Spiritual Hiccups - REPENT!

The word "repent" has become something of a cartoon word, more likely to appear on the panel of a comic strip than in regular conversation.  Other than reading it from the Bible and then talking about it in an accompanying sermon, I'm not sure I've ever suggested to anyone that he or she needs to repent.  But of course, all of us do.

In its stereotyped, cartoon form, "repent" has come to mean something that terrible or evil people need to do.  It's a word a street preacher might use when telling someone he is about to go to hell if he doesn't repent.  In this sort of understanding good people or "saved" (another loaded word) people don't need to repent, but bad or evil people do.  Trouble is, Jesus seems not to use the word this way at all.

For Jesus (and for John the Baptist) repentance is needed because, "the kingdom of heaven has come near" ("kingdom of heaven" being Matthew's way of rendering "kingdom of God").  The issue is less whether or not repenting makes you good enough to get in.  Rather, repenting means to change so that one's way of living begins to conform to this new day, this new dominion of God that is approaching.  Much of Jesus' teachings is about the ways of this kingdom.  And every one of us who has not yet fully learned to love our enemy, to forgive over and over from the heart, to love others as much as ourselves, to do God's will over our own, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of God's new day, and so on, haven't yet fully conformed to God's kingdom.  And so we still need to turn, to change, to repent.

This is probably truer of pastors than anyone.  Our work gives us a lot of cover.  Many of our day-to-day tasks have the appearance of doing God's work, and so it can disguise our ambitions, the way we grumble about members who don't do their share, or the way we measure ourselves and our congregations by budgets and Sunday attendance rather than how faithful we are to God's call.  Being a pastor is even a great place to hide from God's call.  If God is calling a pastor to some other place or some other kind of ministry but that pastor is comfortable where he or she is, how is anyone other than God going to know.  The pastor appears to be doing God's work when, in actuality, resisting it.

My favorite way to use being a pastor in ways contrary to the kingdom is to busy myself with work but get disconnected from God.  That has the added bonus of insuring I don't hear God if God asks something of me not already a part of my routine.

God's kingdom looks little like the world we live in, and our lives are shaped by and conformed to this world.  But those ways do not work in the world that is coming, the new day Jesus shows us.  And so, Repent!

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Sermon video - Brokenness, Love, and Hope

This was my effort at speaking the gospel on the 10 year anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

Sermons also available on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - 9-11 Agitation and the Cross's Foolishness

We did not significantly alter our worship service yesterday on the ten year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.  Those events did, however, figure prominently in the day, especially in the sermon.   I tend to prepare my sermons well ahead of time, and while this sermon gave me more trouble than most, it was still finished many days before.  Given that, I was somewhat surprised at how yesterday's worship impacted me.

I found myself ill at ease in worship yesterday, and I don't think that came from the day itself.  I think it was my sermon that bothered me.  My own sermons often bother me in the sense that I'm not happy with them or think they are not very good.  But this one unnerved and agitated me a bit.  This had nothing to do with it being a powerful sermon or such, but somehow the sermon, the service, and the day combined to make be realize how much 9-11 drew us into the world's brokenness.

Last night I got to thinking about this, and it struck me that I have become as oblivious to the deaths of people in Afghanistan and Iraq as the 9-11 terrorists were about killing people in the World Trade Center Towers.  The tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of combatants and civilians who have died scarcely register with me.  They are simply numbers.  That many, many more innocent civilians have died in our war on terror than died on 9-11 has bothered me intellectually, but for some reason it hit me emotionally yesterday.

One of the questions right after the 9-11 attacks was how anyone could do such a thing.  How can anyone think their cause makes it acceptable to kill completely innocent people who are just going about their daily lives?  Some have even suggested that one definition of evil is the loss of the capacity to see some other human beings as mattering, as being others like me.  The 9-11 terrorists clearly had lost that capacity.  Their cause had blinded them to the humanity they killed.  But has the same happened to me?  Do the lives of Iraqis and Afghans not matter in the battle to keep terror beyond our shores?

Yesterday I preached about how dealing with the world's brokenness often draws us into it ourselves, and I also talked about how God deals ultimately with the world's brokenness through love.  And as I read Paul's words to the Corinthian church in this morning's epistle reading, I became fixated on the phrase, "For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

The cross is foolishness.  It is no way to battle evil.  It makes no sense.  How can turning the other cheek, praying for enemies, and going to the cross without even a struggle, do any good?  No wonder we reduce Christian faith to getting our tickets punched to heaven.  It doesn't make sense in our real world.  It is pure foolishness.  And somehow yesterday made it clear to me how much trouble I have embracing that foolishness.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Sermon audio - Brokenness, Love, and Hope

Download this audio here.

Sermon Text - Brokenness, Love, and Hope

Exodus14:19-31 (Matthew 18:21-35)

Brokenness,Love, and Hope

JamesSledge                                              September11, 2011

Manyof us here today can remember where we were 10 years ago when we first heardabout the attack on the World Trade Centers. I was in the church lounge as people arrived for the first meeting of aFall, weekday Bible study.  I heardreports of a plane hitting the first building from some of those people as theyarrived. 

Mostall of us later saw the images of the towers with smoke pouring from them,followed by the sickening sight of them collapsing down on themselves.  Those horrible images of the buildingsfalling and dust swallowing up that part of Manhattan are forever seared intomy brain, as I imagine they are for many of you.

Andnot only did those events imprint themselves onto our memories, but they havegreatly altered our lives.  Flying on an airlinechanged dramatically.  Relationships withMuslim neighbors are still a point of conflict and division.  We have been more than willing to exchangesome of our freedoms for a bit more security. And we are still embroiled in seemingly endless war in Iraq andAfghanistan, wars costing trillions, but whose true costs are impossible tofully measure.

WhenI began thinking about what I should say or do on this Sunday, I was a bittaken aback to discover the Old Testament reading for this morning.  Our verses from Exodus bring to a closeIsrael’s escape from slavery in Egypt, a story filled with more than its shareof carnage and terror. 

A series ofhorrible plagues, including the death of every first born in Egypt, human andanimal alike, finally convinced Pharaoh to recognize God’s power. 

ThePassover and escape from Egypt are the events that form Israel into a people,and our reading marks the end of those Passover events as Israel now leavesEgypt and heads to Mount Sinai, the mountain of Yahweh. 

Israelhas come out of Egypt, but Pharaoh has had a change of heart and pursuedthem.  When the Israelites saw theEgyptians, in fear they cried to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves inEgypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?  What have you done to us, bringing us out ofEgypt?  Is this not the very thing wetold you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’?  For it would have been better for us to servethe Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” It seems that the Israelites were no more certain about God orMoses than was Pharaoh.

Whathappens next is well known, if only from the movies.  Moses stretches our his hand and the watersare dried up.  I can picture it easily,with Charlton Heston playing the part of Moses and Cecil B. DeMille specialeffects creating a dry path through the sea. Crossing the sea on dry ground is part of the imagery of our scripture,but it ends with a more troubling one.  Israelsaw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

Thesongs of Moses and Miriam that celebrate this event in the verses immediatelyfollowing today’s reading speak repeatedly of horse and rider thrown into thesea.  And Israel saw the Egyptians deadon the seashore.  I wonder ifthat image was seared into those Israelites minds the way 9/11 is for many ofus.  To be certain, it is a much happierevent for them, but it is not a pretty picture. 

Inthe Exodus story, God’s intervention in the world’s brokenness on the side ofthe oppressed seems to drag God into that brokenness.  Dealing with evil produces greatcarnage.  Thousands of first born liedead, and Israel now gazes on Egyptian bodies lying on the shore.  The Passover events state powerfully God’scommitment to Israel, which includes a promise made to Abraham that all thefamilies of the earth shall be blessed through him.  But the problem of the world’s brokenness, ofevil, of oppression and violence and slavery remain.

Itturns out that God deals with this more fundamental problem of the world’s brokennessin a very different manner, not with violence or plagues, but with Jesus’suffering and self- sacrifice.  I thinkthe gospel reading this morning is jarring next to the story of slaughter inthe sea.  Forgive over and over, and notbegrudgingly but from the heart. Otherwise you will be counted among the wicked, a part of the world’sbrokenness.  Granted the forgivenessspoken of here is within the community of faith, but Jesus is more than happyto extend this requirement beyond the Church, telling us to pray for ourenemies and do good to those who persecute us. 

Notmany wanted to hear Jesus say such things in the aftermath of 9-11.  Not that people didn’t come to Church; worshipattendance swelled, but it quickly waned. The religious impulse inspired by 9-11 evaporated in much the same waythat the good will of the world shortly turned to animosity and the sense ofunity we felt as a nation degenerated into one of the most divisive andpartisan times our nation has known. It’s strange in a way.  For amoment, the horrors of 9-11 pushed us toward one another and away from thebrokenness of the world.  But then wemoved back toward brokenness.  We wantedvengeance.  We were afraid and we wantedsecurity.  We distrusted anyone whowasn’t “with us.”

Theawful events of 9-11 stand as a terrible monument to the world’s brokenness, tothe reality of evil and inhumanity in the world.  The firefighters and police who rushed intothe Twin Towers stand as an enduring reminder of the human capacity for selflessness,the willingness to risk everything, to give one’s life for another.  But what will the enduring legacy of 9-11be? 

Thatis still a work in progress, but I fear the work is not going well, at leastnot from a Christian perspective.  Infact, it seems to me that a truly Christian perspective is largely absent fromthat work.  The Church has too rarelyspoken on Jesus’ behalf in discussions about how to respond and move forward inthe aftermath of  9-11.  We have checked our faith at the door whenentering the arena of patriotism, politics, and war.

Myown faith has never led me to become a pacifist, though I sometimes wonder ifthat is more a lack of nerve than good theology.  But I am tentatively convinced that theworld’s brokenness at times requires the use of force to protect the innocentand vulnerable.  But this always involvesbodies on the shore.  It is alwaystragedy.  Yet we Americans have carefullynumbered our men and women who bravely gave their lives in Afghanistan and Iraqwhile hiding from view all those Afghan and Iraqi bodies on the shore, numbersestimated anywhere from 100,000 to over a million.

Butif the occasional use of force is at times warranted this side of God’sKingdom, it is a provisional, stop-gap measure that draws us into the world’sbrokenness, a brokenness that God finally overcomes not by force, but by love.  As Christians we are, perhaps, sometimescalled to take part begrudgingly in the use of force.  But as the body of Christ, our identity isrooted in love and mercy and hope and forgiveness.  And I still recall the words of the preacherat the National Cathedral in the days just after 9-11 when he cautioned usabout how we would respond to the great evil of 9-11, “lest we become the evilwe deplore.” 

Tenyears later, as we remember those who died, as we look back at how the worldhas become a very different place, we who are people of faith need carefully toconsider where we have placed our hope and trust.  And as I consider the strange contrastbetween Old and New Testament readings this morning, I find myself clinging toseveral truths.  In a broken world, Godsides with the weak, the vulnerable, and the oppressed; and against thepowerful and mighty.  God’s ultimatevictory over evil and brokenness comes not by might, but by mercy, grace, andlove.  And in Christ, we are invited tobecome part of that victory even now.

Spiritual Hiccups - Make Me a Star

Thanks largely to reality television, a new category of famous people has emerged in recent years: people who are famous for being famous.  I think of folks like Paris Hilton and the Kardashian clan.  They are a different sort of star from movie stars or sports stars.  I don't know that this makes them any worse or better, simply different.

I'm thinking about famous people, about "stars," because in today's reading from Philippians, Paul calls the Christians at Philippi to become stars.  More specifically, he calls them "in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation... (to) shine like stars in the world." 

I wonder how many Christians think of themselves as "stars."  Americans tend to think of faith as a private thing, and it is hard to be a star in private.  As a pastor, I get up in front of the congregation each week, and there is some sense that I am "on stage."  But this is not before the world.  It is within the closed doors of the faith community.  In terms of the world, my preaching remains private in much the same way American faith tends to do. 

Paul's description of Christians as stars comes in the context of a call to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure."  Private faith tends to think of salvation as having to do with my internal, private beliefs.  But Paul seems to think of salvation as more dynamic, God at work within us so that we act in ways that make us shine like stars in the world.

In one of his teachings, Jesus speaks of how no one hides a light under a basket.  Paul speaks of us shining because God is at work in us.  In other words, we become stars because we reflect God's light and people see God at work in us. 

I wonder if anyone sees God reflected in me?  God, make me a star.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Spiritual Hiccups - Real Enough to Fear?

Yesterday I posted something on facebook saying that I was struggling with exactly how to handle the anniversary of 9-11 in worship this Sunday.  Judging from the handful of comments, most understood my quandary, though some didn't seem to appreciate that my struggle was about how a national day of remembering fits within a time of worshiping God.  Similar issues arise when July 4th comes on a Sunday.  Is celebrating our loyalty to a nation appropriate in a time set aside to worship God and profess our absolute loyalty to Christ as King and Lord?

Interestingly, today's gospel reading features Matthew's story of wise men (no number is given) from the East.  When they come to Herod's palace in Jerusalem, seeking the child born king of the Jews, their search strikes fear in the hearts of Herod, "and all Jerusalem with him."  The source of Herod's fear is obvious.  He is king, and a new king is a threat to his status.  But what about "all of Jerusalem?"  Presumably their fear is about the change and upheaval a new king might bring.  Herod wasn't actually a Jew, but he rebuilt the Temple and he maintained the Jewish traditions.  He was a known quantity and everyone knew the rules and how the system worked.  A new king threatened all that.

I seems to me that the lordship of Jesus, his claim to be King, is a threat to all other powers, lords, and loyalties, even in our day.  And yet, I have rarely experienced much fear around this.  The Old Testament frequently encourages people the "fear Yahweh," and the Old Testament reading for this coming Sunday tells of the Israelites crossing the Sea on dry ground as they escape Egypt and Pharaoh's army.  Afterwards, "the people feared Yahweh."  Yet I have rarely feared God.

Perhaps my lack of fear comes from knowing a loving God, from such an intimate relationship with God's love in Jesus that this has removed all fear.  It would be nice to think so, but I suspect my lack of fear more often is the product of being unimpressed by God.

God isn't much of a threat to my comfortable routines and patterns because, more often than not, God isn't all that powerful a presence in my life.  Jesus' lordship isn't real enough that turning the other cheek or loving my enemy actually seems like an option.  Trusting God and following Jesus even if this leads to suffering (much less death) are not really things I think much about.  But the juxtaposition of worship and 9-11 remembrance uncomfortably reminds me of how little my faith impacts my life.

I've never allowed worship to display much patriotic fervor because my theology taught me well that God is sovereign and that Christ is Lord of all.  I "know better" than to let the day lose its focus on being a "sabbath to Yahweh."  But my theological correctness is not the same as becoming a new creation in Christ.  It is not the same as experiencing God's presence so vividly and trusting God's love so fully that I want to bow down and say, "Whatever you ask, I will do.  Wherever you send my, I will go.  Whatever the cost, I will gladly bear it."

I love the study of theology and think it invaluable to the Church.  But what I need in the core of my being is not better information about God, but a more vivid experience of God's presence, one that shakes me and moves me and transforms me.  Come, Lord Jesus!

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Spiritual Hiccups - Forgetting Who I Am

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
     and why are you disquieted within me? 
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
     my help and my God.  (from Psalm 42)

Last week I attended a church conference where at one point a presenter showed a clip from the animated Disney movie The Lion King.  If you've never seen the movie I'm not sure I can sufficiently set the context, but the story revolves around Simba, the cub of the lion king, Mufasa.  Simba is heir to the throne, but Mufasa's brother Scar, the villain in the story, hatches a plot in which Mufasa is killed and Simba blames himself for the death.  Simba runs away, leaving the pride to the evil rule of Scar.  In the scene I saw at the conference, others have come pleading for Simba to return, to throw out Scar before he totally despoils the kingdom's lands.  Simba resists, but with help of the wise sage Rafiki, he has a vision of his father who tells him, "You have forgotten who you are, and so you have forgotten me... Remember who you are."  (It helps if you imagine James Earl Jones speaking these lines.)

When my soul is cast down, there is often forgetting going on.  I forget that in my baptism God has claimed me and called me a beloved child.  I forget that Jesus has called me and promised to be with me always.  I forget that the Spirit dwells within me and will equip me to do all God asks.  Oh, I can remember to say such things, but deep down I have forgotten.  Deep down, I don't remember or know who I am.


Why are you cast down, O my soul,
     and why are you disquieted within me? 
Hope in God;

Hope is about the future, but it is also about remembering.  Hope comes from somewhere, and I think it comes largely from remembering.  When I forget who I am, I also forget God, much like Simba forgot his father.  But when I remember that I am beloved, called, blessed, and empowered by God, it becomes possible to look the the future, even when things are bleak, with hope.

"You are my son.  You are my daughter."  So God says to us all.  Remember who you are.  Remember.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Sermon video - What To Wear

Sermons videos can also be found on YouTube.

Sermon text - What To Wear

Romans 13:8-14

What To Wear

James Sledge                                                         September 4, 2011

There is a catchy little ad campaign that you may have seen on television for something called freecreditreport.com. All the ads feature a young man and his band mates singing about how someone stole his identity and now his bad credit score has unexpectedly kept him from buying a house or getting a new car, a good cell phone, and so on. He sings that if he had only used freecreditreport.com this would never have happened. The songs are snappy and the characters in the commercials are funny, and I would not be surprised if it had won some sort of advertising award.

There is one part of these commercials that is easy to miss. It may appear in tiny print at the bottom or is spoken so quickly by an announcer that you can scarcely understand it.  So I’ll slow it down for you. “Offer applies with enrollment in Triple Advantage.”

It turns out that your free credit report is not quite free. You can get a free report which does not include your actual credit score if you sign up for their plan. Then, you will get this useless, free report, free as long as you realize that you’ve just signed up for a $19.95 a month plan that kicks in if you don’t cancel your membership within seven days. If you actually want your credit scores, you have to pay a dollar up front for them, as well as sign up for the program that starts billing you $19.95 a month if you don’t cancel it in a week.

The crazy thing about all this is that you can get your credit scores at absolutely no cost directly from the credit agencies. By law they must give you one free report every twelve months, and the companies that compile credit reports have even created a website called AnnualCreditReport.com where you can request reports from all three companies at once.

Now to my mind, the folks sponsoring those catchy commercials are engaged in a kind of fraud.

They use a misleading name and commercials where the band sing “free” over and over, even spelling it out, in the hopes of getting you to sign up for a pay service you don’t need. And indeed this company has occasionally been sued by attorneys general from various states. These suits have sometimes required them to alter their commercials or put clearer disclaimers on their website, but as long as they tell you somewhere that score isn’t really free, their misleading advertising isn’t actually against the law.

And herein lies a serious problem with laws. Most everyone agrees that people shouldn’t be allowed to steal, but creative folks are forever figuring out new ways to separate someone from property or money without technically violating any laws. There are so many laws that no one can keep up with them all because someone is always figuring out yet another way to lie, steal, or cheat not covered by existing law. This is the reason people sometimes say, “You can’t legislate morality.” People always find a new way.

But according to the Apostle Paul, love fixes this. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and that solves the problem of never being able to create laws that cover everything. Love does no wrong to the neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Paul doesn’t simply mean that by loving your neighbor you insure that you stay within the law. He also means that love is the end toward which the law means to direct us. Truly to love your neighbor as yourself, to put the other person’s needs on a par with your own, brings us to the full intent of God’s commandments, the creation of true community where everyone has enough and where everyone finds his or her place and all live in the kind of mutual harmony that the biblical book of Acts uses to describe the early church in Jerusalem.

For Paul, the possibility of living in a true community of love is not some “pie in the sky” hope for another day. Paul knows full well that much of the world does not share in his hope. He knows that the current ways of our world, or of the flesh, are not in keeping with the new day that Christ’s death and resurrection have begun to bring. But Paul is certain that those who are in Christ can fully experience a life governed by love, a life that does not belong to the ways of the current world but to the world that is drawing near. That is why Paul speaks so frequently in his letters about being “in Christ” and why he calls us this morning to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you got ready to come to worship this morning, you put on clothes. In all likelihood, you picked some clothes over some others. Worship dress codes have certainly changed in recent years, but most of us have some things we wouldn’t wear to worship.

And what to wear isn’t just about coming to worship. There are “appropriate” clothes for many different occupations. A lawyer had better not go into the courtroom in shorts and flip flops. And many schools have dress codes or even uniforms, and you can’t come into the school building without wearing the proper attire.

Speaking of uniforms, if I were standing here this morning wearing shoulder pads, jersey,  and a helmet, I would look quite ridiculous. But everyone would know just what I was dressed for. What I had put on would reveal that to everyone.

Paul seems to think that putting on Jesus is a bit like this. It not only equips us for what we are going to do, but it also identifies us as those who are engaged in the peculiar activity of revealing the ways of God’s coming kingdom to the world.

If you are anything like me, the state of the world sometimes bothers you. In fact, I sometimes find it downright depressing. Whether it is an obsession with sex that treats people as objects, encourages meaningless “hookups,” and even creates sexy outfits for toddlers, an economy that seems to be creating less and less jobs but a greater and greater gap between rich and poor, a political system that seems to be both toxic and broken with an “us versus them” mentality where anyone who disagrees is my enemy, or our inability to live in community and do things for the common good, there is much in the world to lament. Sometimes I even think that the terrorism that so plagues our world is but a slightly less restrained version of the same hatreds and divisions we see in our own country.

But Paul says there is another possibility. We can become part of the light that shows a new way. We can clothe ourselves in Christ so that we are no longer caught up in hatreds and darkness. We can begin to live now in that new day of hope and love. When we put on Christ we will have what we need to live lives of love that fulfill God’s law. And it will be obvious for all to see because we will no longer be caught up in the destructive behaviors of this world because clothed in love, we will no longer desire to do any wrong to a neighbor, to anyone.

What a wonderful possibility. No hatred. No treating others as sexual objects. No arguing and fighting. But to join in this possibility, you have to dress right. You have to put on the right clothes. So what are we going to wear?

Spiritual Hiccups - Extravagance, Love, and the Poor

"For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me."  These words, or at least some paraphrase of them, seem to be quite well known.  Jesus utters them in response to his disciples' scolding of a woman for pouring an extremely expensive jar of perfume like ointment on Jesus.  (The jar of ointment apparently cost nearly a year's salary.)  The disciples think that this extravagance would have been better used if it had been sold and the money used to help others, and 300 denarii would have been able to do quite a bit of good.  But Jesus praises the woman for what she has done.

But for some reason, Jesus' remark about there always being poor folk has received much of the attention.  I have often heard the passage used as a general justification for not helping the poor.  After all, you'll never solve the problem.  Go ahead, enjoy whatever extravagances you want.  Jesus did.

Of course that is not at all what Jesus said.  To begin with, Jesus is talking to his disciples, and quite clearly the problem of poverty will not be solved in their lifetime.  And so they will have ongoing opportunity to show kindness to the poor, as Jesus clearly expects them to do.  And the extravagance in this passage is not a personal gift to oneself.  Rather it is an act of love, the sort of extravagance one lover gives to another.  This sort of extravagance is not self serving or manipulative.  It rushes from the heart, sometimes without much rational thought.

It seems to me that Jesus points out to his disciples, and us, that faith is not a purely utilitarian enterprise.  Yes, he does come to bring good news to the poor, but Jesus is about more than a social agenda.  He is about love, both love of God and love of neighbor.  And love often has a tendency to issue forth in extrvagance.

By personal inclination, I'm a bit inclined to side with the disciples.  When you consider all the money that gets spent on religion, couldn't it be better used to alleviate hunger and suffering?  And indeed, some of the marvelous church architecture, music, and artistry is a mixed bag.  It is sometimes hard to tell if these are extravagances offered to God or monuments to those who created them.  But I think Jesus' words are meant to be of help to us here.

Jesus does not provide us any easy litmus test.  Rather this is a heart matter.  The question is whether or not the extravagance is an act of love given to another.  All extravagances don't count.  The old joke about a husband giving his wife another very expensive gift each time he cheats on her is an obvious example of a self-serving extravagance.  It seems less motivated by love than by guilt or fear or the idea of a payoff.  But loving God with all your being and your neighbor as yourself produces a different sort of extravagance, or at least an extravagance with very different motivations.

Institutional religion sometimes breeds institutional faith.  And I suspect that the fascination with spirituality in our age is in part a hunger for something a little less institutional, something that flows from the heart.  Jesus praises this woman's costly gift because it is a heartfelt extravagance offered in love.  But the minute we start trying to deduce formulas from this episode, to justify not doing more for the poor and so on, we have left the realm of love and the heart.

I wonder how much of my faith life actually emanates from love?  How much of my work, my service, my worship, my giving, my prayer, etc. is an extravagance that pours out from my heart, offered as a present to God or to "the least of these" in whom Jesus is found?  And how much of my faith life is a bit more calculated and self-serving.  I don't think any formula can answer such questions.  The answers require looking deep within my heart.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Spiritual Hiccups - God Can't Be Very Happy

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
     whose hope is in the LORD their God, 
who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them;
        who keeps faith forever;
     who executes justice for the oppressed;
        who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free; 
     the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. 
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
     the LORD loves the righteous. 
The LORD watches over the strangers;
     he upholds the orphan and the widow,
     but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.    (from Psalm 146)

Like most parents, I love my children.  I want the best for them.  If they were in a difficult situation, I would be "on their side."  But being on their side is not the same thing as supporting whatever they do.  Thankfully my experiences with this have been of the minor variety, but loving a child sometimes means saying "No."  It sometimes means correcting or even punishing.

Most parents, and even lots of children, can appreciate what I'm saying.  Yet very often we Christians seem quite unable to receive correction from God.  Christians of all stripes tend to latch on to a portion of the biblical message and then claim God's blessing and sanction for their side.  The stereotype, to which there is some truth, is of liberal Christians focusing on loving and helping others while ignoring issues of purity and morality, while conservative Christians do the reverse.  And at times, both sides can be rather arrogant in their claim to be the ones right with God.

But at the risk of making that same mistake myself, I feel the need to comment on the political right's frequent claim to be in God's camp.  I have no problem with them speaking openly about their faith and how it impacts their politics.  If their faith had no bearing on their politics it would strike me as a pretty meaningless faith.  But for politicians to publicly wrap themselves in Christian faith and then actively pursue policies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor cannot be pleasing to the God of the Bible.  One has to read the Bible in an incredibly selective manner to miss how much God is on the side of the poor and oppressed.  I cannot recall any passages where God promises to help the rich get more, but I can recall quite a few that promise to topple the rich and powerful and have them exchange places with the poor and weak.

Besides all this, those who would speak for God should expect to be held to higher standard.  Pastors aren't any "better" or less sinful than other folks, but because we so often proclaim God publicly, it becomes very important for our lives not to undermine our proclamation.  The same sort of thing applies to politicians who wrap themselves in their faith.  And those who invoke the Christian mantle as a key element of their political service imply that their policy positions are somehow sanctioned by God.  But just as I would be very upset if a child of mine did something wrong and said, "My father said I could," I think God is probably pretty worked up about  the behavior of some folks who say, "God supports what I'm doing."

No doubt all of us upset God on this account from time to time, but Jesus and the biblical prophets  reserves their harshest criticism for those who wear their faith conspicuously while failing to care for those they deem "beneath them."

But finally, I wonder if God is not most upset with the Church.  For it is the Church which has fostered a faith that easily claims the label Christian without opening a Bible or learning what Jesus commands us to do.  Jesus' last words to the Church in Matthew's gospel are about making disciples of all people, "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."  But the Church has substituted, "Believe in Jesus, come to worship now and then, and drop a little money in the plate."  God can't be very happy with us.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.