Spiritual Hiccups - Money and Spirituality

I have heard it said, and believe it true, that you can tell more about a person by looking at her checkbook and credit card bills than you can from anything she tells you.  That is because when you figure out where someone's money goes, you figure out where his passions lie. 

I think it is common in our day for people to think of spirituality as an add-on, another consumer item acquired to enhance the quality of life.  It means learning some techniques on meditation or prayer, and perhaps some sort of participation in a group or even in a religious organization.  It is somewhat akin to an exercise program for the interior life.  And unless one gets caught up in it, its financial implications are limited to the costs of the program.  Like joining a gym or buying some running shoes, a spiritual program may require purchasing some books, attending a class, or going on a retreat.

But Jesus makes an explicit link between spirituality and finances, between one's heart and one's checkbook.  "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Where your money goes, there goes your soul.

Given that we live in a consumer society, and that our religious culture has lived in a capitalist system for the entire life of America, it is hardly surprising that we tend to view faith and spirituality as one more thing to help life be good and full and complete.  But true spirituality aims to draw us into the divine mystery and, in so doing, to help us discover who it is we are truly meant to me.  This cannot happen by adding more or by acquiring something.  It can only happen when our lives, both inwardly and outwardly, are reshaped so that they conform more to the character of the divine.

And when this happens, our passions begin to look more like God's passions.  And the evidence will be found in checkbook registers and on MasterCard statements. 

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Spiritual Hiccups - Remembering

I have discovered over the years that one of the great spiritual difficulties for me is remembering.  By that I mean that moments which were formative, that spurred me to make some change in my life or convinced me that God wanted me to take a particular path, become fuzzy, without the power they once had. 

I presume such many others have had similar experiences.  Remembering, at least meaningful remembering, can be a difficult thing.  Over time, couples often forget the feelings they once had for each other.  Current irritations are more vivid.  Sometimes they drown out those old moments to the point that people doubt old feelings of love, dismissing them as youthful infatuations. 

When relationships run out of steam, the present overwhelms the past.  All relationships deal with this at times, and remembering is essential.  Remembering old promises, remembering old commitments, remembering formative moments in the life of a relationship is necessary for it to grow and continue. 

Today's reading from Deuteronomy realizes this need for remembering.  Even the powerful experiences of God in the wilderness will lose potency in the face of the present if people do not work to remember.  "But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children."

When I was growing up in the Church, I was taught some of the history of God's people.  I was drawn into this remembering.  But too often, it seemed an academic exercise.  Faith was about knowing the material and agreeing with it.  But faith is about relationship, right relationship with God.  And relationship is not about knowing the correct facts and agreeing with certain doctrines.  But it is about remembering.

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Congregational Singing: "Stayed on Jesus"

It can take Presbyterians a while to get warmed up, but by the end, we're doing okay.

Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

As a boy, I loved Mad Magazine and its slacker icon, Alfred E. Neuman.  Neuman's catchphrase, "What Me Worry?" seemed to bespeak more a devil-may-care attitude than his having figured anything out.  His lack of worry appeared to be the product of dullness and ignorance more than anything else.  Alfred E. Neuman doesn't worry because he doesn't know any better.

Small children and slackers may not worry, but that's only because they don't get it.  Anyone who pays much attention to the state of the world, anyone who has responsibilities and a family to support, how could she not worry?  And yet here is Jesus, suggesting we strike a more Alfred E. Neuman like pose in our lives.  "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life..." 

Our culture is certainly filled with worry and anxiety.  Much of the partisan rancor in our politics is driven by this.  People are worried and anxious and easily become afraid.  When we are frightened our actions become more primal, more primitive.  Those old fight of flight instincts kick in.

You see it in the Church, too.  With all the major denominations losing members, losing influence, and struggling financially, people of faith worry, they grow anxious and afraid.  Far too often, we lash out at those who disagree with us.  We identify "them" as the problem.

I wonder how one becomes less of a worrier without simply burying his head in the sand.  How do we find a way to say "What, me worry?" without it being a sign that we don't have a clue about what is happening?  Jesus is no Alfred E. Neuman, but he says stepping back from our worry is part of life in the Kingdom, in God's new day. 

I don't think Jesus means by this that we are not to respond to the situation around us.  After all, when Jesus saw people's needs, sickness and hunger, he tried to help, and he commanded his disciples to help as well.  But Jesus seemed unconcerned with whether or not what he did solved all problems or fixed everything.  He was able to live out his call and trust that God would use his ministry to bring about God's plans.  And I think that is exactly what Jesus is asking of us.

What, me worry?  Actually, I do more than my share.  But now and then I do experience a touch of what Jesus is talking about.  When I am willing to give up control of things, when I am able simply to do what I should, and let God do with that what may, there is a genuine peace there.  But that is the heart of the faith problem isn't it, really trusting our lives to God.

Spiritual Hiccups - Are We a "Christian Church?"

I live in Ohio, one of several states currently considering legislation to curb the bargaining power of public employee unions.  While Ohio hasn't produced the sort of headlines coming out of Wisconsin, the rhetoric here is no less bitter.  Republicans are "attacking the middle class," while Democrats help unions gorge themselves on taxpayer money, totally unconcerned about the state's fiscal crisis.

American politics has long been a "contact sport," but it isn't all that hard to find instances where fights in the church don't look so different from the polarized, partisan bickering that passes for legislative debate.  I am over-generalizing and stereotyping, but I have seen debates on the floor of my own denomination's governing bodies that appeared to be opposing sides employing whatever carefully crafted strategy they deemed most likely to defeat their evil opponents. 

Contrast this with Paul's words in today's epistle reading.  He says that because it is only by God's mercy that he is who he is and engaged in his ministry, he does not lose heart even in the face of huge difficulty, suffering, or what appears to be defeat.  Because he doesn't measure by the world's standards he can say, "We refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God."  Paul doesn't need to employ a slick strategy to counter the equally slick strategy of his opponents.  He simply speaks the gospel and leaves the rest up to God.

And if that seems like an unworkable, impractical way of accomplishing anything, consider what Jesus says.  "Do not resist an evil doer... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."  Now I've never been sure if Jesus expects people to employ such methods, or if Jesus would condemn force used to save someone.  And the Church has long wrestled with how to reconcile Jesus' teachings with the states need to employ force and "just wars."  But even if there are reasonable exceptions to Jesus' teachings on non-violence and pacifism, surely such exceptions must be carefully weighed and thought out.  Surely we must acknowledge that we are acting contrary to a particular teaching of Jesus, and own up to that.

One of the arguments that has become a part of America's current partisan divides is the question of whether we are a "Christian nation."  Without engaging that debate, it seems to me that, in light of Jesus' teachings on love, at times we would do well to consider whether or not we are even a Christian church.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Dry and Parched

It seems that "dryness" as a synonym for God's absence, for feeling spiritually bereft, is an ancient one.  It's there in today's morning psalm.  "I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land."  That's how it feels to me. After I first experienced the stirring of a mature faith but before I had learned the language of "spirituality," I described my first real encounter with God's absence as "feeling dry."

Such dry times come over me with more regularity than I like to admit.  It is terribly frustrating to pray, to spend time in silence, and feel that I am alone.  It feels like being in the desert, aching with thirst, and lifting a water bottle to my lips to find nothing but dust.  My worst doubts emerge in such dry times.

I have often longed for a surefire way to quench these times, some magic formula or practice that would immediately leave me feeling spiritually refreshed.  But I have never discovered one.  However I have begun to develop, somewhat grudgingly, some appreciation for my dry times.  Not that I enjoy them, but they are often powerful motivators, and they also provide a contrast that makes me relish those times of God's bountiful presence all the more.

I think that much of my spiritual "growth" over the years has come out of searching for a presence that seemed to have become lost.  This dryness might be compared with a lover's longing for the other.  I cannot imagine a lover who has never experienced such longing. It may even be that this longing is necessary in order to validate and confirm a deep and abiding love.  So too with dryness?

I think it was Frederick Buechner who said, "Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith."  Perhaps dryness works in similar fashion, prodding us and drawing us deeper into the mysterious and wonderful life of God.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Not My People

"May I continue to find favor in your sight, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, even though I am not one of your servants."  If you knew that these words were from the Bible, but did not know the context, what would you suppose they meant?  In the Old Testament, Israel is often spoken of as God's servant.  In the Greek of the New Testament, the same word is sometimes translated "servant," other times "slave."  Paul writes of being a slave to sin, and Jesus speaks of a servant not being greater than the master.  Many of these uses speak metaphorically about relationship.

And so I think it would be reasonable to hear the opening sentence of this blog and presume it to be the words of an outsider, a Gentile perhaps, acknowledging God's grace and asking that it continue even though this outsider is not one of God's people.

I love to tell a story about my grandmother-in-law, a wonderful lady who was 95 when she drove herself to the doctor with "the flu," which turned out to be the heart failure that ended her life days later.  One time when I had replaced the filter on her furnace (a complicated procedure that required measuring and cutting filter material from a roll and fitting it onto a cage-like structure that went in the furnace), she wanted to pay me.  I objected but she insisted.  When my wife also objected, she said that she had to pay me because, "He's not my people."  

It was her way of saying I wasn't a blood relative, and as such I didn't have quite the same obligations toward her.  Not being "her people," I wasn't required to help her, but since I had, she felt required to pay me.  Strange as it might seem, by not being "her people," I had it better than those who were.  She treated me no differently from her biological grandchildren.  In fact her statement, "He's not my people," was so funny to all of us because there was nothing in her behavior toward me to bear it out.  And so the only difference between me and those who were "her people" was that I got paid and they didn't.

"May I continue to find favor in your sight, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, even though I am not one of your servants."  These are Ruth's words to Boaz after his kind treatment of her, kind treatment motivated by Ruth's loyalty to Naomi, and in spite of the fact that Ruth is "not his people."  

For most of modern history, Western Christians have tended to understand the faith along sharply drawn lines of "us and them."  But it is not clear to me whether these dividing lines are rooted in God's character or in our own.  And if the story of Ruth is to be read at all metaphorically, God's character seems not unlike that of my grandmother-in-law when it comes to those outside the family.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Call Me "Bitter"

Early today a devastating earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand.  When a horrific earthquake struck Haiti just over a year ago, televangelist Pat Robertson made headlines for blaming the quake on voodoo and deals with the devil that the Haitian people made during a slave rebellion centuries ago.  Today I saw a post on Twitter wondering how such logic would work with this latest quake, noting that it occurred in a city named, of all things, Christchurch, where the quake heavily damaged the city's wonderful cathedral.

Pat Robertson's foolishness strikes me as obvious, but still I think many of us struggle to understand how and where God is in the midst of such events.  Robertson's thought process may be extreme and even absurd, but his desire to find order and sense in the midst of such chaos is fairly normal.  We would like to think that the world is more orderly, that we can keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, that when we do what we are supposed to, things will work out well for us.  But the world keeps reminding us that this is not necessarily so.

When Naomi returns to Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law Ruth, the people recognize her after her many years absence and say, “Is this Naomi?” But she responds, “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, (literally "Bitter") for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me."  Naomi has lost her sons and  has no grandsons in a world where such widows were in jeopardy of quickly becoming destitute.  She has good reason for her name change.  She has good reason to think God and the world are against her.

People of faith often think that faith gives them insight into why bad things happen, and they sometimes think that faith is suppose to protect them from such bad things.  There are certainly passages of Scripture that would support such a view, but on the whole, the Bible knows there is much suffering and tragedy that cannot easily be explained, and that people of faith are far from immune.  The story of Ruth does not hide from the reality of this, but it does still speak hope, insisting that God can bend to worst tragedy toward the good.

I think that biblical faith realizes that there is much we cannot understand and know, that any attempt to systematically explain all suffering and tragedy will, in the end, founder in much the way Pat Robertson's overly simplistic theology does.  But biblical faith does not simply shrug at tragedy.  Biblical faith has no trouble being "bitter," in calling God to task.  And I've long loved a quote from a letter the great preacher Carlyle Marney wrote to his friend and colleague John Claypool when Claypool's daughter was dying of leukemia.  After admitting that he did not know who to make sense of such suffering he added, "I fall back on the idea that our God has a lot to give an account for."
(John Claypool, "Life is a Gift" in A Chorus of Witnesses: Model sermons for today's preacher, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans, 1994) p. 125)

But if our faith at times calls us to shake our fists at God, it also calls us to embrace the power of resurrection, the certainty that God can turn the worst evil, the worst tragedy toward the good.  I'm not talking about pie in the sky by and by.  I'm talking about acknowledging the reality of tragedy while hoping that, somehow, this is not it.  Faith is about hoping and therefore working for the as yet new thing God will draw out of tragedy.  Faith is willing to embrace the name "Bitter," yet hope and trust and live in the certainty that this name is not permanent. 

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Spiritual Hiccups - From Unlikely Places

What makes for a hero or heroine in a religious story?  How must folks act in order to be religious heroes?  In my religious formation, faith was primarily about holding certain beliefs, and so it would make sense that any religious champion would have to have his or her religious beliefs correctly organized. 

Perhaps because they have often been a minority, Jews have a tradition of celebrating "righteous Gentiles," but I'm not sure we Christians have anything comparable.  That makes the story of Ruth an intriguing one, I think, for Christians. 

Going to Sunday School as a child, I learned the broad outlines of the story.  The events in book of Ruth's are fairly easy to tell in a "Bible Story" aimed at children.  But I'm not sure I ever picked up on an essential element of her story, the fact that she isn't Jewish.

It doesn't work that way in our world, but in Ruth's day, to say she is Moabite is just another way of saying she is Gentile, that she is not a Jew.  Because of dire circumstances Naomi's sons have been forced to take Moabite women as wives, but this is not the norm, and there are a number of places in the Old Testament where this is expressly forbidden.  Yet Ruth becomes a model of faithfulness, even though her faithfulness is not to a set of religious beliefs, but to her mother-in-law.

Nowhere in Ruth's story do we hear her spout any Jewish theology.  Nowhere does she proclaim that the LORD is the one and only God.  Ruth's only desire seems to be the welfare of her mother-in-law, and all she does is to that end.  It is for this that her husband-to-be will praise her and declare her blessed by Yahweh.  It is by this that she restores her mother-in-law and becomes the great-grandmother to King David.

More often than not, my experience in the Church has seemed to say that faithfulness outside the Christian circle is of little interest or use for me.  To see the actions of a Buddhist or a Muslim as somehow instructive or even helpful for a life of Christian faith sounds like heresy to many.  Yet right here in the book of Ruth, a Moabite woman shows others the shape of loyalty and faithfulness and is called blessed by the LORD.  Perhaps God's grace is at work in other places we think off limits.

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Sunday Sermon video - Kingdom Ethics: On Being Perfect

Sermons with better video quality are available on YouTube.

Sunday Sermon audio - Kingdom Ethics: On Being Perfect

Kingdom Ethics; On Being Perfect - Feb. 20 sermon.mp3