"When I look back on my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance" (J.D. Vance, "Hillbilly Elegy," p.239.
Many years ago, a man of considerable success and wealth said to a group of Rotarians, "Life is full of free lunches."
He went on to list so many things and people that simply came to him as gift, out of the blue, if you will, or from the hand of God, as some might say.
A loving home and the wisdom of mindful parents.
Teachers who cared and encouraged and challenged.
The network of family and friends who looked after him.
His own ambition and good health.
His dreams and energy.
Professors who never let him get away with shoddy work.
Folks who helped him get his first job.
The banker who loaned him money, on his word.
And all along the way, people, even strangers, who showed up at the right time.
And all of those fortuitous moments, too numerous to mention, and mostly unknown.
All of these, and more, the free lunches of life.
Here was a wise man who understood that his life was a gift, not a achievement of his own doing, and as such, there was only response, and that was gratitude, immense and all-consuming, gratitude, and the promise, the pledge, to be a free lunch for others.
How it should work, who knows.
Some have the opportunity, but something gets in the way.
A crummy family life.
Poor health.
Bad choices and no one around to cushion the fall.
Who knows?
A spectrum of variables, bits and pieces.
But this much I know, for those who "make it," there's only one legitimate response, gratitude. And maybe a huge amount of humility, as well.
Too many people walk around these days with their arms in a sling, broken arms, for patting themselves so vigorously on the back.
But for the woman or the man who truly understands the millions, even the billions, of variables that had to come together at just the right time so they could make, there is no back-patting, but only open arms and open hands to everyone around them.
And the best we can do is give and keep on giving free lunches.
Government programs, of course.
Personal engagement, you bet.
Financial support for aid organizations, all the way.
And many more moments and variables in which we can play a part for others.
Showing posts with label grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grace. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
The Fatal Flaw of Creationism
Creationists have committed themselves to a fatal flaw that will end badly for those who sign on to it. And what's the flaw? Contrasting "revelation" with "reason," "faith" with "science." By positing the contrast, Creationists, unwittingly, perhaps, or worse, purposefully, suggest that God is a house divided - that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is opposed to, or different than, the revelation of God in God's creation. And worse: that the devil created fossils, or God did, by some means of deception, in order to "test" our faith.
As Jesus rightly noted: A house divided cannot stand for long. And the house-divided crafted by Creationists cannot stand either.
For those who have signed on to the house-divided, it will result in one of two options: 1) some form of cynicism wherein folks simply pack up their bags and leave the faith behind, either because they cannot believe in its dogmas or because they can no longer trust their teachers; or, 2), some form of absolutism, wherein the dogmas are taught with an increasingly blind force and the teachers are "trusted" with an absolute devotion.
Either way, the goodness of God's creation is lost ... it simply becomes "existence" for those who cannot abide the false god of the Creationists, or it becomes irrelevant for those who can abide only with the false god of Creationism.
If I have to choose, I'll choose some form of cynicism, because it, at least, keeps the doors and windows open. But for me, there is another choice, and it's simply the affirmation that what God has given, and continues to give, in Christ AND in creation is consistent and honest and open to our senses, our minds, our examination - all of this subject to the ambiguities of our existence.
With another affirmation - that what we cannot fully grasp grasps us in grace. Whether it be the glories of creation or the wonders of the cross, we can see these things and welcome, consider and examine them, but more than anything, they welcome us, consider us and examine us ... and in that moment, there is no contrast, no contradiction, no pitting of one against the other. No more a house divided!
As Jesus rightly noted: A house divided cannot stand for long. And the house-divided crafted by Creationists cannot stand either.
For those who have signed on to the house-divided, it will result in one of two options: 1) some form of cynicism wherein folks simply pack up their bags and leave the faith behind, either because they cannot believe in its dogmas or because they can no longer trust their teachers; or, 2), some form of absolutism, wherein the dogmas are taught with an increasingly blind force and the teachers are "trusted" with an absolute devotion.
Either way, the goodness of God's creation is lost ... it simply becomes "existence" for those who cannot abide the false god of the Creationists, or it becomes irrelevant for those who can abide only with the false god of Creationism.
If I have to choose, I'll choose some form of cynicism, because it, at least, keeps the doors and windows open. But for me, there is another choice, and it's simply the affirmation that what God has given, and continues to give, in Christ AND in creation is consistent and honest and open to our senses, our minds, our examination - all of this subject to the ambiguities of our existence.
With another affirmation - that what we cannot fully grasp grasps us in grace. Whether it be the glories of creation or the wonders of the cross, we can see these things and welcome, consider and examine them, but more than anything, they welcome us, consider us and examine us ... and in that moment, there is no contrast, no contradiction, no pitting of one against the other. No more a house divided!
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
The Apostle Paul and Big Government
At the heart of Paul's gospel is an idea that strikes a mortal blow against all human pretension and the human inclination to then divide the race between "those who deserve something" and "those who don't."
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| He read the Text with great care! |
It's called grace ... the love of God reaching out to those who cannot reach beyond themselves, their sorrows and their plight.
"None are righteous," says Paul, and therein he demolishes any and ever wall erected by pride of place or power.
In God's eyes, humanity is a pauper of soul, and only by divine largess, both in its initiating and in its sustaining, it is always and forever grace that enables life.
Hence, no one can claim a higher ground, either in the initial awakening, or in whatever good fortune, spiritual or material, may emerge.
Only God's Big Government is big enough to undertake the rebuilding of God's earth - devastated by greed and its demented cousin, War!
The Biblical Message of Grace is the ultimate Liberal Agenda, a Progressive ideal, and when embraced, can only generate the healthiest of all emotions: humility before life, especially if life has been favorable, and kindness toward one another, especially those for whom life has been less than favorable.
No wonder the Medieval Church didn't want people reading the Bible, and no wonder Evangelical Preachers chop it up into tiny little bits and pieces, and then rework it all to become a "personal message of salvation" (which it isn't) or a "Harvard Business Model for Success" (not even close). These are the forces arrayed against Grace, those they tout their own righteousness and speak easily of Jesus, as if they were all his political advisors.
Nevertheless ...
It's God's Big Government, intervening in the affairs of humankind, injecting massive amounts of spiritual wealth into the human system, that puts Humpty Dumpty together again.
And to God be the glory ...
Friday, November 2, 2012
Ancient Israel Wanted Clout - from F. Buechner
Today's reading (Nov. 2) from Frederick Buechner's Listening to Your Life really caught my attention.
Here it is:
Here it is:
Israel did not want to be a holy nation. Israel wanted to be a nation like all the other nations, a nation like Egypt, like Syria. She wanted clout. She wanted security. She wanted a place in the sun. It was her own way she wanted not God's way; and when the prophets got after her for it, she got rid of the prophets, and when God's demands seemed too exorbitant, God's promises too remote, she took up with all the other gods who still get our votes and our money and our 9 AM to 5 PM energies, because they are gods who could not care less whether we are holy or not, and promise absolutely everything we really want and absolutely nothing we really need. ~ Nov. 2 reading, Listening to Your Life - excerpted from The Clown in the Belfry.
The church in America is Ancient Israel all over again. We've sold our soul to the gods who promise us clout, security, and a place in the sun.
Gods who couldn't care less about our holiness and are more than happy when we substitute narrow-mindedness for faith, snottiness for discernment, and overly-scrupulous concerns for private/personal behavior - centered in the genitals - for the purposes of life given by Jesus in his hometown sermon.
We despise the prophets, like a Jeremiah Wright, who call our "greatness" to account, who reveal the false gods for what they are, who shine the light of grace on narrow-mindedness, snottiness and petty morality and dare to call down God's judgment upon us.
We preach health, wealth and happiness and are more than content to ignore the Prophets and turn Jesus into some kind of a mental-health guru who will turn us into business geniuses, transform our marriages, guide out children into prosperous careers, eliminate acne and dandruff, make our nation strong, feed our needs for oil, prevent global warming, trample our "enemies" and make us happy.
But the happiness never arrives.
We still have acne and dandruff.
And God still waits for us to hear his Son in the Nazareth Synagogue.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Assurance of Pardon - Where in the Liturgy?
Where should the Assurance of Pardon be liturgically placed?
In most of my experience, limited as it is, the Assurance appears after the Confession of Sin, and I guess that's okay, but I'm wondering if the placement could be more appropriate if placed before the Confession.
Part of my thinking is a chicken and egg question, though I think the question in my mind is easier to solve, and has been solved for us by Jesus and in 1 John, wherein it is written, God first loved us!
As it now stands, one might assume that our confession of sin triggers God's forgiveness, or, as some might say it, and have said it, without such confession, no forgiveness is possible, driving some, as it did Martin Luther, to endless confession and maniacal self-examination.
With that in mind, perhaps the Assurance should appear first in the liturgy - in other words, we start with the love of God and the grace therein - a primordial love for creation, and through the lambs of the centuries and now the Lamb of God of Calvary, there is forgiveness, profound and pervasive, complete and without condition - though ignorance of it condemns the ignorant to life lived fearfully or despairingly, and for some, ignorance can even promote a self-willed morality that grants approval aside from the love and mercy of God (the heart and soul of various legalisms which are always suffused with arrogance - the vain belief in one's inherent ability to truly be good, often requiring a woeful avoidance of the whole story, as we leave out or whitewash the darker chapters).
So, perhaps we should begin with the love of God - the Assurance of forgiveness - that the great work of God throughout history, ever since God made sturdy clothing for Adam and Eve, has always been forgiveness, and now has reached its culminating moment in Jesus who embodies God's purpose and love in such depth and purity as to finish the work of forgiveness, and, by the Spirit, empowering his disciples to tell "the good news" to all the world and to make disciples, those who know the truth, in full humility, and can share that good news further with others, in full compassion.
We are thus invited to confession, not as some potential trigger of God's mercy, which would always remain in doubt if tied to the "quality" of the confession, always leaving room for anxiety - that, perhaps, the confession wasn't complete enough, or sins of omission were overlooked, and sins of commission forgotten, and, thus, the forgiveness of God is withheld.
If, on the other hand, we know in Christ the unrestrained love of God that has wrought forgiveness, once and for all, confession is relieved of anxiety and empowered to be honest, for we are now, in Christ, without fear of judgment, but, in fact, invite judgment, the work of the Holy Spirit, to further our growth in Christ - sometimes requiring a harsh hand upon the soul, but harsh or not, always the hand of love.
One of these Sundays, I'll locate the Assurance prior to the Confession and then make it a teaching moment.
We'll see ...
In most of my experience, limited as it is, the Assurance appears after the Confession of Sin, and I guess that's okay, but I'm wondering if the placement could be more appropriate if placed before the Confession.
Part of my thinking is a chicken and egg question, though I think the question in my mind is easier to solve, and has been solved for us by Jesus and in 1 John, wherein it is written, God first loved us!
As it now stands, one might assume that our confession of sin triggers God's forgiveness, or, as some might say it, and have said it, without such confession, no forgiveness is possible, driving some, as it did Martin Luther, to endless confession and maniacal self-examination.
With that in mind, perhaps the Assurance should appear first in the liturgy - in other words, we start with the love of God and the grace therein - a primordial love for creation, and through the lambs of the centuries and now the Lamb of God of Calvary, there is forgiveness, profound and pervasive, complete and without condition - though ignorance of it condemns the ignorant to life lived fearfully or despairingly, and for some, ignorance can even promote a self-willed morality that grants approval aside from the love and mercy of God (the heart and soul of various legalisms which are always suffused with arrogance - the vain belief in one's inherent ability to truly be good, often requiring a woeful avoidance of the whole story, as we leave out or whitewash the darker chapters).
So, perhaps we should begin with the love of God - the Assurance of forgiveness - that the great work of God throughout history, ever since God made sturdy clothing for Adam and Eve, has always been forgiveness, and now has reached its culminating moment in Jesus who embodies God's purpose and love in such depth and purity as to finish the work of forgiveness, and, by the Spirit, empowering his disciples to tell "the good news" to all the world and to make disciples, those who know the truth, in full humility, and can share that good news further with others, in full compassion.
We are thus invited to confession, not as some potential trigger of God's mercy, which would always remain in doubt if tied to the "quality" of the confession, always leaving room for anxiety - that, perhaps, the confession wasn't complete enough, or sins of omission were overlooked, and sins of commission forgotten, and, thus, the forgiveness of God is withheld.
If, on the other hand, we know in Christ the unrestrained love of God that has wrought forgiveness, once and for all, confession is relieved of anxiety and empowered to be honest, for we are now, in Christ, without fear of judgment, but, in fact, invite judgment, the work of the Holy Spirit, to further our growth in Christ - sometimes requiring a harsh hand upon the soul, but harsh or not, always the hand of love.
One of these Sundays, I'll locate the Assurance prior to the Confession and then make it a teaching moment.
We'll see ...
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Grace Around the Edges - The Rev. Dr. Frank Alton
The following message was given Sunday, January 31, 2010, at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles, CA, by the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Frank Alton. It's one of the best messages I've read, and with Frank's permission, I'm sharing it with you today. Read and be blessed!
Grace around the edges
Jer. 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30
Don’t you hate it when people tell you an uncomfortable truth and you know they are right? I do. I’m reminded how much I hate it every time I go to my peer supervision group. Last Sunday I was in Oakland for one of four annual sessions of peer supervision. About a dozen leaders of multicultural institutions work with consultants to learn to be better leaders. I have come to love the group. But I remember how threatened I was during my first few years attending the group. From day one I was confronted by some of my blind spots in leadership. It was painful to have to face them. But I kept going back because I had learned the cost of quitting. You see, I’d experienced something similar when I took some acting classes right before I joined this group. I found the feedback there intolerable. I felt so vulnerable having to access scary parts of myself and put them on stage for all to see. I quit the acting classes before I had a breakthrough. I didn’t want that to happen again, so I hung in with peer supervision until the breakthrough.
Last week Elizabeth spoke to the first half of today’s Gospel lesson – Jesus’ sermon to those gathered in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus returned as a young adult to the village that helped raise him - not just his mother and brothers and sisters but also the neighbors who had kept him when his mother was sick, and the shopkeepers who had let him run errands for them, the old men who had leaned on their sticks in the heat of the day and told him stories that made his hair stand on end. He was their son too, so of course he went home to them, wanting to give them the best of what he had to offer. The people of Nazareth had heard reports of the great things Jesus did over in Capernaum. He gave them a dramatic message from Isaiah.
Today we read the second half of the story. Jesus pushed the sermon to the edge and got push back from the townspeople who literally pushed him to the edge of town. Jesus confronted his former neighbors with the uncomfortable truth that the least expected people often respond to God more than the expected ones and God in turn responds to them; and the most irritating truth of all: that everybody loses when we fail to love our enemy. Why is that? Well, the enemy loses because we block God’s work in their life; we lose because we miss the insight into God’s grace that we gain when we see God transform the very ones we call enemy. We turn people who are different from us into enemies because we don’t understand their behavior so we’re not sure we can control it. That makes us afraid – afraid of anyone who lives on or beyond the edge of our known world. I refer to the ones Jesus cited in Isaiah’s text - the poor, prisoners, the blind and (we could add) the mentally challenged, people from other cultures, immigrants, etc.
The people of Nazareth tried to get rid of the truth by killing the messenger. Can you blame them? Doesn’t it make you angry when someone tries to get you to reason with your enemy? Just when I’m really enjoying being angry with an enemy, someone comes along and suggests that my enemy is partly right. Oooh, that makes my blood boil. I want someone who says, “Yeah, and can you believe how they…?” That makes me feel better about my anger. I don’t want someone to say, “Well, have you looked at it from their side?” That is the last thing I want to hear when I’m angry.
And we do the same thing with God. As religious people we want God to oppose our enemies as much as we do. We want God to protect us from them rather than push us toward them. When we’re honest we admit that we’d rather have God bring vengeance on our enemies than reconcile us with them. That’s why the people of Nazareth were already a little edgy after Jesus’ reading of the Isaiah passage. They knew their Bibles, and they knew Jesus had left out a key phrase in the Isaiah scroll. The final verse didn’t end after, “to proclaim the year of God’s favor.” It went on to read, “And the day of vengeance of our God.” In their minds one could not come without the other. God’s favor for Israel was tied up with God’s vengeance on Israel’s enemies. Their enemies would finally get what’s coming to them. That’s what they waited for.
But Jesus’ vision went beyond Isaiah’s vision. Clearly Jesus had left out that final phrase intentionally. And he couldn’t just leave it at that. He had to make sure people understood the new level of inclusiveness that was central to his message. He understood that in order for “the year of God’s favor” to mean anything it had to include enemies as well as friends. So he went on to tell two stories from the people’s sacred history: the story of the nameless widow of Zarephath who was about to die of starvation, and the story of Naaman the Syrian general who was a leper and. Both were foreigners and both were healed or saved by prophets of Israel.
In the time of the prophet Elijah there was a famine in Israel and in the surrounding lands. During that time there were many poor, starving widows in Israel who needed food. Elijah was sent to the land of Sidon north of Israel where he met a widow who was down to her last scrap of food. She was going to prepare it for her son and herself before they died. Elijah told her not to be afraid and the three of them had enough meal and oil until the famine ended. The crowd in the synagogue started mumbling to each other: "Is he saying God likes Gentiles better than Jews?”
Jesus recalls another story, this one from the time of Elisha. There were many sick lepers in Israel during that time; they received no cure. Instead Elisha cured a leper named Naaman who happened to be the General of the army of one of Israel’s enemies. It turned out that Naaman’s wife had an Israeli slave girl who told her mistress that the prophet Elisha could heal her husband of his leprosy. The general told this to the king of Syria, who sent a letter to the king of Israel. When the king of Israel read the letter he tore his clothes because he feared that Syria was trying to provoke a war. Elisha intervened, healed Naaman & Naaman worshipped Israel’s God.
When people feel “on edge” the last thing they want to hear is a message that invites them to go closer to the edge. The people in Nazareth were living the same reality as the rest of Israel: they were a colony of Rome. Rome was their enemy. They were awaiting a Messiah who was going to liberate them from Rome. What kind of Messiah shows up & announces the day of the Lord's favor without also bringing the day of vengeance that was promised so long ago? When Jesus reminded them that during previous times of crisis, God seemed to favor their enemies they were incensed. One commentator writes, "Anger and violence are the last defense of those who are made to face the truth embedded in their own tradition." (Fred Craddock)
Rabbi Ed Friedman has written a lot about how families and societies mature. One life principle he has discovered is that “there is no way out of a chronically painful condition except by being willing to go through a temporarily more acutely painful phase.” (A Failure of Nerve, p. 202) Applied to families this means that families that are stuck show a low capacity for enduring pain. To the extent that we are motivated to get on with life, we seem to be able to tolerate more pain; in other words, our threshold for pain increases.
Jesus seems to have understood the same thing. He knew that he would provoke more pain by telling the stories he told. But he went ahead and told them because he knew that he had to raise people’s threshold for pain in order to help them mature beyond love for their own tribe to love for “the other.” We don't like being told that our enemies are God's friends. Yet no matter how hard we try, we cannot seem to get God to respect our boundaries. God keeps plowing right through them, inviting us to follow or get out of the way. The big lie the world tells us is that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, & the seeking of profit — nothing else. Whereas the truth of God is that all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts because its true destiny is joy.
Mature people understand that “we should expect to be challenged and upset by the truth, by the people sent to yank our chains and upset our equilibrium so we do not confuse our own ideas about God with God." (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by another Way) In the scriptures of all the great religions, Christianity no exception, we see that God is defined precisely as “Other”, as what’s beyond imagination, as outside the realm of the familiar. This is what scripture means when it calls God “Holy”; “Holy”, not because of some moral quality but because of God’s otherness and difference from us. In the Bible, revelation from God is understood to come mostly through the stranger, the foreigner, the unexpected, the unfamiliar, in what’s different, in the surprise. That’s why the scriptures insist on the importance of welcoming strangers: since God is Other, strangers, among all others, are the most likely to be carrying God’s revelation.
This is a difficult message to hear today. We’re being overwhelmed by otherness. Nothing’s safe for long. More than any previous generation, we’re being stretched beyond what’s familiar. That is both painful and disorienting. It’s not easy to have our boundaries, values, and ideas under constant redefinition, especially when we believe in eternal truths. Yesterday at the Presbytery meeting we were discussing the deep chasm that exists among Presbyterians about what biblical truth is. One person stood up to tell us how many people had called her because they were confused by the different messages people found in the same Bible. She was calling us to have a unified message. The problem is we’re not there yet. We live in times where we experience the truth as muddy water. We can’t just clean up the water. That’s not going to happen soon. People need to be equipped to live with the muddiness. We’ve never grasped truth deeply enough. We have it in small pieces. That’s why we call it a mystery. The painful truth is that a lot of the pieces we still need to fill out those mysteries lie precisely in what’s foreign to us, in what’s other, strange, and different. That’s what Jesus was saying.
Rabbi Friedman notes that chronically anxious families will seek out those professionals who promise the most comfort, who help them avoid or reduce their pain as quickly as possible, not those who offer the most opportunities for maturation by encouraging them to endure their pain in order to move toward higher goals. The latter group is offering grace around the edges.
I believe that’s what President Obama tried to offer in his State of the Union address last week. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I was deeply inspired by it. The whole time I was listening I knew that the pundits would start tearing it apart as soon as it was finished. And I was not disappointed. Only one commentator I heard spoke positively about the address, and he got roundly criticized for saying that Obama sounded almost post-racist. Is it no longer appropriate for Presidents to try to inspire hope in the nation? Is it inherently naïve to hold out the challenge to live up to our best selves rather than our usual selves? Have we lowered our standards so far that we consider it naïve to continue to call for bipartisanship after a year of seeing it fail? I, for one, was inspired by the vision our President set forth, by the confessional tone of his acknowledgment of failure, and by his willingness to speak uncomfortable truth instead of sweeping it under the rug.
I was pleased that a series of email reflections that I received from colleagues who are pastors of other churches spoke in these tones in response to some short-term wins for progressives in the Presbytery yesterday. The “wins” were that a proposal to split the church along theological lines was rejected and Brian Symonds was advanced to candidacy on his way to ordination. My wise colleagues realize that it is never a true victory when one side wins a particular vote. Pastor after pastor committed to work with those who proposed the way to split the church without a divorce, in order to seek mutual understanding and unity with those who felt like they lost.
So the question I would like you to walk away with today is: Who is the hardest “other” for you to incorporate into your circle? It’s easy to criticize those who have trouble accepting the ones you easily accept. But it doesn’t help to focus on the one that other people call enemy. That only serves to make us feel self-righteous because we don’t consider that enemy an enemy. The only way Jesus’ invitation to love our enemy will heal us is if it taps into the pain of facing the one we call enemy. Let us pray for the power to do that.
Grace around the edges
Jer. 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30
Don’t you hate it when people tell you an uncomfortable truth and you know they are right? I do. I’m reminded how much I hate it every time I go to my peer supervision group. Last Sunday I was in Oakland for one of four annual sessions of peer supervision. About a dozen leaders of multicultural institutions work with consultants to learn to be better leaders. I have come to love the group. But I remember how threatened I was during my first few years attending the group. From day one I was confronted by some of my blind spots in leadership. It was painful to have to face them. But I kept going back because I had learned the cost of quitting. You see, I’d experienced something similar when I took some acting classes right before I joined this group. I found the feedback there intolerable. I felt so vulnerable having to access scary parts of myself and put them on stage for all to see. I quit the acting classes before I had a breakthrough. I didn’t want that to happen again, so I hung in with peer supervision until the breakthrough.
Last week Elizabeth spoke to the first half of today’s Gospel lesson – Jesus’ sermon to those gathered in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus returned as a young adult to the village that helped raise him - not just his mother and brothers and sisters but also the neighbors who had kept him when his mother was sick, and the shopkeepers who had let him run errands for them, the old men who had leaned on their sticks in the heat of the day and told him stories that made his hair stand on end. He was their son too, so of course he went home to them, wanting to give them the best of what he had to offer. The people of Nazareth had heard reports of the great things Jesus did over in Capernaum. He gave them a dramatic message from Isaiah.
Today we read the second half of the story. Jesus pushed the sermon to the edge and got push back from the townspeople who literally pushed him to the edge of town. Jesus confronted his former neighbors with the uncomfortable truth that the least expected people often respond to God more than the expected ones and God in turn responds to them; and the most irritating truth of all: that everybody loses when we fail to love our enemy. Why is that? Well, the enemy loses because we block God’s work in their life; we lose because we miss the insight into God’s grace that we gain when we see God transform the very ones we call enemy. We turn people who are different from us into enemies because we don’t understand their behavior so we’re not sure we can control it. That makes us afraid – afraid of anyone who lives on or beyond the edge of our known world. I refer to the ones Jesus cited in Isaiah’s text - the poor, prisoners, the blind and (we could add) the mentally challenged, people from other cultures, immigrants, etc.
The people of Nazareth tried to get rid of the truth by killing the messenger. Can you blame them? Doesn’t it make you angry when someone tries to get you to reason with your enemy? Just when I’m really enjoying being angry with an enemy, someone comes along and suggests that my enemy is partly right. Oooh, that makes my blood boil. I want someone who says, “Yeah, and can you believe how they…?” That makes me feel better about my anger. I don’t want someone to say, “Well, have you looked at it from their side?” That is the last thing I want to hear when I’m angry.
And we do the same thing with God. As religious people we want God to oppose our enemies as much as we do. We want God to protect us from them rather than push us toward them. When we’re honest we admit that we’d rather have God bring vengeance on our enemies than reconcile us with them. That’s why the people of Nazareth were already a little edgy after Jesus’ reading of the Isaiah passage. They knew their Bibles, and they knew Jesus had left out a key phrase in the Isaiah scroll. The final verse didn’t end after, “to proclaim the year of God’s favor.” It went on to read, “And the day of vengeance of our God.” In their minds one could not come without the other. God’s favor for Israel was tied up with God’s vengeance on Israel’s enemies. Their enemies would finally get what’s coming to them. That’s what they waited for.
But Jesus’ vision went beyond Isaiah’s vision. Clearly Jesus had left out that final phrase intentionally. And he couldn’t just leave it at that. He had to make sure people understood the new level of inclusiveness that was central to his message. He understood that in order for “the year of God’s favor” to mean anything it had to include enemies as well as friends. So he went on to tell two stories from the people’s sacred history: the story of the nameless widow of Zarephath who was about to die of starvation, and the story of Naaman the Syrian general who was a leper and. Both were foreigners and both were healed or saved by prophets of Israel.
In the time of the prophet Elijah there was a famine in Israel and in the surrounding lands. During that time there were many poor, starving widows in Israel who needed food. Elijah was sent to the land of Sidon north of Israel where he met a widow who was down to her last scrap of food. She was going to prepare it for her son and herself before they died. Elijah told her not to be afraid and the three of them had enough meal and oil until the famine ended. The crowd in the synagogue started mumbling to each other: "Is he saying God likes Gentiles better than Jews?”
Jesus recalls another story, this one from the time of Elisha. There were many sick lepers in Israel during that time; they received no cure. Instead Elisha cured a leper named Naaman who happened to be the General of the army of one of Israel’s enemies. It turned out that Naaman’s wife had an Israeli slave girl who told her mistress that the prophet Elisha could heal her husband of his leprosy. The general told this to the king of Syria, who sent a letter to the king of Israel. When the king of Israel read the letter he tore his clothes because he feared that Syria was trying to provoke a war. Elisha intervened, healed Naaman & Naaman worshipped Israel’s God.
When people feel “on edge” the last thing they want to hear is a message that invites them to go closer to the edge. The people in Nazareth were living the same reality as the rest of Israel: they were a colony of Rome. Rome was their enemy. They were awaiting a Messiah who was going to liberate them from Rome. What kind of Messiah shows up & announces the day of the Lord's favor without also bringing the day of vengeance that was promised so long ago? When Jesus reminded them that during previous times of crisis, God seemed to favor their enemies they were incensed. One commentator writes, "Anger and violence are the last defense of those who are made to face the truth embedded in their own tradition." (Fred Craddock)
Rabbi Ed Friedman has written a lot about how families and societies mature. One life principle he has discovered is that “there is no way out of a chronically painful condition except by being willing to go through a temporarily more acutely painful phase.” (A Failure of Nerve, p. 202) Applied to families this means that families that are stuck show a low capacity for enduring pain. To the extent that we are motivated to get on with life, we seem to be able to tolerate more pain; in other words, our threshold for pain increases.
Jesus seems to have understood the same thing. He knew that he would provoke more pain by telling the stories he told. But he went ahead and told them because he knew that he had to raise people’s threshold for pain in order to help them mature beyond love for their own tribe to love for “the other.” We don't like being told that our enemies are God's friends. Yet no matter how hard we try, we cannot seem to get God to respect our boundaries. God keeps plowing right through them, inviting us to follow or get out of the way. The big lie the world tells us is that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, & the seeking of profit — nothing else. Whereas the truth of God is that all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts because its true destiny is joy.
Mature people understand that “we should expect to be challenged and upset by the truth, by the people sent to yank our chains and upset our equilibrium so we do not confuse our own ideas about God with God." (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by another Way) In the scriptures of all the great religions, Christianity no exception, we see that God is defined precisely as “Other”, as what’s beyond imagination, as outside the realm of the familiar. This is what scripture means when it calls God “Holy”; “Holy”, not because of some moral quality but because of God’s otherness and difference from us. In the Bible, revelation from God is understood to come mostly through the stranger, the foreigner, the unexpected, the unfamiliar, in what’s different, in the surprise. That’s why the scriptures insist on the importance of welcoming strangers: since God is Other, strangers, among all others, are the most likely to be carrying God’s revelation.
This is a difficult message to hear today. We’re being overwhelmed by otherness. Nothing’s safe for long. More than any previous generation, we’re being stretched beyond what’s familiar. That is both painful and disorienting. It’s not easy to have our boundaries, values, and ideas under constant redefinition, especially when we believe in eternal truths. Yesterday at the Presbytery meeting we were discussing the deep chasm that exists among Presbyterians about what biblical truth is. One person stood up to tell us how many people had called her because they were confused by the different messages people found in the same Bible. She was calling us to have a unified message. The problem is we’re not there yet. We live in times where we experience the truth as muddy water. We can’t just clean up the water. That’s not going to happen soon. People need to be equipped to live with the muddiness. We’ve never grasped truth deeply enough. We have it in small pieces. That’s why we call it a mystery. The painful truth is that a lot of the pieces we still need to fill out those mysteries lie precisely in what’s foreign to us, in what’s other, strange, and different. That’s what Jesus was saying.
Rabbi Friedman notes that chronically anxious families will seek out those professionals who promise the most comfort, who help them avoid or reduce their pain as quickly as possible, not those who offer the most opportunities for maturation by encouraging them to endure their pain in order to move toward higher goals. The latter group is offering grace around the edges.
I believe that’s what President Obama tried to offer in his State of the Union address last week. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I was deeply inspired by it. The whole time I was listening I knew that the pundits would start tearing it apart as soon as it was finished. And I was not disappointed. Only one commentator I heard spoke positively about the address, and he got roundly criticized for saying that Obama sounded almost post-racist. Is it no longer appropriate for Presidents to try to inspire hope in the nation? Is it inherently naïve to hold out the challenge to live up to our best selves rather than our usual selves? Have we lowered our standards so far that we consider it naïve to continue to call for bipartisanship after a year of seeing it fail? I, for one, was inspired by the vision our President set forth, by the confessional tone of his acknowledgment of failure, and by his willingness to speak uncomfortable truth instead of sweeping it under the rug.
I was pleased that a series of email reflections that I received from colleagues who are pastors of other churches spoke in these tones in response to some short-term wins for progressives in the Presbytery yesterday. The “wins” were that a proposal to split the church along theological lines was rejected and Brian Symonds was advanced to candidacy on his way to ordination. My wise colleagues realize that it is never a true victory when one side wins a particular vote. Pastor after pastor committed to work with those who proposed the way to split the church without a divorce, in order to seek mutual understanding and unity with those who felt like they lost.
So the question I would like you to walk away with today is: Who is the hardest “other” for you to incorporate into your circle? It’s easy to criticize those who have trouble accepting the ones you easily accept. But it doesn’t help to focus on the one that other people call enemy. That only serves to make us feel self-righteous because we don’t consider that enemy an enemy. The only way Jesus’ invitation to love our enemy will heal us is if it taps into the pain of facing the one we call enemy. Let us pray for the power to do that.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Who Wants to Hear About Grace?
One of the most insidious devices used by Satan to destroy us (personally and socially) is the story of the self-made woman ... who, by dint of her own energies and creativity, masters the world and achieves success.
American mythology is filled with images of frontier women and men bravely hacking their way through the impenetrable wilderness, fighting off wild beasts and staving off savage attacks from those who would foolishly resist progress. The loner. The entrepreneur. The successful!
American religion, as well, has drunk deeply from the well of this salvation-by-works view of life, turning many an American pulpit into a podium for motivational jargon and silly stories that always bring a tear to the eye without the genuine transformation essential to the gospel of a real Christ - a living Christ who invites us to deny ourselves, trust God radically, give away profoundly, take up our cross and follow unconditionally.
Why is this notion of a self-made woman such an insidious idea?
Well, for one, it's patently false!
If one probes beneath the surface of the lives of the successful, one discovers the hidden imprint of grace, an imprint discernible through the lens of faith, itself a gift from God.
That's the point, I suppose - life is a gift from God, every bit of it, determined by God. Though we must be careful - this idea has been used by the powerful and the wealthy to justify the poverty of others and the maintenance of the social status quo as if it were the will of God, forever and immutable. Hence, the Victorian objection to Darwin who suggested that systems actually change. Churchly high pulpits linked arms with positions of privilege to fight Darwin's ideas and to promote the "created order ordained by God" to keep others in slavery and some in the lap of luxury. How convenient to believe that poverty and privilege are ordained by God.
But the point remains: the Bible and the work of good theologians point to the mysteries of grace that bestow wealth and power without our participation. Wealth and power - gifts from God, irrespective our character, our morality, our faith or our intelligence. Ouch! Did I just say that?
Socially, the myth of the self-made woman perpetuates the kind of pride that divides a society against itself - the "successful" person, imaging her success to be of her own making, looks down her snoot at everyone else, and then publishes a book or two about how smart she is, and if working-man Pete and single-mom Susie could only be as smart and as hard-working as she's been, why, they'd be successful, too, living on easy street and enjoying the well-deserved fruits of their labors.
Clearly, one of the fiery darts used by the Evil One to puff the soul and destroy our social conscience.
On the other hand, when one confronts the mystery and the joy of grace, one realizes, quickly, just how fragile our success is - how a million little factors, way beyond our purview and control, have brought us to this point in life. It truly is "amazing grace," and such grace leaves us spell-bound and grateful and utterly humbled.
In the face of grace, we begin to see why God has blessed us ... so that we might be a blessing to others (without questioning and judging their status even as we question and judge our own status in the light of grace), and use our position to fight the larger evils that oppress and destroy body and soul.
The wealthy and the powerful, if they truly understood the source of their wealth and power, would all become deeply radical, working tirelessly to change the hideous systems of disparity and death, even supporting a much higher tax rate for themselves, because taxes are the means of a shared responsibility to care for one another, paying their taxes with joy, giving thanks for what they have without demanding ever-more.
Living in the power of grace, the wealthy and the mighty would devote themselves to legislation and programs to provide the best of schools for every child everywhere, to promote unions for the protection of the guys and gals who turn our beds and serve our food and wash our cars and clean our streets and fight our fires and solve our crimes and fight our wars. Living in grace, the powerful would work to change the world rather than using charity as a sop to the poor and a salve to a greedy conscience.
Grace no longer asks the question: Why are poor people poor? As if it were their fault.
But asks the larger question: Why has God given me so much?
And then grace rolls up her sleeves, figures out how to spend a whole lot less on the self and engage a whole lot more in making this God's world, as it should be, after all.
Grace - who want's to hear it?
But it's the truth, and only the truth, the gracious truth, shall set us free at last.
American mythology is filled with images of frontier women and men bravely hacking their way through the impenetrable wilderness, fighting off wild beasts and staving off savage attacks from those who would foolishly resist progress. The loner. The entrepreneur. The successful!
American religion, as well, has drunk deeply from the well of this salvation-by-works view of life, turning many an American pulpit into a podium for motivational jargon and silly stories that always bring a tear to the eye without the genuine transformation essential to the gospel of a real Christ - a living Christ who invites us to deny ourselves, trust God radically, give away profoundly, take up our cross and follow unconditionally.
Why is this notion of a self-made woman such an insidious idea?
Well, for one, it's patently false!
If one probes beneath the surface of the lives of the successful, one discovers the hidden imprint of grace, an imprint discernible through the lens of faith, itself a gift from God.
That's the point, I suppose - life is a gift from God, every bit of it, determined by God. Though we must be careful - this idea has been used by the powerful and the wealthy to justify the poverty of others and the maintenance of the social status quo as if it were the will of God, forever and immutable. Hence, the Victorian objection to Darwin who suggested that systems actually change. Churchly high pulpits linked arms with positions of privilege to fight Darwin's ideas and to promote the "created order ordained by God" to keep others in slavery and some in the lap of luxury. How convenient to believe that poverty and privilege are ordained by God.
But the point remains: the Bible and the work of good theologians point to the mysteries of grace that bestow wealth and power without our participation. Wealth and power - gifts from God, irrespective our character, our morality, our faith or our intelligence. Ouch! Did I just say that?
Socially, the myth of the self-made woman perpetuates the kind of pride that divides a society against itself - the "successful" person, imaging her success to be of her own making, looks down her snoot at everyone else, and then publishes a book or two about how smart she is, and if working-man Pete and single-mom Susie could only be as smart and as hard-working as she's been, why, they'd be successful, too, living on easy street and enjoying the well-deserved fruits of their labors.
Clearly, one of the fiery darts used by the Evil One to puff the soul and destroy our social conscience.
On the other hand, when one confronts the mystery and the joy of grace, one realizes, quickly, just how fragile our success is - how a million little factors, way beyond our purview and control, have brought us to this point in life. It truly is "amazing grace," and such grace leaves us spell-bound and grateful and utterly humbled.
In the face of grace, we begin to see why God has blessed us ... so that we might be a blessing to others (without questioning and judging their status even as we question and judge our own status in the light of grace), and use our position to fight the larger evils that oppress and destroy body and soul.
The wealthy and the powerful, if they truly understood the source of their wealth and power, would all become deeply radical, working tirelessly to change the hideous systems of disparity and death, even supporting a much higher tax rate for themselves, because taxes are the means of a shared responsibility to care for one another, paying their taxes with joy, giving thanks for what they have without demanding ever-more.
Living in the power of grace, the wealthy and the mighty would devote themselves to legislation and programs to provide the best of schools for every child everywhere, to promote unions for the protection of the guys and gals who turn our beds and serve our food and wash our cars and clean our streets and fight our fires and solve our crimes and fight our wars. Living in grace, the powerful would work to change the world rather than using charity as a sop to the poor and a salve to a greedy conscience.
Grace no longer asks the question: Why are poor people poor? As if it were their fault.
But asks the larger question: Why has God given me so much?
And then grace rolls up her sleeves, figures out how to spend a whole lot less on the self and engage a whole lot more in making this God's world, as it should be, after all.
Grace - who want's to hear it?
But it's the truth, and only the truth, the gracious truth, shall set us free at last.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Gratitude
Gratitude …
Sure, it’s a good word.
Who doesn’t want to be grateful?
Or at least, to talk about it.
But gratitude can be a surface thing.
Like a suntan, fleeting for a season …
Words we say, or sing, or pray.
But deep down, something strange and dark.
We actually believe in ourselves more than God.
That it’s our work,
Our diligence,
Our intelligence,
Our drive,
Our ambition,
Our dreams,
Our … whatever … fill in the blank …
That made the day and spread the table,
And filled the bank account and filled
The gas tank.
And I did it my way.
I mean, is it me that provides the daily bread spread upon the table?
Or is there some hidden mystery here that I prefer to ignore.
Some might call it chance.
Or fate.
Or the luck of the draw.
Or it is what it is.
A mystery, that I’d like to ignore … that I have things … and a home … daily bread … and work.
Some would call it grace.
Even God.
But if it’s grace that provides …
If it’s God that gives …
Then I can’t be anything but really grateful …
And humble …
And never again look down my nose at anyone who has less …
And never again suggest that I did it, and so can they,
If they would only work as hard as I have worked hard …
As if I could make the sun rise,
And the wheat grow,
And the stocks rise,
And the world go around …
By my work.
Paul the Apostle, in a fit of disgust with those who pinned
Medals on their chest, wrote,
“I’ve worked harder than all of you.
But it really wasn’t me.”
It was grace at work within in me.”
Poor Paul.
He can’t escape grace.
Grace gives him the work, and
The strength.
The vision.
The moment.
The opportunity.
The “luck” as some would say.
Just grace.
Damn it all!
Just grace.
To shape these hearts into something sweet and soft.
Kindly and gracious.
Humble,
Grateful.
God gave it all to me: every bit of it.
And God might well take it all away, if that’s what it takes …
To transform hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.
To say the prayer with simple trust:
“Give us this day,
our daily bread.”
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