SpiritWalkers

AWOL

2009-06-24T15:59:00.001-04:00

I'm working feverishly on the 107 biographies of the founders of the Massachusetts Bible Society for our July 6 bicentennial event. So probably SpiritWalkers won't resume until after that.

The Bible, A Lamp, and A GPS

2009-06-07T10:15:00.002-04:00

Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

To begin with, just a bit of information about this Psalm in case you are ever on Jeopardy and there’s a Bible question about Psalm 119. With 176 verses, it is the longest of the Psalms. It is also known as an “alphabet" or "acrostic" Psalm, meaning that every eight-verse section begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

There are eight other Psalms that are written this way, each with a differing number of verses per letter. For this reason and because Psalm 119 focuses on the importance of keeping God’s law, it is often used to train Jewish children in the Hebrew alphabet. “I’ll take The Bible for 500, Alex.” Now you’re prepared.

But what I really wanted to talk about was last week, when I put my handy-dandy GPS on my dashboard to head to the church where I was preaching. Those of you who know me know that I can get lost in my own backyard, so the invention of the GPS instantly took the stress out of trips for me. No longer do I have to try to read directions and drive at the same time. If I go the wrong way, my lovely GPS figures out where I am, says “recalculating” without a hint of criticism for my error, and gives me a new way to get there.

Last week, however, I discovered a flaw. It apparently is not smart enough to know about bike races. I was an hour away from home and almost to my destination, when I saw the flashing lights up ahead. Bicycles flew by but the nice officer stopped me and told me that the road was closed and I would have to go another way. I asked my little dashboard friend what to do about it, but it was silent. It was up to me to make a choice and then it would give me maps and directions based on the road I was on.

Some people seem to believe that the Bible shows only one road that must be followed at all costs—a road that can be followed to its completion if you just figure out how to do it correctly. But I think this verse from Psalm 119 (made famous by Amy Grant’s song) teaches us that it’s not quite so simple. The Bible is like a lamp. It shows what is beneath our feet so we can take our next steps. That lamp might show a flat, firm path. It might show a rocky ascent, a slippery slope, or a path so covered in brambles that it is impassable. It might show us a crossroads with several paths to choose from. It is then up to us to decide what steps and what path to take.

When we make a choice, the lamp continues to show us what lies in front of us, just as my GPS always shows me a map of my immediate area. But lamps and GPS devices don’t make your decisions for you. They simply give you a clearer idea of what you get if you go a certain way. The Bible is no different. God does not take away our freedom to choose the way we will follow. God simply makes sure that we always have a light for our path.

I know, I know...

2009-06-04T21:25:00.002-04:00

I continue to be awol from SpiritWalkers as life is not letting up. The past couple of weeks it has been a very sick dog. After the third vet trip today I hope we've found a solution, but I've been pretty much a basket case. So thanks for bearing with me. I also had to preach last weekend. I'm hopeful that this Sunday will see the dog better and me back with you again.

Invasive Species

2009-05-17T10:52:00.002-04:00

1 Corinthians 12:19-20 “If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body.”

I had a landscaper come out to my house last week to see if it were possible to turn this jungle around my house into something resembling a yard. He laughed when I said I wanted something that required no maintenance and he laughed even harder when he heard what I had for a budget. And then he told me I had illegal aliens in my yard.

It’s a shrub called the “burning bush” for the vibrant red color the leaves turn in the fall. They are lovely and grow just about anywhere, which is the problem. They are an invasive species that is not native to New England. Human beings love their color, and the birds love their berries, which they proceed to eat, digest, and then deposit in a slightly recycled form all through the woods. New bushes spring up and choke out native plants, squelching biodiversity. They are now illegal to buy and sell in Massachusetts.

It struck me that we often do the same thing in the various communities of which we are a part. Churches, families, workplace, neighborhoods—they all can have a tendency to latch onto one particular type of personality or talent and value the beauty of the one to the exclusion of others. With my grandmother it was gardening. If you worked in her gardens you had her favor (and her cash), but there were no other options if gardening wasn’t your thing. She would have no sympathy for my yard plight.

Sometimes we get so involved in one hobby or activity that it chokes out our spiritual lives, and sometimes we are so involved in church activities that our family bonds wither. Sometimes we nurture only one type of gift or expertise and others suffer. In the centuries since the Enlightenment the words for a smart person have been “rocket scientist” and “brain surgeon,” but never “concert pianist” or “imaginative writer.” We are out of balance as a result.

Paul is clear in his teachings about the Body of Christ, that we are one body with many members. Many important members. Many different members with different gifts. It is as difficult for the Body to be without arms as it is to be without eyes. When a particular member or gift is beautiful, we must watch to be sure that specific beauty doesn’t become an invasive species. It must not be allowed to choke out anything that needs more precise conditions and extra help to grow.

Checking in

2009-05-12T12:50:00.002-04:00

Since some of you have written with concerns since SpiritWalkers has now missed a number of weeks, I wanted to write.

First--yes, it will be back. I've had a convergence of family, health, work, and general life issues that have me struggling to keep even my snorkel above water, let alone my head.

It might be a week or two yet before I'm back in the groove, so I wanted to offer the following in the meantime.

If you're up for video, I've done a couple of things lately that are available in that format. The video is in a mobile format, so you should be able to watch it on your phone, too.

1. Since God with Skin on is now officially out and available (you can get it on Amazon here), I had a book signing on April 28 at which I gave a talk about the book. It's posted on the MBS website here. If you have trouble viewing it on that site you can also watch it directly on Motionbox here.

2. One of the events that has been a huge time sink was our Annual Meeting on May 2, which was followed by a bicentennial celebration worship service. I preached for that and the sermon is posted on the MBS site here or on Motionbox here.

If you can't watch video, well, there's this book you can read. :)

Thanks for keeping in touch.

Naboth's Vineyard

2009-04-19T14:31:00.005-04:00

1 Kings 21:15 “As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, "Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to sell you. He is no longer alive, but dead."

I was out preaching this morning in one of the Bible Society’s partner churches, where I highlighted our willingness to address questions anybody might have about the Bible. A man came up to me during coffee hour saying that he wanted to take me up on that with a question that had bugged him for some time. “You know that story about the vineyard?” he asked. My mind raced through a whole pile of biblical vineyard stories. “The king gets the vineyard and I don’t understand why,” he continued. “And there’s something about dogs.”

We finally figured out that he was talking about the story in 1 Kings 21 where King Ahab and Queen Jezebel take the vineyard of one of their subjects named Naboth. First they offer to buy the vineyard, but Naboth would like to keep his vineyard and declines their offer. So they kill him and take it. The prophet Elijah finds out and brings the word of the Lord to Ahab and Jezebel, predicting their own demise will result in their dead bodies being left unburied so that wild dogs will eat them. A lovely lunch-time story.

The man asking the question was troubled that within the pages of Scripture was a story where an evil king took away both the life and the property of a good man. Even though Ahab and Jezebel bore the condemnation of God, as he saw it they still benefited from the vineyard and in some sense got away with it.

His question was two fold. On the one hand is the question asked by most of us at some time or another and that is captured best by Jeremiah when he says to God: “Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (Jer. 12:1) I’m not especially qualified to answer that question, since I often have it myself. But this man’s issue seemed to be more specifically that this was a story in the Bible, which to him meant that it was an example of how things should be. But the bad guy won, so how could it be in the Bible?

That’s actually a common misperception, so I thought I would address it. The Bible is not a picture of life the way it should be. The Bible is a picture of how life is and always has been. What makes it special is that it is the story of how God has worked and is working within the history of what is to try to teach us to make it what God intended it to be from the beginning. So the Bible tells us the stories not just of the good people, and not just of the people who are trying to be faithful but mess up. It tells us also of the jerks and the mean and vile people and shows us exactly how they harm the innocent. Then it brings along prophets like Elijah who speak for God in condemning the evil that has been done. Ultimately it brings the story of Jesus, who shows us how to live faithfully in a world where the wicked often do prosper.

In the story of Jesus we see what all the other stories have been for. They show us God at work within human history, teaching and rebuking, pulling and shaping, to try to mold a troubled world into something resembling the Kingdom of God.

In our world today things are no different. Kings steal the vineyards of their citizens. Bernie Madoffs steal your retirement. Wall Street steals your home and laughs all the way to the bank. The wicked too often prosper and the righteous too often get hit by a bus. And God continues to respond just as God always has—by calling on God’s people to fix it and raise up our children in a different way. Easter night Jesus appeared to his disciples, breathed the Holy Spirit into them and said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:21) Empowered by God’s spirit, fixing the world so that the wicked no longer prosper is our job now.

The Bible is not all sweetness and light. It shows the world with all its flaws. It also teaches us what to do about it.

Why Good Friday Matters

2009-04-05T11:14:00.004-04:00

Luke 9:24 “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

Yesterday I was at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. The speaker was Paula Peters (pictured here), the Marketing Director of Plimoth Plantation, the living history museum here in Plymouth that depicts the lives of the Plymouth colonists and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe after the landing of the Mayflower. Paula is a member of the Wampanoag Tribal Council.

Paula’s speech was notable because she is the first Wampanoag speaker in the Society’s history. There was actually one other time when a member of the tribe was invited. It was in 1970 that the Society invited Wamsutta Frank James as part of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the Mayflower's arrival.

His speech (which had to be submitted ahead of time) was so severely censored, however, that he refused to come and deliver the non-descript pabulum that was left over. You can read his intended speech here. So it took some time before the groups got together again--thirty-nine years to be exact. Paula’s speech was not censored nor asked for ahead of time, nor did she pull any punches in describing what white people remember on Thanksgiving as a day of mourning for her people.

While Paula was clear about the experience of Native peoples after the arrival of the Mayflower, she was also clear that she was not there to bring us guilt. She was bringing us the responsibility of creating a more hopeful future, a hope that was acted upon, in a small but important way, yesterday. She received a standing ovation from the 150 people there—people who have long resisted seeing their Mayflower ancestors as anything but saintly icons who stood for religious freedom and democracy. Paula’s husband, also a tribal member, wiped a tear from his eye.

On the drive home, I thought about what I had just experienced in light of Holy Week and the way I have experienced church across 50 years of Holy Weeks. What I have seen is that, at least in American Protestantism, we want all the glory and celebration of Palm Sunday and Easter. A lesser but still significant number want to do some reflection on Maundy Thursday. But the number of people who want to climb the hill of Calvary to a bloody execution drops off a cliff. Many communities do Good Friday services together ecumenically so that the small numbers are masked by bringing many churches together.

My interpretation of that phenomenon is that we are not fond of the message that in order to experience resurrection, we have to die first. Jesus set the stage in this passage in Luke (and others like it in the other gospels). We have to die in order to live. He’s not calling for martyrdom or saying that the way to salvation is through a literal suicide. I think he means things like what happened at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. In order to move into a more hopeful future, we have to kill off some of the cherished fictions of the past. As long as we held onto those whitewashed notions of our ancestors, we could not be reborn into a bright and truth-filled future.

And of course it’s not just the Mayflower descendants or the idealized notion of the first Thanksgiving. Each of us travels across the span of our lives collecting beliefs and assumptions that inform how we see the world. Some of them are accurate and good. But many turn out to be cherished fictions, designed to keep us from having to face certain unpleasant truths about ourselves and therefore do something about them. We cling to bad habits. In conflict we are righteous and those who oppose us are evil or, in cases of abuse, we believe that we are evil (or at least inept), and that our abuser is good. We all do it—and apparently they did it in Jesus’ day as well.

The message of Jesus, both in his teaching and in his example this week, describes a different way. There is no resurrection without death. If we are willing to kill off those bad habits and those cherished fictions, then and only then will we rise up to new life in Christ.

It is not just Easter; it is Holy Week. All of it. Whether in the public rituals of church or in the privacy of your spiritual prayer closet, follow the footsteps of Jesus this week. The steps up to the Place of the Skull are heavy, and it’s common to fall several times under the weight of such a cross. But keep going. The death of those old ways is necessary and ordained by God. Easter awaits—a life out from the shadows and into the truth. If the Mayflower descendants can do it, you can too!

Crows and Songbirds

2009-03-22T12:14:00.002-04:00

Proverbs 12:18 “Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

While out walking yesterday I heard a very strange bird call. It sounded almost like a human trying to imitate a crow and another human calling back. The call was “caw, caw” but not in the raspy tone of crows…more like a conversation between two human actors trying to make their point understood by saying the word “caw” in different tones. It’s hard to describe. As I searched for the source, however, I discovered that it was not people saying “caw,” but actual crows. I found them and watched and listened to the two of them “talking” to each other. No harsh sounds, no raspiness.

Hearing that made me remember a number of years back when I lived in Dover, NH and had birds and critters of all kinds on my back deck. It was there, for the first and only time in my life thus far, that I heard a crow actually sing. It was a song as lovely as any traditional songbird, and it drew me to the window to see what new bird had come to bring such a melody. And there, on the deck railing not ten feet from the window, was a crow…singing. I had heard that it was possible. Crows are known to imitate other birds and even the human voice. But in thousands of encounters with crows in the wild, I have now heard something different than a raspy caw only twice.

Thinking of that made me remember that a key theme in the book of Proverbs is the use of the tongue. Actions may speak louder than words, but words reveal the heart and can get you in a pile of hot water. Whether you’re talking about lies or gossip, angry words or just mindless blather, Proverbs comes down on all of it, contrasting the fool with the wise as in the passage quoted here.

In this season of Lenten discipline, I am remembering the crow. The bird who usually just makes a harsh racket but yet is capable of beautiful song and gentle speech reminds me that I, too, am capable of both. For which type of speech am I known? Do others so associate my speech with harshness that they would call a lovely song a rarity? Do I whine more than encourage? Is my speech a sword thrust or a healing balm?

It’s easy for us sometimes just to claim we’re not songbirds…that we don’t have the gift to make our speech a soothing melody. No, they are the songbirds and I’m the one who has to convey the harsh reality. I’m the prophet crying in the wilderness until my voice is raspy from the effort. Perhaps. But I will never forget the day I heard a crow sing.

Church in the Cross-hairs

2009-03-08T11:21:00.001-04:00

Luke 13:10-13 “Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”

Coming home from the office last week I passed an elderly man carefully finding his way down an icy sidewalk. He walked with a cane and was so bent over that if you wanted to look him in the eye, you would have to lie down on the ground and look up. It has to be incredibly hard to live that way. I went home and took more calcium.

Jesus met a woman with such an issue, something she had suffered with for almost two decades. And he healed her so that she stood up straight. Her response was gratitude and praise to God. But remember that Jesus is in the middle of teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath when he does this. Here’s the next verse: “But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”

It’s notable that in the Gospels the people who come off looking the worst are the religious leaders. Ironically, they are the ones who either can’t or refuse to understand the mission of Jesus. They are the ones too invested in the institutions and structures that give them power and authority in society. But I don’t believe the Holy Spirit preserved this story so that we could rail against the legalistic insensitivity of a first century synagogue leader. It’s here so we can try the shoe on our own feet and see if it fits.

Jesus put aside regular Sabbath worship and teaching to give priority to helping a woman stand up straight. Think about that for a minute. Wouldn’t many if not most of our churches object to turning a Sunday morning service into a mission day? Plenty of other times for that. If someone has spent two decades in poverty, what’s one more day? We’ll set up a different time that doesn’t interfere with our worship service. Anybody who wants to be part of that can come then. As an aside, you can guess how many turn out for those sorts of mission days.

But it’s not about the numbers present. I think Jesus is making a statement about what the gathering of the faithful is for. He is saying that the mission of an institution representing the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is to help those who are bent over to stand up straight. And he is saying that there is in fact no better day than the Sabbath to put that mission into action. He did not actually interrupt his teaching that day, he simply taught through actions rather than words.

Suppose a church took that seriously and made the primary gathering each week a time to actively help those who are bent over in any number of ways and set other times for people to come for teaching or to hear the choir. Suppose people received Jesus’ broken body and shed blood in their jeans rather than their Sunday best because the rest of the morning would be spent setting the broken bodies of others free. Every week. In prime time. In place of the regular worship service. As THE main activity that defined what it meant to be a church.

This passage is not about the woman. It is about the nature and purpose of the people of God. The passage right before this is a parable about a fig tree that does not bear fruit and the limited amount of time the gardener gives it to produce. Immediately following this story are a number of short sayings about the nature of the Kingdom of God. I think the message of the story about the bent-over woman is that a church that reserves the Sabbath only for their own comfort and edification is no church at all.

Undeserving Neighbors

2009-02-22T10:29:00.001-05:00

Romans 5:8 “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

We live in pretty strange times. During the Bush years we heard a lot about the Christian influence on government and how we were a “Christian nation.” And there was a lot of emphasis on social values related to abortion and gay marriage. Christians differ about those things (although you never would have known it from the media) but you did have the sense that the religious community was thinking about policy and at least trying to apply it.

Now, in our new reality, we are really in trouble. We have major, major issues that affect not only all of America but the entire globe. What strikes me is that for at least six months now, the “secular” media has been devoting large chunks of airtime to what are, in essence, religious issues and questions. Even specifically Christian ones. The table is prepared for us, yet no one is coming to the feast.

As the collapse began, it was the issue of greed. Everybody talked about it. The Roman Catholics have named it a deadly sin. The Bible is so full of talk of greed that if you cut those passages out, you’d be left with tatters. Even now that first course of the meal remains largely untouched by people of faith, although it is an issue that we agree on across the liberal-conservative spectrum.

Next came depression and despair. I wrote here about TV anchors wondering aloud how to give people hope. We had a huge election that was all about hope. Some of that salad course might have been consumed in the privacy of local churches, but I didn’t see the religious figures on the news in the way the gay marriage and abortion folks had been. Hope is a uniter, not a divider in Christian faith. We could speak together, but largely we haven’t.

And now, the entrée has been served, and if we don’t get our butts into those dinner chairs, liberal and conservative alike, then we deserve every bit of criticism that has been heaped on the Church and organized religion. Since Congress began putting together the meat of a stimulus bill and now into the rich sauce of a housing proposal, almost half of every news program I watch is people arguing against any part of a proposal that will help people who don’t deserve it. More than that, this course is so rich that the mainstream, secular media is asking almost every single night, whether it is right and proper to help our neighbors, our honest-to-goodness-live-next-door neighbors, if they contributed to their own misfortune.

Neighbors. Get it? Love your neighbor?

The core of the Bible for mainliners is generally the Great Commandment: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The core of the Bible for evangelicals is Jesus dying for our sins even though we didn’t deserve it. Grace is the church word for receiving what we don’t deserve. That’s why we sing that it is amazing.

It is completely understandable that those with different faith systems or no faith tradition at all would worry about helping out the guy across the street who doesn’t deserve help. But, literally for heaven’s sake, not a single Christian on either the right or the left, should be objecting on those grounds. You may not like it for other reasons, but if you profess anything at all like Christian faith, you should be able to recognize and support grace when you see it.

My new book, God with Skin On, is all about the concept that the job of Christians is to continue to do to others what Jesus did for us. By doing so…by giving others the experience of God in the flesh—God with skin on—we help others recognize and accept God’s love. If you have never received something you didn’t deserve on this earth, recognizing that God would do such a thing for you is too big a chasm to jump. There are proposals on the government table that would offer grace. Will Christians oppose it on that very point? Oppose it on other points if you will, but not that one. Has there been any climate since the Great Depression when it was more fitting for Christians to speak out on “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors?”

Where are the Christians at this meal? The main course is served!

God with Skin On

2009-02-16T08:53:00.001-05:00

I've been up to my eyeballs this weekend and there won't be a regular SpiritWalkers, but instead I have another project in which I invite your participation. As you know, my third book will be out in April. It's called God with Skin On: Finding God's Love in Human Relationships. Last night I launched a new, simple website for the book here.

I used a very simple program to make the site, so it's not all that flexible, but I wanted to get some interactivity in there anyway, which you'll see on the blog page. I'm inviting people to send me (short!) stories of people who have been "God with skin on" for them. And a picture, too, if you've got one. The plan is to make the blog a collection of stories and pictures of what it means to be God with skin on for others. I'm going to trim names down to just first names, and if you send any pictures with children, please assure me in the e-mail that you have the permission of parents or guardians to put the photos up. It wouldn't hurt to check with the adults either, but with the children it's a must.

The book is available now for pre-order on Amazon, by the way. The links are on the godwithskinon site.

If you could send along your own stories, I'd love to have them.

Thanks, and I'll be back with a regular issue next weekend.

Snakes on a pole

2009-02-08T16:09:00.002-05:00

2 Kings 18:4b “He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.”

You may recall that after the Hebrews were freed from slavery in Egypt, they spent 40 years wandering around the desert, forging both their faith and a nation. This wasn’t easy, especially for poor Moses who had to try to lead them. Life was hard and it wasn’t long before even some of God’s greatest miracles were taken for granted and, instead of offering God gratitude, many simply offered a constant stream of complaints. So, in one of the few instances where God does what I might have done under similar circumstances, God sends them poisonous snakes. It’s all there in Numbers 21.

Now they really have something to complain about and they holler for Moses to do something. God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Whoever looks at the bronze snake will be healed. It works.

I’ve written about the meaning I find in that text before, but what I have been reflecting on this week is what happens to that bronze snake over time. Apparently, what began as a good gift from God became an idol. By the time of King Hezekiah almost a thousand years later, the thing has become an idol and a snare to the faith of Israel. It even has a name, Nehushtan. As part of a program of reform, Hezekiah takes the thing that God commanded Moses to make and destroys it. The bronze serpent Moses made was nothing without God’s power working in and through it. It was a vehicle for God’s healing, not the source. But over time that got confused and the crude bronze snake was worshipped as a god. It became an idol and the good it once did had become spiritual harm.

What I see is that the way idols are made hasn’t changed much across the millennia. We begin with something that is good—holy, even. Maybe it is even something that God has commanded that we do or have. It might be a thing, like a Bible or a rosary. It might be a family member or special person that God has brought into our lives. It might be a virtue like duty or service. We begin to relate to that gift or responsibility remembering its context, its source, and its purpose. But in time we often come to forget that such things are merely a means to the end of true worship and relationship with our Creator. Idols are not usually bad things in and of themselves. The harm comes not from the thing but from our improper devotion to it.

Churches are full of idols. Often they, too, have names affixed with a brass plaque. Pastors discover the power of such idols when they suggest moving them to the other side of the chancel. Sometimes it is the sacred pew, the King James Version of the Bible, a certain creed or style of music, or even the church itself—either as a building or as an institution. When discussions over the times of worship or Christmas decorations cause people to fail in their love of neighbor, you know you have an idol on your hands. When a congregation can’t put money into missions because the roof has to be fixed first, or can’t open a food pantry because it might make the church look messy, those are signs that idols dwell in your midst.

But of course it’s not only churches. After all, WE are the church. We are the ones who are prone to idolatry in both our personal and public life. I think it’s fair to say that idolatry brought down Wall Street. They don’t call it the “almighty dollar” for nothing. Like the ancient Israelites, we make our offerings to the wrong gods. We demand that our leaders or those we love have no flaws, that they be divine in their perfection. If they accept that role we say they are arrogant. If they defy our request and admit failures, we say they are weak and change gods. We deify national symbols, “family values,” “the good old days,” self-sufficiency, and particular interpretations of Scripture. The list goes on and on.

Lent is around the corner. It’s a good time to start taking an idol inventory in our lives, in order that the season of fire and ashes might break apart our Nehushtans. What causes you to violate the love of neighbor because of your devotion to it? It’s time to let it go.

Groundhog Day

2009-02-01T12:32:00.000-05:00

Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”

Everybody is all stirred up about the Super Bowl tonight. The real celebration, however, comes tomorrow which, in my world, is known as The Feast of St. Chuck. (To understand my reverence for the lowly woodchuck, click here.) I love Groundhog Day not just because I have a penchant for furry rodents (although I do), but because the groundhog (aka woodchuck) has a lesson to teach us—the lesson of the seasons.

This year, most of the U.S. has had a taste of the ravages of winter. Even as I write there are still a half million people without power from an ice storm that hit many southern climes unused to such calamities. Right before Christmas much of my state was without power for 2-3 weeks from a similar event. The storms of winter are not just inconvenient. People die. Some with heart conditions shovel heavy snow and do not survive the exertion. Those who lose power, and therefore heat, sometimes die from the cold or from the various ways they try to keep warm. Fires spread from kerosene heaters. Carbon monoxide from generator exhaust or open gas ovens ensures that some never waken from sleep. Many are killed in accidents on icy roads or sometimes when a frozen tree falls and crushes a car or home. People fall on the ice. Winter has its beauties to be sure, but there is no doubt that it is a difficult, expensive, and dangerous season.

This is not news to woodchucks. When the cold winds start to rip, they grab one last bite of your favorite flower bulb and then head deep into the ground for a winter-long snooze. Once safely underground, their metabolism drops and they live off the fruit of their earlier labors until they hear you setting their table in the garden in the early spring. While those who have not found enough food during the warmer months might never emerge from hibernation, most of them seem to have been raised with the hymn, “Work for the Night is Coming,” and manage to fatten up enough to last through their winter-long nap.

It is winter now and the woodchucks sleep. Since I believe that God speaks through Creation, I think the God-given instinct of the woodchuck has something to teach us about how to approach winter storms. Of course there is the direct message to come in out of the raging snow and ice and don’t take unnecessary risks. But there are also those metaphorical winter storms that hit us. Right now the world is in an economic winter and many of us are learning that we should have saved more during the “warmer” months. There are winters of grief when a loved one is lost. There are winters of illness that pound our physical bodies and winters of emotional strain that make it difficult to get out of bed.

The woodchuck teaches us that despite the workaholic nature of our society, there is a season to hibernate. There is a time to stop all labor, crawl into a hole, and let the storm pass. But the woodchuck also teaches us that hibernation is a season, not a lifestyle. There is also a time to come out and re-engage the world with love and labor, the things that make us healthy enough to live through our next hibernation. The woodchuck reminds us of the necessity of Sabbath in balance with the work of our hands, especially when a stormy season comes.

To everything there is a season. Celebrate the Feast of St. Chuck by acknowledging the seasons of your life. Acknowledge that while there may be strange guys in top hats eager to pull you out of your lovely sleep too soon in order to predict the weather; God has sanctioned hibernation as a normal and natural part of Creation. Work will have its season once the storms are past.

Decisions, decisions

2009-01-25T11:51:00.000-05:00

Isaiah 2:4 “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Joel 3:10 “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.”

I stopped for gas yesterday. As I stood there in the cold, some seagulls swooped down nearby, hoping for a few dropped fries from the Burger King at the rest stop. I looked at them and marveled that the same basic skin and feathers protected them both in this biting cold and in the heat of summer. I thought about the way God designed the creatures of air, land, and sea to live in their environments. And I thought of the way that God provided each of them with some form of defense from enemies and how some of them were actually given offensive weapons: talons and claws and very sharp, pointy teeth.

“But what about human beings?” I thought, as I shivered under several layers of clothes and coats. Our God-given skin protects us from neither snow nor sun. It is not thick enough to protect me even from the cat kneading my lap and no porcupine quills or skunk spray spring up to throw at those who threaten me. What was God thinking?

I continued to think about that on the way home (it’s mentally exhausting being me) and realized that what God provided for us was a body that could be used for many different endeavors and in many different circumstances. Like getting a naked Ken and Barbie in a box, however, we have to be intentional in deciding how we will dress and equip ourselves. Our hands are designed for delicate work, but whether we perform surgery, tat lace, or make bombs is up to us. We have legs that are designed to propel us, but whether we use them to compete in sports, run from our enemies, charge into battle, or dance with our children is our decision. We can digest foods of so many types that almost all options, from the vegan to the cannibal, are open to us.

I think that range of choice is evident in the seeming contradiction of the biblical prophets. Isaiah’s call is for a time when wars will end as people elect to use the raw material of metal to cleave soil rather than flesh—swords to plows. But Joel calls people to a different task: to leave their farms and seek vengeance in war—plows to swords. And just a few verses later, in verse 14, Joel describes all the nations under God’s judgment: “Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision.”

I think that is indeed how we will be judged—by the decisions we have made. How have we decided to equip ourselves? Have we made more plows or more swords with the raw metal of our lives? Have we used our hands to push others down or to raise others up? Have we used our legs to kick or to dance or to support a child on our shoulders? Have we nourished ourselves with what is good? God gave us our bodies for a reason, but elected not to make that reason entirely clear. If we had a big rhino horn instead of a nose, we could make some assumptions. Instead, however, we were deposited naked into the valley of decision.

The good news is that just as I can put away my winter clothes and dress for summer when the weather changes, so I can decide to change many other things. I might be surrounded by swords, but at any time I can begin to beat those swords into plows. Or not. God gave me hands capable of wielding either and left the decision to me. Our new envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, put it in this hopeful way: “Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings; they can be ended by human beings.”

And so we sit in the valley of decision—our decisions about our own lives and God’s decision about whether our choices have helped or hurt the world. It’s both the most hopeful gift and the most weighty responsibility. Swords or plows? It’s up to us.

Heroes

2009-01-18T11:30:00.001-05:00

Philippians 2:4 “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

I have been keeping a box of tissues near the television this week. For some reason I am much more likely to cry in response to heroism than in response to tragedy, at least on the national scale. I think I must be a closet pessimist, expecting the worst, so when disaster strikes—either in the form of an accidental disaster or an intentional horror—I am angered and motivated to right the wrong, but don’t feel personally disappointed enough to shed tears. Sadly, harm is what I generally expect, much as I hate to see it happen. Somebody drilled that original sin/fallen humanity/bound for hell mentality into me a bit too deeply.

But then there are weeks like this one—a week of heroes. While I mean his mother no disrespect, overcoming a name like Chesley B. Sullenberger, III is no small feat in America. I can’t imagine what his Jr. High years must have been like. But somewhere along the line he beat the rap, became simply “Sully” and rose to master his profession as an airline pilot. And when a flock of geese flew into both engines of his plane full of passengers, he kept his cool and landed with perfection in the Hudson, saving every last person aboard. And he walked the length of the frigid-water filled plane twice before bringing himself to safety, just to be sure. And he’s known at home for his work in the community. And he raises guide dogs for the blind. And the media covered news so fabulous it became known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” non-stop for days. So I got out the tissues.

And tomorrow we celebrate another hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A man of faith—we read his Letters from a Birmingham Jail in seminary; a man who took Paul’s teaching seriously, risking his life and ultimately giving his life for the freedom of a people. He was a man who believed that violence solved nothing, no matter how natural or understandable a violent response might seem. His dream was of harmony, not discord; unity, not division; peace with justice for all. There were some who couldn’t bear it, and one shot hope through the heart. Or tried. The hero died, but not the heroism—the man, but not the dream.

Now there is Tuesday and the inauguration of that dream to the highest office in the land. If you remain unmoved by the history unfolding before us, then I wish you tonic for your heart. While every presidential candidate, and ultimately every President, puts a large red target on his chest, if you think that isn’t magnified a million-fold as an African American, then you haven’t been paying attention. A black church was torched on election night, specifically to register racist anger at the election of a black President. The perpetrators went back to the scene and laughed. And that was in 2008. In Springfield, Massachusetts.

In the face of such actions and the still vile, bigoted evil spoken of him online and elsewhere, our President-elect stood up in three historic cities yesterday and called for “An appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.” That any African American can believe in humanity’s “better angels” is a wonder to me. And I hold the box of tissues a bit tighter.

Whether Obama will carry that heroic spirit into the grueling work that lies before him remains to be seen, but by some miracle the inner pessimist in me is quieted. The part of me that thinks Bernard Madoff is just the tip of the financial corruption iceberg is willing to give ground to the hope that Barack Obama actually can inspire those better angels in all of us.

That’s actually what Paul was trying to do in his letter, written from prison, to the church in Philippi. This verse leads into what may well be the earliest hymn in the Christian tradition, the hymn that urges us all to have the “mind of Christ” and to follow Christ’s example in sacrifice. It is a call to do more than recognize a hero. It is a call to be one. As Christ was, so we can be. We can be—indeed are called to be—both saints and heroes, simply by looking not to our own interests, but to the interests of others.

It remains to be seen whether Obama can land our damaged national plane as perfectly and with as few casualties as Chesley B. Sullenberger, III. But, as a passenger on that flight, I’m pulling for him. And I’m willing to follow his instructions to stow my inner pessimist in the overhead bin and inflate the life jacket of hope beneath my seat.

The Hot Shower

2009-01-11T10:56:00.000-05:00

Mark 2:17 “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

It has been a stormy month and, here in the Northeast, that means snow. And ice. And the dreaded “wintry mix.” When all of that falls from the sky it makes demands. You have to shovel, put some sort of de-icer on the walk and, if you’re like me and don’t have a garage, you have to brush and scrape your car to remove snow and ice. We’re barely into January and all that is getting old already. It has, however, reminded me of a basic truth: Hot showers feel their best when you are actually cold and dirty.

The minute I said that to myself, the words of Jesus from Mark leapt into my brain. Jesus has just come under fire from the religious leadership for inviting a tax collector to be a disciple and for eating meals (a sign of personal acceptance and honor) with tax collectors and sinners. To get into the sentiment, imagine Jesus having dinner (and obviously enjoying dinner) with Bernie Madoff when he had an invitation to dine with the local bishops. Jesus points out that he hasn’t come to validate the righteous but to help those headed in another direction to turn around and see the God who loves them.

There are two things that strike me when I consider that passage and my hot shower experience. First is that the Church today seems much more interested in seeking out those who are basically warm and clean and trying to convince them that they are actually cold, dirty and in need of a shower. Rare is the church that truly seeks those who are metaphorically (or literally) cold and dirty. Those who are literally cold and dirty bring too many problems and demand services that they can’t usually support. We give a lot of lip service to seeking “those people,” but we rarely try to find them except when giving out Thanksgiving baskets. When those who are metaphorically cold and dirty (i.e. “sinners”) show up, we call them hypocrites for being in church and yet leading a sinful life. Who wants to stick around for that?

The second thing that strikes me is that (perhaps because the church has focused on serving those who are righteous for so long) we often come to believe that if we do fall into sin, Jesus is the last person who wants to see us. Sin becomes the reason we should NOT go to church, NOT take communion, and NOT try to engage God in prayer, scripture, or anything else. We imagine God sitting on his throne with his finger poised by the button opening the trap door to hell, just waiting for us to make a misstep. Or, if our image of God isn’t quite that severe, we figure we’ll at least get “that look.” So we decide it’s best just not to bring the matter up anywhere that God might be listening.

Jesus points out both in his words and in his behavior that he is not interested in a religious club for the “good” people. Nothing wrong with them, but that’s just the point. His mission is very specifically to those who can’t get their act together and need help. To those who are in some way “lost.” And the thing that seems to get under the skin of the Pharisees is that Jesus seems to actually like those lost people--love them even. He doesn’t come into their midst proclaiming their damnation—he comes in with “good news.” That the Kingdom of God has come near, even to them. Especially to them. And Jesus later calls the Pharisees every name in the book for trying to deny them access to God.

The healthy don’t need a physician; the clean don’t need a shower. Jesus came to heal the sick and to find the lost and when we are in that condition, he should be the one we hope for, not the one we dread. For those of us who have climbed onto the discipleship bandwagon, both as churches and individuals, the mission of Jesus is our mission. How are we doing with that?

The Two Wolves

2009-01-04T10:39:00.000-05:00

Philippians 4:8 “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

In the last few days of 2008, media of all types and all ideologies spent time looking back over the year. Everybody had their top ten lists and the re-hashing of both the presidential campaigns and the economic meltdown. After watching one such recitation I heard one news pundit say to another, “Personally, I have never seen a year filled with such huge yet equal amounts of both hope and fear. It’s like they’re battling and we don’t know which one will win.”

When I heard that, it reminded me of an old story, usually attributed to Native American sources, about two wolves. You may well have heard it before. The general story goes that a tribal elder is speaking to a young boy. “My son, there are two wolves who are fighting within every person’s heart: love and hate. You can hear them snarling if you lie very still and when one isn’t looking the other will pounce. It is a great and terrible battle and the outcome will determine who you become.” The young boy’s eyes grow wide as he asks, “But which wolf will win?” The old man answers, “The one you feed.”

I doubt that story ever actually happened, but it is a “true” story nonetheless. And the same truth is reflected in Paul’s letter to the Philippians as he reminds a church facing persecution to focus on the positive—to feed the good wolf, if you will. Remember that Paul is writing this letter from prison, facing execution. The circumstances for both Paul and the church in Philippi are dire. The bad wolves are circling in both cases. But, even so, Paul encourages the church to think on the good, in order to give life to what is honorable, just, and pure even in the midst of great turmoil and evil.

I think the news pundit was exactly right about our contemporary situation. Hope and fear circle each other like two wolves seeking dominance. Right now they are of equal strength and stamina. It will be up to us to decide which wolf to feed and that, in turn, will decide the battle. I think Paul would tell us to feed the hope. The hope wolf may still sustain some wounds in the fight, but if hope goes in better fed and cared for, it will win in the long run.

What Paul advocates is not easy, especially when you are in dire circumstances, but I think Paul gained his strength from exactly that sort of practice. Remember this was the guy that early on in his ministry was found singing hymns in his dungeon cell. He learned to feed the good wolf and it became strong enough to guard against despair, even when starting his own execution in the face.

Welcome to 2009. Hope and fear are on the prowl, looking for food to sustain them in battle. Which one will you feed?

Bending Low

2008-12-21T10:20:00.000-05:00

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, v. 3: “And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing. O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!”

I thought a lot about burdens yesterday. Not because my life is so overwhelmed with them, but because the trees were. If you’ve watched weather reports recently, you know that we in the northeast have been hammered with storms. While I escaped the devastating ice storm, this last snow came in full force, heavy and wet. I looked out in the morning and it was a winter wonderland. I took video. Every tree, every bush, covered in pristine white.

Then I took Ruckus for a walk. Huge limbs were down all over the neighborhood, blocking roads and turning yards into brush piles. The air had a lovely scent of pine, but it came because pine trees were gashed open as their snow-laden branches could take no more and broke from the trunk. Children sledded down a nearby hill, their shrieks of delight melding with the groaning of the pines. One tall, slim tree was bent all the way over in an arch to the top of another tree where the snow pack connected them like Siamese twins. If I were a bit taller I would have hit my head on branches hanging low over even the middle of the road.

I stopped and freed a young oak, bent so that it’s top almost touched the ground. Even shaking the limbs would only do so much. I had to knock off the snow clumps by hand. Then I went back to my yard and did the same, knowing that either high wind or more precipitation would do them in (and maybe do in the power lines as well). Overnight, those weary branches caught their breath and this morning they stand back tall, several feet or more above where the snow had brought them.

As braches shed their snow and sprang back (sometimes whipping my face on their way!), I thought about the Christmas carol, It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. There’s a lot of bending in that carol. In the first verse it’s the angels bending near the earth to pluck their harps of gold so that mortals can hear. In verse three, which I cited above, it is humanity that is bent low beneath life’s crushing load. Our lives often end up like those trees—so much falls on us all at once that we are bent over from the weight and simply can’t spring back up on our own.

What Christmas reminds us is that God noticed and sent help. God bends low first and works in our lives to get the burdens back to a manageable level. It’s a slow process, and sometimes when a branch in our lives finally springs free, we slap God in the face on the way back up, but the stripes God receives from our branches do not deter the work. Branch by branch, limb by limb, tree by tree, God lifts the burden of life’s storms—maybe not completely, but enough that we can make it through.

And what God did for us in that baby in a manger, we are called to do for others. Jesus spent three years in ministry bending low to help those under the crushing snows. But it wasn’t just about those he helped. It was about showing us what a life as his disciple was supposed to look like: Healing the sick, feeding the hungry, finding the lost.

If you look around and see the beauty of Christmas and hear the joy of children in the season, look a little deeper. The very thing that causes the beauty might also be bending some to the breaking point. Bend low with them, and help them up.

“For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old, when with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling, and the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.” Amen.

Bailouts

2008-12-14T12:13:00.000-05:00

Matthew 1:21 “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

It’s almost Christmas and we’re in the midst of economic crisis. When it’s Christmas time and banks are failing; when Congress is trying to decide if US automakers deserve a bailout, this season gives us stories to ponder.

We’ll get back to the biblical Christmas story in a moment, but there’s another Christmas story that speaks to our situation quite directly. “It’s A Wonderful Life.” We often remember this classic film simply as showing how our lives have ripples out well beyond what we can see. We remember how Clarence the angel gets his wings by showing George Bailey how different (in a bad way) the lives of his family and friends would have been without him, thus convincing him not to end his life.

But what I want to remember now is that the plot device of the story is a large corporate bank (owned by Mr. Potter) trying to own a town and, through scheming and corruption, put the only competition—the Bailey Savings and Loan—out of business. The economic story in “It’s A Wonderful Life” is a perfect education in fundamental banking systems. We see the seamy side as Mr. Potter is exposed as a slum lord who will quickly foreclose on someone to gain a buck and who will steal from the competition to put them out of business. And, of course, we see the good that banks were meant to do when Potter causes a run on the Bailey Savings and Loan and people try to take out all their money.

Faced with angry customers, George tries to explain to them:
No, but you...you...you're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The, the money's not here. Well, your money's in Joe's house...that's right next to yours. And in the Kennedy House, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then, they're going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?

The bank closes $2 in the black and is saved. Potter, of course, is not done and later steals $8,000 during an audit and then threatens to have George jailed for misappropriation of funds. That prompts George’s suicidal thoughts, which is when Clarence the angel steps in. The film closes on Christmas day with the loyal friends that George has made through his generosity bringing as much money as each one can, capped with a telegram from his old buddy, Sam Wainwright, promising a $25,000 bailout.

I think many are offended by the bailout of the financial system because the criterion for receiving funds has been whether an institution is “too big to fail” not whether their practices have been good and fair. By the government’s criteria, Potter would get the bailout and George Bailey would go under. But let’s circle back to the Christmas story. Another way to talk about the birth of the Savior is to talk about the birth of the bailout, because that, in essence, is what saviors do. We call it grace, or mercy, or forgiveness, but we’re all there as sinners with our hands out.

The rest of the Gospels try to give us an insider’s view into how Jesus makes bailout decisions. Moneychangers in the Temple are going home empty-handed. The woman caught in adultery is pardoned with a warning to “go and sin no more.” Blind Bartimaeus, who keeps hollering at Jesus until Jesus pays attention and stops, gets a full healing while presumably those who were not the “squeaky wheel” are left in their condition. Those who fail to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc. step into a handbasket bound for you know where, but a thief being executed for his crime gets full absolution, simply by acknowledging that he deserves what he’s getting and asking Jesus to remember him. The rich young ruler was offered a bailout but turned it down when he learned that the terms included his willingness to bailout others. Of course that is how Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” (The economic “debts” reflects the original Greek much better than “trespasses” or the more generic “sins.”)

Make this Christmas relevant to our time by using it to think about bailouts. Watch “It’s A Wonderful Life,” and think about whether some banks really should get some help and why. Read not only the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke but the rest of at least one of the Gospels. Think about who Jesus bailed out and why. Then do the hard part. Think about what sort of a bailout you need at this point in your life, and then turn to the one born to “save his people from their sins.” I have always found him to be more merciful than I am. Maybe Lehman Brothers should have thought of that.

The Fair Balance

2008-12-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

2 Corinthians 8:13-14a “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need.”

Friday night I was at an event co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Bible Society and the Boston Faith and Justice Network. It was called “The Gratitude Economy” and featured three people who told about the ways they have adjusted their lives to increase their giving for the poor.

One woman explained that she has joined with a group of thirty other women who all pledge to give 1% of their income (over and above their tithe) to a cause they would select jointly. That group gives $35,000 - $40,000 per year, living frugal lives to enable their giving. The next speaker was moved by a photographer’s exhibit of 70 orphans to render those photographs as oil paintings. He painted 70 oil portraits and sold them for $70 each, money that was contributed to services for orphans. More than that, each purchaser was required to pledge $70 per year for the remaining years of his or her life to that same cause. All 70 were sold and so he painted another 70.

The third speaker, a well-paid technology executive, told of his family’s decision to live on the income of the average American household and to give the rest away. When they began, that average income was $38,000. Today it is closer to $50,000, but he makes $200,000. They give away about $150,000 per year, and live in a poor area of one of California’s poorest cities to make ends meet. They find themselves in ministry in many ways in that setting, from leading Bible studies for gang members to taking neighbor children to school.

The most notable thing about the evening, however, was not the stories of any of the speakers. It was the audience. We were in a room at a local Lutheran church with about 80 chairs set up. Not only was every chair filled, but people lined every wall and were jammed in so tightly that some couldn’t even get in the door and strained to listen from outside. This to hear about how to live simply and give more. But (as they say in cheap advertising) wait! There’s more! Not only was the crowd spilling out the door, I was one of only about 5 or 6 people in the room over 30. That’s right, it was young people, many of whom have joined economic accountability groups themselves through the work of Boston Faith and Justice in order to address the concern Paul speaks about above—the “question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need.” When the third speaker cited a Bible passage, about a third of the young people there pulled out Bibles.

As I sat there in the midst of this sea of young faces, I thought of the many, many churches that have trouble attracting people under 60, let alone under 30. In fact, even churches with healthy numbers of 30-50 year olds have significant gaps in under 30. “What do they want?” our committees moan, often spiraling down into conflicts about whether or not to change the worship style. While worship styles are not unimportant, Friday night’s event taught me that the under-30 crowd wants relevance. The world they are inheriting is spiraling out of control and it will be up to them to right it. They organized in massive numbers to bring change to government, and they are taking seriously the need to live balanced and just economic lives. Maybe there wasn’t a bigger over-30 crowd because we might feel too threatened. We make too much.

The Bible has much to say on this topic. In fact, if you cut out all the economic passages in Scripture, you would be left with tatters. The passage above is just part of two whole chapters in 2 Corinthians that Paul devotes to urging the churches across Asia Minor to support an offering for the poor of Jerusalem. While his goal is specific to the time, his urging is straight from the prophets. There is abundance in God’s economy. God has created a world where there is enough for everyone. But if some of us keep more than our fair share, others will experience scarcity. While we have seen through history that legislating that balance leads to abuse, the way of God is different. These two chapters in 2 Corinthians are where you find Paul’s famous statement, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Cor. 9:7)

Our economic crisis has already caused great pain. But it also provides great opportunity for people of faith to get back to our roots in God’s economics. It is up to each of us to figure out “a fair balance between your present abundance and their need.” We need the help of our religious leaders and institutions both to learn what that means and to have the courage to live it out. Our young people, at least, are hungry for it.

The Blazing Christ

2008-11-30T11:46:00.001-05:00

Revelation 1:13-16 “I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.”

Today begins the Advent season. It is New Year’s in the Christian churches as we go back to the beginning of the Christian story by preparing the way for Christ’s birth. In this season, it’s hard to get Jesus out of the manger, which is actually quite handy. The baby Jesus doesn’t talk back, doesn’t tell us to sell all we have and give to the poor, doesn’t embarrass us by hanging out with the riff raff, and doesn’t make strange predictions about his own death, the destruction of religious establishments, or the end of the world. If you believe the carols, he doesn’t even cry. He just makes cute baby sounds and looks lovingly at the sheep whose feeding trough he occupies.

How different is our Christmas Jesus from this image in the book of Revelation! And yet as events in the world unfolded on this holiday weekend, I found it was this formidable Jesus, the one with the double-edged sword coming out of his mouth, that I wanted. Three days of terror in Mumbai with gunman shooting everyone and anyone. And here in the US shoppers at a New York WalMart actually knocked down a door to get into the store, trampling a worker to death so that they could get a deal on a big screen TV or some other wanted sale item. They not only killed the young man, they obstructed the medical help. Finally, when the announcement came over the loudspeaker that someone had been killed and that the store would be closing for a few hours, they complained! “But I’ve been in line since yesterday!” one woman griped.

Perhaps it is just my unforgiving soul. But when those shoppers got home, angry at their thwarted desires and unconcerned that someone had died because of their greed, I didn’t want the baby Jesus waiting for them. I wanted the burnished bronze, double-edged sword guy there, just to add a little perspective. While they’re not in the same league as the shoppers, that’s also the guy I want waiting for the Mumbai terrorists and the guy that Osama bin Laden sees in his dreams. For the oppressed, for the brutalized, for the babies that Herod massacred in Bethlehem and the babies being raped today in the Congo; for all of them, a cooing baby in a feeding trough is no use. They need the one whose face shines with such force that it hurts to look and whose voice thunders like the waters of Niagara.

Of course the Bible is clear that the nature of God, even the blazing, sword-speaking version, is love. I don’t know about you, but I get a much better sense of how God’s mercy might also bring justice from the image in Revelation than I do from the baby in the manger. And that brings it’s own sense of comfort. There will be justice as well as mercy, even if I never see it.

I often wonder if balancing the good-shepherd Christ from our Sunday School days with the blazing Christ from Revelation might stop us from thinking we need to take justice into our own hands. Maybe we wouldn’t think we needed capital punishment, torture, or rendition if we trusted in the fiery Christ as well as in the one who spoke not a word on his way to the Cross. Maybe we would be more likely to trust God to handle it. I know I am.

Blessings?

2008-11-25T13:52:00.000-05:00

Luke 6:21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

I may have used this story before, but I think it bears repeating at Thanksgiving time, especially a Thanksgiving coming in a time of economic crisis and global turmoil. I’m not going to comment on it except to say this. The Bible is full of talk of blessings, and when we count our blessings we tend to think of the good things that have come to us. But when Jesus describes blessings in what we call the Beatitudes (in Matt. 5:1-12 or a bit differently here in Luke 6:20-26), he doesn’t list things that would be at the top of our list of things we’re thankful for—things like hunger and weeping and persecution.

The story below comes from an ancient Chinese work entitled “Lessons in Human Life,” in “Huai Nan Zi” and compiled by Liu An (179-122 BC) in the Western Han Dynasty. That means it was around more than a hundred years before Jesus was born. Did the story travel from the Far East and reach the ears of Jesus? Maybe a story told to Mary and Joseph by one of the Wise Men? Whether Jesus ever heard the story or not, there is something of its perspective in Jesus’ teaching about blessings. Here is the story. Apply as needed.

There once was an old man who lived at the northern border of the state. He was skilled at raising horses. One day he discovered that his horse had disappeared into the neighboring state of Hu. Neighbors felt sorry for him, but the old man said, "Who knows if this will turn into a blessing?"

A few months later, the missing horse suddenly returned, bringing back a fine horse with it. Neighbors came to congratulate the old man on his good luck. But the old man said, "Who knows if this will turn into a disaster?"

His son loved riding the fine horse, and one day he fell off the horse, broke his legs and crippled himself. Neighbors came to comfort the old man, who replied, "Who knows if this will turn into a blessing?"

A year later, the neighboring state of Hu invaded, and all the young and strong men were drafted to fight the war — nine in ten ended up being killed. The son, being crippled, stayed home and his life was spared.

Blessings can become disasters, which can then transform into blessings. The change is never ending, and its mystery is forever unrevealing.

A Special Calling

2008-11-16T15:07:00.000-05:00

Exodus 13:19 “And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph who had required a solemn oath of the Israelites, saying, ‘God will surely take notice of you, and then you must carry my bones with you from here.’”

Christian theology is incarnational, which means that it is very tightly tied to physical bodies and what happens in and through them. Our faith is built around a God who decided to come to earth in the flesh (in carne, is Latin for “in the flesh”) and unlike gnostic sects who see the body as a prison to be escaped, we see the body as the place where God is made manifest. While the Jewish faith does not share our conviction of the nature of Jesus, it too has a heavy emphasis on the body. For both Jews and Christians, bodies and what happens to them matter.

From that belief in the importance of bodies springs a heavy emphasis on justice and compassion for those who are hurting in this bodily life. It also creates a reverence for the physical body even after God’s life-giving spirit has left it. That is why Joseph wanted his bones brought back to his homeland one day, and that is why, four hundred years after Joseph’s death, Moses and the Israelites picked up those bones as they fled Egypt and did just that. It is also why I want to tell you about Linda Abrams.

I met Linda yesterday, as she was the featured speaker for the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. She is a forensic genealogist. Since 1988, in fact, Linda Abrams has been THE forensic genealogist for the United States military. When human remains of soldiers are found, anywhere in the world, from any United States conflict, the Pentagon calls Linda with a guess at who the remains might be, based on where they were found, the list of those missing, etc. It is Linda’s job to find the next of kin so that the remains can be identified through DNA and interred. If the next of kin is a spouse or another person who does not share the DNA of the deceased, Linda must also find a relative of the deceased who can provide a positive identification of the remains through a DNA test.

Linda has provided positive identification for over a thousand soldiers. There has not been a single case she did not solve. For the first 12 years she did the work as a volunteer, even when she racked up over $800 per month in phone bills, cold calling every Carter in Nebraska to find the right family. Now she is paid hourly up to 30 hours, even though she works as much as 200 hours to solve a case. From the Civil War to Vietnam, she searches, navigating the minefields of adoptive parents with states who will not reveal the name of the birth mother and scant or non-existent records for African American soldiers in World War II. She drives from her home in Massachusetts to Indiana and flies to Bermuda or Europe to look at records. She soothes the high emotions of mothers who always hoped that their sons were still alive somewhere, families who are overwhelmed by a loved one’s remains being put to rest at last, skepticism about a strange woman calling out of the blue and wanting your DNA to match your great-grandmother’s sister’s grandson, who you’ve never heard of. She coaxes family members who are embarrassed about unwanted pregnancies to reveal those family skeletons so that the real skeletons can be identified and laid to rest.

On the one hand it doesn’t sound like religious work, although Linda is a Christian. Linda is obviously good at what she does, but it is equally obvious that for Linda this is more than a job. It is her calling. She can hardly tell the stories of her work in a public talk without being overcome with the emotion of bringing a soldier home. It is clear that she will not rest until they do. She is the foster mother cradling every son until he can again be reunited with his family. She is the pastor who stays with every body until it is lowered into its proper grave and who comforts grieving families. She is the advocate who fights state governments for the rights of the dead and their families.

We often think of God’s calling as only being religious work—a calling to the ministry or to church music or to the mission field. I lift up Linda Abrams as an example of the myriad other ways that God calls us, using our own gifts and passions to serve not just the souls, but also the bodies of God’s children. Like Linda Abrams, each of us has such a calling. What is yours?

Help us, God, to honor the bodies you have given us and to find the calling you have for our lives. Amen.