Years ago I worked out at a YMCA housed in a big, old, and aggressively ugly three-level building. The middle level had a reception desk and some offices. The lower level was divided into half a dozen small rooms that held free weights, punching bags, and some of our nation’s original workout machinery. Those rooms had cement block walls, no windows, and low ceilings. This level of the facility had the look and feel of a boxing movie made in the nineteen-forties. In fact, when I exercised down there I had the strange sense that someone was filming my workout in black and white.
The upper level was better. It had a big airy gym where people played basketball or threw each other around in judo or practiced ballroom dancing, although ideally not all at the same time. Beyond the gym were some exercise rooms with modern equipment and decent light. In one of those rooms stood a long line of treadmills, strategically placed before a row of windows that offered a pleasant view of the street below. One nasty winter I did a fair amount of training for a marathon on one of those treadmills and spent many hours looking out those windows.
I enjoyed the light and the view until I realized something distressing: across the street from the gym, directly in my line of sight, stood the city’s largest funeral home. It occurred to me that I was spending quite a lot of my life running toward the funeral home, which seemed full of unpleasant symbolism. I immediately quit the treadmill and went back to running the slippery winter sidewalks of Ann Arbor. There I fell down hills, and sometimes up them; I slipped in front of moving trucks, and sometimes into them; I tripped over fallen branches, and sometimes whole trees when my glasses fogged up; but at least I wasn’t staring death in the face and running right at it.
None of us want to face death. We avoid thinking about it until life leaves us no alternative. Humor helps; it can prompt us to laugh about the absurdity of our mortal condition. I remember a New Yorker cartoon that shows a man sitting behind his office desk, the Grim Reaper standing on the other side. The man is saying “Thank goodness you’re here. I can’t accomplish anything unless I have a deadline.”
Mostly, though, we deal with death by ignoring it. Some of us even deal with it by fleeing it, by trying to recapture our youth, by turning away from the funeral home and running as fast as we can in the other direction. This sells a lot of convertibles, Caribbean cruises, and cosmetic surgery.
But life has a way of reminding us of death. And, for most of us, before we confront our own mortality we confront that of others, including those we love. Over the years I have lost people I have cared about to cardiac arrest and cancer, to automobile accidents and suicide, to old age and young recklessness. I have attended funeral services for newborns and ninety-year-olds. I have attended memorials where people wailed and grieved; and I have attended wakes where people laughed and remembered. I have lost count of the number of funerals I have attended. I suppose this goes with the territory of getting older.
I think, though, that all of these funerals have had one thing in common. At some point in the exchanges of sympathies someone has said: “I just can’t believe they’re gone.”
I understand why people say this. It doesn’t seem to matter how long you’ve had to prepare yourself for the loss, it still comes as a shock. My father had been ill for many years before he passed away and yet I still found myself saying at his funeral: “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
The Gospels do not tell us much about the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the day between the crucifixion and the resurrection, a day some have called “Silent Saturday.” But the Gospels don’t need to tell us much about that day. Our own experience with funerals probably gives us a pretty good picture.
We can imagine the disciples gathered together, trying to understand what has happened. We can imagine their grief and fear and confusion. We can imagine their silence, their awkward conversation, and their efforts to comfort each other—and to find comfort. We can imagine their sadness, their loss of hope. We can imagine them saying: “I just can’t believe He’s gone.”
When someone we care about passes away we find ourselves in that same place the disciples occupied on that desperate Saturday two thousand years ago. We try to understand what has happened. We share our sadness and fear and confusion. We retreat into silence and emerge into awkward conversations. We try to comfort each other—and to find comfort. We feel an irreconcilable emptiness. Often, shortly before the death, we have come to a moment when we have told each other “there is no hope,” and that sense of hopelessness clings to us even after the passing, like dust we cannot shake off and leave behind.
I am not a psychologist, but I think most mental health professionals would tell us that under these circumstances we need to allow ourselves to grieve and to recognize our loss. I have great respect for psychologists but this is, actually, very old advice. “There is nothing new under the sun,” the book of Ecclesiastes tells us. And then the book goes on to remind us that there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Everything has its time, including grief and loss and death, and including getting beyond grief and loss and death.
One of the most important messages of the Gospels is that all of the times of our lives are times for hope. And one of the most significant messages of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that death does not extinguish hope. Indeed, theologian Patrick Fannon has written this: “There can be no hope without death.” That bears repeating: “There can be no hope without death.”
In order to understand this truth about death we must first recognize a truth about life. In
our experience, some lives seem hard and some seem easy. Some seem like failures and some successful. Some seem surrounded by community and some lonely. But one thing is true of each and every one of us: in this life we can only fulfill part of our destiny.
That is why—if we think about it carefully—we would not choose to live these physical and earthly lives of ours forever. Those lives are by their very nature limited, unfulfilled. So, as Patrick Fannon puts it: “[o]ne simply cannot be satisfied with an endless day-to-day existence.”
Indeed, an endless life as we know it can seem like a terrifying proposition. The Greek myths tell a story about a prophetess who once had an opportunity to ask anything she wanted from the god Apollo. She bent down, grasped a handful of dust, and asked for as many years of life as she had grains in her hand; the god granted her wish. And the myth tells us that as she grew older and older, she also grew smaller and smaller, shriveled, terrible, until she prayed for death. It is with this myth in mind that T.S. Eliot says, in his great poem The Waste Land, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
Death gives us hope because it presents the possibility of something beyond this life and its fearful limits. Death gives us hope because it is the necessary condition for rebirth. Death gives us hope because it is only through death that we come to realize that we are more than a handful of dust or a small pile of ashes—much, much more.
We do not have this hope because we are in a state of denial or delusion. We have this hope because we are in a state of affirmation and faith. We have this hope because we believe that something happened on the Cross that did not end on the Cross.
On that saddest of Saturdays long ago the disciples must have bowed their heads and said to each other, as we sometimes do, “all hope is lost.” But on Easter Sunday, the day of resurrection, hope returned. It returned to the disciples. And it returned for all of us.
On Easter Sunday, the stone was rolled away and the tomb was found empty. In the days that followed, Jesus reappeared to the disciples and spoke with them. But He did not reappear as a being wholly disconnected from his life and ministry on earth. To the contrary, He reappeared in a way that expressed the continuing fulfillment of everything He had done on earth among them. And He did not just return and commission the disciples to pursue his work—He reassured them that He would be with them always, “to the close of the age.”
Patrick Fannon summarizes it beautifully: “Our New Testament records are at pains to show that the risen and transfigured Christ was in some state of real continuation with the earthly Jesus. Whatever personal development was His on earth was preserved and transformed in His new mode of existence. The Christian hope of the disciples derived precisely from this: that all they had achieved in this life would be maintained and transformed, too, in their life with Christ after death. Faith in the resurrection of Christ implies the hope that, because of Christ, whatever is of real human value in a person’s life on this earth … would also have an eternal value and meaning.”
It may well be that on that terrible Saturday two thousand years ago the disciples gathered together, mourned their loss, shook their heads, and expressed disbelief that their loved one was gone. But if the words of Saturday are “I can’t believe He’s gone” then the words of Sunday are “Don’t believe it, for He is not gone.”
Not gone because the best of this life is “maintained and transformed” in the next.
Not gone because whatever was “of value” in this life continues to move toward fulfillment in the next.
Not gone because our lives—like the lives of the disciples—carry forward all we have learned from all those we have loved.
Not gone because death changes us but does not extinguish us.
In spring, my backyard is full of bird nests with fledglings in them. Some of those nests are constantly assailed by threats, others seem happily protected. But all of those nests have one thing in common, no matter how much warmth and comfort they offer: a fledgling cannot become a bird in them. At some point, the fledgling must fall out of the nest and find the fulfillment of the wings it had been growing all along. At some point, the fledgling must go beyond the possibilities of growth afforded by the nest, drop into another world, and fly.
I’m sure many of you know the old spiritual called I’ll Fly Away. “Some glad morning when this life is over I’ll fly away to a home on God’s celestial shore—I’ll fly away. I’ll fly away, oh glory, I’ll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away.”
We have our time on this earth, in the nest. We grieve a little, grow a little, suffer a little, sing a little. We work on our wings. Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for all of this.
But the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in which we all share, tells us there is also a time after than time. There is a time for the transformation we call death, when we fall out of the nest.
And that is the time when—praise God—we discover that we can fly.
Amen.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
First Impressions
During Lent, our attention ultimately turns to the end of Jesus's ministry, his crucifixion, and, ultimately, his resurrection. This often includes a close consideration of the last words of Christ. But Lent is also a good time to remember and reflect on his first words. As with the last words, the various gospels report Jesus's first words differently.
In Matthew, Jesus's first words are words of humility. John hesitates when Jesus comes to him for baptism. Jesus answers "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness."
In Mark, Jesus's first words are words of prophecy and summoning. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.'"
In Luke, Jesus's first words are words declaring his relationship to the Father. Mary and Joseph have returned to Jersualem in a desperate search for the twelve-year-old boy who remained behind when they departed. "How is it that you sought me?" Jesus asks when they finally find him in the temple. "Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?"
As with Christ's final words, these words seem to capture something essential about Jesus, about who He was, and about what He came to do. But my favorite first words are those that appear in the Gospel of John. For when we meet Jesus there he begins our relationship by saying words that irresistibly draw us into a deep contemplation not only of who He was -- but also of who we are.
In the Gospel of John, Christ's first words are simply these: "What do you seek?"
In Matthew, Jesus's first words are words of humility. John hesitates when Jesus comes to him for baptism. Jesus answers "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness."
In Mark, Jesus's first words are words of prophecy and summoning. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.'"
In Luke, Jesus's first words are words declaring his relationship to the Father. Mary and Joseph have returned to Jersualem in a desperate search for the twelve-year-old boy who remained behind when they departed. "How is it that you sought me?" Jesus asks when they finally find him in the temple. "Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?"
As with Christ's final words, these words seem to capture something essential about Jesus, about who He was, and about what He came to do. But my favorite first words are those that appear in the Gospel of John. For when we meet Jesus there he begins our relationship by saying words that irresistibly draw us into a deep contemplation not only of who He was -- but also of who we are.
In the Gospel of John, Christ's first words are simply these: "What do you seek?"
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
God of Monotony
Sometimes we enter periods of spiritual contemplation, like Lent, with unspoken but high expectations. We seek a dramatic spiritual renewal that will unmistakably make itself known to us. We wait in eager anticipation for the clap of thunder or the firm guiding voice or the sudden awakening. But it doesn't come. Instead, life just grinds on.
But if we set our sights on grand revelations then we miss the fact that God often speaks to us through the everyday. Indeed, every hour of every day offers us with opportunities to experience God's presence. Even the smallest things -- perhaps especially the smallest things -- can shine with divine light.
Mark Van Doren expresses it exactly in these few lines:
Of breakfast, then of walking to the pond;
Of wind, work, rain, and sleep I never tire.
God of monotony, may you be fond
Of me and these forever, and wood fire.
It seems to me a perfect poem. It seems to me a perfect prayer.
Amen.
But if we set our sights on grand revelations then we miss the fact that God often speaks to us through the everyday. Indeed, every hour of every day offers us with opportunities to experience God's presence. Even the smallest things -- perhaps especially the smallest things -- can shine with divine light.
Mark Van Doren expresses it exactly in these few lines:
Of breakfast, then of walking to the pond;
Of wind, work, rain, and sleep I never tire.
God of monotony, may you be fond
Of me and these forever, and wood fire.
It seems to me a perfect poem. It seems to me a perfect prayer.
Amen.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Christian Burial
Scripture: Psalm 27
A gray frost covers everything. The sunlight has faded and darkness has begun its evening descent. The barren limbs of the trees scratch at the sky. The wind moans across the desolate landscape like a death lament.
And then the man standing in this lonely place discovers he has company -- a songbird:
At once a voice arose among
The black twigs overhead
In a full-throated evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
[Far or near] around
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
So goes Thomas Hardy's magnificent poem The Darkling Thrush, a work written at the beginning of the twentieth century, when its author looked into the future and struggled to find causes for hope.
Life draws us into an ongoing contemplation of the nature of hope. What is it? What reasons do we have to entertain it? What is its relationship to faith and love? How do we find it? How do we put it to work in our lives? How do we share it with those who have lost it?
I want to offer some thoughts on these questions. But let me be clear: my thoughts do not describe a destination. Rather, they describe a kind of four-pointed compass that might help us navigate our way beyond our desolate landscapes to a place of light and life.
The first point of reference is commitment. To find hope we must first find something beyond ourselves, something greater than ourselves, something to which we can dedicate our time and energy, something to which we can commit our hearts and souls.
Such a commitment can help sustain us through our periods of hopelessness. Psychiatrist and philosopher Victor Frankl wrote that "Those who have a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how.'" In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl describes his horrific experiences in the Nazi concentration camps and recounts how those who survived the physical ordeals of those prisons were not the youngest or the strongest or the most physically robust but rather those who found a reason to keep living, some purposeful work to do even amid the death and despair. "Our main motivation for living," he wrote, "is our will to find meaning in life."
Of course, a commitment must not only be made; it must be maintained. True commitments are not like New Year's resolutions, with their notriously abbreviated life spans. Rather, true commitments require resolve and relentlessness. As Christian writer Ann Lamott put it, "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work. You don't give up."
Such stubborn resolve may require us to change -- and change profoundly. After all, as Ralph Waldo Emerson famously asked, "Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them?" Still, as someone once told us, if we would see great things then we must be born anew.
Our second point of reference is courage. Psalm 27 summons us to have courage --through God, for God, and because of God. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
Courage is critical because it is the necessary condition for everything else we would do and be. As the poet Maya Angelou wrote, "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
Courage is also critical because it is rare, and because it is rare the world notices it, and when the world notices it hope is restored and change can happen. Robert Kennedy captured this perfectly when he said: "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice."
This sounds very grand, but we might find ourselves worrying over a few things. We might worry about what this requires of us. We might feel some anxiety over the uncertainty that arises whenever we try to act boldly and bravely and discover we're standing on uncertain footing. The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard understood this objection, and answered it. He acknowledged that "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily." But, he added, "to not dare is to lose oneself."
We might also wonder whether our decisions, our actions, our efforts will make enough of a difference to justify the trouble. Whether through humility or insecurity, we may doubt our capacity to have much of an impact. There are a few answers to this. One of the best comes not from the poets or philosophers but from an early woman pilot, Betty Reese, who gave us this gem: "If you think you are to small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito." More importantly, though, we must remember this: it is not what we do that finally carries the day in any event -- it is what God does with what we do.
In his recent book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus Christ, Peter Gomes discusses the relationship between hope and courage. He argues that "we cannot be ruled by our fears but only by our hopes." This is so, Gomes maintains, because we must have courage in order to have compassion. "Compassion and fear," he writes, "do not go together." And, of course, it is our compassion that is supposed to mark us as the followers of the carpenter from Nazareth.
Indeed, compassion is our third point of reference on our journey toward hope. Now, my emphasis on compassion, rather than love, is deliberate. It goes without saying that our faith places love at the forefront of virtues. Jesus said: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you." Paul ranked love greater than faith or hope. And Paul provided his own description of the relationship between love and hope when he declared that love "hopes all things."
But compassion goes beyond love. Compassion puts love into practice. The dictionary therefore defines compassion as a "sympathetic consciousness of another's distress together with a desire to alleviate it." Compassion is "love plus." It is love plus hot soup, love plus a warm blanket, love plus bandages and medicine.
Jesus told a story about this. You know it. A Samaritan once found a man on a road. Robbers had beaten him and left him for dead. "And when the Samaritan saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn, and took care of him." We can imagine many things about this Samaritan. But is it possible to imagine that he lived a life without hope? If you have lost hope then simply do this: engage in an act of unexpected and unrequited compassion. You will find hope again.
This brings us to our fourth, final, and most important point of reference: Christ. For if we rely solely on ourselves and on the world then we will find good reasons to lose hope. And if we seek commitment and courage and compassion in our own inner impulses then we will often come up wanting. But, as the scriptures say, "We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us." Through Christ we can dedicate ourselves to things that matter; through Christ we can act boldly and bravely; through Christ we can put our love into action. We need guidance on our journey, and Jesus Christ marks our True North.
So we have the four points of our compass: commitment, courage, compassion, and Christ. But before we embark on this voyage we need to do one more thing. Like many aspects of our faith, it involves a bit of a paradox. You see, before we can set forth on this journey we need to unpack.
We need to unpack whatever baggage we have that has held us back and that continues to burden us. Of course, this baggage can take many different forms: an old resentment that keeps us from forgiveness; a festering anger that keeps us from loving; a comfortable selfishness that keeps us from compassion; a nagging sense of unworthiness that keeps us from leading; an eager yearing for acceptance that keeps us from speaking out; a cultivated fear of the unknown that keeps us from stepping up. You see, our journey toward hope does not coast downhill on wheels; it goes straight uphill on foot; and we simply cannot get to the top of the mountain encumbered by baggage that does nothing but weigh us down.
We may find all of this daunting. But it helps to remember that we do not embark on this voyage alone. We have help from each other. And we have help from the wisest, most powerful, and most loving force in the universe.
The Lord is my light and my salvation. What shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life? Of what shall I be afraid?
Amen.
A gray frost covers everything. The sunlight has faded and darkness has begun its evening descent. The barren limbs of the trees scratch at the sky. The wind moans across the desolate landscape like a death lament.
And then the man standing in this lonely place discovers he has company -- a songbird:
At once a voice arose among
The black twigs overhead
In a full-throated evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
[Far or near] around
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
So goes Thomas Hardy's magnificent poem The Darkling Thrush, a work written at the beginning of the twentieth century, when its author looked into the future and struggled to find causes for hope.
Life draws us into an ongoing contemplation of the nature of hope. What is it? What reasons do we have to entertain it? What is its relationship to faith and love? How do we find it? How do we put it to work in our lives? How do we share it with those who have lost it?
I want to offer some thoughts on these questions. But let me be clear: my thoughts do not describe a destination. Rather, they describe a kind of four-pointed compass that might help us navigate our way beyond our desolate landscapes to a place of light and life.
The first point of reference is commitment. To find hope we must first find something beyond ourselves, something greater than ourselves, something to which we can dedicate our time and energy, something to which we can commit our hearts and souls.
Such a commitment can help sustain us through our periods of hopelessness. Psychiatrist and philosopher Victor Frankl wrote that "Those who have a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how.'" In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl describes his horrific experiences in the Nazi concentration camps and recounts how those who survived the physical ordeals of those prisons were not the youngest or the strongest or the most physically robust but rather those who found a reason to keep living, some purposeful work to do even amid the death and despair. "Our main motivation for living," he wrote, "is our will to find meaning in life."
Of course, a commitment must not only be made; it must be maintained. True commitments are not like New Year's resolutions, with their notriously abbreviated life spans. Rather, true commitments require resolve and relentlessness. As Christian writer Ann Lamott put it, "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work. You don't give up."
Such stubborn resolve may require us to change -- and change profoundly. After all, as Ralph Waldo Emerson famously asked, "Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them?" Still, as someone once told us, if we would see great things then we must be born anew.
Our second point of reference is courage. Psalm 27 summons us to have courage --through God, for God, and because of God. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
Courage is critical because it is the necessary condition for everything else we would do and be. As the poet Maya Angelou wrote, "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
Courage is also critical because it is rare, and because it is rare the world notices it, and when the world notices it hope is restored and change can happen. Robert Kennedy captured this perfectly when he said: "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice."
This sounds very grand, but we might find ourselves worrying over a few things. We might worry about what this requires of us. We might feel some anxiety over the uncertainty that arises whenever we try to act boldly and bravely and discover we're standing on uncertain footing. The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard understood this objection, and answered it. He acknowledged that "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily." But, he added, "to not dare is to lose oneself."
We might also wonder whether our decisions, our actions, our efforts will make enough of a difference to justify the trouble. Whether through humility or insecurity, we may doubt our capacity to have much of an impact. There are a few answers to this. One of the best comes not from the poets or philosophers but from an early woman pilot, Betty Reese, who gave us this gem: "If you think you are to small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito." More importantly, though, we must remember this: it is not what we do that finally carries the day in any event -- it is what God does with what we do.
In his recent book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus Christ, Peter Gomes discusses the relationship between hope and courage. He argues that "we cannot be ruled by our fears but only by our hopes." This is so, Gomes maintains, because we must have courage in order to have compassion. "Compassion and fear," he writes, "do not go together." And, of course, it is our compassion that is supposed to mark us as the followers of the carpenter from Nazareth.
Indeed, compassion is our third point of reference on our journey toward hope. Now, my emphasis on compassion, rather than love, is deliberate. It goes without saying that our faith places love at the forefront of virtues. Jesus said: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you." Paul ranked love greater than faith or hope. And Paul provided his own description of the relationship between love and hope when he declared that love "hopes all things."
But compassion goes beyond love. Compassion puts love into practice. The dictionary therefore defines compassion as a "sympathetic consciousness of another's distress together with a desire to alleviate it." Compassion is "love plus." It is love plus hot soup, love plus a warm blanket, love plus bandages and medicine.
Jesus told a story about this. You know it. A Samaritan once found a man on a road. Robbers had beaten him and left him for dead. "And when the Samaritan saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn, and took care of him." We can imagine many things about this Samaritan. But is it possible to imagine that he lived a life without hope? If you have lost hope then simply do this: engage in an act of unexpected and unrequited compassion. You will find hope again.
This brings us to our fourth, final, and most important point of reference: Christ. For if we rely solely on ourselves and on the world then we will find good reasons to lose hope. And if we seek commitment and courage and compassion in our own inner impulses then we will often come up wanting. But, as the scriptures say, "We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us." Through Christ we can dedicate ourselves to things that matter; through Christ we can act boldly and bravely; through Christ we can put our love into action. We need guidance on our journey, and Jesus Christ marks our True North.
So we have the four points of our compass: commitment, courage, compassion, and Christ. But before we embark on this voyage we need to do one more thing. Like many aspects of our faith, it involves a bit of a paradox. You see, before we can set forth on this journey we need to unpack.
We need to unpack whatever baggage we have that has held us back and that continues to burden us. Of course, this baggage can take many different forms: an old resentment that keeps us from forgiveness; a festering anger that keeps us from loving; a comfortable selfishness that keeps us from compassion; a nagging sense of unworthiness that keeps us from leading; an eager yearing for acceptance that keeps us from speaking out; a cultivated fear of the unknown that keeps us from stepping up. You see, our journey toward hope does not coast downhill on wheels; it goes straight uphill on foot; and we simply cannot get to the top of the mountain encumbered by baggage that does nothing but weigh us down.
We may find all of this daunting. But it helps to remember that we do not embark on this voyage alone. We have help from each other. And we have help from the wisest, most powerful, and most loving force in the universe.
The Lord is my light and my salvation. What shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life? Of what shall I be afraid?
Amen.
All The Darkness In the World
In his poem "What I Believe," Michael Blumenthal writes: "I believe that no one is spared the darkness, and no one gets all of it."
Knowing we do not get all the darkness -- knowing others share in the pain and disappointment and tragedy life doles out -- offers some consolation and peace of mind. Talking with friends, family members, or even strangers who have lived through the same struggles helps us understand the grim dynamics of suffering and the incremental process of healing. And these conversations reveal to us that even when we were in our darkest places -- even when we could see nothing beyond our own grief and despair -- it turns out we were not alone after all.
But, then, we never were. Lent calls us to remember that there is One who did take all of the world's darkness upon Himself. There is One who stood beside the mother who cried out for her dying daughter, the leper who despaired of his disease and of society's contempt, and the woman who was condemned to death for adultery. There is One who suffered on a cross for all of God's children. There is One who was indeed alone in His suffering. And there is One who ensures you never will be.
Knowing we do not get all the darkness -- knowing others share in the pain and disappointment and tragedy life doles out -- offers some consolation and peace of mind. Talking with friends, family members, or even strangers who have lived through the same struggles helps us understand the grim dynamics of suffering and the incremental process of healing. And these conversations reveal to us that even when we were in our darkest places -- even when we could see nothing beyond our own grief and despair -- it turns out we were not alone after all.
But, then, we never were. Lent calls us to remember that there is One who did take all of the world's darkness upon Himself. There is One who stood beside the mother who cried out for her dying daughter, the leper who despaired of his disease and of society's contempt, and the woman who was condemned to death for adultery. There is One who suffered on a cross for all of God's children. There is One who was indeed alone in His suffering. And there is One who ensures you never will be.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
The Light At Our Backs
Lunar eclipses have a magical quality. On a frigid night a few years ago, my family and I watched through one of our upstairs windows as the moon showed a scar, then started to disappear, and finally vanished. The absolute darkness of the country night made it seem as though everything outside the window vanished right along with that big white moon.
But lunar eclipses also have a sadness to them. They occur, of course, because planetary rotations place the earth between the sun and the moon. In a sense, they therefore happen because we stand with our back to the light. And when that is where we find ourselves, we have nothing before us but the cold and boundless void.
The season of Lent has a similar sense to it. As we turn and turn through that season we arrive in the shadows of Good Friday, the day when the world turned its back to the light, though, alas, not the only or final day it has done so. So we move through these days anticipating the lightless nights that lay ahead, perhaps fearing them, perhaps more than a little.
We take comfort in knowing the eclipse will pass and the darkness will break. And we can stand and wait for that to happen. Or we can turn ourselves in a different direction, facing the light that never really disappeared at all, bathing in the warmth that beckoned us all along.
But lunar eclipses also have a sadness to them. They occur, of course, because planetary rotations place the earth between the sun and the moon. In a sense, they therefore happen because we stand with our back to the light. And when that is where we find ourselves, we have nothing before us but the cold and boundless void.
The season of Lent has a similar sense to it. As we turn and turn through that season we arrive in the shadows of Good Friday, the day when the world turned its back to the light, though, alas, not the only or final day it has done so. So we move through these days anticipating the lightless nights that lay ahead, perhaps fearing them, perhaps more than a little.
We take comfort in knowing the eclipse will pass and the darkness will break. And we can stand and wait for that to happen. Or we can turn ourselves in a different direction, facing the light that never really disappeared at all, bathing in the warmth that beckoned us all along.
Friday, February 22, 2008
One Thought Too Many
The philosopher Bernard Williams was fond of considering this sort of ethical dilemma: A man who rushes into a burning building must choose between saving his beloved wife or a complete stranger. What does he do? Well, obviously, he saves his wife. He does so not because that decision necessarily advances the greater good of mankind or logically follows from the application of a cost-benefit analysis. He does so because he loves her. Looking for consequentialist justifications under these kinds of circumstances, Williams argued, is to have "one thought too many."
It sometimes seems as though the world conspires to force us to have "one thought too many." We are besieged with data and trivia and gossip and opinion, often presented as if these things were of equal significance and reliability. We have become a nation of multi-taskers, and in the process have forgotten the old adage that the fox who chases two rabbits will not catch either of them. We have become frantic enthusiasts for constant stimulation, and along the way have lost our love of simplicity and our capacity for sitting still and being at peace.
If Lent is a season of searching, then it is also a season of stillness. Certainly, it is a time when we should labor to step forward and do God's work. But it is also a time when we should try to preserve some opportunities for quiet reflection, for getting away from the "one thought too many," and for focusing single mindedly on the one thought that matters.
When Jesus ended his forty-day withdrawal into the wilderness -- the time we remember during Lent -- he initiated in earnest his ministry among the people. He called some to follow, and they immediately left their nets and their tax collecting stations to do so. Some others, like a very righteous but also very rich young man, could not quite bring themselves to reach the same decision. They thought they had more important things to do.
It sometimes seems as though the world conspires to force us to have "one thought too many." We are besieged with data and trivia and gossip and opinion, often presented as if these things were of equal significance and reliability. We have become a nation of multi-taskers, and in the process have forgotten the old adage that the fox who chases two rabbits will not catch either of them. We have become frantic enthusiasts for constant stimulation, and along the way have lost our love of simplicity and our capacity for sitting still and being at peace.
If Lent is a season of searching, then it is also a season of stillness. Certainly, it is a time when we should labor to step forward and do God's work. But it is also a time when we should try to preserve some opportunities for quiet reflection, for getting away from the "one thought too many," and for focusing single mindedly on the one thought that matters.
When Jesus ended his forty-day withdrawal into the wilderness -- the time we remember during Lent -- he initiated in earnest his ministry among the people. He called some to follow, and they immediately left their nets and their tax collecting stations to do so. Some others, like a very righteous but also very rich young man, could not quite bring themselves to reach the same decision. They thought they had more important things to do.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Quarreling With God
When he was on his deathbed, Henry David Thoreau was supposedly asked by his aunt whether he had made peace with God. Thoreau responded "I did not know we had ever quarreled." Like many stories about Thoreau this one has great curmudgeonly charm. But it isn't great theology.
In fact, people of faith often find themselves quarreling with God. Abraham, Moses, Jacob -- all quarreled with God. Jesus's disciples left everything behind to follow Him; but they remembered to bring along their skepticism, challenges, and questions. Indeed, we even hear something of this in Jesus's own words in the Garden of Gesthemane: "My Father, if it is possible , let this cup pass from me." Of course, Jesus hastens to add: "Yet not what I want but what you want." (Matthew 26:39)
Sometimes we quarrel with God because we don't understand why certain things happen. We don't understand why good people suffer or why bad people succeed. We don't understand starvation or war or poverty or disease. We don't understand natural disasters. We don't understand why life and death are so often so hard. These quarrels, though, tend to die out under the weight of their own pointlessness. After all,we do not and cannot have any final comprehension of why such things happen in a world under the control of a loving God. And so we pray for faith and we work to make things better.
And that brings us to the other reason we sometimes quarrel with God. Sometimes we quarrel with God because of what God calls us to do. Sometimes we quarrel with God because following leads us into some difficult and inhospitable places. Sometimes we quarrel with God because loving and forgiving and reconciling and embracing pose serious challenges.
Maybe, like Thoreau, you have never quarreled with God. Maybe that's just fine. Or maybe you haven't quarreled because you're not listening to what God is asking of you.
In fact, people of faith often find themselves quarreling with God. Abraham, Moses, Jacob -- all quarreled with God. Jesus's disciples left everything behind to follow Him; but they remembered to bring along their skepticism, challenges, and questions. Indeed, we even hear something of this in Jesus's own words in the Garden of Gesthemane: "My Father, if it is possible , let this cup pass from me." Of course, Jesus hastens to add: "Yet not what I want but what you want." (Matthew 26:39)
Sometimes we quarrel with God because we don't understand why certain things happen. We don't understand why good people suffer or why bad people succeed. We don't understand starvation or war or poverty or disease. We don't understand natural disasters. We don't understand why life and death are so often so hard. These quarrels, though, tend to die out under the weight of their own pointlessness. After all,we do not and cannot have any final comprehension of why such things happen in a world under the control of a loving God. And so we pray for faith and we work to make things better.
And that brings us to the other reason we sometimes quarrel with God. Sometimes we quarrel with God because of what God calls us to do. Sometimes we quarrel with God because following leads us into some difficult and inhospitable places. Sometimes we quarrel with God because loving and forgiving and reconciling and embracing pose serious challenges.
Maybe, like Thoreau, you have never quarreled with God. Maybe that's just fine. Or maybe you haven't quarreled because you're not listening to what God is asking of you.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Searching Season
In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says "search, and you will find." Lent is, in many respects, the searching season. It is the time when we ponder what Jesus did for us and take stock of what we have done for Him and for His. It is the period during which we ask ourselves tough questions and entertain the possibilities of even tougher answers.
This search does not always play out the way we anticipate. We may not find what we expected. We may not find what we thought we wanted. Jesus offers no assurances in those respects. But he offers better ones.
First, Jesus assures us that we will indeed find. Our quest may take longer than we thought it would or lead us in unfamiliar directions. But ours is not a God who hides what we need to know. So in Matthew 13:35, Jesus declares that he "will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world."
Second, Jesus assures us that we will find good things. "If you ... know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" Good things -- God's good things -- await those who answer this call to the active pursuit of them.
Finally, Jesus assures us that the act of searching will -- in and of itself -- bring us closer to God. After all, Jesus does not just invite us to a destination. He invites us on a journey. And He would hardly do so unless the journey -- the willingness to get up out of our comfortable places and go looking for something else -- was an indispensible part of this enterprise we call faith.
This search does not always play out the way we anticipate. We may not find what we expected. We may not find what we thought we wanted. Jesus offers no assurances in those respects. But he offers better ones.
First, Jesus assures us that we will indeed find. Our quest may take longer than we thought it would or lead us in unfamiliar directions. But ours is not a God who hides what we need to know. So in Matthew 13:35, Jesus declares that he "will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world."
Second, Jesus assures us that we will find good things. "If you ... know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" Good things -- God's good things -- await those who answer this call to the active pursuit of them.
Finally, Jesus assures us that the act of searching will -- in and of itself -- bring us closer to God. After all, Jesus does not just invite us to a destination. He invites us on a journey. And He would hardly do so unless the journey -- the willingness to get up out of our comfortable places and go looking for something else -- was an indispensible part of this enterprise we call faith.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Breakthrough
Scripture: Exodus 34:29-35 and 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
For more than a decade I have been a devoted student of Tae Kwon Do, a Korean form of karate. I've received first, second, and third degree black belts after rigorous testing periods that the school euphemistically calls “camp.” As part of this process, the lead instructor would occasionally, and unexpectedly, call on us to step outside our comfort zones. This could be pretty daunting because, as you might guess, master karate instructors expect their students to have comfort zones of very wide diameters.
So, one Friday a few years back, when I was attending a mid-day class, my instructor marched up to me and asked if I’d be returning to the school in the late afternoon to teach – something I like to do when I have time. I said that I would. He thought for a second and responded “Alright. Well, when you come back today I’d like you to try to break a cement slab with your hand.” He smiled and walked away. I didn’t smile and started to worry. Granted, I had previously broken wooden boards with kicks and punches. But, in case you haven’t noticed, cement is harder than pine.
I called Lisa, told her about the plan, and asked her to come to the school that afternoon to lend moral support. By time she got there, I was feeling pretty confident. I’d broken that cement slab in my head a thousand times.
Nevertheless, my self-assurance started to wane as I watched my instructor set up for the demonstration. He perched a cement slab atop two huge blocks. Then he put some small wooden spacers on the edges. Then he put another slab on top of that. Then more spacers and another slab, and again, until I was staring at a stack of four chunks of cement, waiting for me to hit them as hard as I could.
Lisa saw the look on my face and – doing her best to keep her skepticism at bay – made one of those statements that are really questions. Specifically, she said: “You’re sure you can do this.” Amazed that she would harbor any doubts about my super-human powers, I crossed my arms, puffed myself up, and boldly responded “I am absolutely sure that when my hand hits that cement something will break.”
These two scripture readings have a great deal to do with comfort zones, stepping outside, and breaking through. Biblical scholars have described both of them as “difficult” passages and they have, indeed, been the subject of some unfortunate misinterpretations and mistranslations. But a careful reading of them reveals that they have something very powerful to say to each of us, particularly during the holy season of Lent.
The story told in Exodus may at first seem straightforward enough. Moses has spoken with the Lord, who has revealed the Ten Commandments to him. As a result of his encounter with God, Moses’s face “shines.” This frightens the Israelites, so Moses uses a veil when he speaks to them; when he returns to talk with the Lord, he removes it.
The Hebrew language, however, makes this apparently simple story a great deal more mysterious. For example, the word “shine” is a translation of the Hebrew term “qaran.” Most scholars believe this translation makes sense even though the Hebrew Bible nowhere else uses the word qaran to mean “shine.” Rather, it typically uses qaran to mean “horn.” Indeed, early translations of the Hebrew Bible adopted this meaning of the word, which explains why Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses features two huge horns protruding from his hair.
Some have suggested that the best translation combines the two meanings, so we might envision Moses descending from Sinai with two shafts or “horns” of light “shining” from his face. Indeed, the famed nineteenth century biblical illustrator Gustave Dore portrays Moses in just this fashion. This understanding would certainly help explain why Moses’ appearance would have frightened the Israelites!
The word “veil” presents some problems, too. This is a translation of the Hebrew “masweh,” which appears in this scripture. Scholars think this is a valid rendering of the Hebrew term based on its context. Some uncertainty remains, however, because this word appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
It seems to me, though, that the most interesting mystery at work here doesn’t relate to these particular words but to the event itself. After all, whatever its other ambiguities the passage does clearly tell us that Moses’s encounter with God changed his appearance – somehow – and that Moses decided to conceal that change so as not to frighten the Israelites. But what the scripture does not tell us is why Moses would have so indulged the anxieties of his audience. To put it differently, why didn’t Moses call upon the Israelites to put their silly trepidation aside so they could experience the light of the Lord in its full and undiluted glory?
The answer, of course, is that Moses – like all great leaders – had a profound understanding of human nature. He knew how hard it is to convince people to change, to challenge themselves, to chart a new course. He had seen the almost irresistible forces of timidity and inertia at work; indeed, he had led the Israelites out of captivity only to hear them complain that they’d been better off before. Long before Sir Isaac Newton, Moses grasped the principle that a body at rest will stay at rest until something else gets it moving. And long before we coined the phrase, Moses had a deep knowledge of comfort zones ... and how easily we get stuck in them.
So Moses gave the people what he thought they could handle. He shared the word of the Lord, while withholding some of the light of the Lord. As one distinguished biblical analyst puts it, in this passage the “urgency of communication” takes priority over everything else.
Now, we may well sympathize with Moses’ decision here. After all, Moses wanted the people to hear the word of God, and anything that distracted them needed to be put aside – even if the distraction came in the form of a divine radiance. Well, we may sympathize with this decision – but Paul does not.
Indeed, in this passage from Second Corinthians Paul takes the story from Exodus and turns it against itself. Or, more specifically, he turns it against Moses. And perhaps we can understand Paul’s dismay over Moses’ decision to hide his shining light when we remember that Jesus invited us to let our light shine before others, all for the glory of the Lord.
Paul points out that Moses “put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing” on the full glory of God. But, Paul says, we are called to be different. We are called to cast away anything that stands between us and the Lord. We are called to look toward the Lord with unveiled faces. We are called to open ourselves fully to the working of the Spirit and to know the hope and freedom that follow. And then we are called – in our unveiled and unfettered state – to “act with great boldness” – “to act with great boldness.”
Now, on the theme of misinterpretations, I think it important to understand what Paul is not doing here. He is not trumpeting the virtues of the Corinthians over those of the Israelites. We know this because it is impossible to read Paul’s letters without sensing his deep frustrations with his beloved church in Corinth. As the historian Garry Wills says in his book What Paul Meant, “[h]is dealings with [the Corinthians] were sticky, thorny, and cantankerous.”
I particularly like this image from the work of Donald Harman Akenson: "At times, Paul reminds one of a vice-principal of a large urban high school who has to teach a daily class in calculus to the college-bound stream, then, as head of discipline he breaks up a fight in the hall, and next he finds he has to fill in for a shop teacher who has gone home with a migraine. After school he coaches the offensive line of the football team, and finally at night he has to appear before a special session of the city council and give a polished argument for continued funding of the art and music classes. So we honor the canon of [P]aul’s letters my accepting their sometimes-distracted, sometimes-staccato quality as part of the warrant of their authenticity, the words of a man on a mission."
The image of Paul as a vice-principal is so true to the text. And so is the recognition that Paul had many different kinds of issues with the many different kinds of people who made up the Corinthian church. Clearly, though, one of those issues was that individuals who came from Greco-Roman religious traditions simply did not think about faith the same way the early Pauline Christians did. They had their way of doing things – including spiritual things – and that was that. In other words, Paul had trouble moving some of the Corinthians out of their comfort zones.
No surprises there – those Corinthians liked their comfort zones. Just like the Israelites. Just like us.
Now, this brings up an interesting fact. Do you know where the phrase “comfort zone” comes from? It is a phrase used in biology and engineering to describe that temperature range where we neither shiver nor perspire.
When we’re in our “comfort zone” we’re neither hot nor cold. We’re tepid. We’re lukewarm.
And, in this passage from Second Corinthians, Paul makes it unmistakably plain that he does not want lukewarm Christians. Indeed, I think Paul might have questioned whether there can be any such thing. I think Jesus might have questioned it as well.
This is worth contemplating during Lent. After all, many of us like to “give something up” for the season. Perhaps some of us feel called to “give up” chocolate or red meat. I had a friend years ago who for Lent gave up swearing at people who cut him off in traffic—that always seemed like setting the bar awfully low!
But let me offer another possibility here, one that I think embraces and fulfills these scriptures and leads us in a more compelling direction. What if, for the season of Lent, we were to give up our “comfort zones?” What if we were to stop talking about them? What if we were to get a little uncomfortable? What if we were to put aside the veils we pull out whenever God gets a little "too close for comfort?" What if we were to leave lukewarm behind and try living at a full, rolling boil for a while?
What if during the holy season of Lent we were all to stretch a bit further? What if we were all to take on that something more, that something different, that something challenging that God needs done and that we can do if only we will take the little leap of faith that lands us outside of our comfort zones? What if we were to show the true courage that escorts true faith wherever it goes, wherever God leads? What if we were to go through Lent “acting with great boldness?”
Well, in case you’re wondering, I broke the cement slabs. It worked because my instructors told me something that, in a very different sense, Paul tells us as well: you cannot break through anything by hitting to it; you have to hit through it; you have to hit through it even when you’re not sure you can; you just need to imagine the breakthrough, act boldly, and have faith.
Over the years I’ve probably hit or kicked a hundred boards and cement slabs. I’ve only gotten hurt one time. It was the time I hesitated. It was the time I held back.
Hesitating, holding back, hiding behind our convenient veils, idling in our comfort zones – what wonderful things to give up for Lent.
What wonderful things to give up for good.
What wonderful things to give up for God.
Amen.
For more than a decade I have been a devoted student of Tae Kwon Do, a Korean form of karate. I've received first, second, and third degree black belts after rigorous testing periods that the school euphemistically calls “camp.” As part of this process, the lead instructor would occasionally, and unexpectedly, call on us to step outside our comfort zones. This could be pretty daunting because, as you might guess, master karate instructors expect their students to have comfort zones of very wide diameters.
So, one Friday a few years back, when I was attending a mid-day class, my instructor marched up to me and asked if I’d be returning to the school in the late afternoon to teach – something I like to do when I have time. I said that I would. He thought for a second and responded “Alright. Well, when you come back today I’d like you to try to break a cement slab with your hand.” He smiled and walked away. I didn’t smile and started to worry. Granted, I had previously broken wooden boards with kicks and punches. But, in case you haven’t noticed, cement is harder than pine.
I called Lisa, told her about the plan, and asked her to come to the school that afternoon to lend moral support. By time she got there, I was feeling pretty confident. I’d broken that cement slab in my head a thousand times.
Nevertheless, my self-assurance started to wane as I watched my instructor set up for the demonstration. He perched a cement slab atop two huge blocks. Then he put some small wooden spacers on the edges. Then he put another slab on top of that. Then more spacers and another slab, and again, until I was staring at a stack of four chunks of cement, waiting for me to hit them as hard as I could.
Lisa saw the look on my face and – doing her best to keep her skepticism at bay – made one of those statements that are really questions. Specifically, she said: “You’re sure you can do this.” Amazed that she would harbor any doubts about my super-human powers, I crossed my arms, puffed myself up, and boldly responded “I am absolutely sure that when my hand hits that cement something will break.”
These two scripture readings have a great deal to do with comfort zones, stepping outside, and breaking through. Biblical scholars have described both of them as “difficult” passages and they have, indeed, been the subject of some unfortunate misinterpretations and mistranslations. But a careful reading of them reveals that they have something very powerful to say to each of us, particularly during the holy season of Lent.
The story told in Exodus may at first seem straightforward enough. Moses has spoken with the Lord, who has revealed the Ten Commandments to him. As a result of his encounter with God, Moses’s face “shines.” This frightens the Israelites, so Moses uses a veil when he speaks to them; when he returns to talk with the Lord, he removes it.
The Hebrew language, however, makes this apparently simple story a great deal more mysterious. For example, the word “shine” is a translation of the Hebrew term “qaran.” Most scholars believe this translation makes sense even though the Hebrew Bible nowhere else uses the word qaran to mean “shine.” Rather, it typically uses qaran to mean “horn.” Indeed, early translations of the Hebrew Bible adopted this meaning of the word, which explains why Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses features two huge horns protruding from his hair.
Some have suggested that the best translation combines the two meanings, so we might envision Moses descending from Sinai with two shafts or “horns” of light “shining” from his face. Indeed, the famed nineteenth century biblical illustrator Gustave Dore portrays Moses in just this fashion. This understanding would certainly help explain why Moses’ appearance would have frightened the Israelites!
The word “veil” presents some problems, too. This is a translation of the Hebrew “masweh,” which appears in this scripture. Scholars think this is a valid rendering of the Hebrew term based on its context. Some uncertainty remains, however, because this word appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
It seems to me, though, that the most interesting mystery at work here doesn’t relate to these particular words but to the event itself. After all, whatever its other ambiguities the passage does clearly tell us that Moses’s encounter with God changed his appearance – somehow – and that Moses decided to conceal that change so as not to frighten the Israelites. But what the scripture does not tell us is why Moses would have so indulged the anxieties of his audience. To put it differently, why didn’t Moses call upon the Israelites to put their silly trepidation aside so they could experience the light of the Lord in its full and undiluted glory?
The answer, of course, is that Moses – like all great leaders – had a profound understanding of human nature. He knew how hard it is to convince people to change, to challenge themselves, to chart a new course. He had seen the almost irresistible forces of timidity and inertia at work; indeed, he had led the Israelites out of captivity only to hear them complain that they’d been better off before. Long before Sir Isaac Newton, Moses grasped the principle that a body at rest will stay at rest until something else gets it moving. And long before we coined the phrase, Moses had a deep knowledge of comfort zones ... and how easily we get stuck in them.
So Moses gave the people what he thought they could handle. He shared the word of the Lord, while withholding some of the light of the Lord. As one distinguished biblical analyst puts it, in this passage the “urgency of communication” takes priority over everything else.
Now, we may well sympathize with Moses’ decision here. After all, Moses wanted the people to hear the word of God, and anything that distracted them needed to be put aside – even if the distraction came in the form of a divine radiance. Well, we may sympathize with this decision – but Paul does not.
Indeed, in this passage from Second Corinthians Paul takes the story from Exodus and turns it against itself. Or, more specifically, he turns it against Moses. And perhaps we can understand Paul’s dismay over Moses’ decision to hide his shining light when we remember that Jesus invited us to let our light shine before others, all for the glory of the Lord.
Paul points out that Moses “put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing” on the full glory of God. But, Paul says, we are called to be different. We are called to cast away anything that stands between us and the Lord. We are called to look toward the Lord with unveiled faces. We are called to open ourselves fully to the working of the Spirit and to know the hope and freedom that follow. And then we are called – in our unveiled and unfettered state – to “act with great boldness” – “to act with great boldness.”
Now, on the theme of misinterpretations, I think it important to understand what Paul is not doing here. He is not trumpeting the virtues of the Corinthians over those of the Israelites. We know this because it is impossible to read Paul’s letters without sensing his deep frustrations with his beloved church in Corinth. As the historian Garry Wills says in his book What Paul Meant, “[h]is dealings with [the Corinthians] were sticky, thorny, and cantankerous.”
I particularly like this image from the work of Donald Harman Akenson: "At times, Paul reminds one of a vice-principal of a large urban high school who has to teach a daily class in calculus to the college-bound stream, then, as head of discipline he breaks up a fight in the hall, and next he finds he has to fill in for a shop teacher who has gone home with a migraine. After school he coaches the offensive line of the football team, and finally at night he has to appear before a special session of the city council and give a polished argument for continued funding of the art and music classes. So we honor the canon of [P]aul’s letters my accepting their sometimes-distracted, sometimes-staccato quality as part of the warrant of their authenticity, the words of a man on a mission."
The image of Paul as a vice-principal is so true to the text. And so is the recognition that Paul had many different kinds of issues with the many different kinds of people who made up the Corinthian church. Clearly, though, one of those issues was that individuals who came from Greco-Roman religious traditions simply did not think about faith the same way the early Pauline Christians did. They had their way of doing things – including spiritual things – and that was that. In other words, Paul had trouble moving some of the Corinthians out of their comfort zones.
No surprises there – those Corinthians liked their comfort zones. Just like the Israelites. Just like us.
Now, this brings up an interesting fact. Do you know where the phrase “comfort zone” comes from? It is a phrase used in biology and engineering to describe that temperature range where we neither shiver nor perspire.
When we’re in our “comfort zone” we’re neither hot nor cold. We’re tepid. We’re lukewarm.
And, in this passage from Second Corinthians, Paul makes it unmistakably plain that he does not want lukewarm Christians. Indeed, I think Paul might have questioned whether there can be any such thing. I think Jesus might have questioned it as well.
This is worth contemplating during Lent. After all, many of us like to “give something up” for the season. Perhaps some of us feel called to “give up” chocolate or red meat. I had a friend years ago who for Lent gave up swearing at people who cut him off in traffic—that always seemed like setting the bar awfully low!
But let me offer another possibility here, one that I think embraces and fulfills these scriptures and leads us in a more compelling direction. What if, for the season of Lent, we were to give up our “comfort zones?” What if we were to stop talking about them? What if we were to get a little uncomfortable? What if we were to put aside the veils we pull out whenever God gets a little "too close for comfort?" What if we were to leave lukewarm behind and try living at a full, rolling boil for a while?
What if during the holy season of Lent we were all to stretch a bit further? What if we were all to take on that something more, that something different, that something challenging that God needs done and that we can do if only we will take the little leap of faith that lands us outside of our comfort zones? What if we were to show the true courage that escorts true faith wherever it goes, wherever God leads? What if we were to go through Lent “acting with great boldness?”
Well, in case you’re wondering, I broke the cement slabs. It worked because my instructors told me something that, in a very different sense, Paul tells us as well: you cannot break through anything by hitting to it; you have to hit through it; you have to hit through it even when you’re not sure you can; you just need to imagine the breakthrough, act boldly, and have faith.
Over the years I’ve probably hit or kicked a hundred boards and cement slabs. I’ve only gotten hurt one time. It was the time I hesitated. It was the time I held back.
Hesitating, holding back, hiding behind our convenient veils, idling in our comfort zones – what wonderful things to give up for Lent.
What wonderful things to give up for good.
What wonderful things to give up for God.
Amen.
Wasted Lives
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the words "waste" and "vast" share a common Latin root. This connection seems to echo in these lines from one of Shelley's poems: "I love all waste / And solitary places; where we taste / The pleasure of believing what we see / Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be."
Of course, most of us experience the "waste and solitary places" of our lives with less enthusiasm than Shelley's lines suggest. We know that every hour comes to us only once. And we feel remorse and regret over all the hours -- or days or years -- we have failed to fill. For many of us, life includes a number of these broad and barren landscapes.
Hard winters offer a standing invitation to this sort of reflection. Everywhere the land seems infertile and empty. Wind moves uninterrupted across frozen lakes and past leafeless trees and speaks in lonely groans. A Michigan February provides the perfect stage set for the replaying of troubling scenes from our personal dramas.
So, on the theme of what we might "wish our souls to be," it may console us to remember how often Jesus rejects the popular opinion that someone has wasted their life. Throughout the gospels, Jesus repeatedly finds hope in lives society decrees hopeless and value in lives society decrees valueless. Jesus meets people in their "waste and solitary places." And, by His presence and through His grace, He brings them to a place where life is full -- and, ah, beautiful paradox, where it is boundless as well.
Of course, most of us experience the "waste and solitary places" of our lives with less enthusiasm than Shelley's lines suggest. We know that every hour comes to us only once. And we feel remorse and regret over all the hours -- or days or years -- we have failed to fill. For many of us, life includes a number of these broad and barren landscapes.
Hard winters offer a standing invitation to this sort of reflection. Everywhere the land seems infertile and empty. Wind moves uninterrupted across frozen lakes and past leafeless trees and speaks in lonely groans. A Michigan February provides the perfect stage set for the replaying of troubling scenes from our personal dramas.
So, on the theme of what we might "wish our souls to be," it may console us to remember how often Jesus rejects the popular opinion that someone has wasted their life. Throughout the gospels, Jesus repeatedly finds hope in lives society decrees hopeless and value in lives society decrees valueless. Jesus meets people in their "waste and solitary places." And, by His presence and through His grace, He brings them to a place where life is full -- and, ah, beautiful paradox, where it is boundless as well.
Monday, February 18, 2008
You Will Be With Me
Scripture: Luke 23:39-43
On its face it seems like a simple story with a simple message: Jesus has mercy on a man who confesses his guilt and proclaims his faith in Christ. But there are few simple stories in the Bible. And there are no simple stories about the death of the Son of God. So let's look closely at this passage, which has many things to say to us, including some very hard things.
Let's begin by remembering where this story takes place: at the site of some of the greatest suffering in the history of the world; at a site not just of death but of mass systematic torture. We have grown accustomed to this story and hardened by the sufferings of this life. So we may unconsciously look away from the terrible reality of the context of these words; we may find ourselves picking up our pace and hurrying past the anguish of the Cross to the triumphal comforts of Easter.
In one of his most famous novels, Albert Camus describes the misery that follows when a plague descends upon an Algerian village. As the death toll mounts, the villagers become less sensitive to the suffering around them. Camus writes: "In some houses groans could be heard. At first, when that happened, people often gathered outside and listened, prompted by curiosity or compassion. But under the prolonged strain it seemed that hearts had toughened; people lived beside these groans or walked past them as though they had become the normal speech of men." (Albert Camus, The Plague (1948))
We need to stop and gather at the foot of the Cross. We need to listen. We need to hear the groans of these three condemned men -- and to hear them for what they are.
This does not just force us to confront something terrible. It forces us to confront something profoundly unsettling. It forces us to plunge into the deep and turbulent waters of this complex theological question: does God suffer?
We take it as a given that Jesus suffered. Much of our understanding of the significance of the crucifixion depends upon it. And the traditions of our faith recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah's messianic prophecy of the "suffering servant."
But does the Father -- to whom Jesus later cries out -- suffer? Is God suffering even as Jesus speaks the words in this story? If not, then what are we to make of such a God and the idea that we are made in God's image? If so, then how does that correspond to our understanding of God's power and authority? Can we coherently imagine a God who has ultimate control and who also suffers -- when suffering in our experience so often reflects an absence of control?
The revered theologian Jurgen Moltmann offers this answer: "If God were in every respect incapable of suffering, God wold also be incapable of love. If God is love, however, God opens God's self for the suffering that love for others brings. God does not suffer, as we do, out of deficiency of being, but God does suffer from love for creation, which is the overflowing superabundance of God's divine being. In this sense, God can suffer, will suffer, and is suffering in the world." (Jurgen Motlmann, "The Crucified God Yesterday and Today," in Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices 74-75 (2004)).
So when we come to this story, we must restrain ourselves from rushing to its consoling message of redemption -- even though it unquestionably contains one. We must pause and remember that we have come to a place of unspeakable suffering: suffering of the children of God; suffering of the very Son of God; suffering of and by God; suffering for us.
There is, of course, a tragic irony in the fact that this suffering occurred on behalf of humankind -- for the suffering also occurred at the behest of humankind. It shames us to remember that Jesus was crucified not against the will of the people but in compliance with and fulfillment of the will of the people. And it shames us to remember that, throughout the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, only a few people expressed their belief in his innocence. As if to compound the irony, those few are not among the Bible's heroes. To the contrary, they included Pontius Pilate, Herod, and the criminal in our story -- a man about whom we know little, except that his crime and his guilt were great enough to force from his lips the confession that he deserved to be crucified.
Jesus responds to this confession with words that must have comforted the criminal -- and that must challenge us. "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." This is a stunning pronouncement, dense with good news, and dense with hard news as well.
The hard news comes not from what Jesus says, but from what He does not say. In context, it seems clear that Jesus directs His promise to the criminal who has confessed his weakness. It therefore follows that Jesus did not offer similar reassurance toward the criminal who was deriding Him. To put it more pointedly, His statement offers hope to one man, but it also passes judgment against another. Of course, the text includes no explicit discussion of any such judgment and we can't presume to know what became of the other criminal. But the apparent omission of any palliative words toward him invites us into a close consideration of divine justice, which we must think as perfect as divine love, even if thinking so makes us very uneasy.
But the good news is extraordinarily good -- indeed, so good it threatens to eclipse the harder news implicit in this story. For, in these words, Jesus extended a promise to one of the forlorn -- and to all of us as well. And it is a promise that gives us cause for unalloyed joy and unbridled hope.
In these words, Jesus made a promise to the least deserving in the kingdom. He made a promise to a man who had done some very bad things -- so bad the man had given up on himself and had embraced death by torture as a fitting end to his life. But Jesus tells the man that he -- even he -- could go where Christ would lead him.
In these words, Jesus made a promise that exceeded the man's prayers. Indeed, you'll notice that this criminal asks nothing of Jesus but to remember him. But Jesus embraces the man beyond his greatest expectations, beyond his wildest hopes.
And, in these words, Jesus made a promise that was not remote or distant in its fulfillment. "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." The man had asked for something that could only be achieved over time; he asked not to be forgotten. But Jesus gives him something for which he does not need to wait; he gives him something immediate.
In his beautiful commentary on the seven last words of Christ, Peter Storey writes as follows about this passage: "Today! The early Methodist circuit riders of the American frontier never tired of telling their hearers that the offer of Chrst's forgiveness and salvation was available now -- immediately! There was no need to wait. We come to the Cross to make that discovery again and to cry, 'Remember me, Jesus.' Today!" (Peter Storey, Listening at Golgotha 36 (2004))
So I want to leave you with these questions. If Jesus, in the throes of his own agony, in the midst of his greatest suffering, heard the voice of a dying and disgraced felon, can we believe it possible that he does not hear our voices as well? Can we believe he does not answer us? Can we believe he does not say "I am with you?" Can we believe he does not say "and you -- you will be with me?"
Amen.
On its face it seems like a simple story with a simple message: Jesus has mercy on a man who confesses his guilt and proclaims his faith in Christ. But there are few simple stories in the Bible. And there are no simple stories about the death of the Son of God. So let's look closely at this passage, which has many things to say to us, including some very hard things.
Let's begin by remembering where this story takes place: at the site of some of the greatest suffering in the history of the world; at a site not just of death but of mass systematic torture. We have grown accustomed to this story and hardened by the sufferings of this life. So we may unconsciously look away from the terrible reality of the context of these words; we may find ourselves picking up our pace and hurrying past the anguish of the Cross to the triumphal comforts of Easter.
In one of his most famous novels, Albert Camus describes the misery that follows when a plague descends upon an Algerian village. As the death toll mounts, the villagers become less sensitive to the suffering around them. Camus writes: "In some houses groans could be heard. At first, when that happened, people often gathered outside and listened, prompted by curiosity or compassion. But under the prolonged strain it seemed that hearts had toughened; people lived beside these groans or walked past them as though they had become the normal speech of men." (Albert Camus, The Plague (1948))
We need to stop and gather at the foot of the Cross. We need to listen. We need to hear the groans of these three condemned men -- and to hear them for what they are.
This does not just force us to confront something terrible. It forces us to confront something profoundly unsettling. It forces us to plunge into the deep and turbulent waters of this complex theological question: does God suffer?
We take it as a given that Jesus suffered. Much of our understanding of the significance of the crucifixion depends upon it. And the traditions of our faith recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah's messianic prophecy of the "suffering servant."
But does the Father -- to whom Jesus later cries out -- suffer? Is God suffering even as Jesus speaks the words in this story? If not, then what are we to make of such a God and the idea that we are made in God's image? If so, then how does that correspond to our understanding of God's power and authority? Can we coherently imagine a God who has ultimate control and who also suffers -- when suffering in our experience so often reflects an absence of control?
The revered theologian Jurgen Moltmann offers this answer: "If God were in every respect incapable of suffering, God wold also be incapable of love. If God is love, however, God opens God's self for the suffering that love for others brings. God does not suffer, as we do, out of deficiency of being, but God does suffer from love for creation, which is the overflowing superabundance of God's divine being. In this sense, God can suffer, will suffer, and is suffering in the world." (Jurgen Motlmann, "The Crucified God Yesterday and Today," in Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices 74-75 (2004)).
So when we come to this story, we must restrain ourselves from rushing to its consoling message of redemption -- even though it unquestionably contains one. We must pause and remember that we have come to a place of unspeakable suffering: suffering of the children of God; suffering of the very Son of God; suffering of and by God; suffering for us.
There is, of course, a tragic irony in the fact that this suffering occurred on behalf of humankind -- for the suffering also occurred at the behest of humankind. It shames us to remember that Jesus was crucified not against the will of the people but in compliance with and fulfillment of the will of the people. And it shames us to remember that, throughout the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, only a few people expressed their belief in his innocence. As if to compound the irony, those few are not among the Bible's heroes. To the contrary, they included Pontius Pilate, Herod, and the criminal in our story -- a man about whom we know little, except that his crime and his guilt were great enough to force from his lips the confession that he deserved to be crucified.
Jesus responds to this confession with words that must have comforted the criminal -- and that must challenge us. "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." This is a stunning pronouncement, dense with good news, and dense with hard news as well.
The hard news comes not from what Jesus says, but from what He does not say. In context, it seems clear that Jesus directs His promise to the criminal who has confessed his weakness. It therefore follows that Jesus did not offer similar reassurance toward the criminal who was deriding Him. To put it more pointedly, His statement offers hope to one man, but it also passes judgment against another. Of course, the text includes no explicit discussion of any such judgment and we can't presume to know what became of the other criminal. But the apparent omission of any palliative words toward him invites us into a close consideration of divine justice, which we must think as perfect as divine love, even if thinking so makes us very uneasy.
But the good news is extraordinarily good -- indeed, so good it threatens to eclipse the harder news implicit in this story. For, in these words, Jesus extended a promise to one of the forlorn -- and to all of us as well. And it is a promise that gives us cause for unalloyed joy and unbridled hope.
In these words, Jesus made a promise to the least deserving in the kingdom. He made a promise to a man who had done some very bad things -- so bad the man had given up on himself and had embraced death by torture as a fitting end to his life. But Jesus tells the man that he -- even he -- could go where Christ would lead him.
In these words, Jesus made a promise that exceeded the man's prayers. Indeed, you'll notice that this criminal asks nothing of Jesus but to remember him. But Jesus embraces the man beyond his greatest expectations, beyond his wildest hopes.
And, in these words, Jesus made a promise that was not remote or distant in its fulfillment. "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." The man had asked for something that could only be achieved over time; he asked not to be forgotten. But Jesus gives him something for which he does not need to wait; he gives him something immediate.
In his beautiful commentary on the seven last words of Christ, Peter Storey writes as follows about this passage: "Today! The early Methodist circuit riders of the American frontier never tired of telling their hearers that the offer of Chrst's forgiveness and salvation was available now -- immediately! There was no need to wait. We come to the Cross to make that discovery again and to cry, 'Remember me, Jesus.' Today!" (Peter Storey, Listening at Golgotha 36 (2004))
So I want to leave you with these questions. If Jesus, in the throes of his own agony, in the midst of his greatest suffering, heard the voice of a dying and disgraced felon, can we believe it possible that he does not hear our voices as well? Can we believe he does not answer us? Can we believe he does not say "I am with you?" Can we believe he does not say "and you -- you will be with me?"
Amen.
Monday, February 11, 2008
An Introduction
Art history class met very early. We would hustle out of the cold Ann Arbor air and into the warm auditorium with its soft, worn seats. The instructor would dim the lights, put up a slide, and begin lecturing in the hushed, resonant tone of someone accustomed to speaking in museums. The low hum of the projector, combined with the professor’s sedate British accent, consistently lulled me back to sleep. As a result, my knowledge of art history has a kind of episodic quality: for example, I remember a great deal about cave painting, but almost nothing about Impressionism. It’s the sort of idiosyncratic exposure that people sometimes mistake for sophistication.
Occasionally I would stir from sleep and open an eye half way. An image would register in my foggy semi-consciousness, and a few words might get through as well, but these distant sensations usually just hastened me back to my dreams. Ironically, many of those dreams centered on the exotic-looking dark-haired young woman who sat in front of me in art history class. I might have convinced her we should get to know each other if I could have rallied a bit, demonstrated some appreciation for beautiful things, and stayed awake for more than the first ten minutes. But this was not to be.
I recall one morning when, glancing up at the screen as I rolled over from my left upright sleeping position to my right upright sleeping position, I noticed that the screen seemed oddly lit. I blinked a few times, looked more closely, and realized that the strange light came from the painting itself. The edges of the painting merged with the darkened walls of the room, but the figures in the center glowed magically. There was the broad side of a horse, and a groom tucked into the shadows holding its reins. At the forefront of the picture was a man, lying on his back, grasping up blindly toward the powerful shock of light that had thrown him off the horse and onto the ground. It was, of course, Caravaggio’s famous painting of the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus.
Even in my post-adolescent sleepiness the painting made a powerful impression. Surely, the work of God must look like this. Surely, the grasp of God must bathe us and blind us and bludgeon us like this. Surely, this must be what it is like to have the hands of the Lord reshape your heart. Auden tells us that the Old Masters were never wrong about suffering. Nor were they ever wrong about ecstasy.
At that age I knew only one other conversion story. I think I first heard it from my grandfather. My grandfather was a fine person and devout churchgoer who nevertheless swore with greater fluency than anyone I have ever known. On one occasion, my uncle—convinced that my grandfather let all these expletives slip without thinking—secretly tape-recorded a brief conversation with him and then played it back to make the point. My grandfather listened with disbelief and, at the end of the tape, barked out a spontaneous curse.
In any event, my grandfather was a Methodist hardwired with that denomination’s passion for old hymns. So, of course, he told me the story of John Newton, the eighteenth-century captain of a slave ship who experienced a “great deliverance” during a violent storm at sea, became a minister, and composed “Amazing Grace.” This story made a powerful impression, too, and at an early age I understood that if God really wanted to get your attention God knew how to do it. Still, for many years my life trudged along without a blinding light or a tidal wave.
Then, in December of 2004, everything changed. It was about a week before Christmas. On that day my wife, Lisa, and I had shopped for presents, decorated the house, and trimmed the tree. By evening we were bone tired. We shut off all the lamps, put on some quiet holiday music, and dropped down on the couch. The tree glimmered, the fireplace flickered, and the dogs snored. Peace settled over us, and, then, something more than peace.
I felt stirrings deep inside me that brought back memories of another, much less happy Christmas. I was about five years old. My father’s business had collapsed and he had been criminally charged for various financial improprieties. Everyone in the family thought of my father as a good man who had overextended himself, and no one believed he would be convicted of a crime. But he was, and when the judge sentenced him to a lengthy prison term our astonishment and sorrow seemed boundless. We lost everything—our house, neighborhood, and friends—and moved in with my grandparents, who lived in a big and impressive house in a tired and unimpressive corner of St. Louis.
I have a clear recollection of the first Christmas Eve without my father. I felt his absence palpably. I missed his smile, the way he hushed us and cupped his hand around his ear to check whether he had heard the ring of sleigh bells, and his elaborate ritualized hanging of favorite ornaments—ugly antique German ones he had inherited from his father’s father and that had been worn free of paint. Like everyone else in the family, I distracted myself from such memories on that Christmas Eve by bustling around the house with a kind of grim purposefulness. I was bone tired at the end of that day, too.
After dinner, I wandered into the dark, paneled living room where my grandparents had put up their Christmas tree. The lights were off, except for those on the tree, and I could hear a scratchy holiday album playing in another room. It was as if you could hear the house’s sadness as well. I lay down on the couch and stared at the tree and wondered what my father was doing at that moment. I imagined his loneliness, and settled into mine.
And then a remarkable thing happened. A deep sense of well-being, of understanding, of reassurance, of comfort, descended on me. It cannot be described, except perhaps by saying that I knew my family was loved by someone, someone very strong who would help us find our way. Or maybe it is best described by borrowing John Wesley’s phrase: I felt my heart “strangely warmed.” When I experienced that feeling as a child I did not know what it was; I only knew it was wonderful. When the feeling reappeared forty-two years later, I still knew it was wonderful; but I also knew what it was.
When Prince Hamlet curses his situation—son to a murdered father, called to avenge the wrong—he says the “time is out of joint.” Most of us obviously don’t confront Hamlet’s precise dilemma—when and how to kill our stepfather. But most of us do seem to wander through lives that feel “out of joint.” Still, we make adjustments and learn to live with this misalignment.
After all, this situation does not strike us as tragic or unendurable. And so we keep moving forward by deploying all the mechanisms at our disposal. We make ourselves excessively busy. We fill our time with trivia. We drink. We eat. We watch. We buy things we can’t afford with money we don’t have. And, above all else, we live in a state of denial. Or, more properly, we live in a state of substantial denial, because we cannot help but have some distant consciousness of the quiet crisis that plagues our souls.
I spent the forty years after that first Christmas Eve in such a state of substantial denial, largely ignoring that occasion when God had been so immediately present to me, and for me. Through those years I busied myself with school, a hectic professional life, a kind of spiritual life, a cluttered social life, with working out and running, always running, running and running. Along the way, I acquired a collection of experiences typically reserved for bad Country Western songs: the death of my grandparents while we were still living with them; my father’s release from prison and our move from St. Louis to Detroit the year of the riots; our subsequent move to a remote house in the country where my father could fish and hide from his past; my father’s death; my marriage to a woman who struggled with profound mental illness; the late-term death of an unborn child; a painful divorce; my ex-wife’s suicide; remarriage to a woman I love so deeply and uncontrollably it defies all my understanding of what we can expect from our time on earth.
During those forty-some years I rode the horse very hard. I rode through brush and across rivers. I rode through the cold rain and the dry heat. I pulled up to a full stop for no reason. I spurred on into a full gallop without any sense of destination. We found wonderful and terrible places together. And then, at the age of forty-seven, I fell off the horse.
I was not blinded by light and tossed to the earth. I was not seized and shaken and thrown to the ground. I just sort of tumbled off, without grandeur or drama. And, when I did, there was that feeling again after all that time, the same warm sense of well-being and comfort, the feeling of being helped to my feet and held up, the feeling of coming to my senses—the way you do when your mind has wandered and someone says your name. I felt knocked into a state of awareness; I felt called; and I felt an overpowering compulsion to answer. That is how I felt the last week of December 2004. The first week of January 2005, I became a seminary student.
My seminary studies came to an abrupt halt when a nephew of mine passed away, leaving behind children who needed the sort of home Lisa and I could provide. So I put my formal studies aside and contented myself with teaching law school, practicing law, and trying to figure out how to be a decent parent. As the saying goes, though, when the seminary door closed another opened: my church approached me about the possibility of preaching once a month and performing some other worship leadership functions. I leapt, and have not yet landed. This blog offers up the resulting sermons and prayers.
I do not offer these sermons because I claim any special academic credentials. Certainly, more than twenty years ago I had the good fortune to study with Hans Kung, one of the leading theologians of our age, and David Noel Freedman, one of the most insightful biblical scholars of our time, and my interactions with those two men deeply inform my thinking. But those studies have grown rusty with disuse and it would be unfair to claim that such sturdy scholars parented such fragile offspring.
Nor do I offer these sermons because I claim any unique life experience. My life, like all lives, bears the marks of birth and victory and joy and celebration, and also the scars of death and failure and pain and loss. I am not saying my life has been any harder or better or more interesting than that of anyone else—to the contrary, it has not been, and that is precisely the point.
Years ago I knew someone who attended a conference for artists and writers, one of those settings where people talk about anguish and claim it for their own. A group around a dinner table waded into a deep discussion of the inspiration they had drawn from their painful childhoods. At last one weary listener observed: “This is all well and good, but the line of people with painful childhoods starts here and goes around the world.” This is a bitter truth, and one that also applies to those who have lived hard and complicated lives: the line starts here and goes around the world. Or, more properly, the line starts with a carpenter from Nazareth and goes around the world, and goes around still.
So these sermons make no special claims of experience, enlightenment, or expertise. And—the pun intended—Heaven knows they make no special claims of spiritual clarity or purity. The man who fell off the horse is the same man still (alas) even if he is also a different man altogether (amen). But, again, that is precisely the point. I offer these sermons because there is nothing extraordinary about me at all, and God has a stunning track record of making remarkable use of unremarkable instruments. God raises the lowly and we are amused; God saves the wretched and we are amazed; and I am tempted to think of myself as just another example of God’s love of irony and paradox.
These sermons, written by a fellow traveler, invite you to slow your horse down and to hear the sound of God walking beside you. And they invite you to brace yourself. For God may greet you as a blinding light, a clap of thunder, a burning bush, or a pillar of fire. Or God may greet you as a gentle whisper, as distant music, as the soft voice of the dying, or as a child’s tug on the sleeve. God may throw you off the horse suddenly and dramatically. Or you may fall off the horse slowly and haltingly. We are an infinitely complex species. But God has an infinitely complex understanding of how to speak to us. That is what God does: watches us; loves us; talks to us.
So stop charging forward. Pull back the reins. Find the silence that rests in all of us. Be still. And listen.
Occasionally I would stir from sleep and open an eye half way. An image would register in my foggy semi-consciousness, and a few words might get through as well, but these distant sensations usually just hastened me back to my dreams. Ironically, many of those dreams centered on the exotic-looking dark-haired young woman who sat in front of me in art history class. I might have convinced her we should get to know each other if I could have rallied a bit, demonstrated some appreciation for beautiful things, and stayed awake for more than the first ten minutes. But this was not to be.
I recall one morning when, glancing up at the screen as I rolled over from my left upright sleeping position to my right upright sleeping position, I noticed that the screen seemed oddly lit. I blinked a few times, looked more closely, and realized that the strange light came from the painting itself. The edges of the painting merged with the darkened walls of the room, but the figures in the center glowed magically. There was the broad side of a horse, and a groom tucked into the shadows holding its reins. At the forefront of the picture was a man, lying on his back, grasping up blindly toward the powerful shock of light that had thrown him off the horse and onto the ground. It was, of course, Caravaggio’s famous painting of the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus.
Even in my post-adolescent sleepiness the painting made a powerful impression. Surely, the work of God must look like this. Surely, the grasp of God must bathe us and blind us and bludgeon us like this. Surely, this must be what it is like to have the hands of the Lord reshape your heart. Auden tells us that the Old Masters were never wrong about suffering. Nor were they ever wrong about ecstasy.
At that age I knew only one other conversion story. I think I first heard it from my grandfather. My grandfather was a fine person and devout churchgoer who nevertheless swore with greater fluency than anyone I have ever known. On one occasion, my uncle—convinced that my grandfather let all these expletives slip without thinking—secretly tape-recorded a brief conversation with him and then played it back to make the point. My grandfather listened with disbelief and, at the end of the tape, barked out a spontaneous curse.
In any event, my grandfather was a Methodist hardwired with that denomination’s passion for old hymns. So, of course, he told me the story of John Newton, the eighteenth-century captain of a slave ship who experienced a “great deliverance” during a violent storm at sea, became a minister, and composed “Amazing Grace.” This story made a powerful impression, too, and at an early age I understood that if God really wanted to get your attention God knew how to do it. Still, for many years my life trudged along without a blinding light or a tidal wave.
Then, in December of 2004, everything changed. It was about a week before Christmas. On that day my wife, Lisa, and I had shopped for presents, decorated the house, and trimmed the tree. By evening we were bone tired. We shut off all the lamps, put on some quiet holiday music, and dropped down on the couch. The tree glimmered, the fireplace flickered, and the dogs snored. Peace settled over us, and, then, something more than peace.
I felt stirrings deep inside me that brought back memories of another, much less happy Christmas. I was about five years old. My father’s business had collapsed and he had been criminally charged for various financial improprieties. Everyone in the family thought of my father as a good man who had overextended himself, and no one believed he would be convicted of a crime. But he was, and when the judge sentenced him to a lengthy prison term our astonishment and sorrow seemed boundless. We lost everything—our house, neighborhood, and friends—and moved in with my grandparents, who lived in a big and impressive house in a tired and unimpressive corner of St. Louis.
I have a clear recollection of the first Christmas Eve without my father. I felt his absence palpably. I missed his smile, the way he hushed us and cupped his hand around his ear to check whether he had heard the ring of sleigh bells, and his elaborate ritualized hanging of favorite ornaments—ugly antique German ones he had inherited from his father’s father and that had been worn free of paint. Like everyone else in the family, I distracted myself from such memories on that Christmas Eve by bustling around the house with a kind of grim purposefulness. I was bone tired at the end of that day, too.
After dinner, I wandered into the dark, paneled living room where my grandparents had put up their Christmas tree. The lights were off, except for those on the tree, and I could hear a scratchy holiday album playing in another room. It was as if you could hear the house’s sadness as well. I lay down on the couch and stared at the tree and wondered what my father was doing at that moment. I imagined his loneliness, and settled into mine.
And then a remarkable thing happened. A deep sense of well-being, of understanding, of reassurance, of comfort, descended on me. It cannot be described, except perhaps by saying that I knew my family was loved by someone, someone very strong who would help us find our way. Or maybe it is best described by borrowing John Wesley’s phrase: I felt my heart “strangely warmed.” When I experienced that feeling as a child I did not know what it was; I only knew it was wonderful. When the feeling reappeared forty-two years later, I still knew it was wonderful; but I also knew what it was.
When Prince Hamlet curses his situation—son to a murdered father, called to avenge the wrong—he says the “time is out of joint.” Most of us obviously don’t confront Hamlet’s precise dilemma—when and how to kill our stepfather. But most of us do seem to wander through lives that feel “out of joint.” Still, we make adjustments and learn to live with this misalignment.
After all, this situation does not strike us as tragic or unendurable. And so we keep moving forward by deploying all the mechanisms at our disposal. We make ourselves excessively busy. We fill our time with trivia. We drink. We eat. We watch. We buy things we can’t afford with money we don’t have. And, above all else, we live in a state of denial. Or, more properly, we live in a state of substantial denial, because we cannot help but have some distant consciousness of the quiet crisis that plagues our souls.
I spent the forty years after that first Christmas Eve in such a state of substantial denial, largely ignoring that occasion when God had been so immediately present to me, and for me. Through those years I busied myself with school, a hectic professional life, a kind of spiritual life, a cluttered social life, with working out and running, always running, running and running. Along the way, I acquired a collection of experiences typically reserved for bad Country Western songs: the death of my grandparents while we were still living with them; my father’s release from prison and our move from St. Louis to Detroit the year of the riots; our subsequent move to a remote house in the country where my father could fish and hide from his past; my father’s death; my marriage to a woman who struggled with profound mental illness; the late-term death of an unborn child; a painful divorce; my ex-wife’s suicide; remarriage to a woman I love so deeply and uncontrollably it defies all my understanding of what we can expect from our time on earth.
During those forty-some years I rode the horse very hard. I rode through brush and across rivers. I rode through the cold rain and the dry heat. I pulled up to a full stop for no reason. I spurred on into a full gallop without any sense of destination. We found wonderful and terrible places together. And then, at the age of forty-seven, I fell off the horse.
I was not blinded by light and tossed to the earth. I was not seized and shaken and thrown to the ground. I just sort of tumbled off, without grandeur or drama. And, when I did, there was that feeling again after all that time, the same warm sense of well-being and comfort, the feeling of being helped to my feet and held up, the feeling of coming to my senses—the way you do when your mind has wandered and someone says your name. I felt knocked into a state of awareness; I felt called; and I felt an overpowering compulsion to answer. That is how I felt the last week of December 2004. The first week of January 2005, I became a seminary student.
My seminary studies came to an abrupt halt when a nephew of mine passed away, leaving behind children who needed the sort of home Lisa and I could provide. So I put my formal studies aside and contented myself with teaching law school, practicing law, and trying to figure out how to be a decent parent. As the saying goes, though, when the seminary door closed another opened: my church approached me about the possibility of preaching once a month and performing some other worship leadership functions. I leapt, and have not yet landed. This blog offers up the resulting sermons and prayers.
I do not offer these sermons because I claim any special academic credentials. Certainly, more than twenty years ago I had the good fortune to study with Hans Kung, one of the leading theologians of our age, and David Noel Freedman, one of the most insightful biblical scholars of our time, and my interactions with those two men deeply inform my thinking. But those studies have grown rusty with disuse and it would be unfair to claim that such sturdy scholars parented such fragile offspring.
Nor do I offer these sermons because I claim any unique life experience. My life, like all lives, bears the marks of birth and victory and joy and celebration, and also the scars of death and failure and pain and loss. I am not saying my life has been any harder or better or more interesting than that of anyone else—to the contrary, it has not been, and that is precisely the point.
Years ago I knew someone who attended a conference for artists and writers, one of those settings where people talk about anguish and claim it for their own. A group around a dinner table waded into a deep discussion of the inspiration they had drawn from their painful childhoods. At last one weary listener observed: “This is all well and good, but the line of people with painful childhoods starts here and goes around the world.” This is a bitter truth, and one that also applies to those who have lived hard and complicated lives: the line starts here and goes around the world. Or, more properly, the line starts with a carpenter from Nazareth and goes around the world, and goes around still.
So these sermons make no special claims of experience, enlightenment, or expertise. And—the pun intended—Heaven knows they make no special claims of spiritual clarity or purity. The man who fell off the horse is the same man still (alas) even if he is also a different man altogether (amen). But, again, that is precisely the point. I offer these sermons because there is nothing extraordinary about me at all, and God has a stunning track record of making remarkable use of unremarkable instruments. God raises the lowly and we are amused; God saves the wretched and we are amazed; and I am tempted to think of myself as just another example of God’s love of irony and paradox.
These sermons, written by a fellow traveler, invite you to slow your horse down and to hear the sound of God walking beside you. And they invite you to brace yourself. For God may greet you as a blinding light, a clap of thunder, a burning bush, or a pillar of fire. Or God may greet you as a gentle whisper, as distant music, as the soft voice of the dying, or as a child’s tug on the sleeve. God may throw you off the horse suddenly and dramatically. Or you may fall off the horse slowly and haltingly. We are an infinitely complex species. But God has an infinitely complex understanding of how to speak to us. That is what God does: watches us; loves us; talks to us.
So stop charging forward. Pull back the reins. Find the silence that rests in all of us. Be still. And listen.
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