Christmas Eve Homily

Did it ever occur to you that there is danger in Christmas? We can be so blinded by the joy of the season, the shimmer of the star, the reverent awe of the manger scene, we forget what a revolution is occurring in Bethlehem. Birth is a beginning, a doorway into the totally unknown.

A baby is a blessed gift, but it will require nursing, protecting, feeding, diapering, clothing, disciplining, teaching, worrying over, arguing with, wondering how to pay for its education, how will he make it through the drug scene, is that girl the right one for him, will he survive the broken bones, the emergency surgery, the chemotherapy, the heartache, the danger of flagging hope .....

Well, Jesus didn’t have to face all that, but his parents would face much before his untimely end at Calvary. And the truth is, the most blessed of gifts, the most longed for of hopes, the most cherished of dreams are also dangerous. They all require one thing - change.

As much as we hope for some great good, we will - upon receiving it - find our lives inevitably alter when the unknown comes into us. I remember meeting the girl who would become my wife. I had not been looking for her, she simply appeared in my world, and before long, spending time with her was all I wanted to do. Our courtship, simple and chaste enough to satisfy the most demanding Puritan, became so important, my whole future changed course. A year and a half later the courtship had ended and the marriage begun.

I need not describe the changes! A friend had told me, when I announced my engagement, that he had never known what true happiness was until he got married - and then it was too late! Ah those days of adjustment. Sweet, terrible, we began a journey that knocked all our previous notions of marital bliss out the window. Don’t get me wrong. That love was true and enduring. Our marriage lasted 45 years, and was richer, deeper, more gratifying than I’d ever hoped for, clear up to the day she died. For that I feel profoundly grateful.

But I was changed. Everything changed. And change takes courage.

Remember the birth of your first child? We were in Houston, the steamiest, hottest place I ever lived, and we had wrapped up our precious five day old daughter in two layers of clothes and a receiving blanket to take her home - a good hour’s drive from the hospital, in a car that had no air-conditioning! That child was beyond red - she was purple when we got home. But we had protected her from catching cold! Well, you parents know, life changed. It would never be the same. To this day, even though that child is now a mother herself, she can still tug my heart strings as insistently and endearingly as she did that day in Houston.

That Bethlehem birth represents the greatest gift we ever received, a gift for which the Jews had waited so long, and for which we wait with equal eagerness, certain that when God comes into our lives, we will be satisfied at last. Remember Simeon, that pious old man known for his earnest and faithful watching for the Messiah, there in the Temple when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus there? He uttered those famous words, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation”.

We get it. We feel his elation. We share his joy at finally seeing that for which he’d longed for such a long, long time. We celebrate the gift of God’s love into our world. But there’s a slight hitch. You see, up ‘til now it’s been our world, a world we believed we owned and had already learned how to control for ourselves. We want the love, but we also want the world we already have. We want the familiar because it is safe. It is ours. But to receive the gift of love and new life, we must be prepared and willing to change. And we don’t always like change. More often than not, we resist it with every ounce of strength in us.

The birth of an idea always challenges what we thought we knew. The creation of a new piece of art, or a new chord of music, or a new turn of a phrase must fight for its place in a world that never heard of such a thing before. We wanted the marriage, but we had to surrender the independence. We wanted the love, but we had to dare the risk of being loved by one who sees in us what we don’t see ourselves. We want the child, but must know that child will not stay a child. We want the job, but we may not be ready for the sacrifices that job can demand of us.

If I could give one gift to you all, it would be the gift of courage. Courage to accept and use the new hope that is in this wondrous babe of Bethlehem. Love sees possibilities our eyes have not yet glimpsed. It takes courage to dare to believe, as Jesus lived and believed, in a better world, a better life, a better way, a God-blessed life here on this planet we call home.

Perhaps the greatest courage of all comes with the birth of love. To be loved, to be seen with God-blessed eyes that know the possibilities of new growth in us, is to be aware of opportunity and risk that will change us into beings we never thought of or dared to believe we could be. Can we do it? Can we be it? “Lord, are you sure you really know me?” Think of Moses. Think of Jeremiah. Think of Isaiah. Think of yourself and all its faults and frailties. All imperfect. All unworthy. All trembling at the endless possibilities of change before us.

“Merry Christmas” we cry. Merry Christmas indeed. But far more important, have a Brave Christmas! A Courageous Christmas! A Daring Christmas! A Hallowed Christmas! For when Christ is born in us - and that is his true manger, not a stable in Bethlehem - we will be launched on a journey the like of which no eye can see, no mind can grasp, no imagination can fully fathom.

Yes - the Christ child is born - not just in Bethlehem - but in you and me. God grant we may have the courage and the faith to make him more alive - more real - in this hurt and trembling world. Amen.
 
 
Christmas, 2011

Sermon: "In the Meantime.....Love!"

(Based on Deuteronomy 34:1-12, Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 & Matthew 22:34-46: The Message)

Moses is an interesting character. An unlikely candidate for becoming a leader of a nation, he pulls off an exodus from the then most powerful nation in the known world. Self-described shy and self-abasing, he manages to hold the Hebrews together through a grueling 40 year trek across the Sinai peninsula to the shores of the river Jordan. Apparently a man of sage judgment, he was subject to fits of temper that barred him from reaching his hoped-for destination. Willing to persist no matter what the odds, his impatience could be his undoing. Perhaps most remarkable of all, he was a man of acute spiritual sensitivity who received an incredible gift from God, a personal encounter such as few ever have. Such a man is entitled to operate on a higher level of faith than is usually encountered in our far from perfect world. Yet for all his achievements, he is left on the wrong side of the river, peering into a promised land he will never set foot on himself.

On first glance, Moses is unlike anyone I’ve ever known, and certainly unlike me. Yet as I strive to list all the reasons why he is not like us, the more similarity I discover between us. Take for instance that psalm we heard read this morning.

It’s rather unique in that it is attributed to Moses himself. Whether he was the author or not scholars may debate. That it is true to his character works for me. It is the words of a man who feels comfortable enough in his relationship to God to speak plainly. He does not shy away from thorny issues.

It is the song of an old man. I think those of us who have traveled the course of our three-score years and ten, may appreciate his feelings more personally than the young might. Out of the mud we came and we know our return is close. Though Deuteronomy assures us Moses would get his four-score and even two more, yet this old man does not forget from dust he came and to dust he will return. And one of the privileges of being ancient is the right to speak our minds. (I still remember Bess, a woman comfortably launched into her nineties, who was lavish in her praises of my sermons. “I don’t know how you do it. I thought last Sunday’s sermon was your best, but this Sunday’s was even better.” But then came the inevitable Sunday when Bess said, “I don’t know about anybody else, but that sermon didn’t do a damn thing for me.”)

Yes, Moses was old, and he was candid, and he was barred from his life-time dream. Is that not true for us all? Oh, I know there are many who achieve great things, and I know we all can look back on great moments which make us glad. Yet who among us can truly say we’ve done it all. We’ve won our prize. We are truly satisfied. We are in our promised land. I dare say even the most satisfied among us still is capable of finding one disappointment in his or her life. Or, if not disappointment, still longs for one unreachable star that beckons beyond touch.

Interestingly enough, Moses doesn’t seem to brood on this disappointment, does he? He has seen the Promised Land and that appears to be enough.

You know, it reminds me a bit of a favorite film of mine. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. Aside from the derring-do which is all smoke and mirrors, what grips me about that film is the last scene when Indiana has found the cup of the Holy Grail, and used it to save his father’s life. Now, when the unspeakable happens and the cup is about to be irrevocably lost, his father tells Indiana to let the cup go. It isn’t as important as his son’s life.

Somehow our promised lands aren’t the real goal after all, are they? I think that’s one of the reasons why depictions of heaven fall so far short of satisfaction. Dante’s vision at the end of his classic “The Divine Comedy” is frankly static, over-blown and boring. It can’t hold a candle to the vivid depictions we’ve already seen of hell and purgatory. The depiction of heaven in the Book of Revelation is just as disappointing to me frankly. The whole Bible has been a journey to this heavenly destination, but what can we rejoice in here besides flashing jewels and eternal hymns, while angels strut their stuff in endless parades. Can’t you imagine the Queen of England perched on that balcony of hers forever? One more bagpipe ensemble playing “God Save the Queen” one more bloody time. Must I really endure “Amazing Grace” for another 300 billion times?

There’s something of a cheat about promised lands. The real satisfaction is knowing there’s still one more song to sing, still one more step to learn in this thing we call the dance of life. And while Moses may be kept from that heavenly promised land, he apparently is still alive enough that he can finish out his days in obscurity, seeking who knows what, doing what who could ever guess, still content to make his way back to dust convinced it had all been worthwhile.

Yes, I can identify with Moses. And I have at least one advantage he did not have. I have the example of Christ who would make his inexorable way to the grave with the same kind of faith and confidence. He walked our road with LOVE.

And that leads me to my other theme for today: Love. Such a common word. So ubiquitous. How quickly we mouth it. How gratefully we remind everyone ours is a God of love, not dogma. I believe I’ve heard it said “love makes the world go round”. And that genius composer Andrew Lloyd Webber assures us that “Love Changes Everything”. But even the eloquence of a William Shakespeare can’t capture all the nuances and definitions of love.

We could do worse than review Erich Fromm’s treatise “The Art of Loving”. I reread it recently, and while I have a few more quibbles about it than I did when I first read it — Good Lord! Fifty years ago? Still he has some useful things to say about it. And rather surprising for one who claimed to be at least an agnostic. He was in hearty agreement with Jesus’ great commandment while also acknowledging that the love commandment is what we now call an oxymoron, for if there is one thing love can’t be, it can’t be commanded. It is always a gift. It can come to us as a surprise - both the giving and the getting. And it always comes with admiration, respect, a deep valuing of the beloved. Interestingly enough, it must spring from a lover that is admired, respected, valued, genuinely loved. Put simply, we can’t love others if we don’t love ourselves.

For me, the act of love is an act of faith. It sees what others may or may not see. Even flaws can be recognized, embraced, valued. Some mocked that line in the film “On Golden Pond” when Katherine Hepburn refers to Henry Fonda as “You old poop”. But many more of us were inwardly applauding. We identified with it. We had known such a love. We cherished it. We had moved on from that adolescent fixation on finding Mr or Mrs “Right”, off on a search for the ideal beloved, the one who would magically fill the empty hole inside us we could not fill ourselves. In its place we had grown comfortable and grateful for the ideal one at our side, warts and all.

I often think of an episode from the old TV western “Bonanza” that concerned a rancher who had a fondness for fine horses, particularly race horses. He knew he must not indulge himself in this passion. His wife did not share it and would surely skin him alive if he brought home another of those old hay-burners, but he has succumbed to his love, and now must try to figure out how to keep the horse and not have his wife find out about it. Of course the story would have no zip to it if she did not find out - and find out she most certainly does. After her explosion of anger, she finally turns to the chastened husband and says, “Oh, tie that old hay-burner to the back of the wagon and let’s go home.” The line itself does not reveal the real message. It is the look in her eye and the heart-felt sigh that accompanies it that tells us our hero is not only forgiven, he is loved. And more important still, he is loved, not in spite of his foolishness, but because of it! She values even his flaws for they make up the fascinating totality of his deeply cherished being.

Indiana Jones and his father had much to learn, and loving each other may not have been what they thought they wanted, but it was precisely that love they had always needed, a recognition of the value and importance that lay inside both of them all along. Moses may not have been able to cross over into the Promised Land, but he had gained enough wisdom to know he was already there, and had been his whole life long. How is that to be so? By love. By the love of God. By the acceptance of God. By the affirmation of God. By the unshakable certainty that God was still his closest, dearest, most very best friend. And nothing would ever change that.

Did you see the news clip of the soldier stationed in Ramstein AFB in Germany finally screwing up his courage to tell his father – over a long distance phone call – “Daddy, I’m gay”. What made that moment so special to me was the response of the father. “You are my son and I love you. I will always love you. And I am so proud of you.”

Put your own shame in that story - we all have them - and hear God’s response. “I know, and it doesn’t matter. I love you and always will.” On, and by the way, Let’s not forget all the others waiting to hear that word too! Love them, just as you have learned how much you are loved.

We all live in the meantime — the time between what was, what might have been and what we wish could be — but still “meantime”. So please, in the meantime, love. Love with your whole being. Love for all you’re worth.

Amen.
 
(October 23, 2011)

Thoughts in Holy Worship

I am weary of right words.
Give me a liberated tongue
that I may speak my words.

There is an itch in my mind
they cannot scratch –
a tear chokes my throat
so that I gag on undigested song.

I tremble in thy holy presence
quivering in my groin,
alive, tongue dumb and heart bruised -
quivering in the grip of shame
for not living the right words.

I am weary of right words
that slay the giant
before he breaks his chains!

The Jesus "Do-Over"

Matthew 15:21-28 (the "Message")

Once, when I was a chemical dependency counselor, client Cassie made a point I thought could be corrected. Using my best therapist logic, and being careful to choose the most acceptable way to make my point, I tried to suggest a different way to look at the situation she was describing. When I finished, she flashed me a bright smile, her eyes sparkling, and she said, “You know, you are so wise and so helpful, I love what you’ve done for me. So it just slays me when you say stupid things like that!”


* * * * *

When I listen to Jesus, frankly, I am not amused. This saying is not his finest hour. A woman has come to him with a perfectly reasonable request. She has done so at the risk of being rejected. She knows she’s not a Jew. She knows she has no rights, no standing, with this stranger/miracle worker. And she knows she has made a nuisance of herself. She’s an embarrassment to everyone there.

But she loves her daughter, she knows her daughter’s affliction, and she doesn’t care what anyone else might think of her bold maneuver to get her help. Love cancels out all other considerations. Isn’t that enough? Can’t even the most callous person understand this act and make allowances? How could Jesus act so unfeelingly? I want to reach through the pages of the Bible, grasp Jesus by the throat and shake him. “Take that back, Jesus. That’s beneath you. You are the Son of God. You came to teach us a new gospel of hope. You are recruiting people to join your kingdom. You tell us the first commandment is to love one another. You can’t mean what you just said.”

* * * * *

I pause and reflect. No, he didn’t say this. He couldn’t have. This is all a big mistake. Someone has put these words in his mouth. After all, Matthew was writing for Jewish Christians, wasn’t he? He knew how offended they would be if Jesus helped a Gentile. Didn’t Jews call them “dogs” all the time? It was as common as the “N” word once was in our mouths not that many years ago.

But can you be sure? If Jesus didn’t say it, how did it ever get put in here and not challenged centuries ago?

Theologians have wrestled with it. Bible translators struggle with it. Read a half dozen translations and notice how they try to blunt it a little. Peterson’s paraphrase takes a stab at it by suggesting Jesus was so busy, so over-worked, so preoccupied with his mission to the Jews he simply missed the anguish in the woman’s voice. Her persistent clamor went unheard by the Master. It was the disciples who finally had had enough and urged him to get rid of her.

Understandable. Possible. Yes, I could see myself acting that way if I were in that situation. But it’s a stretch. Jesus was so good at identifying needs, even before people knew they had the need. He healed a lame man who seemed less than anxious to be healed. He gave sight to a blind man who hadn’t even asked for it. He challenged a tax collector to come down out of a tree and make dinner for him, a man who certainly did not need or want the publicity. How could Jesus miss this woman’s? What excuse can he give for his actions. “I’m too busy?” Excuse me, Jesus. A request for a trophy house in Telluride, or a winning ticket in the lottery - yes, I’d say those requests can be ignored, or at least put down the list a ways - way down, actually. But a loving, despairing cry for a beloved child? No. We don’t brush that off with a peremptory shrug, and a demeaning insult to boot.

But Jesus said it, apparently, and he has to be accountable for his words.

* * * * *

In his defense, we might point out that he was speaking the truth. He was busy. He did have a big job on his hands. He wasn’t handing out Tootsie Rolls to children, or autographed pictures of himself to an adoring crowd. He was about his Father’s business, remember? That’s the way Luke would describe it in his gospel. The dispensing of the grace of God is serious stuff. It costs. His very life before it’s over. Don’t come to Jesus looking for a miracle for amusement. Andrew Lloyd-Webber has King Herod taunt Jesus with the words:

     Prove to me that you’re no fool,
     Walk across my swimming pool!

Jesus was not a carnival attraction, here to amaze us with cheap tricks. “Take me seriously” he is saying to this mother.

Here is where the rubber meets the road. Here is where the Canaanite Mother looks him square in the eye and challenges Jesus to take her seriously too. “Call me a dog if you will, I know my place. I know what I deserve. I’ll take the scraps, and willingly. But give them to me. My daughter needs them, and I’ll do anything you ask of me. Just heal her, for pity sake.”

How many times have we approached God with requests that were frivolous, half-hearted, or worse, flippant as if such requests were our right? I remember Cora (not her real name, although you wouldn’t know her real name anyway) approaching me and demanding that I pray for total healing for a sick child. Wealthy Cora, who could demand obedience from anyone she met. She paid her way. She was entitled to get whatever she wanted.

Not this Canaanite woman. She did not come to Jesus expecting to be granted her wish because of her rank and position in society. She did not “buy” her miracle with the power of her pocketbook. She knew who she was, and what she asked. She faced the master with naked honesty and integrity. We could learn a thing or two about real praying from her.

* * * * *

But there’s one thing more happening here: it’s called real faith. Really believing that God is approachable, God really cares, and that we really matter whether we’re dogs or not. I think we tend to forget this. In the hurry and scurry of our daily lives, we act as if we are either our own gods and expend boundless energy on getting our own way and doing our own thing as if God is only needed when we’ve exhausted all other human resources. Or we act as if God was running some kind of gigantic machine that moves without thought to us. We don’t count in the grander scheme of things. Our petty problems are just part of the collateral damages of a universe busily going its own way.

How many of you still give yourselves comfort with the thought that “Whatever will be will be?” “If it’s your time to go, you’ll go?” “There’s no point in pestering God with juvenile requests. God won’t listen to us anyway.” We scoff at the advice of the prophet Joel, who cried out to the people:

     Yet even now, says the LORD,
     turn back to me wholeheartedly
     with fasting, weeping, and mourning,
     Rend your hearts and not your garments,
     and turn back to the LORD your God,
     for he is gracious and compassionate,
     long-suffering and ever constant,
     ready always to relent when he threatens disaster.
     It may be he will turn back and relent
     and leave a blessing behind him. (Joel 2:12-14a REB)

Joel holds out a slim but vital hope. God is not implacable. God does relent. God has changed course before. Even when God is most enraged, yet the almighty hand of wrath has been withdrawn.

The Gospels tell us Jesus himself could change his mind. Matthew relates that, when he heard of the beheading of his cousin John the Baptist, he was so disturbed, he took his disciples and tried to withdraw into a “lonely place apart” to rest and pray. He was exhausted and struck to the heart with grief. Who could blame him for seeking such solace in silence and retreat? But when he got there, he found the crowd had already anticipated his actions and were gathered there, “a great throng”. As exhausted and grief-stricken as he was, he could not ignore them. You see his heart had gone out to them, because they were like “sheep without a shepherd”.

That’s the clincher. That’s the hope in this story. The mother’s plea was heard and answered. No matter what has happened, no matter what we may have done, no matter how undeserving we feel, ours is a God whose heart goes out to us. God can have a change of heart. Jesus may be busy, he may even be unthinking and rude (and that’s a novel thought, isn’t it?) But he can also change his mind.

I will not speculate on what God will do. The solace, the healing of God may not come in the manner we wish. But it will come.

Even Jesus can use a “do-over”, and don’t you forget it! Amen

God’s Treasure

(Based on Matthew 13:31-33; 44-46)


“Are you listening to this? Really listening?”

That’s a curious question Jesus asks, right in the middle of these sayings. Of course, we’re listening, Jesus. We are soaking up every word you ever uttered. And yet Jesus seems bent on prodding us with this question, as if he was saying “Do you get it? Do you really understand what I’m trying to say to you?”

This doesn’t strike me as an offhand remark, something like the tedious habit some people have of following each sentence with that irritating “you know?”, as if they can’t think of anything else to say, but they don’t want to stop talking.

No, I think Jesus may well be trying to give us a new thought that is on the edge of our comprehension, one that we are so unaccustomed to hearing he does well to wonder if we are catching his meaning.
* * * * *

He’s talking about the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven - a curious remark when you stop to think about it. I dare say most of us think of it as the heavenly after-life, one we’ve grown accustomed to hearing about and hoping we’ll get into some day. But if that is all it is, these sayings are difficult to comprehend.

It’s valuable, it’s a treasure buried in a field so valuable a man would sell all he has to get it. It starts small, but grows incredibly. Eugene Peterson increases the size a bit by changing the metaphor from a mustard plant to a pine tree. I think Jesus would approve of that.

But where will we find this Kingdom? What will it really look like? And what relevance does it have to us, here on this side of the grave?

Frankly, it’s not very helpful if what it refers to is something we have to die to get into. And that’s pretty uncharacteristic of the rest of Jesus’ sayings. The beatitudes, the Golden Rule, the Great Commandment of love, all are solidly grounded in the present. They apply in the here and now.

So if the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be understood as a “Here and Now” place, just as we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer - “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” - then I think an attitude adjustment is in order.
* * * * *
The Kingdom is quite simply that place where God is king. To enter the kingdom of God is to become a naturalized citizen of heaven. It is to live life as a member of God’s family. It is to think of God as a present reality. We do not walk alone.

With that said, where do we look for it? Where is that pearl of great price? Where is the field worth selling all we have to purchase it?

Many people spend their lives searching for “the truth” but they wonder if any one will ever find it. It’s sort of like treasure hunters trying to find the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition mountains of Arizona. Or the lost treasure of Captain Kidd. Or the “Open Sesame” Cave of Wonder of Ali Baba. So many hunters, so few finders.

Do you suppose we’ve got it wrong?

Maybe Jesus wasn’t sending us on a scavenger hunt, maybe we’re not supposed to be the ones looking. What if Jesus is the hunter, and we are the treasure?

I know that sounds crazy, but think about it. If you look at the Bible as the story of the human race gone missing with God trying to find us and bring us home, it takes on a whole new meaning.

The children of Israel lost in Egypt are rescued by God and set free on a journey to new life and hope. They are given the Law of Moses so they won’t get lost again.

They get lost.

Judges are provided to give them guidance, but they prefer establishing their own form of government. Kings are what other nations have, they want them too. So God gives them Saul and David and what turns into a double line of kings in a divided kingdom, men who, by and large turn out to be corrupt, greedy, despicable tyrants. Again the Jews get lost.

God then provides a series of prophets, spokesmen who can give them guidance. Such prophets supplied them a more direct line to God, but that doesn’t work either. “If you can’t prophesy anything nice,” the people complain, “then don’t prophesy anything at all”- and again they get lost.

Now Jesus has come, the living embodiment of a searching God, the shepherd trying to reclaim his sheep, the God who spends his all - the life of his incarnate son, to demonstrate just how valuable he considers these precious human lives he’s created.

Suddenly these parables come leaping off the page. A pine seed - so small, so insignificant, but look what it can produce. Thus, the kingdom of Heaven is made up of insignificant human lives, mister and missus anonymous, but the accumulation of these nameless people is a mighty tree of strength and endurance.

A germ of yeast, so small we can’t really see it, turns out to have power that lies dormant in its chemical structure. More important, that power can permeate the whole lump of dough, making it rise many many times its own size.

And we, the people of God, far from being soiled, worn out, worthless - as we have been taught to think of ourselves - are treasure, buried in an empty field, and infinitely valuable. As one wagster put it, “If God had a refrigerator, our pictures would be on its door”. Face it, God’s crazy about you.

Are you getting it? Jesus asked. “Do you really get it?”

* * * * *

I’ve had my days of feeling worthless. I’ve had my moments of shame. I carry memories that plague me like locust that don’t wait seven years to come down on me with their buzzing fury. Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Oh how I wish I could do that over again.

And St. Paul - the mighty giant of the Christian faith, Paul - cries out about his “thorn in the flesh”, his constant reminder that he is far from perfect. “That which I should do, I do not; and that which I should not do, is the very thing I do do every time. Woe is me. Who can rescue me from this hell I’m in?”

Jesus himself depicts it indelibly in his Sermon on the Mount. “You say, thou shalt not kill, but I tell you, all you have to do is hate your brother and you have already committed murder. You say you will not commit adultery, but I must remind you, even if the only thing you’ve done is lusted after another, you’ve already done the deed.”

“Good Lord, master,” his disciples object, “If that’s true, who can ever be saved?”

Miserable sinners. Loathsome to ourselves. Despised by all decent people. Surely God knows the dreadful truth better than anyone else. We are worthless.

But what does the Bible show us? A God who never gives up on us. Hear Jesus’ reply to his disciples, “Left up to ourselves, it is impossible. But cheer up, with God, all things are possible.”

Here’s the good: ours is a God who says “I’ll pay the price. You’re worth it to me.”

* * * * *

The Kingdom of Heaven is you and me. The Kingdom of Heaven is growing in us. The Kingdom of Heaven is a treasure of infinite worth. The Kingdom of Heaven is that place where God is King - and that is in our hearts. It is in our mouths. It is in our hands. It is in our pocket books. It is in our imaginations. It is in our hopes and dreams. It is in us, right here, right now.

This is the amazing news God has for us. But be careful. This is not news that should make us proud and boastful. We have not been given permission to strut like peacocks, or stand in the Temple loudly proclaiming “God, I’m so glad I’m not like other people. I’m way better than that pitiful sinner over there.” Ah, how our attitude can tarnish the precious metal of God’s treasure.

But we can also tarnish it by robbing God of his treasure, by living as if we were the ones in charge, the seekers, the builders of our own dreams. Like the ancient story of tower of Babel, we would prefer to be our own masters, our own gods. And like Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the landlord’s vineyard who kill the owner’s son so they can claim the vineyard as their own.

We are the owner’s treasure; we do not belong to ourselves.  Amen.

HOPE - the Labor Pains of Life


based on Romans 8:12-25

When Viktor Frankl wrote his classic “Man’s Search for Meaning”, he focused his attention on the concept of “Hope”. He had survived the holocaust and become a beacon of light for countless people who have read and cherished his writings. He was a psychotherapist, and a Jew, when he was imprisoned, and used his time in the camp observing and pondering the lessons people were learning there. On the surface, the book is a memoir of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. At a deeper level, it is a revelation of the nature of the human soul.

At one point he remarks, “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future–his future–was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.” (P. 82)

“Faith in the Future” is another way of saying “Hope”, and for Frankl, hope was – and is - the essential mode for existence. We cannot exist without it.

The Irish playwright Bernard Shaw, writing in quite a different style, came to the same conclusion. He wrote a witty drama depicting hell as the place where hope no longer exists. That’s an odd approach, isn’t it? Well, Shaw was a most eccentric author. In the play, a woman has just discovered that she has died and gone to hell; a development she considers shocking. All her good works had gone for nothing. She immediately announces she will starting praying. Another character quickly interrupts her saying, “Don’t do that. If you pray, you will throw away one of the chief advantages of this place. Written over the gates are the words ‘Leave all hope behind, ye who enter’. Think what a relief that is. For what is hope after all but a form of moral responsibility. Here we have nothing to hope for, nothing to work for, nothing to pray for. We can do exactly as we please.’” To another character, that is an excellent definition of hell, and the very thing that makes it so horrible. To be forced to live wheren there is nothing left to live for - that is the ultimate essence of hell.

One might think Paul had every reason to long for death. His was not an easy life. As a young man he was tormented with depression, insecurity, doubt. He was driven to live a good life even when he found no satisfaction or relief in his austere life. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, his life got significantly worse. As a Jew he had been admired and respected. As a Christian he would be beaten, imprisoned, stoned, ship-wrecked, and if tradition is accurate, finally executed in Rome - all for his loyalty to a Jewish carpenter who had been crucified and whose body mysteriously disappeared. Paul dedicated his life to telling this unbelievable story to people who constantly misunderstood him or argued with him or ignored him. But in spite of all this, he would write friends in Corinth that, as much as he would like to die and be with God, yet he still very much wanted to live and serve that God. “So that, whether here or away, whether in this body or in the new body of eternal life, (he) was always content.”

The key to this attitude was, and is, hope. Even in that famous passage in I Corinthians, when he sums up his belief in those familiar words “Thus abideth faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love,” hope cannot be overlooked. It may or may not be the greatest, I will not quarrel with St. Paul about that. But I think I will demure just a bit and suggest, while love is what life is really all about, such an insight rests on an intellectual belief - a matter of faith. And faith, as a mere creedal statement is good for a memorable quote, a beloved verse of scripture to memorize. But where the rubber meets the road, where it all comes down to energizing a human life, is in that four letter word HOPE. That is what makes it possible to get up in the morning.

Frankl said of the moment when hope died: “We all feared this moment–not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving.” The death of hope was the prelude to death itself.

He also made it clear that such a hope had to be grounded in the present. One cannot live merely on the promise of some day. You see, hope for someone, someday, somewhere is rather like a well-dressed store window at Christmastide. It’s lovely, it’s admirable, and it may even be enjoyed by live people - but it’s not my feast, my fireside, my festivity. Hope is that elusive quality that makes the possible my possible. It grows in the heart that has been affirmed, cherished, valued, loved.

I wish I had known St. Paul. I wish we’d been able to sit down together and talk about the weather. I wish I could have heard about his day. About the sandal strap that was coming loose and caused him to limp a little as he climbed Mars hill. I wish I could have told him about the scary dream that grabbed my mind and would not go away. I wish we could have compared our taste in vegetables. Did he despise bell peppers too? I wish I could have felt his hand grab hold of mine as I struggled to get to my feet. It would have been a steady hand that not only helped me but believed in the strength of my legs. I wish I had known all this, for it is out of this seed bed of common humanity that faith is bred and hope ignited.

Hope is hard. It must survive the blind rush of life that can bruise as well as heal. It must stand up against the impersonal, the mindless, the selfish, the cruel. It is the beacon light that reassures us that we do matter, that someone does indeed care, that someone laughs with joy at our awkward loveliness, and weeps with our disappointments and our losses. And hope never settles for rewards postponed. Hope sustained St. Paul, and four year old Jeanette who skipped through her house singing lustily “Jesus loves me! Rah! Rah! Rah!”

Hope is the Energizer Bunny that keeps going whether anyone is looking or not. Hope is the springboard of creativity that strives to perfect the turn of a phrase, to return to that one brief shade on a painting that makes the picture come alive. A story is told of the actress Lynne Fontaine that she had struggled with one brief line in a play that had never seemed to be just right. The evening of the last performance, she burst into her husband’s dressing room and exclaimed, “I’ve got it! I know how to do that line.” “For heaven’s sake, Lynnie,” Alfred Lunt replied, “It’s our last night.” “Ah,” she replied wisely, “But that’s just it. There is still tonight!”

And hope can get exhausted prisoners up out of bed in the morning, convinced that this new day matters. It matters because they matter.

That’s the message of our Psalm today, isn’t it? The indisputable truth is crystal clear. God created us. God knows us. And God never gives up on us. The missing link was establishing that truth in us. A link, a bond, a connection that transformed theory into reality. For me, that link has always been reinforced with a human hand. God in human flesh. God in human hearts. God, incarnate, in the Holy Spirit.

I remember Bill. He had hit bottom, a truly terrible bottom. He had lost his career, his reputation, his ‘significant other’. He had given up on sobriety. He could not believe in God. His substitute was an empty whisky bottle that had given him no relief. And finally, the thought that he might be able to redeem himself by donating a kidney to his sister was rejected. Doctor’s established it was not a suitable match. In his despair, Bill chose a bullet in his brain, only to wake up in a hospital bed with the humiliating thought he couldn’t even successfully kill himself. One thing sustained him. One friend was left; a friend who loved and valued him in spite of all the rest that had gone before. It was a slim thread to tie on to life, but it would be enough. I call that thread hope. And it was held out by the human hand of a friend.

Paul called hope our birth pangs. Never forget. Where there is labor, there is life. Life, the ultimate gracious gift of God. Amen.

Tag, You're It!

(based on John 14:1-14)

I wish we knew more about John. His gospel is so deeply loved and cherished, it would be nice to know just who this man was and how he came about recording this special view of Christ and his teachings. I referred to him as a "he", but we don't even know that for sure. The name has been added to the Gospel later, it has not been verified anywhere in the gospel itself - or anywhere else for that matter. All that we think we know comes from tradition about the Gospel and could be quite wrong.

But putting aside such questions for the moment and just reading the gospel as a piece of literature, it is so different from the other three gospels, one wonders how it got written this way in the first place. Much of what it reports does not occur elsewhere. And much that does occur is presented in a totally different light. Who is this mysterious author and where did he get his information? Again, we simply do not know.

We can infer some things. It appears to have been the last of the gospels to be written. It seems to have been written for new Christians who needed a word of encouragement in a time of cruel persecution. And it seems to call on us to look deep into the inner workings of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who knew Jesus and those who now are striving to keep faith with him now that his physical body is gone. While Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the story of Jesus, John preaches the story, striving to get at the relevance of it to our lives. Without realizing it, readers are drawn to John's gospel for it's direct appeal to us to have faith, believe, trust this mighty Son of God, so that we might have life, real life, a full and fruitful life, as God originally intended for us to have. We move out of theoretical belief into living action. If our creed tells us Christ is alive, John tells us because Christ is alive, we are too.

The center of the gospel is chapter eleven where we are told the story of the raising of Lazarus. I don't think it's a coincidence that John chooses this point for this story. It is the apex of the gospel, it is the miracle of miracles Jesus performs, and it is the entrance into the life of faith we are urged to discover for ourselves. Put simply, we believe in Jesus so that we can be fully and completely alive, people who had been dead before but are now vibrantly alive, and not just frantically busy as are many people who think the more they put on their calendars, the more important they are. No, in a quite incredible turn of events, we find ourselves more completely alive in order that we might take up the work Christ was doing and carry it further than he did.

Christianity is not a "feel good" joy ride at Disneyland. It is a transformed existence fraught with exhilaration and challenge. It is true living and also genuine danger. It is glorious and terrible in its opportunities for distortion and destruction. The film "Bruce Almighty" tries to get at this in a comedic way. Bruce is given the job of being God for a day to see how well he can handle the infinite number of problems in the world. The result is chaos.

John's gospel shows us what that job looks like. He does his best to sort through all the qualities that made Jesus God in human flesh and then points his finger directly at us and says "Tag: you're it." The movie is just a movie, and Bruce is let off the hook in the end. We don't get let off the hook. We're more like Tim Allen's character in "The Santa Claus" who has no graceful way out of the job. Try as he might to shed the uniform, it keeps coming back.

"You will do the work I do" Jesus cautions us. And what's more, we will do even greater work than Jesus did. You don't hear that verse preached very often, do you? My God, we cry out in dismay, this is too much. You better believe it's too much. That's why we are promised a helper, a Holy Spirit, a safety net of friends of faith who will sustain us when the storm gets too heavy, who will enlighten us when our eyesight is too feeble, who will comfort us when our defeats - and there will be defeats - are too painful. The church is God's ark, if you will, our last place of refuge and safety in a storm that threatens to overwhelm us.

The TV series "Joan of Arcadia" tried to get at this truth and stumbled. The concept made it one of the most important and relevant "Christian" TV series ever attempted, but the writers and producers just weren't up to the task. They stumbled and the public soon sensed the hokeyeness of it. Joan was not asked to be "Joan Almighty" but she was challenged to be a living presence of God in the world. It did not take long for her to realize just how inadequate she was for the job, and we - the audience watching her - were invited to discover just how weak and ineffective we are too. Unfortunately, a TV series couldn't quite offer the hope Jesus offered. There were friends surrounding Joan but they didn't seem to have what it takes to be a Holy Spirit, if you will.

You and I have a job we didn't look for and can't see how we have the qualifications to fill. It's only training is "on the job". There will be no retirement from it, unless you consider death as the final resting place. (Frankly, I have an uneasy suspicion that it's more like the next level in a video game where new challenges, new lessons, new opportunities emerge.) Jesus' appearances to the disciples after his resurrection suggest as much to me. I'm still alive, mates, I'm still working, the Kingdom is still coming. And now YOU are that Kingdom, you are the living, breathing presence of a vibrantly alive God in a world that is infinitely more challenging and complex than the one Christ knew or could even imagine. Think what Christ might have accomplished if he'd had Facebook and Twitter to work with!

John tells us that Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. But the kicker in this "good news" is that the life we now have doesn't really belong to us. It's God's life. It's God's work in the world. It's the continuing revelation of Almighty God taking on human flesh.

You may have read the story of the student who watched a new boy in school get bullied and teased and shunned and saw him knocked down, spilling has backpack of books all over the ground. He went to the aid of the boy, helped him pick up his books, and started to get to know him. What was a mere moment of kindness turned into the start of a genuine friendship. And what had been a shy, introverted school untouchable became a strong, confident student and at graduation the one who was chosen to be class valedictorian. Imagine how he must have felt when he heard his friend begin by telling of that awful moment when he was knocked to the ground. All those books, they were not a sign of a bookworm nerd, he had just cleaned out his school locker and was taking his possessions home where he intended to kill himself - an intention that was avoided by the spontaneous act of kindness of another boy who had been picked by God to do a work God needed to have done.

Now that is a pretty dramatic example, but please believe me, God is alive and well and working in the world, and he's at work in simple human beings just like you and me. We rarely know when we've done our job - or where we've failed to do it for that matter! But we are on the job all the same. When Marilyn died and I discovered grief in ways I had never even thought of before, I once remarked to a kind friend, "I don't know if I can do this. I don't even know if I want to do this. It's too hard." My friend only looked at me and listened with patience and understanding. And after a moment, I added, "But I don't have a choice, do I?" He smiled and nodded. "That's what I was thinking too." That smile, that acceptance, that patient understanding was God at work offering me the help I needed, the only help that could sustain me in that dark place called grief.

"The works I do, you will do," Jesus tells us, "and not only my work, but even greater work than I could ever do. But don't worry, you won't have to do it alone. The Holy Spirit will be there helping you." That's what John believed. That's what I believe too. Amen.

On the Road

(Based on Luke 24:13-35)

If there’s one story in the Bible upon which I most often depend, it’s this story of the two disciples making their way on the road to Emmaus. It reminds me of many truths, chief among them is what it tells us about our search for God.


You see, rarely in the Bible do we read of any one finding God. The cry of Elijah, "Oh if I knew where I might find Him" is a universal lament. We all long for union with God, one way or another. Augustine said it in his Confessions when he prays to God, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."

We look in many ways. The weak struggle to be strong, the poor rich, the bored entertained. The alcoholic is not thirsty for drink, he is thirsty for the Spirit of God, a spirit he tries to copycat with the "spirits" of alcohol. The sex addict pursues sexual encounters, the gambler the thrill of "living on the edge". They all have one thing in common: they all reveal an empty space within themselves they are trying to fill, a space only the true God can occupy, and all these other things become their pseudo-gods.

Those who turn to the Bible for wisdom will discover that we do not "find" God. The truth is, it is God who finds them. It is God who is searching. It is God who initiates the divine encounter. And the human reaction for them all is virtually the same: surprise, disbelief, fear. Isaiah cowering in the temple; Jeremiah amazed; Moses trembling barefoot before a burning bush; Elijah more ready to die than to hear the voice of God; Paul struck blind.

This fact is not a comfortable one for a people used to making their own happiness, figuring out their own problems, lording over creation with their own superior power. We are the children who were raised to help ourselves, be independent, go after our own goals, claim success as our well-earned right. It’s almost un-American to propose the notion that we must give up our searching and wait patiently for God to find us. The poet Henley captures our national creed in his poem "Invictus" when he declares "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

Today’s story presents a different truth. Two men, disciples of Jesus, walking down a dusty road, discouraged, heart-broken, are met on the road by a stranger. Their grief is so deep they do not recognize him. Why would they? Jesus had been crucified, his body put in a tomb and then taken away. There’s no reason why they should expect to be walking beside him on this road. Now see what happens.

FIRST Jesus listens to them and in listening is able to help them sort out their thoughts. If we see God, we must first sort out our thoughts, clear away our preconceptions, become teachable. How often do we take time to look at why we are as busy as we are? Why are we so driven to achieve our unexamined goals? Where is that empty space inside ourselves we are so intent on filling? C.S. Lewis put it in an interesting parable. He says we cannot encounter God "Until We Have Faces". We must first become genuine and real ourselves. Then God has something to meet.

SECOND we must journey together. Rare is the individual who can map out his or her road entirely alone. Even the reclusive scholar is not really alone. He walks with his books, his mentors, his invisible guides. We walk with the teachers of our past. As many have confessed, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We are the recipients of wisdom, insight, understanding passed on to us by benefactors of yesterday. The myth of the self-made man is just that: a myth.

I understand that we do much, we are not merely passive objects, empty vessels to be filled by someone else. But we need the training, we need a model, we need the touch of another to set afire the creativity within us. The very conduit of learning - language - must be learned from others. Without it there is no making sense of our complex world.

THIRD we must be truly hungry. The disciples have stopped at an inn to share a meal with the stranger who has joined them. For most of us, we can be so obsessed with our own plans, our own search and satisfying what we think is our hunger with the substitute that most pleases us, that we are unaware of our real hunger. It’s only when we encounter the stone wall of tragedy, when we are broken and unable to get up, when our carefully manicured facade cracks that we become ready to be fed.

How often have we pushed food on people who are in the beginning stages of grief. "You’ve got to eat something!" we say. In part that is our need to believe we’re being helpful, but it is also in recognition that grief robs people of the will to go on. Get them to eat and they will have taken their first step toward recovery.

FOURTH we must realize that the Christ who meets us, listens to us, feeds us, disappears. Once glimpse God and he is gone. We don’t like this. Peter instinctively voiced our concern when he was on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus. Let’s build a temple up here so we can stay here forever. We want permanence. We want dependability. The Prudential Insurance Company showed astute business sense when it chose the rock of Gibralter as their logo. As strong and dependable as a rock. That’s what we want.

In the face of that demand, Jesus disappears. No leaning post he, he goes on before us. The place to expect an encounter with God is on the road. We will stop and rest. We will say our prayers. We will take up our cross, as Jesus put it, our mission in the world. But we will do so with the memory of what we once saw and heard. "Did our hearts not burn when he spoke to us?" the disciples remark. And we will go "on the road" ourselves.

FIFTH we must be careful that we not get too busy again. Once know what our true hunger is, be careful that the old ways of satisfying our hunger don’t return. Remember to stop, to eat, to share with others. Remain open to when he might join us again. For he does. We do not have only one encounter. There will be many. And like as not, they will come disguised and ill-timed.

I was a child riding a carousel at the zoo in San Francisco. I was delirious with the game of it all. There was a contraption that offered rings for you to try and grasp as you went whirling by. Most were mere iron, but some were brass, and if you caught the gold-colored ring, you could have an extra free ride. There was also a canvas with a clown’s face painted on it. It had a gaping hole for the clown’s mouth. You threw the useless iron rings in the clown’s mouth. I was delirious with delight throwing my rings into that mouth. Then, as I threw the next ring I heard voices shouting, "You’ve got the gold ring! You’ve got the gold ring!" And I saw that, indeed, I had just thrown the gold ring into the grinning mouth of that clown.

We must all seek God on the road. But we must be open and ready for his coming. God will come and dine with you, but in His time and in His way. Amen.

I’ve Got My Eye on You!

O LORD, You have examined me and know me.
When I sit down or stand up You know it;
You discern my thoughts from afar.
You ... are familiar with all my ways.


The Psalmist’s faith in the all-knowing nature of God is both reassuring and disconcerting. While it is comforting to be reminded that we are thoroughly known by God, inside and out, it can also be disturbing.

Forty-five years of marriage with my wife was made special one day by her remark, “living with you, I wake up with a stranger every morning.” That was probably one of the most loving things I ever heard from anyone. Since I was discovering the same thing about myself, it was comforting and gratifying to know this life I was unfolding was under scrutiny and valued by another. After all, why bother to examine something that had no worth at all?

The Psalmist is asserting that God is searching and examining us with the same kind of diligence, not to take note of all our imperfections, but to discern the fascinating evolution of human lives that are constantly in the process of growth and change. That is the privilege and wonder of love.

One might say God has to love us. Like any parent, it’s required. Well, maybe so, but love demanded, esteem that is compulsory, praise taken for granted sounds like a pretty cheap commodity. I prefer to think of God as the loving one, eternally fascinated, vigilantly watching for some new manifestation of creativity and worth in us.

I recall another examination that jolted me. It came in a sigh and a look, that spoke louder than words. The examiner was a professor, disappointed by my poor performance on an assignment. Her look spoke volumes: “You can do so much better than this, I wish I knew how to get you to do it.”

It took a while for me to dare to believe that word and test my own capabilities, just as it seems to take we human beings a long time to hear that same affirmation from an all-knowing, all loving God. We might refuse to believe God’s daring expectation of us. We may even try to hide in that old excuse, “Boy have I got you fooled, Lord.” The Psalmist was right. God knows us better than that.

The God who sees and knows us is the God who cares and loves. This God is the greatest friend we’ll ever have. The Psalmist may have wished he could hide, could be invisible, could escape the scrutiny of God. But he remembered something else. The scrutiny of God is the work of love.

That’s why he could earnestly pray, “Search me and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Limping toward Glory

Jacob called the place Peniel, saying
“For I have seen God face to face
and yet my life is preserved.”
The sun rose on him ... limping”
Genesis 32:30-31


Jacob may have had his faults, don’t we all? I know I do. But he did know what to do when put to the test. He held on.
Granted, that’s a risky virtue. I remember one fellow admitting shame-facedly that he was a coward. He hated fighting because he didn’t like getting hurt. His friend replied ruefully, “I don’t know if that makes you a coward but I can think of a few fights I wish I’d walked away from.”

Jacob didn’t walk away from his wrestling match with that angel, or some kind of heavenly being. “Let me go,” the stranger pleaded. “Not until you bless me” Jacob replied. The wrestling bout left Jacob lame, so that he limped the rest of his life, but he got his blessing - a new name: Israel, a name that would live on to the present day.

There are some wrestling matches that are life-transforming. The battle the recovering alcoholic has with his addiction is a clear example. Life without booze may seem insignificant to those who have not succumbed to the tyranny of alcohol. However, for one who has gone down that road, sobriety is hard-won, and the scars last a life-time. Sober life is a new-found blessing, but it’s also a pronounced limp, especially in a society and a culture that places such a high priority on drinking.

I suspect we all have our demons (or angels!) to wrestle. The teenager up against peer pressure. The GLBT person seeking acceptance and the deepest level of all, self-acceptance. The victim of physical or sexual abuse. And the perpetrators, caught in a compulsive behavior they believe they are helpless to control.

“Let me go!” the stranger demands, “it’s almost daylight.” Yes. The light is coming. I will be exposed. But Jacob held on. Damn the exposure, and damn the shame. I must have my blessing.

We can claim a blessing too. Not necessarily one we wanted. It may not look so attractive at first sight. And no one can predict the ultimate outcome.

This much we do know: we may limp, but we will be limping in the sunlight. There is blessing if we can just hold on.

"Who Do You Trust?" (based on John 3:1-17)

There are so many truths in this passage one could preach on it every Sunday for a year and not do it justice. Some have spent hours speculating on why Nicodemus chose to go see Jesus at night. Too busy? Too important to be seen going to a country preacher? He had a bad conscience and couldn’t sleep? He was waiting until the Sabbath had ended? And on and on.


What strikes me about this passage is the immediacy of it. Nicodemus is in the presence of the Son of God. He doesn’t know it, but he senses there is something special about Jesus that he can only respect and honor. One would think Jesus would appreciate that fact, even glory in it. But he does not. “ You say nice things, and offer me your respectful attention, but you do not believe me. You trust your own teachings more than you trust me. “

It’s painful. Plato spoke about the same thing in a parable . He describes a nation of people who are trapped in a cave. Their feet are shackled to the floor, their heads held rigid so that all they can see is a blank wall. A fire burns behind them and objects are placed between them and the fire so that they cast their shadow upon the wall. That is their reality. That is all they know: shadows. Then one man manages to escape his shackles and slip out of the cave into the real world, a world of dimensions and color. He is dazzled by what he sees. But how shall he explain what the real world looks like when he goes back into the cave?

That is the dilemma of the Son of Man who has been to heaven and back and is now charged with telling mortals what he has seen and known. This is the challenge of the Messiah. This is the heartbreaking reality of the “seer” who has glimpsed divine truths that simply can’t be condensed into words.

Let’s put this on a still more “human” level. You’ve been in the amusement park and you saw the roller coaster beckon. It was way too scary to attempt, but it was also so attractive. It must be incredibly exciting. Listen to the screams and squeals of delight of the happy rider. Nothing bad happened to them. Surely it was safe, or authorities would shut it down. In a moment of daring, you decide to give it a try. And it is glorious! Now you can’t wait to share the exhilaration with your friends, but they won’t go. Too dangerous. Impossible. How do you tell them you felt like a god in heaven itself?

Of course Jesus was God. The analogy doesn’t quite fit. No, in fact, it fits even more. Jesus spoke of what he knew from his own experience. But what he said was so preposterous - born again. No, no way. Quite impossible. How frustrating to know you are speaking the truth and you are not being understood. You are either put down as a liar or a lunatic. All right, a nice liar - you mean well. Just like coaxing a child to take medicine you know tastes terrible, but it will be good for the child. Or a benign lunatic, one who has harmless delusions. “Thinks he’s the son of God, but he’s not dangerous.”

The newcomer to an AA meeting is confronted with just such “lunatics” who confidently say “There’s hope. I was down for the count, and look at me now.” And the newcomer says, “Good for you. I wish it could work for me, but it won’t.” It’s frustrating and heart breaking. It echoes Thomas Merton’s cry “How can I tell people they are walking around shining like the sun?”

This is the anguish of Jesus, and of God. To love us so much. To be so vitally wrapped up in our lives and caring so deeply, and be unable to be heard, believed, understood.

Our problems are many, but chief among them is our fear - our fear of the holiness of God. Our fear of such perfection that can singe us. Our fear of an expected wrath that could annihilate us with one word from the omnipotent God. How can God get over that very human fear?
Jesus tries to reassure Nicodemus. God’s not on the warpath out to punish us endlessly. Those who think so give God a terrible reputation. I am not only appalled at such preaching, I am incensed that God’s good news should be polluted by such madness. These folk who go to funerals and cemeteries spewing out hatred and call it the will of God - I think surely, if God does have anger, it must be focused on them who make God out to be a monster.

But we need not blame only such fanatics; this misguided thinking abides in the nation at large. I have heard it too many times not to know what people are really thinking. When someone draws near to death, or someone suffers an untimely death, there are good people, people who mean well, people who love Jesus and serve God faithfully, but who are obsessed with fear that their loved one may not have been saved. Did they never listen to Jesus’s words? Did they not believe him when he spoke of God’s grace? Don’t they understand our God is a gracious and loving God, quick to forgive, eager to be friends?

What we can’t understand is a loving God who is forgiving of that which we cannot forgive ourselves. We judge ourselves far more fiercely than God does. We believe our own judgment more than the good news of the Son of God. Any God who would overlook my mistakes is too imperfect for me. I need a perfect God, and obviously such perfection would have nothing to do with me.

Yet we sing the hymn, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” We like the song, and think, “Wouldn’t it be nice?” and go right on condemning ourselves as beyond forgiveness anyway.

Well, all I can say is this, Jesus offers hope. We get the benefit of that hope by accepting it: a free gift. Our part in the matter is simple: believe it, accept it. In other words “Have Faith”. Simple, right? Well,
not so simple. We are so certain this good news is faulty, we shake our heads and dismiss it.

We don’t know what Nicodemus did with his good news. He came in the night and left in the darkness. And the rest of us? Well, who knows. The wind of the spirit comes and goes. How blessed are those who dare to trust Jesus and believe the good news they’ve heard, more than their own idea of who God is and what God is really like.

That roller coaster ride is bliss! Amen

Who’s in Charge Here? - Matthew 6:24-34 (CEV)

I wonder about this passage. Being the child of a materialistic culture, the wealthiest the world has ever produced, I have always been taught that the accumulation of things was a sign of the good life. And more, that the more things you own, the better proof of your goodness as a person.

The poor you have with you always - Jesus told Judas. They are the godless ones; or so we assume. Say “welfare” and immediately, images come forth of worthless women having babies in order to collect money from the state - surely an evil practice and one worthy of our scorn.

We are Calvinist and we believe we are saved by faith, not by good works. The Calvinist pushed the logic of that belief a step further and declared that God alone knows who will be saved because God alone chooses the “elect”. Work for salvation all you want, your efforts are pointless.

But — since God is a just God, stern in judgment and always fair, he surely would not allow a bad person to be prosperous. That defies logic. We cannot prosper without the implied blessing of God.

Well, what a convenient logic! If one prospers, one automatically must be good - it makes sense. Add to this logic the theory of evolution - what we call social Darwinism - and you can be happy in the knowledge that only the fittest survive. Those who survive and prosper must be the elite, the creme de la creme.

Which all adds up to one thing - material goods do matter. They are a barometric reading of our spiritual condition. We live in a prosperous country. We are prosperous ourselves. Therefore, we must be good.
Only Calvin didn’t say this, and neither did Jesus. Calvin said such worldly prosperity was no guarantee of holiness, it was a blind chance, nothing more. He knew wealthy men and he knew that wealth - what Paul called the love of money - is the root of all evil. Read a history of the builders of the transcontinental railroad, for instance, and you will discover these men were rascals to the core. They not only showed no mercy for their neighbors, they saw no point in such mercy. Selfishness and greed was their rule and they lived by it.

Jesus also knew how corrupting material goods can be. The King James Version of the Bible uses the word “mammon” and that translates into a love of things. It is a god, a demanding god, a god with a voracious appetite. What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too, if I can figure a way to get my hands on it. Serve mammon, and you push God out of your life.

We are confronted with a choice here - and it is not simply a choice between having things and not having things. (God forgive me, but I cling to my toys like any other man. My computer, my DVD’s, my books, my fine dining - all indulgences of the flesh and the spirit that make life worth living - I can scarce contemplate life without them.

As I said, the choice is not just about things. The choice is as it always was - what will be my God? What will dominate my life? What will motivate me to action? What comes first? Some of you remember Jack Benny, the comic with a reputation for being a miser. One of his famous moments was when he was confronted by a thief who was pointing his gun at the comedian. “Your money or your life” the thief demands. There is a long pause, “Well?” the thief prompts him. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking!” protests Benny.

I see at least two things going on here: one is pride. As I pointed out earlier, our wealth stands as a measuring stick for our success, our worthiness. I remember the first season of “The Apprentice” when Donald Trump invited one of the winning teams up to his penthouse to show off its glittering walls of gold. Everything was gold. How can one doubt the worth of such a man who has so much to show for his wealth?

The other is fear - and this Jesus points to with unswerving insistence. In his eyes, the accumulation of wealth has to do with fear about tomorrow. It has to do with anxiety that there won’t be enough food to eat, clothes to wear. Existence itself is threatened by the lack of worldly goods.

The fearful man is the loner, eking out a meager existence and in constant dread of the next day. Soren Kierkegaard asked “What is anxiety? Anxiety is the next day.” It is that mythical tomorrow we expect to come, the one for which we must always be prepared, the one that can bring blessing or disaster - we never know which one. So we must be ready.

We must be. Only that isn’t a “we” it’s a “me”. Me, me alone, only me.

Here Jesus parts company with conventional wisdom. He points to another possibility. No, this is more than a possibility - he points to another reality, a certainty, an unshakable faith. We are not alone.

You see, we are not in charge, God is. Somehow our anxiety has clouded our vision. Our lives become misdirected in our search for safety. We become driven by our need to secure ourselves and perpetuate our own immortality.

At the moment, the world watches as men of power are growing old and weak. Their insatiable appetite for wealth and power has consumed so many they can no longer hold on to their wealth and position. And they don’t know it. They have lived their privileged lives so long they can’t imagine any other way of living. They are desperately alone.

Recall the eccentric Howard Hughes who died a pitiful death, with no more dignity, no more stature, no more self-worth than the most common beggar. His wealth proved nothing. Mubarek may have escaped Egypt with untold riches at his command, but who is he in the eyes of the world now? Ghadaffi faces exile, declaring he’d rather die. Hussein’s statue was toppled and he himself died cursing his enemies and defying them to the end.

All alone. All thought they were successful. All thought they had limitless power. All worshiped themselves and relied on their own powers, their own brains, their own indomitable will. And they all were alone in the end.

Jesus would also die. But even in the darkness of Golgotha, and in spite of that terrible moment when he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”, he would cling to one more word of faith. “Father, into your hands I place my spirit.”

The prophet Isaiah said God will never forget you. “I’ve got your names tattooed on the back of my hands!”

That unshakable confidence is at the core of the Christian life. Now please understand, Jesus does not say everything will turn out all right. There is no promise here that we will be happy, healthy, and successful in the manner of a Donald Trump who can gild every inch of his penthouse with 24 karat gold. The presence of God is an assurance that whatever we face, whatever we are called upon to experience and endure, is faced with the presence of God.

I think you might say, God is there with the reassuring words, “I’ve got your back”.

That’s what Jesus is talking about here. Whatever comes, God is a part of the story, we are not - and we never will be alone.

We like to think we’re in charge. Well, we aren’t. History has proved that again and again. We’d be willing to trust God if we could be sure he’s in charge. Jesus seemed to think that’s so. But remember, history can be tricky. Things don’t always go the way we wish. Events occur that seem quite out of the realm of the control of God. Jesus would suffer and die.

The good news is - God brings victory out of even the most disastrous defeats.

Don’t worry folks - when you do, you’ve taken back control. You are laboring under the delusion that you’re in charge again - and you’re not. Trust God, he’s got your back! Amen

Living Gospels

Sermon  (Based on Matthew 5:13-20)

When Jesus called his disciples “salt of the earth, and “light of the world” he did something important. He made them “living gospels”. They became the conduit through which the Holy Spirit of God passes into the world.

In previous generations, God spoke through priests and prophets. The people waited hungrily for words of guidance and courage, for correction and consolation that came to them through the lips of a Moses or a Samuel, an Isaiah or a Micah. Then, after a long waiting, a Messiah was to come and all that had gone wrong with mankind and our world would be set right. Jesus was that messiah - or so his disciples believed, and so have we Christians through the ages.

But our expectations did not change. The messiah brought hope, but it was not the hope we had looked for. He spoke of a new Kingdom of Heaven, but it did not look like a kingdom. Rome still ruled, the Jews still suffered, and the new believers, now calling themselves Christians, resumed their waiting - only this time it was for a radical end of this world and the beginning of an entirely new one. The Book of Revelation came to be understood as a promise of cosmic warfare, the humiliation and defeat of Satan, and the launching of a new heaven and a new earth with a kingly Christ returning to usher in this promised paradise. Somehow, the simple message Christ taught his disciples got diminished in significance. It has the sound of a coach’s pep-talk before the game begins, rather than the unexpectedly startlingly new message - we are now the messengers, we are the medium and the message (to borrow a notion from Marshall McLuen). We get the part about how we could do better, make a greater effort, but we miss the crucial edge of this teaching - we already ARE the medium and the message. Now we must ask what kind of living gospels have we become.

I say, “we missed it,” or was this only an unfortunate oversight on my part? Did I hear and see but fail to understand? Perhaps you caught the message better than I. It occurs to me that many Christians are under the false impression that they should be the salt Jesus speaks of, or the light Jesus expects the world to see. If I read his words properly, that’s not the point. Put simply, we ARE salt, we ARE light. The question is, what kind of salt shall we be, what do we do with the light that shines through us?

Have you seen the bumper sticker that reads, "I have no problem with Jesus, it’s his friends I can’t stand"? That’s a pretty damning statement, and all too unhappily true. We all know people who profess Jesus but manage to make us feel inferior and unwanted. They may be Jesus’ friends, but they do little to make us want them to be our friends. Charles Dickens, novelist and crusader for the poor and the oppressed, loved to point out the hypocrisy of pious church goers who agonized over the plight of natives in Africa while turning a blind eye to the misery that surrounded them in London or Liverpool. Mark Twain took an equally jaundiced view of religions that seemed to be good for nothing more than making people ashamed of themselves. I remember Myrna who spoke of her teenage years being so fraught with fears that she was an unforgivable sinner rushing toward damnation she made rededicating her life to Christ a regular Sunday morning ritual. Her father once said "I wish to God I knew what you’ve been doing every Saturday night!"

My wife the nurse came home from the hospital one day and reported a conversation she’d had with the volunteer chaplain. "I don’t know how to talk to an alcoholic who’s in here again to get over another drinking binge." "Why?" she asked, "he’s just sick like everybody else, isn’t he?" "I know," he protested, "but his sickness is self-inflicted. His suffering is his own fault." "So’s my being overweight," she replied, "but that doesn’t take away my suffering. If anything, it adds to it." We all suffer from our sinful ways, but that doesn’t mean we are no longer entitled to the mercy and redemption of God.

And I remember pastor Ralph, who served a church that devoted itself to knowing the truth and preaching it unflinchingly. When invited to make a donation to the United Way, he was actually shocked. "We don’t participate in such worldly things."

Is it any wonder that there are people out there who take a dim view of Jesus’ friends? And don’t protest that this isn’t fair. We must not condemn Christianity because there are church people who don’t live up to the ideals Jesus taught. Of course the world condemns hypocrisy. Of course the world notices when we proclaim good news but don’t get around to living it. Why wouldn’t they? What else do they have to go on? That’s not our fault.

Wasn’t it? Where was the light? What happened to the salt? It was there, but it was pretty dim and tasteless. The Gospel of John said the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never been able to put it out. And when Jesus called us "salty" he knew that salt doesn’t really lose it’s flavor. Salt is always salty. It can be diluted, it can be hidden by other flavors, but it’s there all the same.

So what happened?

What flavor of faith are you giving out? It’s not enough to say you believe in Jesus, you need to show it. We are not performing good deeds to make ourselves righteous and worthy of a place in heaven. We are living our faith so that the world might see what the grace of God looks like. The minister who labors over producing a great sermon should not be surprised to discover that what people heard wasn’t necessarily what he said. Nor should he be offended when he learns the kindness of a faithful church member meant more than his carefully worded interpretation of John 3:16. What gospel am I living? That’s the real message.

What look is on my face as I go down the sidewalk? What tone of voice do people hear when I call them on the telephone? How promptly do I pay my bills? How considerate am I on the highway? How attentive am I to the needs of others when I have my cell phone in my hand?

Why do I ask these questions? What do they have to do with your faith? They demonstrate your faith. They are a visible, indelible impression of who you are. But they are more than that: they are a witness to who God is and what God is like.

Jesus cautioned his disciples to beware the mistaken notion that, just because they were friends of God, that did not mean they could ignore the good works God urges us to do. True, the legalism of the religious pharisee is misplaced. We cannot aspire to holiness just by assuming the appearance of holiness. But neither can we ignore the rules of good behavior as irrelevant. To accept the grace of God in Jesus Christ and then rest on our laurels as if we now belonged to some privileged class is equally wrong.

We are now on duty. We have a task. We are the extension of God’s saving grace. We are the salt that gives flavor to faith. We are the ones who make the gospel tasty, appetizing, appealing to the world. We are the light that helps people find their footing.

We are, in a word, living gospels. We are God’s good news. We are God’s models of new life. We are hope in living flesh. You “I can’t do this, it’s too much for me. Remember Moses? Remember Isaiah? They tried that line and God over ruled it. Jesus has already hired us on. The issue now becomes what kind of witness will we be?

Jesus talks about our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven being somehow linked to our salt and our light. A hasty reading might suggest that we need to clean up our act so we can qualify for going to heaven. But look again. Jesus says we will have a lower position in heaven. Or perhaps another way of putting it, we will have less significance. Diluted salt and flickering light are of little use to God. You see, this isn’t about getting into the Kingdom, it’s about our status in the Kingdom already.

The Kingdom of Heaven, as I read it, is not what we’ll find after we die. The Kingdom of Heaven is the fellowship of saints who have gone before us and who will come after us and who are presently surrounding us in our world right now. It is nothing more than that place where God is acknowledged as our King, our higher power, our supreme being. If you live as a child of God, you are already a citizen in the Kingdom.

Then once more I must ask, what kind of citizen am I? One who embodies the grace and mercy of God? Or one who wears a God face to look good in the world but is actually motivated by selfishness, greed, prejudice, a desire to be my own God. Does the zest of Christ permeate my being, or am I cold porridge hardly fit to feed the dog? Am I the light house people seek out in the midst of their raging dark storms, or have I satisfied myself by preserving a waning battery in an old flashlight, turned on only in emergencies? You know, that proverbial foxhole prayer?

Think about it. The question is not, will you be a sunbeam for God? The question is what kind of sunbeam are you now? Amen.

Following Directions

(Based on Micah 6 and Matthew 5)



I shall never forget Diane’s earnest remark about her church and its beliefs. "Honestly", she said, "we don’t believe we’re better than anyone else, we’re just afraid of not getting the gospel right. We have to be so very strict, you see. What if we got it wrong? We’d spend all eternity in hell!"



Bless poor frightened Diane. She has company, doesn’t she? Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. How unfortunate, how sad. Didn’t we hear the prophet Micah?



He has told you, O man, what is good,

And what the LORD requires of you:

Only to do justice

And to love goodness,

And to walk modestly with your God.



The Christian life is quite simple, really. The rules, if you wish to call them that, are clear, succinct, and applicable for everyone in every walk of life. Be just, love goodness - or be kind, and be modest or humble. The hard part is discovering how to apply these very basic principles.



Take justice. Humanity has long recognized this is an appropriate rule. What’s right for A should be equally right for B. Anyone can grasp that concept. Children on the playground learn it quickly. “That’s not fair!” an anguished voice cries. We all have seen it, we’ve all felt it. Recognizing the universality of that truth, our Declaration of Independence states all men are created equal. Only we don’t act it. We don’t even believe it. By the time the United States Constitution was adopted, such equality applied only to white men, and as for voting, not only were slaves not counted, neither were women. Our physically challenged folk have long recognized the world belongs to the able-bodied. Left-handed folk know society designed our furniture and implements with right-handed people in mind.



All these examples are issues that emerge from that basic principle, be just. The principle is good. The prophet speaks well. The problem is figuring out how to act justly.



Love goodness - or be kind and merciful. Again, the words say easy. We have many sayings that help us achieve this goal. “Be nice” we say to children, “good little children share with others.” Their puzzled looks remind us that being nice is a weird concept that has nothing to do with their desire to have the whole ice cream cone rather than share a bite with another child. Why should I let someone have what is mine when I want to keep it for myself? Any fool can see that. You say a good man shares what he has. Then sociologists and economists and anthropologists and psychologists gather around and tell us it may not be such a good idea giving all these goods to others. They need to learn how to take care of themselves, don’t they? They even point to Darwin who taught us there’s another principle here called “The survival of the fittest”. If you can’t make it on your own, maybe you’re not supposed to.



So Micah adds one more rule - walk meekly or humbly or modestly with God. Ah, now that is where we stop preaching and start meddling. How do you do that? Do you testify every where you go, telling people about the mercy and love of God? That would be nice. Of course, there are people like Ralph who takes great pride in knowing there is no God, and for him such unasked for advice is merely a nuisance. Or there’s Sally who cringes when told God is her loving father, for she had such a loving father - one who entered her bed nightly and took away her personhood, her dignity, her innocence and any chance of her ever being able to trust and respect herself or any man again. So our good news may not always be enough. Then let us live out our good news with a positive attitude. Let a smile be your umbrella. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam to shine for him each day. You can catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar. And then I remember Peggy of the sweet smile who told biting lies with those cheerful lips inflicting hurt wherever she went. She showed God, all right, a god of bitterness and hypocrisy.



What can our prophet tell us now? It’s not in the script, but it’s there between the lines: being human is a full time job and requires a fearful honesty that will keep us searching our souls, our motivations, our true impulses and needs for that which can best reflect the image of God placed in us by our creator. When I walk with God, I see the difference between my creature imperfection and the ideal that God represents. When I walk with God, I am better able to walk with my neighbor in true humility and kindness because I walk with God in you. (I may just discover that God is walking in you with me, and that you are God’s blessing for me when I am hurting!) When I walk with God, I hope I learn that you and I are of the same fabric, that humanity means I can feel and understand what you are like, what you need, what you fear, what you dream, and I can be attentive to another rule that sums up all Micah has said: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.



Our passage from Matthew carries on the proclamation of Micah. But instead of giving us rules to follow, it pronounces blessings that come from God on those who strive to live by these principles. These are current, of this moment, present-tense blessings, and what’s more, they radiate their very blessedness out to others. If those who have been hurt will hurt others, those who are blessed will be blessings to others.



However, please notice that this “simple” rule is just as difficult to follow as those Micah puts before us.



For one thing: you are not me. What you need or want or long for or dream about, is unknown to me. And vice versa. Give me tickets to the Super bowl and you will be disappointed that I do not respond with instant joy and gratitude, any more than you will respond with equal elation when I give you season tickets to a box seat at the Opera. Take me to the ski slope and you can only wonder why I choose to sit by the fire in the lodge rather than break my neck on the mountainside. Or consider my dismay when I serve you my beef stroganoff only to watch you push it from one side of your plate to the other because, unfortunately, you happen to be a vegetarian.



Living Christ’s great commandment to love others as we love ourselves isn’t easy. It takes sensitivity. It takes open-mindedness. It takes being aware, awake, alert - to your own beliefs, tastes, and principles every bit as much as the beliefs, tastes, and principles of the other. Put together the teachings of Micah and Jesus and you will have guides for how to do as God would have you do. But you’re still not home free. We need something more.



Here is where we look to Jesus who lived these principles, embodied them, and treated those whom he met according to all these rules. He took on himself the nature of a servant, lived among us as a genuine human being and showed us what being human is finally all about. He showed us how to be the human being God created us to be. He lived our lives, dreamed our dreams, shared our hopes and fears, grieved as we grieve: in a word, he knew us through and through and could treat us as his very own best friends. This kind of knowing was not just behaving nicely. The goodness of Jesus went to the very core of his being.



Remember what he said about breaking the Ten Commandments? Don’t congratulate yourself because you have not committed adultery: you have entertained lustful thoughts. Don’t think refraining from killing your neighbor is noble: be honest, you killed him with your hatred or your biting words, or the evil look you gave him that murders the soul even more than a knife or a bullet would do. When you think about it, your offense may be even worse than murder. By hating rather than murdering your neighbor, you avoided the consequences of committing murder. You weren’t holy, you were simply a bitter coward.



I remember Herbie who spoke complacently about being insulted by someone to whom he was trying to witness for Jesus. “He was even a minister; a man of God! And he slammed the door in my face. But I prayed for him anyway.” Without thinking what I was saying, I remarked “That’s getting even with him, Herbie”. The look of shock on his face told all. “I’m not sure I like that.” he said. And rightly so. I had unwittingly shown him his true nature. He did not really pray for that man, he enjoyed feeling spiritually superior. Of course Herbie didn’t like what I said. My words were not likable. But I must add I too, was guilty. I hadn’t meant to be kind. I had just broken the Golden Rule myself, all in the name of Jesus.



All these rules, all these principles, all these wise and godly sayings are meant to help us live lives that reflect the nature of God and also reveal that nature that resides in us, for we are created in God’s image. But simple though they are, they are not easy. Live by them as best you can and you will be driven to your knees in remorse and frustration. How weary God must be hearing me cry out “Oh Lord, I did it again!” You may think our prayer of confession each Sunday morning is a bit excessive: I disagree. That prayer is essential, it is the way we prepare for a course correction in our lives.



God mercifully, graciously, lovingly did for us what all the rules and principles could not do. He sent Jesus to live the pattern and die for us. He showed us the consequences of not living as Micah urged us to do. But Jesus does more than show the love of God in action, he redeems us from our sinful nature. He brings us good news. He shows us that though we still suffer from our pride, our egotism, our self-centeredness, our natural bent for grabbing the whole ice cream cone for ourselves, though we still are blind to the devastating consequences of our prejudice, our hypocrisy, our self-righteousness, God does not hold a grudge against us or give up on us. God still has hope for us, God still has the last word and that word is “I love you, you are mine and I will not let you go.”



Trust God and allow him to instruct you and redeem what we could not redeem ourselves. Amen

Ouch! - January 8, 2011

I can usually take the world for whatever it offers. No doubt that’s from my training in philosophy and my long years of dealing with the human race as a minister, counselor, helper and friend. But there are moments when I receive a kick in the gut that winds me and I am left wordless and stunned. All I feel is stinging tears and a gulf of despair too awful to contemplate.

That’s happening this morning. The attempted assassination of a congressman in Arizona, for whatever the reason and by whomever the perpetrator, has assassinated me - momentarily. My usual confidence in the abiding care taking of God seem childish and futile. For the moment, the only thing that makes sense is retaliation and revenge. I assume the shooter(s) had some motive they thought reasonable. Now it’s our turn to wreck vengeance.

Hurt me and I’ll hurt you back, that’s the warning embedded in our DNA, isn’t it? I immediately recall the phenomenon I saw repeatedly in my counseling practice amongst survivors of drug and alcohol abuse, of family members in the wake of hellacious abuses, the scars that still ache for the despised, the disadvantaged, the exception to our society’s norms: it was a simple observation, "Hurt people hurt people".

The trouble with such observations is quite simply, it’s too pat, too obvious, it’s trying to soothe a bruise with a parental kiss and a reassuring hug. At moments like this, we do not want to be soothed, or comforted, we want blood. And for those like myself, who never was much good at inflicting physical pain on others, there is too often the other escape - despair. We find ourselves growling "I hate the human race", only to realize such a confession necessarily includes self-hatred, for we all belong to this despised race, whether we like it or not.

I do believe in God. I do believe in the possibilities of humanity. I cherish the progress I have seen, and in which I eagerly participate. I just can’t quite get past the hurt, the dismay, the horror that is exposed by an act like this. It is as if Satan himself had suddenly popped up in front of me grinning: "Go ahead, hate me" he gloats, "I want you to. Hate is my victory."

It is just such moments when I can completely understand the pathos of the cross and be humbled by the spirit of Jesus who simply prays "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

I have a new neighbor that is taking some getting used to. In all my years I have not had a boombox neighbor before. The resonance of his stereo is felt and heard and slamming doors, and scraps of dropped trash finding their way unto my lawn only add to my dissatisfaction with him. I feel helpless, not wanting to be an old grouch, yet unable to deny I am feeling intensely grouchy. I’ve spent much time contemplating this situation and wondering what I could do about it.

As I pondered the tragedy of this senseless killing in Tucson, it suddenly struck me that I am preparing myself for just such an insane act myself, right here on Phillips Ct. My anger and my urge to retaliate springs from the same fountain of perversity that fed the act of that gunman who killed so wantonly in Arizona. He is not alone. We’ve seen this at Ft. Hood, and in Maryland, in an Amish schoolhouse and in sky scrappers in New York City. Never mind the motive, a woman killed in Paonia or a fallen president in Dallas, all are victims of that same propensity for hatred and violence. And my pouting at a trashy neighbor next door is first cousin to these criminals.

I have no answer to this demon that resides in me, but I do have an unshakable belief. I believe that God weeps with us. This was not, and could never be, the will of God. I also believe that God is not and will never be defeated by this hatred. God may be the composer of a grand symphony that gets interrupted by these squeals of a misplayed clarinet, but even these wails can be the inspiration of a new loveliness so desperately needed by the human soul.

Anne Frank, in her diary, reflecting on the evil and madness of the holocaust that was going on around her, maintained her faith in the human race. She wrote, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart". And Jesus on his cross could affirm that God was good and his creation redeemable. Perhaps I am redeemable too.

I pray God that those deaths in Arizona will not be wasted. If no other good comes from them, at least I shall look at my neighbor differently than I did before.







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