A Divine Housing Problem!

Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood? Why, the cosmos itself isn't large enough to give you breathing room, let alone this Temple I've built. - King Solomon

Temples are special - you must believe that. They are the houses of God. When Solomon built his temple in Jerusalem, he revolutionized the religion of the Hebrews. Up to that time, God lived in a sacred RV, if you will, carried from place to place in an elaborate chest referred to in the King James Bible as “The Ark of the Covenant.” Wherever the Hebrews camped for the night, or for an extended period of time, that ark was placed inside a large tent. There God resided in magnificent loneliness, unapproachable by mere mortals. Only the high priest dared enter the holy of holies, inside the tabernacle, and he could only do this once a year. The implication was clear, if not usually commented on: God was a traveling God, a God who went where the people went.

 But he also was isolated. Their God was a lonely God. David would have liked to build a temple for the ark, but God turned down the offer. Ostensibly, David was unworthy, especially after that business with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. Whether God was all that upset over David’s indiscretions or more concerned that David would build a temple that glorified himself - “Look what I’ve done: I’ve built a grand house for God!”, may be a good question. Such boasts were common enough in those days - (dare we mention that many a house of God today has similar signs of human boasting?) David would scarcely have been out of line had he done the same thing.

Unfortunately, such boasts have another hidden insinuation in them. The house I build for God is the place where God must now reside. I am God’s landlord. Not a good conclusion. So the Temple was built - not by David, but by Solomon. Probably even grander than David could have envisioned, Solomon’s temple was a wonder of cedars of Lebanon, ivory and gold. But to Solomon’s credit, he did at least realize that no human building was going to be able to contain God. His first act in the temple, then, was to address God with a prayer of thanksgiving and supplication. This temple is designed to show the might and power of God - not Solomon.

I learn some things from this prayer. For one thing, Solomon had the good sense to realize no temple would ever be able to house God. The plethora of mansions popping up all over our country are good examples of BIG houses. More rooms, more indoor tennis courts and swimming pools, more private theaters, you name it. Solomon could have matched them all, apparently, but he could not build a house big enough to hold God. We need to remember this. Not only is it unwise to worship a particular building because it is built for God, it is futile, for buildings are too restrictive. The God who once made do with an Old Testament equivalent of an RV, is a God who refuses to be tied down. God will not be confined in any Temple, no matter how immense it is.

 Nor can we confine God in a temple of ideas, doctrines, dogmas, theories, beliefs. Science recently found the Higgs boson, and people hailed the discovery as the equivalent of finding the “God particle”. At last, we have scientific proof of the existence of God. If you listen carefully, you may hear a divine roar of laughter. A particle so infinitesimally small it cannot be seen or measured is the proof for God for which we’ve been looking for so long? No. God is far too large to fit into our physics, our philosopher’s essays, our eloquent preachers’ sermons, our creeds.

 When you are sure you have found God, remember Solomon’s temple. God’s too big for our human brains to house. People worship a God they comprehend, and the truth of the matter is, any God we can comprehend is too small. Worship as a Christian, worship as a Jew, worship as a Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu. Worship as a Baptist or Catholic or Presbyterian or Pentecostal Evangelical, but remember, God, the God to whom Solomon prayed, will never fit in any of our creeds. God needs more space than we can provide.

That said, just how comfortable are you in housing God in your neighborhood in the first place? Suppose you were Zaccheus and heard Jesus address you with the words “What are you doing up in that tree. Come down right now. I need you at your house preparing a feast for me.”

Oh dear. There goes my afternoon to watch the Super Bowl. There goes my plans to play golf. There goes my Bridge Club. There goes the quilting lesson. Or even more ironic, “There goes my Bible Study Group”. An omnipresent God could prove to be inconvenient. I remember Marilyn once remarking to me, “I married you for better or for worse, but not for lunch every day at noon!”

And that’s only assuming God could be an inconvenience. What about God observing the seamier details of our lives? The things we think, say or do we would rather God not witness. Oh yes, we are all like Isaiah who remarked almost automatically - upon seeing God in the Temple - “woe is me for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips living in a generation of people with unclear lips.” Paul puts it emphatically - “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

  Even though our sins be simple ones - we have no murder or theft or adultery on our conscience, still our least imperfection is magnified a thousandfold when placed along side the perfection of God. We learn we can live with our shortcomings. We can even rationalize them. Take comfort that we are, after all, only human. What more could anyone want - even God.

But when we are put next to God, the simple defect of character takes on gigantic implications. Can we really bear to live in the presence of perfection when we are so acutely aware of our imperfection? Would not the contrast itself  be so obnoxious we could not bear it? Eugene O’Neill, in his masterpiece “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” depicts a family of human failings, and imperfections, who lacerate themselves with memories of mistakes and the unbearable agony of being in the presence of someone they think is better than themselves. They long for healing to take place in an addicts struggle for victory over drugs, thinking “if she can do it, there may be hope for me”, only to harbor a deeper satisfaction when the addict succumbs. “Look at her, she’s as bad as me.”

What if that neighbor was God? God, the perfect one? God the constant winner? God the infallible measuring stick for all our behavior? In another of O’Neill’s plays a man is so tortured by the goodness of his wife and his shame over his repeated failures to live up to her goodness, he finally kills her. He could no longer bear such goodness in his own back yard. Isn’t that a thinly veiled description of mankind and the way we murdered Jesus? Destroy the Son of God and let us have our neighborhood back on our own terms?

Well, that may be your answer, but you would do well to notice: God has already moved in. We live in God’s neighborhood, whether we like it or not. God is willing to die to show us just how sick we are and how much he loves us anyway.

Is it possible we have not only misjudged the breadth and depth of God and his unswerving love; we have also over-estimated both our human self-sufficiency and the real significance of our sin.

Solomon built a grand temple, one the world would eventually pull down. God built a different home, one more suited to his needs. We call it the human heart. It’s now up to us to learn how to live in God’s neighborhood. Apparently God’s quite happy to have us move in! Amen.

Conventional Wisdom?

As I pondered the observations of Paul to his readers in Corinth, I was haunted by the story of a five year old boy and his mother’s parchment lamp shade. I don’t know why.

She was very proud of that lampshade. I guess they were all the rage. The boy was too young to understand that. All he knew was how the shade sort of hid the light. He wondered if poking a hole in the lampshade would allow more light to come through.

As it happened, ther was a sharp pin near by that would probably do the trick. Quicker than it takes to tell it, he poked the hole in the shade. The result was promising. A bright dot of light showed through the shade. With that kind of success he thought a second hole would let out more light.

Actually what he really thought was that one hole looked like an accident. A whole ring of holes around the shade would like like it was supposed to be there! And he proceeded to punch holes in the shade all the way around the shade.

It was a success. Sort of uneven in spots, but no matter. Nothing’s perfect in this world, is it? And with his experiment in interior decorating done, he went off in search of other interesting things to do, and forgot all about it.

When his mother discovered the desecration to her lampshade, she had no difficulty figuring out what had happened, and who had done the deed. She confronted the boy with the typical parental question. "Why did you poke holes in my parchment lampshade?" No "Did you do it?" Why waste time with the obvious.

Now parents always ask dumb questions like that. "Why?" Well, so nobody’d notice it. Of course, that reason was off the table. And with no back up excuse handy, he simply looked blank faced, like "Huh?" Maybe if he looked really dumb he could slip out of it.

His mother wasn’t buying it, and he had to endure a lecture about respecting other people’s property, as well as a recital of his sins to his father and anyone else who would listen to his mother’s wailing.

"I swear I don’t understand that boy. What was he thinking of? He’s always doing things like that. I mean, if he’d just poked one hole in it, I could understand that. Anyone can make a mistake like that. But he poked holes all the way around the shade!"

What does this story have to do with St. Paul? I told you, I don’t know. I think it has something to do with the feeling I get when I read this portion of his letter to the Corinthians. How do I explain this thing called faith to you? How can I make you understand?

You see, he was writing to a sophisticated group of people well trained in philosophy and ethical discourse. They had Plato and Aristotle for their teachers. Socrates had been their mentor. How do you talk about something as elusive as faith? It reminds me of a treatise I attempted to read once, a scientific formula of the concept of love - a sixty-three page essay so abstruse and convoluted I can’t remember a single word of it.

And if the Greeks weren’t a hard enough sell, any Jews in the audience were even more bewildered. They were of the "black is black and white is white" mentality. It’s in the Law, stupid!

Centuries of repetition of the Law of Moses with its many gradations of meaning had been dinned into their heads. They knew precisely how many steps they could take from their land without breaking the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. They could speak to a neighbor through the window, if they did not lean into the window, or the neighbor leaned out of it.

What is this faith business?

Lest we look down on these people for their lack of sophistication, think of how many of us derive reassurance by thinking "if it’s in the Bible, it must be all right". Well, there are a lot of things in the Bible including incest, child sacrifice, execution by stoning, etc, that we would hardly condone today. Adultery may be popular, but we’re still pretty uncomfortable with David’s cavorting with Bathsheba - especially when he arranged for her husband to be killed so he could marry her.

But it’s in the Bible. And for the real purist, it’s even in the King James Bible - an important distinction to many who seem to believe God not only wrote the Bible himself, he did so with all those "thee’s" and "thou’s" and "begats" thrown in.

Yes, we like to have it all down in black and white. Clear-cut, pat, logical. Our entire nation is in the grip of the Ayn Rand mind set that glories in reminding us that "A is A", with no room for nuances or subtleties. For her, the first premise of respectable discourse is the supremacy of the rational mind. "I do not believe in God" her heroes proclaim, to which her heroines reply "Thank God!"

This is the audience Paul addresses, and to whom he must endeavor to explain why they should listen to a man who fell off a donkey, saw a blinding light - no doubt caused by an epileptic seizure - and not only gave up his mission to arrest and execute Jewish heretics in Damascus, but changed his name and proselytized the whole of Asia Minor on behalf of Jesus Christ.

"The just shall live by faith", that is his mantra. For those who have lived this message all their lives, it is easy to miss how radical it must have sounded at the time. We live in a culture dubbed "Judeo-Christian" which I personally think is rather unfortunate. Perhaps it’s true but it assumes we know what we’re talking about when I doubt we do. In a land where everyone’s "Christian" the very concept loses its meaning.

We started out as "followers of the Way", a fluid concept where each step was into the unknown. It’s rather like that inspired scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where his ultimate test is to step out unto thin air with no idea how he can keep from falling into an abyss. An apt metaphor for the true Christian way. And insanity of course to the rest of the world.

Paul experienced grace. Paul experienced transformation. Paul experienced a burning zeal of sharing this good news, this gospel, to all who would listen. And he combined it with a scathing scorn for the old, rational, parsing of the Law that had been the rule.

How do you explain that? Especially when it came to dealing with ultimate things like the will and grace of God? For this was not about intellectual discourse and speculation. This was about seeking the good will of almighty God. One needed to get that right or risk spending eternity in hell.

I was facing the equivalent of that kind of wrath when my mother confronted me with the hideous crime I had committed against her beloved parchment lamp shade. I was up against the law, and this was no time to seek a revision, a possible addenda that could mitigate the punishment I had earned and richly deserved.

How does Paul help me out then?

Well, in fact he does. Without minimizing the nature of my crime, he points me to God’s mercy upon which I can rely, if I will accept it. As exasperated as my mother may have been, it was clear that her love was not conditional. She was not about to bar me from her embrace for this unforgivable sin. While she no doubt would have preferred I keep my hands off lampshades, she considered her child more important than the appearance of the lamp.

(You will no doubt be gratified, as she was, to learn I made no further experiments with the furniture decorating. At least, not intentionally!)

I risk trivializing the supremacy of faith by this example, and for that I beg forgiveness of Paul and you. However, I do think restoration, redemption, salvation, call it what you will, takes on resonance and meaning most effectively when it is communicated to us in the flesh.

In our Gospel reading this morning, , Jesus speaks of tearing down the Temple and rebuilding it in three days. Clearly this is nonsense and his hearers were right to be outraged." Paul tells the Corinthians - "Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."

Explain that? Make sense of that? Good luck. The life of faith breaks all the rules of conventional wisdom. Thank God. Amen.

March 11, 2012

The Quilt of My Life

As I faced my Maker at last judgment, I knelt before the Lord along with the other souls as we prepared the quilts of our lives. However, as my angel took each piece of cloth off the pile, I noticed how ragged and empty each of my squares was. They were filled with giant holes. Each square was labeled with a part of my life that had been difficult; the challenges and temptations I was faced with in everyday life. The largest holes of all were the hardships I had endured.

I glanced around me. Nobody else had such squares. Other than a tiny hole here and there, the other tapestries were filled with rich color and all the bright hues of worldly fortune. I gazed upon my own life and was disheartened. My angel was sewing the ragged pieces of cloth together, threadbare and empty like binding air.

Finally the time came when each life was to be displayed and held up to the light. My angel looked upon me and nodded for me to rise. My gaze dropped to the ground in shame. I hadn’t had all the earthly fortunes. I had love and laughter...but there had also been trials of illness, death, and false accusations that took from me my world as I knew it.

I had to start over with my life many times. I often struggled with the temptation to quit, but was able to summon the strength to pick up and begin again. I had spent many lonely nights on my knees in prayer, asking for help and guidance.

And now, I had to face the truth. My life was what it was, and I had to accept it for what it had been. I rose and slowly lifted the combined squares of my life to the light. An awe-filled gasp filled the air. I gazed around at the others who stared at me with eyes wide open.

I looked upon the tapestry before me; light flooded the many holes and had created an image. The Face of Christ appeared before me, with love and warmth in his eyes. He said, “Every time you gave your life over to me, it became my life, my hardships, and my struggles. Each point of light in your life is when you stepped aside and let me shine through...Until there was more of me than there was of you.”

(Author unknown)

The Jesus-Lover and the Yellow Light

The light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration, as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, so naturally.... I assumed you had stolen the car.”

(Author Unknown - Possibly Jesus?)

((Not mine, but worth sharing!))

The Healing of a Leper

I want to tell you about the mystery and the power of hope. For that’s the only way I can understand what happened to my father. It is a mystery, you know. It always has a question mark, because you never know for sure what will happen, but you keep hoping anyway.

My father had leprosy. A terrible, terrible disease, the very worst kind of disease you can imagine. It eats your flesh. It robs your face of its familiar markings. You lose your identity. Parts of your body rot away. Toes rot, whole feet disappear. I have seen it, this enemy that will not be defeated.

But it eats more. It eats into your soul. No matter how you try to keep it out, at night, when you close your door and put out the lamp, there is no friendly dark to wrap around you guarding you in your sleep. The shadows march toward you, unseen, unheard, but imagined enemies who are ruthless, mindless, deaf to all pleas for mercy.

Where will they attack me tonight? What new spot will appear, signaling the start of a new invasion? When he first saw the spot at the corner of his mouth, my father let out a moan of grief. There had been so many other spots, his body already a hateful prison to him, a useless fortress of flesh and sinew and bone already breached, helpless against an enemy that never retreated without plans for yet another assault. What use to scream out? Who could possibly listen? What could anyone do.

Even worse was the isolation. What dwelt in my father’s body could attack us too if we got close. My mother had fled in terror when it first came to our house. My brothers, brave warriors though they were, also ran away. Our neighbors were quick to learn of the tragedy and closed their windows and doors lest his finger should mistakenly touch them and bring his disease upon them as well.

I alone stayed with him, though not by choice - not at first. I was the ill-favored one, the daughter who was good for keeping house, but scarcely likely to be granted the favor of a husband and children and a home of my own. What mattered it to them should the disease invade my body? I could tend to my father. I would be useful. Strangers would provide us food and rags to cover our sores.

God was kind. The filthy disease never touched me. But I lived with the fear. Each night I examined my body, searching, searching, searching, on the look out for any sign. None came. But I saw it on my father, in my father, a hopelessness that started as puzzlement , grew to fear and then to rage. By then his family was gone, and their aid as well. I kept us alive with my begging. I could not work. I could not leave my father, and even if I could, no one would risk hiring a girl who lived with a father who was a leper. Quickly I was labeled a leper too, though anyone with eyes to see could have seen it was not true. We walked alone, my father and I, no friends beside us, shunned by everyone.

Can you understand how remarkable it was that He touched him? The Master? I never expected that. I had encouraged my father to go see the teacher everyone was speaking of. I even urged him to call out to Jesus and ask for help. But not to have the Master touch him. That was unthinkable.

At first father did not want to go. The hopelessness of his illness was too much for him. No one could heal leprosy. Why dare hoping the hopeless? It was a fool’s errand. People would be shocked at him. Divine miracles don’t happen to sinners. That was senseless; it wouldn’t be right. This disease attacked only the most filthy people, people who had transgressed the moral law too grievously. A leper wore the mark of shame where all the world could see.

My best friend - well, my only friend really - asked me how I could bear to live with such a man.

“Zilpah! What are you saying? He is my father.” I cried.

She immediately apologized. But then added, “It must be difficult, you know. At least it seems that way to me. I mean, he’s your father, but God must be punishing him for something, don’t you think, to make him sick like that?”

“Oh Zilpah,” I told her, “Don’s say that. How could you? It is too awful.” Then she threw her arms around me and we cried, she for shame and me for fear she might see into my heart and know I could not help but wonder the same thing myself.

“We shall not speak of this, Zilpah. No. We must never speak of this. He is my father, and I love him. If it is true that God hates him for some evil, then God must hate me too, for I shall say to Him, ‘the sin you hate and punish in my father, that is my sin. Give me the same punishment that we may go away together and be hated by all the world.’”

Zilpah was horrified, but she did not turn away from me. She could see my unhappiness and my determination to love my father, no matter what he’d done.

But I wondered. How could I not wonder? Zilpah had only said what everyone said. I had said it myself. It was a truth that could not be argued or denied. And when the leprosy first began on my father’s body, I was heart-broken. I loved him. But he was unclean. He had to be. There was some sin hidden deep inside him the world could not see. Only now we saw it, saw the proof. He would live eternally shamed. He might have our pity, but he would always have our — oh, God forgive me for even thinking the word: our contempt!

It was never spoken, at least not where I could hear the words, but it was in their eyes. The tone of their voices. The way they stood just a little taller, a sign of their superiority over my father. He tried to hold on to his pride, his dignity, but when he did, people shunned him even more. “How dare he?” they seemed to say.

People think we stayed to ourselves out of respect for their purity, that we sought “our own kind,” father and I, because we knew our own place. We didn’t. We stayed away because their goodness pained us.

Only Zilpah seemed to understand, seemed to care.

“I shall pray for you, Hanna” she said. And I think she must have done it, for after that, as hopeless as our life seemed, I found comfort in the thought, if a girl like Zilpah could be my friend, could care about me, could love me, in spite of everything, maybe - just maybe, God could be our friend too. And when we heard rumor that a godly man, a teacher, had been known to bring healing in his touch Zilpah urged me to take my father to see him.

“The people would never let us get near him, Zilpah. You know that!”

“I don’t know that,” she stubbornly insisted, “Where do the holy books tell us we cannot ask for help? How many times did King David cry out for help, do you think? More times than the book tells us, I’m sure. Was he not a man, just like your father?”

I thought of the stories I had heard about David. He was far from a perfect man. His sins were many, and the people knew it. And he was not the only one. Moses, the greatest leader and prophet our people had ever known, he was forbidden to go over the Jordan into the promised land because of his sins. I didn’t understand what he’d done that was so wrong. In fact, I didn’t really know what sin was. I just knew it was shameful and bad.

Stealing, killing, sleeping with someone who was someone else’s wife or husband: those were all sins and very bad. Even telling lies was bad. I trembled at that thought. I lied all the time.

“Do you say your prayers, my child? Do you love God?” “Oh yes, kind lady, always. I weary the ears of the Almighty with my crying.” Lies, all lies. Why waste your breath praying to an angry, uncaring God.

Then give up? Is that what we must do? How can you give up? When the sun never gives up. Your pulse keeps beating. Your lungs breathe air. And your heart, your foolish, hasty heart, keeps longing for something better. Perhaps Zilpah was right. If God does not listen to the cries of the needy, the helpless, the sinful, the shameless, then who’s prayers does He hear? It must be a lonesome place, this heaven of His, this place where only the pure, the good, the perfect may enter.

So went my thoughts, and when Jesus came to our village, I begged my father to go see him. I had little hope he would do it, but if something could be done to end the loneliness, the unending shame, surely he could at least try. I was surprised when something stirred in him.

“God is coming here to our village, you say? The Almighty one? The holy one who rescued our forefathers in Egypt and brought us to the promised land?”

“No father,” I explained, “not God, but a holy man whom people say has healing powers.”

“Ha! They say that, do they? Well why not go and see for ourselves?”

He stood up, his sick body barely covered to provide him decency, and he strode out of the house into the harsh light of day. He did not walk humbly, bowing to the dust out of respect for all those better deserving than himself. He strode quickly, almost as if he had to go quickly or he would not have been able to go at all. I could hardly keep up with him. I had no idea he had that much strength left in him. I wondered what had happened to this man. This man I called father had grown so strange, I could not even remember his name!

People tried to keep us away from the miracle worker, but my father would not be turned back. They screamed at us, angry that we dared to bring our contagion into their midst. My father paid no attention to them. He’d been screamed at too many time to let them stop him. We’d lived alone, only glimpsing the world through small windows, wondering what real life must be like out there. The loneliness was too much. It was time to use his voice before there was no voice left to be heard.

I was amazed, frightened, shy, curious, anxious, wondering - would the healer see us or turn us away? Would he listen, or curse my father? And as we drew closer, all those emotions faded while a new one grew inside me like the breath of heaven itself, ready to burst my chest. I didn’t know what it was, but afterward Zilpah said simply, “I think it must have been hope. You dared to hope again.”

When we got to Jesus, my father did the unthinkable. I say it was unthinkable, because if he had been thinking, he would never have dared to do it. He fell on his knees before Jesus and challenged him. “If you wanted to, you could heal me.” How he dared to say it I’ll never know. I don’t think he knew. For his words came from the lips of a man who had stopped believing years ago. His disease had not only killed his body, but it had killed his soul as well. That part of him that could still care, still dream, still imagine something better - his soul that had been tramped down inside him, stirred. That had to have been what happened.

Just imagine: a man without hope daring to ask the impossible! That was the miracle. And when Jesus touched him - although the crowd was shocked, frightened, eager to rush forward and snatch his fingers away from contagion, I only watched with awe. Something inside me saw that the miracle had already taken place. Whether those terrible lesions on my father’s body went away or not, he was healed and he was clean and he would never again be shut away in silence and solitude, dead to the world, dead to himself.

You know what happened next. The disease was destroyed. The filth vanished. He was as clean as a fresh-washed, newborn babe. His skin was so soft. I could almost smell the cleanness in him. I threw myself on him and felt his arms - amazingly strong for arms that had not held me, or anything else in years - gripped me in an embrace that seemed to go on forever and ever. I could hear Jesus saying something to my father about going to the priest and being cleansed there. “Don’t tell anyone what has just happened!” As if we could keep such a miracle to ourselves! How could Jesus expect us to do that?

He did tell. Was God angry? I don’t know. How could he be? How could he be angry when joy had broken into the life of a man who had all but forgotten what joy could feel like? No, angels danced in heaven. I’m sure of it. And sang. They had to have sung - how could they not?

Zilpah added that last thought - she loves singing. And so do I!