Perspective

Richard John Neuhaus (Death on a Friday Afternoon, 2000:5-6) has penned the
following words:



"We contemplate for a time the meaning of Good Friday, and then return to
what is called the real world of work and shopping and commuter trains and
homes. As we come out of a movie theater and shake our heads to clear our minds
of another world where we lived for a time in suspended disbelief, as we
reorient ourselves to reality, so we leave our contemplation—we leave the church
building, we close the book---where for a time another reality seemed possible,
believable, even real. But, we tell ourselves, the real world is a world
elsewhere. It is the world of deadlines to be met, of appointments to be kept,
of taxes to be paid, of children to be educated. From here, from this moment at
the cross, it is a distant country. “Father, forgive them, for they have
forgotten the way home. They have misplaced the real world.” Here, at the cross,
is the real world, here is the axis mundi (i.e. the axis of the world)."



Neuhaus is writing about Holy Week, that time just before Easter, when our
attention is drawn to Jesus’ last week and particularly to his death. But Jesus’
death is a piece with his life and ministry. Jesus lived to show us that what we
think is the most real – the world of schedules and taxes, TV programs and
computer games, getting that degree and pursuing a career and family, is not the
ultimate reality. It isn’t unreal, Jesus was very much emerged in the day in and
day out struggle and drama which is our life in this world, but Jesus had a
different perspective. Jesus wants us to see the ultimate reality of the
spiritual and the personal. In a world where we are captives of a
consumer-driven, efficiency-minded, results-oriented culture that often even
invades the church, Jesus wants to call us to a different perspective, a
different reality. This isn’t a reality that denies this world, but one that
makes every effort for a balanced life in which the life of the soul,
relationships and possessions are held together in a richer, fuller
perspective.



Occasionally we are reminded of this. Sometimes it happens when we gather
together in church and the Gospel is really heard or when we begin to examine
our lives and stop to reflect on what is really important, or all too often, it
happens when we are confronted with the crises of life and we are forced to look
deep into our inner being to see what there is there that we can really hold on
to. Too often we go through life living or surviving on the surface, not really
knowing or experiencing the depth of life. We are like stones skimmed across a
lake, barely touching the surface. The real world goes undetected, hidden under
the many layers of culture that surround us.



Even our religious or “spiritual” life doesn’t really help us since most of
us have become consumers of religion rather than cultivators of a spiritual
life. As consumers we grab onto the quick fix and the least demanding. We look
for some secret technique or the most recent, best-selling inspirational
devotional. But, like most fads, they quickly leave us sated and wanting to move
on to something else that we hope will scratch our spiritual itch.



But the spiritual life, life in that reality that Jesus came to show us and
tell us about, the REAL reality requires more from us. It requires discipline
and the willingness to sacrifice. Good athletes know the importance of
discipline and sacrifice. Unspectacular training and diet are foundational. They
are accepted and undertaken because the prize is worth it.



Jesus calls us to see that what is really REAL, what is ultimately important,
is to cultivate the life of the soul and meaningful relationships and treat our
possessions as stewards who know their value, importance, but also their
limitation.



In a couple of weeks, March 9 to be precise, the season of Lent begins. It
isn’t so much about giving up chocolate or coffee or something else that we
like, as it is about gaining perspective on the need for balance in life. And at
the heart of that balance is our relationship with God. So let me encourage you
to commit yourself to a Lenten journey. Find a guide or talk to your pastor or
to someone you feel is a maturing follower of Jesus for some help. You can
contact me for some suggestions if you like. My prayer for you and for me is
that we will learn to really see and learn to live in the real world that God
intends for us to know. Peace.

Waiting, Work and Hope

Let me be honest, I’m not very good at waiting. Admittedly, I have gotten a lot better, but I still have a long way to go. I get up in the morning and although I like to grind my coffee beans, boil the water and filter a good strong cup of coffee, I can’t usually wait. So in my impatience, I pop a K-cup into my Keurig and within a minute or so, I have my coffee. Better than instant, but not as good as my usual dripped coffee. But I find it hard to wait.

There are other things that are hard to wait for –  my turn in line, test results, seeing loved ones, waiting for the newest gadget to hit the stores. Now, some waiting is good. Waiting can build character and patience. It gives us time to think and to weigh the issues involved. It helps us avoid rushing into things by carefully considering the implications and consequences of our actions and our choices. There is something to be said for deferred gratification and careful planning. Waiting can be good.

But there are other things, bigger, more pressing things that I find it hard to wait for. It is hard to wait for things like: ending hunger in a nation of plenty, clean water for all people, affordable health care for all, decent and dignifying jobs for all who want them, decent and affordable housing, healthier marriages and families, the end of injustice, just politicians and equitable systems that benefit all people not just the mighty or the wealthy or the ones who are well-connected or know how to manipulate the system. I wait. And I wait.

Of course, that is what life is often like in a fallen world – a world waiting and groaning for its and our redemption (to paraphrase Paul’s words in Romans 8). Jesus and the long prophetic tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures remind us that we are waiting for God’s ultimate Kingdom to come and while we wait, we experience all the tension and travail that often accompanies waiting. Yes, the Kingdom of God has broken into our world in Jesus. Yes, the Kingdom of God is working itself out whenever God’s will is understand and embraced and put into action. But yet, we still wait for the Kingdom’s full realization.

And while we wait, we work. It is easy to get discouraged and angry and throw up our hands and say: “Forget it!” (or something stronger!). But those whose hearts are gripped by the compassion and vision of Christ, refuse to become victims of despair. They have glimpsed something and experienced something of the possibilities of the Kingdom and have to respond. Our work can take many forms. It can be serving, marching, protesting, making donations, writing letters and making phone calls, it can be speaking out against practices, structures, systems, persons that dehumanize and betray the dignity of human life as God intended it. But it seems to me that one of the key ways in which we work against the injustices and demonization in the world is by prayer. The theologian Karl Barth once wrote about the revolutionary nature of prayer. He said: “To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” William Ramsey, a former Archbishop of the Church of England, reminds us that: “The church is called to be a community which speaks to the world in God’s name and speaks to God from the middle of the world’s darkness and frustration. The prayer with beautiful buildings and lovely music must be a prayer which also speaks from the places where men and women work, or lack work, and are sad and hungry, suffer and die. To be near to the love of God is to be near, as Jesus showed, to the darkness of the world. This is the ‘place of prayer’” Prayer is not a passive exercise, a folding of the hands and a closing of the eyes. It is taking up arms against the darkness of the world and embracing the world with the compassion and heart of God.

And what keeps us going? What keeps us from giving up or getting tired of waiting? It is hope.

As we look at the life of Jesus we see that he tasted failure, sorrow, loneliness and brokenness. And Jesus didn’t really promise much less for those who were to follow him. This is what life is like in a broken world and a world that so often forgets its God-oriented purpose. But Jesus not only endured, but triumphed through hope in the goodness, sovereignty, presence, plan and promises of God.

God’s spirit makes that hope real in our lives by changing our hearts and perspectives and helps us to see God’s future -- a future described in the vivid images of the closing chapters of Isaiah and Revelation among other places. Christians are witnesses in the world to God’s shalom (peace, wholeness, well-being) for the created cosmos. It is a future with hope (cf. Jeremiah 19:4-5,7,11),  a good future.

Just as there cannot be any love without God, there can be no hope without God, for all hope is rooted in God and the promises of God. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that hope is the anchor of the soul. Without it, life is a long journey into darkness. And so we wait in hope, we work in hope, we are inspired by hope. This is true at the personal, social and global level. Hope that both looks back at Jesus’ life, ministry and resurrection, and a hope that looks forward, moves forward, revolutionizing and transforming the present.

One of my favorite quotes on hope was given to me years ago by one of my students. I have kept it with me over the years and have drawn encouragement from it. It by the Brazilian theologian/philosopher Rubem Alves: “Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith is to dance to it.” Anyone feel like dancing? Don’t give up.

Work and Identity

Many of us, when we are introduced to someone, pretty soon are identifying ourselves by what we do? I’m a student, a nurse, a pharmacist, a pastor, etc. Yes, these may be things that we do, but they really aren’t who we are, our identity. Yes, they are often the way we identify ourselves in a society that encourages people to find their identity in a job that demands a 24/7 preoccupation. Psychologists tell us that a fundamental drive is the fear of insignificance. In Western culture the popular mark of a significant person is a hard worker, someone with a successful career.  And in the current climate where people so often lose their job, it is easy to feel worthless or that that we have lost our identity. But our identity, our true identity, isn’t found in what we do. I think that we intrinsically know this. Maybe this is why for many people there is so much monotony, boredom, repetition and dissatisfaction associated with their work. For many people, it does not fill them or satisfy them. That is because, no matter what we do, work does not justify our existence. This is why it is important to distinguish work, a job, from vocation, that is, a “calling.” Vocation comes from the Latin word vocatio, and literally means a summons or an invitation. In the Christian understanding, vocation has to do with our God-given identity – who we are called to be in Christ. And because that is who we fundamentally are, it’s possible to lose a job but not our identity. Who we are is more than a job we do.

If we understand this more basic, fundamental, defining understanding of our identity, work, like all aspects of life can be a means through which we can know and love God more deeply. In the end, what we do is not as important as how, for whom, and to what end you do it. The Apostle Paul reminds us: “whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Now, of course, there are some things that we can do that clearly do not glorify God because they are contrary to who God is and what he calls us to be in Christ and what God desires for the creation. And realistically one of those things that might not glorify God is the mind-numbing, totally unsatisfying job you may feel you are stuck in. If that is your situation, there are some personal discernment questions you have to ask yourself – am I here because I am too afraid or too lazy to risk looking for something else? Am I here because I really have no other choices? Am I here because I should be and I have found this work unfulfilling because somehow I have left God out of it? Sometimes we need help making this discernment. But maybe the job I’m in isn’t all that satisfying, but is there a way that I can do it that will enable me to be a greater witness to God’s grace and life? Maybe the job is simply a way to earn a salary that frees me up for other areas of service? We should never live to simply work, we work to live and with that life we find ways of serving God and others.

Work, when it is meaningful is both challenging and stressful. As followers of Jesus, we can learn to hold our jobs, our careers with a “light touch” and enjoy a sense of personal peace in those places we find ourselves. We know that our identity is not in what we do, but in who we are. We are God’s children, made in God’s image, people of inestimable worth. And because we know that, it is much more important to be focused on how, for whom, and to what end you do our work.

Healing Through Caring

The late English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge tells in his book Something Beautiful for God (1971:91-92) about a conversation he once had with Mother Teresa about what her community tries to offer the dying on the streets of Calcutta. She replied: "We want to make them feel that they are wanted, we want them to know that there are people who really love them, who really want them….It is not very often things they need. What they need much more is what we offer them. In these twenty years of work amongst the people, I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. Nowadays we have found medicine for leprosy and lepers can be cured. There’s medicine for TB and consumptives can be cured. For all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures. But for being unwanted, except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be cured."

Did we get that? Mother Teresa said:  “…it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.” And it isn’t just the poor and dying on the streets of Calcutta that are afflicted with this disease. We find it in the affluent homes and cities in our country, and often in the places we frequent – our schools, our streets, churches, clubs, stores, our homes, and the list goes on. Maybe we ourselves have felt that way and hoped desperately that someone would reach out to us and help us to know that we were loved and wanted.

As followers of Jesus we are called to care and comfort those around us. The word comfort means “strength or strong together.” But all too often we stay to ourselves or our own. “It doesn’t concern me” is a common response. Sometimes it is because we are afraid; sometimes it is because we are too focused on other things – school, work, building a family, doing church, playing,  that we don’t feel we have the time to reach out. But when we take the risk: to listen, feel, reach out and be compassionate, to suffer together with the other, when we care enough to face the loneliness and pain of another, we are not only fulfilling the call of Christ to love as he loved, we also find something new within ourselves. Henri Nouwen wrote: “Comfort is the great gift that creates community. Those who come together in mutual vulnerability are bound together by a new strength that makes them into one body.” This is the church, this is the Body of Christ – people who come together in mutual vulnerability – “vulnerability”, because they come together in caring, comforting, healing, risking love. In their coming together in their vulnerability, they are bound together by a new strength.

So many churches measure their success in how many people are filling the pews, how great their worship is, or how big their budget is. But the real measure of success among the people of God is how much do we really love and care. The church is to be a place of healing – healing through caring.

All of us need, and I hope find, people who make us feel wanted and also help us become people who make others feel wanted, friends who love, people who create an atmosphere of warmth and genuine trust which enables us and others to love in return.

I think Mother Teresa was right: “…except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be cured.” Are you and I becoming those hands and hearts to the people around us? Because, unless we are, this disease will continue to claim the lives of people who are crying out for help. Maybe we can start with those in our families or in our classes or at our work. But wherever we start, we need to reach out.

Thinking About Love

Today is Valentine’s Day and while I’m not a real big fan of the ways the day has become commercialized and how it seems that for many people it has become a way of atoning for failing to express their love to their significant other the other 364 days of the year, it is a celebration of romantic love and a helpful reminder that we need to express that love. So, for those of you who gave flowers or candy or both, cooked a meal, sent a card or made a call to show your love, well done! And I hope that it is also a good reminder to continue to show your love throughout the year.

But while we are thinking about love, let’s admit it: “love” is a very chameleon word. It takes on so many different meanings in our society. I’ll let you enumerate the many ways the word seems to be used, but we know that it can mean everything from “like” to “lust” to “sacrifice.” For the Christian, the thing that helps us define love is Jesus and what Jesus has to say about God, whom the Bible describes as “Love.” In other words, all love, be it genuine romantic love, family love, or love for others in general, has its basis in God’s love whether we acknowledge it or not. The hunger for love and the capacity to show love is part of what it means to be made in the divine image.

The problem with love is that we are often limiting it or conditioning it. Sometimes it is hard to love others because we haven’t learned to love ourselves as loved by God. But as we come to know God’s love it deepens and transforms our love in all those areas of life where we seek to love.

If you are still struggling with God’s love for you, take a look at this poem written by Sue Garmon. Allow its images and language to break through the defenses you may have erected against God’s love, consciously or unconsciously. And as you see how much you are loved, allow that love to show through your life.


Lord, thank you
for not giving up on me.
Thank you
for not washing your hands of me.
Thank you
for not turning your back on me and my brokenness.

Lord, thank you
for not considering me
a hopeless case;
for not shrugging your shoulders
and walking away
from my innumerable failures,
great and small.

Lord, thank you
for believing in me
when I can’t believe in myself.

Thank you
for hoping in me
when I can’t hope in myself.
Thank you
for trusting me
when I can’t trust myself.

Thank you, Lord,
for being my Father
who believes in me,
who hopes in me,
who trusts me
and loves me
forever and ever---
no matter what.

Lord, forgive me for thinking
that your love for me
and my love for you
can be measured
with the same
yardstick.

Your love for me
doesn’t depend
on what I do for you.
Your love for me
doesn’t falter
in the face
of silence.
Your love for me
doesn’t shrivel
in the face
of my refusal to respond.

Your love for me
doesn’t use me,
force me,
manipulate me
or coerce me.
Your love for me
is free,
and it sets me free.

Forgive me, Lord,
for trying to do to you
what your love won’t allow you
to do to me.

And even now
you say to me,
“Throw away
that yardstick!”

Lord, I’m so happy
that you’re God!

Especially Graced

Today is one of those especially graced day. Every day is graced in that it is a gift, but today I feel  especially graced. I got to spend the morning with our youngest granddaughter who will be four later this month. We went to the zoo and then to McDonalds for her to climb and socialize in the play area. On the way to and from the zoo I got the opportunity to introduce her to the world of folk music, particularly Peter, Paul and Mary. She listened and tried to join in the singing of Kum Ba Yah, If I Had a Hammer, We Shall Overcome and Puff, the Magic Dragon. Some of the songs she has heard her older sisters sing. I’m sure that a lot of it went over her heard or in one ear and out the other, but you never know. Hopefully she was a bit more sensitized to freedom songs. But as I was listening to Puff, the Magic Dragon, I was reminded of how the song is a celebration of the imagination and a sad  lament on how it is often lost when we get older. Angelina has a great imagination and I hope she never loses it. But it’s an uphill struggle. The world, as the poet says, is too much with us. As we grow, we get jaded to the wonder of the world around us. Yes, there is so much evil in the world and so much childish stuff that we have to put off as we “grow up”, but I think we really lose something when we have lost our sense of wonder.

      This reminded me of something Brennan Manning talks about in his book, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba’s Embrace. In a chapter entitled “Christmas Reflections at O’Hare” he relates a time when he and many other passengers were stranded in Chicago’s O’Hare airport because of a  winter storm (been there, done that). As he looked around he saw that many of the passengers shared his turmoil and growing anger. But across the aisle from him he saw a middle-aged black woman cradling a child. And she was laughing! Intrigued, Manning crossed the aisle and found himself staring at the woman. She was rubbing her fingers across the child’s lips as he blew mightily “brrh, brrh.” She looked up. Manning spoke: “Ma’am, you’re the only person in this place who seems to be together. Would you mind telling me why you’re so happy?” “Sho,” she said, “Christmas is coming and dat Jesus---He make me laugh!”

     Manning thanked her, recrossed the aisle and slumped into his seat. “Dat Jesus—He make me  laugh!” he repeated to himself. And then he raises some questions that we might do well to ask ourselves. He asked: Am I getting too serious about life? In the hurly burly of the marketplace have I let my childlike sense of wonder fade? Have I stopped looking at sunsets and rainbows? Am I so lost in preaching, teaching, writing, traveling that I no longer hear the sound of rain on the roof? How long since I stopped making snowballs and flying kites?

     He goes on to remind us that Christmas is the good news that God has invade our world and life cannot/should not ever be seen the same way again. God comes into history and comes daily in  mystery. And this God will one day come in glory. These are his words: “God is saying in Jesus that in the end everything will be all right. Nothing can harm you permanently, no suffering is irrevocable, no loss is lasting, no defeat is more than transitory, no disappointment is conclusive. Jesus did not deny the reality of suffering, discouragement, disappointment, frustration, and death; He simply stated that the kingdom of God would conquer all of these horrors, that the Father’s love is so prodigal that no evil could possibly resist it.”

     If, Manning challenges us, we can accept the mystery of Bethlehem, our lives can be filed with the laughter  of God. And there can be a rebirth of wonder in our lives.

     Oh, and the second reason today is an especially graced day? It is my wife’s birthday. And each  and every day her presence reminds me of how rich my life is and I am struck by how great a gift God gave me when I found Connie. But that is a story for another time.

 Blessings.

Grace, Love and Me

The German theologian and cultural historian, Eugen Biser, reduces the troubles that most of us face to three basic problems: over-activity, loneliness, and angst (anxiety). I don’t know about you, but I’ve been there and maybe a good deal of the time that describes me. And the only real cure is love -- to be loved and to love ourselves and others. When we love and are loved, our over-activity can be seen for what it is – often fear or a need to prove our worth and value by doing, and we can rightly prioritize the many activities in our life so that we aren’t over-extended or burning the candle at both ends. Our loneliness can be transformed into intimacy and our anxiety into peace and courage.  

      Kathleen Norris, relates a simple but profound story in her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (p.150): “One morning this past spring I noticed a young couple with an infant at an airport  departure gate. The baby was staring intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking, he would respond with absolute delight. It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would allow it, I felt awe-struck as Jacob (Genesis 28:10-19), because I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. And, as Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God, who can look right through whatever evil we’ve done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image. I suspect that only God, and well-loved infants can see this way.” 

     Our tired, lonely, anxious spirits need love as much as our bodies need air. I know that I do. And the good news is that God loves you. He delights in you, just as that baby delighted in every face he saw. It is hard sometimes to accept that. We know what darkness lurks in our heart. We know how unlovely we have been or can be. Honestly, I am not always sure that I could love someone like me. But God does.  

     Jesus knew the Father’s love and he said: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my  love” (John 15:9). We are loved unconditionally and completely. God’s love is a boundless,  bottomless love. But we often suffer from amnesia. We forget that we are loved. And often that is  because we allow other things to come between us and God’s love. The secret to living in that love is to stay connected with Jesus where we experience the love between the Father and the Son. To remain in that love and to grow in it is more than just thinking about it occasionally, like on Sunday morning or when we are at fellowship or when someone jars our memory. To remain in that love means that the love of God is the foundation of our lives, it is our home, our security, our joy. And if it is, we grow in that love and it not only helps us to deal with our fears and our loneliness and our anxiety, it also helps us to love others. And in loving others we begin to heal and transform our world, one person at a time. John Vanier reminds us what love is when he describes love as “revealing to someone else that  person’s own beauty.” God has shown that love to us in Christ and we show it others. Love means showing the other person how special, how beautiful, how precious they are. They can’t really  discover that alone. Another person is needed.  

     We all need love. A man was standing in a grocery checkout line with quite a few other people. He was getting impatient. Others in the line began to complain and gripe. The man looked at the front of  the line at a couple there and they were smiling. “Of course, they’re smiling,” he thought to himself, “they are at the front of the line.” But when he got to the front of the line, he noticed that the checkout clerk had made a sign out of a piece of cardboard and put it in front of her. It said, “We have been  made with love; please treat us accordingly.” Wouldn’t it be great to mentally see that hanging on every person we meet and also be seen on me by every person who sees me? God has made us with love and we are all precious. And one of the great privileges I have in life is to treat each person I meet as loved and a person of worth and dignity. And as I have the opportunity to tell them why – they are loved by a gracious God with a bottomless, unbounded, unconditional love.

Where Have You Encountered Christ Today?

John L’Heureux is a former Jesuit priest and a prize-winning author who has taught at several American universities and for many years has been Professor of English at Stanford University. In one of his poems, “The Trouble with Epiphanies” (1968) he reminds us that this is God’s world and that, as Jesus indicated (Matthew 25:31-46), he can be encountered in the daily experiences of life if we are sensitive to his presence in our world and life and can look beyond the places and circumstances in which we expect God to appear. Often God comes in the interruptions and surprises of the day. Where did you see Jesus today? Where did you have an epiphany that made you aware (or now makes you aware as you reflect on it) of God?

Christ came into my room

and stood there

and I was bored to death.

I had work to do.

I wouldn’t have minded

if he’d been crippled

or something—I do well

with cripples—but he

just stood there, all face,

and with that d—ned guitar.

I didn’t ask him to sit down:

he’d have stayed all day.

(Let’s be honest. You

can be crucified just so often;

then you’ve had it. I mean

you’re useless; no good

to God, let alone

to anybody else.) So I said

to him after a while---

well, what’s up? What do you want?

And he laughed, stupid,

said he was just passing by

and thought he’d say hello.

Great, I said, hello.

So he left.

And I was so d—ned mad

I couldn’t even listen

to the radio. I went

and got some coffee.

The trouble with Christ is

he always comes at the wrong time.

 

--John L’Heureux, “The Trouble with Epiphanies” (1968)

“The Heresy of a Privatized Faith"

 

 

 

 

A while back, sociologist Robert Bellah writing in Habits of the Heart, related this story: “Sheila Larson is a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy and describes her faith as  Sheilaism.” This suggests the logical possibility of more than 235 million American religions, one for each of us. ‘I believe in God,’ Sheila says, “I am not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.”

 

“My little voice” and a “just Jesus and me” faith also guides many so-called “Christians.” We may  expand it a bit to cover “Sharpism” or Smithism” or “Chanism” or Hernandezism”. We may ask God to bless me and my wife, our son John and his wife, us four, but this is not the faith of Jesus and it is not the faith of the early church or historic Christianity. When his followers asked him to teach them how to pray, Jesus didn’t say that they were to pray, “My Father who is in heaven….” He taught them by example and word to pray, “Our Father,…” Christianity has always been a “communitarian” faith. Not communitarian in the sense of a political philosophy, although there are some connections there, but that at the heart of the Christian faith is “community.” God is a Triune God. In the beginning was God, and that means in the beginning was a relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Christians worship a God who has existed from all eternity in self-giving, outgoing love among the members of the Trinity. And that means that if God-as-Trinity is the core reality of the universe, it  means that the core of reality is community. And everything has to be seen from that perspective.  

 

This means that for the follower of Jesus who has been brought into this community of love and  nourished in the community of the faithful, I am to see things, process things, value things, make decisions in the light of how they glorify God who is a community of love and how they build up and strengthen the community of faith of which I am a part. Certainly this is what we see in Acts 2 and 4 and in the letters of Paul, especially 1 Corinthians and Ephesians. In the books of Acts, Chapter 5, there is a startling story of a husband and wife who forgot this. They decided to sell some of their property and give it to the church so that, as we can see in Acts 2 and 4, the proceeds can be used for the relief of the poor and those in need. They decided to say to the church that their contribution was the total amount they had received, although it wasn’t. They held back some for themselves. They lied. They lied not just to the church, but also to God and with that came a judgment. 

 

Society may operate on a social contract – I am an individual first who joins together with others when it serves my self-interest and can withdraw when it doesn’t. But this isn’t the way of the church or our life in God. Those who are connected by faith to Christ are “in Christ” the Apostle Paul likes to say. I am not alone. And so are all those who are related to God through Christ. It is not a social contract, but a covenant relationship in which I am bound to God and to all those who are my brothers and sisters. And I am not only to do good for the Body of Christ, I am also to do good for all people (Galatians 6:10) as I have opportunity. 

 

Because Christians belong to God and one another, we realize that all that we possess is loaned to us  as stewards. The Christian can’t really say “this is mine” in any exclusive sense. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” writes the Psalmist (24:1). And the Christian realizes that he/she is a steward of all they possess, materially and otherwise. Maybe we should put on everything the words: “for the use of [name]”. They are for the use of the steward of these goods. But they are not owned or possessed exclusively. It all belongs to God and we are privileged to use it for his glory and this means that I am called to share. This is a good reminder in the face of so much greed and selfishness and personal consumption that pervades our culture and even the lives of many professed followers of Jesus. But we are to invest in God’s kingdom and the Lord’s Prayer or the Disciple’s Prayer in  Matthew 6 reminds us that we are to pray that God’s kingdom/God’s will is realized in this world. But that is hard to do when faith becomes privatized. To pray the “our Father” and to live in the Kingdom of God is a rejection of all privatized faith. I wonder how our world would be different if the almost two billion people who claim to be followers of Jesus really lived that way? What revolution and transformation would take place in our life, society, our country, our world?

“Learning to Love -- A Christian Imperative"

I have been thinking about all the animosity, mean-spirited criticism, negative attacks and just plain hate that seems to be filling our world. My greatest pain comes from seeing that some of it, maybe too much of it, comes from professed Christians. For many their ideology or political or socially driven agenda has surpassed their commitment to love as Christ has loved us.

 

 

If God is love (1 John 4:8) and human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), learning to love is a theological imperative. An “imperative” is something essential, vital, crucial, urgent. It is essential for our wholeness as human beings, our existence as followers of Jesus, and it is vital if the world is to really see that the message we seek to share – that God loves all people and has shown that love in Christ-- is real. 

 

 

Learning to love begins with reexamining our understanding and experience of love, especially with regard to God. Even if we are fortunate to be born into a loving and caring family, it’s not too long before our understanding of love gets connected with rewards and favors. As we grow, we pick up the subtle messages that getting and giving love is often based on meeting certain expectations; and if we don’t, love can be withheld. Whether it’s being quiet, performing well in school, getting along with our siblings, etc., we soon learn that love is conditional. Maybe we even came to see God’s love like that. God doesn’t love us unless we live up to certain standards and perform in certain ways. And as we grow older, this is the kind of love we learn how to give, both to God and others -- love as an effort to cultivate acceptance, receive favor, and even manipulate others for our own purposes. And if we didn’t get what we wanted, love could be abandoned or withheld until we did. As a pastor I have seen this in families and in relationships between husbands and wives. 

 

 

But that’s not real love. In the Hebrew Bible, a word used to describe God’s love is hesed.  It is steadfast love, resilient love, a determined love. It is not based on feelings or convenience. It is a relational love grounded in God’s unrelenting, unconditional love for us as people created in God’s image and loved with a cross-like love seen in Jesus. This is the kind of love that those who claim to be related to God are intended to have. If we only love God and others for what we gain from the relationship, we are not loving them. We are just using the relationship for our own gain. This is exploitation, not love. 

 

 

Now, the reality is that all of our love as human beings is tainted by selfishness and self-interest. That’s who we are as a result of our current condition. But we can LEARN to love as God loves. But our ability to love as God loves depends completely on our first knowing God’s life-altering love for us. Without that experience we don’t know what pure love is. And as we come to understand and experience this  unconditional, unlimited love it begins to change us, or should. God’s love is a healing and transforming love. If we allow it, it can begin to heal our own inner wounds and fears, and as we are changed so is the way we see our world and react to the people in it. It makes it possible to become more compassionate, empathetic, patient, understanding. 

 

 

“Possible”, but not always easy. When people hurt us or we face things that rub us the wrong way or threaten our circumstances or values, the first reaction, the natural reaction is to retaliate or to leave or shut down. It is a reaction based on feelings--hate, fear, anger, insecurity, indifference. But if we understand and have experienced God’s love for us, we come to realize that love for others is an attitude, it is a choice.  I don’t think God’s love for us is one that causes God to go weak in the knees, feel queasy in the stomach, or get all gushy or sentimental. I’m not denying the place of emotion, but I don’t think that biblical love (agape) is essentially or primarily emotional, it is an attitude or a disposition. It is wanting the best for the other. It is intentional. It is a choice we make. But that choice, intention, attitude needs to be cultivated and it only develops as we grow in our experience of God’s love and we see what that love looks like in the life of Jesus. It will never be perfect in this life, but we all know of people who have shown growth in that kind of love in their lives. Many of us have been on the receiving end of that love. And as we grow like Christ, love becomes the guiding principle in our response to all people, both in word and deed. And the interesting thing is that as people around us are touched by this love, their attitudes and actions towards us are often transformed. And if they aren’t, we don’t stop loving them. Because God is love and we are children of God.  I wonder how learning to love would change your world, our world?

The God of Infinite Surprises

Lord, you're the most unpredictable
person
I know.
Just when I think
I've finally begun
to figure you out,
you do something
so fantastic,
so completely, wildly
unexpected
that I'm knocked for a loop.

I think I know where to find you
and then suddenly I find you
in the most unlikely places;
at the oddest moments;
in the strangest people.

I think I know your voice;
and then I hear you
in a child's crooning lullaby;
in an old man's chuckle;
in a lover's sigh.

I think I know your face;
and then I see you
in a psychiatric ward;
in a jam-packed tenement;
in the streets,
wandering aimlessly.

I think I know you well;
and then I discover
I know you not at all.

I think I know your love;
and then I discover
I haven't begun to know it.

Thank you, Lord,
for being unpredictable.
Thank you for startling me
out of my comfortable rut.
Continue teaching me
that you're a God
of infinite surprises.

--Sue Garmon (Cited in Brennan Manning's Souvenirs of Solitude, pp. 37-38)

May this God of infinite surprises astonish and startle you this day. May your eyes be open to the surprising ways he speaks, looks and acts as you go throughout your day. Blessings

“Beginning Again”

 

Today, for those of you who don’t know, is the beginning of the Chinese New Year. This year is the  Year of The Rabbit.” I have spent most of my adult life and ministry in Asia or in Chinese churches. Chinese New Year is a family time, a time for celebrating and feasting. It is a time for looking forward to the future and to a new adventure.

 

For me, Chinese New Year has meant all these things, but I have also seen it as a chance to begin  again. This is especially true when you see it as a chance to begin the new year over again after the January 1 New Year. Many of us make New Year’s resolutions – to lose weight, to start a hobby, to work on a relationship, to be less critical, not to lose our tempers, to simplify our lives, etc. And, if you are like me, about two weeks into the New Year, you’ve already broken or forgotten or given up on those resolutions. Then Chinese New Year comes around at the end of January or in February and you have another chance, a new start. Maybe you restate your original resolutions, maybe you realize that they were hopelessly ideal and forget them, but whatever you do about resolutions, you are reminded that it can be a new start.

 

Actually, every day can offer a new start. Especially if we remember that the God Jesus reveals to us is a God who can and wants to offer us a new start. The God of creation wants to make us new  creations in Christ. I think this is especially important for those of us who have a tendency to get down on ourselves, to beat ourselves up because we aren’t where or what we wish we were. And sometimes we project that dislike of ourselves or doubt onto God. And this can especially happen when it come to forgiveness and our relationship with God. “God can’t or won’t forgive me for ….” We think. And so we find ourselves mired in guilt or hopelessness. But the good news is that every day can be a new start. Of course, it is more than a cavalier or casual asking for forgiveness and expressing our love to God and then going on doing the same thing over and over again, thinking that we can come to God as a kind of slot machine who dispenses forgiveness and renewal if we drop a coin in or say the right words. 1 John 1: 9 reminds us that if we confess (truly agree with God) that we have sinned (blown it -- fallen short of God’s desire and intention for us), God is faithful and just and loving and will forgive us of all our sins. It’s a great gift. But even with that promise and the reminders of God’s grace and care that come to us each day if we have the eyes to see, some of us still don’t get it. Somehow we think that the possibility of forgiveness and starting over doesn’t include me. Maybe some others can experience a new beginning, but not me. Jane Keiller says of this attitude, “If we deny God’s  forgiveness we demonstrate an extraordinary arrogance in believing that the cross is adequate for everyone else’s sin except ours.” It is arrogance and it is a shame because it keeps us from moving on. Instead of accepting this great gift and starting again, we keep score of those things that we feel God keeps score of. But God doesn’t keep score. Thomas Merton reminds us, “Quit keeping score  altogether and surrender to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.”

 

So, on this New Year’s day (and every day) let’s start over, begin again. It can be a new year, new  day, new life when we see ourselves as one beloved and accepted by God in Christ. And as Brennan Manning loves to say, “faith is the courage to accept acceptance.”

 

Happy Chinese New Year!!

“Silence and Solitude”

There is an old saying: “Tell me how you distribute your time and your money, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Not too far off. Our time and money say a great deal about us and our values. But what I am really thinking about today is the place of silence and solitude in our allocation of  time.

 

Let’s admit it. Most of us don’t really carve out intentional times of silence and solitude. Several years ago, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea, pp. 43-44) wrote the following:

 

As far as the search for solitude is concerned, we live in a negative atmosphere as invisible, as all-pervasive, and as enervating [i.e. debilitating] as high humidity in an August afternoon. The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone.

            How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says, I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

            Actually these are among the most important times in one’s life—when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray.   

 

When we think about silence and solitude words like “Boring!”,“That’s a waste of time”, “There are just too many things to do”,  “I don’t have time for that” come flooding to our mind. Yes, for some of us – the introverted—silence and being alone is a bit easier. We seem to be hardwired for such times. But how do we use those times? Often for sleeping, and sleeping can be good and the right thing to do during some of those times of solitude. But I’m interested in the place of silence and solitude in our spiritual life. All of us need silence and solitude.  Henri Nouwen has gone so far as to say, "Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life". That’s a strong statement. But Jesus evidently agrees. As we read the Gospels we see that Jesus’ life contained regular times of silence and soli­tude. David Runcorn (Space for God) comments that:  “His times alone were the commas, pauses and full stops in the story of his life. They gave the rest of his life its structure, direction and balance. His words and his works were born out of these hours of silent waiting on God.”

 

 

I think these times were so important in Jesus’ life and in the life of his followers because without solitude it is nearly impossible to hear the voice of God. There are so many voices clamoring for our attention, even those within our own heart, that without these intentional times apart we can’t really hear what God is saying to us. They are also important because without solitude the other disciplines of the Chris­tian life (prayer, worship, Bible reading, service, and sacrifice) will lose their effectiveness. This is especially true of the discipline of prayer. 

 

 

Silence enables us to be aware of God, to let our minds and hearts reflect on God’s truth and grace, to reflect on what is really important and takes priority in our lives. Silence can be scary and disconcerting because when we are alone with God we may become aware of some things that we don’t like, that we know that God doesn’t like. The tendency is to run – to get back to the familiar noise and busyness of the world. But if we do, we cheat ourselves and we weaken our relationship with God and our everyday life.  In silence all we have to do is be still, stay close and let God love us into wholeness.

 

 

Today is Wednesday, “hump day”, we are on the downside of the week. What are your plans for this weekend? How about some time for silence, solitude and waiting on God? Of course, you don’t have to wait until then. Peace.

“Deeper People”

Several years ago, Richard Foster wrote: “The desperate need today is not for greater numbers of intelligent people or gifted people, but for deeper people.” (Celebration of Discipline, p.1). We live in a world of superficiality. We see it all around us – in relationships, fashions, conversations, how we deal with social problems and issues, and even in spirituality. Our culture encourages us to be cautious about getting involved too deeply. We haven’t the time and things change quickly. The latest gadget reminds us that technology is all about innovation. Admittedly, many of these innovations have improved our lives and allowed us to free up time for other things. But the problem is that we fill this “extra” time with things that are often very shallow or held tentatively since we know that we will be moving on to something else pretty soon. There is something liberating about not being locked into the past and unable to change with the times or see and embrace “new” things that really are better and allow is to be live more humanely and comfortably in the world. But along with that freedom comes the temptation to superficiality.

 

Foster cites a quote from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan that describes many of us: “I go through life as a transient on his way to eternity, made in the image of God but with that image debased, needing to be taught how to meditate, to worship, to think.” It describes me. I don’t know why I often think that spiritual maturity and growth as well as contentment and wholeness simply come. Moving beyond a superficial faith, going deeper does require something of me and the first thing beyond the desire to go deeper is time. I am always amazed at how much time I spend reading or facebooking or surfing the web or working or watching TV, etc. compared to how much time I put in to deepening and solidifying my spiritual life. In the spiritual life I often settle for  superficiality and then complain when something happens that upsets and penetrates my shallowness: “Where’s God?” “Why me?” “Doesn’t God care?” “There’s got to me more than this!” But often, instead of pausing to look at my life and its shallow relationship with God and working on that, I cry out to God (not, in itself, a bad thing) or reach for my Bible for some quick verses and when I feel a little bit better, go on with life as usual. I’m like the person who is sick, takes the medicine, feels a bit better, and then decides that I don’t need the medicine anymore only to discover later that the problem was much deeper. Instead of dealing with the deeper issue (our need for God), we often deal only with the superficial, although real, symptoms. 

 

Coggan is right, we need to LEARN how to meditate, to worship, to think. And we could add pray and serve. And to learn something well it requires time, making time. But I guess making time and desire are closely related. What is it that I really desire in life? 

 

Two final thoughts: One from Larry Hein and the other from Thomas Merton (whose birthday was yesterday, January 31). My prayer for myself and others is that they will stimulate, discomfort, and comfort us:

 

“May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.” (Larry Hein)

 

“Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the “one thing necessary” may be in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us, together with the one thing we needed.” (Thomas Merton)