibly take them from their owners. In return, they left Bibles, in the hopes of civilizing a people who had been doing just fine at civilization for thousands of years. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition that doesn’t need much commentary..

*We also saw the Holocaust Museum. The only word for it is numbing. I got “lost” for awhile in a small hall that is filled with shoes, thousands and thousands of them, taken from people sent to Auschwitz for extermination. I couldn’t stop looking at them. There were lots of high top, leather shoes- workingmen shoes. But there also were highly polished, maybe Italian shoes, the kind a rabbi or professor or medical doctor might wear.
Fancy toeless and strappy women’s shoes, little children’s shoes that some parents no doubt would have oohed and ahhed over, ballerina slippers, spiked golf shoes, loafers, cloth shoes, sandals, even some wooden shoes.

The smell of the shoes filled the hall, even after these sixty years of being piled in warehouses. It was the same leathery smell of my own shoes; the same smell the owner’s of them would once have breathed, too. I could barely stand the thought of some little girl hanging on to new ballerina slippers during the packed boxcar ride to Auschwitz; hanging on to her dreams until the very end.

*Harper’s is a favorite magazine of mine. The last page is always filled with unrelated but intriguing facts about recent discoveries and scientific investigations. From this month’s “Findings”: Humans and chickens share 60 percent of their genes. Almost half of the food produced in America goes to waste. Curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry, can help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s. Swordfish heat their eyes while hunting. A Spanish neuroscientist found that rats can tell the difference between spoken Dutch and Japanese. Now, you know those things, too. Spread the word.

*While we were in the American Indian Museum, there was a group of schoolchildren and their teachers touring, too. I overheard one Asian-American boy, about 10 years old, laughing at another little boy: “It’s Cherokee, not Cherry-okie!,” he was saying.

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I see in yesterday’s paper that Dr. Gene Scott died at the age of 77 in Los Angeles. Gene Scott was well-known as the leader of a 15,000 member church there, and for his long-running nightly television show on obscure UHF channels around the world. He had once been a history professor or Oral Roberts University. Unlike many of those on Christian television with the title of “Dr.”, Scott’s was a legitimate Ph.D., earned from Stanford University.

Most remember him with his cigar, his cluttered blackboard, and the videotapes of his horses. But he was a scholar who spoke of God’s grace in refreshingly new ways. He never sought to build barriers between people or to mold his listeners into his way of thinking about God. He was persuasive, but not coercive. He simply taught from the Hebrew and Greek texts and let the spirit move him from those texts into all kinds of personal reflections and stories. Oftentimes, the relevancy of those stories was difficult to discern, but they were always interesting.

He refused to be bent into anyone else’s idea of what a Christian television evangelist should be. He often preached and taught from a chaise lounge. He was distinctive, but never slick. Actually, he was kind of a mess onstage.

I didn’t agree with him on many of his theological positions. But, truth be told, I kind of liked him.

One More Time

2005-02-23T07:09:00.000-06:00

“Follow me..” Jesus, in the first and last chapters of John

There were about three years, between the time Jesus said those words to Levi, a tax collector, and to Andrew and Simon, fishermen, and the second time he said them. Soon after he invited Levi, Simon, and Andrew, he invited Phillip and Nathaneal and others to follow him, too. None of them knew exactly where they would be going, nor did they even know very well who this fellow was that was inviting them to come along. But they stepped away from the professions they knew and the familiar surroundings they’d grown up in, and began a walk with this man people were beginning to call “the Messiah”, into eternity.

They listened to Jesus preach and teach. They were there when he healed sick people with a touch and a word. They served him as best they could, even though they were very adept at misunderstanding him. And then they began to hear him say scary and strange things about having to die in order to fulfill the plans God had for him.

Maybe they were misunderstanding him again? When Peter contradicted him for saying such a thing, though, Jesus turned on him, angrily. Jesus could not bear to consider the very real possibilities he still had open to him as a man with a following. He needed to do what was necessary; he needed to stay focused, in the midst of a world which kept the disciples themselves unfocused at times, on the sacrifice that was becoming more and more clear to him that he had to make.

Jesus was successful in overcoming the temptations of his forty days in the wilderness and the numerous temptations which must have dogged him throughout his remaining ministry. The disciples were not successful in staying the course. Each of them, in different ways, succumbed to the fears of possibly having to follow Jesus these last few steps of his life, to the torturing hill of Golgotha. They ran, they hid, they denied being his followers; they could not go the whole way with him. Who they were was still the greater motivation in their lives, greater than their understanding of who he was.

After his resurrection, Jesus sought out his former closest followers again. The last thing he had shared with them as a group- a meal- was the first thing to which he invited them to join him in, once he had found them again. He even went so far as to take Simon, now known as Peter, aside, knowing he had been the one to run the fastest and furthest from the fateful events of Friday. He knew that about Peter, and he also knew the enormous shame Peter was carrying because of the way he’d acted.

“Follow me,” Jesus again invited Peter.

Peter shouldn’t have had to hear Jesus say those words twice. None of the disciples should have. And none of us should, either. Because of the example of the disciples, and through the lives and teachings of many thousands of believing brothers and sisters in the ensuing twenty centuries, we know that there are many, many, many people who are able to live consistent and focused lives. We know there are people who never waiver in their following of Jesus from the time they first heard those words of invitation to them of “Follow me.”

But we also know there are those whose inner fears win out, for a time, over the love of the Messiah to which they were called. In their flights from the security and graceful companionship of the son of God, they allow their fears and doubts, and temptations of the world, to sound louder in their ears than the memory of his most important words to them.

I don’t know to whom I might be writing this today. Maybe it’s to someone you know who would benefit from reading these words, and to whom you can forward these words. But I do know this, I can testify to this: Jesus is waiting for you. No matter where a person is hiding, trembling, ashamed, and crippled by guilt, Jesus is waiting- there on the shore, see him?- to have fellowship with you again. He is waiting, right now, as you’re reading this, to say again to you, “Follow me.”

But before you accept this time, you must do something. You must see something you may not have noticed the first time he called you to his side. Look down at his hands this time; look at them for however long it takes for the magnitude of what he has just said to you again, to sink in. Do you see his hands? His hands are still bleeding. When he embraces you again, and he will if you let him, his blood will be on you.

It must be.

Now follow him into eternity..

Stereotypes

2005-02-22T09:07:00.000-06:00

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you get to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ John 1: 45-49

Leetonia, Ohio, was about 10 miles from Columbiana, where I lived. They were part of the Tri-county League, as our high school was, so we played them in sports with regularity. At the turn of the 20th century, many Italian immigrants found their way to Leetonia to work in the coke ovens there, a part of the area’s steel milling industry. Everyone in Columbiana knew some people in Leetonia. The ones we didn’t know we thought we knew by their generic labels: ‘wops’ and ‘guidos.’ I’m not sure what we were known as to them.

Youngstown North High School was not a part of the Tri-county League, but it was on our football schedule each year. North was a largely African American school. (Schools in the North looked very much like schools in the South, despite what you may have heard.) I still have a mimeographed scouting report on their team put together by our high school coaching staff in 1965. At the top is a kinky-haired line drawing of a thick-lipped football player falling down as his helmet flies off. In place of his eyes, there are Xs. The headline of the report reads, “Hit them in their glass jaws!” That was something “Negroes” had back then, don’t you know? They were big and tough, but if you could hit them in their jaws, they’d go down. We would be able to beat them, the report said, because while they were strong and fast, they could easily be “out-smarted.”

When people grow up within the inundation of racism, or stereotyping, it is almost impossible to completely shed. The ideas we learn from childhood may be intellectually set aside, but they remain as sore spots on our souls, and flare up occasionally no matter how much we may not want them to. The history of humanity is the history of assumed superiority of one nation or group of people over another by some perceived divine authority.

Nathaneal’s response to Phillip, then, when told that the Messiah had been found and that he was, of all places, from Nazareth- ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’- is understandable, unfortunately, by almost everyone. I would have reacted the same way in 1965, in an overt and thinking manner: “Can anything good come out of Leetonia?” Even today, the first, immediate reaction I would have to such a statement, would involve the word “wop.” I would not leave the reaction there, I would not verbalize it, and I am ashamed that it is still in me, but I would be lying if I said it is not still a deeply imbedded part of me. That’s the damnable part of cultural chauvinism and racism- learned early on, it continues to influence, no matter how far we try to distance ourselves from it.

Nathaneal’s prejudice about the possibility of a Messiah from Nazareth was overcome by a personal encounter with Christ. I believe that the transformative intentions God has for each person on earth, include seeing others, no matter who they are, as Images of God. There have been lengthy treatises published in the past “proving” that Adam was Caucasian, or Hebrew, or African, depending on who the un-transformed researcher was that was writing a particular report. By developing such a theory, it is implied, of course, that all other races are inferior. In America, such notions were institutionalized early on to support the practice of slavery: the “mark of Cain”, referenced in Genesis 4:15 as a mark placed on Cain by God as a result of his killing his brother Abel, was taught by many to be his dark skin. It marked his “God-ordained” inferiority, the perpetuators of such baseless nonsense said.

There are a number of other ‘Gospels” which exist about Jesus, besides the four we are familiar with. Everyone from the authors of The DaVinci Code to producers of the History Channel have claimed that there was a ‘conspiracy’ to keep these extra books out of the Bible itself. There was, indeed, a series of decisions made not to add these ‘gospels,’ and for good reasons that hardly constitute a conspiracy. They were all written at much later dates than the original four, in the 2d and 3rd centuries. The writers all have clearly discernable political intentions, often based on ‘secret’ knowledge supposedly imparted by Jesus. And they are full of prejudices.

The Gospel of Thomas is one of the most complete of these gospels we have, and was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948. It is very possible that some of the sayings in it were made by Jesus and passed through time, almost intact. But there are also very blatant statements of prejudice that conflict with the words and actions of Jesus in the four biblical gospels. Here are the final verses of the Gospel of Thomas, and they concern Mary Magdalene:

“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.’

Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.’”

If you want to call keeping those words out of the Bible a conspiracy, have at it. I call it a very good decision.

As is every decision to look past the cultural, national, local, and spiritual prejudices we are force-fed, often ignorantly, by those who claim some sort of divine appointment. Our prejudices, our reactions based on human stereotyping, impede the flow of God’s natural grace onto others, and ourselves. It was hard to speak of God’s love and grace to another human who bore the scars of a whip’s lashes on his back. It is equally difficult to accept God’s love and grace with a closed fist.

Postscript: The match-up between Youngstown North and Columbiana in September of 1965, ended a 63 game losing streak by North. They beat us. It wasn’t that our team was bad; it was that their team was good, very good. For many of us on that losing team, it was one of the very best things that happened to us that year.

Idolatry

2005-02-21T00:13:00.000-06:00

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them..(Exodus 20: 1-5a)

The First Commandment seems, to many of us, probably the easiest one to obey. Idols- images or things used as objects of worship- do not play the obvious and overt role in religion that they once did.

Few us keep little objects- carved, painted, or sculpted- in our homes or on our person in the way that the abusers of such idols did. Some people wear crosses or medallions, or carry little momentoes in their pockets, but not many people ascribe the kind of real, supernatural power to them the way the ancients did.

Or do we?

Idols implicity involve our being able to do something to influence the “powers that be.” The idol pictured at the left is from an old Children’s Bible I own. It depicts one of the idols of Nebuchadnezzar being worshipped by the people of Babylonia. Five or six hundred years later, various Roman Emperors would challenge members of the Christian groups growing within their midst to kneel before similar statues of Caesar.

I was fascinated while listening several years ago to a very well known Hebrew Bible scholar speaking at a large, predominantly African-American church in Dallas. She was extolling the virtues of once again treating the Bible as a sacred object, the way she remembered it being treated in her grandmother’s home. Nothing was ever allowed to be placed on top of it, she noted. It held a central position on a table in the family living room. It was touched and held with reverence.

I was increasingly uncomfortable listening to her. I remembered Bibles which were on display like that in the homes of people I knew as a child. They seemed kind of ‘spooky’ as a matter of fact. But I’ve seen other examples of Bibles being used that way which strike me as..odd. Years ago, there was a very popular gentleman who attended the church we were members of at the time. He carried a large, grey leather Bible, with silver-edged pages with him every time I saw him in church. I watched; it never betrayed any signs whatsoever of having been opened. I asked him to borrow it one time to look up a scripture, and noted that the pages still had that stuck-together feel of a book which has never been read.

I realized then that there are people who carry Bibles like an amulet, like a magic wand that, I guess they hope, will ward off evil spirits, or something. What they demonstrate in their actions is what I concluded the professor was professing: they believe the Bible, as a material thing, has its own special spiritual status. Ironically, the man who carried the unopened Bible would have been one of the 1st to scoff at someone standing in front of a carved wooden crucifix, genuflecting. He would have thought that action “superstitious.”

I remember an episode of “The Walton’s” when Libby (the younger mom) became outraged because the elderly sisters who lived in town (who also were bootlegging their father’s ‘special recipe’), offered to adopt the Walton’s son Ben, because they thought the Walton’s were in dire financial need. Libby huffed and puffed, then realizing the ‘error’ of her ways, went to drawer at the bottom of a dresser and removed a huge family Bible. She dusted it off before opening it and randomly flipped from page to page in order to find some antidote for her anger. She found something, I remember, but I don’t think it was revealed to the audience. Calmed down again, she put the Bible back into its special keeping place.

Now, at least Libby opened her Bible. But then she read it as others might read tea leaves at the bottom of an empty cup. Again, it was like throwing dice and examining random numbers for meaning.

At the other end of the “Bible as Idol” spectrum are those I am most concerned about. They seem to regard the Bible in the same way they would say that they regard God. The Bible for them is the “Holy Bible,” in a way that the book itself is an object of almost-worship. They will (I have observed this) lay the Bible over the afflicted part of an ill person’s body, as a kind of “spiritual medicine.” They will read to an ill person from the Bible, not simply (and wonderfully) because the words are informative and enlightening, but because the words themselves have the power, they believe, to heal!

They often regard the knowledge imparted by the Bible (as it is, of course, interpreted by them) to be all the knowledge there is, all the knowledge we need, about- for instance- Jesus. Personal perceptions and personal interactions with the Holy Spirit are very secondary to them as a source of new knowledge or revelation.[1] The Bible for them becomes the litmus test for fellowship. It is to believed in totally, inerrantly, and without question, if one is to be admitted to the ‘believing fellowship.’ (An important- a very important- subset of this [I believe] idolatrous belief system is the “King James Version Only” crowd who believe that the 1614 version, ordered up for translation and publishing by King James of England, is the only legitimate translation.)

I love the Bible. I’ve got more copies and translations of it than I will ever read all of. I have two copies (the New International Version, and The Message) on my Palm Pilot which is with me all the time and which I read something from daily. It is the primary, most important source of my knowledge about God and his son. But God is the point of my reading the Bible! The Bible reveals God to me in a way that I am more and more open and aware of God’s presence, through his son, through his holy spirit, in everyday life- in the people, places, and things around me. His Creation and his Creatures speak to me as well. I don’t think they are to be disregarded at all in understanding and knowing him.

It is important never to forget that the explosive growth experienced by the first century Christian church occurred without a New Testament even thought of, let alone nearby. People telling other people about Christ, sharing his stories and parables, his teachings and the memories of his presence, and, of course, his death and resurrection- those were what attracted new believers.

Give me someone who reveals a changed heart and a transformed life anytime over someone standing on my doorstep furiously flipping back and forth through the Old and New Testaments in order to make a theological argument. The first one is evidencing an encounter with the living God. The other is witnessing to intellectual understanding.

Maybe.
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[1] New ‘knowledge’ and ‘revelation’ about God must, I believe, be consistent with knowledge and revelation about God as contained in the Bible. Saying “Thus sayeth the Lord” before making some outrageous pronouncement about God, does not make it so!

Mystery

2005-02-19T08:14:00.000-06:00

“Unless we are grounded in Mystery- unless we experience both ourselves and the others as co-participants in Mystery- we find it almost impossible to live in compassionate love of one another for any length of time.” Carolyn Gratton, The Art of Spiritual Guidance[1]

I believe that Mystery is something we must come to terms with as Christians. There are classical definitions of Mystery, but I think best in visual metaphors, so here is how I see it: There is a vast and deep sea of unknown knowledge between ourselves and God. God has allowed us, through the equipping presence and guidance of his son, to enter that sea of knowledge. We discover, however, that the further we enter into it, the wider and deeper it becomes.

That leaves all of us in the predicament of never being able to know all there is to know about God. By accepting the gift of faith, we each begin to get our feet wet in Mystery by adjusting our lives within that which is illogical, invisible, and intangible. The further we step beyond the comfortable and safe shallows of the shoreline, the more we realize we are totally dependent on God to keep us afloat. Ours is a God who both over there on another shore and right here beside us. The further into those choppier and deeper seas we are willing to go, the more insignificant become our own strengths and abilities, and we become, of necessity, more and more aware of God’s grasp on our lives.

It was as if John the Baptist was directing us toward the Guide who both pointed us toward that sea he had already been across, and guaranteed our own safe passage if we would follow his leading. We stand beside him, where the warm waters and gentle waves lap our toes. He holds our hand as we then begin to look out beyond the reef where blue-green waves are breaking, and beyond them to larger, white-capped waves, colder-looking and dark. The water there is deep, very deep, he tells us, but I will be with you as you move toward horizons you cannot yet see; I will be closer to you than a brother, even though you, at times, will feel alone and forgotten.

But watch closely for the others; they are mine, too, he says. And because they are mine, and you are mine, then together, all of you will be safe. They will help you, and you will help them. It is my strength that each of you leave here with. It is my strength, and my strength alone, that each of you will depend on the others to share. And they will. You will find those who are with you as you move further and deeper into those waters, are of like faith, ever more understanding and aware that they need you and you need them, and that you are all beloved and dependent on me.

Go. Now. You have seen me, and because you have seen me, now you have seen and known He-who-awaits-you.

~~

As we leave his physical presence, we take his words with us. We look back in expectation that he will be longingly watching after us as we leave, but he already has turned his attentions to those just arriving at the shore. His words are all we have. His words, which will lead us into deeper and wider understandings of who God is, the God who awaits us. We seek the hands of others who desire- dare!- to step further away from the shore. Some are more reluctant than others to leave, while others already feel the dangerous exhilaration of losing themselves in the depths of God-knowledge and in the knowledge of each other.

At times, the sea seems to part in calmness; other times, the waves break apart the hands locked together in comfort and safety and the swimmers roll alone under the surf, at the mercy of the powerful currents. Grasping for the hands of others, any others who have come with them this far, they find rescue in the touch of those they are in these depths with, and gather again in the renewed and ever-strengthening belief that what their Guide said IS true, that they WILL BE safe.

~~
Pardon this odd digression this morning, please? The Words of God are mere archaeological curiosities unless they are translated and lived in the world, by those who choose not only to believe them, but to do their best to act upon them. Sometimes I find myself taking steps into places where the waters are colder than I’d like them to be, and where the footing isn’t nearly as sure as I hoped it would be when I took that last step. When I have the opportunity to get my bearings again, I have to reflect and think and see what I’ve learned about God in the process. And so, today, I was needing to do just that. Thus, that which is written above.

Blessings..

[1] The Art of Spiritual Guidance, Carolyn Gratton, Crossroad, 2004, p.143

Ingratitude

2005-02-18T08:45:00.000-06:00

By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2: 8

Give God the praise for any well spent day. Susanna Wesley

It was a busy day, the kind of day that I pray I have done to the best of my abilities what God would have me to do, yet, at the same time, a day in which I was second-guessing myself..a lot. It was dinnertime, and I knew that I would be a part of group in just over an hour that would be talking, very specifically, about God’s graces. Then the phone rang.

A woman I know here in town had been with her children to the local pizza parlor. There was a “road warrior” standing outside the entrance to the building who asked her if she knew where the Salvation Army shelter in town was located. Now, for those who don’t know it, this is a town of only 4000 people. There is no Salvation Army shelter within 60 miles of here. But, this friend did tell the man she knew somebody to call. Thus, the ringing telephone.

I told her I would go to where the man was as soon as I finished eating, figuring I could do it on my way to the meeting. When I arrived there, I found the man (he was easy to spot), eating a pizza someone had bought for him. I introduced myself, shook his hand, and I think he said his name was Tim. He was not a friendly-looking man. I asked him if he wanted to bring the rest of his pizza along, I’m finished with it, he said. I love leftover pizza, I thought, why isn’t he taking it along for tomorrow? I invited him to get in the car.

So, you need a place to stay? Yes. Where are you from? Southern California. Where are you headed? Around. Now, if you’ve been reading this newsletter for awhile, you know I usually enjoy these kinds of encounters (see “Norman”) But, this guy was a presenting a challenge to my usual attitude. Trying again: What kind of work do you do? Any kind. How far did you come today? Not sure.

Oh well! We were at the motel, and the meeting was to start in ten minutes, so I didn’t have much time to visit anyway. God be with you, friend, I said as I paid for the room and touched his shoulder. He was too busy filling out the registration card to turn and say “Thanks” or acknowledge in any way that I could perceive, that I was even leaving.

I thought about his ingratitude. I thought about it in an angry way.

Now, jump ahead an hour into the meeting. One of the participants in our sharing time together about God’s grace spoke how he hoped he was moving toward that place in his faith journey where he could act from his heart rather than his head. He wanted to be like those folks he knew who acted in a Christ-like way not because they made a decision to act that way, but because they are that way!

For me, it was one of those statements which causes a line of spiritual dominoes to begin to fall. I had chosen, just an hour before, to give a gift to a man, who I expected to receive thanks from, but didn’t. I was briefly upset. Not traumatized, but upset. Had I not had a meeting to go to, I could have spent more time getting judgmental and contemplatively angry and self-righteous. And I probably would have.

Now, jump backwards 55 years, and begin with me to try to count the times I have been graced, gifted, guided, touched on the shoulder, embraced, picked up, corrected, and loved by God and the people of God, without ever bothering to turn and even mutter the simplest word of thanks. I’m typing through tears right now, because I know- I know- those times number in the thousands!

And how did God respond to my overwhelming displays of ingratitude? He sent his son to forgive them. And he sent two men, very different from each other, within the space of one hour, to correct my course yet again.

Thank you God, for these two men. Most of all, thank you for your son, who never stops melting us, molding us, filling us, and using us- all of us!- to reveal himself through us, to others. Amen!

Testimony

2005-02-17T07:04:00.000-06:00

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. John 1: 18

This is the last verse of the prologue, the introduction, to John’s gospel. In these eighteen verses, John has introduced us to two important witnesses to what will follow in his story of the son of God- John the Baptist and himself, the Apostle John.

The Baptizer announces the Messiah’s coming, and the Apostle follows the Messiah’s ministry, death, and resurrection. The Apostle is writing a reminiscence, sometime after the story itself has occurred. He is writing his testimony of what he has seen.

Testimonies are important, and the Apostle demonstrates their importance early in his gospel, by telling the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (Chapter 4). Jesus reveals who he is to the woman by telling her things about herself that only God could have known. She is so excited about that fact that she returns to her village to tell others.

Then, we read a short discourse Jesus has with his disciples about harvesting. He tells them to look around and see that in about four months the fields will be ready to harvest. But, he continues, I say the fields of Samaria are ready for harvesting right now! While the disciples are trying to figure out what he means by those two statements, the Samaritan woman is in town telling her story over and over again to anyone who will listen. She no longer is ashamed of herself anymore because the Messiah is not ashamed of her! And she wants everybody to know! Verse 39 says this: “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony..” She was harvesting; she was the first evangelist!

Now, the Apostle’s readers know the importance of testimony- it is how others will come to know God the son. John’s testimony is a collection of the testimonies of others, many of which he observed as they were happening. His testimony will reveal some testimonies which will acknowledge the transforming presence of Christ and some testimonies which express doubt in varying degrees. Just as it is in a court of law, a judge or jury decides the veracity of the various testimonies, based on the evidence. We have little doubt by the end of his gospel of what John believes. But he also is a respecter of his readers. It is his readers who must also judge the person John has written of; readers of every generation are the jury for their time.

Is he the son of God, or isn’t he?

We, the jury, do not only have John’s testimony, and the testimonies of those of whom he writes. We also have the other gospels. And, like the various people who populate those four gospels, we have others whose stories- testimonies- we have heard. All of us have a “Samaritan woman” or many, in our pasts, who have told us about the Messiah they have found. We have their testimonies, too; we have their evidence for the reality of God the son. Those peoples’ stories play a significant part, too, in the decision John is, in effect, asking us to make.

Is he the son of God, or isn’t he?

In the past pages of this newsletter, I have written of many who testified to me about Jesus through their words, their actions, their lives: Mom, Grandma, Grandpa, Robbie, Dad, Etta, Yogi, Ella, Aunts, Uncles, Luevirt, Kyler, Gilberto, Evelyn, various Professors, and many more. And those were flesh and blood people whom I had contact with. There is an equally long list of people whose written testimonies of Jesus in their lives have also been important parts of my deliberations: C.S.Lewis, Fred Craddock, G.K.Chesteron, Dave Hunt, Annie LaMont, Mother Theresa, Max Lucado, Barbara Brown Taylor, St.John of the Cross, Tich Nhat Hahn, the Apostle Paul, and, if I don’t stop now, this will never get sent!

That I can say, as a conclusive statement of the facts as I’ve learned them, “Jesus is the Christ; the son of the living God” is, whether they know it or not, part of the testimonies of all the above people, too. The Jesus I know, worship, and love would be incomplete without the knowledge I have of him from any one of these people. And I am learning more about him everyday!

Over the past several weeks, I have spoken with several older people who have wondered out loud why they are “still here.” I don’t know all the reasons, I’ve told them, but an important reason is this: they are all on various individual’s lists, like the one I’ve written above. I pointed out to one man in his mid-90s that there is a 13 year old who, I know, comes to see him regularly, who enjoys those visits, and- whether he is fully cognizant of it yet or not- is being formed through this older man, among others, into the young man God wants him to be. “Thank you,” he told me, “I needed to hear that today.”

Others need to hear it, too. Others- all of the above who are still alive and kicking, among many others- need to know that God has used them to touch your life and my life in some way. Let them know that. They need to hear it today, too. They need to know that their testimony is a part of yours and mine, too.

Start your list: ready, set, go!

Looking the Other Way

2005-02-16T07:30:00.000-06:00

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. John 1: 10-13

"The Message" paraphrases verse 10 in this way: He was in the world, the world was there through him, and yet the world didn't even notice.

How did people miss Jesus among them then, and how do they miss him now? I think there is a key to answering those questions in an often used word within the Greek scriptures: metanoia. Meta means change; noia means mind. Together, the words traditionally have been translated to mean repentance. Literally, metanoia means changing one’s mind.

The kind of changes Jesus pointed to were not of the mundane mind-changing types. We change our minds every day: “Waiter, make that a decaf coffee, instead, please?” or “I guess I’ll wait to go the Post Office tomorrow.” The mind-changes Jesus demonstrated and taught were more of the mind-altering kind. He was asking people to give up old and known attitudes for new and unknown ones.

“You’ve heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say, love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you.” (Matthew 5: 43, 44) Loving our neighbors- those close to us- seems to be the natural human thing to do. But Jesus said to love our enemies too, and to go so far as to pray for them! We know how to function when the good guys are wearing white hats, speaking our language, and are nice to us. We know how to defend ourselves when black-hatted mean guys threaten us. But, Jesus, you’re asking a lot of us to be nice to those bad guys, too!

It’s easier to kind of look the other way, isn’t it, when Jesus says things like that? It’s easier to ‘not accept’ that part of what he said, or even to turn our heads and ‘not notice’ him. The trouble is, he said many things like that! Not only did he teach about mind-altering in sermons like the Sermon on the Mount, but most of his parables were about radical mind-altering, too.

What should we do when we encounter a person in need? You’ve heard it said that you should call Welfare, or get them checked out by the Police department. But Jesus says, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that a person in need is worthy of all we can give him or her, in order to get them on their feet again. How should we react when someone we love has betrayed us, taken advantage, even scorned us? You’ve heard it said that you should shun that person, write them out of your will, don’t return their calls. But Jesus says, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, to throw a party for that person when they’re ready to come home, embrace them, kill the fatted calf! They were lost, but now they’re found!

Yikes! Jesus is asking us to see and listen to the world though God’s eyes and ears! He’s telling us that God’s way is not necessarily some supernatural form of the human way; rather, it is a different way altogether! It’s us who must adjust our thinking to God’s, not vice versa!

It’s an easier path oftentimes, to act like the bumbling Sergeant Schultz of TV’s “Hogan’s Heroes” when he would see yet another escape plan hatching right in front of him:
“I see nothing. I hear nothing. I know nothing..”

So, I’m wondering, if it was merely a matter of his people not accepting Jesus. I’m thinking maybe there was more to it than just not noticing him. Maybe they heard him loudly and clearly but decided that what he was asking of them was too mind-altering to even consider! So, they turned their backs and allowed the old, known, and human ways to have their course.

It was easier that way, after all. Still is..

Light

2005-02-15T10:15:00.000-06:00

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1: 6-9)

Then God said, ‘Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1: 3,4)

I think that the Light, created even before the moon and the sun according to Genesis, is what we more often speak of today as grace. God’s grace is the reason Jesus came among us. God could have erased his disappointments with what had become of his Creation; instead, he offered the world the opportunities of redemption.

Through his son, he demonstrated that there was a different way of seeing and being. No longer did humankind have to view the world through the dark lenses of human perception; Jesus demonstrated the brilliance and illumination of God’s light. “I accept you,” he told the Samaritan woman at the well who lived in the scorn of her neighbors. “I want you,” he told a group of uneducated fishermen. “Join me for dinner,” he invited the hated tax collector and a group of his rowdy friends.

He opened his arms to children at the back of the crowd. He wrapped his arms around the woman about to be stoned. He spread his arms to the Roman executioners, before forgiving them.

It would be impossible to tell someone intellectually about that kind of love, that kind of Light, that kind of grace. It could only be demonstrated. And it was, again and again. Other teachers, other “Messiahs”, had purported to speak for God. Other religions even have virgin birth stories and claims of resurrected leaders. But none of them have continued to exist through history; none of them were born of the Light.

Light cannot be destroyed. Physics tells us that. Once created, it continues outward through time and space. It disperses, it is absorbed and reflected, but the substance of light itself never diminishes. “The true light” of Christ continues to be dispersed, be absorbed, and reflected through those who turn long enough to allow it to warm their beings. When that happens, in the myriad ways that it does happen, new sources of Light- new brothers and sisters of Jesus, are born. And their Light is as his Light, the first Light.

Please, take the time necessary to read this story from this month’s Christian Counterculture (http://www.christiancounterculture.com/meet_grace.html). It might be the very best thing you read today:

Glory

2005-02-14T08:16:00.000-06:00

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1: 14)

For a number of centuries at the very beginnings of the church, there was a question which stood out from many others being asked: How should people best worship Jesus Christ? After 20 centuries of “doing church”, one can look around the world and see that there were a number of answers which grew out of the answering of that question.

Very early on, and for almost the first twelve centuries of the Church’s existence, the highest plateau one could reach in the following of Jesus was martyrdom. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, published in the mid-1500s, was an eight volume collection of stories and histories of individuals and groups who suffered and/or died for the cause of Christ from the time of the Emperor Nero (mid-first Century) through the time of Foxe. The book continues to be printed and bought, as this ‘high ideal’ of martyrdom for Christ continues to influence many parts of the Church.

People aspired to die for Christ. They aspired to be like Christ, and to suffer as he did, and die as he did, so (the thinking went) they would be resurrected as he had been. When Pope Urban II called in 1095 for “pilgrims to travel east to Jerusalem” to seize that city from Muslim conquerors, later known as the First Crusade, the response was tremendous. In part, there was no lack of volunteers because there was such a great popular desire to give one’s life in battles for Christ and his Church.

One of those very early martyrs was a man named Valentinus, who died at the orders of the Roman Emperor Claudis in 269. He probably had been a priest. He might have secretly married Christian couples. He might have loved his jailer’s daughter, and he might have prayed for her to be healed of blindness. Very little is known of him except that there is a tomb in Rome with his name, and that he died because he was a Christian. That made him a martyr. And miracles attributed to his interventions with Christ made him a saint. Somehow (and there many “official” versions and theories about why this is so) his name became associated with expressions of love on “his” day, February 14.

Martyrs followed Jesus Christ the best way they knew how. Many of those who are documented in Foxe’s books died in combat with perceived enemies of Christ. Others died because they refused to bow down to a particular ruler or because they would not cease evangelical activities. Many are still dying because of Christ, in the Mid-east, Africa, and Asia, China in particular, for that same latter set of reasons.

Those who so live that they must die for Christ, have seen his glory- the grace and truth of his life- reflected in the life of someone else. Some other person, in person or in writing or by some other means of communication, has been able to allow God the Holy Spirit to move through them in such a powerful way that someone else was convinced of the truths of God as revealed through his son. That’s the “language” God has spoken in since Jesus ascended into heaven- the language of presence, one human being to another. The Bible may assist in, or solidify the knowledge of Christ, as it moves from one person to another, but- bottom line- it is men and women who have themselves been caught in the glory of God who serve the Living Water and Bread of Life to others.

Dying for Christ is no longer something we aspire to as being primary in our Christian lives and Church traditions. Living for Christ is. Living for Christ is the only way others will have the opportunity to know him and be served by him. Dying for him may be part of that process, but it is not the main thing.

May the glory that Valentinus knew, whoever he might have been, be yours today!

Touch

2005-02-13T06:16:00.000-06:00

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis1: 1,2

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. John1: 1-3

Dr. Michael Hunter, a young doctor in the 1960s, in England, describes going on once-a-week rounds with Lord Cohen, General Medical Council of Parliament, the highest medical administrator in the land, and one of the Queen's Physicians:

“We would proceed from bed to bed, the patients were introduced, their illnesses and their treatments related, and the great man asked to comment. Rarely had he anything new to add; occasionally, we would pretend confusion so that he could clarify things for us, making the whole exercise look more meaningful than it really was. At the end of the visit with each patient, Lord Cohen would grasp the patient's hands in his, stare into their eyes, and whisper words of comfort.”

The young man, with his intern colleagues, would then go to lunch where, he said, the conversation after a visit from Lord Cohen was always enlivened and animated. Then, they would return to their patients. He goes on:

“We would return to the ward after lunch and what we found there always puzzled and annoyed us. Everybody looked better! There was a buzz of conversation and laughter; patients who had been claiming weakness and fatigue were up walking, talking, and asking when they could go home. They were on the phone telling family members in distant parts of the country about their brush with greatness and repeating endlessly the words that the old man had spoken to them. It was more than we could bear.”[1]

In God’s Continuing Creation, we are his agents of change. We are the ones given the responsibility for touching his creation, for interacting with it, representing him in it, and continuing his work. In his Creation, we are called upon to be the wind- blown by his Spirit over places that are formless and void. We are called to be the Word- brothers and sisters of Christ- bringing his light and life to places where darkness and death predominate.

Jesus’ journey began “in the beginning.” The first chapter of John, he goes on to describe John the Baptist, who preceded Jesus’ appearance as the Christ; the Baptist “prepared the way”
by touching others with his voice and his presence. Those whom John so touched were ready when Jesus appeared among them to be baptized himself. Many of them became the first followers of Jesus as he established God’s Kingdom on earth.

Touching others, in preparation for Jesus’ arrival in their lives, is every bit like Lord Cohen’s touching of his patients. Being with others (grasping their hands), listening intently (staring into their eyes), and then affirming them as beloved persons (whispering words of comfort), is a simple, but profoundly healing process.

Remember today, those who have prepared the way of the Lord for you. Remember, and thank God for, those whose presence made God real to you and those whose touch led you into the presence of your Messiah.

[1] Michael J. Morton, M.D., MedHunters.com, http://www.medhunters.com/articles/touchingTheMagic.html

A Journey

2005-02-12T09:24:00.000-06:00

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’… (John 1:38)

They said to him, ‘Rabbi’, ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ (John 1:38,39)

In literature, the motif of the journey has a long tradition. Homer’s Odyssey, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and many, many other books use movement from one geographical location to another as a metaphor for life. John, the author of the gospel John, was not only a chronicler of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but he was a master writer. His gospel is unlike the other three gospels. Like Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John is writing to a particular audience, but unlike those three, he pays an artist’s attention to the arrangement of his stories, right down to choosing the particular order in which he uses direct quotes from Jesus.

Thus, the very first actual quotations used in John’s gospel are the two printed above. Taken together, they remain as one of the great invitations ever written to those who are seeking truth. They are words which have been read as new and fresh by generations of students and disciples because there is, within every human, the desire- the God imaged desire- to find the Messiah. “Where are you staying?” was the specific question of John the Baptist’s disciples upon first meeting Jesus, but it remains the fundamental question of all who are searching for Messiah: Where is he?

John goes on to show his readers where, exactly where, Jesus can be found. In chapter after chapter, Jesus encounters individuals and groups of people. Again, John is chronicling an historical story, but, skilled writer that he is, that story becomes a metaphor in itself. The question posed by the Baptist’s disciples then answers itself: Jesus is found in his, and our, encounters with other people.

Those whom Jesus encountered all reacted to him in one of three ways: they rejected him, they accepted him as a miracle worker, or they accepted him as the Messiah they were looking for. But, notice something else John demonstrates in his writing about these encounters by Jesus: Jesus always leaves the door open to further interaction. He keeps the door open to those who accept him, to those who temporarily accept him for selfish reasons, to those who can’t make up their minds about him, and even to those who reject him.
“Make up your mind, Nicodemus!”

“Don’t let the doorknob knock you down on your way outta here, Peter!”

We don’t hear those kinds of words from Jesus, as we have from many of his disciples throughout history. The element that colors all of Jesus’ interactions with all people he encountered, and which must color all of our own interactions with others, is grace.

Grace allows us to find Jesus. It is the answer to the question, “Where are you staying?”

In 1970, I won an inter-mural college Speech contest by talking about the “silliness” of the Bible. Today I am writing this. That’s grace, God’s grace. There were many, many encounters with all kinds of people between then and today. Gradually, I began to see the grace of God in those people, especially those who had already found the Messiah themselves. It was a journey, a long one, and just as real a journey as the one Odysseus made around the Mediterranean or that Huck Finn took down the Mississippi. It was a journey full of wrong turns, retreats, and mistakes.

But God kept people coming at me. Jesus-in-them kept the door to his Kingdom open. I gave Jesus ample opportunities to say “Forget you!” but he never did.

And now I’m writing this.

And you’re reading it.

You’re reading it because you’ve been on a grace-filled journey, too. Maybe you found out where Jesus was staying when you were still a child. Maybe it took a whole parade of witnesses before you understood. Or maybe you’re still looking for him. The fact is, that his grace- his unending desire for you to somehow through someone someday to find him- has been unrelenting. And it will remain that way.

Come and see.

Five Things We Cannot Change

2005-02-11T09:00:00.000-06:00

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me..” (Psalm 23: 4)

Psychotherapist David Richo, writing in this month’s Spirituality and Health magazine, writes of “five unavoidable givens, five immutable facts of life built into the very nature of things, over which we are powerless.[1]” They are:

1. Everything changes and ends.
2. Things do not always go according to plan.
3. Life is not always fair.
4. Pain is part of life.
5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

He goes on to write: “Too often we behave as if somehow these givens aren’t always in effect or are not applicable to all of us. But when we oppose these five basic truths, we resist reality, and life becomes an endless series of disappointments, frustrations, and sorrows.”

We are up against some real cultural factors in our lives that cause us to resist these truths. One of them is the “Power of Positive Thinking” Movement which began, as a marketable commodity, in the early 1930s, as a reaction to the Depression and sense of hopelessness that had become very real in America. Salesmen were taught POPT as a part of their sales training. Gradually, books, courses, and seminars on POPT found an audience that increased as the means of proliferating the philosophy grew. Cassette tapes, videotapes, and now CDs and DVDs can bring POPT speakers and teachers right into our homes and cars, anytime we want them to be there.

There is nothing wrong with thinking positively about the world and the people in it. We know the differences in emotional and physical health that accompany our optimistic or pessimistic attitudes. But there is also lurking within the POPT movement a false sense of well-being, an unrealistic expectation of our own ability to control our environment and the people in it.

I remember what I considered to be a very sad story in Dallas Life Magazine from probably twenty years ago. It concerned a 30 year old man who had been a well-known and outstanding basketball player at a small high school in East Texas. He had subsequently flunked out of the junior college he went to play for. Then he got in trouble and was sent to prison for five years, where he continued to play basketball as he was able. All the while, he was reading and listening to those purveyors of false hopes who had him convinced that if he would only practice hard enough, focus keenly enough, and give no mind to the “negativity” of other people, he would one day play for the Dallas Mavericks.

He had been to three open tryouts and had received three polite but firm rejections. He paid no attention to them, but went back home to the local elementary school yard and shot baskets endlessly, convinced that someday someone would recognize his very real talent and call him to play.

That’s an extreme example. But I have known a number of salesmen in Dallas who were deeply in debt, “fakin’ it, while they were makin’ it,” and any number of other people from many different walks of life who intentionally wore blinders to the realities of their own limitations, because of the false truths they had absorbed after shelling out sometimes hundreds of dollars for a box of false hope.

One therapist in last month’s issue of Time magazine on “Happiness” goes so far as to call it the ‘Scourge’ of Positive Thinking. She sees it as a particularly nasty mindset among many minority young people who hope to bypass the hard work of school and entry-level jobs, and jump directly onto a professional basketball court or entertainment stage.

The POPT movement even entered the Church in the late 1950s and has evolved now into the “Positive Confession” movement, which is nothing less than an attempt to control God- to have “God in a box” serving one’s own desires and needs. Some practitioners will never admit to feeling badly, going so far as avoiding medical doctors entirely. “To speak illness,” they say, “is to give it power.” Others are convinced that they can cause divine miracles by positively expecting them to happen. I have a videotape in which one Positive Confession televangelist even says there will come a day when cadavers will be propped up in front of Christian television shows, and return to life!

Oh, my..

God created us, on his terms, to live in a world in which David Richo’s stated realities are operating, constant, and true. It is God’s presence with us in that sometimes harsh reality that allows us to transcend that harshness; it is God’s promise that even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we can do so without fear of his being absent from us. He never promises that we can “wish” bad things away, or speak unreality into reality.

Nor does God sentence us to a dour, pessimistic existence in which we suffer through the travails and temptations of life merely waiting for death to launch us into heaven. In Christ he has given “peace that passes understanding” and “joy that knows no bounds.”

Ours is a God of constant, ever-present, never-ending hope. But he doesn’t adjust his plans to fit ours. He asks us to adjust ours to his and, in so doing, experience a journey of his making, not one of our self-directed and selfish planning.

Richo goes on say that “fear is a ‘no’ to what is. To fear these givens is to be afraid of life, since they are its components.” He urges his readers to cultivate a “Yes” attitude toward all of life’s givens. And I say, that God helps us do exactly that.

(You can read all of David Richo’s article for free next month at spiritualityhealth.com, or you can go there and subscribe to the magazine, if you don’t want to wait: $19.95 for six bi-monthly issues. It is an always excellent publication and it is a glorious website to spend time in.)

[1] David Richo, “Five Things We Cannot Change”, Spirituality and Health, February 2005, p. 48-49

For the Birds..

2005-02-10T07:44:00.000-06:00

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 24:26)

At about 8:30 to 9:30 each morning, and again each afternoon for several hours beginning about 4:00, our backyard becomes a spectacle that matches anything put together by Cirque d’Soleil. We’ve watched as, at times, eight different kinds of birds are all feeding there together at the same time. It is an amazing display of color, beauty, and aerial acrobatics that is spell-binding to watch.

Present all day are the goldfinches, but they arrive in their heaviest abundance during these times. They are fearless; wherever sunflowers seeds are piled, they are there, right up onto the sill of the kitchen window. They don’t even mind us getting our faces inches from them; they seem to know there is a pane of glass protecting them. I have no doubt, if we opened the window and spread seeds around the sink, that they would come on inside.

To open a sunflower seed and eat the kernel within, I need both hands and my teeth. The finches open the seeds in their tiny black beaks, expertly tossing the hulls aside, while breaking the kernel into small bits, before swallowing. And they do it all day. How many sunflower seeds does it take to fill a finch? Apparently, the answer is an enormous amount. We are putting out over 50 pounds a week! ($14.95 for a 50 lb. at the feed store..hopefully, the finches will be moving north, soon!)

Some of the finches are house finches. The ratio seems to be about 100 to 1, gold to house. They have a reddish head and breast, and, for some reason, are a little more skittish than their yellow-gold cousins. They don’t like it when we look directly at them when they land on the window sill.

Our favorites are the cardinals. As beautiful as the male is, with his bright red feathers, I think the female, with her coppery brown color and distinctive orange, black-framed beak, is the most beautiful of the pair. Cardinals are some of the few kinds of birds that mate for life, so when we see an easily-seen male, it is always fun locating his less visible but dependable mate, always somewhere nearby. One of the males always seems to be accompanied by two females. We call him the Mormon. The cardinals prefer to eat the sunflower seeds, but they also eat other birdseed, too. They rarely come closer than the back fence.

The cowbirds have returned! They are medium sized dark brown birds with distinctive purple heads. They’re not particularly attractive, but their sheer numbers and the fact that their call is one of the most beautiful bird sounds I’ve ever heard, makes them a welcome group of visitors. Individually, their call sounds like a drip of water. When there are a hundred of them roosting outside, it sounds like a little stream gurgling through the backyard.

There are so many different kinds of sparrows, but their differences are so subtle that I’ve given up trying to identify the various types. Some have masks, some don’t. Some have stripes on their back, some don’t. Some tails feathers are long, some are short, or pointed, or blunt. They swarm over the birdseed I throw on the ground and they are a source of endless amusement for our dogs who chase them into the bushes, wait for them to come back out, then chase them again. Our retrievers were bred to fetch ducks and other hunted prey, so the sparrows give them the opportunity to act on their instincts, even though they have never caught a single one. It is fun watching their unending, undiminished hope in action.

The whoosh and flurry of the gentle-looking doves has begun in the last couple of weeks. They like pecking around down on the ground best of all, but will occasionally get up on a feeder. It’s a much more precarious job of balancing there for them, however, than it is for the sparrows and cowbirds.

There are also chickadees, tufted titmice, blue jays and the occasional grackle. One morning we happened to be watching as a grosbeak hawk swept down and grabbed a blue jay in mid-flight. It was actually the flurry of blue feathers we saw first. I resisted my human impulse to run out and interrupt the kill, understanding that hawk impulses were here first, and will probably be here long after, too.

“..your heavenly Father feeds them,” Jesus said. Now, I know these birds don’t exist because of me. I know they would probably find food somewhere even if I wasn’t making it easier for them by putting food out for them. But, I get to be part of God’s plan for these creatures of His, by doing it. I get to be part of that whole system of grasses and wind and rain and gleaning, that God designed so that these birds, and all the other animals of his creation, can eat, without having to sow or reap on their own.

And when I am part of God’s plan in this way, I am abundantly rewarded. Look at those colors! Watch those flurrying gusts of cowbirds, those long swoops of hummingbirds, and those almost melodic bursts of doves exploding en masse into the air! I couldn’t begin to buy, or produce, or train enough animals to put on such a twice-daily circus. Yet, by aligning myself within the systems of stewardship and service to the world which God designed, I get to see the marvelous intricacies of his handiwork, sometimes just inches away!

‘Tis amazing, yes?

To Vincent, whom I love..

2005-02-09T07:34:00.000-06:00

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1: 9-11)

Some people have called these among the saddest words in the gospels. The crowds which followed Jesus were fickle. He was constantly being challenged by spiritual “superiors.” And, in the end, he died with a only a few of his former followers nearby.
Even after his resurrection, it was only several decades before the Jewish people- “his own”- began to reject the stories of his appearance and reappearance among them.

I intentionally pull back at times from contemplating how Jesus must have felt as he was dying on the cross. Did he know, as he was dying a human death, what his death would mean to the world? For my own sanity, I must believe that he did. I must believe, despite his prayers of the previous night, that his faith in what he discerned of his Father’s plan, allowed him to see beyond the pain in his body and allowed him to know that his death was meaningful.

There are others I observe in history who suffered similarly. Alone at the ends of their lives, lives in which they seemed to have accomplished very little, I wonder if they had glimpses or understandings of the fruits which would be born of the seeds they had planted. Did they die knowing, I wonder, that their lives would transcend their deaths?

Vincent van Gogh is one of those whose life and works, and death, I often contemplate. He wanted to be a pastor, but failed at it. He was both compelled to preach and, at the same time, absorbed in the pain of others he found himself in the midst of in 19th Century rural Belgium. So he painted. He painted furiously, trying, trying, trying to speak of that pain of others which he felt; trying to portray the majesty he perceived in even the most humble of other humans; trying to understand, and to share the understanding he had of the God-created beauty of the natural world he loved.

But aside from his brother Theo, from whom he borrowed money to live, and to whom he sold a single painting, Vincent had no customers for his work. Other painter friends, Gaugin among them, knew the talent of van Gogh, but found it difficult be around his intense personality for very long. So not only was he usually broke, but he was desperately lonely as well.

He suffered several nervous breakdowns, and finally ended his own life in April of 1890. He left behind several hundred of his paintings, whose brushstrokes and intense colors were to have a profound and lasting effect on expressionism and art in general. The self-portrait above was done in 1889, within the last year of his life and is one of 35 self-portraits done over a ten year period. He sought to know himself, understand himself, and perhaps even create himself through these self-portraits. The brushstrokes reveal the oneness he felt with his world. The lines of his clothing and hair vibrate with the same intensity as the air around him.

His understanding of other humans, as beautiful creatures in a beautiful but harsh world, was reflected in his choice of human subjects. He did not paint kings, or businessmen, or rich folk who might have been able to pay him for his work. He painted peasants, laborers, potato-eaters and poor people. He immortalized the mundane and saw loveliness and value in those who others would have thought of as merely dirty or invisible. In his “Wheatfield with a Reaper” (right), he captured that relationship between earth and sky and the humans that were dependent on both. Of this painting, van Gogh said, “I see in this reaper - a vague figure fighting like the devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task - I see in him the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping.... But there's nothing sad in this death, it goes its way in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything with a light of pure gold." I believe van Gogh understood the value of his work and knew that, like the work of the reaper, it would go on beyond the one who created that work. I hope so, anyway. Even though his suffering at the end must have terrible, I pray he died with some inkling of the power his works would have on generations to come.

His own did not accept him, either. There are many who feel that way about their lives and who have those feelings, real or not, apparently confirmed by the disregard of others. Most of them, I fear, are unaware of the seeds they have planted that have the possibilities of bearing fruit beyond their own lives. That is where our faith must play a role. That is where we must believe that God can take the meanness of humans and turn it to something valuable within his larger plans (Genesis, the story of Joseph). That is where we must believe that all things, even the bad things, can be made to work for good, for those who love God (Romans 8).

The Christ-light in van Gogh was not darkened by a self-inflicted bullet. The Christ-light in him was brighter than he could ever have imagined! He was the vehicle for it, the carrier of God’s graceful visions of humanity and creation to millions, even to the present day; but “his own people did not accept him.” And in his own broken humanity, he mistook the world’s evaluation of his work, as God’s estimation of his life.

Don’t miss the van Goghs still among us. Don’t be the van Gogh that mistakes the lack of attention shown to you by the world for seeming failure in life. Accept the grace and vision and purpose God has given you, no matter how difficult a burden it may seem to be at times. Know- know!- that the fertile, good, and blessed seeds we plant today, are tended by God, and will bear fruit.

Jesus is our Savior. But he is also- we must never forget this- our role model as well. How he lived, suffered, and died may be the way we must live, suffer, and die as well. But his tomb is empty, and so will be our own.

Hallelujah!

A Temporary Case of Crankiness

2005-02-07T16:19:00.000-06:00

From Blue Like Jazz, Nonreligous Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, by Donald Miller:

“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”

I’ve been feeling cranky recently. It’s probably not a good thing to be watching me too closely of late. Here are five things I’m feeling cranky about:

One: The most recent election, and all the posing by various politicians before it and since, have discouraged me greatly about the whole process of government, as we have allowed it to evolve. Our individual votes (it seems to me) mean very little compared to the billions of dollars spent by lobbyists, who ultimately determine how votes in Congress are cast.

I love the story of Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration as president, because it shows how distant we are from the kind of citizen’s government the shapers of this nation had in mind. Here it is: After his inauguration, Jefferson went with some friends to a local café for supper. They had to wait 20 minutes for a table.

That’s it. That’s the story. Nothing more needs to be said.

Two: McDonald’s. Not just McDonald’s, but the whole culture of quick, impersonal, impetuous buying of food, clothes, cars, status, beauty, information, and all kinds of feel-good antidotes that promise to counteract the general and ever-growing feelings of malaise, are discouraging- very discouraging- to me. McDonald’s simply identified and influenced a particular niche in marketing to consumers that has since become an abyss. It is an abyss into which Americans have gotten so good at throwing money, physical and mental health, and their own humanity into, that we are now exporting it into the world, so that everyone can be obese, unhappy, maxed-out on their credit cards, and desirous, above all, of not being different from their neighbors.

Here’s some statistics I’ve read recently[1]:

* By 2020, depression will become the second-leading global cause of death and disability, after heart disease.
* People from traditional cultures increase their risk for psychological problems, including schizophrenia, by up to six times when immigrating to developed countries.

And (I bet) most of them will learn to love Big Macs and teach their kids to love them, too, by getting them involved quickly with what is perhaps the most ill-named product in American corporate history: the Happy Meal!

Three: Second and Third graders having to do homework. In fact, I’ll make a statement even more radical than that: I wish no child through high school had to have homework. I’m dancing in an area here in which I have no expertise other than personal experience and lots of anecdotal evidence. But (again), it seems to me, that our schools have become part of that multi-billion dollar lobbying effort in Washington, Austin, and other state capitols and the real products being lobbied for are not smarter kids, but rather books, construction, social experimentation, and other interests mandated by private corporations to mine dollars from the public tax trough. Teachers must teach to standards that are irrelevant to many of their students, incomprehensible to many of those students’ parents, and impossible to accomplish in limited class times.

Thus, we have 7 and 8 year olds who should be outside playing, and learning about the things that will interest them later in life, having to study spelling words and do arithmetic before they go to bed. In school, the next day, in too many school districts, they can “wake-up” with a Coke, or look forward to lunchtime where the local McDonald’s franchise also has the elementary school’s lunchroom concession.

A couple anecdotes I find it impossible to ignore: Henry Ford didn’t read until he was 11 or 12 years old. Thomas Edison was so uninterested in school that it was thought he was ‘slow.’ Both were too busy putzing around out in their daddy’s barns with old machine parts to care about the geography of Hungary or the difference between participles and gerunds. There is a lesson there somewhere; I only wish someone would find it, and quickly. (Actually, someone has. It’s called Montessori education. But more about that another day.)

Four: The War on Drugs. Someone has said that definition of “Crazy” is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results. It’s trite, but in the case of the so-called War on Drugs, it’s true. Sorry, but I am suspicious again of the lobbyists who push new prison construction and mandatory sentencing. It is in the best interests of many in the public and private prison construction and support industries to have as many people imprisoned as possible. In Texas, and I assume many other states, prison construction and maintenance are the largest line items in the State budget.

There are many people (many people!) who should be in prison, and far, far away from civilized communities. But are all of those who commit victimless crimes among them? Is an 18 year old who stupidly drives across state lines, and gets caught with half pound of marijuana, really deserving of a mandatory 20 year prison sentence? We tolerate the professional baseball players who use ‘performance-enhancing’ drugs; why are we so intolerant of people who, of their own volition, choose to dump other types of drugs into their bloodstreams? Why does one abuser get a new multi-kabillion dollar contract, while the other gets time behind bars? I think it has much to do with the fact there are many more of the latter and that they are usually poorer than the drug-guzzling athletes. We turn them culturally into a kind of super-bogeymen so we don’t feel so badly about spending the $18,000- $30,000 per year it will take to keep them incarcerated; $18,000- $30,000 which certain lobbyists, by the way, are delighted is being spent.

Five: TV preachers. But you already knew that, so I will spare you (for today anyway) my usual rant.

Now, back to the Miller quote that I began this piece with. He goes on in his book to explain and demonstrate his encounters with the living, vibrant, transforming, and overwhelming realities of God’s grace. He doesn’t always find it in churches; in fact, he was unable to see it at all for a long time because he had limited himself to institutional churches in his search.

I need a disciplined approach to getting my eyes, ears, mind, and heart wide opened again to that same grace. For the 40+ days of Lent, I will be doing a short piece each day on what I am seeing, hearing, thinking, and experiencing as I intentionally seek evidence of that grace. Last year, during Lent, this newsletter began as a number of us worked together through The Purpose Driven Life. I did as on a daily basis to help myself and others get past the theological differences we were bound to have with that book, so that we- together- could learn more about the great strengths and truths the book had to offer.

This year, as a number of us share from The Way of Grace[2], I will roughly be following the exercises in that book as a basis for what I write here. Whether you are reading the book or not, however, I’ll present these articles in a way that (I hope) will be beneficial to each of us. And then, after Easter, we’ll return to the once-a-week schedule.

Blessings, at the beginning of this season of Lent..

[1] From The Big Ideas of 2005, Jan/Feb 2005, #57
[2] Companions in Christ, The Way of Grace, Upper Room Books, 2004. Available at Cokesbury.com, or at a Cokesbury bookstore.

Norman

2005-01-18T23:43:00.000-06:00

When he came near, Jesus asked [the man], “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Lord,” he replied. “I want to see.” (Luke 18: 40b-41)

A woman in the Emergency Room at the hospital called tonight just about the time we were done eating supper. “There’s a homeless guy up here. He wants somebody to talk to. Could you come?”

We live about two minutes away, so I told her I’d be right there. This is a small town, but it’s on a much-travelled highway between Ft.Worth and Mineral Wells, so a lot of transients pass through. Also, because it’s a small town, people learn quickly who to call with questions like, “Could you come?” when they are confronted by one of these people who needs a place to stay or something to eat. They know that I don’t mind those kinds of calls; I really don’t. And on the way back from Mineral Wells, where I ended up taking this fellow (Norman is his name), I think I finally figured why it is that I don’t mind these kinds of calls. And I’ll tell you my conclusions, after I tell you about Norman.

He’s 65 years old. He worked all his life, he said, as a store clerk or a salesman. What did you sell? Fire alarm systems, first in Los Angeles, then in Oregon. Have any kids, a wife? Two wives, six children. Do they live in Oregon? My first wife was from the Phillipines, we lived on an island in the far southern part of the Phillipines. Did it get hit by the tsunami? I don’t know what that is. You know, the tidal wave last month. I don’t read the news at all while I’m on the road, was anyone killed?

Norman is very well-spoken, obviously fairly intelligent. I kept asking questions, suppressing my amazement that there was somebody who had not heard of what’s being called the greatest natural disaster in modern history. I don’t remember the specific question which uncorked the bottle of his effervescing desire to talk, but for the next half hour, all I did was listen. Norman had grown up in a foster home. He didn’t know until he was 17 that his parents were “being paid to be my parents.” When he found that out, it so confused him that he quit high school in his senior year and joined the Army. It was 1957.

He was assigned to a small unit in the South Pacific that moved from small island to smaller islands, looking for places to built satellite tracking systems, which I found interesting since Sputnik, the first satellite, hadn’t even been launched yet by the U.S.S.R. When his time in the Army was finished, he was offered a job by a private contractor to continue building these systems, but he thought he might like to go to the Phillipines instead, “to look around.”

He married the daughter of a coconut plantation owner there who set him up as a jobber importing sports equipment from the U.S. But, after one child and two years of marriage, his wife left him. He left the Phillipines within a month and has never seen his former wife or their child since.

He worked at Woolworth’s in Los Angeles for awhile, then began selling fire alarm systems. Then he tried real estate. Then back to fire alarms. When he ran out of leads, he went back to work at Woolworths. He worked in the late 80s for the first Sam’s Wholesale Club in California, but he didn’t like the boss, so he quit. More fire alarms. Oh yeah, he worked on a ranch in Wyoming for awhile in the 70s and really liked it, but it was too cold. So he quit that, too. Wishes he’d have stayed there.

And now he’s 65.

His plan is to find a small town in New Mexico, where it is dry which will be good for his asthma. He hopes he’ll find a Christian ministry or family there to “be his friends” for a few months while his Social Security is being processed. Why a Christian family?, I asked. Because I was part of a church in Oregon one time and it was the only place where people really seemed to love me, he answered. I learned from them, he went on, that God always loves me. Even here, tonight, when I don’t have any money. I have a place to stay and something to eat (We’d just pulled up in front of a place called Economy Inn). Thanks for being nice to me, he said as we parted.

Now I’m not telling you this story because of that last line. He was saying it front of me, but I don’t think he was saying it directly to me. I think he was saying that God had just pulled through for him again, and it seemed just a matter of fact to him, that God would continue doing that.

These stories never end nicely and neatly, by the way; there are always loose ends, many more questions which don’t get asked, and lots of second guessing on my part about what I could have done to be more helpful. But I always, always come away from them having learned something interesting about other humans, and something fascinating about the ways God chooses to reveal himself to others. My immediate conclusions when leaving someone like Norman have to do with wondering about all the bad choices he’d made at all the wrong times in his life. I’d heard about ten or fifteen of those bad decisions (as I judged them to be) just in the hour I was with him.

But I also see in Norman someone who is trusting God more than I have ever been called upon to trust God. He wasn’t bitter about anything he told me. He wasn’t condemning himself or anyone else for his failures. That’s just the way things were, and it was obvious that had chosen not to be bitter or angry about them. He has- against all odds and against all the evidence I might try to assemble- hope. He had hope, because some people at a church in Oregon had loved him and through that love Norman believed God loves him. And God proves that, Norman knows, by taking care of him.

I met a guy one time in a situation like this one, who could, he said, close his eyes and see red lightening flashing over Washington, D.C. Another time, a woman in Dallas told me that her CIA- prescribed medicine had been cut off and that peppermint schnapps was the only substitute she could find. And she had a sack full of empty schnapps bottle to prove it, she said. (And she did!). A young man who I was called by a friend to talk to in Garland was convinced a ‘dream-visitor’ named Jeremy was telling him each night to kill himself so he could be with a baby son who had died. (I talked him into letting me drive him to a mental health center!)

Sometimes the lessons aren’t easily discerned, in other words. But I love these kinds of “edge” people because, as I read the gospels, these are the kinds of people Jesus was most inclined to move toward in his ministry. Somehow, Jesus was hearing God best when he was touching lepers. Somehow, he was responding to God best when he was with demoniacs, scoundrels, and those who were hated by others. I don’t know why this is so, but it is, and so I try to respond accordingly. It’s confusing sometimes, even messy, but never boring.

Am I urging similar responses by you to these people at the edges of life? No. I want you to listen to God and your own common sense about such things. What I am urging is that whatever it is God is prompting you to do in any situation, that you embrace that prompting. Go with it, be a tool in his hands, and become a part of his continuously unfolding story.

2005-01-12T22:16:00.000-06:00

The Veneer of Faith

2005-01-12T19:10:00.000-06:00

Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding.
When you do something for someone else, don't call attention to yourself. You've seen them in action, I'm sure--"playactors' I call them--treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that's all they get!
(Words of Jesus, from The Message, Matthew 6: 1,2)

The 5,280 pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments, which was removed by court order from the rotunda of the Alabama State Supreme Court Building last August, is currently on tour around the United States, on the back of a flat-bed truck. The tour was arranged by “Americans Standing for God and Country”, a Texas-based veterans' group looking for congressional support (read: tax dollars) to permanently display the marker at the U.S. Capitol.

I remember when the removal of this monument was being protested last summer. People from all over the United States arrived in Montgomery for rallies, public prayer, and speeches by various ministers. Many people prostrated themselves inside and outside the building, almost as if God himself was watching to make sure they were debasing themselves properly.

I see public demonstrations like this and, frankly, they break my heart. They represent to me what Christianity has become for many people: a very public, outward display of the “motions” and “language” of their faith, with little resulting substance. It is (I don’t know how to avoid saying this) a very real form of idolatry.

When a chunk of carved granite causes any amount of money and time to be spent, in the name of Jesus, while he is..somewhere..in prison, in need of clothing or food or something to drink, or just plain lonely, is abominable. (see Matthew 22: “When you’ve done something for one of the least of these, you’ve done something for me..”) God is not being served when human-made symbols of him are treated with more respect and honor than are those people in need that God created in his own Image.

This false worship of God is widespread. (maybe ‘misdirected’ is a better word than ‘false’) In the last thirty years, there have been any number of “God and Country” rallies held around the U.S. They are usually self-congratulatory gatherings which devolve quickly into “us” versus “them” diatribes against all manner of sinful behaviors the “them” are taking part in. Countless amounts of time, energy, and money are spent on such superficialities as manger scenes on courthouse lawns, wrangling over the words of the “Pledge of Allegiance”, or praying over the loudspeakers at high school football games. And those things are superficialities and nothing more. They are activities entered into under the very mistaken notion that God somehow needs to be defended, that his Church is so fragilely built that any attack on it will cause it to fall, and that it is somehow a courageous thing in America to take a public stand for Christ.

Here’s what I think:

*If you really believe a wooden or plastic Nativity scene will bring someone to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, or somehow cause a passerby to reach in his/her pocket and give money to those who need it, then build one in your own yard. Or, if your own yard is too far off the beaten path and you are afraid you might not get proper credit for erecting it, buy or rent some land in a very publicly visible place and put it up. Nobody will stop you. But then, there will be no reason for the newspapers to come by either, which may or may not be the real point of it all.

*Ask yourself how far the cause of Christ is advanced by hearing the person behind you saying the words “One Nation, Under God”. And then ask yourself how it was we made it through the Depression and WWII without saying those words, which were not incorporated into the pledge until the mid-1950s. If the words are meaningful to you, say them. You have freedom of speech. So does the guy behind you.

*Go ahead and pray at football games. Pray, in fact, exactly as Jesus instructed to pray: go to the restroom, close the stall door, and pray silently- not for others to hear, but for God to hear. Jesus didn’t need a loudspeaker. Neither do you.

Am I sounding sarcastic about all this? Well, I am; but I try to keep smiling about it so that I don’t become upset. It is possible to dwell one’s whole life in the veneer of the Christian faith, and miss the point of our faith entirely. It is possible to wear the right clothes, say the right words, be very active in public ways, and be labeled as a Christian without ever stepping into the cold, shark-filled waters Jesus pointed all of us toward.

It does not demonstrate courage of any sort to stand on the Mall in Washington with 100,000 other believers and sing “God Bless America.” The rally organizers may try to convince those throngs in front of them that they are “taking a stand”, but, at the end of the day, will the Kingdom of God have increased by a single soul? Will the suffering of a single person have been alleviated?

Show me the 17-year-old hammering nails into the roof of a home in the 110º heat of Mexico this summer as part of a Mission Trip; show me the retired women sitting with teenagers after school helping them with their homework; show me the doctors putting their practices on hold as they help out in Sri Lanka; show me the sacrificial and quiet giving of people who know they will never hear a ‘thank you’ or hear themselves being applauded for their efforts. Show me those things and I will say, “There is the body of Christ!”

Show me a 2 ½ ton block of granite on the back of a flat-bed trailer and I’ll call it a waste of diesel fuel.