Holding On to the Dust

Wake up! Do something, Lord!

Why are you sleeping?

Don’t desert us forever.

Why do you keep looking away?

Don’t forget our sufferings

and all of our troubles.

We are flat on the ground,

holding on to the dust.

Do something! Help us!

Show how kind you are

and come to our rescue.

Psalm 44:23-26 (CEV)



Sometimes a phrase grabs our imagination and takes on powerful meaning. Today, such a phrase caught my eye that shall stick with me.



I noticed the words, “holding on to the dust” embedded in Psalm 44. I was caught by the image of being prostrate on the ground, weak, helpless, in incredible pain - physical, mental, spiritual - and holding on for dear life lest I descend into madness.



Fortunately, such moments have been infrequent in my life, and I hope that is true for you too. Yet they are real, and will surely happen to us all. The tragic death of a 12 year old at a church camp comes to mind. The unexpected earthquake that destroys a whole nation. The suicide that robs us of a beloved relative or friend. The loss of a relationship, the death of a pet, even the breaking of an heirloom - which may seem insignificant to some, but precious beyond price to others - all can be devastating. Then it is we find ourselves “holding on to the dust”, and our hearts cry out to God “Do something! Help me.”



The Psalmist puts into words what our lips might hesitate to utter. Can we talk this way to God? Dare we accuse God of being forgetful, or even asleep? The Psalmist does not hesitate. He tells God exactly how it is with him: “I’m hurting here, God, it’s time to do something.”



I find just being able say the words, helps. I don’t need explanations, excuses, erudite sermons about the goodness of God in contrast to my own sinful ways. I don’t even need for God to speak, or apologize. What I need is the freedom to cry OUCH, and not just to cry out, but have the assurance there is someone who is listening and cares. How much more bearable the unbearable can be when we know we’re not alone.



The Psalmist gives me the courage - and the permission - to reach out to God, frankly, whole- heartedly, sometimes even blasphemously if that’s what it takes. The child who cries over a broken toy is closer to God than the stoic Christian determined to show no tears or utter any complaint. If God could hear Jesus cry out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Surely God can hear us too.



I have held on to the dust. It is good to know there’s a word for what I’m feeling, and a God big enough, strong enough, caring enough, loving enough to hear my weeping and share my sorrow.

Dr. George Miller

The Universal Question

I once heard a piece of profound wisdom from an anonymous voice. He was a young man reflecting on his journey towards wholeness. “Every time I think I’ve finally got it figured out, that’s when I’m sure I don’t.” Ah, how true.




Pity the one who has it all figured out, for it is at that dangerous moment that the mind closes and the understanding is left unfed. The atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer told newsman Edward R Murrow on a TV interview back in the fifties that science had just cracked open the door to a whole new universe and had not even stepped across the threshold. That was not mere false modesty, it was a profound description of the true condition of the human mind. How great is our knowledge and how puny in the face of all there is yet to be understood.



But there is a second danger in this notion. When we have it all figured out, we take the next step of thinking our answer is THE answer. Sounds innocent enough, doesn’t it? And yet, this is the underlying cause of such aberrations as the “Ultimate Solution” which the world now calls the holocaust. The well-meaning busybody who is only trying to help, unwittingly can be the cruel tyrant who insists “I know what’s best for you.” What a short distance lies between that statement and the assumption of omniscience. An old Buddhist saying is so true: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”



With that in mind, consider this lesson learned by the apostle Peter.



Good Jew though he was and aware of the prohibitions of the Mosaic law concerning dietary practices, he had eaten a meal with the gentiles. This simply was not done. Why? Who knew? Who asked? It was the law. And that was the end of the matter. So let us agree, their question was legitimate and Peter guilty as charged.



And what do we do when someone so obviously steps off the straight and narrow path of righteousness? Scold them. Correct them. Remind them how they were supposed to act. The problem with this is that it assumes such rules and laws are chiseled in stone. They are eternal. There is no room for new insight and growth. And they forget what the purpose was behind those rules.



It’s an old story but a good one. A young bride, remembering how delicious her mother’s roast was, asked her for the recipe. The mother said it was easy enough. “First you cut off the end of the roast.” “Why?” asked the new bride. “I don’t know,” her mother replied. “That’s just the way your grandmother taught me. Ask her.” So she did. The grandmother looked at her granddaughter with impatience, “Why? Because it was too big for the pan, of course!”



Good rules, but maybe we need to understand the purpose of the rule. Peter lived with rules that had been in place for hundreds of years. They had become self-evident. But just living by the letter of the law could be anything but the intention and will of God as Peter found out.



He dreamt a dream that put him in a dilemma. He was told to eat forbidden food. His refusal brought about a confrontation with an angel who chided him for his disobedience. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” It was a troubling order. Who was he to defy the Law of Moses and risk the wrath of God? On the other hand, who was he to resist a direct order when that order came from God? Wanting to be faithful and righteous, he was caught between a rock and a hard place.



It was resolved when he was later challenged to go to a gentile who needed him. Now the uncertainty about a dietary law disappeared in the face of a more significant issue. Would gentiles be accepted into the new Kingdom of God, or was Jesus’ mission only for the Jews? Peter was not only a good practitioner of the Mosaic Law, he was also a good Jew. What he now faced was unique. Had he not had that vision of the unclean food, he might have refused to go to the gentiles. But he went, telling his Pharisee critics he had to ask himself the question “who was I that I could hinder God?”



As I read this passage again, I found myself asking “In what ways do I hinder God?” And worse, “How often have I hindered God while believing I was doing so for God?” I shall not go to confession with you on that issue. It is troubling enough to have to admit I have done it many times. And probably no longer ago than this past week!



Ultimately, this event, this vignette, this glimpse into the story of Peter is about action not belief. We can argue until the earth looks flat about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but what action does our belief produce? Believe the gentiles are impure and it only makes sense to avoid them. Believe that the Jews are impure and you justify the holocaust. Believe that someone’s sexual practices are impure and you have just cause for turning them into objects of ridicule and scorn.



I am not free of these unholy judgments. As I heard one woman put it, “I’m a snob. I look down on people who look down on people!” Oh, I wish she hadn’t said that. Yes, I too am guilty. Where there is hatred, prejudice, intolerance, injustice there is a profanation of the holy. We all are created in the Image of God and no matter how far we have defaced that image, God has not shut the door on any of us.



For Peter, the lesson meant action. It was not enough to have a vision of unclean food; he was called to minister to the hated ones. He was invited into their home where he saw with his own eyes an anointing of the Holy Spirit upon the enemy. It’s rather like seeing one’s home team ignored while the challengers from out of town have God in their bleachers!



No, no, no. That’s intolerable. Isn’t it? Or is it? Wasn’t that what Peter was doing when he was urged to go to the Gentiles? Or think of Jonah, that righteous man who tried to run away from God rather than risk telling the Ninehvites how God felt about them and see them repent and be saved. Oh dear. Could God love that pimple faced thug who aspires to dating my daughter?



Apparently God could, and does, and urges us to do likewise. It’s not just a new world we Christians are living in, it’s a newer world every day. There’s no keeping up with it. I listened to a report on NPR yesterday which speaks of this new “i” generation. The generation of the i-pod, the i-pad, google and twitter and facebook. Lord have mercy on us. We are raising children who understand the uses of the internet by the time they’re in first grade. When I can’t get my MP3 player to work, I find a 5th grader to explain it to me. Can we honestly think that the gospel we learned fifty years ago really fits the world in which they live? We may long for the “good old days” and lament the easy morals of today’s youth, but I must remind you, their morals are not that different from the ones we practiced or that our forebearers took for granted. Thus it will ever be as long as we stay satisfied merely obeying the letter of the law without looking beyond the forbidden food to see the miracle God is constantly working in our constantly changing world.



Don’t think Peter got it right away. Told to eat unclean food he rebelled. Never. Never? Why Peter, think who you’re talking to. You know more than God?



Well, yes. The laws are pretty clear on this. And it’s what everyone else believes. And yet, are we really so clear? It’s not been that long ago a couple were convicted of contributing to the death of their son when they refused to avail themselves of the aid of modern medicine for him because of their religious beliefs. We were horrified. How could they do that? Yet how could they not? Given their understanding of the requirements of their faith, to do otherwise was to deny God. Suppose everything you ever believed was being thrown out the window when you were totally convinced that God had ordered things otherwise? How frightening, how dreadful, how terrible for you and your son.



The Universal Question continues to be, “Am I doing the will of God, or am I getting in the way of God’s will?” And that is why I was reminded of that remark I heard long ago, “Just when I think I have it figured out, I realize I haven’t got it figured out.” And to take it a step further, “Just when I’m sure I know the will of God - ah, how strange that I cannot understand the will of God at all!” The poet Stephen Vincent Benet, in his epic poem about the Civil War, imagined Abraham Lincoln struggling to know God’s will:



What is God’s will?

They come to me and talk about God’s will

In righteous deputations and platoons,

Day after day, laymen and ministers,

They write me Prayers From Twenty Million Souls

Defining me God’s will and Horace Greeley’s.

God’s will is General This and Senator That,

God’s will is those poor colored fellows’ will,

It is the will of the Chicago churches,

it is this man’s and his worst enemy’s.

But all of them are sure they know God’s will.

I am the only man who does not know it.



And yet, if it is probable that God

Should, and so very clearly, state His will

To others, on a point of my own duty,

It might be thought He would reveal it me

Directly, more especially as I

So earnestly desire to know His will.



God bless the Peters of this world and the Abraham Lincolns, and the young man who thought he knew but discovered he did not know. God bless us who want to do what is right but must live in a world that keeps changing, changing so radically our sacred rules seem useless.



God bless you as you hear Jesus’ words:



I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.



May God give us the courage, the humility and the faith to hear those words as if we had never heard them before, and the resolve to live by them as best we can this day. Amen.

The Blessedness of an Empty Tomb

The saying goes, “Seeing is believing”. That’s the rallying cry of the realist, the credo of all down-to-earth people. We are followers of the disciple Thomas who vowed unless he saw with his own eyes and felt with his own hands the risen Christ, he would not believe. And that’s what makes the Easter story so incredibly hard to swallow. It isn’t what we see that makes the difference - it’s what we don’t see.




Think about it. We are here today celebrating a non-sight, an empty tomb. Now we may go on and on about the implications of that empty tomb. We may protest and say “But that only proves Christ rose from the dead.” Not necessarily so. Even the disciples were unconvinced, and dismissed the words of the women as an “idle tale.”



In this, Luke tells a different story from the other Gospel writers. We have no Jesus in the garden, who confronts Mary. Nor do the disciples get to visit with the angelic messengers. No. We are left with an empty space - and a sense of wonder.



Very unscientific - and very un-American I might add. We are the “Show me” people. Unless we see for ourselves, we will not believe.

But how much we miss for all our scientific approach to things. In my experience, when I am on familiar ground, when I have all the facts in hand, when I know what I am talking about - then I am least able to recognize God.



It is in the empty places I am forced to start searching. Who seeks food when he or she is already full? Who seeks enlightenment when he or she already knows? Who explores new territory when he or she is content at home?



In the book of Revelation, the Church in Laodicea is chided for being “lukewarm.” They think they are rich, they think they are well dressed, they think they are healthy. Laodicea was known throughout the whole Roman Empire for its fine wool, for an eye salve that was produced there from minerals found in the area, and for the mint that produced coins for Rome. Yet, the author says they are “poor, blind and naked.” The implication is clear - how much better off you would be if you were poor, blind and naked - then perhaps you would recognize your true need. You would hear me knocking at the door, and you would invite me in so we could sit down and dine together.



The empty places, they are the blessed places - and they are the very places we strive the hardest to avoid. I invite you to contemplate this empty tomb - think not about where Jesus is, think only about where he is not. We cannot keep him in a dusty tomb. He will not be confined in our churches. He will burst out of our theological formulae. It’s rather like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn attending their own funeral, watching the people grieve over the poor dead angels. Jesus peeks over our shoulders, looks into the empty grave and says “It is empty, isn’t it. Surprise!”





The life of faith, unlike the life of the pragmatist, is lived in an empty space where the unexpected can take place. Only in the empty place can God come tapping at our door, and we will hear and invite him in.



It’s an old legend, but still powerful - about the tailor in a small Russian village, who is told in a dream that he will be visited by God the next day. He is overjoyed at such an honor, and sets out to prepare for the great visitor. But hard as he tries to prepare he keeps getting interrupted. He prepares a feast, and then a beggar comes needing food. The only food in the house sits on the table waiting for the divine guest, he has nothing to give the beggar. But he can’t turn the poor fellow out. Especially when he learns the man has a sick wife and small children at home, all starving. He packs up the meal and sends it off with the poor man. He has stayed up all night sewing a handsome robe for his guest - only to have another beggar come tapping at the door. It is winter and cold and the poor man is in rags and freezing. The tailor can find nothing to help the cold man, all he has left in his shop is this splendid robe. But he can’t turn the fellow out either. He gives him the cloak, and rues the fact there is nothing left in his house for his divine guest. He has a few pennies left, which he decides to use to go get some bread - but on the way he meets still another beggar, and can’t find it in his heart to refuse the outstretched hand. The pennies are given, and the tailor goes home cold and hungry to wait for God. When God does not come, he is shattered. He tells his disappointment to his neighbor. The neighbor, wisely, remembers something he had read, and turning in the Gospels, he finds Jesus saying “I was hungry and you fed me, I was naked and you clothed me - for in as much as you did it onto the least of these, my brothers, you did it onto me.”



Who knows when we have played host to the Spirit of God - in disguise? Our humble tailor could have missed his divine guest. In all the excitement of getting ready for God; in the egotism that surely must come from the thought the he would be host to the Almighty; how disappointed he was. It took a neighbor to challenge him and help him see the real truth.



Luke will do much the same thing with his story. Rather than making a grand entrance and dazzling the disciples, the next thing we read is of two men on their way to Emmaus where a stranger joins them on the road. They are so caught up in their own grief they don’t recognize the stranger. Jesus even explains the situation to them and they still don’t know who he is. Only when they sit down to eat at the inn are their eyes opened. Only in the common time, the ordinary time, the everyday moment we all share as human beings, do they become aware of who their guest really is.



And once they do recognize him, Jesus vanishes from their sight.



There, in a nutshell, is the formula for the life of faith in Christ. We worship a God we cannot see, a God who refuses to be pinned down, a God who joins us when we least expect it, and most often in the common and ordinary places of our lives where we are doing the common and ordinary things of life.



I can repeat the good news - Christ is risen. But more important than the good news is my willingness to live it in the everyday places of my life. Thank God for this empty tomb that prompts us to be on our way. Happy reunions on your journey. Amen.

No Longer I

Luke leaves little doubt as to the sin this woman has committed. She’s the town’s prostitute, a profession that has had poor press in the history of the Jews. I wonder if the story would have had quite the same impact if she had been an attorney! That Jesus would so easily forgive her is as shocking to the Pharisees as it is gratifying to the rest of us who might think “if that sin can be forgiven, surely mine can be, because God knows I’m not that bad.”




But be careful. When you start to compare sins, you’re on shaky ground. This parable is not about sexual misconduct, it’s about forgiveness, and more to the point, whether Jesus over-stepped his bounds when he forgave this woman. Who was he to forgive sins? Only God could do that!



There’s another sin here, one that is not so obvious, yet perhaps even more destructive than fornication. Jesus’ brief parable points us to this truth. “Simon”, Jesus says, “there once were two debtors”. Two. The woman is not the only sinner in the room, the Pharisee is the other. One owes fifty denarii the other five hundred. One debt is ten times the size of the other. The woman’s sins is obvious and universally despised. But what about Simons?



A religious man. A man of good reputation in the community. Apparently generous: he’s hosted a feast for Jesus, hasn’t he? What is his sin? Someone this righteous can’t have much on his conscience. We might conclude his was the fifty denarii debt while the woman’s was the five hundred. But I believe that conclusion would be dead wrong.



You see, the one sin is basically one of breaking a moral law. The other is against God himself. It isn’t just breaking the great commandment of loving God and loving our neighbor. It breaks our relationship with both. Laws can be mended, they can be out of date, they can be just plain wrong. Relationships are another matter. God is love - so says John in his first epistle. Refuse to love and you refuse God. Refuse to love your neighbor and you become the impediment for God’s love. For the love of God is not some invisible force that drops out of the sky willy nilly, it is transmitted to us through others. We are the channel of God’s love, forgiveness, mercy.



Jesus’ parable is of two debtors, not one, and rightly understood, it points to Simon much more than to the prostitute. Jesus elaborates this by reminding Simon that she has washed his feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, poured perfume on them, kissed them. Simon has done none of these things. At first glance, such extravagance is a bit bizarre for our modern eyes. I daresay most of us would be uncomfortable with such attention. But you see, this isn’t about our feet, it’s about her gratitude and love, her instinctive understanding that something about Jesus transcends a casual meeting. Any man could possess her body, only Jesus relates to her inner being, her soul. It is the one who can be comfortable with our souls that is our truest friend. A favorite saying of mine was voiced by a woman I knew who said of a friend, “I love her, not for what she is, but for what I become when I am with her.”



We see this kind of love in this woman, and her gift of perfume and tears flows out of this instinctive sense of gratitude in her. Clearly, Simon the Pharisee does not know what Jesus’ is talking about here. In his world, obedience to a law is all that is required of him. Such obedience guarantees him good standing in God’s eyes. It begins and ends with him.

For Jesus, the important point is how open we are to the searching eye of God and God’s forgiveness. The sign of such openness is the gratitude we display for the good grace of God, a grace we never thought we’d deserve. That is the alchemy of love, the transforming power of God’s spirit that takes on life and meaning in human relationships. And the fruit of such forgiveness is the way we make ourselves available to God to extend that forgiveness and love to others.



When Paul was writing his letter to the Galatians, he was dealing with a similar issue: new Christians being required to obey the Jewish Law rather than experiencing the liberating grace of love. He dismisses his credentials as worthless compared to his story, his experience of unearned love. Such a shift in emphasis is tricky. It can so easily look like boasting, and Paul knew it. If you concentrate on the ecstatic experience of being loved and broadcast it to all the world, you can become obnoxious. You’ve met such people I’m sure.



So Paul tells the story of what happened to him and then explains that the Saul he once was is now no more. The transformation is so total he even ceases to be Saul and is now called Paul. The difference is so marked he thinks of his old self as dead and a new self has emerged. And the remarkable sign of that new self is that he has become totally committed to Christ, so much so that his new life is only an extension of Christ. He lives now so that Christ can live in him.



Forgive me for being confessional here, but I can’t find any other words for it. Today marks the anniversary of the transforming moment for my life when I was released from the tyranny of my addiction to alcohol. That was 37 years ago. I mention this, not because I am proud of my sobriety - after all, it is rather foolish to take pride in not doing something, especially when others can drink without harm to themselves or anyone else. On the contrary, the miracle in my case was the way I was freed to serve others and be an extension of hope in a loving God who never gives up on us. Paul says, “I no longer live, now it is Christ who lives in me.” Those who have experienced release in AA discover early on that the key to their sobriety is in their efforts to help others. We call it “Twelfth stepping”. The miracle was not something we could keep to our selves, we had to pass it on.



I recall Jimmy whom I met briefly when he was in the throes of DT’s waiting for transportation to the alcoholic ward of the state mental hospital. There was little I could do. Newly sober myself, not even a full year, I had very little wisdom and virtually no experience at all in “working the steps” as we call it. But I could sit with him and keep him company until his ride came. It was Good Friday - how symbolic! - and as it would happen, Easter Sunday I would be in the same town as the hospital, so I decided to drop in on him to see how he was coming along.



He was still shaky, but the monsters that had been coming at him through cracks in the wall were gone, as was the look of terror I’d first seen in his eyes. His words were beginning to make sense. And he told me, “When you saw me Friday, I was so scared. I hardly knew what was happening to me. Today is the first day I could start to make sense out of anything. When I woke up this morning, I knew it was Easter and I missed my family. They don’t even know I’m here. I felt so lonely. And then you walked into the room, and when I saw you, you looked just like Jesus Christ!”



I have no mistaken notions about being Jesus, and no desire to compete with him as the savior of the world. But I understood what he was talking about. I remembered the night I had sat in an AA meeting feeling so desperately lonely and unforgivable, a “man of God” who had sinned grievously, and when a total stranger sat next to me, keeping me company and treating me as a human being deserving of compassion, understanding and love, the miracle of new life began for me. He had been my “Jesus Christ” even though I hadn’t called him that.



As the years have gone by, I have been learning more and more the lesson Paul was trying to teach us, that we are all extensions of the Christ to one another, and that where we will love, God loves, where we will listen, God listens, where we will care, God cares. But we must first be broken, our pride cracked open, our need for acceptance of love and healing ourselves revealed.



You see, Jesus not only described Simon’s sin, the sin of self-righteous and moral superiority, he told him both debtors were forgiven, not just the one. Think what you will about who was the greater sinner - in the end it really doesn’t matter. Both were sinners and both forgiven. That is the good news. The question is, which will show the fruits of that forgiveness - Simon or the Prostitute? The evidence is pretty conclusive, isn’t it?



Gratitude is the sign of the New Life, and service its hallmark. I love the prayer of the old slave, who said to God,

Oh Lord, I ain’t what I oughta be.

Oh Lord, I ain’t what I wanta be.

Oh Lord, I ain’t what I’m gonna be.

But Thanks Lord, I ain’t what used to be! Amen.

So Much More

I’m guessing we were in what they now call Middle School, give or take a year. My sister was talking to mother about something or other and I wanted to know what she was talking about - probably for the sake of argument. (We did a lot of arguing, my sister and I!) I asked for an explanation. My sister, who was a year younger than I, mind you, gave me a condescending look and said those galling words, “You’re not old enough to understand.”




Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those about the most irritating words you can ever hear? For one thing, you’ve probably asked a perfectly acceptable question, which in itself is both an admission of ignorance AND a willingness to be enlightened. To have that very vulnerable position made worse by rubbing your nose in it is unbearable. No wonder my sister and I fought all the time. It was all her fault, you understand. She did not understand the protocol of diplomacy, let alone the fragility of the male ego. Come to think of it, she may have understood it all too well. I never appreciated how deceptively cunning a woman could be. Sigh.



Funny that memory should come back to me now as I read John’s account of this final teaching Jesus gave his disciples in the upper room. There is certainly nothing condescending or patronizing in him. I doubt his name would even be known today had that been his personality and character. But if we can get passed the implied insult to our intelligence, there is so much truth in this statement.



More to Learn



For one thing, the story isn’t over, there is so much more to learn. Generally speaking we’re a people who don’t like to be in the dark. I remember Helen. She was under the hair dryer at the beauty parlor and curious what two women were talking about. She could only catch a snatch of the conversation here and there, but it sounded like some steamy goings on were being discussed. Being in a small town where everybody knew everybody else’s secrets, it was unbearable not to know more details. Just who was cheating on who. She was dying to know. When she got out from under the dryer, and the other women had gone, she asked the operator to fill in the details. She looked a little blank at first, then laughed and said, “Oh that. They were talking about somebody on their soap opera!”



A silly story, but it describes our incurable curiosity. How stale and dull life would be if we weren’t always “in the dark” about something or other. There is so much more to life, so much more to learn, so much beyond our eyes and comprehension. When Jesus says he has more to tell us, he affirms that hope - that there is more, infinitely more, and implies that the time will come when we can hear it.



How sad when people forget this. How limiting. How frustrating. The story may be apocryphal but it illustrates my point. I read or heard somewhere that the head of the US Patent Office (date and time no longer recalled!) resigned his position because there was nothing more to invent! In his opinion, everything that could be known was already known. And this before the technological revolution had really gotten started. To think that we are living in a live and pulsing world, one constantly creating and growing, one with discoveries that make the Arabian Nights look childish - and yet confine ourselves to notions that were stale almost from the day we first learned them. How pitiful. A man in a shop that sold computer games told me he had a masters degree in computer science, but had been unable to find a job. Three years later the degree he had was useless.



Unhappily, too many of us have settled for an old understanding of the Bible and religion that isn’t up to coping with the modern world in which we live today. It’s not enough to ask “What would Jesus do?” as much as we might wish it were. What would Jesus do about oil gushing out of the earth beneath the waters of the Gulf Coast? What would Jesus do about the rising suicide rate amongst adolescents, or the increase in juvenile diabetes in our “fast food” society? What would Jesus do about our attitudes toward sexuality in a world that not only offers us the “pill” but Viagra as well?



No, no, no! Although we know so much more than we once knew, there is so much more we don’t know - always. The possibilities are absolutely infinite. But it is always possibility, we never know it all. And we won’t know any of it until we begin by an admission that we don’t know it all. The philosopher Herbert Spencer once observed that “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a person in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” Put more simply, this is the person who says, “I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts.”



Jesus tells us to consider there is so much more to know.



Getting Ready



Willingness to learn is essential. Humility is too. It is never shameful to admit you don’t know something. I remember Donny who was having trouble in school. “Did you tell the teacher you didn’t understand the question?” “No.” “Why not?” “I don’t know. I thought you were supposed to figure it out for yourself.” How human. How many of us suffer from the mistaken notion that we were supposed to know virtually everything. We’re too ashamed to admit we don’t. (And to make matters worse, we assume that everyone else does know!)



We all have a bit of Donny in us, don’t we? We are ashamed of our mistakes, ashamed of our ignorance, embarrassed to admit others might know something we don’t know. We’re afraid to look “bad” in the eyes of the world. What Jesus is trying to tell us is we’re supposed to be stupid. The tennis star Billie Jean King got it right when she said, “For me, losing a tennis match isn't failure, it's research” and the esteemed author James Joyce echoed that sentiment when he wrote: “Mistakes are the portals of discovery”. We don’t look bad, we look ready to learn.



I confess this is one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever tried to learn - and I’m still working at it. It’s really all right not to know. It’s really all right to be in the dark. It’s really all right to wonder. Think what we know today because somebody somewhere didn’t know and decided to find out. Leonardo wondered how birds could fly. Now we know. Well somebody knows. We’re doing it! Good heavens, now we’re even talking about going to Mars.



There is so much more Jesus wanted to tell us, but we couldn’t hear it, we didn’t have the experience, the training, the basic knowledge . We could not understand or make use of what he was telling us. My sister was almost right when she said I was not old enough to understand. What Jesus is telling us is we don’t have enough knowledge or experience to understand. And Jesus is right. How were we to understand a God who loved us so much he could die for us, especially when we were the ones who were killing him? All we understood were the Laws of Moses and a God who seemed ready to punish for something or other. This new reality simply didn’t make sense.



Do not be afraid of having wrong ideas about God. God’s used to that. Be afraid of being convinced you have God completely figured out. Too many people live with a God who is too small, one who has to fit into their pre-conceived notions of what he ought to be. When God is trying to open our eyes to new truths, we are getting in the way with our limited vision. Instead of looking through a plate glass window at the universe, we are looking through the peep hole in the door! Get ready to be surprised, to learn, to grow, to encounter a God bigger than anything your brain can comprehend.



Helps Coming



This may be the trickiest part of all, the notion that Jesus hasn’t given up on us. No, we are enrolled in a new school and we have a new teacher. The church has given it a name - the Holy Spirit. He will teach us what we need to know.



One of the unfortunate consequences of the King James Bible is the way it translated the word “pneuma”. It chose the word “ghost”, an invisible entity that floats around in the air, basically invisible, but sometimes dimly glimpsed. I’ve always been a little suspect of that word. “Spirit” helped, for I could associate it to spirituality. Still it wasn’t much better, for it, too, was invisible and seemed somehow foreign to us, basically an illegal immigrant if you will.



Our seminary professor was a big help to me. “The Holy Spirit is the Living Activity of God in the world.” I know, I know - academic garbledegook. That’s one of those definitions that needs to be defined! In a nutshell, The Holy Spirit is our name for the God who has taken up permanent residence with us and in us. Where people love one another, God is present. Where people care for one another, God is there. Where people are considerate of one another, God is ministering to them.



In this passage, Jesus speaks of the spirit of truth. I have been led by wise teachers who showed me truth I could not grasp on my own. And they did more. They encouraged me to open my eyes and look for my truth, truth I could give back, if you will. We’re all on a journey of exploration, and as we follow others who discover truth for us, we too, are discoverers who will expand the horizon of knowledge. The Holy Spirit cannot only be trusted, Jesus is telling us God trusts us as well. But remember, it is in relationships that are respectful, loving, caring.



Jesus once remarked that where two or three are gathered together, he will be in their midst. That is the Holy Spirit. When I am with someone I trust, with someone I know respects and trust me, Christ is there. We are “in” love.



Conclusion



Today is both Trinity Sunday and the day we remember those we love who have gone on before us. Trinity Sunday is the reminder that there is a new relationship between us and God. We are one unity. Memorial Day reminds us that that union is eternal. Not even death separates us from God and one another.



I would remind you of Jesus’ words: Be teachable, be open, be loving and be grateful for the Spirit that is in us and among us, a spirit that is here to stay! Amen.

City Planning: Christian Style

There is a stunning image in the book of Revelation; it is the author’s depiction of the ideal Promised Land. He calls it the New Jerusalem, a vision of hope for all God’s people. There are twelve gates that stand open: no one will be shut out. There are trees that provide fruit all year round. There’s a river of living water rushing through the city with no hint of flooding. Amazingly, there is no sun or moon because there is no more night. No GE light bulbs there. No DMEA.




What do we make of such a vision?



At first glance, it’s tempting to think of this as Utopia. No more tears, no more worries, no more death. Come on, this is paradise. Every religion promises such a spot, doesn’t it? Islam has its Garden of Allah replete with endless virgins to play with. The Norse legends depict a warlike Valhalla where the gods get to show off their physical prowess and brag about past conquests. The playwright Marc Connelly provides another image - heaven seen through the eyes of the Negro slave: a non-stop fish fry in green pastures complete with cigars and fresh batches of “firmament” that get you tipsy without embarrassment or hangovers.



While such fanciful images of paradise sound ideal, others wonder. George Bernard Shaw described such an after life as being like spending an eternity in a candy shop, a sure cause for ennui and eternal boredom. I remember Frank, a banker friend, who said he had a lot of anxiety about going to heaven. While golden streets might be a novelty, if gold was that plentiful, what was the point of having it? Besides, he had no desire to spend eternity sitting on a cloud and plucking harp strings.



Then what shall we make of this vision of John? Such literal interpretations seem to create as many problems as they solve. But if we look below the surface, I think we find an intensely satisfying promise. For one, these visions are about life.



The Tree of Life



Death has always been the great insult, the implacable enemy that refuses to go away. It is not surprising that a promise of eternal life would be the ace in the hole for believers. But we must be careful with this promise. Endless life, while it seems to satisfy a deep human hunger, if it is ever granted, can be a punishment of its own. Myths and legends are filled with examples of hapless folk afflicted with eternal life. One familiar version is of the Wandering Jew. He is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the thirteenth century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming. In this instance, just living forever is no blessing, it is a terrible curse.



Endless living is not enough. The true gift is being truly alive. The images in Revelation are dynamic rather than static. Fruit and fresh water, growing, flowing, movement, that is the heart of these promises. The Gospel of John sums it up succinctly when Jesus remarks, “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” At the end of the Gospel, the author strikes that note once again when he says,



Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)



The question we must ponder is not, how long will we live, but how alive will we be while we’re living. What keeps us from being fully, vibrantly alive? I read an obituary recently of Doris “Granny” Haddock, a campaigner for election reform who died on March 9th at the age of 100. Do you remember her? A tireless campaigner for the cause in which she believed, she set out to walk from Pasadena, California to Washington DC to capture attention to her cause. Remember? She was 90 at the time and it took her a year to complete her trek. You may say, “So what?” I say, praise God. Whether you adopt her cause, you must applaud her example of life. She was still planning more actions when she died. Another example comes to mind: a group of Senior Citizens in Mass. who have established a name for themselves singing concerts of Rock and Roll music. The results is chronicled in a delightful documentary called “Young at Heart”. Their message? It’s not how old you are, it’s how alive you are.



The New Jerusalem is that place where we are thrillingly, vibrantly alive. And people like Doris Haddock show us we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to live there.



No Lights



Another sign of the New Jerusalem is the absence of artificial light. There isn’t even a sun. An odd distinction, don’t you think? It sounds like we might as well all be blind! Ah, be careful. That is hardly heaven. In fact, a quick survey of the Bible shows that “darkness” is the exact opposite of heaven. The book of Job strikes this note over and over again, and the Psalms continually refer to the similarity between darkness and Sheol, another word for hell.



Then what is there about heaven that is so blessed when a chief characteristic is the absence of the sun? The answer, quite simply, is God. The need for light has been satisfied by the glory of God. Frankly, here the vision of John carries me beyond my knowledge and understanding. I am at a loss how to explain this mystery. I can call upon the works of imagination that have satisfied others. For instance, Dante, at the climax of his classic “The Divine Comedy” an epic poem describing hell and heaven, completes his masterpiece by attempting to describe God himself in the center of the universe. It is not a satisfactory description. God is simply light, a blinding light, so bright, so intense that the poet falls silent. He can say no more.



Frankly, this image fails to move me. I am more attracted to a different kind of light, the kind that accompanies that wonderful “ah ha” moment when we glimpse some new insight or truth. While a flash of light may accompany this vision, it’s hardly the point, is it? It’s the seeing, not the light. It’s the understanding, not the view. It’s the amazing “ah ha” that reshapes everything we thought we knew or understood. It’s Paul saying “when I was a child I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” It’s Job saying “I thought I knew, but I did not. Now I understand”.



Not that such knowing and understanding are necessarily clear. No, not at all. More often - no, I’d go even further and say - always they are course corrections that steer us away from what we thought we knew into a new unknown where our journey continues for the next glimpse of insight. John Henry Newman captures this in his beloved hymn “Lead Kindly Light”



"Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me."



Not the whole journey, just the single step. That is what God’s light grants us. Frankly, it is probably all we can bear. In John’s gospel, Jesus remarks to his disciples a the Last Supper, “There is much more that I would tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” (John 16:12) We walk in the light God provides as we need it and to the extent that we can comprehend it. And that is all.



No Temple



Perhaps the most remarkable omission in the New Jerusalem is the absence of a Temple. How can God permit such an oversight? Down through history, temples have been essential. We literally grade civilizations by their temples, cathedrals, altars. Show me where you worship and honor your God and you show me the true nature of your soul. I think it no accident that explorers and missionaries begin their conquests by obliterating the temples of the pagans and replacing them with their own altars



When John wrote his vision, he lived in a culture replete with Roman and Greek temples to every God under the sun. While the Jews had prohibited statues, they still revered the memory of their temple, and their most recent grief had to do with its destruction. Surely heaven would restore that temple with a grandeur the human imagination could not comprehend. Yet John sees no temple. There isn’t even a vacant lot for future construction.



And for good reason: John is told God no longer needs a temple. God is not living in an ark, or a building, God has become a living temple. The greatest promise of all is the simple assertion: God is completely with us. All separation is over.



The Gospel of John had already tried to describe this. It quotes Jesus as praying:



It is not for these alone that I pray, but for those also who through their words put their faith in me. May they all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so also may they be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you gave me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one; I in them and you in me, may they be perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me, and that you loved them as you loved me.

- John 17: 20-23



This vision of oneness, unity, wholeness is the ultimate depiction of heaven and, again, need not wait until we die to be realized. We live in that promise today. But not in the static sense that now we are one big happy family, we all see alike, all prejudice is gone, good will exists among all people, the divisions amongst Christians are overcome, etc, etc, etc. No, as with our other visions, this is the promise that is being realized, and the final outcome is not only beyond our vision, it’s even beyond our comprehension.



The Lord’s Prayer



Each Sunday we pray, “They Kingdom come, thy will be done”, little thinking how these words are a reminder that the kingdom is coming and we are already a part of it. The vision in Revelation is describing this coming also. The Early Christians were blessed to have it for their encouragement and consolation. But it was no Hollywood preview of coming attractions. It was a challenge for the here and now. The distinguished psychotherapist Victor Frankel, a survivor of the holocaust, wrote an incredible book about his internment in a concentration camp called “From Death Camp to Existentialism”. In it he said that simply being told of a hope for tomorrow, or next week, or sometime in the unspecified future would not have been enough to keep him alive. His hope had to be in today, and it was grounded in an imperishable conviction that what was happening to him was known to God and mattered. Being Jewish, he did not have the vision of heaven we find in the book of Revelation, but he had the essence of it anyway. He lived where there was no need of light, no need of temple, no need indeed of longevity of life. He lived in the spirit of God.



May we live there too. Amen.

Credentials and Testimonies

When the apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, he did not know we would be reading it today. He didn't even know who would be reading it - for sure. This letter did not go to a particular church or a particular town, it went to a region we now call Asia Minor and he expected it to be passed from church to church, a kind of general letter for the attention of a wide group of people. In this sense, it must have had particular significance to him, since he wanted to reach as many people as possible. To emphasize just how important he thought it was, he took the pen in his own hand to underscore how he felt about what he was writing. "See what big letters I write!" he says, probably because he suffered from poor eyesight and usually relied on a scribe to write his letters for him.




We need, if we can, to feel that same sense of urgency when we read it today, and in order to do that, we need to ask ourselves, "in what ways do we resemble these Galatians? What were they doing Paul considered so disturbing, and are we doing the same thing?"



The problem seems simple enough: the Galatians, being gentiles, had never followed the rigors of the Mosaic Law: in particular, the practice of circumcision. Some body had come to them, a Jew who had converted to Christianity, or even a gentile who had become a Christian - such people were called Judaizers - and explained to these men that it was necessary for them to obey the Jewish Law if they were to become full-fledged Christians. That meant they must be circumcised.



Now Paul was born both a Jew and a Roman citizen: he had dual citizenship if you will. He had lived by the Mosaic law, including circumcision, and he could brag about his righteousness as well as any other Jew. But Paul knew something else. His righteousness had never satisfied him. As hard as he tried, he could not get good enough to face God with clean hands and a pure heart, and he knew it. His relief came when he meant Christ on the road to Damascus, intent on going there to seek out converts to Christ and kill them.



At first blush, this hardly seems like a contemporary issue for us. How are we supposed to get instruction from this non-issue? If Paul was that upset, shouldn’t we be too?



I think so, but we have to read carefully to see what Paul was really upset about. It wasn’t the circumcision issue itself. I don’t think Paul cared one way or the other. But he did care passionately about what getting circumcised signified to these pseudo-Christians. For them it was a mark of being true Christians, the guarantee that they were saved if you will. And to Paul’s mind it shifted the emphasis from faith in Christ to faith in how well we obeyed the law.



Put in a nutshell, it was trusting in having the right belief rather than faith in Jesus.



Paul tells the Galatians he can match their righteousness with his own record. Born a Jew. Raised in the Jewish faith. Taught by the Pharisees. Zealous in his observance of the Mosaic Law, his record is unblemished. That’s his credentials, if you will. But what mattered was not what he did but what God did. God erased the sin and guilt by sending us Jesus Christ.



How does this speak to any issues we might have today? Well, stop and think about what you consider important in your religious life. Where do you put your faith and trust? We say we have accepted Jesus, but that says easy and does hard. The truth is, we don’t trust Jesus, we trust behaving ourselves. Work hard, be good, and God will take care of you. God helps those who help themselves. God won’t put more on you than you can bear. Love your neighbor as yourself. You know the list. I won’t argue with it. They’re all good. Notice Paul doesn’t argue with such rules either. He argues with the motive - the trusting part, the part that says “If I do these things, I’ll be all right.”



Well, he did all those things, and he wasn’t all right. And we’ve done all those things, and we weren’t all right either. I remember a remark an elder from my church made when we discovered our beautiful building had become infested with termites. He was incredulous. This was impossible. He could understand termites attacking a house of ill repute, but not a church! If we put our faith in living good, clean lives, we are making a short-cut to righteousness. We are saying, in affect, we trust our own ability to save ourselves. I remember Roger, a fellow seminary student, who was genuinely puzzled by all the fuss over the Ten Commandments. He had never broken any of them. They were the rules, you lived by them, and you had a clean bill of spiritual health.



Jesus seemed to think it was not that easy. “Do not kill” - “He who hates his brother has already killed him.” (Matthew 5:21-22) “Do not commit adultery” but if you lust after another - (Jesus says a man lusting after a woman, but I see no reason to confine it to men alone!) You have committed adultery already in your heart.(Matthew 5:27-28) Paul doesn’t tell us how much he struggled with obeying the law. That he had struggles we know from a cryptic remark he once made in his second letter to the Corinthians - “I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan sent to buffet me” (12:7) We don’t know what it was, what he does tell us is that we all are afflicted with such problems. He told the Romans “There is no one righteous; no, not one:” and he proceeds to describe us in humiliating detail. And it’s not all about sex either. That’s hardly the big sin in his eyes. The big one is our assumed righteousness, our pride in our goodness, our smug self-righteousness - the kind of thing my seminary friend Roger was demonstrating - that’s the big one, and Paul knew whereof he spoke, because he considered himself first among sinners on that score.



The book of Galatians is Paul’s testimony, if you will, his attempt to redirect our eyes and our thoughts from concentrating on laws we don’t break, to the inner reaches of our hearts where our ungovernable wills run riot. He does this, not by recounting his stellar record as a good man, but by placing before us the incredible power of Jesus Christ who met him at the very moment when he - Paul - was determined to destroy all traces that Jesus had ever lived! It’s this story, not a book of instructions, that Paul believes will bring relief and healing.



When I consider the world in which I live, I am struck by how amazing we are, how no miracle seems too impossible for us to accomplish. Yet how miserable we are. We have countless rules to guide us, yet even those who obey all the rules can still be miserable. Termites still come. We talk a good talk about rules and regulations to make sure that we will be safe - from oil spills in the Gulf, for instance, or explosions in coal mines. Yet we still find ways to get around those rules for the sake of profit. And we use those rules to justify ourselves. “We didn’t do anything illegal.” And in the end, we have only succeeded in proving that our true god is not love, or goodness, or truth, but expediency and profit.



That’s what Paul is talking about. That’s what has upset him so he must write in Big Letters! And that’s why we need to listen to him so carefully today. The credentials of a Christian is our story - the story of how we have been met by the Christ, and our lives been changed. We must give up trusting our ideas about being good, and turn instead to the Christ who makes us good in God’s eye - not because we deserve it, but because we are loved.

Call Waiting: The Tale of Three Boys

This morning I’d like to tell the story of three boys. They’re all in the Bible. They never knew each other, but all are remembered and revered and may have something to teach us. They were, you see, special and had much in common. They each received a call — from God.




Samuel



For Samuel, the call came early. It was in the early days of the Hebrews, the period we call the time of the Judges. The Jews were a collection of tribes living in the promised land after God had rescued them from Egypt. Moses is long dead and Joshua too is gone. The people have no leader, and while they still have the ark of the covenant, that sacred table in which they preserved the stone tablets of Moses’ Law, their existence is precarious and not always godly.



Samuel was his mother’s pride and joy. She had long been barren and finally made a pact with God that, should he grant her a son, she in turn would raise the boy specifically for God. In this story we find Hannah has kept her promise. The boy was given to the old priest Eli at the temple at Shiloh to be apprenticed into the life of a priest himself.



The lad served the old priest at the temple. He no doubt received religious training there and from what little we are told must have been a source of satisfaction to him. Perhaps his only joy, for Eli was old and there was trouble in the land. The Philistines had gathered nearby threatening their peace and safety. His sons were little satisfaction to him. Though meant to be priests like their father, the Bible tells us these young men neglected their duties and paid little attention to the niceties of the Mosaic Law. Eli could not control them, nor could he do much about the dangers surrounding the people. Until one night when Samuel heard a voice and thought it was the old priest who was calling him. But he was wrong. It was God.



This was the beginning of a remarkable life and an historic time for the Hebrews. The people needed guidance, more than a novice priest could give. Samuel was appointed a Judge, like Samson and Deborah before him, to be their leader. He was not a king, that honor was reserved for God, but Judges had special insight and power in the eyes of the people. The trouble was, they didn’t have enough; at least not enough to face down the dreaded Philistines The Jews grew more frightened and discontented. They needed something more powerful than a judge. After all, Samuel was no longer a boy, he was growing old and unbending in his ways. When the Philistines attacked them and stole the ark of the covenant, the people began clamoring for a king who could really lead and protect them. After all, big countries had kings, if they had one too, it might give them strength and prestige among the nations. Samuel, with God’s urging, reluctantly chose them a king, a man named Saul, and thus ended his story as far as the Jews were concerned. God no longer needed him. What do you do with a worn out Judge?



Jeremiah



The time of Judges passed, replaced by a line of kings. But kingdoms fade too, and the kingdom that had grown so mighty under David and his son Solomon was also gone. Worshiping God when it suited them, the Hebrews had been prone to quarreling and dividing. They had even become two nations instead of one with Israel, the larger, to the North, and Judah to the south. Israel was conquered in 721 BC leaving Judah, the smaller of the two scarcely much more than a city state with Jerusalem its capital. King Josiah had attempted to bring reform to the land, but it was too little and too late, and Babylon was too strong for them. God was preparing them for a new covenant. He called Jeremiah to be his spokesman.



Perhaps Jeremiah was not technically a youth, nor quite as untutored as some children, still when his story begins it is clear that he considers himself far too young to be commissioned to prophecy for God. Even though he belonged to a priestly family that lived in a village just outside Jerusalem, the religious center of the nation, and surely had religious training of his own, he apparently did not think of himself as priestly material. Surely God needed a more likely person than he. “Who is going to listen to a child?” he asks God.



It was not a happy assignment. No, rather than a wise leader upon whom the people could rely for guidance, his would be the more difficult calling. Like it or not, he would be a prophet. Being God’s prophet is not a happy calling and as some spiritual advisors have put it, “If you can be anything else but a minister, be it.” “The sky is falling, the sky is falling”, cries the prophet, and you know how unpopular that kind of person usually is.



Some prophets could at least hold out some hope. Joel, for instance, had called for a national day of repentance and prayer, saying, “Maybe God will turn around and change his mind.” Micah had urged them to “Do justly, love kindness and walk humbly with God.” There was still time. God was giving them another chance.



Jeremiah had no such message. “Lay down your arms” he thundered. “You’re not just fighting the Babylonians, you are fighting God. God is on their side this time. It’s too late. Give up. Accept your fate and take your punishment. It was nice while it lasted, but it’s over.”



He was hated for it, of course. And he was broken-hearted. He would witness the fall of Judah and the destruction of the Temple in 587 BC. He fled to Egypt where he spent the rest of his life in exile. No wonder he has been given the nickname “The weeping prophet” : he would become a symbol for suffering and tragedy for all times.



The Boy Jesus



I don’t need to tell the story of Jesus, do I? Not in detail. But I would like to look a moment at this strange boy who, at the age of twelve, goes to the temple to listen and learn and do some teaching of his own, without the permission of his parents.

He’s a bit of a contrast to the other two boys, isn’t he? Samuel, naive, Jeremiah reluctant, Jesus eager to be about his Father’s work. Samuel hears a strange voice and must have the old priest Eli explain it to him. Jeremiah apparently hears God’s voice too, but has no difficulty recognizing it. Prophets have a peculiar trait: hearing that inner voice and feeling a sense of compulsion that goes beyond their own willingness



Jesus does not seem to have this struggle, this reluctance: at least not at first. His love of God is all-consuming. He is, after all, God in human flesh. How could he quarrel with God’s mission for him? Still, we know the rest of the story, and we know how many times he was misunderstood, rejected, reviled and even threatened with death. And all this before his final act of obedience: his week in Jerusalem which would end with a trial and a cross.



It seems strange to me that all three boys would be given so completely to God, remain faithful - even if at times reluctant - to their mission, and all three would suffer so dreadfully.



Each lived in a time of trouble and crisis. It was during Samuel’s lifetime that the Philistines attacked Shiloh and stole the ark of the covenant. This represented not only the weakness of the Jews in the face of attack from the enemy, it also suggested that God was either angry with them and had taken his protection away from them, or that he was too weak a god to prevent such desecration, a horrible thought.



Jeremiah lived in a time of turmoil also. The Babylonians were poised for conquest on their northern borders, and the religious practices of the Jews had grown lax and corrupt. Exile would mean the end of the mighty nation, and though there would be a return to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah, the old glory would not return.



And of course, the Palestine in which Jesus lived was under the military rule of the Roman Empire. They called it peace, the Pax Romana, but it was still slavery. There may have been a congenial relationship with the authorities, but the Jews were subservient to their masters in Rome - a puppet state, and a galling one considering what they had once been under King David.



But the point of it all is that in each case, God was on watch, God was preparing for new things, and God called each of these boys to an important task that would change, not only their lives, but all our lives.



A Little Child Shall Lead Them



What is the moral of these stories? Consider one more child: There is an unflattering anecdote that occurs in all three Synoptic Gospels concerning an argument that developed amongst the disciples. It seems they were doing some head count about who was the likeliest leader of their number - after Jesus of course. They were jockeying for positions of authority and honor in the new Kingdom they expected Jesus to establish when they got to Jerusalem. It’s rather like the celebration that typically occurs on election night for the campaign workers of the winning candidate.



Jesus took a child and set it before them and announced that this child was worthier of such recognition than any of them. Later, when people brought their children to Jesus for recognition and blessing, and the disciples, proving their memories were short, tried to protect the Master from such an undignified interruption, Jesus corrected them again, suggesting that entrance into the Kingdom of God required the innocence and the wide-eyed trust of a small child.



What are we to make of this teaching? Not that children are so cute and cuddly, although they can certainly be that. But as any parent knows ‘tis not always so. No, our three boys tell us that children hear more because they are more curious, more willing to listen, more eager to learn. It is as if we all arrive with a vague sense of purpose buried deep within that suggests we belong first to God, and then are on loan to this world for a little while. Such a knowing is too vague, too indistinct, to be put into words. We grow into it.



We also learn that such a calling is not necessarily a happy assignment, for we live in a less than happy world. Thus it has always been. God is like a potter, constantly reworking the clay, constantly striving to bring this imperfect creation to a higher degree of perfection. Ours are the hands he uses to - as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, - make “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.



But as we learn the lesson of the little child, let us be careful to remember, it is not an assignment of privilege, it is a labor that can and quite likely will break the heart. It is also the only life worth living!



There is a call waiting: will anyone answer? Amen.

Freedom to Serve

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1)

fit for service in the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62)



The British have contributed a host of remarkable writers to the world, and there have been significant preachers, missionaries and theologians that came from the United Kingdom. One writer, not particularly well known, qualifies as both. He has become a favorite of mine. His name is Charles Williams and was a friend and companion of writers like CS Lewis, JRR Tolkein, Owen Barfield and Dorothy Sayers. Williams has a style that blends theology and fantasy with a grounding in classical literature and mythology that is theologically provocative and always intriguing story-telling.



One such book has a character, a young woman named Pauline, who is haunted by a ghost-like figure that seems to follow her everywhere. It also happens to look exactly like her! It is so persistent, she becomes afraid to leave her house for fear this ghost/woman will meet her around the next corner. One day she meets a man, Professor Stanhope, who takes seriously her increasing fear and tells her “The next time you see that apparition, tell yourself you need not be afraid because I will be feeling the fear for you.” She thinks this is an odd solution to a problem that has grown so great she is almost paralyzed by it. Yet when she takes a chance and leaves her house, she reminds herself of that promise. Meanwhile, Stanhope keeps it by trying to imagine just what such a fear must feel like. As luck would have it, the figure does appear, but Pauline, remembering what Stanhope said, tells herself, “I do not need to be afraid, for he is feeling that fear for me.” The strategy works. She meets the apparition and finds there is no harm in it. When she later tells Stanhope how the fear had been lifted and she is free, he tells her, “now it is your turn to bear someone else’s fear. “ Williams suggests that what has happened here is a living example of the doctrine of substituted love. When Jesus died on the cross, we were relieved of the burden of our sin. Now, with that freedom, our shoulders are ready to assume the burden of other peoples’ sin, if you will.



Our two readings seem to support Williams’ fictional account. Freedom is a big issue for Paul. At first glance, it seems to be freedom from the Law of Moses. That’s what the Galatians are succumbing to. It’s an odd notion, when you think about it. Why should obeying a law be slavery? To answer that question, you must remember Paul’s story. Remember, he is a faithful Pharisee and a zealous adherent of the law of Moses. He followed this path believing that this was necessary for him to find peace of mind and a sense of goodness in the world. However, the harder he tried to obey those laws, the more complex they became to him, and impossible to obey.



(There is an interesting book written a year or two ago, by a Jewish writer who set out to obey the Mosaic Law down to the jot and tittle. He did it, not to achieve holiness, but to discover for himself just what it would be like actually living by those rules. As the weeks and months pass, it became increasingly obvious that living by the rules would be a major disruption in his life and his marriage. And this just to write a book. It was not to save his immortal soul!)



But Paul’s problem went deeper. Even if he had succeeded in obeying the rules, he discovered a new kind of tyranny of sin - an obnoxious self-righteousness that relied more on the rigorous efforts of obeying the law than on faith in a loving God who does for us what we cannot do ourselves. Works-righteousness is the name we usually give it and what makes it so intolerable is how it takes our eyes off God and puts them on ourselves. This is “operation bootstraps”. This is “self-help” to the max. This is living as if there was no God, and in fact, need not be any.



Paul’s emphasis is on the saving acts of God. His eyes are on the gracious work of God revealed in Jesus. Here is where the freedom is really felt. When Paul rejoices in freedom, it is similar to the exhilaration the woman in Charles Williams’ fantasy felt when she relied on a promise made to her by the new friend she’d met. I am free from trying so hard and always failing. I am living by God’s grace, not by exhausted efforts.



However, our modern parable looks beyond the freedom won for us by Christ to the challenge such freedom brings. Our shoulders are empty, now we can carry the load of others. It is intriguing to me how twelve steps programs - and there are a host of them - all include this emphasis. Salvation is not a possession we keep, it is activated, if you will, when we give it away.



Our passage from St. Luke gives us a glimpse of the nature of discipleship. It is rigorous; it is alienating; it is a whole new world; it demands total commitment. For what? Not the salvation of our souls - which is what we are most often warned. No, it is for service. The Christian life is not how to keep our souls safe for heaven, it is an invitation and a challenge to open our souls and give them completely away.



Through the years, I have noticed how we approach people to serve on Sessions, or session committees, or in community service. How many times have we hastened to reassure them “This won’t take much of your time!” We are quick to minimize the work that must be done. This was not Jesus’ approach!



I worked with the Red Cross one summer and I remember a remark the chairman of volunteer services made. “When someone comes to me and says ‘I don’t have anything to do. I think I need to do some volunteer work.’ I thank them for the offer, but I never call on them. No, I choose someone who tells me they are so busy with their many commitments they wonder how they’ll squeeze yet another task into their already busy lives. That’s the person I know will actually do the work.” It’s counter-intuitive, isn’t it? And yet, you have seen this yourselves. Those who have been freed of their own personal burdens are the ones who understand the importance of helping others. Oscar Hammerstein, no Christian theologian, still understood the importance of this truth, and expressed it in the last lyric he ever wrote. It was added to the musical “The Sound of Music.” Maria sings it to Liesel who is pondering the confusing emotions of love:

A bell is no bell ‘til you ring it,

A song is no song ‘til you sing it,

And love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay;

Love isn’t love, ‘til you give it away.



Jesus did not rely on poetic lyrics to say the same thing. We are saved to serve. When he performed miracles of healing, he never asked for a “thank you”, nor did he seek recognition from the crowds. When he asked the lame man at the pool of Siloam “Do you want to be healed?” he didn’t stop with that brief question. He told the beggar to take up his mat and walk. He could have simply said, “I heal you”, but he didn’t. The beggar was healed so he could walk. That was Jesus’ way.



Paul lived out the same example. He could have stayed in the desert of Arabia, grateful for his salvation and content to enjoy his freedom from the slavery of sin. That was not enough. He wrote the Philippians “To me, to live is Christ”, and to that end, he must give himself to a life of service to Christ - a service Jesus told the disciples has no end. Once we have put our hand to the plow of service, there is no looking back.



I have found a curious truth about this saying. I once thought this remark put the emphasis on moral responsibility. If we look back, we cease to be fit for service in the Kingdom of God. In other words, we look back at ourselves and wonder about being good enough. On the contrary, that problem has already been addressed by Christ. The issue is whether we are now equipped for service. Are we in fit condition to serve.



What I’ve discovered is that once beginning to serve, one really can’t go back. The opportunities for service are too great. Jesus once put it, the fields are ripe - who will go out to harvest? (Luke 10:2) You see, our freedom to serve comes with a startling awareness that we are most fully alive when we are serving. The healthy ones are those who seek out ways to give back, not the ones who scramble to acquire more.



It comes down to this: we are not saved in order to get into heaven. We are saved to serve. We are freed from our old life to bring good news to others. We are given new meaning by our commission to be God’s people at work in God’s world.

A New Creation

Ever wondered what you’d say if you found a genie in a bottle and were offered three wishes? What do you want? What do you really want? What seems so vitally important that you would spend one of your precious wishes for it? Our scripture texts this morning give one answer. See if that answer fits you.



First there is the army general Naaman, For him, the answer is obvious. He wants relief from his loathsome disease. We may need to linger a moment and be clear about that disease. What Naaman suffered was a skin disorder that the Hebrews called Tzaraath. Thought to be contagious, lepers were quarantined and shunned by society as a whole. Hansen’s disease, the medical name for leprosy, while similar, is not contagious once treatment begins and need not be shunned. Naaman’s affliction was not only painful, it was a source of shame. Thought to be incurable, the sufferer was condemned to a life of isolation and self-loathing. Naaman’s wish is for healing and restoration to human society.



A second man is involved in this story, Jehoram, king of Israel. His is a different affliction. He has been approached with a king’s ransom of tribute for the purpose of securing healing for a valued army general, Naaman. His problem? Jehoram is not a faith healer and he has no idea how to heal this general. Therefore he wonders, “Why are they coming to me? Is this a set up? When I am unable to heal this general, will they use this as an excuse to attack my kingdom and destroy me?” Probably a rescuer, someone to get him out of this hot water he finds himself in. As Shakespeare has one of his kings remark, “Heavy lies the head that wears the crown! Saying “No” to kings is not normally a healthy thing to do.



Our third player is the apostle Paul. His wish is clear and unwavering - a new creation. Not a do-over, not things as they’ve always been without the uncomfortable complications. Not my wistful sigh as I contemplate the figures on my scale, the obvious result of my recent binge on ice cream and chocolate cake. Why can’t I be like those other people who can eat all they want and never gain weight? Many an alcoholic can truthfully say “I’d like to be sober” but on closer inspection this wish might better be phrased “I’d like to be able to drink as much as I want without the usual unpleasant consequences.” It’s the plight of the child who is not really sorry for stealing cookies from the cookie jar. The regret comes from having been caught!



Paul found his treasure in becoming a new creation. “The old is finished and gone. We have become new creatures in Jesus Christ.”



Obstacles to the New Creation



For Naaman there were several obstacles: his expectations, his pride, his social position, his xenophobia, his arrogance. This is a successful man accustomed to VIP treatment. He is not only on speaking terms with a king, he has been given royal treatment by that king. The amount of money he carries to Jehoram is truly staggering. Even though kings can be insanely generous (visit Blenheim palace in England, the palatial country estate of the Duke of Marlborough and gift of Queen Anne, and you can see what kings are capable of) but they do not bestow such gifts capriciously. Naaman had to have been worth the expense, just as John Churchill was at the battle of Blenheim. Naaman was a VIP of great magnitude and he expected the very best treatment. Being told to take a bath in the River Jordan, not the cleanest of water and certainly a mundane treatment that could have been done just as well back home, was an insult to his position and reputation. “I may be a leper, but I’m a high-class leper.”



A contemporary situation might be the popularity of resort type rehabilitation centers where the rich and famous can maintain their style of living while seeking recovery How difficult it is for them to achieve the simplicity and humility required for sobriety. . Blessed are the poor who know they are poor, blessed are the despised who have felt the sting of social ostracism. The well-to-do can find recovery, but the path to new life must first take them through the rigors of ego-deflation, and few are willing to undergo that humiliation when they still have the wherewithal to buy whatever they want.



Another problem is one of expectation and intellectual arrogance. Many cannot find healing because they have already determined: a) what the “real” problem is, b) how it should be dealt with and c) what the outcome should be. Both William James in his “Varieties of Religious Experience” and Soren Kierkegaard speak of the blessedness of the simple believer, the one who knows his or her need and puts that need in the hands of a God they can trust. For the rest - and these two distinguished scholars counted themselves among them - knowing ahead of time what should be done and how it should be carried out, keeps us from receiving the healing we need.



In our story, a young slave girl makes the obvious observation, “If you’d been asked to do something difficult, you’d have done it without question. Why can you do something so simple as washing in the Jordan?” Why not indeed.



Paul would have applauded her commonsense. The Galatians have also taken on the arduous task of obeying the Jewish law, as if such effort would insure salvation. Wrong. The law was never meant to save us, it’s only use was to show us how far short we’ve fallen of true goodness. Our help is not in our arrogance and contempt for the “common people” so to speak. Our help is in a God ready to do for us what we can never do for ourselves.



The New Creation



The chief obstacle remains - what do we really need? Is it the Oscar, or the Pulitzer Prize? Being President of the United States, or singing a perfect high C on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera? Is it the Nobel Peace Prize or accumulating ten million dollars in your bank account? Is it marrying your Prince Charming or the girl of your dreams? It’s rather like that game I remember playing when I was a child: the Game of Life. One set up a goal toward which you strove. There were three categories: wealth, fame or love. I always chose “Love” figuring without that the other two would be meaningless in the end. As I played the game, I found that the wisest strategy was a prudent mix of all three. Even so, I don’t ever recall finally winning.



Naaman learned humility was the prerequisite for healing. Only when you admit you’re down and out can you begin the task of recovery and healing. Life is tricky - it’s the game we win by losing, we give up to get up, it’s when we die to our old life that we really start to live the new one. King Jehoram showed amazing good sense when he

took the advice of his advisors and called in a competent miracle worked names Elisha. In his way, he had to learn the same lesson Naaman learned: humility. That sometimes our greatest obstacle is our own misguided pride. But Paul could have taught them something more: the real prize was not clean skin or escape from attack by an outraged king. The real prize was a new creation. We are broken people who have been healed, not so we can keep on doing what we did before (without the bad consequences!) But so we can embark on a new reality, becoming God’s people in a new and always unexpected way.



Now that can be an uncomfortable goal too. After all, the old way of life is the familiar way. We understand how the old life work. Daring to become new means all bets are off. The addict gets clean and sober and has to learn a whole new way to face life and the world. The man who loses his wife and must learn how to live by himself on his own. The pianist who loses an arm in battle and learns to play again with one hand. Oh dear, the list is endless because everyone of us has had a life-altering even that forced us to take on a new creation.



For Paul that new creation was what we needed all along. CS Lewis wrote an intriguing parable called “The Great Divorce”. In it, souls in hell are given permission to have one day in heaven. Not just one day, they are invited to stay for eternity there. But most of the souls don’t like it. It isn’t what they’re used to. One soul is a positive mother who has only come to heaven to get the soul of her son and take him back to hell with her where she can take care of him for all eternity. Another soul is a minister who is teaching a Bible study in hell and considers himself indispensable back there. Still another has a personal demon he considers his closest friend, one he can’t imagine living without. In every instance, angels are there pleading with them, encouraging them, trying to convince them heaven really is their natural home. They just have to stick around and let their souls get used to it. Nearly all the souls return to hell, the place where they will feel most comfortable, most “themselves”, most at home.



Paul saw through that lie. He’d lived it, and he earnestly begs the Galatians to see through it too. We are the stuff of a new creation, one we can’t begin to comprehend on our own. If we will but surrender our own preconceived notions, if we’ll trust beyond our eyesight, if we’ll dare to become new, then we can discover what it means to be most fully and truly and completely alive. God grant you the faith to become new creations in his eyes! Amen.

Mercy: The Forgotten Virtue

“I hope you don’t mind that I never call you Rev. Miller.”




“No, Not many people do” I replied.



The worry lines on her face did not go away.



“I don’t mean to be disrespectful of you, I really don’t. It’s just that my church teaches us not to.”



“I understand” I assured her.



The worry was still in her eyes, but there was relief there too.



“You see, it’s not that we think we’re better than any other church, it’s just that we are so afraid we might do something wrong. That’s why we must be so very careful.”



“So afraid we might do something wrong” - that admission has stuck with me for 20 years. And I have felt sorry, and sad, for a very nice person who earnestly tried to do what God wanted her to do, but could not get beyond her barrier of fear. She trembled before an unforgiving and vengeful God.



A Plumb Line



Our texts this morning suggest one reason why. We have been taught to quail before the perfection of God. Amos uses the analogy of a plumb line. It establishes the norm, it measures anything that is off balance, and threatens horrible consequences for any misdeed. The Pharisee, asking Jesus about the requirements for a holy life is looking for a plumb line also. He is as fearful as was the woman I mentioned earlier. When you strive to worship and be obedient to a vengeful God, you do well to be afraid. There is no rigging the results of a plumb line. It will disclose your every deviation from the perpendicular.



As for Amos, we need to remember he was not a priest or a holy man in the accepted sense of the word. He was a shepherd, an uncouth one at that apparently, who spoke bluntly and could be insulting. When Amaziah, the priest of Bethel protested, Amos was unrepentant. He redoubled his threats of woe about to fall upon the nation. You see, both men lived in a time of relative peace and prosperity where people were not overly-scrupulous in their observance of the Mosaic Law. Amos was offended by what he saw and held up a plumb line as his measuring device for how far the people had fallen away from the perfect norm he expected of them. When perfection is your measurement, there is no leeway, no “gimmes”, no almosts being good enough. It’s all good or equally bad.



When Israel failed to measure up, the consequence was divine retribution. You break the law, you pay for your sins. It’s as simple as that.



By the time of Jesus, the laws were more refined, the voices of prophets more muted. I suppose the Jews had grown more skeptical of God doing much to rescue them from the Romans. But this did not mean they had lost interest in the possibility of a Messiah. Sadly, the law had become so difficult to observe, only the very wealthy had much chance of ever observing it satisfactorily. The priestly class and the social elite were the most likely to be “saved” - the rest could forget about it.



This, I think, is why Jesus so often emphasized the plight of the poor, the naked, the widowed and the orphaned. These were people who could not meet the requirements of the Law and had given up trying. They were beyond caring.



I remember Rosalie, a young woman in counseling who remarked in a matter-of-fact voice, “I’ll never get to heaven. I’ve done too many bad things. I’m unforgivable.”

She did not elaborate on just what it was she had done, but it hardly mattered. Her despair was palpable and irrevokable. She had seen the plumb line, if you will, and knew what it meant.



Mercy



In the face of such pessimism we hear a simple story about a despised man, a down and outer, if you will, showing compassion to a victim lying beside the road. This Samaritan was not a good candidate for the grace of God. Despised by God for worshiping a wrong God in a wrong temple in a wrong place, the Samaritan represents a human being who has no “pull” with God, if you will. How fitting that he should be the one to show mercy. In that one word, Jesus cuts through the theological arguments of what is sin and what is not, and simply shows the healing power of God in a gesture of compassion and mercy.



I have stumbled over this parable, wondering who represents what in the story. I’m not the only one. I’ve also been troubled by the example of the Samaritan when I think of the poor and down-trodden I’ve passed on the other side of the road. Must I stop and pick up every stray I see on the highway? How dare I look the other way when a fellow human being is in obvious need? Can I really be a Christian if I haven’t helped the stricken one?



Unfortunately, what I have done is literalized the story and overlooked the pertinent lesson. This is not about helping beggars, although it can be. This is about having an attitude of compassion for others. It is about having the capacity to empathize with others. It is the act of putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. It is laying aside the plumb line, and considering the circumstances instead.



I remember Margaret who was so offended by a decision by our Presbytery that she indignantly cried out, “But what about the purity of the Church?” never stopping to think of how the Pharisees had sought to do away with Jesus for precisely the same reason. How dare we exercise mercy before an immaculate: Heaven forbids it.



The Perfect Law



Yet isn’t that precisely what God did for us in Jesus Christ? Lay down the plumb line in order that we might have a right relationship reestablished with him and with our neighbor? Jesus asks the Pharisee, “How do you read the Law?” and the Pharisee quotes Deuteronomy - “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says “Exactly. Do that and live”. But the righteous man, uncomfortable with such a broad interpretation, seeks clarification. “Who is my neighbor?” The answer? The one who showed mercy.”



You see, the victim beside the road is not just anybody, that victim is you and me. We are the ones who have suffered and been left helpless. The good neighbor is God who sees our plight and does for us what we’ve never been able to do on our own. And Jesus Christ is how God showed us that mercy.



If we accept that gift of mercy, then we are in the position to pass that gift on to others. By being agents of mercy ourselves. We are here to walk beside one another, to affirm the value of one another, to be caring and loving, to lay aside judgment and show acceptance instead. To be merciful.



God forgive me if all I have to say to my Lord at the end of my life is that I did my best to live a good life by keeping as many of the rules as I possibly could. I remember as story I heard eons ago about the miser who upon arriving at St Peter’s gate is asked to name one reason why he should be admitted into heaven? Can he remember a single act of kindness or generosity he had ever committed? After much thought he finally remembered how he had once given a dime to a newspaper boy for a newspaper that only cost a nickel and told the boy to keep the change. “That’s all?” Peter asks. “I’m afraid so.” Peter turned to the recording angel and said, “Give him his nickel and tell him to go to the devil!”



The question that really matters is “Did you show mercy where it was undeserved?” Did you care when no one else did? Were you a true neighbor to one in need? Mercy: the forgotten virtue - and the one, after all, that really counts! Amen

God, Our Good Neighbor

God, Our Good Neighbor


It’s funny what a difference a word, or a new piece of information can make. A fellow counselor friend tells this story. She was trying to get to work in a blinding blizzard and was relieved to finally see the entrance to her parking lot ahead of her. Unfortunately, as she approached the entrance, a man suddenly appeared out of the blowing snow. He was walking in the middle of the street, and my friend could not get around him. She knew she was late and wanted to get her car parked and out of the blizzard. She lost her temper and started honking her horn vehemently at this stupid man plodding down the middle of the street where he didn’t belong. At the sound of the horn behind him, the man turned around, and it was then my friend saw he was carrying a white cane in his hand! The man was blind. You can imagine how quickly her attitude changed.



Social scientists call this kind of event a “paradigm shift”. I experience this when some word or thought makes me see a situation in a whole new light. It’s rather like the hymn writer John Newton’s immortal words in his hymn “Amazing Grace” -“I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”



There is a word in our passage today that has made a dramatic change in my understanding of this text. But you did not hear it in the scripture reading. It comes instead from the insight of a seminary professor I once heard preach on this text. His name was John Wyck Bowman, and he taught New Testament studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. Bowman had been a missionary in the Middle East, and he brought a new perspective to this story out of his missionary experiences.



The word was shamelessness. This is the only place it appears in the gospels, and that makes it a problem. How do we translate a word we have not seen anywhere else in the Bible? Bowman suggests that the closest word the translators could find for the original Greek term was “shameless”, but they were unwilling to use it because of its negative connotation. “Shameless” in English suggest “brazen”, “insolent”, “audacious”, “unblushing”. Surely Jesus was not suggesting this was an appropriate attitude for us to assume in prayer. How dare we approach God with our nose in the air and a defiant announcement, “Here’s what I want God, now do it!”



Therefore, translators turned to another story in Luke 18:1-8. An unjust judge becomes so irritated by a widow’s persistent nagging, he finally gives in and lets her have what she wants. Jesus draws from this parable the virtue of persistent faith. Keep believing, even when the heavens seem to have been shut against you. From this story, the translators applied the same notion to the word “shameless” as being more suitable.



But to Bowman, the new word brings its own problems. Persistence in one’s faith, is one thing, being a nagger is something else. And whatever it is, it has little to do with being “shameless”.



He suggests we step back and look at the story again. What is it really about? It is about being caught short and needing help - not just for yourself, but for your guest. In the Middle East, hospitality is not simply a kind gesture, it can be a matter of life and death. If you are hungry and left out in the night alone, you can turn to a total stranger and know that your need will be recognized and honored. If you, as the one receiving the knock on your door, refuse such a request, you will bring shame on yourself, and by extension, on the whole village where you live. The beggar can go to another village and tell how he was treated by you. That is truly shameful and unthinkable.



With that insight in mind, consider the parable again. Would you give a snake to your child rather than the fish that was requested? Or a scorpion instead of an egg? These contrasts are vivid and the answer easy: of course not. So if we know better than that ourselves - and we, after all, are not perfect like God is! - how much more can we depend upon God giving us what we most desperately need? The implication is inescapable. God would be ashamed not to answer our request.



Put this way, then, the admonition, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened unto you,” is seen in an entirely new light. Instead of concentrating on asking endlessly, as if this were a condition we had to fulfill to show our faith - which actually shows the opposite when you stop and think about it! - we are being urged to rely on the honor and trustworthiness of God. Jesus’ recommendation that we consider the lilies of the field how they grow, how they neither toil nor spin, is in the same spirit of faith and trust. We don’t have to frantically beg, we can rely on God who must hear and answer.



Now there are difficulties with this interpretation too. Bowman has managed to relieve us of the anxiety of nervously worrying about how we ask and whether we have asked enough times. (It reminds me of the question one woman asked about prayers for the soul of her recently deceased mother. “How many prayers does it take to get her into heaven?”) But we are still left with a promise that does seem reckless. “Is that all we have to do? Just ask? And God has to answer?” It sounds almost as if God is our servant, waiting on our beck and call.



Right or not, that pretty well describes how many of us use prayer. “God helps those who help themselves” Ben Franklin suggested, and we concur. That means, only when I’m in a tight spot, only when I’m at my wits end, only when I can’t see any other way out of my dilemma - then I will refer the matter to God. And when I didn’t get what I wanted, the fault was obviously mine because I didn’t ask the right way, or more likely, I didn’t have enough faith. Now, if Bowman is right, we are saying, “No, it isn’t my fault: it’s God’s fault. He ought to be ashamed of himself!” I’m not satisfied with that conclusion either.



What can I say? Well, for one thing, I believe we are not required to nag God endlessly as if we thought he had no ears. This isn’t about persistently asking and not getting. But it is about adjusting our faith to concentrate on a good God who really does care. This is not an unjust judge who finally gives us what we want in order to get rid of us. This is a neighbor that we can rely on and trust.



But I think Jesus’ teaching also shows us something about the kind of things we pray for. The Lord’s Prayer, for instance, is a model of praying for the basics - food and health, forgiveness and mercy. His parable also emphasizes the seriousness of the crisis. The request for bread so we can feed a friend at midnight is a legitimate need and clearly one any good neighbor would honor. I have known people who customarily pray for a good parking place and they tell me that God provides it every time they ask. I don’t want to doubt their stories, but I cringe at the thought of using God as one’s personal divine parking attendant!



On the other hand, I do not have access to the mind of God and do not want to presume to know what God thinks is an appropriate prayer request and what is not. That’s God’s business, not my own. Maybe God does help them find their parking spaces. I do still think these parables teach us one lesson: to always pray seriously. Sure, winning the lottery might be great. I’ve been wondering lately if I need to start putting my name in the barrel for the Publishers’ Clearing House again! But the thought that God is waiting to draw my name or my number out of the millions ahead of me, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But perhaps God is shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Hey dude, I’m ready to do my part, but you got to work with me on this one. Start buying your lottery tickets!”



Well - I am content to declare the God I worship has been faithful and met my needs and when Jesus urges me to trust that God, I strive to do just that. But forgo the nagging please. Let us pray for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out. And strive to find the faith and courage to trust our good neighbor, a gracious, attentive and loving God! Amen.