People are still interested in those who have spent time with God. Back on the night when Jesus was arrested and rushed to trial, people asked Peter “weren’t you one of the ones who came with Jesus from Galilee ?” Peter denied it, so we don’t get to hear why they asked the question. Still, I wonder. I wonder if perhaps they were simply curious. They knew that Jesus was on trial, and they wanted to know more him. They wanted to hear the story of what God had meant to a regular person like Peter.
At the trial inside, Peter’s testimony seems to be sorely missing. John’s gospel tells us that “the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. Jesus answered, ‘I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Judeans come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said’” (John 18:19-21). Jesus tells them to ask someone who was with him. And there is Peter, one of those who had heard what Jesus said, right outside. He could have spoken as a witness, but he wasn’t saying anything.
I wonder, are there times when we keep quiet about our own faith? Unlike Peter, our silence is not for fear of arrest, and we are not going to be asked to give testimony in a trial. But I bet that you and I encounter lots of people like the ones who asked Peter if he knew Jesus. I bet that we meet people who are curious to hear about our own faith, to hear the story of the time we have spent with God. They may not ask directly, as they did to Peter. But they might ask indirectly, leaving a pause in conversation in case anyone has anything to say about the love of God. These openings in conversation are like a question, and we can choose to speak or to remain silent. As a first step, we might just begin to notice those openings. Then, one day, we’ll begin to speak and tell our story.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sermon - We Are What God Made Us
Preached on March 22, 2009 at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC
Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21
Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Author Ray Anderson stepped into a public restroom one day and saw, on the mirror, a message, written with soap in a slanted line. It said: “Judas, come home…all is forgiven.”
In the gospel of John, speaking about himself to Nicodemus, Jesus says that “God did not send his son into the world to condemn it.” And so let us recover the message that should always be at the center of our Christian faith and proclaim to all people: God is not out to get you. Counter to what you may have heard, counter to what you may have been taught to believe, counter even to what you may in the secret part of your mind be afraid of: God is not out to get you. That wonderful prophet of the restroom mirror was right: “come home...all is forgiven.”
God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save it, even for people like Judas. The son of God came with forgiveness on his lips, instead of condemnation; mercy, instead of judgment; compassion, instead of vengeance. There were people who expected something different. There were a lot of people who expected the messiah to take care of everyone who had wronged them. They thought that God kept track of transgressions and would dispense punishment. But Jesus came as an answer to God’s bad reputation. To those who thought that Jesus would give their enemies what they had coming, Jesus said that what they have coming is mercy, salvation, new life, not condemnation.
To Judas, and to us, Jesus says “come home…all is forgiven.” In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul, or perhaps a follower of Paul, describes you and I like this. “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world”(Ephesians 2:1-2). Isn’t that an interesting way to talk about sin? He isn’t saying that we’re all terrible, destructive people, who leave hatred and hurt in our wake. He says that we can sin (which means separation from God), just by “following the course of the world.” What Paul is saying is that even regular people, leading regular lives are walking around dead.
Paul describes our spiritual state in terms of life and death: “Even when we were dead through our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). It reminds me of that movie The Sixth Sense, in which a young boy, played by the oh-so-cute and sincere Haley Joel Osment, is disturbed by his unwanted communication with people who had died. As he explained so memorably: “I see dead people.” And then he clarifies: “I see dead people, walking around like regular people…they don't know they're dead.” It’s just a ghost story, maybe. But those words of his - they seem to me like an astute observation about our lives, with language right out of the new testament. Dead people walking around like regular people, not even knowing the difference. Not knowing what it is to be made alive by the grace of God.
To be made alive requires a death. It requires the death of whatever it is inside us that keeps us from God. When our self-consumed interest dies, and we look with God's eyes to others, we are made alive. When the lie that are not lovable dies, when the conviction that we don't have anything to offer dies, when the stubborn refusal to finally come home dies, like it did for the prodigal son, like I hope it did for Judas, then we are made alive. Because finally, Judas, the prodigal son, you and I come to realize that we are what God made us. God made us alive. God made us, Paul writes, for good.
This movement from death to life is, for many of us, a long process, and we have to receive God's grace anew for each new challenge. That's one of the reasons we come back to the season of Lent each year. It's why we come back to the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter each year. Because when you are 17, the new life you need is a different gift than when you are 40, or 68. And in each new part of our life we are discovering the good for which God made us. People are doing this all the time. Let me tell you their stories.
When Beth Slevcove moved with her husband Joe from the suburbs into the heart of the city, she embraced urban life, even the noise and sirens and difficult parking. (This story is quoted and paraphrased from The Sun, August 2007). While the homeless people in the neighborhood made Joe nervous, Beth met them and called them by name. But there was one place that Beth steered clear of: the tattoo parlor across the street. The guys who ran it would sit around out front, and got into fights that would move into the street and stop traffic. They harassed women who walked by and intimidated the men. For two years Beth glared across the street at them from her window with dark thoughts.
Then one day she changed her approach. She got a tattoo. She walked across the street and marched inside. Manuel, who ran the store, was working on somebody’s back. Beth introduced herself as a neighbor and asked if she could watch. He said sure. After a while, she went outside and sat in front to study the world from their perspective. One of the guys asked what she was getting done, and she said “Love thy neighbor.” She explained, “you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You kind of scare me - you know, with all the fights that break out over here.”
He took her inside and announced, with complete sincerity, “Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We got to stop fighting.” There was an awkward moment there while Manual got defensive until Beth explained that she hadn’t come because she was mad, or to change them, but just to get a tattoo on her wrist with the words “love thy neighbor.” They settled on a design and style for the letters. “How do you spell thy,” Manuel asked shyly. “I didn’t go to school.”
From then on Beth would wave to the tattoo guys like they were old pals. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe. Four months later, when she ran into Manuel at an auto shop, Manuel turned to the mechanic and said “hey, this is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.”
We are what God made us. We were made for good.
One more story before we close. (This next story is told by Philip Yancey in What's So Amazing About Grace?) This one is about Gordon Wilson, who was with his grown daughter in a town near Belfast, Ireland on Veteran’s Day in 1987 at a Protestant observance when an IRA bomb killed 11 people, including his daughter. It wasn’t so much different from much of the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, where extremists traded revenge attacks and bystanders got caught in the middle. A newspaper later proclaimed, “No one remembers what the politicians had to say at that time. No one who heard Gordon Wilson will ever forget what he confessed…His grace towered over the miserable justifications of the bombers.” What he said was this: “I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray, tonight and every night, that God will forgive them.”
Gordon Wilson became a leader for peace in Ireland. The Protestant extremists who had planned a revenge attack decided against it. With Gordon Wilson on the scene, such an attack would be politically foolish. Wilson met with the IRA, forgave them, and asked them to stop. He said “I know you’ve lost loved ones, just like me. Surely enough is enough.”
These are stories of regular people, much like you and me, who were made alive by the son of God who came to save the world. It would have been easy for them to act out of fear and hatred. In fact, that would have been the course of the world. But we were made for something else. We were made for a goodness that will come forth in surprising ways and will have amazing consequences. It will be as if we had been dead, and God made us alive.
We are what God made us, and God made us for good.
Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21
Dedicated to Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Author Ray Anderson stepped into a public restroom one day and saw, on the mirror, a message, written with soap in a slanted line. It said: “Judas, come home…all is forgiven.”
In the gospel of John, speaking about himself to Nicodemus, Jesus says that “God did not send his son into the world to condemn it.” And so let us recover the message that should always be at the center of our Christian faith and proclaim to all people: God is not out to get you. Counter to what you may have heard, counter to what you may have been taught to believe, counter even to what you may in the secret part of your mind be afraid of: God is not out to get you. That wonderful prophet of the restroom mirror was right: “come home...all is forgiven.”
God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save it, even for people like Judas. The son of God came with forgiveness on his lips, instead of condemnation; mercy, instead of judgment; compassion, instead of vengeance. There were people who expected something different. There were a lot of people who expected the messiah to take care of everyone who had wronged them. They thought that God kept track of transgressions and would dispense punishment. But Jesus came as an answer to God’s bad reputation. To those who thought that Jesus would give their enemies what they had coming, Jesus said that what they have coming is mercy, salvation, new life, not condemnation.
To Judas, and to us, Jesus says “come home…all is forgiven.” In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul, or perhaps a follower of Paul, describes you and I like this. “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world”(Ephesians 2:1-2). Isn’t that an interesting way to talk about sin? He isn’t saying that we’re all terrible, destructive people, who leave hatred and hurt in our wake. He says that we can sin (which means separation from God), just by “following the course of the world.” What Paul is saying is that even regular people, leading regular lives are walking around dead.
Paul describes our spiritual state in terms of life and death: “Even when we were dead through our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). It reminds me of that movie The Sixth Sense, in which a young boy, played by the oh-so-cute and sincere Haley Joel Osment, is disturbed by his unwanted communication with people who had died. As he explained so memorably: “I see dead people.” And then he clarifies: “I see dead people, walking around like regular people…they don't know they're dead.” It’s just a ghost story, maybe. But those words of his - they seem to me like an astute observation about our lives, with language right out of the new testament. Dead people walking around like regular people, not even knowing the difference. Not knowing what it is to be made alive by the grace of God.
To be made alive requires a death. It requires the death of whatever it is inside us that keeps us from God. When our self-consumed interest dies, and we look with God's eyes to others, we are made alive. When the lie that are not lovable dies, when the conviction that we don't have anything to offer dies, when the stubborn refusal to finally come home dies, like it did for the prodigal son, like I hope it did for Judas, then we are made alive. Because finally, Judas, the prodigal son, you and I come to realize that we are what God made us. God made us alive. God made us, Paul writes, for good.
This movement from death to life is, for many of us, a long process, and we have to receive God's grace anew for each new challenge. That's one of the reasons we come back to the season of Lent each year. It's why we come back to the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter each year. Because when you are 17, the new life you need is a different gift than when you are 40, or 68. And in each new part of our life we are discovering the good for which God made us. People are doing this all the time. Let me tell you their stories.
When Beth Slevcove moved with her husband Joe from the suburbs into the heart of the city, she embraced urban life, even the noise and sirens and difficult parking. (This story is quoted and paraphrased from The Sun, August 2007). While the homeless people in the neighborhood made Joe nervous, Beth met them and called them by name. But there was one place that Beth steered clear of: the tattoo parlor across the street. The guys who ran it would sit around out front, and got into fights that would move into the street and stop traffic. They harassed women who walked by and intimidated the men. For two years Beth glared across the street at them from her window with dark thoughts.
Then one day she changed her approach. She got a tattoo. She walked across the street and marched inside. Manuel, who ran the store, was working on somebody’s back. Beth introduced herself as a neighbor and asked if she could watch. He said sure. After a while, she went outside and sat in front to study the world from their perspective. One of the guys asked what she was getting done, and she said “Love thy neighbor.” She explained, “you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You kind of scare me - you know, with all the fights that break out over here.”
He took her inside and announced, with complete sincerity, “Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We got to stop fighting.” There was an awkward moment there while Manual got defensive until Beth explained that she hadn’t come because she was mad, or to change them, but just to get a tattoo on her wrist with the words “love thy neighbor.” They settled on a design and style for the letters. “How do you spell thy,” Manuel asked shyly. “I didn’t go to school.”
From then on Beth would wave to the tattoo guys like they were old pals. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe. Four months later, when she ran into Manuel at an auto shop, Manuel turned to the mechanic and said “hey, this is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.”
We are what God made us. We were made for good.
One more story before we close. (This next story is told by Philip Yancey in What's So Amazing About Grace?) This one is about Gordon Wilson, who was with his grown daughter in a town near Belfast, Ireland on Veteran’s Day in 1987 at a Protestant observance when an IRA bomb killed 11 people, including his daughter. It wasn’t so much different from much of the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, where extremists traded revenge attacks and bystanders got caught in the middle. A newspaper later proclaimed, “No one remembers what the politicians had to say at that time. No one who heard Gordon Wilson will ever forget what he confessed…His grace towered over the miserable justifications of the bombers.” What he said was this: “I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray, tonight and every night, that God will forgive them.”
Gordon Wilson became a leader for peace in Ireland. The Protestant extremists who had planned a revenge attack decided against it. With Gordon Wilson on the scene, such an attack would be politically foolish. Wilson met with the IRA, forgave them, and asked them to stop. He said “I know you’ve lost loved ones, just like me. Surely enough is enough.”
These are stories of regular people, much like you and me, who were made alive by the son of God who came to save the world. It would have been easy for them to act out of fear and hatred. In fact, that would have been the course of the world. But we were made for something else. We were made for a goodness that will come forth in surprising ways and will have amazing consequences. It will be as if we had been dead, and God made us alive.
We are what God made us, and God made us for good.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Sermon - Can We Love Without the Pain?
Preached on March 8, 2009 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Psalm 22:23-31 Mark 8:31-38
Dedicated to all who have loved and lost; and always to the glory of God.
C.S. Lewis, who wrote the chronicles of Narnia and many books of theology and of other stories, was married late in life to Joy Gresham. The movie Shadowlands tells the unlikely story of their relationship before she died of cancer. Although Lewis finds great happiness, great joy, in their marriage, it also brings him great pain to see her suffer. At one point he wishes that he could take away her pain by suffering it himself, as I’m sure so many of you have wished on behalf of a spouse, parent, friend, or child. Finally, there is the pain of grief. The experience of pain causes him, and us, to wrestle with questions: Why must there be pain in the world? Why would God allow it? But most perplexing is this: why would you or I, who usually seek to avoid pain and minimize suffering, ever make a choice that will bring us more pain? That’s the question I hear in the argument between Jesus and Peter in the gospel reading. Why would we ever choose something that brings us into pain? C.S. Lewis put it this way, after the death of his wife:
“Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.”
The reality that Jesus helps us to face is this: When we love, we open ourselves to pain. When we seek good for others, we become vulnerable to suffering. But as Lewis said: that’s the deal. The only way to keep ourselves from being hurt is to turn inward, to become protectionist in a self-centered isolation. Don’t love anyone, because you will lose them, or they will let you down. Don’t offer assistance, because you might be giving away something that you will one day need. Better to guard yourself, keep what’s yours and keep your tender heart out of sight. We might think that we are saving our lives, Jesus says, only to find that we have lost them.
I think of Ebenezer Scrooge, from A Christmas Carol. He kept his life safe. He didn’t care for anyone, and that way he didn’t mind if no one cared for him. He looked out for his own interests. But when the spirit of Christmas Past comes to visit, we discover that he once loved others, as a child and as a young man. But his love had brought him pain, and his response was to close the walls around his money and around his heart. He thought that he was saving himself from pain, saving his life, but any child who hears that story knows that he had lost his life, and only found it in the end.
The argument between Jesus and Peter begins when Jesus starts to tell his disciples that what he is doing will lead to his suffering and death. Peter rebukes Jesus – which is a stronger word than perhaps it sounds – and then Jesus rebukes Peter, calling him Satan, which is the word for one who is arguing against God.
To hear this the way the disciples heard it, we need to remember everything that they have seen, back to the beginning of Mark’s gospel. At the beginning of his ministry, after he was baptized and spent his forty days in the wilderness, Jesus came back to town and began to proclaim his message: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And what did the kingdom of God look like? Well, if you were following Jesus around the Sea of Galilee back them, it quickly becomes clear that the kingdom of God is where everything broken is made whole. In the kingdom of God, people find that their illness is met with healing, their hunger is met with food, their isolation is met with community, and their sin is met with forgiveness.
The gospel of Mark tells in quick succession how Jesus healed leprosy, fever, internal bleeding, blindness, deafness, a withered hand, the guy they kept chained up in the cemetery because he had a legion of demons inside of him, and even a girl who had died. Along the way, he shared meals with people whose sins made them outcasts and fed large and hungry crowds with a few loaves and fish, making it clear that no one is to be kept away from the table. This is what the kingdom of God looks like. The kingdom of God restores us to health, restores us to community, and restores us to God. You might say that the kingdom of God is where we get to be our true selves, perhaps for the first time.
The way of Jesus is to make the kingdom of God a present reality, where the love of God meets the broken world and makes it whole. But now there is a hard reality to face. Until the time when God remakes heaven and earth, there are forces that work against the kingdom of God, both outside us and within us. There are kingdoms built on power, and the injustice that inevitably follow self-interest. There is suffering, and there is death. Jesus knows that to meet the world with love is also to meet the pain of the world. We can’t love without the pain. That’s the deal.
That is why the ministry of Jesus leads to the cross, and why our season of Lent leads to Good Friday, that dark day when it seemed as if the kingdom of God has been snuffed out. Only it hadn’t. Easter tells us that the kingdom of God will ultimately prevail, that finally, all that is broken will be restored. The one who gave his life in love is risen.
And now we can hear the most important part of what Jesus says to his disciples. After he has predicted his own suffering, after Peter has rebuked him, Jesus tells the disciples that all those who want to follow him must deny themselves and take up the cross. He has already sent he diciples out in pairs to do the work of the kingdom. They had been out in the towns proclaiming that the kingdom of God was near, healing the sick and welcoming the sinners. Now Jesus tells them that this way of the kingdom of God, this way of love, will bring pain with it.
Jesus sends us in the same way to heal, to feed, to forgive and welcome. We work in medicine; we support missionaries; we give food; we prepare meals; we welcome each other from far and wide to this place of worship, fellowship, and growing faith. But the more we give ourselves to the way of Jesus, the more we open ourselves to the pain of this world.
Be careful not to hear Jesus the wrong way. When he says that we must deny ourselves, and lose our lives, it isn’t a call for us to allow ourselves to be walked all over or used up and burnt out. Too often this teaching has been abused. In the name of Christ, people have said that other races should resign themselves to hardship, that the poor should resign themselves to danger and oppression, that good Christians should put up with domestic violence, all in the name of love, all with the promise that they would be rewarded later. That is not what Jesus said. Remember that his entire ministry has been to restore what is broken, so giving our lives does not mean giving up our lives, allowing them to be degraded.
What Jesus calls us to give is our full, strong, and vibrant lives. We give our best lives, and to do so we must overcome that which harms us and breaks us in the name of the love of God. Sometimes people misuse this teaching, saying “that’s just my cross to bear” about the wrong things. We need to be careful that naming something as your cross to bear is not simply an excuse because we don’t want the trouble of confronting an unhealthy relationship, or doing the hard work to make ourselves healthy and strong.
The cross we bear has to with where we decide to direct our strength. Do we seek to protect our own interests, or are we moved to love those besides ourselves, to love those outside our families, our tribe, our nation? We know that loving them will involve suffering. When we seek to restore health, we will have to know the faces of illness and injury. When we seek to restore peace, we will have to face the violence of war and conflict, and our own participation in the root conflicts. When we seek to restore justice, we may find ourselves in holy confrontation with injustice. In some cases, our care for others will cause us to sacrifice something we had held dear. Sometimes, we will suffer simply because we lose the ones we have come to love. But let none of these stop us. The pain is a part of the joy of living in the kingdom of God, of being restored to wholeness by God, and of offering that same love to this wonderful world.
Psalm 22:23-31 Mark 8:31-38
Dedicated to all who have loved and lost; and always to the glory of God.
C.S. Lewis, who wrote the chronicles of Narnia and many books of theology and of other stories, was married late in life to Joy Gresham. The movie Shadowlands tells the unlikely story of their relationship before she died of cancer. Although Lewis finds great happiness, great joy, in their marriage, it also brings him great pain to see her suffer. At one point he wishes that he could take away her pain by suffering it himself, as I’m sure so many of you have wished on behalf of a spouse, parent, friend, or child. Finally, there is the pain of grief. The experience of pain causes him, and us, to wrestle with questions: Why must there be pain in the world? Why would God allow it? But most perplexing is this: why would you or I, who usually seek to avoid pain and minimize suffering, ever make a choice that will bring us more pain? That’s the question I hear in the argument between Jesus and Peter in the gospel reading. Why would we ever choose something that brings us into pain? C.S. Lewis put it this way, after the death of his wife:
“Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.”
The reality that Jesus helps us to face is this: When we love, we open ourselves to pain. When we seek good for others, we become vulnerable to suffering. But as Lewis said: that’s the deal. The only way to keep ourselves from being hurt is to turn inward, to become protectionist in a self-centered isolation. Don’t love anyone, because you will lose them, or they will let you down. Don’t offer assistance, because you might be giving away something that you will one day need. Better to guard yourself, keep what’s yours and keep your tender heart out of sight. We might think that we are saving our lives, Jesus says, only to find that we have lost them.
I think of Ebenezer Scrooge, from A Christmas Carol. He kept his life safe. He didn’t care for anyone, and that way he didn’t mind if no one cared for him. He looked out for his own interests. But when the spirit of Christmas Past comes to visit, we discover that he once loved others, as a child and as a young man. But his love had brought him pain, and his response was to close the walls around his money and around his heart. He thought that he was saving himself from pain, saving his life, but any child who hears that story knows that he had lost his life, and only found it in the end.
The argument between Jesus and Peter begins when Jesus starts to tell his disciples that what he is doing will lead to his suffering and death. Peter rebukes Jesus – which is a stronger word than perhaps it sounds – and then Jesus rebukes Peter, calling him Satan, which is the word for one who is arguing against God.
To hear this the way the disciples heard it, we need to remember everything that they have seen, back to the beginning of Mark’s gospel. At the beginning of his ministry, after he was baptized and spent his forty days in the wilderness, Jesus came back to town and began to proclaim his message: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And what did the kingdom of God look like? Well, if you were following Jesus around the Sea of Galilee back them, it quickly becomes clear that the kingdom of God is where everything broken is made whole. In the kingdom of God, people find that their illness is met with healing, their hunger is met with food, their isolation is met with community, and their sin is met with forgiveness.
The gospel of Mark tells in quick succession how Jesus healed leprosy, fever, internal bleeding, blindness, deafness, a withered hand, the guy they kept chained up in the cemetery because he had a legion of demons inside of him, and even a girl who had died. Along the way, he shared meals with people whose sins made them outcasts and fed large and hungry crowds with a few loaves and fish, making it clear that no one is to be kept away from the table. This is what the kingdom of God looks like. The kingdom of God restores us to health, restores us to community, and restores us to God. You might say that the kingdom of God is where we get to be our true selves, perhaps for the first time.
The way of Jesus is to make the kingdom of God a present reality, where the love of God meets the broken world and makes it whole. But now there is a hard reality to face. Until the time when God remakes heaven and earth, there are forces that work against the kingdom of God, both outside us and within us. There are kingdoms built on power, and the injustice that inevitably follow self-interest. There is suffering, and there is death. Jesus knows that to meet the world with love is also to meet the pain of the world. We can’t love without the pain. That’s the deal.
That is why the ministry of Jesus leads to the cross, and why our season of Lent leads to Good Friday, that dark day when it seemed as if the kingdom of God has been snuffed out. Only it hadn’t. Easter tells us that the kingdom of God will ultimately prevail, that finally, all that is broken will be restored. The one who gave his life in love is risen.
And now we can hear the most important part of what Jesus says to his disciples. After he has predicted his own suffering, after Peter has rebuked him, Jesus tells the disciples that all those who want to follow him must deny themselves and take up the cross. He has already sent he diciples out in pairs to do the work of the kingdom. They had been out in the towns proclaiming that the kingdom of God was near, healing the sick and welcoming the sinners. Now Jesus tells them that this way of the kingdom of God, this way of love, will bring pain with it.
Jesus sends us in the same way to heal, to feed, to forgive and welcome. We work in medicine; we support missionaries; we give food; we prepare meals; we welcome each other from far and wide to this place of worship, fellowship, and growing faith. But the more we give ourselves to the way of Jesus, the more we open ourselves to the pain of this world.
Be careful not to hear Jesus the wrong way. When he says that we must deny ourselves, and lose our lives, it isn’t a call for us to allow ourselves to be walked all over or used up and burnt out. Too often this teaching has been abused. In the name of Christ, people have said that other races should resign themselves to hardship, that the poor should resign themselves to danger and oppression, that good Christians should put up with domestic violence, all in the name of love, all with the promise that they would be rewarded later. That is not what Jesus said. Remember that his entire ministry has been to restore what is broken, so giving our lives does not mean giving up our lives, allowing them to be degraded.
What Jesus calls us to give is our full, strong, and vibrant lives. We give our best lives, and to do so we must overcome that which harms us and breaks us in the name of the love of God. Sometimes people misuse this teaching, saying “that’s just my cross to bear” about the wrong things. We need to be careful that naming something as your cross to bear is not simply an excuse because we don’t want the trouble of confronting an unhealthy relationship, or doing the hard work to make ourselves healthy and strong.
The cross we bear has to with where we decide to direct our strength. Do we seek to protect our own interests, or are we moved to love those besides ourselves, to love those outside our families, our tribe, our nation? We know that loving them will involve suffering. When we seek to restore health, we will have to know the faces of illness and injury. When we seek to restore peace, we will have to face the violence of war and conflict, and our own participation in the root conflicts. When we seek to restore justice, we may find ourselves in holy confrontation with injustice. In some cases, our care for others will cause us to sacrifice something we had held dear. Sometimes, we will suffer simply because we lose the ones we have come to love. But let none of these stop us. The pain is a part of the joy of living in the kingdom of God, of being restored to wholeness by God, and of offering that same love to this wonderful world.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Present
During the season of Lent, I am seeking times of stillness, focus, and prayer that is more about listening than speaking. I’m trying to sit still, to remember how to focus on one thing at a time. People are getting better and better at multitasking, but I fear that we are getting worse at giving our full attention to one thing, to one person. Years ago I read a story called “The Precious Present.” It was about a young boy who loved to spend time with the old man who was his neighbor. The old man always seemed happy and content, no matter his circumstances. The man explained to the boy that his happiness was the result of the precious present, and the boy spent hours trying to guess what kind of present could be so great as to impart such sustained joy. At the end of the story, the boy discovers that the precious present is not a gift, wrapped in a box, but the present time. The old man is content because he has learned to give his full attention to the precious present moment, and so he is not worried about the future or caught up in the past.
Technology has made us good at multitasking, but it has also distracted us. It used to be that there was one time of day to receive mail, sort it, and respond to it as necessary. Now we receive email (or texts, or twitter – whatever that is) at all hours, sometimes even when we are out at the grocery store, or at dinner with friends. It used to be that we learned about the news of the world, sports scores, and local happenings by reading the newspaper with a glass of orange juice or coffee, or by watching the evening news at 6:00 PM. Now we are hit with 24 hour news networks, headlines on our computers, and sports scores on our cell phones.
We need to relearn how to be still. We need to remember the ancient teachers. Here is what they say: First, sit down and sit still. Sit as comfortably and as stably as you can: feet flat on the floor, arms lightly laid on arm rest or lap, eyes gently closed. When the body learns stillness, the mind can be still. Quiet your mind by focusing on your breath. The Biblical words for breath also mean spirit, so this focus on the breath is a way to remember the gift of the Holy Spirit. Breathe in, breathe out, and listen. This stillness is prayer, even if you don’t say a word. If you want to use words, there is a tradition from the Russian church to say a simple prayer while you breathe. As you breathe in, say “Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and as you breathe out, say “have mercy on me.” Be still. Receive the precious present.
Technology has made us good at multitasking, but it has also distracted us. It used to be that there was one time of day to receive mail, sort it, and respond to it as necessary. Now we receive email (or texts, or twitter – whatever that is) at all hours, sometimes even when we are out at the grocery store, or at dinner with friends. It used to be that we learned about the news of the world, sports scores, and local happenings by reading the newspaper with a glass of orange juice or coffee, or by watching the evening news at 6:00 PM. Now we are hit with 24 hour news networks, headlines on our computers, and sports scores on our cell phones.
We need to relearn how to be still. We need to remember the ancient teachers. Here is what they say: First, sit down and sit still. Sit as comfortably and as stably as you can: feet flat on the floor, arms lightly laid on arm rest or lap, eyes gently closed. When the body learns stillness, the mind can be still. Quiet your mind by focusing on your breath. The Biblical words for breath also mean spirit, so this focus on the breath is a way to remember the gift of the Holy Spirit. Breathe in, breathe out, and listen. This stillness is prayer, even if you don’t say a word. If you want to use words, there is a tradition from the Russian church to say a simple prayer while you breathe. As you breathe in, say “Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and as you breathe out, say “have mercy on me.” Be still. Receive the precious present.
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