Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
I was the oldest of four children. We came in pairs. My brother and I were a year apart, and then after a several year gap, came another brother and sister, also a year apart. From my perspective as the oldest, I was absolutely convinced that those younger than me got off easy. To my mind this imbalance also grew worse as you moved down the line.
And so I can commiserate with the elder brother in Jesus' parable. He had worked hard all those years, always being "the good son." But now his spoiled, rotten, no-good brother had returned home after becoming destitute, and Dad rolled out the red carpet.
Often when people hear the "Parable of the Prodigal Son," they focus on the love of the Father who welcomes home this undeserving son who has realized the error of his ways. But I find myself drawn to the very poignant end of the parable. It concludes without resolution, the elder son standing outside the celebration as his father pleads with him. Did the elder acquiesce and go in? Did he storm off? Jesus doesn't say.
I grew up in a nice middle class home where I really never wanted for much. I may have thought I had to do more work around the house than some friends (and some younger siblings), but my life was pretty good. I played sports, had a horse, was taught to water ski by my father, fished in a local pond, took my turn hand-cranking the ice cream churn on birthdays, and so on. Still, it seemed to me that my younger siblings had it better and got off lighter. I worked harder and got less for my efforts. It wasn't fair.
"That's not fair," is a favorite lament of little children, which almost always arises from feeling they've been shortchanged in some way. We humans seem acutely sensitive to others getting more or getting the same with less effort. And I wonder if this doesn't grow out of a view of the world and life that is profoundly different from God's. We operate out of the view that there isn't enough to go around. And if that is true, then we need to be careful about getting our share.
But if that view is entirely false, if God is a God of abundance, then such worries are foolish, like toddlers squabbling over who has the bigger piece of cake when both have been told they can have seconds, and even thirds.
I grew up with a very static picture of God. By static I mean things such as unchanging, immutable, immovable, and so on. And while there is some warrant for this picture in the Bible, it comes mostly from Western, philosophical notions of God as the embodiment of perfection. And perfection, by its very nature, cannot change. To change, to become different, would be a move away from perfection.
Interestingly, the ancient Hebrews did not view God this way at all. In the Hebrew Bible, God is incredibly dynamic, even emotional. God gets angry, God is pleased, God makes plans, God changes plans, God brings punishment, and God relents from punishing. In some places God is even said to "repent" of plans to punish.
In today's reading from Joel, the prophet calls the people to change their ways, to come before God with weeping and mourning and fasting. "Who knows whether (God) will not turn and relent?"
In the gospel reading, Jesus tells his parable of the lost sheep in response to questions about his hanging out with sinners, ending with this. "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." Perhaps it is not obvious, but if God experiences joy, then it seems that God can become happier than God was, which presumably means God can become unhappy. And all of this describes a dynamic rather than static God, a God whose relationship with creation and humanity costs God something, cost God what scholar Walter Brueggeman calls "a disturbed interior life."
I wonder if this isn't a much more helpful way to speak of the cross. Rather than some sort of sacrifice that God had to offer in order to placate Godself (When I say it that way I like the idea even less.), the cross is the embodiment of God disturbed interior life, the tremendous cost God endures in extending grace to us.
When we think of "costly grace" rather than "cheap grace," we are usually talking about our accepting God's favor without it requiring anything of us in return, without it changing us. But it seems that grace costs God quite a bit as well.
Letting go of a static picture of God challenges my Western notions of God as the very embodiment of the concept of perfection. But not only does a dynamic God appear to be a lot more biblical, the hope of a relationship with a dynamic God seems a lot more plausible.
When we hear about Jesus calling his first disciples, we are told, "Immediately they left their nets and followed him... Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him." And in today's gospel, Jesus turns to the crowds and says, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Then after a couple of illustrations about calculating the cost of something before undertaking it he adds, "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
Following Jesus means letting go of other things. It means turning loose of what had been the best hope for security, for protection, for belonging. In the hyperbolic style of Middle Eastern speech, Jesus' instruction to "hate" actually mean to "love less." Still, there is a shift of loyalty, which requires old loyalties to recede.
I was at my local presbytery's "Church Professionals' Retreat" for the last couple of days. It featured Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann talking about how renewal comes out of loss, but how it requires grieving and lamentation for God's new possibility to become visible.
I wonder if Jesus isn't speaking in a similar way here. He is not saying that families and possessions are inherently bad things. But just as a successful marriage requires "hating" (in the sense of loving less) parents and siblings and shifting one's primary love to a spouse, the new life that comes from Jesus requires a similar shift.
For some people, the leaving home that comes with marriage and adulthood provokes a profound sense of loss. But if a marriage is to thrive, somehow goodbyes must be said, old ways must be abandoned. There is loss that must be experienced in order to move to something new.
If someone "hates" (loves less) spouse rather than mother or father, the marriage is on shaky ground. So, says Jesus, trusting money or possessions to provide us security, happiness, fulfillment, or meaning makes it nearly impossible to discover our true humanity, our true selves in life as Jesus' family, as God's children.
Our culture works very hard to sell us the lie that we can have it all, and that chasing after it all is what we should do. But Jesus insists that abundant life, true humanity, salvation, is about letting go of some things so that our lives can move toward their truest destiny.
When I around 13, my brother came home with the comedy album, “George Carlin: Class Clown.” This album contained the famous routine, “The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” and so we had to be a bit careful about letting our parents overhear it. But it also had a number of routines focusing on Carlin’s upbringing as an Irish Catholic.
Like many rebellious youth, Carlin had found the absurdities of religion, well, absurd, and he and his friends probably made life miserable for the nuns and priests who ran their parochial school. On the album he describes how they would try to trip up the priests by asking questions such as, “If God is all powerful can God make a rock so big God can’t pick it up?’
Or they would take a simple, straightforward rule, and then surround it with fantastic circumstances to confuse things. As an example Carlin explains that Catholics were required to receive communion at least once between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost. Not doing your “Easter duty” was a mortal sin. And so the question for the priest goes, “Father, suppose that you didn’t make your Easter duty, and it’s Pentecost Sunday, the last day. And you’re on a ship at sea, and the chaplain goes into a coma. But you wanted to receive. And then it’s Monday, too late. But then you cross the International Date Line.”
I thought of Carlin when I read the trick question that the Sadducees pose to Jesus. Just like Carlin, they take a simple, straightforward requirement of the law, and then place it into a set of bizarre circumstances. The law in question is something called levirate marriage. This law required the brother of a man who died without heirs to take his widow as a wife. The purpose of this law was primarily to give that dead brother offspring so that his line would continue on. But it also meant that these widows, who were extremely vulnerable in ancient times, would not simply be left to fend for themselves.
Now admittedly, levirate marriage is an odd concept to us, and so this whole discussion can be a bit hard for us to follow. But just as people in that day had different understandings of marriage, of men and women, they also had different understandings of resurrection.
Luke points out that the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, but neither they nor Jesus understood resurrection to be about going to heaven when you die. The Sadducees were what you might call fundamentalist traditionalists. They said that if you couldn’t find it in the Law, in the five books of Moses, it just wasn’t so. They tried to maintain beliefs that were the norm in Judaism back in King David’s time, one of those being that the only way you lived on after death was by having progeny, offspring who carried on your line.
But later Judaism drew on the prophets to envision a day when God did something wonderful and new, when a new age dawned. When this new day came, when God created a new heaven and a new earth, there would no longer be the sound of weeping or the cry of distress. And along with this hope grew a parallel hope that when God’s new day came, there would be a resurrection of the dead, and all the righteous dead would participate in the wonder of God’s new kingdom. The Sadducees rejected these later “innovations,” but the rest of Judaism had embraced this idea of resurrection, this idea of resurrection as an event in history. And this is what’s being discussed when the Sadducees try to trick Jesus. On that day, when all the dead are raised, “whose wife will the woman be?”
But Jesus rejects their question outright. All the layers of circumstance, the seven different husbands, don’t matter because resurrection is not at all what they imagine. On that day, says Jesus, old categories won’t matter because nothing will be the same. In that age they shall be “like angels,” which really tells us next to nothing. Most of our images of angels are not found in the Bible. And so we are left with Jesus saying that in the age to come, those who are raised will be nothing like they are now, but not really telling us exactly what that means.
Now since Sadducees don’t expect a resurrection to begin with, they presumably borrow a picture of resurrection from popular notions of that day, popular notions that Jesus dismisses out of hand. And that makes me wonder. Are our notions of resurrection and the age to come drawn from the good news Jesus proclaims, or are they popular notions that Jesus would dismiss?
Think about popular understandings of resurrection, about life after death and heaven. Think about your own. There are many possibilities. There’s the ever popular getting your wings at the pearly gates and becoming an angel image. There are various images of heavenly, pastoral bliss. There is the gazing down on loved ones below image. There are images of a vague spiritual well-being or bliss. You perhaps have others. Interestingly, none of these are in the Bible. When the Bible speaks of resurrection or of the age to come, it resorts to simile and metaphor, to the wolf living with the lamb, to swords beaten into plowshares, to something so new and so wonderful that it cannot be accurately described.
I’m not trying to shatter any dreams here. Rather, I’m wondering if we haven’t sold resurrection woefully short. I’m wondering if Jesus’ vision of a new day, of God’s kingdom, of the age to come, boggles our minds so that we settle for something we have an easier time processing, things pretty much as they are now, but simply relocated to a better locale, to the nicer neighborhood of heaven.
I recently had a conversation with someone of deep faith, discussing how we seem to have replaced Jesus’ good news of the Kingdom with good news of going to heaven. This person acknowledged my point, but went on to say that he did not see how even God could straighten out this world. Yes, he said, the Bible does speak of a new heaven and new earth, of a New Jerusalem here on earth, of a redeemed creation. But just look at the world. It’s as messed up now as in Jesus’ day. So perhaps heaven is the best we can hope for.
Perhaps it is, that is unless we can see something that lets us hope for more. And that is precisely what the prophets and Jesus do. They see something other people cannot. It’s in our reading from Haggai this morning. Haggai says, “Look at the ruins of Jerusalem. Aren’t they a dump? But take courage for I see God at work!”
You know, prophets are really strange dudes. I know lots of people think that what makes a prophet a prophet is telling the future, but biblical prophets aren’t really about predicting the future. Rather they glimpse a reality that other people aren’t able to see.
When you think about it, Jesus is a pretty strange fellow, too. And he sees things other people don’t, which is perhaps why Luke’s gospel calls him a prophet. Jesus keeps saying, “Look, the kingdom of God has come near.” And when they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, his followers see it, too. And they form a strange new community, the likes of which the world had never seen. And Jesus invites us to join them, to see as they see.
Lord, send your Spirit. Let us see what we’re missing.
I've got the television on as I type, watching a college football game. College rules don't allow the same sort of end zone celebrations seen in the NFL, but the players still strike poses, flex their muscles, and pat themselves on the chest. Some of it is genuine celebration, but mostly it's a "grown up" version of "Look at me, look at me!"
Our culture is filled with variations of this. People who quietly do their jobs without getting much notice rarely advance to the top of their company. You have to call attention to yourself. In my denomination, when pastors are looking for a new position, it works much like a secular job search. We have to sell ourselves, trumpeting our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses so that a search committee will "Look at me!"
It's behavior that comes naturally to many, very similar to behavior in other animals. Just watch a nature program that shows males posing and strutting as they seek to attract a mate.
So what do we do with Jesus' words in today's gospel? "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
Our culture doesn't value humility, probably because our culture is all about striving to make it, to get ahead. At its very core, it is a culture of anxiety. In our anxiety, we are perpetually worried about whether or not we've been noticed, about whether or not we're getting the credit we deserve.
Wouldn't it be nice to live life without worrying, without anxiety? Wouldn't it me nice if we could simply focus on doing what God calls us to do, trusting that what we need would come to us? That is, after all, what Jesus tells us when he says in another place in Luke, "Instead, strive for (God's) kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well."
We believe in Jesus, and we want to follow him. But we sure have a hard time trusting him, don't we.
I have long thought that Jesus' lament over the city of David is one of the more poignant utterances in the Bible. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" The sadness that I hear in Jesus' voice is all the more striking given his description of "the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!" Despite the city's long history of spurning God, Jesus wants only to drawn them to himself.
God's desire for us and our resistance... Surely this is one of the great mysteries of our existence. Oh, I know that there are theological formulations that can account for all these behaviors, but from a personal, experiential level, how is it that humanity, that I, can be so unyielding in the face of God's desire?
For my own part, there are many times when I would appreciate God being a bit more obvious about longing to draw me in. Frequently God seems far too subtle for me, and I feel that I must struggle to sense God's desire.
But at the same time, I seem to have an uncanny ability to dismiss and "forget" those moments when God's presence has been more dramatic, when God's desire for me has been palpable. And when I try to remember and draw strength from those moments, too often they feel like someone else's memories, like stories of faith rather than my own experience of it.
What is it about this relationship dance with God that is so difficult for many of us? Perhaps that is why some of us are content with some sort of institutional religion. At least the rules are clear. At least we know just what to do and to expect. But a lot of people are saying this isn't enough. I think that the struggles of traditional churches in our time grow in part from this. People have a vague sense of the poignancy in Jesus' longing for us, and they want to feel it, to know it.
I saw Twitter conversation yesterday that started with someone's speaking of joining a monastery and gradually evolved into talking about how congregations could be urban monasteries. And if this means congregations as places where we all learn how to open ourselves to God's desire, where we learn the steps of the relationship dance with God, then that seems a pretty compelling image to me.
I just checked The Weather Channel homepage, and Tropical Storm Tomas is still headed for Haiti. I suppose this might not be earth shattering news, especially as Tomas is no longer a hurricane, except that there are still thousands and thousands of Haitians living in tent cities in the aftermath of last year's earthquake. And the winds and rain of Tomas come on the heels of a cholera outbreak in these tent cities.
It is easy to look at the situation in Haiti and fall into despair. After all the attention, the donations, and the telethon following the earthquake, the situation is still so dire. And of course Haiti is only one example.
Situations such as this make it easy to understand how the Church took only a few generations to move from talking about God's coming Kingdom to talking about heaven when you die. Jesus spoke over and over about the Kingdom, God's new day that had drawn near, that was at hand. He spoke of how it lifted up the poor and oppressed while pulling down the rich and powerful. But as the years went by, and as the Church was embraced by the Emperor Constantine, by the rich and the powerful, hope for the Kingdom turned into hope for a better life when one died.
We've been talking this way for so many centuries that it is a bit hard even to glimpse the Kingdom that Jesus says is all around us. In today's gospel, Jesus says that the Kingdom is like the tiniest seed or a bit of leaven, something scarcely visible that transforms its world.
As I look at our world, straining to see some signs of the Kingdom, I sometimes wonder why it seems so hard to spot it. Is God dallying in bringing the Kingdom? Or are we blind to the Kingdom and so failing to be the seed and yeast we are supposed to be? Or maybe I simply miss the seed and yeast because they are so small. A little help here, God?
I've probably written about this before so I apologize in advance if you've already heard this. One Sunday as I was preaching, I observed an usher speaking to someone in the narthex. (Glass windows in the back of the sanctuary give me a pretty good view.) I recognized the fellow talking to the usher, though I doubt the usher knew who he was. He stops by the church every now and then, looking for some food or a bus pass. From what I could tell, the usher was polite and kind to the man, but pretty quickly he escorted the fellow out of my field of vision, headed toward one of our main doors which are located on either side of the narthex.
I learned later that the usher had told the man to come back later. We were in the middle of worship and it was not the appropriate time. The congregation never was never aware of any of this. It happened, quite literally, behind their backs. But I imagine that many of them would have approved. We were in the middle of worship, and later would be a better time.
That's essentially the same argument offered by the synagogue leader in today's gospel. He doesn't object to Jesus healing the woman, but her condition was chronic and not life threatening. It could have waited. "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."
At the heart of this conflict is how people of faith live appropriately before God. What sort of things should we do to honor and please God? What are the rules to live by if we want our ways to conform to God's ways? What sort of things take precedence over others?
The Bible frequently encourages worshiping God. It also speaks of refraining from work on the Sabbath. Jewish rules in Jesus' time allowed exceptions to the work prohibition if a life was in danger or if it was a real emergency, but this woman had suffered for 18 years. What would one more day hurt? But Jesus seems to think that helping someone in need is sufficient cause to make a Sabbath exception.
21st Century American Christians typically aren't all that big on Sabbath regulations, so the synagogue leader's actions look like arbitrary, religious legalism to us. But I suspect that nearly all of us who are serious about our faith have our share of arbitrary, religious notions about what is appropriate, how things should be done, etc. And I wonder how often I might find myself trying to prevent Jesus from offering someone healing and restoration, saying, "Come back later. Now is not the appropriate time."
Frost on the last two mornings in Columbus seems to have put an end to my gardening for the season. I don't have space for a big garden, but I manage to plant some tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers each year. And being from the South, I grow a bit of okra. (If you've never had fried okra, you don't know what you're missing.) I think I enjoy gardening because of the concrete results it produces. Usually my efforts are rewarded with tasty vegetables, often so many that we share them with friends and neighbors. It is a nice change of pace from my work as a pastor, where the impact of my work is often not so tangible.
However, I am not the most patient gardener. In the spring, I watch anxiously for my seeds to sprout, or for the first tomatoes to show. In my impatience, I've occasionally picked something before it was really ripe, or even knocked a tomato or pepper off with my constant examining of the plants. And if I buy a variety of plant that doesn't produce, you can bet I won't buy it again the next year.
And so I understand the frustration of the landowner in Jesus' parable of the fig tree. Year after year he comes to see if the tree has produced any figs, but each year it is barren. Finally, he tells the one who tends his vineyard, "Cut it down!" That seems a logical course of action. But the gardener begs for more time, promising to give it tender care, hoping to coax it into blooming and producing fruit.
A lot of people look at parables and try to figure out who is who in them. Is the landowner God and the gardener Jesus? I suppose a certain amount of that is unavoidable, but I much prefer to simply look at the bigger picture the parable paints without turning it into an allegory.
The elements of this painting are simple. There is a tree that is supposed to bear fruit, but it does not. Clearly fig trees without figs are faulty on a fundamental level, and cutting this one down and replacing it seems more than warranted. But not in this garden. Here every effort is made to allow the tree to become what it is meant to be.
This parable speaks of purpose, of judgment, and of grace. And it ends with waiting. Will grace and tender mercy help the tree become what it is created to be? To frame the question larger, will God's creation be set right? Sometimes religious folks want to hurry the parable along. We want to end the waiting. Some end it with judgment, others with grace, but either move seems to me to hurry the parable. Thankfully the gardener in the parable is the patient sort.
Give ear to my words, O LORD; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray. (Psalm 5:1-2)
Some people are surprised to learn that a huge number of the Psalms are cries for help. These are often referred to as psalms of "lament," and according to many counts, they comprise the largest single group of psalms. Some of these psalms sound desperate, some plead, and some are downright angry. Some people are surprised by this as well because somewhere along the line they got the notion that railing at God, questioning God, or shaking a fist at God was either an act of disbelief or of disrespect.
And yet a recurring theme in the psalms and many other parts of the Bible is the longing of faithful people for things to be set right. In the Beatitudes, Jesus speaks of those who "hunger and thirst for righteousness" being blessed by God. This simply means that those who long for a broken world to become a place of goodness, peace, hope, and mercy, who experience pangs similar to thirst and hunger when they dream of an end to evil, hate, violence, and exploitation; these are among those God calls blessed.
Curiously, many Christians have exchanged this longing for a better world for a longing for heaven. Indeed some Christians actively disparage people who work to care for the earth because "God's just going to destroy it some day soon anyway." Yet Jesus calls us to pray for God's kingdom and God's ways to come here on earth, as they now are in heaven. It is Jesus himself who holds out the hope of a world where God's will is done. It is Jesus who holds out a vision of a redeemed and transformed world for us to long for, await, and work for.
What do you long for? What does your faith call you to long for? "Give ear to my words, O LORD; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my cry."
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” What on earth for!? What would possess anyone to do such a thing? Did you pray for Osama bin Laden in the days after 9-11?
George W. Bush, who probably wore his Christian faith on his sleeve more so than any president in more than half a century, argued quite forcibly for attacking our enemy before he attacked us, creating the new American doctrine of preemptive war.
And on an individual level, we don’t celebrate the person who calmly “takes it,” who endures abuse. We celebrate the one who stands up for himself. I grew up when Westerns were still popular on TV and the big screen, and the hero was often an every day fellow who, when pushed to his limits by the bad guys, rose up gave them what they had coming.
Truth is, we just don’t know what to do with this love your enemy stuff.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ Beatitudes flow right into his words on loving enemies and turning the other cheek. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is not as familiar to some of us as those found in Matthew. Not only are the blessings more concrete in Luke – blessings on the poor rather than the poor in spirit – but they are paired with a corresponding list of woes.
Those in the blessed category are the poor, the hungry, those who are weeping, and who are reviled. On the other hand, the rich, those who go to great dinner parties, those who are laughing, and the popular folks are in the “woe to you” group. But this doesn’t sound right. It’s backwards, just like loving your enemies. I don’t know many people who want to be poor, hungry, sad, or unpopular, and the reverse doesn’t sound like a curse to me, far from it.
When I was a kid, The Smothers Brothers were quite popular, with a string of records and a television show. For those who don’t know of them, this musical comedy team involved one of the two brothers, Tommy, playing the fool. In real life he was the one who had created the act, but on stage the comedy came from his misunderstandings and foul-ups played against his “smart,” straight-man brother.
A recurring bit in their act was Tommy’s feeling of inadequacy expressed in the line, “Mom always liked you best.” They even had an album with that title. The album cover featured the two brothers posed like children. Dick stands there grinning as he wears a toy gun and holster, surrounded by a wagon, bicycle, scooter, beach-ball, and assorted and sundry toys as a dog gazes at him. Tommy, on the other hand, is seated, gazing up at his smiling brother. He has not a single toy and is holding a rope, used as a leash for a chicken. The album title is above him, depicted as his spoken words. “Mom always liked you best.”
The “truth” of Tommy’s words is clear for everyone to see. His smiling, happy brother is surrounded by good things while he has almost nothing. Any fool can see that his Mom favors his brother and slights him.
We humans are quite sensitive to such things. “That’s not fair!” cries the young child whose sibling has gotten a slightly larger slice of cake. Even if the Smothers Brothers stretch it for comic purposes, we are anxious about what others have, compared to what we have. From an early age, we compare ourselves to those around us, noticing who is different, who seems to have more, who seems to have less.
When you think about it, we humans are a rather insecure sort. I suppose that there are biological, evolutionary advantages to this. It could provide drive to gather or hunt for enough food to get through the winter. It’s a good survival instinct to notice which potential mate might be likely to provide enough to raise children. It makes sense to worry about whether or not a shelter is sufficient to keep out the elements. From a survival standpoint, our insecurity makes sense.
But once we leave the realm of survival, our insecurities cause more problems than they solve. It begins when we are small. We clutch at what we have, worried we may lose it. We don’t want to share. And we worry about fitting in. We will change our appearance, our clothes, so we can belong. Worse, we will belittle others to make ourselves feel more secure.
Many of us always feel that we are just short of having enough. If we just made a little more money, just looked a little better, just had a little hotter boyfriend or girlfriend, just had that latest high tech gadget, we’d be happy. But somehow we never quite get there.
And when things are going badly, our insecurities really kick in. As we wind down the current political campaign, candidates on both sides play on our insecurities and fears. They know that we worry about all sorts of things, and they seek to stoke those worries, telling us that their opponents don’t simply disagree with them, but they’re out to destroy our way of life, to take away our jobs, our things, our money, our happiness.
Even the Church has insecurity problems. For years mainline churches have looked at mega-churches with a mixture of envy and loathing. Presbyterians have lamented our loss of prestige and power. Fortunately there is always some congregation that is much worse off than us, and we can feel better about ourselves when we realize that we look a lot more successful than that sorry congregation over there.
Often we draw God into our insecurities. Some claim the Presbyterian Church’s woes are because we’ve failed to believe certain things or understand the Bible correctly. Others say America’s woes are because we’ve abandoned certain religious values, taken prayer out of schools, or said “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”
We seem to think God operates out of the same insecurities that we do. Listening to some Christians you’d think God was worried that all creation could come unhinged. I hear people say God will have to do this or have to do that if people don’t straighten up. Wow, it must be awful being God and having to worry about all the things that could go wrong.
But Jesus presents a very different view of God. Amidst our insecurities about having enough, being good enough, being popular enough, Jesus speaks of God’s blessings poured out especially on those who have next to nothing. Jesus even speaks of those things our insecurities drive us to chase: wealth, popularity, and so on, as being a curse. As a 1st Century, Palestinian Jew, Jesus was prone to speak in hyperbole, but still, he warns us that the insecurities that so motivate us, tend to drive us away from God
Tomorrow is All Saints Day, so we are celebrating it today in worship. But over the years Christians have distorted the original meaning of “saint” so that it now describes a super Christian, someone who has out-Christianed the rest of us. Out of our human insecurities, we have undermined the Bible’s insistence that each one of us is an integral a part of the body of Christ, and we’ve insisted that some are better and so more valued.
But the good news of Jesus is that God is not like us. God has no insecurities. God is not frightened of anyone or worried that someone could undermine God’s happiness or God’s plans. And so God is totally free to love. It upsets our human sensibilities sometimes, but God loves us, not because we are good enough or because we believe the right things or because we belong to the right group. God simply loves us. God loves you, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done or failed to do, and wants what’s best for you, even if God’s understanding of “best” looks quite different from what our fears and insecurities lead us to chase.
On this day when we remember the saints of this congregation who have died, we also remember that Jesus calls us all to be saints. Saints are simply those who have experienced God’s love embracing them, who have discovered that the security of God’s embrace liberates us from our fears and insecurities, and allows us to live as the children God longs for us to be. And when God’s love frees us from our worries and insecurities, the transformation is remarkable. Secure in God’s love, we are free to love, even something so foolish as loving our enemies.
I've blogged on this before, but Peter raises the issue himself in today's gospel. "Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?" Modern day Christians, especially Protestants, are prone to think of the Bible as an evangelical tool. We presume that everything in it is spoken for everyone, that if we could just get everyone to read it and believe what it says, the Kingdom would surely come.
But of course this is a relatively modern, Protestant notion. For the first 1500 or so years of Christianity, almost no Christians owned a Bible. And no one gave Bibles to non-Christians. It took the invention of the printing press and the development of high literacy rates before Protestants could insist that every individual should read Scripture for himself or herself. And this idea needed to become ingrained before handing out Bibles made any sense as a conversion technique.
All of this is to say that for most of Christian history, the Bible and its teachings weren't not necessarily thought to apply equally to everyone. Jesus himself, in today's reading, suggests that those who weren't aware of what Jesus' return meant would not be held accountable the same way his followers would.
Some Christians are quick to condemn non-believers, but Jesus seems to say that it is believers who need to be on their toes, that they are the ones who will be held to higher standards and scrutiny. And I suspect that if we believers did hold ourselves to higher standards, that might prove to be the most effective sort of evangelistic witness.
I grew up reading Mad Magazine which featured Alfred E. Neuman and his stock phrase, "What, me worry?" Neuman's lack of worry seemed the product of a general cluelessness, not necessarily something to be emulated. And yet Jesus recommends something of Neumanesque pose. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear."
Jesus also seems to give a nod to another facet of Neuman's character. Neuman appears to be something of a "slacker," not the sort of fellow who would knock himself out to make good grades or participate in lots of extracurricular activities so he would be accepted into an elite college. Our culture rewards endless striving. Parents pick enrichment activities for their toddlers, already worrying about college applications. And yet Jesus says, "And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying."
What do you worry about? What do you expend energy trying to achieve? Some people assume that pastors have an advantage when it comes to living "Christ-like" lives. After all, our work is centered on the faith. And yet we pastors are often caught up in our culture's obsession with success. Countless books and conferences aimed at pastors urge us to work harder and smarter in language that would sound familiar to business managers and leaders. And much of this material that tries to make us "better pastors" feeds off of and adds to a climate of worry. We're worried about church finances. We're worried about aging congregations. We're worried about declining church participation. We're worried about how it looks when a congregation loses membership on our watch.
I don't for a second think that Jesus wants me simply to lounge around doing nothing. But Jesus says my striving should be for God's kingdom, which is not always the same thing as a "successful" congregation, a to-die-for youth program, or a gang-buster stewardship campaign.
What sort of worry and striving occupies your time? What sort of worry and striving occupies your congregation or faith community? I know that a lot of my worrying and striving has little to do with the Kingdom. I wonder if Alfred E. Neuman might be available for a little church consulting.
I readily admit that readings such as today's gospel make me a bit uncomfortable. When Jesus starts talking about being "cast into hell" or how "whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven," I struggle to fit this in with other images of Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, with his call to love and pray for your enemies. Perhaps, as a modern "liberal," I'm simply uncomfortable with judgment and accountability.
Perhaps... But I also think some of my discomfort arises from texts such as today's being used in an "us versus them" sort of way. Because we are so accustomed to the Bible being employed for evangelical purposes, we often forget that it was originally written for internal use only. The gospel of Luke was not handed out on the streets as might be done today by the Gideons. The vary rare copies of it (all copies had to be written out by hand) were read aloud at gatherings of churches, often house churches. And so these words are aimed almost exclusively at Christians.
I don't know that removes all the discomfort of these verses, but it does change the focus quite a bit. Nothing is being said here about believers versus non-believers. This is about how believers respond when their faith puts them in jeopardy. In this sense the words seem intended more as encouragement than as warning. They are a call to stand fast in the face of persecution, to trust in God's care for them no matter the circumstances.
And when they are persecuted, "everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven." This is a most curious saying. Speaking against Jesus is not a deal breaker, but the Holy Spirit is another matter. There is debate about just what is meant by this, perhaps something along the lines of: If in a moment of fear a disciple speaks against Jesus, that is forgiven, but if a disciple actively rejects the Spirit's efforts to strengthen and encourage them, that is not.
However, what is clear is that the only ones in any danger in this scenario are Christians. Jesus' words are addressed to believers who face persecution. And isn't it strange that we can take words addressed to us, and somehow turn them so that they speak words of condemnation against others who don't believe the same as we do.
Have you ever wondered what Jesus would think if he visited your congregation? I'm not talking about his presence being there but about the Jesus we meet in the gospels walking in off the street and dropping in on a worship service, a fellowship dinner, a committee meeting, and so on. I was prompted to wonder about such things after reading today's gospel and being reminded once again how it took religious people to get Jesus really honked off.
For many of us who grew up in the church, this fact is sometimes missed. Pharisees, scribes, and such have become such stock, bad guys that we don't necessarily see much beyond cartoon, cardboard cutouts. (I grew up in the South where sometimes Catholics got the same sort of treatment. If the Catholics did it, surely it was a bad idea, which explains why Ash Wednesday, Lent, and so on are somewhat new to me.) But what if we replace the term "Pharisee" with something not having the same negative stereotypes?
Today's gospel features Pharisees and lawyers, and I don't think it is all that much of stretch to rename them pastors and theologians. (Maybe Protestant pastors; we'll let the priests and Sadducees be Catholic.) It isn't very hard for me to imagine Jesus lashing out at some of us pastors and theologians for being overly concerned about keeping our churches going, about getting the doctrines straight, about worshiping in the proper manner, without worrying much about issues such as justice. If Jesus visited our committee and board meetings, I can visualize him getting enraged over how little "good news for the poor" gets emphasized and how the poor are often viewed as little more than opportunities for mission projects, who should show gratitude to us for our noble efforts.
It isn't that pastors or theologians are such bad folks, but then neither were those Pharisees and lawyers Jesus addresses. But all of us can get terribly preoccupied with running our little religious enterprises and mistake all that work and energy for loving God and serving others.
It took religious people to really get Jesus angry. Perhaps that is because he thinks we should know better. Perhaps that means we religious types would do well to spend more of our time getting closer to Jesus, letting him invade every little corner of our lives, and letting him rattle our cages now and then so that we get back on the path he shows us.
I've long loved the story of Jonah. It is a remarkable story that contains a great deal more meaning when one listens for its message rather than worrying about historical events. Like the book of Job, the book wrestles with the ways of God. But unlike Job, who becomes enraged over God's unfair punishment of him, Jonah is angry over God's graciousness and mercy.
The story depicts a reluctant prophet who heads off in the wrong direction when God calls him. Finally forced by God to go to Nineveh, Jonah unenthusiastically fulfills his mission, then is angry that God reverses course (literally "repents") on plans to destroy the city. Jonah complains that this is why he ran from God's call. He feared God would show mercy all along.
The story concludes with a curious little aside that is both poignant and humorous. Jonah goes out and sits, perhaps hoping God will yet destroy Nineveh. As he waits, God has a plant spring up to provide Jonah shade. But then God sends a worm that bores into the plant which withers, taking its shade in the process. And Jonah is so upset he asks to die himself. This allows God to respond, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"
The story ends there with that "and also many animals?" Jonah is angry that God has not meted out justice to those Gentile Ninevites. Then he becomes so enraged over the loss of a bush that provides shade, he loses all composure. In a mixture of religious self-righteousness and egocentricism, Jonah cannot even see the thousands of men, women, and children he hopes God will kill, not to mention all those animals.
"And also many animals?" Interesting that their fate would weigh on God so. I know many Christians who seem to picture God as remarkably cavalier over the fates of those who don't get their religious beliefs correct. And who even counts animals?
My wife and I decided to get away for a couple of days, a possibility that comes with no children any longer living at home. We went to Ohio Amish country for a relaxing weekend. We stayed in Berlin, OH, visited the many shops on its main street, and watched the Amish families in their buggies. On a nice Fall weekend, we were hardly alone. Traffic in Berlin was bumper to bumper. But we were walking so it didn't much matter.
I had never been to Berlin before so I was not prepared for the contrast between Saturday and Sunday. We left our little cottage in late morning to discover the streets of Berlin nearly deserted. None of the shops we visited the day before were open, and there was scarcely a car to be seen. Berlin, it seems, is closed on Sunday. It reminded me of my native South when I was very young and Sunday was a "day of rest."
I would imagine that Berlin, OH is quite dependent on tourism dollars, and weekends would seem to be prime time for tourists. But, perhaps because many of the shops are Amish, the only shopping going on was window shopping.
For God alone my soul waits in silence; from God comes my salvation. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
I don't think I would want to be Amish, but I do wonder if we haven't become so busy and anxious as a people that we have difficulty finding any time for God. Despite all those things Jesus says about wealth and possessions being a hindrance to relationship with God, we want more. More things, more information, more entertainment, more and more, and we want it now.
The Amish are an exotic novelty to us because they are so foreign, so different from us. They have not bought into our culture's norms. I do not necessarily agree with their reasons for this, nor do I idealize their lives. But still, they do stand as a kind of reminder that happiness and contentment do not always require more.
I often find that when I am swamped with things that need doing in the office, when I am feeling the most stressed, those are the times when I lose touch with God. At the very times when God's presence would seem to be most needed, I am too busy to stop. I am too busy for silence. I am too busy for God?
It is a deservedly famous line from the prophet Micah. "And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" What God requires is a basic religious question. In the case of Micah, the answer rejects much of the traditional religious ritual of that day, burnt offerings and sacrifices. That's not what God wants," says Micah. You know what God wants, justice, kindness, a humble faith life.
The gospel reading for today also touches on this issue of what really matters. This passage is often noted for the way it explodes conventional gender roles. But beyond that, it raises more general questions about priorities. Someone had to get dinner ready if Jesus and the other house guests were to eat. I don't think Jesus or Luke is saying that domestic tasks are bad things. This issue is one of priorities.
All our lives are filled with choices. We have finite energy and resources. If we work 65 hour weeks, something else suffers. Living in Columbus, OH, I've learned of people who live 500 miles away and yet spend every weekend of a home Buckeye football game here in Columbus. Clearly those weekends are not available for other things.
It strikes me that when the passages from Micah and Luke are considered together, they ask people of faith to consider two different sorts of priorities. Luke addresses a more general issue of priority. Where does our faith fit into the other priorities of our lives? Micah, however, asks about the priorities of our faith lives. Where does our religious energy go? It isn't that worship is a bad thing, far from it. But if religious rituals encompass the majority of of faith lives, what happens to those things God requires of you, "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
Today's gospel contains the famous parable of the "Good Samaritan." The parable is intriguing enough in own right, with its use of a despised Samaritan to demonstrate acting neighborly. But I was struck by the lawyer's original question to Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Now I presume that if the lawyer were to ask this question today to a group of Christians, a significant number of them would say something to the effect that "You must believe in Jesus and profess him as your Savior." But the curious thing is that Jesus' own answer says nothing of the sort. Jesus simply queries the lawyer (a religious scholar and not what we mean by "lawyer" today) about what the law says. The lawyer responds by quoting Scripture, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Upon hearing his answer, Jesus responds, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." There is no "You need something more," no "You lack but one thing." Jesus simply says that if he loves God and neighbor, that is sufficient.
Now I am acutely aware of the hazards inherent in creating grand theologies from small snippets of Scripture. But if Jesus thinks that loving God and neighbor is enough, who I am to insist otherwise?
Luke's gospel speaks of the poor and lowly being lifted up while the rich and powerful are pulled down. In keeping with this theme of reversal, in today's lection Jesus speaks of God having "hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants." He goes on to tell his followers how blessed they are to have been a part of his movement. "For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."
I've never been quite sure how to reconcile Jesus' words about God's revelation "to infants," with a church where wisdom about the faith seems to be lodged with experts. All that is required to show this is to ask church members to teach a class. "Oh, I could never do that," is the common refrain. Sometimes this is false modesty. Sometimes it is an excuse. But underlying it is the notion that real information about the faith is held by experts. Just as I would never have tried to teach my daughters calculus, so a great many church members assume that faith, biblical knowledge, and so on are best handled by specially trained experts.
But Jesus seems to think otherwise. His disciples are hardly made up of the religious elite. The first few are fishermen, one of the very last places one would expect to find any candidates to lead the Church. And in today's reading, Jesus makes a special point about how God chooses to work this way.
My own Presbyterian/Reformed tradition has long valued having "educated clergy." To be ordained pastors must have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from an accredited seminary. We must have had courses in Greek and Hebrew to facilitate handling biblical texts in their original language. And it is certainly true that things get lost in translation. There are things one can see in the Greek that you can't find in English, and there is real value in congregations having someone that can see these things. But when a congregation comes to see faith as primarily the purview of experts, the value of an educated clergy seems to have done more harm than good.
Jesus tells his first followers to "make disciples of all peoples," so presumably he wants to let all of us in on these wonders revealed to infants, these things prophets longed to see and hear. Presumably Jesus expects all of us to be filled with the Spirit and thus "know" what no expert can know because of learning or study. And it seems to me that we sell our faith woefully short, that we sell Jesus woefully short if we do not draw near to him expecting him to reveal to us what prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah could only long for.
I read Richard Rohr's Daily meditation in conjunction with today's lectionary passages. Rohr spoke of how we need mentors to help us stay on track because religious people often think their job is to help other people change. We forget that faith is about God transforming us, a process that is never quite finished. And when we focus on getting others to be like us or agree with us, we often forget about the work of transformation in our own lives.
I thought about Rohr's comments in light of the reading from Micah. Micah, like many other prophets, blasts the rulers of Israel. In a sense, these prophets seek to mentor the rulers. King in ancient Israel is a religious position. Kings were messiahs, God's anointed ones. Their rule was to be guided by God, but privilege, power, and rich friends made it easy to go astray, and the prophets sought to call them back. Of course kings often found false prophets who would tell them what they wanted to hear.
All this makes me wonder about who serves as my or your mentor, who reminds us of our own need to change. Who is our prophet, counselor, mentor, or spiritual director? Who reminds us to let the Spirit continue her transforming work in our lives? This is especially problematic for pastors, at least for me. I often think that if only I could get those people to be more.... things would be better. But who says to me, "First remove the log from your own eye..."
The tradition in which I grew up didn't have spiritual directors, and it didn't really encourage mentoring relationships. Faith was mostly about agreeing with what my tradition said was true. As an avid reader, I was fortunate to find mentors on the printed page, but books are easier to ignore than someone who has a relationship with you.
I just came out of a finance meeting where the topic turned from money to the changing landscape in which the church lives. Our conversation would have been familiar to many. We talked about the fact that the culture doesn't encourage church attendance any longer, about how congregations are often engaged in a competition for a shrinking number of church folks, about how many mainline congregations have trouble connecting with people who aren't predisposed to attend church, and more.
Such conversations sometimes have a paralyzing effect. Longtime, dedicated church members can see the situation as overwhelming. After many years of being quite good at doing worship, caring for one another, and doing a little mission work to boot, they fear they must now become marketing experts, that they must relearn how to worship, that they must outshine mega-churches with mega-budgets.
Such thoughts were bouncing around in my head when I read today's gospel. In it a Samaritan village does not welcome Jesus "because his face was set toward Jerusalem" (and by implication, the cross). The disciples want to punish the Samaritans, but Jesus rebukes them. Next Jesus speaks with would be followers about what it means to be his disciples. And the interplay of these events struck me with regards to the situation facing many mainline congregations.
For example, how to we perceive those who do not join us, who have little use for the church? I know a lot of church folk who not only do a fair amount of hand wringing over "Where have all the people gone," but they harbor a certain anger and resentment towards a culture that has abandoned them. I've never heard anyone suggest calling "fire to come down from heaven," but the culture is often viewed as a big part of the problem.
But the gospel reading quickly shifts the focus from what to do about those who don't embrace us to what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus seems unwilling to worry about "them" and instead hones in on what we, who say we do want to follow him, are supposed to do. And the two specific things Jesus mentions are a single-mindedness about the work of disciples, and "proclaiming the kingdom of God." And I think that some of the best advice available for worried, mainline congregations may be found right here.
Put simply, our endless worrying about "them," the people who aren't here, tends toward one of two opposites. Either we blame "them" and focus on being the righteous remnant. Or we try to figure out how to lure "them" with the latest and greatest offerings. But Jesus calls us to a different path, taking our own call to discipleship so seriously that proclaiming the Kingdom becomes our central purpose.
Interestingly, I have seen a number of surveys done with people who have little use for the church that say one of the biggest factors in their attitudes is seeing little of depth and substance in the congregations they've encountered. They've not met people who seem to be focused on following Jesus and proclaiming the Kingdom, who are willing to live, act, work, and spend their money differently because they follow Jesus.
This says to me that if mainline congregations become communities where the people who were there spend more time deepening their own spiritual lives, in following Jesus' commandments and embodying the kingdom he says has "drawn near," we might just find ourselves in a much better position to speak to those around us. Then we could say with real integrity, "See what a difference following Jesus has made in our lives and for the community in which we live? Wouldn't you like to be a part of something like that?"
I presume that most all of you know about the two young boys from Upper Arlington who were killed by their father before he killed himself.The father’s depression had apparently become so severe and painful that not only could he not go on living, but he felt he was doing his children a favor by sparing them the sort of pain he felt.And out of the horrible, twisted logic caused by his sickness, three people are dead, a family is shattered, a community seeks answers, and most all of us shake our heads and wonder how such a thing could happen.
The family lived one street over from me, but I had never met them.My wife once bumped into them while walking the dog.The boys ran over to play with the dog.The father came along behind them.They all seem like nice, likable, friendly people…
It didn’t happen locally, but in the last month, five gay teenagers have died by suicide, most of them taking their own lives after being tormented and taunted to the point they simply could not take it any longer.And I don’t care what one thinks about homosexuality, these deaths are horrible, tragic, and the hate that caused them run counter to everything Jesus taught.Young lives have been cut short, families are torn apart, and communities are left to wonder how this could have happened.
How is it that the world can be such an inhospitable place for so many?And this isn’t simply an interpersonal thing.Thousands in Haiti are still living in tent cities all this time after the horrible earthquake there.Recent tropical storms killed some of these people living out in the open.And the billions in aid that the US promised are stuck in Congress, held up by a congressman worried that a few million of this aid is going to be used for something he considers wasteful.Enjoy your tents, folks.
And while we’re on the topic of Congress, our political system seems to have become almost completely dysfunctional.Democrats and Republicans alike would rather blame the other than grapple with serious issues.Politics has become a bitter war, and each party is terrified of giving the other any ammunition.So when it comes to long term issues such as Social Security, Medicare, and how to rebuild a crumbling transportation infrastructure, people on both sides are afraid to work with the other lest that side get credit.And they are afraid to propose difficult or painful solutions because they know the other sides will simply use them to make political hay, which explains why both major candidates for governor of this state are for improving education, but neither is willing to offer a single, specific proposal about how they will pay for it.
I talk to more and more people who are frustrated, and who are worried.They’re worried about their own retirement.They’re worried about what life will be like for their children.They’re worried that when they graduate they won’t be able to find a job.
It wasn’t so long ago that most Americans had an almost unshakable belief in progress.My children will be better off than I was.Technology and medicine will solve more and more of the world’s problems.Things will get better and better until everything is wonderful.But I don’t hear as much of that these days.
And yet every week some of us gather and together we pray, “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”Every week we ask God to make the world more like how things are where God lives.In the Bible, that’s what heaven is, by the way.It isn’t a place people go when they die.It is God’s home, and there everything is as it should be.And Jesus taught us to pray, “God make it like that here.”
I grew up saying the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday, but somehow it scarcely occurred to me what the prayer actually asked.And I wonder how many others had the same experience.Sometimes I worry that such rote prayers are the religious equivalent of “Have a nice day.”Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but do we really mean anything by it?
I wonder if we wouldn’t do well to change up the Lord’s Prayer from time to time, to use a different translation or rendition of it.What would it do if when we prayed the Lord’s Prayer, we actually said what the prayer means?What if we prayed, “Lord, up in heaven, you see how things are here.Please make them better.”
And if we prayed this way, would it make our prayer feel more meaningful, or would it only depress us by reminding us of how far from God’s will being done things are?
It is not hard to understand why, over the centuries, the Church gradually shifted the good news Jesus proclaimed from “The kingdom of God has come near,” to “You get to go to heaven.”It was hard to keep talking about God’s will being done here, on earth, when you looked around at how things were.
And yet…Jesus says we should “pray always and not lose heart.”And long before Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah, who has told the people of Jerusalem that they will be destroyed and carried into exile by Babylon, can still proclaim, “The days are surely coming.”
“The days are surely coming,” says the prophet, “when it won’t be like it is now.”“The days are surely coming, says Yahweh, when…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
“The days are surely coming,” says Jesus, “when God’s dream will be born, when the poor will be lifted up and the captives freed, when all will be as it should be, when God’s will is done here, on earth.”And Jesus insists that God’s dream, the kingdom of God, “has drawn near.”And he calls people to repent, to begin living differently because they see what is coming.And he calls us to not lose heart, to pray always.But he also adds, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Will he, indeed?Or will we have looked around at all those ways the world does not conform to God’s will and concluded, “It’s hopeless.”The best we can hope for is something better when we die.”
I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but I think it is a lot easier to believe you will go to heaven when you die than it is to do as Jesus tells us, to pray for God’s will on earth, for a new day, and not to lose heart.It’s even harder to live the way Jesus did, as though that new day was just around the corner.Believing in heaven is easy.There isn’t really anything to dispute that belief, no convincing evidence against such a belief.As a result, all kinds of people believe in a heaven of some sort, even folks that aren’t in the least religious.But believing God’s kingdom is near when there is so much pain in the world… That’s something else altogether.
There was a time when I dismissed much of the current interest in spirituality, in walking labyrinths, going on spiritual retreats, and having a Spiritual Director as some sort of touchy-feely fad.It was for “emotional” types who weren’t satisfied with sound biblical knowledge and well reasoned theology.Worse, I thought that such types detracted from the Church’s mission by focusing too much on their internal, personal, spiritual issues and feelings.But I have discovered that the people with the deepest spiritual lives are very often the same folks most committed to Jesus’ work of lifting up the poor and oppressed, of proclaiming release to the captive, and the coming of God’s new day.And I think that’s because their spiritual connection to Jesus lets them see things more like Jesus does.
It takes a lot of faith to peer into the darkness of our world and say, “See that glimmer over there?That’s God’s new day dawning.”I’m not sure it’s even possible if our hearts don’t get folded into Jesus’ heart, if our lives don’t become lost in his.
