Scripture: Luke 2:8-14
The nativity set that my parents lovingly displayed every Christmas season left something to be desired. Over the years, the stable had loosened around the joints and had taken on a dangerously wobbly quality. I doubt that any Little Town of Bethlehem Safety Inspector would have allowed its occupancy, let alone by the Lord and Savior of Mankind.
The set featured about a dozen animals, most of which had lost at least one limb as the result of careless packing or unpacking. The only way to make the poor creatures stand up was to lean them against one of the stable walls. This explains why, for many years, I mistakenly believed that Jesus was born in an animal hospital.
My parents were more fastidious about the human figures and replaced those that turned up missing an arm or a leg or a head. But the new figurines were never the same size as the old ones—and in some instances they were quite a bit larger. This will help you understand why I affectionately nicknamed their nativity set “The Attack of the 50-Foot Shepherd.”
I take that figure as a symbol of sorts, because many of our Christmas traditions seem to make the shepherds into outsized and unreal characters. We portray them in paintings and films as improbably holy, improbably meditative, and improbably clean. We sing Christmas carols about them, including one (“Do You Hear What I Hear?”) where a shepherd and a lamb engage in a conversation, transforming the shepherd into some sort of desert-wandering Dr. Doolittle.
I love these traditions as much as anyone, but I think it is important to notice that they come at a price: they can cause us to lose sight of the shepherds’ humanity.
The gospels make clear, however, that these shepherds were ordinary human beings, just like you and me. Luke tells us that they did not react to the angel’s appearance with preternatural joy but with understandable terror. I doubt they joined arms and blissfully sang “Do you hear what I hear?” I think they probably grabbed each other by their robes and cried “Did you hear what I heard?!”
By the way, the story goes on to provide a wonderful little detail. Once the shepherds felt somewhat reassured, they did precisely what most of us would do: they talked amongst themselves before settling on a plan. These days, they would have formed a committee.
The gospel of Luke thus belies the idealized image of the shepherds as perfect disciples who eagerly received God’s word and immediately responded to God’s instructions.
Once we recapture a sense of the shepherds’ humanity we can imagine some of the thoughts and feelings they must have entertained. Surely, like all of us, every one of those shepherds had from time to time prayed for a sign of hope. Well, on that midnight clear they got a whopper. But it seems fair to assume that they did not get what they expected and they did not get it when they asked for it. In this respect, the experience of those shepherds is probably very like our own.
We can also empathize with the shepherds’ decision to go see for themselves. Perhaps that decision came from faith, perhaps from skepticism, but in any event who could resist? And then we can imagine the excitement, the mad dash to Bethlehem, the crazy search through town for a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
Now, we know how the story ends—but they didn’t. So imagine—if you possibly can—the utter and inexpressible amazement they must have experienced upon discovering exactly what the angel had described. Surely, this was an occasion for turning to each other and asking “Do you see what I see?!” Then they told all who were gathered what the angel had declared; and Mary treasured all those words, and pondered them in her heart.
But I am particularly intrigued by what happened next. It is recounted in a verse that is often overlooked—in fact, you probably didn’t miss it when you read the passage cited above. Luke tells us that “[t]he shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
I can’t help but wonder: and then what? Did the shepherds become disciples who devoted their every waking moment to spreading the “good news of great joy?” Or did they go back to their flocks and fields, treasuring and pondering like Mary?
And how did they preserve the immediacy and reality of the amazing experience they had shared? How did they avoid falling into doubt and skepticism and rationalization? How did they keep themselves from concluding that the voice of the angel was probably just the sound of the wind in the night? How did they avoid shrugging the whole thing off, telling themselves that anyone who went looking for an impoverished child in Bethlehem would surely find one? If the shepherds were human beings, just like you and me, then how did they keep from falling prey to those very human questions?
Well, we don’t know. The gospels don’t tell us. But I think the answer is this: they remembered. After all, sometimes memory—and only memory—can make faith possible. And I suppose that we are like the shepherds in this way, too.
It often feels to me that during this season we long to reconnect to something very old, something fundamental, something deeply embedded in our collective Christian memory. Certainly, Christmas brings forward-looking feelings of hope and renewal and the promise of peace on earth and goodwill toward all. But there is simply no denying the backward gravity that sets in at this time of year.
For many of us, this means memories of wonderful holidays. Every December, I re-read a delightful essay called “Recipe for Christmas” by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Coffin. Coffin grew up in Maine and argued that any Christmas worth celebrating had to correspond with his experiences as a child. According to Coffin, a decent Christmas therefore requires—among other things—a farm, an ocean, a cold snap, a big fall of snow, a blazing fireplace, a hand-cut fir tree, a horse-drawn sled, a father who tells stories and sings and shoots a goose for roasting, and a mother who strings popcorn and cooks the goose—along with three steamed puddings and twenty-five pumpkin pies.
Of course, most of us never had a Christmas that fits this description. In fact, many of us remember Christmases we’d prefer to forget. Perhaps you’re having one of those Christmases this year.
But the “good news of great joy” is that we share a memory that can sustain us—each and every one of us. It is the same memory that must have offered endless comfort to the shepherds when that miraculous night had ended and the drudgery of everyday life had resumed.
It is the memory of an angel’s voice. It is the memory of a light in the darkness.
You have heard it, even if not while you were watching your flocks. You have seen it, even if not in the sky over Bethlehem. But, as sure as I stand here, I am certain that the voice and the light have come to you, too.
Did you see what I saw?
Did you hear what I heard?
I think you did.
This week, like all the weeks after it, will do its best to distract you from the voice and the light. It will do all it can to drag you to that terrible and sad place called forgetfulness. I think that the shepherds offer us a simple, two-thousand-year-old lesson about how to contend with that challenge. And it can be summarized in just one word: remember.
Remember, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Remember the voice.
Remember the light.
Remember.
Remember.
Remember.
Amen.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Make Some Noise
Scripture: Psalm 100
Psalm 100 is, by any measure, among the most beloved and influential scriptures in the entire Bible. Its verses are familiar. It has a special place in the daily worship of Jews and members of the Anglican Church. It has been set to music by composers as diverse as Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Charles Ives, and Henry Purcell. Biblical scholar James Mays has said that, “[w]ere the statistics known, Psalm 100 would probably prove to be the song most often chanted within the history that runs from the Israelite temple on Mount Zion to the synagogues and churches spread across the earth.”
In addition, Psalm 100’s memorable phrase “joyful noise” has found its way into every corner of our popular culture. It is the name of an Indianapolis record label, a Colorado drum shop, a North Carolina community arts center, a Michigan music studio, countless bands and choral groups, dozens of preschools across the country, and a movie starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton. Clearly, we like this idea of “joyful noise.”
And yet, for all this, it might appear that there isn’t much to say about Psalm 100. It is simple, lovely, and uplifting. It is pleasant to read, more pleasant to sing, and most pleasant to hear sung well. Unlike, for example, Paul’s letter to the Romans, Psalm 100 does not demand that we undertake major interpretive excursions just to understand what it is getting at.
But it is important not to underestimate the richness of Psalm 100. There is a lot going on here. And if we look upon this old friend with fresh eyes we may see and celebrate things we had not noticed before.
Let’s start with that phrase “joyful noise.” At first blush, it might almost seem like a contradiction in terms—an oxymoron—because noise irritates us much more often than it inspires us. In this sense, “joyful noise” may remind us of other oxymoronic phrases, like “airline food,” “motel art,” “family vacation,” “organized religion,” “disco music,” and—my personal favorite—“adult male.”
If you think about it, however, you’ll realize that the Bible is actually a very noisy book. The phrase “joyful noise” appears in four other Psalms: 66, 81, 95, and 98. And the Psalms include a lot of shouting as well. Psalms 32, 35, 47, 65, and 132 all urge us to “shout for joy” to the Lord.
Indeed, the Bible is full of famous shouting. In the sixth chapter of Joshua, a great shout brings down the walls of Jericho. The third chapter of Ezra tells us that the people shouted in praise when the foundation was laid for the Temple in Jerusalem. Matthew reports that the crowds who followed Jesus into Jerusalem were shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
Of course, the Bible has a lot more in it than shouting. It also has trumpets—lots of trumpets. And some scriptural passages even include shouting and trumpets. For example, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes Jesus’ return using this language: “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven.”
So this idea of “joyful noise” is not unique to Psalm 100. It permeates the Bible. Yes, the Bible says that God speaks to us in a “still, small voice.” But it also says that God speaks “with a voice of thunder.” And, yes, the gospels tell us that when we pray we should speak softly and make no great show of it. But they also say that sometimes nothing will do but an unrestrained, full-throated, toss-your-head-back shout.
Still, Psalm 100 is singular in the energy it conveys to us and the activity it demands of us. Indeed, if you look closely at Psalm 100 you’ll notice that its few verses include not less than seven imperative verbs: “make a joyful noise”; “worship the Lord with gladness”; “come into His presence”; “know that the Lord is God”; “enter his gates with thanksgiving”; “give thanks to Him”; “bless his name.”
The only word that seems even remotely soft or passive here is “know,” which might seem to suggest some kind of intellectual process. But, in the Hebrew Bible, “knowledge of the Lord” does not just refer to what we believe; it refers to how we live. So, for example, when the book of Hosea tells us—repeatedly—that God was angry with Israel because its people had no “knowledge” of Him the point is not that they hadn’t heard of the Lord; rather, the point is that they were acting as if they hadn’t heard of the Lord.
With all this talk of knowing, making, entering, giving, worshiping, and blessing we might lose track of what the psalmist actually wants to say to us here. But, if we return to the top of the psalm and note the superscription, the point is hard to miss. This psalm, it turns out, is about how we give thanks to God.
And what the psalmist wants us to understand is that true thankfulness consists of more than a mental state. True thankfulness is expressed through how we choose to live. To paraphrase an old saying, we should live so that if we were accused of being a truly thankful people there would be enough evidence to convict us.
But there is more. The psalmist wants us to understand that living thankfully means taking your bearings, recognizing God as your True North, and setting your course accordingly. That is why biblical scholars have described Psalm 100 as an “orienting” scripture—because it directs our attention away from ourselves and toward higher things. Or, as Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann has put it, “Obviously our world is at the edge of insanity and we with it. In a world like this, [the one-hundredth] psalm is an act of sanity, whereby we may be re-clothed in our rightful minds. Life is no longer self-grounded without thanks but rooted in thanks.”
On September 8, 1860, a boat called the Lady Elgin floundered on Lake Michigan near the Northwestern University campus. A ministerial student named Edward Spencer rushed to its aid and rescued some seventeen people. Spencer’s health was so permanently damaged from the exposure that he was forced to discontinue his preparation for the ministry. Surely, the people he rescued were grateful. But, years later, when Spencer died, his obituary reported that not one of the seventeen people he saved had ever bothered to thank him.
It is a good and pretty thing to have thankful thoughts and thankful hearts. But Psalm 100 tells us that we must also have thankful lives. And it tells us that we must express our thankfulness with all the “joyful noise” we can muster.
Amen.
Psalm 100 is, by any measure, among the most beloved and influential scriptures in the entire Bible. Its verses are familiar. It has a special place in the daily worship of Jews and members of the Anglican Church. It has been set to music by composers as diverse as Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Charles Ives, and Henry Purcell. Biblical scholar James Mays has said that, “[w]ere the statistics known, Psalm 100 would probably prove to be the song most often chanted within the history that runs from the Israelite temple on Mount Zion to the synagogues and churches spread across the earth.”
In addition, Psalm 100’s memorable phrase “joyful noise” has found its way into every corner of our popular culture. It is the name of an Indianapolis record label, a Colorado drum shop, a North Carolina community arts center, a Michigan music studio, countless bands and choral groups, dozens of preschools across the country, and a movie starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton. Clearly, we like this idea of “joyful noise.”
And yet, for all this, it might appear that there isn’t much to say about Psalm 100. It is simple, lovely, and uplifting. It is pleasant to read, more pleasant to sing, and most pleasant to hear sung well. Unlike, for example, Paul’s letter to the Romans, Psalm 100 does not demand that we undertake major interpretive excursions just to understand what it is getting at.
But it is important not to underestimate the richness of Psalm 100. There is a lot going on here. And if we look upon this old friend with fresh eyes we may see and celebrate things we had not noticed before.
Let’s start with that phrase “joyful noise.” At first blush, it might almost seem like a contradiction in terms—an oxymoron—because noise irritates us much more often than it inspires us. In this sense, “joyful noise” may remind us of other oxymoronic phrases, like “airline food,” “motel art,” “family vacation,” “organized religion,” “disco music,” and—my personal favorite—“adult male.”
If you think about it, however, you’ll realize that the Bible is actually a very noisy book. The phrase “joyful noise” appears in four other Psalms: 66, 81, 95, and 98. And the Psalms include a lot of shouting as well. Psalms 32, 35, 47, 65, and 132 all urge us to “shout for joy” to the Lord.
Indeed, the Bible is full of famous shouting. In the sixth chapter of Joshua, a great shout brings down the walls of Jericho. The third chapter of Ezra tells us that the people shouted in praise when the foundation was laid for the Temple in Jerusalem. Matthew reports that the crowds who followed Jesus into Jerusalem were shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
Of course, the Bible has a lot more in it than shouting. It also has trumpets—lots of trumpets. And some scriptural passages even include shouting and trumpets. For example, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes Jesus’ return using this language: “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven.”
So this idea of “joyful noise” is not unique to Psalm 100. It permeates the Bible. Yes, the Bible says that God speaks to us in a “still, small voice.” But it also says that God speaks “with a voice of thunder.” And, yes, the gospels tell us that when we pray we should speak softly and make no great show of it. But they also say that sometimes nothing will do but an unrestrained, full-throated, toss-your-head-back shout.
Still, Psalm 100 is singular in the energy it conveys to us and the activity it demands of us. Indeed, if you look closely at Psalm 100 you’ll notice that its few verses include not less than seven imperative verbs: “make a joyful noise”; “worship the Lord with gladness”; “come into His presence”; “know that the Lord is God”; “enter his gates with thanksgiving”; “give thanks to Him”; “bless his name.”
The only word that seems even remotely soft or passive here is “know,” which might seem to suggest some kind of intellectual process. But, in the Hebrew Bible, “knowledge of the Lord” does not just refer to what we believe; it refers to how we live. So, for example, when the book of Hosea tells us—repeatedly—that God was angry with Israel because its people had no “knowledge” of Him the point is not that they hadn’t heard of the Lord; rather, the point is that they were acting as if they hadn’t heard of the Lord.
With all this talk of knowing, making, entering, giving, worshiping, and blessing we might lose track of what the psalmist actually wants to say to us here. But, if we return to the top of the psalm and note the superscription, the point is hard to miss. This psalm, it turns out, is about how we give thanks to God.
And what the psalmist wants us to understand is that true thankfulness consists of more than a mental state. True thankfulness is expressed through how we choose to live. To paraphrase an old saying, we should live so that if we were accused of being a truly thankful people there would be enough evidence to convict us.
But there is more. The psalmist wants us to understand that living thankfully means taking your bearings, recognizing God as your True North, and setting your course accordingly. That is why biblical scholars have described Psalm 100 as an “orienting” scripture—because it directs our attention away from ourselves and toward higher things. Or, as Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann has put it, “Obviously our world is at the edge of insanity and we with it. In a world like this, [the one-hundredth] psalm is an act of sanity, whereby we may be re-clothed in our rightful minds. Life is no longer self-grounded without thanks but rooted in thanks.”
On September 8, 1860, a boat called the Lady Elgin floundered on Lake Michigan near the Northwestern University campus. A ministerial student named Edward Spencer rushed to its aid and rescued some seventeen people. Spencer’s health was so permanently damaged from the exposure that he was forced to discontinue his preparation for the ministry. Surely, the people he rescued were grateful. But, years later, when Spencer died, his obituary reported that not one of the seventeen people he saved had ever bothered to thank him.
It is a good and pretty thing to have thankful thoughts and thankful hearts. But Psalm 100 tells us that we must also have thankful lives. And it tells us that we must express our thankfulness with all the “joyful noise” we can muster.
Amen.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Multiplication Tables
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:9-12
A great old story goes like this.
There were two elderly sisters who lived together in a big, crumbling house they had inherited from their parents. One had deep religious convictions and believed that God blessed her and met her every need. The other had nothing but anger, bitterness, and skepticism in her heart and resented her sister’s faith. In fact, they had only one thing in common: neither had much money.
One day, a beggar seeking help rang their doorbell. The faithful sister answered, listened to his sad story, and managed to find just enough food in the pantry to make him a sandwich. The grateful man thanked her, but, noticing the dilapidated surroundings, asked if she could spare what she’d given him. “God will take care of me,” she answered.
The bitter sister saw what happened and could not control her wrath. In a fit of spite, she went to the jar where she kept her meager savings and shook out every last penny. She marched to a local store and purchased enough groceries to fill four big bags. Then she put the bags on the front porch of their house, rang the doorbell, and hid behind a bush.
When the faithful sister came to the door she could not believe her eyes. “Praise the Lord!” she exclaimed at she stared at the overflowing bags. “Look how God has multiplied the small kindness that I did for a stranger!”
On hearing these words, the other sister stepped from behind the bush and laughed mockingly. “You’re such an idiot,” she said. “I’m the one who bought all this stuff!”
For a moment, the faithful sister stood speechless. Then she started to weep. “Oh, God,” she said between her tears, “you are even more amazing than I had believed. Not only did you provide me with all these beautiful groceries. You actually got the Devil to pay for them!”
Like the faithful sister, we believe that God provides for us and that God multiplies exponentially the good that we do for others. Indeed, we encounter this theme over and over again in the New Testament—for example, in this beautiful passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. And we find it in some of the miracles performed by Jesus.
Now, in my view, whenever we approach one of the miracles of Jesus we should remember how the Gospel of John ends. It concludes: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did. And, if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain all the books that would be written.”
In other words, the New Testament recounts only some of the miraculous deeds that Jesus performed. And it seems fair to assume that those miracles were remembered and retold because they are particularly important and instructive. The reported miracles of Jesus therefore deserve our attention not just because of their astonishing qualities, but because they have something deeply significant to teach us.
Those miracles can be analyzed and categorized in different ways. We might divide them into groups based upon what Jesus did, or when in his ministry He did it, or who received the benefit of the miracle. But, for purposes of this sermon, I want to separate His miracles into two categories that might not have occurred to you.
Some of the miracles performed by Jesus move a person from death to life or from illness to health. We might think, for instance, of the raising of Lazarus or the healing of the Centurion’s servant. In these instances, God’s love lifts someone from the lowest point imaginable to that place we call survival.
In other miracles, though, Jesus moves people from survival to that place we call abundance. Consider, for example, the miracle where Jesus feeds thousands of people by multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread. Importantly, Jesus did not just provide people with enough to eat; He gave them more than enough. The gospels tell us there were twelve baskets of leftovers!
And this abundance is qualitative as well as quantitative. For instance, at the wedding feast at Cana Jesus does not just turn the water into wine; he turns it into really good wine, much better than what they’d been drinking. Indeed, it probably wouldn’t strike us as much of a miracle if one guest turned to another and said “gee, this tastes like the stuff I get at the grocery store that comes in a box.”
Now, these “abundance miracles” have three important things in common.
First, the gospels make a great deal of them. The story of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes shows up in all of the four gospels—in some gospels more than once. Very few stories receive similar emphasis.
Second, these miracles relate to food and drink. This should not surprise us. We all understand that feeding others serves as an expression of love.
As a personal aside, I will note that few people understand this as well as the big, boisterous Italian family that I joined when I married Lisa. Her ninety-plus-year-old grandmother, who I adore, treats a vacant spot on your plate like a personal insult. I remember one afternoon where I started to fill up a bit after feasting on pasta, sandwiches, meatballs, and ribs. As I paused to catch my breath, her grandmother appeared at my elbow and offered me a donut.
Alas, the idea that food is love rules in our own home. Indeed, the priority it receives is reflected in a sign that Lisa, like her mother and her grandmother, has hanging in the kitchen. The sign says “mangia e statti zitto.” Roughly translated, this means “shut up and eat.”
A third, and critical, point about these miracles is that they are given to the community—not to any particular individual. The community shares in the nourishment and in the abundance and in the joy that they bring. There is no miracle in the gospels called “Jesus feeds the five guys who worked the hardest” or “Jesus feeds the ten people with the most impressive resumes.”
In my opinion, this is where the so-called “prosperity gospel” that you hear televangelists talk about loses its way. When we focus on abundance for us we’re being selfish. When we focus on abundance for others we’re being selfless. And giving some sense of abundance to those who spend most of their lives striving just to survive can make a huge difference.
I recently heard an interview with a psychologist who had closely watched the ordeal of the Chilean miners trapped for months before being rescued. He said that there was a particular moment when he realized that the miners were psychologically healthier than he might have thought. A mechanism had been put in place to get food to the miners while they were still underground; some peaches were delivered; the miners tasted them, didn't like them, and sent them back. This was a wonderful sign because it showed that they had moved from surviving to living.
We see an expression of this idea in the way our own church does business. When this church volunteers to bring food to a shelter we typically provide dessert in addition to the basics of meat, potatoes, and vegetables. We do not do this because brownies and ice cream sandwiches are two of the four major food groups. We do this because we understand that offering a bit of abundance to those who have very little is good for their souls—and for ours.
•
I suppose that Sara Miles, who wrote the book Take This Bread, does not fit the stereotype of a churchgoer. Her parents were strident atheists. And for most of her young adult life her views about religion vacillated between indifference and hostility.
Then, one day, for reasons she still does not understand, she walked into a church and took communion. In that instant, her life was changed. She became a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. She believed, and knew that she had been fed and was called to feed others. So, in the year 2000, she opened a food pantry at an Episcopal Church in San Francisco.
The small piece of bread and slight sip of wine Sara Miles consumed that morning has, shall we say, multiplied. St. Gregory’s food pantry now buys between nine and twelve tons of food each week. And the pantry distributes it—for free—to anyone who comes and asks. It turns out that's a lot of people, about 800 per week, all fed as the result of a single, Christ-like impulse.
And so it goes. We replay the miracle of the loaves and fish over and over again, each in our own way, each act of kindness and generosity multiplied by the relentless and divine mathematics of love and grace. We labor to bring every last person on this tired old planet to the point where they can survive. On occasion, we even manage to show them a little of that glorious thing we will all experience when the kingdom of God has been finally and fully made known: that thing called abundance.
The Lord is watching.
The people are waiting.
The table is set.
What will you bring to it?
Amen
A great old story goes like this.
There were two elderly sisters who lived together in a big, crumbling house they had inherited from their parents. One had deep religious convictions and believed that God blessed her and met her every need. The other had nothing but anger, bitterness, and skepticism in her heart and resented her sister’s faith. In fact, they had only one thing in common: neither had much money.
One day, a beggar seeking help rang their doorbell. The faithful sister answered, listened to his sad story, and managed to find just enough food in the pantry to make him a sandwich. The grateful man thanked her, but, noticing the dilapidated surroundings, asked if she could spare what she’d given him. “God will take care of me,” she answered.
The bitter sister saw what happened and could not control her wrath. In a fit of spite, she went to the jar where she kept her meager savings and shook out every last penny. She marched to a local store and purchased enough groceries to fill four big bags. Then she put the bags on the front porch of their house, rang the doorbell, and hid behind a bush.
When the faithful sister came to the door she could not believe her eyes. “Praise the Lord!” she exclaimed at she stared at the overflowing bags. “Look how God has multiplied the small kindness that I did for a stranger!”
On hearing these words, the other sister stepped from behind the bush and laughed mockingly. “You’re such an idiot,” she said. “I’m the one who bought all this stuff!”
For a moment, the faithful sister stood speechless. Then she started to weep. “Oh, God,” she said between her tears, “you are even more amazing than I had believed. Not only did you provide me with all these beautiful groceries. You actually got the Devil to pay for them!”
Like the faithful sister, we believe that God provides for us and that God multiplies exponentially the good that we do for others. Indeed, we encounter this theme over and over again in the New Testament—for example, in this beautiful passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. And we find it in some of the miracles performed by Jesus.
Now, in my view, whenever we approach one of the miracles of Jesus we should remember how the Gospel of John ends. It concludes: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did. And, if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain all the books that would be written.”
In other words, the New Testament recounts only some of the miraculous deeds that Jesus performed. And it seems fair to assume that those miracles were remembered and retold because they are particularly important and instructive. The reported miracles of Jesus therefore deserve our attention not just because of their astonishing qualities, but because they have something deeply significant to teach us.
Those miracles can be analyzed and categorized in different ways. We might divide them into groups based upon what Jesus did, or when in his ministry He did it, or who received the benefit of the miracle. But, for purposes of this sermon, I want to separate His miracles into two categories that might not have occurred to you.
Some of the miracles performed by Jesus move a person from death to life or from illness to health. We might think, for instance, of the raising of Lazarus or the healing of the Centurion’s servant. In these instances, God’s love lifts someone from the lowest point imaginable to that place we call survival.
In other miracles, though, Jesus moves people from survival to that place we call abundance. Consider, for example, the miracle where Jesus feeds thousands of people by multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread. Importantly, Jesus did not just provide people with enough to eat; He gave them more than enough. The gospels tell us there were twelve baskets of leftovers!
And this abundance is qualitative as well as quantitative. For instance, at the wedding feast at Cana Jesus does not just turn the water into wine; he turns it into really good wine, much better than what they’d been drinking. Indeed, it probably wouldn’t strike us as much of a miracle if one guest turned to another and said “gee, this tastes like the stuff I get at the grocery store that comes in a box.”
Now, these “abundance miracles” have three important things in common.
First, the gospels make a great deal of them. The story of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes shows up in all of the four gospels—in some gospels more than once. Very few stories receive similar emphasis.
Second, these miracles relate to food and drink. This should not surprise us. We all understand that feeding others serves as an expression of love.
As a personal aside, I will note that few people understand this as well as the big, boisterous Italian family that I joined when I married Lisa. Her ninety-plus-year-old grandmother, who I adore, treats a vacant spot on your plate like a personal insult. I remember one afternoon where I started to fill up a bit after feasting on pasta, sandwiches, meatballs, and ribs. As I paused to catch my breath, her grandmother appeared at my elbow and offered me a donut.
Alas, the idea that food is love rules in our own home. Indeed, the priority it receives is reflected in a sign that Lisa, like her mother and her grandmother, has hanging in the kitchen. The sign says “mangia e statti zitto.” Roughly translated, this means “shut up and eat.”
A third, and critical, point about these miracles is that they are given to the community—not to any particular individual. The community shares in the nourishment and in the abundance and in the joy that they bring. There is no miracle in the gospels called “Jesus feeds the five guys who worked the hardest” or “Jesus feeds the ten people with the most impressive resumes.”
In my opinion, this is where the so-called “prosperity gospel” that you hear televangelists talk about loses its way. When we focus on abundance for us we’re being selfish. When we focus on abundance for others we’re being selfless. And giving some sense of abundance to those who spend most of their lives striving just to survive can make a huge difference.
I recently heard an interview with a psychologist who had closely watched the ordeal of the Chilean miners trapped for months before being rescued. He said that there was a particular moment when he realized that the miners were psychologically healthier than he might have thought. A mechanism had been put in place to get food to the miners while they were still underground; some peaches were delivered; the miners tasted them, didn't like them, and sent them back. This was a wonderful sign because it showed that they had moved from surviving to living.
We see an expression of this idea in the way our own church does business. When this church volunteers to bring food to a shelter we typically provide dessert in addition to the basics of meat, potatoes, and vegetables. We do not do this because brownies and ice cream sandwiches are two of the four major food groups. We do this because we understand that offering a bit of abundance to those who have very little is good for their souls—and for ours.
•
I suppose that Sara Miles, who wrote the book Take This Bread, does not fit the stereotype of a churchgoer. Her parents were strident atheists. And for most of her young adult life her views about religion vacillated between indifference and hostility.
Then, one day, for reasons she still does not understand, she walked into a church and took communion. In that instant, her life was changed. She became a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. She believed, and knew that she had been fed and was called to feed others. So, in the year 2000, she opened a food pantry at an Episcopal Church in San Francisco.
The small piece of bread and slight sip of wine Sara Miles consumed that morning has, shall we say, multiplied. St. Gregory’s food pantry now buys between nine and twelve tons of food each week. And the pantry distributes it—for free—to anyone who comes and asks. It turns out that's a lot of people, about 800 per week, all fed as the result of a single, Christ-like impulse.
And so it goes. We replay the miracle of the loaves and fish over and over again, each in our own way, each act of kindness and generosity multiplied by the relentless and divine mathematics of love and grace. We labor to bring every last person on this tired old planet to the point where they can survive. On occasion, we even manage to show them a little of that glorious thing we will all experience when the kingdom of God has been finally and fully made known: that thing called abundance.
The Lord is watching.
The people are waiting.
The table is set.
What will you bring to it?
Amen
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Calling All Angels
Scripture: 1 Timothy 2:1-7
It was a sunny Saturday morning and my parents were looking forward to getting the weekly grocery shopping out of the way. As they walked up the steep parking lot toward the supermarket, they approached a woman who was steering a cart down the slope toward her station wagon. Her cart hit a bump and an apple bounced out and began rolling away.
Without thinking, my father snatched the apple up and gently tossed it to the woman. She caught the apple in her hands, smiled, and thanked him warmly. He beamed with self-satisfaction.
Unfortunately, when the woman let go of the cart it took off down the hill. She and my father ran after it. Other people tried to grab it as it raced by. One of those well-intentioned individuals let go of their own cart in an effort to intercept hers. That cart took off, too.
The carts careened down the parking lot. Like a couple of All-American running backs, they faked out all of those in pursuit, wildly shifting direction back and forth as the flimsy wheels hit cracks and ridges in the pavement. The customers chasing after them did their best to keep up, but they had to dodge the crazy litter of groceries that the carts were leaving in their wake. As you might imagine, this episode did not end well, despite the fact that it began with a kind and gracious gesture.
It has always seemed to me that the events of that bright weekend morning say something interesting about human nature. After all, the incident unfolded as it did precisely because my father tossed the apple without thinking and because the other customer grabbed for the woman’s cart without considering what might happen next. Both of them acted out of an immediate, spontaneous, almost instinctual impulse to come to someone’s aid.
This happens all the time, and often on a much grander and more spectacular scale. Perhaps some of you know a regular feature of Reader’s Digest called “Everyday Heroes” that catalogues such events. The magazine recently told the story of a Minnesota man who dove in front of a moving train to save a woman who had fallen onto the tracks after fainting. In another issue, it described how three female college students rushed into the perilous waters of a Florida bay to save a drowning fisherman.
Some of these stories actually involve multiple layers of spontaneous, self-sacrificing heroism. For example, the magazine profiled a Kentucky truck driver who crashed his rig in order to keep from crushing the family in the minivan that had stopped in front of him. And then it went on to spotlight the husband and wife who were driving by, saw the wreckage, rushed to the overturned rig, and at the last possible second hauled the trucker from his burning vehicle.
We human beings are a baffling, complicated lot. The daily news brings us abundant evidence of our weakness and willfulness and selfishness and sinfulness. As the grand old hymn puts it, we are “prone to wander” and “prone to leave the God [we] love.” The light came to earth, the Gospel of John declares, but something persists inside us all that loves the darkness.
Yet there is abundant evidence that a spark of divine goodness burns inside of us as well. The many acts of kindness, generosity, and self-sacrifice that we witness seem to confirm the assurance, found in Second Timothy, that God endowed us with “a spirit of power and love and self-discipline.” In a passage we all know well, Jesus invited us to find that indwelling light, to bring it out into the world, and to let it shine before others so that they might see the good works that it inspires.
Still, we cannot content ourselves with saying that we will listen for the voice within that urges us to do good things and follow it. There is, after all, nothing uniquely Christian about helping other people—we hold no monopoly on good deeds. The question therefore arises of what, if anything, distinguishes a Christian who serves food to the homeless from an agnostic shelter volunteer who does the same thing. If, as the hymn suggests, “They will know we are Christians by our love,” then we might fairly ask how our love differs from that of anyone else. And the answer, I want to suggest to you, lies not in what we do but in why we do it.
Certainly, we do good things for some of the same reasons non-Christians do. We are moved by compassion. We find such service gratifying. We want to do our part to promote social and economic justice. We seek the blessing of an income tax deduction. But the scriptures invite us to engage in good works for reasons that are much more important and fundamental to our identities as followers of Jesus Christ.
One of those reasons relates directly to our belief in the doctrine of grace. We believe in a God who loves us, reaches out to us, and cares for us no matter who we are, what we have done, or where we have wandered. It is a gift we cannot earn or repay—but we can act as if we wanted to try. So we go forth into this world loving and caring for people just as we find them because this is what God has done for us.
Furthermore, the gospels assure us that when we do these things we do not just show our love for God’s children. We show our love for God himself. I was reminded of this just last weekend, when I had the privilege of helping members of this congregation serve food to those in need at the Jackson Interfaith Shelter.
I always have the same experience when I do this sort of thing. I look at the people and wonder about their stories. Where did they come from? What brought them here? Were they chased to this place by poverty or domestic violence or substance abuse or mental illness—or simple misfortune? Do they still dream—or do their nightmares leave no room for that? Will a day come when I will be on the other side of the counter, standing in line with them?
Without fail, as I am pondering these things a passage from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew comes into my mind. I hear Jesus reminding us that when we give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty it is just as though we are doing it for Him. And, then, my eyes are opened and I see—in each and every one of their faces—the presence of the living God.
This perspective does not just inform the action; it defines the action. You see, in our faith, putting a piece of chicken on a homeless child’s plate is not just conducive to theology. It is theology.
Such actions are also expressions of our thankfulness. As in all of life, what we do speaks louder than what we say. Saying we are grateful shows we are polite. Living like we are grateful shows we are indebted. It shows we are committed. It shows we are transformed—or, at least, that we are working on being so.
I’ve been reading a book by N.T. Wright, a Bishop in the Church of England and a leading contemporary Bible scholar, called After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. The book is filled with nuance and I cannot do it justice here. But I want to offer a summary of one of Wright’s central points because I think it is so intriguing and inspiring—and maybe a little daunting.
Christians, Wright observes, live in a state of anticipation. As an article of faith, we believe that God’s plan plays out through a great, unfolding drama that will culminate in the ushering in of a new kingdom. And we believe that God invites us to have a part in that kingdom.
In this life, we therefore have—in Wright’s words—an “astonishing vocation.” We are called to be “genuine, image-bearing, God-reflecting human beings” who seek to learn “the language of God’s new world.” Wright is a scholarly, sophisticated, and subtle thinker so he would not put it this way, but since I am none of these things, I will: my friends, we are angels in training.
And this holds true for all of us because, as Paul’s letter to Timothy declares, our God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” All of us have value. All of us have something to contribute. All of us are summoned to come into the light and into the life that God calls us to live.
Think of it this way. What God wants and what the world wants are often at odds. But what God wants and what the world needs never are. And what God wants—and what the world needs—is for all angels to report for duty: right here; right now.
So dust off some wings. Try them on. And do what you can to be messengers and instruments of God’s peace, and love, and grace.
The alarm is sounding.
And God is calling all angels.
Even those in training.
Even me.
Even you.
Amen.
It was a sunny Saturday morning and my parents were looking forward to getting the weekly grocery shopping out of the way. As they walked up the steep parking lot toward the supermarket, they approached a woman who was steering a cart down the slope toward her station wagon. Her cart hit a bump and an apple bounced out and began rolling away.
Without thinking, my father snatched the apple up and gently tossed it to the woman. She caught the apple in her hands, smiled, and thanked him warmly. He beamed with self-satisfaction.
Unfortunately, when the woman let go of the cart it took off down the hill. She and my father ran after it. Other people tried to grab it as it raced by. One of those well-intentioned individuals let go of their own cart in an effort to intercept hers. That cart took off, too.
The carts careened down the parking lot. Like a couple of All-American running backs, they faked out all of those in pursuit, wildly shifting direction back and forth as the flimsy wheels hit cracks and ridges in the pavement. The customers chasing after them did their best to keep up, but they had to dodge the crazy litter of groceries that the carts were leaving in their wake. As you might imagine, this episode did not end well, despite the fact that it began with a kind and gracious gesture.
It has always seemed to me that the events of that bright weekend morning say something interesting about human nature. After all, the incident unfolded as it did precisely because my father tossed the apple without thinking and because the other customer grabbed for the woman’s cart without considering what might happen next. Both of them acted out of an immediate, spontaneous, almost instinctual impulse to come to someone’s aid.
This happens all the time, and often on a much grander and more spectacular scale. Perhaps some of you know a regular feature of Reader’s Digest called “Everyday Heroes” that catalogues such events. The magazine recently told the story of a Minnesota man who dove in front of a moving train to save a woman who had fallen onto the tracks after fainting. In another issue, it described how three female college students rushed into the perilous waters of a Florida bay to save a drowning fisherman.
Some of these stories actually involve multiple layers of spontaneous, self-sacrificing heroism. For example, the magazine profiled a Kentucky truck driver who crashed his rig in order to keep from crushing the family in the minivan that had stopped in front of him. And then it went on to spotlight the husband and wife who were driving by, saw the wreckage, rushed to the overturned rig, and at the last possible second hauled the trucker from his burning vehicle.
We human beings are a baffling, complicated lot. The daily news brings us abundant evidence of our weakness and willfulness and selfishness and sinfulness. As the grand old hymn puts it, we are “prone to wander” and “prone to leave the God [we] love.” The light came to earth, the Gospel of John declares, but something persists inside us all that loves the darkness.
Yet there is abundant evidence that a spark of divine goodness burns inside of us as well. The many acts of kindness, generosity, and self-sacrifice that we witness seem to confirm the assurance, found in Second Timothy, that God endowed us with “a spirit of power and love and self-discipline.” In a passage we all know well, Jesus invited us to find that indwelling light, to bring it out into the world, and to let it shine before others so that they might see the good works that it inspires.
Still, we cannot content ourselves with saying that we will listen for the voice within that urges us to do good things and follow it. There is, after all, nothing uniquely Christian about helping other people—we hold no monopoly on good deeds. The question therefore arises of what, if anything, distinguishes a Christian who serves food to the homeless from an agnostic shelter volunteer who does the same thing. If, as the hymn suggests, “They will know we are Christians by our love,” then we might fairly ask how our love differs from that of anyone else. And the answer, I want to suggest to you, lies not in what we do but in why we do it.
Certainly, we do good things for some of the same reasons non-Christians do. We are moved by compassion. We find such service gratifying. We want to do our part to promote social and economic justice. We seek the blessing of an income tax deduction. But the scriptures invite us to engage in good works for reasons that are much more important and fundamental to our identities as followers of Jesus Christ.
One of those reasons relates directly to our belief in the doctrine of grace. We believe in a God who loves us, reaches out to us, and cares for us no matter who we are, what we have done, or where we have wandered. It is a gift we cannot earn or repay—but we can act as if we wanted to try. So we go forth into this world loving and caring for people just as we find them because this is what God has done for us.
Furthermore, the gospels assure us that when we do these things we do not just show our love for God’s children. We show our love for God himself. I was reminded of this just last weekend, when I had the privilege of helping members of this congregation serve food to those in need at the Jackson Interfaith Shelter.
I always have the same experience when I do this sort of thing. I look at the people and wonder about their stories. Where did they come from? What brought them here? Were they chased to this place by poverty or domestic violence or substance abuse or mental illness—or simple misfortune? Do they still dream—or do their nightmares leave no room for that? Will a day come when I will be on the other side of the counter, standing in line with them?
Without fail, as I am pondering these things a passage from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew comes into my mind. I hear Jesus reminding us that when we give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty it is just as though we are doing it for Him. And, then, my eyes are opened and I see—in each and every one of their faces—the presence of the living God.
This perspective does not just inform the action; it defines the action. You see, in our faith, putting a piece of chicken on a homeless child’s plate is not just conducive to theology. It is theology.
Such actions are also expressions of our thankfulness. As in all of life, what we do speaks louder than what we say. Saying we are grateful shows we are polite. Living like we are grateful shows we are indebted. It shows we are committed. It shows we are transformed—or, at least, that we are working on being so.
I’ve been reading a book by N.T. Wright, a Bishop in the Church of England and a leading contemporary Bible scholar, called After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. The book is filled with nuance and I cannot do it justice here. But I want to offer a summary of one of Wright’s central points because I think it is so intriguing and inspiring—and maybe a little daunting.
Christians, Wright observes, live in a state of anticipation. As an article of faith, we believe that God’s plan plays out through a great, unfolding drama that will culminate in the ushering in of a new kingdom. And we believe that God invites us to have a part in that kingdom.
In this life, we therefore have—in Wright’s words—an “astonishing vocation.” We are called to be “genuine, image-bearing, God-reflecting human beings” who seek to learn “the language of God’s new world.” Wright is a scholarly, sophisticated, and subtle thinker so he would not put it this way, but since I am none of these things, I will: my friends, we are angels in training.
And this holds true for all of us because, as Paul’s letter to Timothy declares, our God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” All of us have value. All of us have something to contribute. All of us are summoned to come into the light and into the life that God calls us to live.
Think of it this way. What God wants and what the world wants are often at odds. But what God wants and what the world needs never are. And what God wants—and what the world needs—is for all angels to report for duty: right here; right now.
So dust off some wings. Try them on. And do what you can to be messengers and instruments of God’s peace, and love, and grace.
The alarm is sounding.
And God is calling all angels.
Even those in training.
Even me.
Even you.
Amen.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
And Don't Let Go
Scripture: Genesis 32:22-31
My grandfather was a man of faith in matters large and small.
With respect to larger issues: He believed in Jesus Christ. He believed in the Methodist church. He believed in hard and honest work. He believed in helping the poor. And he believed that my grandmother was the most beautiful woman in the world and that God had brought them together.
With respect to smaller issues: He believed in the nutritional value of hard-boiled eggs and cottage cheese. He believed in the St. Louis Cardinals. He believed that my grandmother could not smell the cigars that he smoked when she wasn’t looking. And he believed that professional “big time wrestling” was real.
I remember, at the tender age of five, watching wrestling with him on television. He had a very old television set, perhaps the first in the entire universe, and it was about the size of an aircraft carrier. On top of it sat a giant set of rabbit ear antennas that were wrapped in aluminum foil to achieve “better reception.”
My grandfather cheered for the good guys and cursed the bad guys and I was puzzled by his habit of reaching over to cover my ears after he had sworn. But, other than that, everything was clear and simple. The good guys were very good; the bad guys were very bad; and the moral clarity of the struggle was heightened by the fact that the wrestling occurred in black and white.
The story of Jacob’s wrestling match, which we find in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis, is perhaps not so clear and simple. Hebrew Bible scholar Terence Fretheim has observed that the meaning of this text “is so elusive that a variety of interpretations is credible.”
Indeed, the text invites many questions and possible answers: Who was Jacob, anyway? Who was he wrestling with? Why does Jacob get injured? Why does the man give Jacob his blessing? And, of course: What are we supposed to learn from this story?
Well, let’s start with Jacob himself. We know Jacob was a patriarch of the Hebrew people, a man much favored of God, and the one who the Lord blessed and called Israel. We tend to remember him as a strong, great, and giant figure.
But Jacob had his weaknesses and his small and petty moments. He came into this world by hanging onto the heel of his brother Esau during the birthing process—a predictive if inauspicious beginning. While Esau became a great hunter, Jacob stayed at home and lazed around. He manipulated his brother into giving up his birthright. And he lied to his father.
It could be argued that Jacob’s foibles distinguish him from a lot of the other major players we meet in the Bible. Many biblical figures show us both greatness and weakness—David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul, for example. But some of their struggles may not feel much like our struggles.
Most of us do not use forced labor to build temples to foreign gods—like Solomon did. Most of us do not have a soldier under our command sent to the front of a battle so our sworn enemies can kill him and clear the way for us to marry his wife—like David did. Most of us do not execute the evil policies of an ruthless empire—like Paul did. There is something grand and spectacular and Shakespearean about flaws of this magnitude.
Jacob, in contrast, screws up in ways that are more petty and less glamorous. He thinks only of himself and what he wants. He resorts to manipulation, trickery, and deceit when it suits his purposes. He hurts people he loves and who love him.
But then God comes to him at a time when Jacob has gotten himself into such a desperate place that he is literally sleeping on the ground and using a stone for a pillow. The Lord speaks to him and brings him a vision and Jacob understands that he must change his life. So he sets out to make peace with the brother he betrayed. And, along the way, a “man” appears in the middle of the night and wrestles him to the ground.
Now, who is this man? Well, several very different answers present themselves. One answer is that Jacob was wrestling with God. A lot of textual evidence supports this interpretation. Jacob identifies the man as God. The name the man gives Jacob—Israel—means “he struggles with God.” And the man’s puzzling insistence that the encounter end before morning becomes less mysterious if we remember the biblical precept that Jacob could not have survived seeing God face to face in the full light of day.
But this interpretation raises a fairly nettlesome question: how could Jacob, a mere human being (and not a particularly powerful or impressive one at that), wrestle God to a standstill? We might argue that God was simply toying with Jacob—just as parents pretend to grapple with their children on the living room floor—but the scripture does not accommodate that view. Remember, the Bible says that the man “saw that he could not overpower Jacob.”
This may explain a second interpretation—or, perhaps more accurately, a tradition—that shows up in sermons and art and literature and that depicts this encounter as one between Jacob and an “angel.” Of course, this approach has problems of its own. One whopper is that it doesn’t square with the text. After all, the Bible knows how to tell us when it is talking about an angel (by saying "hey, this was an angel") but it doesn't do that here.
Furthermore, this explanation asks us to believe that a human being could wrestle an angel into submission. Does that seem likely to you? Well, give it a try, if you like, and let me know how it goes.
So some scholars have suggested a third possible answer to the question of who this man is. This man, they say, is indeed God, but God in truly human form. They emphasize that, in this story, God does not appear to Jacob “in all of God’s glory.” Instead, God comes to Jacob as a man and “stoop[s] to encounter Jacob at his own level.” Terence Fretheim writes: “God does not play games with Jacob; God actually struggles with him … God commits to a genuine encounter, entering deeply into the struggle with Jacob with a kind of power that doesn’t simply overpower him.”
Reasonable people can disagree, but I find this idea attractive for a number of reasons. It is consistent with the text. It resonates with all of the other passages in the Bible that portray the extremes to which God will go in pursuit of us. And, finally—and I think this is particularly interesting—this interpretation understands the story as one that, like many other texts in the Hebrew Bible, anticipates the figure of Jesus Christ. After all, the mysterious man is at once wholly human, because he can genuinely struggle with Jacob, and wholly divine, because he can ultimately prevail over and bless Jacob as well.
What of the struggle itself? What are we to make of that? Maybe the point here is simply that all of us will wrestle with God at one time or another. And, like Jacob, we may find ourselves in the midst of such a struggle before we know it and when we least expect it. Many different circumstances might bring us to the ground: illness; financial distress; depression; addiction; the loss of someone we love—just listening to the evening news can usher some people into a full-fledged religious crisis. Certainly, the story can be read as saying that all of our paths may lead us to a place where we find ourselves wrestling with God. But I believe that it says much more, as well.
In my view, this story also says something important about the physicality of faith. We tend to conceive of our struggles with God as mental and emotional processes. But what happened to Jacob didn’t happen in his head: he had the wrenched hip to prove it. No, this story is about throwing all that we are and all that we have—every atom of our being—into our engagement with God. Or, as Jesus reminded the lawyer, we are summoned to love the Lord with “all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength.”
This is not only essential theology. This is brilliant psychology. Because, sometimes, the only way we can prevail in our struggles with faith is to act as if we had it. And when we do, something incredible often happens. When we love, and forgive, and serve, and visit the sick, and feed the hungry, and tend our flocks it is as if we reach out and grab a hold of God. And, when we do that, God grabs back.
And that leads me to what I believe is the central meaning of this story: that we worship a God who loves to engage with us, who loves to struggle with us, who loves to have us wrapped up in his everlasting arms. In this sense, the most tragic mistake we can make is to disengage, to abandon the struggle, and to walk away.
Surely, one of the saddest stories in the Gospels is that of the rich young man who asked Jesus what he would have to do to be perfect. On hearing the unwelcome news that he would need to sell everything he possessed and give the money to the poor, the disenchanted youth turned his back on Jesus and walked away.
Wrestling with God can be hard. But there are things far worse—like stopping. For, when the struggle ends, the opportunity for God to work in our lives may end with it.
You see, this is why Jacob was blessed. He was blessed because he did not walk away. He was blessed because he did not give up. He was blessed because he hung on fiercely through all of the long, cold night. He was blessed because he would not let go.
And that, I think, is what this scripture hopes to teach us. Are you facing serious challenges? Hold on tight, and don’t let go. Are you struggling—perhaps now more than ever? Hold on tight, and don’t let go. Are you despairing over a world full of pain? Hold on tight, and don’t let go.
Do you seek after joy and rest and comfort and the peace that passes all understanding? Hold on tight, and don’t let go.
And don’t let go.
And don’t let go.
Amen.
My grandfather was a man of faith in matters large and small.
With respect to larger issues: He believed in Jesus Christ. He believed in the Methodist church. He believed in hard and honest work. He believed in helping the poor. And he believed that my grandmother was the most beautiful woman in the world and that God had brought them together.
With respect to smaller issues: He believed in the nutritional value of hard-boiled eggs and cottage cheese. He believed in the St. Louis Cardinals. He believed that my grandmother could not smell the cigars that he smoked when she wasn’t looking. And he believed that professional “big time wrestling” was real.
I remember, at the tender age of five, watching wrestling with him on television. He had a very old television set, perhaps the first in the entire universe, and it was about the size of an aircraft carrier. On top of it sat a giant set of rabbit ear antennas that were wrapped in aluminum foil to achieve “better reception.”
My grandfather cheered for the good guys and cursed the bad guys and I was puzzled by his habit of reaching over to cover my ears after he had sworn. But, other than that, everything was clear and simple. The good guys were very good; the bad guys were very bad; and the moral clarity of the struggle was heightened by the fact that the wrestling occurred in black and white.
The story of Jacob’s wrestling match, which we find in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis, is perhaps not so clear and simple. Hebrew Bible scholar Terence Fretheim has observed that the meaning of this text “is so elusive that a variety of interpretations is credible.”
Indeed, the text invites many questions and possible answers: Who was Jacob, anyway? Who was he wrestling with? Why does Jacob get injured? Why does the man give Jacob his blessing? And, of course: What are we supposed to learn from this story?
Well, let’s start with Jacob himself. We know Jacob was a patriarch of the Hebrew people, a man much favored of God, and the one who the Lord blessed and called Israel. We tend to remember him as a strong, great, and giant figure.
But Jacob had his weaknesses and his small and petty moments. He came into this world by hanging onto the heel of his brother Esau during the birthing process—a predictive if inauspicious beginning. While Esau became a great hunter, Jacob stayed at home and lazed around. He manipulated his brother into giving up his birthright. And he lied to his father.
It could be argued that Jacob’s foibles distinguish him from a lot of the other major players we meet in the Bible. Many biblical figures show us both greatness and weakness—David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul, for example. But some of their struggles may not feel much like our struggles.
Most of us do not use forced labor to build temples to foreign gods—like Solomon did. Most of us do not have a soldier under our command sent to the front of a battle so our sworn enemies can kill him and clear the way for us to marry his wife—like David did. Most of us do not execute the evil policies of an ruthless empire—like Paul did. There is something grand and spectacular and Shakespearean about flaws of this magnitude.
Jacob, in contrast, screws up in ways that are more petty and less glamorous. He thinks only of himself and what he wants. He resorts to manipulation, trickery, and deceit when it suits his purposes. He hurts people he loves and who love him.
But then God comes to him at a time when Jacob has gotten himself into such a desperate place that he is literally sleeping on the ground and using a stone for a pillow. The Lord speaks to him and brings him a vision and Jacob understands that he must change his life. So he sets out to make peace with the brother he betrayed. And, along the way, a “man” appears in the middle of the night and wrestles him to the ground.
Now, who is this man? Well, several very different answers present themselves. One answer is that Jacob was wrestling with God. A lot of textual evidence supports this interpretation. Jacob identifies the man as God. The name the man gives Jacob—Israel—means “he struggles with God.” And the man’s puzzling insistence that the encounter end before morning becomes less mysterious if we remember the biblical precept that Jacob could not have survived seeing God face to face in the full light of day.
But this interpretation raises a fairly nettlesome question: how could Jacob, a mere human being (and not a particularly powerful or impressive one at that), wrestle God to a standstill? We might argue that God was simply toying with Jacob—just as parents pretend to grapple with their children on the living room floor—but the scripture does not accommodate that view. Remember, the Bible says that the man “saw that he could not overpower Jacob.”
This may explain a second interpretation—or, perhaps more accurately, a tradition—that shows up in sermons and art and literature and that depicts this encounter as one between Jacob and an “angel.” Of course, this approach has problems of its own. One whopper is that it doesn’t square with the text. After all, the Bible knows how to tell us when it is talking about an angel (by saying "hey, this was an angel") but it doesn't do that here.
Furthermore, this explanation asks us to believe that a human being could wrestle an angel into submission. Does that seem likely to you? Well, give it a try, if you like, and let me know how it goes.
So some scholars have suggested a third possible answer to the question of who this man is. This man, they say, is indeed God, but God in truly human form. They emphasize that, in this story, God does not appear to Jacob “in all of God’s glory.” Instead, God comes to Jacob as a man and “stoop[s] to encounter Jacob at his own level.” Terence Fretheim writes: “God does not play games with Jacob; God actually struggles with him … God commits to a genuine encounter, entering deeply into the struggle with Jacob with a kind of power that doesn’t simply overpower him.”
Reasonable people can disagree, but I find this idea attractive for a number of reasons. It is consistent with the text. It resonates with all of the other passages in the Bible that portray the extremes to which God will go in pursuit of us. And, finally—and I think this is particularly interesting—this interpretation understands the story as one that, like many other texts in the Hebrew Bible, anticipates the figure of Jesus Christ. After all, the mysterious man is at once wholly human, because he can genuinely struggle with Jacob, and wholly divine, because he can ultimately prevail over and bless Jacob as well.
What of the struggle itself? What are we to make of that? Maybe the point here is simply that all of us will wrestle with God at one time or another. And, like Jacob, we may find ourselves in the midst of such a struggle before we know it and when we least expect it. Many different circumstances might bring us to the ground: illness; financial distress; depression; addiction; the loss of someone we love—just listening to the evening news can usher some people into a full-fledged religious crisis. Certainly, the story can be read as saying that all of our paths may lead us to a place where we find ourselves wrestling with God. But I believe that it says much more, as well.
In my view, this story also says something important about the physicality of faith. We tend to conceive of our struggles with God as mental and emotional processes. But what happened to Jacob didn’t happen in his head: he had the wrenched hip to prove it. No, this story is about throwing all that we are and all that we have—every atom of our being—into our engagement with God. Or, as Jesus reminded the lawyer, we are summoned to love the Lord with “all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength.”
This is not only essential theology. This is brilliant psychology. Because, sometimes, the only way we can prevail in our struggles with faith is to act as if we had it. And when we do, something incredible often happens. When we love, and forgive, and serve, and visit the sick, and feed the hungry, and tend our flocks it is as if we reach out and grab a hold of God. And, when we do that, God grabs back.
And that leads me to what I believe is the central meaning of this story: that we worship a God who loves to engage with us, who loves to struggle with us, who loves to have us wrapped up in his everlasting arms. In this sense, the most tragic mistake we can make is to disengage, to abandon the struggle, and to walk away.
Surely, one of the saddest stories in the Gospels is that of the rich young man who asked Jesus what he would have to do to be perfect. On hearing the unwelcome news that he would need to sell everything he possessed and give the money to the poor, the disenchanted youth turned his back on Jesus and walked away.
Wrestling with God can be hard. But there are things far worse—like stopping. For, when the struggle ends, the opportunity for God to work in our lives may end with it.
You see, this is why Jacob was blessed. He was blessed because he did not walk away. He was blessed because he did not give up. He was blessed because he hung on fiercely through all of the long, cold night. He was blessed because he would not let go.
And that, I think, is what this scripture hopes to teach us. Are you facing serious challenges? Hold on tight, and don’t let go. Are you struggling—perhaps now more than ever? Hold on tight, and don’t let go. Are you despairing over a world full of pain? Hold on tight, and don’t let go.
Do you seek after joy and rest and comfort and the peace that passes all understanding? Hold on tight, and don’t let go.
And don’t let go.
And don’t let go.
Amen.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Gift of Fear
You don't get far into Proverbs before you stumble across it. Indeed, it is the first real admonition Proverbs offers us: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." (Prov. 1:7)
This is strong medicine. And we may resist taking it. It seems a lot easier to digest those short, sweet letters of John that tell us over and over again that "God is love."
But loving relationships can, maybe even must, include a dimension of fear. If we love someone, then we fear disappointing them, letting them down, and making decisions that will hurt them. Love without fear is elation without watchfulness.
We may even admit to fearing the judgment of those we love and who love us. My father had the capacity to be more than a little scary if you got on his bad side. But that was not because he ever became violent. Rather, it was because he had a way of silently conveying to you the full weight of his disapproval and disappointment.
That is the brilliance of this proverb. It recognizes the fundamental truth that love brings with it the fear of love's failings.
It is somewhere in this fear that we begin to move beyond ourselves. It is somewhere in this fear that we begin to put our hearts and minds on higher things. And it is somewhere in this fear that we begin to nurture the rare and wonderful quality that this book calls wisdom.
This is strong medicine. And we may resist taking it. It seems a lot easier to digest those short, sweet letters of John that tell us over and over again that "God is love."
But loving relationships can, maybe even must, include a dimension of fear. If we love someone, then we fear disappointing them, letting them down, and making decisions that will hurt them. Love without fear is elation without watchfulness.
We may even admit to fearing the judgment of those we love and who love us. My father had the capacity to be more than a little scary if you got on his bad side. But that was not because he ever became violent. Rather, it was because he had a way of silently conveying to you the full weight of his disapproval and disappointment.
That is the brilliance of this proverb. It recognizes the fundamental truth that love brings with it the fear of love's failings.
It is somewhere in this fear that we begin to move beyond ourselves. It is somewhere in this fear that we begin to put our hearts and minds on higher things. And it is somewhere in this fear that we begin to nurture the rare and wonderful quality that this book calls wisdom.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Proverbial Wisdom
Over the years, the Book of Proverbs has become like an old friend. There are periods we don't connect all that much. But then I find myself back in its company, nodding at its wisdom, laughing at its bluntness, marvelilng at its insight. It is a wonderful companion and guide.
I invite anyone who is so inclined to read Proverbs along with me. I'll be posting some brief thoughts along the way. And I'll welcome your comments.
As the book says at the beginning, there is something here for everyone: the "simple" and the "young," and also the "wise" and the "discerning." So come along. And discover what this Book has to say to you.
I invite anyone who is so inclined to read Proverbs along with me. I'll be posting some brief thoughts along the way. And I'll welcome your comments.
As the book says at the beginning, there is something here for everyone: the "simple" and the "young," and also the "wise" and the "discerning." So come along. And discover what this Book has to say to you.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
And In This Place, Too
Jacob has an uneasy sleep in the 28th chapter of the Book of Genesis. He uses a stone for a pillow. Strange dreams disturb his rest. But he feels the presence of God in all of this, and when he awakes he declares "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it."
This passage often comes to mind when we find ourselves in life's hard and barren territories. It reminds us that God is in those places, too. Even when we do not know it.
But this past Easter I had an experience that helped me see another meaning in this passage as well. On Easter, circumstances planted me and my family in Key West, at a sunrise service, on the southernmost beach of the United States of America. We gathered there with dozens of others to celebrate the most important day in the Christian calendar.
I had come expecting a gentle breeze, a magnificent sunrise, the soft sand under my feet, and the swishing of the palm trees. Of course, all of that was there, marking the beach as a temple, a testament to creation and life, a holy place.
What I had not expected was the cognitive dissonance that would come from some of the surroundings. On the beach we found the breeze, the trees, and the rising sun. But we also found the volleyball net, the plastic bin full of beach toys, and the stacks of recliners waiting for tourists to oil themselves up and throw themselves down.
All of this led me to ponder how often we fail to think of God in our places of joy and celebration and play. As if God were some sort of "foul weather friend" to be called upon only in unemployment lines, hospital waiting rooms, and funeral parlors. As if the Lord who made clouds and orchids and dung beetles and, perhaps most absurdly, humankind itself had no sense of whimsy.
So I watched the sunlight crack open the darkness. And I pressed my shoulder against Lisa's as we sung the hymns. And I thought to myself, "surely, the Lord is in this place, and I did not even know it."
This passage often comes to mind when we find ourselves in life's hard and barren territories. It reminds us that God is in those places, too. Even when we do not know it.
But this past Easter I had an experience that helped me see another meaning in this passage as well. On Easter, circumstances planted me and my family in Key West, at a sunrise service, on the southernmost beach of the United States of America. We gathered there with dozens of others to celebrate the most important day in the Christian calendar.
I had come expecting a gentle breeze, a magnificent sunrise, the soft sand under my feet, and the swishing of the palm trees. Of course, all of that was there, marking the beach as a temple, a testament to creation and life, a holy place.
What I had not expected was the cognitive dissonance that would come from some of the surroundings. On the beach we found the breeze, the trees, and the rising sun. But we also found the volleyball net, the plastic bin full of beach toys, and the stacks of recliners waiting for tourists to oil themselves up and throw themselves down.
All of this led me to ponder how often we fail to think of God in our places of joy and celebration and play. As if God were some sort of "foul weather friend" to be called upon only in unemployment lines, hospital waiting rooms, and funeral parlors. As if the Lord who made clouds and orchids and dung beetles and, perhaps most absurdly, humankind itself had no sense of whimsy.
So I watched the sunlight crack open the darkness. And I pressed my shoulder against Lisa's as we sung the hymns. And I thought to myself, "surely, the Lord is in this place, and I did not even know it."
Friday, March 12, 2010
Temptations Four Through Six
A revised version of a sermon shared with the residents of the Chelsea Retirement Community, March, 2010
Scripture: Luke 4:1-13
This familiar passage from the gospels describes the three temptations that Jesus faced during his time in the wilderness. Biblical scholars have suggested ways we might relate those temptations to our own experience.
First, the devil tempts Jesus to turn a stone into bread. This offer must have been very alluring, because the text tells us that Jesus had been fasting and was “famished.” Many commentators have compared this to the temptations that come to us from basic needs like hunger, shelter, and survival.
Second, the devil offers Jesus “authority” over “all the kingdoms of the world.” As with all such “opportunities” there’s a catch: Jesus must bow down and worship Satan. Commentators often compare this to the temptations that come to us from our appetite for power.
And, third, the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple in order to prove that He is the Son of God. We might have a tougher time associating this temptation with the sort of temptations that you and I encounter. But I think that Peter Gomes has a wonderful insight here. He writes: “This [temptation] appeals to the sense of identity and the need to prove who we are … No one likes to have his identity challenged or threatened; we are insecure enough without someone demanding proof that we are who we say we are.”
These are pretty traditional views of the scripture and I agree with them, at least as far as they go. But they raise a question: does this scripture still have anything to say to us if those three temptations are not our temptations? After all, they may not be.
We might not know the temptations that come with crippling hunger or with deep uncertainty about shelter and safety. We may always have lived in a comfortable place with plenty to eat. Or, if there were times when resources were scarce, they may be well behind us.
We also may not worry much about acquiring power. We may have reached an age or a state of mind where we see power for the impostor that it is. There is a story about Edward Bennett Williams, the legendary trial lawyer, political insider, and confidant of the rich, famous, and infamous. One afternoon, Williams’ son found his father lying down, chilled and nauseous from the cancer that was killing him. Williams tossed his son a copy of a magazine he’d been reading, which described him as one of the most powerful men in Washington. “They don’t realize what power really is,” Williams said to his son. “I’m about to see true power.”
And as for proving ourselves, well, that may not be as big a deal for us as it once was either. For many of us, growing older brings the grace of no longer feeling the irresistible impulse to establish our credentials with every poor soul who will sit still long enough to listen. Mark Twain once observed that “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.” Certainly, this would save us all the pain and frustration that attends those early years when we are fashioning our identity and trying to get the world to take it seriously.
So we might look at this list of three temptations and say to ourselves “eh, not so much” or "been there, done that." We might question whether these particular temptations still bedevil us (so to speak) the way they used to. We might conclude that this passage does not have for us the same poignancy it may have had earlier in life.
But I want to suggest to you that this text does not describe only three temptations. It describes many more, at least some of which remain with us throughout our time on earth, regardless of our place or age or station. I want to talk here about three of them, which I will call “temptations four through six.”
Temptation four is the temptation to do what is easy rather than what is right. If we look closely, we can see this temptation in this passage. Jesus can eat, know comfort, and have authority over all the kingdoms of the earth if he will only do what Satan asks. It certainly sounds simple enough. But Jesus instead chooses the hardest path imaginable, one that leads him through rejection, grief, betrayal, torture, suffering, and death.
Most of us struggle with this temptation our entire lives. To borrow a phrase from James Russell Lowell, it is in the nature of human existence that we will necessarily encounter “moments to decide” between that which is comfortable and expedient and that which is uncomfortable and righteous. And we will encounter those moments almost every day. Again, to borrow a phrase from Lowell, “the choice goes by forever.”
Think, for example, of all the times we hear the voice of cruelty or bigotry or hatred and we do not call it out for what it is; we let it pass; we pretend it didn’t happen. We do the easy thing. But it doesn’t sit well with us. And, I fear, it doesn’t sit particularly well with the one who made us, either.
Temptation five is the temptation to forget who we are and what we know. If we look closely we can find this temptation in the scripture as well. After all, there is a sense in which Satan is asking Jesus not to prove that He is the Son of God but to forget that He is the Son of God.
Jesus does not take the bait. He remembers who He is. He remembers what He knows.
I think this is why Jesus responds to all three temptations by quoting passages from the Hebrew Bible. Jesus shows that He remembers what He was taught to value; He remembers the sacred texts He studied in his youth; He remembers the ideas that He shared with his elders in the temple while Mary and Joseph were looking around for him. Memory preserves Jesus, as it often preserves each and every one of us.
And then there is temptation six. It is a whopper. Temptation six is the temptation to elevate our physical being over our spiritual being.
We find this temptation in this scripture as well. Jesus is invited to feed all of his appetites. He is offered the opportunity to have all the world’s pleasures at his command. In short, he is urged to define himself by his body, by what Delmore Schwartz in a wonderful and whimsical poem calls “the heavy bear who goes with me, clumsy and lumbering here and there, in love with candy, anger, and sleep.”
Our bodies do this to us. They knock incessantly at the door of our consciousness to reiterate that they’re waiting for us to attend to them. They work hard and constantly to define us--and our culture happily conspires with them to this end.
The form this temptation takes may change as we get older, but the fundamental impulse remains the same. The stiffness in the neck, the soreness in the back, the clicking noises in the joints, the little pains that move around the body like a dog circling and circling before it lies down--these, too, are ways in which our bodies cry out for our attention and claim eminence. And as we age the cries get fussier and more frequent.
In this passage, Jesus answers this temptation, too. And it may help us to remember that this text does not give us the strident voice of the strong carpenter’s son at the peak of his vigor. It gives us the voice of one who is worn down, tired, wanting for energy, yearning for comfort.
Yet, in just that voice, Jesus offers us consolation that can bring "the peace that passes all understanding." For, here, Jesus assures us that there is something else; something greater than the “heavy bear” that we tote along with us on our mortal journey; something beyond "bread alone."
Teilhard de Chardin once observed: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."In calling us to know the life that lies beyond bread alone, Jesus invites us into the heart of that truth. And in the heart of that truth lies our transformation and our salvation and our greatest, indeed our only, hope.
Charles Baudelaire suggested that the greatest trick of the devil was to persuade us that he does not exist. I'm not so sure. I think that maybe his greatest trick is to persuade us that we are something less than what we are.
For the overarching message of temptations four through six is this: you are a child of the living God; you are immortal in your spirit and boundless in your soul; you were placed here to do the holy and sacred work of Love Itself.
Fear nothing in the wildernesses of your life.
Except those things that tempt you to believe otherwise.
Amen.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Thing Before The Thing Itself
Scripture: Luke 4:1-13
Lent—which literally means “springtime”—became popular about four hundred years after the time of Christ. It is a tradition built on scriptural inspiration. We remember Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. And we use the forty days before Easter to reflect more deeply, to give a few things up, and to take a few things on.
But traditions can become stale through habit and repetition. Year after year we may read the same devotionals, temporarily abandon the same sensual indulgences, briefly burden ourselves with the same minor inconveniences, and call it “Lent.” For many of us, this process ends up looking less like worshiping with emotion and more like going through the motions.
The risk that we will not sufficiently engage with this special and holy time is compounded by the natural human inclination to guarantee success by asking relatively little of ourselves. Years ago, a friend told me that in honor of Lent he planned to abstain from screaming profanities at people who cut him off in traffic. This struck me as—shall we say—aiming rather low.
So the beginning of the Lenten season is a good time to ask an important, indeed fundamental, question: What is it—exactly—that we’re supposed to be doing? With that in mind, let’s take a good hard look at the scripture that informs our practice. And let’s see if we can find some answers.
A traditional and common answer to this question suggests that Lent is a time of preparation in anticipation of the glorious rebirth that we celebrate on Easter morning. Lent is not the final destination; it is a journey—a journey toward redemption and hope. Lent is not the thing itself; it is the thing before the thing itself.
At first glance, however, we may have a little trouble connecting this theme of preparation with the text we actually find in Luke. Indeed, when we turn to the scripture we discover a conspicuous, and perhaps even unsettling, absence. After all, these verses nowhere expressly state that Jesus went into the wilderness in order to get ready to do something else.
Nevertheless, for centuries believers have associated this theme with this text. And I think they have done so for good reason. Granted, the scripture may not raise the theme of preparation explicitly and literally; but it does seem to do so implicitly and structurally.
In Luke, Jesus’ ministry begins in earnest immediately after his time in the wilderness. Just think of all that happens after the wilderness story and in the rest of Chapter 4. Jesus returns to Nazareth; reports about Him begin to spread; He starts teaching in the synagogues; He announces that the scriptures have been fulfilled; He is driven out of Nazareth and travels to Capernaum; He astonishes people with what He says; He casts the demons out of one who is cursed; He heals the sick and suffering; and He is called the Son of God.
Similarly, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’ time in the wilderness immediately precedes the initiation of his Galilean ministry. Still, Matthew and Mark offer us a slight variation on the sequence of events. In those Gospels, the first thing Jesus does after emerging from the wilderness is to begin to gather disciples around him. I’ll have more to say about that later.
For now, though, let’s take as one answer to our question that Lent is about preparing, and specifically about preparing for the saving grace that comes to us through Jesus Christ crucified and risen. This preparation requires us to confront our humanness; to acknowledge our weakness; and to own our sinfulness. As one commentary on Lent observes, this explains the conflicting feelings that Lent may inspire:
"Lent should never be morose—an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, we ought to approach Lent as an opportunity, not a requirement. After all, it is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerge. Put another way, Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. Our self-sacrifices serve no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart’s deepest longing: unity with Christ. In him—in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph—we find our truest joy. Such joy is costly, however. It arises from the horror of our sin, which crucified Christ. This is why Meister Eckhart points out that those who have the hardest time with Lent are ‘the good people.’" (Bread and Wine (2003))
That Lent is a time of preparation, then, is one answer to our question; but it is not necessarily the only answer.
A different kind of answer focuses on the reality that Lent is where we live. We live in a world that loves the darkness. We live in an age that persists in turning its back on peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, and love. We live with minds and bodies that are constantly assailed by temptations.
We are an Easter people. But we live in a Lenten time and a Lenten place. And we live with Lenten hearts.
That is why the temptations directed at Jesus intrigue us so. His temptations are our temptations. Peter Gomes describes them as the temptations that come from the need for survival and nourishment; the temptations that come from the urge for power; and the temptations that come from our need to “prove who we are.”
These temptations are constant. Before this day is over, at least one of them will probably visit itself upon each and every one of us. And that visitation may come quietly: temptations are rude; they do not knock before entering.
Of course, these temptations typically do not arrive looking much like the satanic depictions we see in paintings and movies. Still, to paraphrase a famous observation by C.S. Lewis, it is important not to be too particular about the hoofs and the horns. In these, our highly educated and abundantly skeptical times, it is fashionable to doubt the existence of Satan. To adopt the language of our times, however, I want to suggest to you that the reality of the devil is the ultimate inconvenient truth.
And the temptations the scriptures describe are not just constant; they are unceasing. The wilderness story therefore closes with a Satan who is not triumphantly defeated but just temporarily discouraged: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” As Peter Gomes observes, “The devil awaits that opportune time with us, that time when he can appeal to our injured pride, our wounded ego, our fear of not being appreciated, [or] our anger at being ignored. These are the opportune times when the devil’s persistence reaps great benefits.”
It may be worth noting in passing that in the scriptures Satan never really finds an “opportune time” to tempt Jesus. He does, however, find an abundance of opportune times to tempt those around Him: to tempt them into jealousy, pettiness, anger, denial, even betrayal. As many of you know, I am an enthusiastic fan of the old film “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” In my view, the film does something quite brilliant here: the same actor who portrays Satan in the temptation scene—Donald Pleasance—also plays the first person in the crowd to call for Jesus’ crucifixion.
In any event, this second answer to our question suggests that Lent is not only about preparing. It is also about living. It is about trying to figure out how to keep our soul safe in a time and place that relentlessly invites us to put that troublesome chunk of divinity aside and to feast gluttonously on the selfish impulse of the day.
In her essay “Living Lent,” Episcopal priest and author Barbara Cawthorne Crafton observes that when we become slaves to those impulses it often it takes a crisis to bring us to our senses and to remind us how to be in this world:
"When did the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we get laid off from work, one of the thousands certified as extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage fall silent and cold? Or, by some exquisite working of God’s grace, did we just find the courage to look the truth in the eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?"
In this sense, Lent is not the thing before the thing itself. It is the thing itself. This perspective argues that—at least on this side of the transition we call death—there is no destination. There is only the journey. And there is only the constant challenge of deciding how we will travel it and of choosing what—and who—we will bring along as we go.
Well, that leads me to a third possible answer to the question of what we’re supposed to do during this Lenten season. But before describing that answer, I want to return to our passage from Luke and to emphasize a few things that it tells and shows us. And I want to do this because I believe that our Lenten traditions and conventions, wonderful and inspiring as they are, might distract us from some critical realities about how faith works and what we can do to foster it.
So please notice this: Jesus does not just go to the wilderness; He goes to the wilderness “full of the Holy Spirit.” And, verse 14 says, he comes out of the wilderness “filled with the power of the Spirit.”
While Jesus is in the wilderness, Satan tempts him. And Jesus meets each temptation with a quotation from scripture. Three are quotations from Deuteronomy in which the Lord is speaking through Moses. And one is a quotation from the Psalms.
So, you see, we miss something essential if we imagine Jesus (as we often do) going into the wilderness alone. He didn’t. He went with the best company imaginable.
He went with the Holy Spirit. He went with Moses and the Psalmist. He went with all the figures of the bible he read in his youth—Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Solomon and Ruth and Jeremiah and Daniel. And—as Mark tells us—he went with angels at his side.
Jesus also went there with the fresh memory of His baptism at the hands of John. Indeed, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jesus’ foray into the wilderness is framed by the relationships essential to his ministry. Immediately before it we find his encounter with John at the Jordan; immediately after it we find his calling of the first disciples beside the Sea of Galilee.
This helps explain something truly astonishing about Jesus’ interactions with Satan in the wilderness, something I think often goes overlooked. Satan tries to tempt Jesus; Jesus responds; and the argument ends. Granted, Satan goes on to try other tacks; but they fail, too. So what is striking about these exchanges is that they do not devolve into prolonged debates. Satan invites Jesus to do something He knows is wrong. Jesus cites scripture to say no. And that is that.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this is not how it works in my case. My arguments with the devil tend to go on and on. Satan invites me to do something selfish; I say no; Satan points out that I’m a good guy and I deserve it; and I start to entertain the possibility that he has a point. We call him many things: Satan, the devil, Beelzebub, and so on. I sometimes wonder, though, whether we should also call him “But on the other hand.”
Often, though, we are able to cut the argument short by remembering the relationships that matter to us. Drawing on the memory and meaning of those relationships can provide critical help at critical times. It has been said that we can avoid mistakes by recalling a simple acronym, HALT, which stands for the proposition that we're most inclined to blunder when we're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. The strength we draw from relationships, however, can quell our hunger, calm our anger, refresh us with new energy, and remind us that we are never really alone.
And this leads me to the third possible answer to our question of what we’re supposed to do during Lent. Maybe, at least in part, Lent is an opportunity to learn how to exercise and flex whatever spiritual muscle we developed before Lent began. If Lent is where we live, then perhaps we should approach it as a chance to figure out how to incorporate—fully and completely—our preexisting spiritual understanding into our everyday existence.
So it may be true that part of Lent is figuring out what to leave behind. But it is also true that part of Lent is remembering what to bring along—and who to bring along. And this last point is critical, because our journey through the wilderness goes best if we don’t try to go it alone.
So we bring with us the presence of the Holy Spirit. We bring with us that chorus of biblical voices that offer guidance, instruction, encouragement, support, and the reassurance that—whatever challenges we face—there is nothing new under the sun and nothing greater than God’s capacity to help us get through it. Maybe we bring some angels. But, certainly, we bring with us those precious relationships: the ones that have helped shape who we are; the ones that will help shape what we become; the ones that we help shape in return.
It is impossible to overstate the connection between those relationships and the underlying themes and purposes of Lent. But this passage from a work by theologian Harvey Cox may explain what I’m getting at:
"Christians believe that Jesus was the fully human expression of God’s love, so like any other human being, he felt the torments of uncertainty. He sweated drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he tried to decide whether to continue with his mission even when he had become aware that it would cost him his life. He was fully human, and human beings need other human beings, not just as disciples but also as friends, which is what Jesus told his own followers at the Last Supper that he wanted them to be. The point is clear: Living a moral life is not a solo flight." (When Jesus Came to Harvard (2004))
Living a moral life is not a solo flight, indeed. And neither is Lent.
So we go, now, into the wilderness. But we do not go alone. We go with the Holy Spirit. We go with Noah and David and Esther and Isaiah. We go with angels. We go with those who love the Lord. We go with those we love. We go with each other.
And, lo, when they came out of the wilderness, when they arrived at the other side, it was seen that they were filled with the power of the Spirit. And the devil at long last fell away. And the Lord welcomed them home. And the angels laughed, and danced.
Amen.
Lent—which literally means “springtime”—became popular about four hundred years after the time of Christ. It is a tradition built on scriptural inspiration. We remember Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. And we use the forty days before Easter to reflect more deeply, to give a few things up, and to take a few things on.
But traditions can become stale through habit and repetition. Year after year we may read the same devotionals, temporarily abandon the same sensual indulgences, briefly burden ourselves with the same minor inconveniences, and call it “Lent.” For many of us, this process ends up looking less like worshiping with emotion and more like going through the motions.
The risk that we will not sufficiently engage with this special and holy time is compounded by the natural human inclination to guarantee success by asking relatively little of ourselves. Years ago, a friend told me that in honor of Lent he planned to abstain from screaming profanities at people who cut him off in traffic. This struck me as—shall we say—aiming rather low.
So the beginning of the Lenten season is a good time to ask an important, indeed fundamental, question: What is it—exactly—that we’re supposed to be doing? With that in mind, let’s take a good hard look at the scripture that informs our practice. And let’s see if we can find some answers.
A traditional and common answer to this question suggests that Lent is a time of preparation in anticipation of the glorious rebirth that we celebrate on Easter morning. Lent is not the final destination; it is a journey—a journey toward redemption and hope. Lent is not the thing itself; it is the thing before the thing itself.
At first glance, however, we may have a little trouble connecting this theme of preparation with the text we actually find in Luke. Indeed, when we turn to the scripture we discover a conspicuous, and perhaps even unsettling, absence. After all, these verses nowhere expressly state that Jesus went into the wilderness in order to get ready to do something else.
Nevertheless, for centuries believers have associated this theme with this text. And I think they have done so for good reason. Granted, the scripture may not raise the theme of preparation explicitly and literally; but it does seem to do so implicitly and structurally.
In Luke, Jesus’ ministry begins in earnest immediately after his time in the wilderness. Just think of all that happens after the wilderness story and in the rest of Chapter 4. Jesus returns to Nazareth; reports about Him begin to spread; He starts teaching in the synagogues; He announces that the scriptures have been fulfilled; He is driven out of Nazareth and travels to Capernaum; He astonishes people with what He says; He casts the demons out of one who is cursed; He heals the sick and suffering; and He is called the Son of God.
Similarly, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’ time in the wilderness immediately precedes the initiation of his Galilean ministry. Still, Matthew and Mark offer us a slight variation on the sequence of events. In those Gospels, the first thing Jesus does after emerging from the wilderness is to begin to gather disciples around him. I’ll have more to say about that later.
For now, though, let’s take as one answer to our question that Lent is about preparing, and specifically about preparing for the saving grace that comes to us through Jesus Christ crucified and risen. This preparation requires us to confront our humanness; to acknowledge our weakness; and to own our sinfulness. As one commentary on Lent observes, this explains the conflicting feelings that Lent may inspire:
"Lent should never be morose—an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, we ought to approach Lent as an opportunity, not a requirement. After all, it is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerge. Put another way, Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. Our self-sacrifices serve no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart’s deepest longing: unity with Christ. In him—in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph—we find our truest joy. Such joy is costly, however. It arises from the horror of our sin, which crucified Christ. This is why Meister Eckhart points out that those who have the hardest time with Lent are ‘the good people.’" (Bread and Wine (2003))
That Lent is a time of preparation, then, is one answer to our question; but it is not necessarily the only answer.
A different kind of answer focuses on the reality that Lent is where we live. We live in a world that loves the darkness. We live in an age that persists in turning its back on peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, and love. We live with minds and bodies that are constantly assailed by temptations.
We are an Easter people. But we live in a Lenten time and a Lenten place. And we live with Lenten hearts.
That is why the temptations directed at Jesus intrigue us so. His temptations are our temptations. Peter Gomes describes them as the temptations that come from the need for survival and nourishment; the temptations that come from the urge for power; and the temptations that come from our need to “prove who we are.”
These temptations are constant. Before this day is over, at least one of them will probably visit itself upon each and every one of us. And that visitation may come quietly: temptations are rude; they do not knock before entering.
Of course, these temptations typically do not arrive looking much like the satanic depictions we see in paintings and movies. Still, to paraphrase a famous observation by C.S. Lewis, it is important not to be too particular about the hoofs and the horns. In these, our highly educated and abundantly skeptical times, it is fashionable to doubt the existence of Satan. To adopt the language of our times, however, I want to suggest to you that the reality of the devil is the ultimate inconvenient truth.
And the temptations the scriptures describe are not just constant; they are unceasing. The wilderness story therefore closes with a Satan who is not triumphantly defeated but just temporarily discouraged: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” As Peter Gomes observes, “The devil awaits that opportune time with us, that time when he can appeal to our injured pride, our wounded ego, our fear of not being appreciated, [or] our anger at being ignored. These are the opportune times when the devil’s persistence reaps great benefits.”
It may be worth noting in passing that in the scriptures Satan never really finds an “opportune time” to tempt Jesus. He does, however, find an abundance of opportune times to tempt those around Him: to tempt them into jealousy, pettiness, anger, denial, even betrayal. As many of you know, I am an enthusiastic fan of the old film “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” In my view, the film does something quite brilliant here: the same actor who portrays Satan in the temptation scene—Donald Pleasance—also plays the first person in the crowd to call for Jesus’ crucifixion.
In any event, this second answer to our question suggests that Lent is not only about preparing. It is also about living. It is about trying to figure out how to keep our soul safe in a time and place that relentlessly invites us to put that troublesome chunk of divinity aside and to feast gluttonously on the selfish impulse of the day.
In her essay “Living Lent,” Episcopal priest and author Barbara Cawthorne Crafton observes that when we become slaves to those impulses it often it takes a crisis to bring us to our senses and to remind us how to be in this world:
"When did the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we get laid off from work, one of the thousands certified as extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage fall silent and cold? Or, by some exquisite working of God’s grace, did we just find the courage to look the truth in the eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?"
In this sense, Lent is not the thing before the thing itself. It is the thing itself. This perspective argues that—at least on this side of the transition we call death—there is no destination. There is only the journey. And there is only the constant challenge of deciding how we will travel it and of choosing what—and who—we will bring along as we go.
Well, that leads me to a third possible answer to the question of what we’re supposed to do during this Lenten season. But before describing that answer, I want to return to our passage from Luke and to emphasize a few things that it tells and shows us. And I want to do this because I believe that our Lenten traditions and conventions, wonderful and inspiring as they are, might distract us from some critical realities about how faith works and what we can do to foster it.
So please notice this: Jesus does not just go to the wilderness; He goes to the wilderness “full of the Holy Spirit.” And, verse 14 says, he comes out of the wilderness “filled with the power of the Spirit.”
While Jesus is in the wilderness, Satan tempts him. And Jesus meets each temptation with a quotation from scripture. Three are quotations from Deuteronomy in which the Lord is speaking through Moses. And one is a quotation from the Psalms.
So, you see, we miss something essential if we imagine Jesus (as we often do) going into the wilderness alone. He didn’t. He went with the best company imaginable.
He went with the Holy Spirit. He went with Moses and the Psalmist. He went with all the figures of the bible he read in his youth—Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Solomon and Ruth and Jeremiah and Daniel. And—as Mark tells us—he went with angels at his side.
Jesus also went there with the fresh memory of His baptism at the hands of John. Indeed, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jesus’ foray into the wilderness is framed by the relationships essential to his ministry. Immediately before it we find his encounter with John at the Jordan; immediately after it we find his calling of the first disciples beside the Sea of Galilee.
This helps explain something truly astonishing about Jesus’ interactions with Satan in the wilderness, something I think often goes overlooked. Satan tries to tempt Jesus; Jesus responds; and the argument ends. Granted, Satan goes on to try other tacks; but they fail, too. So what is striking about these exchanges is that they do not devolve into prolonged debates. Satan invites Jesus to do something He knows is wrong. Jesus cites scripture to say no. And that is that.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this is not how it works in my case. My arguments with the devil tend to go on and on. Satan invites me to do something selfish; I say no; Satan points out that I’m a good guy and I deserve it; and I start to entertain the possibility that he has a point. We call him many things: Satan, the devil, Beelzebub, and so on. I sometimes wonder, though, whether we should also call him “But on the other hand.”
Often, though, we are able to cut the argument short by remembering the relationships that matter to us. Drawing on the memory and meaning of those relationships can provide critical help at critical times. It has been said that we can avoid mistakes by recalling a simple acronym, HALT, which stands for the proposition that we're most inclined to blunder when we're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. The strength we draw from relationships, however, can quell our hunger, calm our anger, refresh us with new energy, and remind us that we are never really alone.
And this leads me to the third possible answer to our question of what we’re supposed to do during Lent. Maybe, at least in part, Lent is an opportunity to learn how to exercise and flex whatever spiritual muscle we developed before Lent began. If Lent is where we live, then perhaps we should approach it as a chance to figure out how to incorporate—fully and completely—our preexisting spiritual understanding into our everyday existence.
So it may be true that part of Lent is figuring out what to leave behind. But it is also true that part of Lent is remembering what to bring along—and who to bring along. And this last point is critical, because our journey through the wilderness goes best if we don’t try to go it alone.
So we bring with us the presence of the Holy Spirit. We bring with us that chorus of biblical voices that offer guidance, instruction, encouragement, support, and the reassurance that—whatever challenges we face—there is nothing new under the sun and nothing greater than God’s capacity to help us get through it. Maybe we bring some angels. But, certainly, we bring with us those precious relationships: the ones that have helped shape who we are; the ones that will help shape what we become; the ones that we help shape in return.
It is impossible to overstate the connection between those relationships and the underlying themes and purposes of Lent. But this passage from a work by theologian Harvey Cox may explain what I’m getting at:
"Christians believe that Jesus was the fully human expression of God’s love, so like any other human being, he felt the torments of uncertainty. He sweated drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he tried to decide whether to continue with his mission even when he had become aware that it would cost him his life. He was fully human, and human beings need other human beings, not just as disciples but also as friends, which is what Jesus told his own followers at the Last Supper that he wanted them to be. The point is clear: Living a moral life is not a solo flight." (When Jesus Came to Harvard (2004))
Living a moral life is not a solo flight, indeed. And neither is Lent.
So we go, now, into the wilderness. But we do not go alone. We go with the Holy Spirit. We go with Noah and David and Esther and Isaiah. We go with angels. We go with those who love the Lord. We go with those we love. We go with each other.
And, lo, when they came out of the wilderness, when they arrived at the other side, it was seen that they were filled with the power of the Spirit. And the devil at long last fell away. And the Lord welcomed them home. And the angels laughed, and danced.
Amen.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
From Under the Rubble
Scripture: James 2:1-6
Many years ago, I participated in a Bible study group that met in a grand old Methodist Church. We gathered in a room filled to its walls with ancient, overstuffed chairs grown so soft with age that when you sat down in them you found yourself staring at your knees. It turned out that the chairs fostered the perfect environment for theological debate, because when disagreement arose no one had the abdominal strength necessary to sit forward in a confrontational pose, let alone leap to their feet and stalk out of the room in a huff.
I loved the people in that group, but none as much as a soft-spoken woman in her eighties who always sat at the back of the room, near a fireplace that looked as if it had not been lit since Eisenhower was President. If I remember correctly her name was Hazel, although I’ll confess to hedging my bets here because almost every woman of that age in that church was named Hazel. Anyway, I loved Hazel for many reasons, but for two in particular.
First, Hazel understood that with her grey hair, wise demeanor, and gentle speech she could get away with saying things others could not. So, often, in the middle of our discussions she would raise her hand slowly, tilt her head slightly, and in her own quiet way throw a conversational hand grenade into the middle of things. Disagreement would erupt. And Hazel would sit back and watch, sometime allowing a sly smile to creep across her face.
But the second reason I loved Hazel was that she had the insight and persistence to raise the same questions, over and over again, whenever we neared the end of our discussion. She would wait until we got to that comforting moment where we believed our collective effort at interpretation had led us to a point of clarity and understanding about a Bible story, chapter, or verse. And she heard her cue when someone offered up the group’s conclusion about what the passage meant. “Well,” she would say just as we were hoisting ourselves up out of our chairs, “the passage probably means that. But is that the only thing it means? Is it possible it could mean something more?”
Hazel’s smile would spread into a Cheshire cat grin and we would laugh and groan—although, on a few occasions, I thought I could hear some of the less inquisitive among us gnashing their teeth and rending their garments. It was great fun. But it was more than that.
Indeed, over the years I have come to believe that Hazel's questions reflect sound theology and provide an immensely useful principle of biblical interpretation. Look at it this way. We believe that God tells us many things through the Bible. So why wouldn’t we also believe that sometimes God tells us more than one thing at a time? Why wouldn’t we believe that the same passage can contain many different messages? And why wouldn’t we believe that sometimes it takes a fair amount of human effort to sort those messages out? It seems to me that this sort of richness is exactly what we should expect from the God who created such dazzlingly complex things as photosynthesis, the human eye, the structure of the universe, the crazy activity of subatomic particles, and love.
Well, that brings us to this passage from the Letter of James, which I believe has at least two messages—messages that, to make things even more interesting, appear to point in very different directions. Indeed, they may seem inconsistent and irreconcilable. I want here to draw those two messages out; highlight their apparent incompatibility; explore why they are in fact fully consistent; and invite you to consider the possibility that they offer a provocative insight into what it means to be the people of God.
The first message in this passage is one of equality and inclusion. This message is hard to miss. James condemns the practice of showing “favoritism” or making “distinctions” based on an individual’s economic standing. He calls us out for seeking to draw the wealthy close to us while keeping those in poverty at a convenient distance. “Have a seat here, please” we say to rich; “stand there” we say to poor. James brilliantly recognizes that respect is paid in the currency of proximity: those we honor we let near; those we do not honor we let alone.
Jesus understood this perfectly. He understood that to honor all of God’s children means to be close to all of God’s children. Think of all the times in the gospels when Jesus says “do not hinder; let him, let her, let them come to me.”
In her recent book Reading Jesus, novelist Mary Gordon contends that this is why giving money to good causes, while absolutely critical, is still not enough. “The essential genius of Christian charity,” she writes, is that it should be “personal” and “personalized.” Philanthropy is a wonderful thing but it “allows for acts of charity that keep the recipient at a distance.” “For Jesus,” Gordon suggests, “what is required is an encounter. What is insisted upon is the personal responsibility of love.”
Of course, sometimes a personal encounter is not possible or practical. Not all of us can head off to Haiti or Guatemala or Bangladesh with crates of food, clothing, and medical supplies. Also, sometimes it is easier for people to accept charitable gifts that come anonymously or from a distance. I know a family that once fell on hard times but that would never have accepted an outright gift of cash; but when a concerned neighbor left nine one-hundred dollar bills in an unmarked envelope in their mailbox it left them with no choice but to accept the gift with grateful hearts.
Or, at least they thought it was a neighbor. I am, I will confess, a firm believer in miracles. And, in my theology, God knows how to use an ATM machine.
Still, I think that Gordon is right in believing that there is something different and essential about personal encounters. After all, that is what James—and Jesus—believed as well. For the personal encounter allows us not only to care for people, but to include them, embrace them, respect them, and honor them. In contrast, when we remain aloof from the poor we fail to treat them as equals and we thereby, even if unintentionally, facilitate their marginalization and oppression. In this regard, it is worth remembering that the book of Proverbs tells us that when we oppress the poor we insult their Maker. (Proverbs 13:41)
But there is a second message in this passage from the Letter of James: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs to the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” Now, in one sense this verse includes the same themes of inclusion and equality just discussed: all those who love God will inherit the kingdom. But, in another sense, this verse appears to say that in God’s kingdom some are more equal than others. After all, the verse doesn’t suggest that God loves even the poor; it suggests that God loves especially the poor. That explains why God chose them to be “rich in faith” and “heirs to the kingdom.”
We find the idea that God has a special concern for the poor in numerous biblical passages. Indeed, as you know, that idea is fundamental to the school of thinking called Liberation Theology. Some years ago, in a heated theological debate with a friend, I quoted one of the Liberation Theologians in support of an argument on this point; my friend responded by quoting Tevya, from Fiddler on the Roof, who observed that while it was certainly no disgrace to be poor it was probably no great honor either.
In any event, this second message appears to conflict with the first and gives rise to an obvious question. How is it possible to square the concept that it is wrong to make distinctions based on economic standing with the concept that God makes just such a distinction and has a special concern for the poor? The answer to this puzzle matters because otherwise we seem caught in conflicting instructions about how to live: treat everyone equally; but treat the poor even better.
In fact, however, this poses no contradiction at all. After all, it is not that God has a special concern for the poor because they are superior to others morally or religiously. Rather, God has a special concern for the poor simply because they are poor—because, in the words of a prominent theologian, they live “in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job (1987)) In this spirit, one might venture that God has a special concern for all those who are suffering or downtrodden or oppressed or in pain, because their needs are, by definition, greater than the needs of others.
Where the need is great, the concern must be great. That just makes sense. And it makes sense whether we’re talking about how God loves or how we should live. And in this, our world, and in these, our times, the need is great, indeed.
Perhaps you remember the old Batman television series. In the show, when things got tough the police would project a special spotlight—the “Bat Signal”—into the sky. Batman would immediately collect his gear, call for Robin, hop into the Batmobile, and take off into the night, ready to attack the problem at hand.
When I was a child this was my favorite moment in the show: it brought the first spark of hope into a dark and dangerous situation. But as I have grown older I have come to appreciate that things are always tough for someone somewhere; that God calls us to an eternal vigilance over crises near and far; and that we must never weary of attacking the problems that are constantly at hand: poverty; disaster; homelessness; injustice; hatred; violence. To be the people of God is, at least in part, to understand that the Bat Signal never really goes out.
I was reminded of this when I read one of the many stories that emerged after the recent earthquake in Haiti. Shortly after the earthquake, a foreign news crew that had arrived on the scene set up to take pictures of the devastation. As they were getting their equipment in order, they heard a cry from under some nearby stones. They stopped what they were doing, rushed toward the sound, and began digging with their bare hands. There they found a living sixteen-month-old child. They pulled the child out from under the rubble. They brought the child into the light.
That is, of course, precisely what Jesus calls us to do. He calls us to pause from the business we call our life; he calls us to notice the rubble all around us; he calls us to listen for the lost voices; and he calls us to go in their direction and to bring them into the light. Jesus warned us that the poor we will always have with us, at least in this life and in this world—the poor and the sick and the sad and the terrible and the tragic and the ravages and the rubble. And so we will.
I would like to tell you that this call makes life easier. It doesn’t. I would like to tell you that this call makes life prettier. I can’t. I can only tell you, because the scriptures tell me, that it makes life better.
In the meantime, though, the messages of this scripture—indeed, the message of Jesus’ ministry on this earth—may prompt you to look closely at how you are spending your hours. I have no question that, when you do so, you will find meaning in your life, probably even a great deal of meaning, even as it is right now.
But the question, as my old friend Hazel used to say, is this:
Is that the only thing it could mean?
Is it possible—is it possible—that it could mean even something more?
Amen.
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