Pennsyltuckian

Hi, this is God. Please leave a message...

2009-07-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

Hi, this is God. I can’t come to the phone right now, please leave a message after the tone.

There have been good times and hard times when God has been quick to call back. Even if it’s only to leave a message, I’m here. I’m working on it. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to you.

Lately when my phone rings, it’s always someone else.

Elie Wiesel wrote about God’s silence in the night of the Nazi Genocide. My sense of proportion isn’t that far out of whack. I know that losing my job and savings isn’t the same as dying at Auchwitz. I don’t know anything about that kind of suffering.

But I do know about the silence of God. Run a Google search on that phrase and count the clichés and platitudes. For centuries people have tried to speak for this speechless Father, this unmoved Creator. But there’s the trouble. No creature can say anything to compensate for the sense that the God’s back is turned.

After the self-pity, after the unrequited love has passed, there is a choice to be made. If God is not calling back – if God is indifferent to my life – how do I set my own course? How to keep believing in myself when if seems God has given up on me?

When God abandoned Jesus, he gave up the ghost. I don’t have that luxury. My suffering is real, but far from biblical. The great models of perseverance and faithfulness in the scriptures aren’t much help. I’m no Jesus, no Job, not even Jonah. The sufferings of Pennsy aren’t going to matter to anyone in 50 years.

So if God isn’t going to pitch in, what do I have to rely on?

Will. First, I have to choose to go on, and so I do. I choose to keep living.

Love. God does not return my calls, but Mrs P does. My mom does. My sisters, my oldest friend, even our animals. They believe in me and their faith gives me strength.

Wisdom. Betrayal is a great teacher. Not every one who acts loving actually loves. Not everyone who receives feels gratitude. There is a part of a man that he can’t afford to give away, not if hw wants to go on living, working, fighting for the people he loves.

Honor. That old fashioned word that means the value of a name. The shine has been dulled over the years, the finish dented and scratched, but in the end, my only real treasure is the value of my name, the value of my word.

Jesus told the story of a man who held a feast. The fine people he invited chose not to attend, so the man opened his doors and welcomed in the folks he could trust. The common people of the street who may not have been as highly regarded as their “betters”, but who were faithful to the host who offered his hospitality and himself.

God is welcome in my life, and may choose to return someday, but for now I have to go on without the voice I have grown so accustomed to. If God chooses not to walk with me, so be it. I will continue to walk. I will walk as God taught me. I will continue to pray into the silence and to work through the darkness.

I have waited long enough for God to speak. It is time to face the silence with the people who love me enough to call back.

Peace,
pennsy

Freedom For Iran - By Any Means Necessary

2009-06-21T00:57:00.004-04:00

The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself.

During his journey to Mecca, Malcolm learned that the "prophet" he followed had distorted the message of Islam. He tried to tell the world and was murdered.

For 12 long years I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the 'straightjacket world' created by my strong belief that Elijah Muhammad was a messenger direct from God Himself, and my faith in what I now see to be a pseudo-religious philosophy that he preaches.... I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did.

Today, the people of Iran are seeking thier own rights and freedom from tyrants and false prophets. God forbid our nation - founded on those very principles - should leave them by themselves.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.

America must act with wisdom so as not to become an obstacle to freedom in Iran. But when we do act, we must do so as the people in Tehran's streets have done - to put an end to injustice, without compromise, by any means necessary.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.

Peace,
pennsy

The Malcolm X Project
MalcolmX.com
Malcolm-X.org

The Power of Hope

2009-06-18T15:32:00.000-04:00

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen -- Hebrews 11: 1

"Substance" and "evidence": solid stuff. We are used to thinking of faith as a sort of smoky spiritual thing, as if our faith is what allows us to have hope – to see the unseen. But this scripture suggests otherwise. Faith is not the cause, but the product of hope. Without that hope for things not seen, we can never know the gift of faith.

And what a powerful gift it is. Just look at this role call:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace. And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: -- Hebrews 11: 17 – 32

There is great power in faith. It lets us move mountains but it does not exist in a vacuum. Like serenity, faith is a child of hope.

If we renounce despair, if we choose to live in hope, then God’s gift to us is faith: the power to do amazing, irrational, radical, miraculous things. This is more than just the sugary sweet “positive attitude” that so many exhort us to pretend we have. Hope is not a sunny disposition and a clench-jawed smile. Hope is a hunger for the invisible. It is living as if the things we cannot know are in fact true.

Our history, our experience may teach us that failure is inevitable. People will always disappoint, power will always corrupt, and ambition will always fall short. Life may teach us those hard lessons, but living in hope is living as if people can succeed, as if power can be used for good and goals can be reached. The letter to the Hebrews promises that a life lived in hope will have power – that substance and evidence of the unseen and unknowable Kingdom of God that we call faith.

Do not grieve your lack of faith. Rather choose to live in hope, knowing that faith will be added to you.

Peace,

pennsy

Serenity is the Child of Hope

2009-06-16T21:57:00.001-04:00

What to do about the culture of despair? For starters, we might begin closer to home.

There are lots of discouraging things happening in our lives these days. We're losing count of the number of friends who have been laid-off. Friends and family are sick, some seriously so. Bill collectors are learning our names and our 401(k) manager won't take our calls. Much has been lost, and we fear losing what's left.

For a person inclined to mental darkness there is never a shortage of reasons to expect the worst, but these days it's hard for even the merriest of us to keep looking for silver linings. It is tempting to flee our hard lives by focusing on "big issues". To worry about questions like, "What can I do about the culture of despair?" instead of, "What can I do to make our house more peaceful for Mrs P when she comes home today?"

Serenity is the child of Hope, and serenity comes from knowing the difference between the things you can change and the things you can't. I can't change you. I can't change the world. But I might be able to change myself just enough that God can use me to make a difference for someone.

Now that's a change worth hoping for.

Peace,
pennsy

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

The Gospel of Despair

2009-06-15T18:37:00.002-04:00

Where does this end? There are a couple of ways this pattern plays out. The most likely one is that the extremist commandos go a bridge too far -- they're successful on a scale that scares the rational rebels into putting down their guns and bombs, leaving the really crazy actors back at the level of lone wolves...

The other (far less likely, but far worse case) scenario is that the entire country is persuaded to take leave of its senses and take sides, launching a civil war. Given the number of Americans, both left and right, who are thoroughly disgusted with the corporatocracy and increasingly convinced that Congress is too corrupt to deliver even the basics to anyone who's not rich enough to write their problem on the back of a check, it's not a far stretch to imagine a right-wing populist movement that sucks large chunks of the working and middle classes into a full-scale revolution. If the conservative movement does not take a stand against these extremists, they may find that their silence will give permission to actions that are far worse.

... The best thing progressives can do right now is stay in close touch with our base, do whatever we can to restore average Americans' faith in their government. In this incendiary environment, we can't afford to let them lose faith.

Tragedy at the Holocaust Museum: Stand Up To Terror
Thursday, June 11, 2009
-- By Sara

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “right-wing”. I’m not sure it applies in these cases. The language implies a separate member of the same body - one bird, two wings. These domestic extremists, whatever their ideological framework are not on the far right wing, they are part of another bird altogether.

I’ve been doing some research on White Nationalists, including choking down Von Brunn’s book. These people loathe the “right-wing”. They aren’t conservatives; they are revolutionaries who anticipate a war they consider to be inevitable and imminent. The website “White Aryan Resistance” or WAR has changed its name to “The Insurgent.” Their model is no longer the organized militia, but rather the so-called Lone Wolf. As the examples from Orcinus suggest, they are more likely to resemble suicide bombers than secret societies.

The author’s point is worth considering for the church as well as for the nation. Americans ARE losing faith in the ability of their institutions to function. As a child of the seventies, I was raised to question authority. Today, we find ourselves questioning authority’s very existence. Is there any institution that does not lie, cannot be bought, will not betray those who put their trust in it?

There is nothing less biblical, less Christian than despair, yet the gospel of despair is being preached all over our nation today. We are being told there is no reason for hope; failure is inevitable, even desirable. Once it seemed quaint to mourn the loss of civility in our public discourse. Today we need to recognize that much more than good manners are at stake. We need to demand the best of our leaders, both secular and religious – but we also need to accept our own responsibility in the equation. Our language does have consequences and much more than the tone of our national debate is changing.

Fear has always thrived at the extremes. As that fear starts touch both the right and left banks of the political mainstream we can choose to oppose it, or else surrender to the prophets of disaster. It has been fashionable to throw the expression “culture wars” around in a metaphorical sense for some time. How can Christians keep it from becoming literally true?

Peace,
pennsy

Book Review: Through the Outhouse Floor

2008-04-20T07:21:00.003-04:00

Here's a thought experiment for you.

What if Garrison Keillor and Erma Bombeck had a daughter, married her off to a former Navy Submariner, and sent them both to Africa to translate the Bible into a language that until recently had no written tradition?

You might wind up with a book as honest, compelling, and moving as Through the Outhouse Floor by Barbara Thomas.

In the preface of her charming memoir of a missionary family's life among the Komo people of Zaire, Thomas relates a conversation that informs the tone of all that follows. Soon after her arrival in Africa, she commiserated with a more experienced missionary about the inadequate preparation she had received for the difficulties of her new life. "Why didn't they tell us what it's really like?" The answer was that writing about the daily difficulties and anxieties of life in the mission field had always been considered an unseemly sign of weakness - an admission of human failings among people whose ministry can at times seem something more than human to those of us who choose to stay home in the land of iPods and liposuction. It has not been considered "fashionable" to talk about such mundane details.

Ms. Thomas' writing fills the void with rigorous honesty. She and her husband Paul both discerned a call to mission work early in their lives - before they had even met they wanted to carry the Gospel overseas. Once they were wed, they began the long preparation for work as linguists in Africa - translating the Bible into Komo.

This is a self-portrait without pretense. In their home, a case of Malaria is as common as a head-cold. She and her family are tormented by insects, bullies, international conflicts and local bureaucrats. Privacy seems non-existent. Surprise visitors appear in the windows, stroll through the front door, and invite themselves along on bone-jarring journeys over (usually) impassable roads. Komo hospitality is far less reserved than the kind practiced in the American Midwest of her youth, and Thomas is candid about resenting the imposition. At times she can appear to be peevish or even downright selfish.

Much of this modest author's power comes from her willingness to share her own flaws. That candor about the flesh's weakness helps us to trust her when she turns her attention to the spirit's strength.

But don't let the hardships fool you - this is a very funny book (its title comes from an anecdote about a decaying privy, after all.) In one scene after many years in the forest, she explains to her queasy visiting mother-in-law that the fat caterpillars her son has carried into the house taste just like lobster if you cook them right. In another, she and her husband, Paul share a romantic stroll under the setting African sun. In their hands they carry pails to collect dung for their garden. After a chilling night when Paul awakens to discover a burglar reaching through their bedroom window to steal their short-wave radio, the family acquires a fiercely protective German Shepherd and quite publicly names him Nkoki Bakukuba - "Biter of Thieves".

Through all these events, Thomas trusts in God's plan for her family and for the village of Lubutu that comes to be their home. She sees herself as a sort of a pioneer housewife quietly going about the business of raising a family while her husband does the important work of translating and preaching the gospel.

She says that she is writing to give people a realistic picture of the difficulties missionaries face and she succeeds, but her book shows us much more than that. Through the Outhouse Floor is a love story. Barbara Thomas loves her family. She loves the African people, and she loves God. She writes about love without sentiment and without lyricism, and in so doing takes us on an open-eyed journey of personal sacrifice and transformation that opens the mind, softens the heart, and gives the laugh muscles a good long workout.

As a 21st century liberal Christian, I am philosophically uncomfortable about missionaries. In a way, the entire enterprise smacks of paternal colonialism. Is is appropriate for the western church - so plagued by it's own deep flaws - to set about exporting our religion to other parts of the world? What makes our culture so superior to the ones we seek to transform?

Thomas leaves such theoretical meanderings to folks like me with nothing better to do. She is busy being a mother, wife, friend, neighbor, and citizen in a community where she is the only white woman for miles. She tends her garden, teaches her children, and comes to love and admire the Komo people whom God has called her to serve.

She sets out to be a missionary to the people of Zaire, and winds up being their sister in Christ. Now that's a mission even this left wing nut can get behind.

Peace,
Pennsy

That There Should Be No Divisions

2008-02-11T06:32:00.000-05:00

Part of the epistle reading for today from the Daily Office:

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Divisions in the Church
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose.
(I Corinthians 1:4-10)

Paul was writing about factions in the church at Corinth, but he could just as easily been writing about himself, or about me, for that matter.

Paul knew what it was like to be enriched by God - blessed with spiritual gifts. Only a man of faithful righteousness, blessed with gifts of leadership and administration would have been entrusted with the mission that sent Paul to Damascus. When Jesus confronted him on the road, Paul must have felt like he had been split in two. His encounter with the risen Christ challenged everything he believed to be true about God. It took years for him to restore the unity of his own spiritual mind and purpose.

Paul's experience is not unlike my own. I often find myself divided - of two minds. On the one hand / on the other hand. It is important to consider carefully, I believe that is the reason God gives us choices and the free intellect and will to make them. And having considered, it is also important to choose. God does not desire that we should live life divided, but rather that we seek unity within ourselves, among our neighbors, and with our Creator.

Paul's preamble to the great letter to the Church at Corinth has at last brought me to the focus of my Lenten devotion: Stewardship.

I have been blessed with many gifts from God. I have a mind. I have a home. I have a body, a family, clothes to wear, animals to care for. My employer has entrusted me with responsibilities that affect many of the people with whom I work. I have a community and relationships that offer me opportunities to grow and to love.

I am a steward of all of these things, and I confess that my stewardship has been lacking. I have chosen to neglect those things of which I ought to be mindful. I have been faithful to my favorite television programs, and left the the gifts God has given me uncared for.

My Lenten discipline will be to seek out and nourish the gifts I have been entrusted with. I will continue the work of restoring my body. I will reach out to the people I love whose lives I have ignored. I will restore order to my property and my house to make them a testimony to my gratitude and a sanctuary of peace for the people God sends to visit here.

And I will seek guidance and insight as I pursue this discipline in the Holy Scriptures, the word of God.

I'm not sure if that constitutes giving anything up for Lent. Maybe I'm s giving up my unconsidered life. My lent will be a time of stewardship - of caring for and intentionally restoring unity.

Here on Pennsyltuckian I will hold myself accountable to you and to God. And we will walk the road toward Easter together.

Peace,
Pennsy

A Holy Lent

2008-02-06T07:50:00.000-05:00

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
(Book of Common Prayer, Liturgy for Ash Wednesday)

My dear friend Deb, who is a Jew once observed, "I never know what to say to someone on Ash Wednesday. 'Happy Lent' just seems wrong." Many Christians find the season just as baffling.

The forty day fast first appears very early in the Biblical narrative, in the story of Noah.

Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.
(Genesis 7:4)

Moses was on Sinai for forty days. Goliath's torment of Israel. Goliath tormented Israel forty days. Elijah's journey to Horeb, and Jonah's prophecy to Nineveh both took forty days. So Jesus had plenty of precedent when he went into the wilderness to do battle with the devil.

Our Lenten journey commemorates Jesus time in the wilderness, but liturgically, it also calls us to remember the long road to Jerusalem, Golgatha, and the empty tomb of Easter morning. The Lenten prayer commands us to turn our hearts toward three things, Repentance, Fasting, and God's holy word.

To repent means to change direction. We confess that the direction we are headed is not where we want to go, and we turn and to walk another way.

To fast is to say "no" to our own desires - to deny ourselves that which stands between us and God.

To read and meditate on God's holy word is a double discipline. First we take the time to open the Bible and stick our noses inside. Then we take the time to digest the words God gives us.

So giving up beer and chocolate for a few weeks really doesn't cut it.

A friend of mine has pointed out that the Lenten discipline is nothing more than the rule of life for a Christian. Ideally, we would spend every day of our lives in repentance, self-denial, and meditation of the word, but there are no ideal Christians. So we have this special season designed to remind us who we ought to be and how we ought to live. Each of us is on the road to Calvary and the empty tomb. In making a Holy Lent, we remember that every step of the journey is important. We are not only walking toward celophane grass and colored eggs - we are walking beside Jesus who choses to accompany us on our trip from life to death and resurrection.

Pennsy therefore invites you, beloved reader, to a Holy Lent. May you consider your life's direction, turn from the false idol of self-gratification, and seek your God and yourself in the Holy scriptures.

Don't be afraid. We will walk the road together.

And Jesus will walk with us both.

Peace,
Pennsy

A father's blessing

2008-01-31T23:16:00.000-05:00

Twelve years ago this weekend, we buried my father.

He was unlike any man I have ever known. My father poured himself out like a sacrifice for his family, his church, his community. He worked two jobs, three jobs for years. All the while he was a scoutmaster, a church elder, a devoted father, a faithful son, a committed husband. I can say now, though I could not have said it then, that my father was not perfect. He had secrets and flaws - private blemishes. I have learned a lot about blemishes in my own life. I don't hold them against him.

Dad loved Pennsylvania. He would pack us into our Dodge van and pack off to pitch a tent in the woods to hear the sound of the forest at night -not a sound we heard alot in Pittsburgh. He taught us to fish, we would motor out on the foggy face of a lake as the sun rose and the herons preened in the shallows. We caught some fish, but the time we spent on the water with my father was worth more than any treasure we could have pulled out of that lake.

We were Steeler fans. He was not insane over the Steelers, but he was a patriotic Pittsburgher and loved the team out of a sense of honor. He was alive when our city really was, as a nineteenth century wag once quipped, "Hell with the lid off." We grew up watching comedians on our little black and white television using our home as a punchline. There was plenty to be proud of in our smoky town, but the world didn't know it - not until Franco Harris plucked that deflected pass out of the air on that chilly winter afternoon. Suddenly there was something about Pittsburgh that wasn't funny at all. We had always been proud, now the world could see some of the reasons. A team of black men and white men, Italians, Poles, Irish, Rednecks, Scholars - as diverse and tough as the city whose name they claimed spent a decade claiming a piece of history, even as the steel industry collapsed around us. Those of us who lived through that time know what a football team can mean to a community.

Once the 'Seventies were over, we waited a long time for the Steelers to make it back to the big game. The 1996 team was a powerhouse, but in order to claim that "one for the thumb" they would have to beat the great dynasty of that decade. We wanted to believe that the Cowboys could be had, but in our hearts, we had our doubts.

The afternoon of the game, I talked with my Dad on the phone. He had survived a heart attack the year before. Years of too many jobs, too many midnight bowls of ice cream and too many cigarettes had taken their toll. He was scheduled to go into the hospital the next morning for a procedure whose name I don't remember. We talked about how things were going. I asked how he was feeling. "Frankly, I feel like Hell." It wasn't the kind of thing he would say. The year of living with his own mortality had worn him down in a lot of ways. Projects went unfinished. He grew increasingly quiet and sad. The burdens of a lifetime - burdens he had heroically carried for years - were breaking his weak heart.

We talked about the game. Both of us had concerns, but we were confident that Our Team could beat the odds. As game time approached, we wrapped things up. Saying goodbye was always a little clumsy for us. Dad was not an "I love you" kind of guy. For years I had tried to wheedle one out of him. We would hug goodbye and I would whisper "I love you, Dad." Sometimes he would say "I love you, too." but it always felt as if I had cornered him. After a while, I stopped playing the game. I knew he loved me. I could hear it in his voice when we spent time together on my rare trips back home. I said goodbye and was about to hang up, when he said it...

"God bless you."

My father had never, ever said that to me. He was not being casual. He was giving me his blessing.

The Steelers lost Super Bowl XXX, obscenely. I don't remember much about the game. I remember my Dad's blessing. And I remember the nest night when I cam home from work. My sister had called. Dad's procedure had not gone well. By nine o'clock my father was dead.

We buried him under the snowy Pennsylvania mountains that he loved. It is a beautiful spot with a view of the valley and the smell of pine trees and hardwood all around. The last time I was up there, I saw deer tracks in the snow around his grave. He would love it. I go there every once in a while to catch him up with my life. I have carried his blessing through some rough times, but it stays with me intact. And when we say goodbye, I always tell him I love him. It's ok. He doesn't feel any pressure to respond. And somehow I think saying it doesn't bother him so much any more.

God bless you, Dad.

I love you.

bob

=====

The icon of St Joseph and Jesus is from Bridge Building Images.

Our favorite lake, Pymatuning.

Smoke over Three Rivers is from the web site of GASP, the Group Against Smog & Pollution. They've been fighting to clean up the 'Burgh since Joe Greene was a rookie.

We need your best, not just the best you can do

2008-01-27T20:08:00.000-05:00

This is a post I've had rattling around my imagination for a while. If you're following Fat Man Running , then you know that I have made some changes in my life -- changes that I hope will become permanent. The idea in my title is one of the things that I hope will keep my commitment alive.
Mrs P and I were sniping back and forth a few days ago - (yes, sniping can strike even the best of families) - and I was griping about the way she will complain about a thing like a pain or an old glasses prescription for months without doing anything about it. This makes me nuts.

Before I go on, I should tell you that there are two important parts of this argument. First, I was absolutely right. She does do that and it does make me crazy. Second, I do the same d@mn thing which makes me pretty vulnerable when I try to call her on it.

I resolved this conflict in classic American Male style by making it as forcefully and as loudly as I could. The advantage here is that my Bride can't get a word in edgewise - the disadvantage is that I will invariably say something so incredibly stupid that it dwarfs the original offense. Here's how I think it went...

"Why didn't you take care of X last summer when it started bothering you?"

"There were other things to worry about."

"Like what? What could be more important that X?"

"The cats needed meds, Molly needed tests, I was looking for a job, we were trying to sell that old car, your depression was getting worse..."

"But don't you see how dealing with this back then would have made all those things easier? You act like everyone else is more important that you are."

"Well, they are."

"Well, we need you. We need you with X. You're no good to us without X. We need you at your best, not the best you have at the time."

OK, if you have lived with someone for any length of time, you know that the only part of that last line that anyone hears is the part about "you're no good to us without X". That was a really stupid thing for me to say because a) it is not true, and b) it obscured the actual insight that I managed to squeeze out at the end.

Doing your best is just not good enough. Not when the best you have is a sliver of what it could be if you were a better steward of your own life.

I know that your house was decimated by last night's storm and you need help cleaning up, but years of cynicism and personal neglect have made me a lazy, unpleasant person who would do more complaining than working, so I'll stay home and pray for you. I wish I could do more, but that's the best I can do.

That might be honest, but it is worthless to your neighbor and to God.

I would love to tithe to support the church or the poor or the Children's Museum or whatever, but I have piled up so much credit card debt that nearly every penny is accounted for. I wish I could give more, but this is the best I can do.

Yeah, right. Look - if Mrs P needs me and I'm confined to my room because I stopped taking my meds or I've drunk myself into such a state that I can't stand up - rolling over and moaning, "I'm sorry Baby, I love you." isn't giving her my best. She isn't getting anything. I will have wasted the strength and health and intelligence that God gave me so I could be her partner. Those parts of me that should have belonged to her, I have chosen to spend elsewhere.

When she needs my best, I won't have it. All I'll have is what's left -- the remnant I call "the best I can do".

Well I don't want her to have to settle for the best of what's left of me. When my wife needs a husband, I want her to have my best. When the people I manage need a leader, I want them to have the best leader I can be. I want my employer to have my best, not just the best parts that I didn't trade for a few bottles of Rolling Rock the night before. I want the animals who rely on me to have my best. My neighbors, my community, my family - if I really value these people, I will make sure that when they need me, they will get the best God gave me -- not just the best of the parts that I haven't used myself.

So that's why I'm going to the gym. Not so I can "treat myself better", but so that when someone needs the best from me, I will be able to give it.

The life God gave me was a gift. The way I've treated that life has been a sin in many ways. I live today under judgment as a consequence of that sin -- but sin always hurts more than just the sinner. People need me to be better than I am today. My loss is their loss too.

When I eat something stupid or don't drink my water or skip stretches or stay up too late, then I can't walk as far or as fast on the treadmill as I need to. When I hit the red "stop" button while gasping for air, my lungs burning and my chest pounding after half a workout - I haven't "given it my best." I gave my best to David Letterman or Krispy Kreme. The gym just got what was left over.

Jesus' life requires more of me than the best that's left. If I want to be a Christ-like husband, neighbor, citizen, and friend, then I need to be ready to give the best just as Jesus always was.

Jesus went off by himself to pray. I go to the gym. I learn new computer programs. I listen to tapes and pick the brains of successful managers who have more experience and wisdom than I do. I put down the laptop and actually pay attention to my wife once in a while. The road to my redemption is paved by doing the work of restoring the best I can be.

Peace,
Pennsy

Here's an intriguing post from Paul M. Jones on why "Do Your Best" is such a lousy way to manage people.

And Joe McCarthy out pennsy's Pennsy with this existential musing about doing your best vs. trying to do your best (among other things.)

Fat Man Running - the adventure begins

2008-01-13T20:28:00.000-05:00

Today I am beginning a new blog project I'm calling Fat Man Running. I have avoided posts about myself because ... oh, I don't know. Maybe I just want to feel important and smart. It's easier to be cosmic than to be real.

Anyway, I've decided to break that policy in order to journal an adventure that I hope will last for the rest of my life. Mrs Pennsy and I joined a gym yesterday.

Let me put this into perspective - I am 47 years old, 6'-4" tall and weigh 374 lbs. That's a body mass index of 45.5. That number is not an accident. It is a consequence of a lifetime of choices - some good, mostly bad. A lot of destructive habits produced this body, and I sort of hope I can change the results by changing my behavior.

I will still bloviate about God, the Universe and All That in this space. My relationship with my Creator is one of the primary reasons I have started off on this adventure. I'd sort of like to be able to tell God that I did something with the healthy, strong body I was blessed with besides filling it with chocolate and potato chips.

Actually, there are several things I'd like to be able to do. I'd like to live long enough to retire, for example.

So off I go. Maybe my story will inspire someone else, as I have been inspired. I certainly hope that by putting myself "out there" I can develop a sense of accountability to someone - even if no one else reads. I really want to succeed this time.

Peace,
Pennsy

1/13/08, Rainy & Cold
374 lbs
Treadmill walk
1.25 mi
0:25 min
180 Max HR

What's in a Name? - The Holy Name of Jesus

2008-01-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

On January 1, the eighth day after Christmas, we remember the day Joseph & Mary's child was circumcised and named.

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
(Luke 2:21)

They obeyed the command that both had received from holy messengers. In Luke's gospel, the angel tells Mary

Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most high.
(Luke:30 (b) - 32 (a))

In Matthew, Joseph is told not to abandon his pregnant finace with the promise

Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
(Matthew 1:20 (b) - 21)

The name of the child was important enough that both evangelists tell us that it was given to his parents by angels. In English, we identify that name with the man Jesus of Nazareth, but to Jesus' own people, his name was filled with meaning.

The name that we translate into Jesus was Yeshua in Hebrew. It is actually a familiar version of the name Yehoshua. It means "Lord (or Jehovah) who is salvation)."

In English, we might call a child Faith or Godfrey or Regis if we wanted to give them a name that sounded particularly pious or royal. Any author chooses character names carefully because of what they say about the person who bears them. Oliver Twist or Billy Pilgrim are names that tell you something about the character before you even meet them.

So it is with the name of Jesus. It was not a rare name in Hebrew culture, but it was a special one.

If the life of Jesus is a story, then God is that story's author. God chose Jesus name deliberately so that "Jehovah" and "salvation" would be present in the mind of the listener whenever that name was mentioned.

In time, he came to be known as Jesus Christ, but Christ is not a name, rather it is a title, from the Greek christos which is the translation of the Hebrew messias meaning "anointed one." In the gospels, the evangelists refer to Jesus the Christ. After the resurrection, the early Christians transformed Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus into a single proper name, not unlike Julius Caesar.

So what's in Jesus' name? Not a magic spell that grants us wishes when we pray "in Jesus' name." Instead, his name honors both his heavenly father, and the world whose salvation he came to effect. Just as Jesus was both God and human, so also his name spans two dimensions - Jesus the man and Jesus the name are both links between the creator and creation. The name Jesus testifies to the radical love God has for the world.

Peace and Happy New Year!
Pennsy

========
The icon of the Circumcision is from the remarkable website Orthodoxy in China

In Praise of a Secular Christmas

2007-12-25T13:43:00.000-05:00

The Church has wept many a crocodile tear over the War on Christmas - a bogeyman invented by marketeers with a genius for demagogury. Their story goes that the secular humanists hate Christ and Christmas so much that they would like to stuff them both back up the chimbley and dump them off the top of Mount Crumpet. Instead of costuming themselves as St Nick, these Grinches have fashioned a hat and a coat out of the so-called separation of church and state.

Now, I'm sure that the war on Christmas has been a great fund-raiser for somebody, but behind the cynical smokescreen hides a truth that the Church dreads even more than her imaginary conspiracies - I refer to this: Christmas belongs to the world, not to the church. I will weep through Silent Night with the best of them as the candles light the darkened sanctuary on Christmas Eve, but in my heart I have to admit that Christ's incarnation must have been done with more than this comforting ritual in mind.

Our great fear may be not that we will lose Christmas, but rather that we will loose ownership of Christmas. Because the church belongs to Jesus, we feel that the opposite should be true - Jesus should belong to us. But God's heart is too great to be contained in so small a vessel as Christianity. The secular world seems determined to wrest Christmas from our grasp. Perhaps it is doing God's work. God may be moving to restore stewardship of Christ's nativity to the world to whom it was given. Our grief may be for the loss of an ownership to which we were never entitled.

The world belongs to its Creator. We - that is, the Church - are only a small part of God's plan. We presume too much when we insist that Christmas must be as we see fit.

And so I take up my pen (this message was drafted the old-fashioned way, in honor of the day. ed.) on this clear Bluegrass morning to praise a more secular Christmas.

Luke's narrative describes the root of God's Christmas tree, but the fruit is not buried in the dark soil - it is out in the light. Many of the sweetest of those fruits are secular, not religious. The evangelists of this secular Christmas are known to every American and to many parts of the rest of the world: not only Dr. Luke, but also Dr. Seuss and Charles Dickens and Clement Moore. The creche reminds us what Christmas is, but George Bailey's wonderful life teaches us what it means.

Linus knows that Christmas is all about shepherds and a manger - he also knows that it is all about compassion for blockheads. The Grinch, with his hand cupped to his ear, learns that Christmas comes without packages, boxes, or bags. Somehow or other, It comes just the same without these things.

The true meaning of Christmas is not the fact of the incarnation, it is the fruit of that holy event. Because God became humble and was laid in a manger, Christmas is the day when we ought to remember to walk humbly among God's children.

At the end of the year, there are three great holidays in Christian America. At Thanksgiving we celebrate creation - giving thanks for all the things that we have.

On New Years Eve we celebrate life - rejoicing in the great wheel of birth and death that frees us from yesterday and allows us to hope for tomorrow as we remember the Auld and welcome the New with banging pots, popping corks, and laughter at ourselves in our funny hats.

And here at the center of the holidays is Christmas - the high holy day when the delight of receiving a present is exceeded by watching our loved one's eyes light with happiness at they accept our gift to them.

In that joyful moment, we encounter the true meaning of Christmas. This is the day when we celebrate one another. At Christmas, our joy comes from what we give, not what we receive. I hand you your beautiful combs and you give me my watch fob and what passes between us is more precious that those expensive, useless trinkets. We have given a part of ourselves to one another . If only for a moment, we have given one another the fleeting, loving gift of happiness.

The secular world owns the manger because Christmas belongs to the world.On that holy,silent night,a man and a woman gave the best of themselves to God, to one another, and to the world. When shepherds came to see what had happened, the spirit of Christmas was there in their joyful faces.For a few hours in a stable in Bethlehem yesterday's troubles and tomorrow's terrors were put aside. For a few hours, grown men and women gazed in wonder at a beautiful gift - and God's heart will filled with the joy of a child who has given his best, and brought it happiness to the receiver.

Keep Christmas in your own way Church, and let the world keep it in hers. Secular Christmas has done us good, and will do us good and I say God bless it. God bless Blockheads and Grinches - lonely misers and disappointed Building and Loan executives - snowmen who can talk and reindeer who don't fit in and jolly old elves. God bless us, all whos far and near. May God bless you and me this Christmas and may each of us know the joy of giving.

God bless us, every one.

Peace,
b
=====

The image of the Nativity is by Brian Jekel

Bonhoeffer on Advent and Prison

2007-12-09T00:08:00.000-05:00

A wonderful post on Kingdom People, a blog I am really coming to enjoy.

Peace,
b
=====

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Advent 2: The Ax at the Root

2007-12-08T23:48:00.000-05:00

I think of Matthew as the great storyteller among the evangelists. In my imagination, Mark's action packed gospel makes him God's screen writer, while Luke's chronicles of the life of Christ and the early church remind me of Homer's epic poetry. Mystical John stands outside the narrative tradition of the other three - his story is one of cosmic forces colliding. Together, they form the Gospels - and at the beginning of Matthew, just after the story of Jesus' birth, we meet John the Baptizer. Like a Shakespearian prologue, John sets the scene for the drama that is to come. His appearance, illustrated in this 6th century Byzantine icon, is as memorable as any Greek chorus could ever be.

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
`Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.'"

Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

"I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Matthew 3:1-12

In the quiet Advent season of waiting, I was startled to hear John's warning about the ax at the root. There are roots in my life's tree that have grown long and deep. I am comfortable with them. They define me. I don't mind lining up to be washed in the Christmas river like the pharisees at John's riverside revival meeting, but I am not so excited about having parts of me chopped away and thrown into unquenchable fire.

Just when I'm starting to get cozy with hot chocolate evenings in my big chair, Mrs P across the room reading quietly, Sniffy the cat snoozing on my chest, visions of sugar plumbs and all that -that's when the crazy man in the camel hair coat and the honey breath reminds me that the Gospel isn't just about salvation, it is also about change. I can wade in the water of John's baptism if I wish, but I have to be prepared for the consequences of that bath. Advent is more than just a way to "holy-up" the weeks before Christmas. Advent is time to let go. A child is coming who will gather up the dry husks and chaff -the dead, useless by-products of my life - and throw them into the fire.

I can choose to let go of the useless things that comfort me.

Or I can choose to be destroyed with them.

That's straight talk from a wild man in the desert. Not exactly the stuff holiday TV specials are made of, but it is an important part of the Christmas story. Whoever encounters the Baptizer in the Jordan or the Babe in the manger is confronted with a choice - live as if these stories were fables, or as if they were true.

Confronting the implications of Christ's incarnation for my life may begin with a sprinkle, a splash, or a dunk in the river - but discipleship does not end there.

God, grant me the vision to recognize the chaff in my own life, and the grace to accept your judgment as you cast it away to make me your more perfect servant.

Amen

The Gospel according to AIDS

2007-12-01T14:26:00.001-05:00

The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.
1 Peter 4:7-13 (NRSV)

As usual, the wisdom of the lectionary amazes me. This is part of the epistle from today's Daily Office.

Today is World AIDS Day. I remember the first article I read in Time or USNews about some sort of "gay cancer" that was killing young men in terrible ways. The connection between the community and the suffering gave license to many of our culture's deepest fears and prejudices. The problem was not the disease - the problem was the behavior. Righteousness distracted us from doing right.

And so many, too many died without the church's loving presence.

Now things are different. Celebrities have kept AIDS in the public's consciousness. Experience has taught us that HIV doesn't just kill gay men. Decades of research have made "living with AIDS" more than just a euphemism. Like so many cruel diseases, there still isn't a cure - but there is more hope and less ignorance than there used to be.

Peter was not writing about a disease, he was writing to a persecuted church who suffered at the hands of righteous people. His counsel? Love one another. Cover one another's sins with the love of God. Be stewards of one another, for the steward of another's heart cares for a child of God. Offer holy hospitality, speak godly words, serve as Christ did, with all the strength God gives you because serving one another gives glory to God.

So much of the church's initial response to AIDS was not about the disease either. It was about sins and sinners. Many offered shame in the place of service - condemnation instead of compassion. As a consequence, the people who needed Christ's church the most were pushed away. Such failure of charity grieves God's heart.

Peter's exhortation to rejoice in suffering is a tough pill to swallow. On the one hand, we feel ashamed to compare our suffering to Christ's. At the same time, few of us are faithful enough to keep our eyes on Jesus when our own bodies or minds are in pain.

A friend of mine who lives with deep depression episodes once told me that the one thing that comforted her at her darkest hour was knowing that the darkness would not last forever. Our suffering, and the pain of those who love us is not an eternal curse. In the glory of God our trials will come to an end.

While Peter seems to joyfully anticipate the end of the world, he also gives good counsel for the time between now and then. As long as it is possible to glorify God, it is possible to rejoice, even in our own brokenness.

As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. There were two blind men sitting by the roadside. When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!" The crowd sternly ordered them to be quiet; but they shouted even more loudly, "Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David!" Jesus stood still and called them, saying, "What do you want me to do for you?" They said to him, "Lord, let our eyes be opened." Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him.
Matthew 20:29-34 (NRSV)

The blind men in today's gospel remind me of two things - persistence and faith. I have had friends who refused to let the disease define them. They were not victims of HIV, and they did not allow themselves to be labeled as people with AIDS. They found the courage to insist on living - the virus was incidental, not central to their lives. Their strength and will to go on was not a cry for mercy, but a demand to be allowed to exist. Like the blind men from Jericho, they refused to be discouraged or shouted down. They knew that Jesus would feel their suffering. They believed in life, and many of them believed in Jesus. Though their bodies failed them. their faith never did, and I believe Jesus never did either.

Our compassionate savior suffers with us and desires the health of our hearts as well as our minds and bodies. My friends' hearts are no longer under my stewardship, they are in the arms of Jesus. I pray that God will judge my service to them to have been faithful.

Peace,
b

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The beautiful portrait of Jesus is by horseman. Please visit http://www.jesusweptart.blogspot.com/

Keep awake!

2007-11-30T13:38:00.000-05:00

This will be an experiment in altered consciousness. Last Sunday, I was in the emergency room My left leg was the shape of a melon and the color of a beet. The doctor said I have phlebitis. They gave me meds and told me to sit still with a hot compress on my leg. The combination of drugs, stillness, and warm legs has kept me in and out of sleep for most of the week. Being awake has usually meant a droop-eyed stupor just one notch shy of drooling. So imagine my amusement when I read the gospel for the first Sunday of Advent.

Jesus said to the disciples, "For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."
Matthew 24:37-44

Noah's neighbors never saw it coming. They saw the signs. Some of them may even have asked what in the world he was doing. But they wouldn't accept the truth of his words. In my mind's eye, I can see them coming out on Sunday afternoons with a picnic lunch to watch the crazy man building an ark in his field, then filling it with a menagerie. God's plan wasn't hidden from them - it was there big as life. They just chose to call it madness.They never saw it coming.

As a child, Mrs P was terrified by the gospel song;

Two shall be working, working in the field
One shall be taken, and the other left behind
Will YOU be ready when Jesus comes?

Have you encountered the little tracts from Chick Publications? I was fascinated by them when I was a teenager.The drawings were graphic and disturbing. I remember one about the rapture. In an instant, where someone had been driving or working or reading their Bible a moment before, there was only a pile of clothes. Their discreetly posed naked spirits flew up to heaven while the others were left behind to try and understand what had happened. These tracts are still being published and I don't recommend them. They combine simple mindedness and mean spirit in a way that has impressed me since my teen years.

Still, it is an ill cartoon that blows no good, and even from these little comics I was able to learn about the seriousness of matters like good and evil, sin and repentance, destruction and salvation. The picture Jesus presents in this story is worth a thousand words of theology. The image of one woman delivered from the terrible events to come while another is left behind reminds me that I don't have the luxury of putting Jesus off. I can't move him down on my list of priorities. I need to live each moment as if it is my last chance to do God's work in the world.

So what am I supposed to do, stay awake like a homeowner waiting for a thief? Spend every moment in tense vigilance waiting for the second coming? I find wisdom in this thought from Will Rogers:

"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip."

Jesus doesn't want us to wait. He wants us to live AS IF every moment matters - as if whatever we do, wherever we are, we would welcome him to join us.

The Son of Man is coming. I don't know when, and it really doesn't matter. My job is to always be about his work. My role is to feed his sheep so he doesn't find them hungry when he returns.

Even when I'm only half awake.

May God bless your worship as we begin a new Liturgical Year and the holy season of Advent.

Peace,
b
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Image Sources
Sleepless Smithers
Rapture Shoes
Who's Missing?, Jack Chick, LLC, 2003.
Will Rogers

Christ: the King who Remembers

2007-11-24T12:10:00.000-05:00

This week, the church year comes to an end. The lectionary calls this “The Last Sunday after Pentecost”. Now there’s an ominous phrase – the last Sunday.

The day has a second name – Christ the King Sunday. This is the day when contemporary preachers try to make sense of this medieval, patriarchic image as if God were the head of a government who lived in a palace and sat on a big chair giving audiences to rich tourists. To my 21st century ears, a king in heaven sounds more like a cartoon than an inspiration.

It’s an uncomfortable Sunday. Most American Christians have not yet recovered from the obscene dance of consumption that passes for what should be our nation’s High Holy Day. We give thanks by eating until we can’t move while most of the world can’t move because it doesn’t have enough to eat. The next day we join the great procession to the temples and high places where we pay homage to the things we love and worship – the things we can own.

So by the time Sunday morning rolls around, we’ve had at least three meals of turkey and old mashed potatoes, we’ve spent time we can’t spare spending money we don’t have buying things we don’t need.

This Sunday’s gospel is the last thing any of us needs to hear.

The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
Luke 23:35-43

The stores are playing Christmas carols. Miracle on 34th Street was just on TV. Our football team is going to a bowl game. Why in the world to we want to hear about Good Friday today?

It just seems so --- distasteful.

Is this just another example of the way the church tries to take the fun out of anything that gives us real pleasure, or is there something more going on here? What does the thief on the cross have to teach us about Thanksgiving and the end of the church year?

Our text tells us that the first thief derided Jesus. Even at the threshold of his own death, he found the strength to mock Jesus. Under normal circumstances, sarcasm is a lazy sort of self-gratification – a cheap substitute for thinking. Under these circumstances – two men being publicly executed – the first thief’s will to hurt his neighbor is at once pathetic and terrifying. Is the impulse to abuse one another really so strong that it can distract us from our own mortality? Upon finding himself in the presence of the living God, was he really so blind that he could not see what was happening right in front of him?

Yes, he was. He had the words right – “you are the savior, save us” but he had the spirit all wrong. He saw no farther than his own suffering. The world beyond his outstretched arms had no meaning for him.

The second thief had vision that the first did not. We are not told anything about him. We don’t know why he saw the truth that so eluded all the wisest and most powerful men in Jerusalem. We only know that he testified. He was able to see beyond his own pierced hands and feet – to gain a cosmic perspective on the scene of which he was a part.

And from that cosmic point of view, we hear his prayer. Such a prayer! If you could ask God for anything – and you knew your request would be granted - what would you ask? Peace and prosperity? Good health? Security?

Jesus, remember me.

Remember me: the last request of a dying man. Don’t forget me. Hold me in your memory. Keep me alive in your imagination, though I am dead and gone. Don’t let me stop mattering.

He looks at a man suffocating on a wooden beam, suspended above the earth, covered with blood and spit and his own filth and he sees a King.

But to the thief, this is not the last day of Christ the King. He sees not only the tortured present, but also the glorious future. In testifying about this unjustly condemned man, the thief becomes more than a good thief – he becomes a prophet. The universe is peeled open, and from his cross, he peers at the truth of who Jesus is and who he will be. On a day when all whom Jesus knew and loved betrayed him with their silence, this visionary thief spoke the word of the Lord. And Jesus blessed him for it.

The thief was not naïve. He knew they were all going to die. But he also knew that their terrible ending would bring about a new beginning. His testimony to the world that day was that by dying, Jesus would become a heavenly king - Christus Rex - the ruler who redeems.

The King who remembers.

The church year will soon be over. We will change the altar cloths, take out the Advent candles, and begin a journey toward a manger in Bethlehem. We will agree that the commercialization of Christmas is a sad thing, even as we browse the internet for presents and cruise the parking lot for a closer space. Sometimes we will be like the first thief – so consumed with our own wants and desires that we can’t see anything beyond our own reach. Other times we will be like the second thief – blessed with a prophet’s vision of the truth about who we are and who Christ is.

This cycle of vision and blindness, of awareness and distraction is a part of what we are as human beings. We are made in the image of God. Inside of us live both creature and creation. We remember and we forget.

Before a bloodhound is set on the trail of a lost child, the trainer will place some article of the child’s clothing in a bag and hold it over the dog’s face so he can remember the scent. Then they begin the long journey in search of the one who has been lost. It is an amazing thing to witness these animals using senses far more perceptive than our own as they follow the path toward their goal. It is also instructive to see that before they can begin their journey, they must have a way to recognize the true path from the false trails – a single tone to pick up out of the symphony of scent that they encounter on their way – their trainer gives them something to remember.

Before you set off on the Advent trail to Bethlehem, remember that the stable is not the end of your journey, any more than the cross was the end of the thief’s own path. The cross and the tomb are not the end, any more than the second coming or the New Jerusalem. The last Sunday after Pentecost is the first Sunday before Advent and the seasons, far from beginning and ending, flow into one another like rain feeding a stream into a river into the sea whose water vapor becomes rain clouds.

This circle of life is who we are. It is the reflected image of the God who made us. It is full of scents that are both beautiful and repulsive and it is a very easy place in which to become distracted and lost.

This is why we talk about life at funerals and about death at Thanksgiving. We need to remember who we are, where we are going, and why. We need to remember the ones who have taught us, and the ones who will learn from our own journey. We need to remember that neither joy or grief or prosperity or poverty or weakness or strength can change our value in the eyes of the Christ who sees us for who we truly are.

The Christ who saved us.

The king who, in spite of the billions of reasons we give him to put us out of his memory forever….

Remembers us.

Jesus, remember me. And for God’s sake, help me to remember you.

Amen

-----

Links to the images used in this post.
Burger King
The Good Thief, Albrecht Dürer
Black Friday Shoppers
Bloodhound
Christus Rex

A Prayer of Rememberance

2007-09-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

It is a foggy, drizzly morning in the Bluegrass. So unlike most of the mornings in this drought-stricken year. So unlike that morning whose stories always seem to include comment on the clearness of the blue sky.

I'm glad for the rain. I'm not ready for another clear sunny September 11th just yet. There is still too much hanging in the air, too many still crying from the ground for crisp autumn skies on this of all days.

I was too young to remember the deaths that punctuated life in the sixties, the "where were you when..." moments of that generation. But I will never forget the moment my country seemed to change forever.

I pray today for families lost, for killers and victims, for sponsors and targets. I pray for the redemption of forsaken souls, and the healing of broken hearts.

And I pray for my country. I was born here by accident of fate. She is what she is and we, her people are what we are. The debt I owe her, I did not take on, but it is mine nevertheless. It is the debt any child owes to the mother who gives it life and nourishment and a compass for finding right and wrong on life's highway.

My country is not always right and she is not always great, but she is mine. She has enemies, foreign and domestic against whom I am duty bound to protect her. Since she gave me life, honor requires that I give life to her as well by adding my strength and knowledge and judgment, such as they are, to those of my neighbors as we work together to make our country a stronger, wiser mother to her children and a better neighbor to the nations with whom we share this planet.

Such is the work of America's sons and daughters. It is work that does not end. It will not go away. But it will wait for a day. Today I pray for the lives unlived, the dreams undreamed and the promises unkept. I pray for the courage of those who worked to save, rescue and recover. I pray for all who were touched by what fell from the sky that morning.

In short, I pray for the world today. Dear God, please keep us in your mind and your heart this day and everyday. We want to live so well. Yet we can get so lost along the way. Be our strength in times of weakness, our courage in times of fear, our compassion in times of anger, and our mercy when all we desire is the blood of our enemies. Unless the Lord build our tower, vain is our labor. Lord deliver us from vanity, from meaninglessness. And please, most merciful, heavenly Father -- grant us your peace. All this I ask in the name and for the sake of the one whose spirit not even death could hold in the ground, your son, our savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Review: Stanley Grenz - A Primer on Postmodernism

2007-09-03T14:41:00.001-04:00

I participate in a small number of online communities. The one I have always found most rewarding is TMF – The Motley Fool. I can’t recommend it highly enough. People from all over the world come together there to share knowledge about everything from finance and investing to home-brewed beer. Each of these boards generates a community of relationships – friends and rivals come there to be challenged and to grow.

Along with learning to manage my personal finances, I have been drawn to two religious communities on TMF – "Christian Fools" and “Faith in a Postmodern World.” I joined the latter community because I liked the people who built it, and I hoped to learn more about postmodernism in general, and Christian living in a postmodern context in particular.

Since my own education did not include an introduction to postmodernism, (or at least we didn’t call it that in Pennsyltucky in the ‘seventies,) I’ve always felt ignorant participating in the conversation. Over time, it became apparent that many others on the board were as vague in their understanding as I was. Many expressed an understandable reluctance to change a place of lively conversation into a forum for arid academic and philosophical esoterica. A friend recommended a resource to me, and I promised to read it and share some of the information and insights gleaned from the journey. What follows is the fulfillment of that promise.I hope you may find something useful in the course of our trip together.

Review: Stanley Grenz - A Primer on Postmodernism

Grenz, Stanley J., A Primer on Postmodernism, William B Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, 1996.

Stanley Grenz died in March of 2005. He was 54 years old. He left a legacy of bridge-building. His life's work reflects a ministry to the church - a mission to call her to carry the Gospel to the world of the present - not to let the news of Christ be lost in nostalgia for the way things used to be. He was passionate about helping the church to look through the lens of postmodernism, and to discover ways to minister to a generation that was raised while looking through this lens. His Primer has become a touchstone for anyone in the church seeking to carry on this missionary calling.

In the preface to Primer Grenz describes his objective:

…to assist students, church leaders, youth workers, and even colleagues in understanding the attitude or mind-set that is becoming increasingly prevalent in North American, especially (but not exclusively) on university campuses. (p ix)

Grenz' subject is not a simple one, and Primer is not always a simple read. In spite of the challenge of wrapping his arms around the principles of postmodernism, he was often successful in giving this old English major a glimpse of the often-nebulous face of this culture shaping movement.

Primer opens with a review of the article Grenz first published in the 1994 edition of Crux, a quarterly religious journal published by Regent College in Vancouver, BC. In "Star Trek and the Next Generation: Postmodernism and the Future of Evangelical Theology, Grenz proposes that contrasting the original series with its latter incarnation can offer insight into the differences between the modern and the postmodern points of view.

Captain James Tiberius Kirk’s Enterprise reflected the modern world that produced it. The ship’s personnel were nearly all human. Their mission was “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The use of the male gender here is not so much sexist as it is anthropocentric. The universe that Kirk’s starship explores has humankind at its center. The modern principle that “man is the measure of all things” reigns in Star Trek. The series emphasized diversity, but human diversity: explorers of multiple nationalities whose planetary civilization had advanced enough to enable them to work together to explore and discover the nature of “the final frontier.”

Kirk was the ultimate rugged individualist, trusting his gut, his experience, and his passionate nature far more than the counsel of small circle of advisors. Warrior, poet, orator, lover: he was a Renaissance man.

The modern ideal is no swashbuckler. A strong individual whose approach to the universe was reasoned and dispassionate, the unfailingly logical Mr. Spock represented the modern emergence of science as the real problem-solver for humanity. In spite of the fiery courage of their Captain, the humans on the enterprise were ultimately able to pursue their mission thanks to the rational expertise of their half-Human/half-Vulcan Science Officer.

Jean Luc Picard’s Next Generation Enterprise is a very different place that its predecessor. Their new mission – to boldly go where no one has gone before – is more than a nod to politically correctness. Man – humankind – is no longer the measure of all things on the Enterprise. The crew’s diversity now includes beings from all over the galaxy. Far beyond the familiar multi-cultural nature of Kirk’s crew, Picard leads an inter galactic team. At his side are a diverse team of advisors. Unlike Kirk, Picard’s second in command, Riker - his “Number One” - is present and prominent. The team includes the blind engineer, Geordi, the fierce Klingon security officer, Worf and the ship’s beautiful and motherly physician, Beverly Crusher. Instead of the super-human strength and intelligence of Spock, Picard has the assistance of the android, Data. Data’s character is very different than that of his Vulcan predecessor. Even though he is a machine, Data desires a more holistic understanding of what it means to be alive. Where Spock finds human emotional life to be an obstacle, or at best “fascinating,” Data actually wants to experience that life.

Like Commander Riker, Counselor Troi has no real antecedent on the original crew. Her empathic abilities bring compassion and emotion to the forefront. Rather than being an obstacle to reason, emotion and feelings are considered to be integral parts of life on the new Enterprise.

Next Generation’s great villain is the Borg, a collective intelligence that robs beings of their emotional selves and integrates them into something that is not a community but an enormous machine of conquest. In the original series, the universe is an often mystifying, but rarely mystical place. Next Generation introduces the supernatural Q, a recurring omnipotent visitor from “the continuum”.

Grenz hypothesis is that Next Generation reflects the postmodern changes that began to occur in our culture in the decades between the launch of the original NBC series in 1966 and the generation that saw its release in first-run syndication in 1987. Our culture is moving away from one that idealizes reason, science, and individual achievement. Postmodernism leads us toward a more inclusive view of our existence - one that includes not only reason, but also intuition, emotion, and individual perceptions in the context of community.

The conclusion of Primer’s first chapter sums up what Grenz feels is the importance of the church considering postmodernism:

We dare not fall into the trap of wistfully longing for a return to the early modernity that gave evangelicalism its birth, for we are called not to minister to the past, but to the contemporary context….

Postmodernism poses many dangers. Nevertheless, it would be ironic – indeed, it would be tragic – if evangelicals ended up as the last defenders of a now dying modernity. (p 10)

In this tribute to Granz, written on the blog Generations in Conversation soon after his death, the Star Trek comparison is described this way:

The first chapter gives us the beautiful metaphor for modernism and postmodernism - Star Trek as a series. The first series - boldness and certainty. The second series - humility, subtlety and uncertainty.

As the modern world changes, postmodern thinking will influence everything about our culture. As a people called to be in the world, but not of the world, Christians need to understand how to negotiate the postmodern landscape, even if it never becomes our true home.

Peace,
pennsy

Next: The Postmodern ethos and world view.

Pentecost 2007

2007-05-27T18:51:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, old girl. Nearly 2000 years since that ordinary day when the most amazing things started happening in an obscure, troublesome corner of the Roman empire.

The wind, the Spirit of the Lord - that same breath that moved over the face of the deep on the first day of creation - that wind filled their little room and tongues of flame appeared above their heads and a new creation was born.

Happy birthday.

You've been through a lot, Mother Church. Wars and dictators. Plagues and earthquakes. Saints and madmen. You've gone through it. And by the grace of God, you've come through it. The cheeks aren't as smooth as they once were, and the hair is touched with gray, but the eyes still sparkle from time to time.

We've done a lot with the flame God gave us in that upper room. We've used it to light the darkness and to warm the chilly bones of your suffering children.
We've spread it over the face of the earth. We haven't always been careful as we ought to have been. We've mingled our own breath with the flame, hoping to make it burn brighter, spread faster. In our impatience, we've done harm in the world, and done harm to you.

But you're still here.

Like a mother who will not give up on her wayward children, you weep with us, discipline us, rejoice with us. You help us to welcome our babies and you help us to bury our dead.

Travel the world and you will find the church's flame burning. Shining like a beacon in the middle of a sin-sick city or glowing softly in the middle of a forest she stands - a stubborn reminder that we are not alone in this lonely universe. The church has many critics, and many of them are right. She is old and stubborn, set in her ways. She doesn't like to change, and is often hard on people who try to change her. She keeps too much, gives too little, holds on too tight, and lets go much too reluctantly. She's got a mean streak a mile wide and often seems more interested in obedience than reason. Much too much harm has been done - too many wounded hearts broken on her stone steps and wooden beams.

But she's still here.

She has been my friend since I was a child. I remember the dark Presbyterian wood of my youth. The smell of lilac perfume and moth balls and Lifeboy as the hard working people in our church in Pittsburgh would crowd into the heavy pews with the hymnal racks and the hearing aids. Her dark stone walls reminded us that even on Sunday, life was hard work - hard as the mills whose stacks filled the air with the dark soot that colored our lives and stained her walls. Her tall square bell tower called us to church and called us to reflect upward - her finger pointing ever heavenward.

I remember the mystery of the communion cups, like a little shot glass in my grandmother's trembling fingers. She would drink when the minister said "This do..." and then place the empty cup in the wooden holder on the pew in front of her. Dad never came to church when I was little. I just thought it was something a man grew out of. There were a few grown men there, but mostly it was the women who greeted my mom and gramma. They would smile at me and talk while I tugged at my mother's sleeve, wanting only to go home and take off my church shoes. Women taught my Sunday school - Miss Margaret, Mrs Misplay, Mrs. Swango. The minister was a man, but it was pretty obvious to me who did the work and who did the sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

When I was older, I joined the Boy Scouts and Dad became our Scoutmaster. At camp, we always had Sunday services and one of the other fathers would speak about honesty or helping people or one of the other scout values. All this made sense to me. These were grown men, but they weren't really talking about church stuff. They were talking about being good scouts and becoming good men. Then one weekend, Dad stood up. I was a little freaked and a little upset. I thought it was kind of hypocritical of him to talk in a chapel service when he didn't even go to church. He read to us from Psalms. "The heavens are telling the glory of God." Dad talked about the trees and the mountains of Western Pennsylvania where our families had grown up. This was where he found God. This was where his own father had shown him how to recognize a bird's song or track a deer through the autumn leaves. When Grampa died, the church stopped making sense to Dad. The rational, compassionate Father and Friend who was preached about from the big pulpit was no friend of my fathers. He had taken away his dad. There would be no more hunting trips. No more fishing in Canada. No more evenings at Forbes Field watching the Pirates and eating hot dogs. His father would not get the chance to watch me grow up. The God of church had seen to all that.

Here in the woods, it was a different story. Here my dad spoke a language I had never heard. He talked about a God whose fingers had scooped out the valleys and whose voice sang in the night. He saw the Creator's fingerprints all over the woods. God had provided fresh water, plants to provide shelter and save food. Even the stones for our fire ring were gifts from God over which we were not masters, but stewards. God had placed all this beauty in our care so that we might find rest from the smoke and the noise of the city. This was the place where the God my Dad knew lived.

Soon after that, Dad started coming to church. I grew up. He grew old and tired. When he died. I was not angry at God. My father had taught me to forgive, even my Creator's sins. We buried my father on a hill in the woods, far far from the city. He is with God.

The church and I have had our ups and downs. I am in awe of her most of the time. She has been through so much, meant so much, helped so many. The old tricks of the cathedral architects still take my breath away. Flying buttresses, soaring domes, rose windows, tiny side chapels. The church has been all these things, but so much more.

She has been our flawed and beautiful guardian - our beautiful partner in the stewardship of creation. She is a glorious monster, a tender giant watching over us, yet reliant on us for her life.

We are the church. That is true. A church is not a building, it is people. But the church is much more than we could ever be on our own. The church is people, but it is not only people. "Only people" is a room full of disciples who have said goodbye to Jesus twice in a few months, lost and a little confused about what it all meant and where they should go from here. "The church" is a street full of apostles speaking in strange languages to suspicious ears about the glory of a Creator who leaves fingerprints everywhere - even on human hearts. The church was born of the marriage between God and God's people. She is our mother AND our child.

Happy birthday, old girl. God bless you.

Amen.

The Great Letting Go

2007-05-13T11:27:00.000-04:00

At the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
John 13:31-35

In this short Gospel lesson, Jesus speaks words his disciples are destined to understand only after his death. It is possible that he spoke for their sake of course, but it also seems to me that he spoke to his own heart which ached with grief at the loss of his friends. Jesus was about to begin his journey through The Way of Letting Go.

The Great Letting Go is a part of human life. Our birth is the primal example. We must leave – in fact we are driven out of the only existence we know. We lose the relationship that has kept us alive. We are thrust into a new world, one where the person we were is no more than a subconscious memory. We have no choice but to let go of the person we were, in order to become the person we will be.

A mother must also travel this painful and confusing road. For nine months she has lived in relationship with someone she has never seen, but with whom she shares an intimacy that is completely unique in creation. She has willingly offered her body to be the home of a being who is not an invader or a parasite, but a new creature. She has changed with her child’s transformation from a single cell into a thinking, breathing person. From the beginning, she knows it is a relationship that is destined to end, this intimate hospitality of mother and unborn child. If her child is to live, a mother has to let it go.

My first memory of The Great Letting Go was when my Grampa died. He had been a special friend to me, my mother’s Father. His angular country features were different from the round, Ukrainian faces I knew in my father’s family in the city. Grampa had a laugh that filled his little house like music. When I misbehaved, or did something dangerous outside, his anger could reach across a pasture like thunder. I remember the smell of his Chesterfields and the Captain Black as their smoke curled around the posts that held up the porch roof. I remember the tiny holes he would sometimes burn in his pants when an ember would accidentally fall from his straight, brown pipe. Those tiny holes began to grow more frequent after he became sick. They grew and spread like the tumors my mother said the doctor had seen in his X-rays. The weekend we went to visit and saw the burn on the arm of Grampa’s big chair in the living room, I knew that something was really wrong with my strong, tall laughing friend. We watched the light slowly fade from his eyes as the stairs became too difficult and the old oak dining room table was moves aside to make room for a hospital bed. Finally an ambulance brought him to the city, driving fast along The Great Letting Go. Finally, I came home one afternoon and my father’s mother, my city gramma was waiting for me. She sat me on her big rocking chair while she sat on the edge of the bed and explained to me that Grampa was dead. He had been a very sick man, but now he was no longer sick.

I had known tears before then - tears of frustration, of pain, of disappointment, fear, or anger - but that was the first time I remember weeping the tears of The Great Letting Go.

Those tears become part of our lives. A friend goes away. Our family moves to a new place. Summer vacation ends.

Later we learn about love and its cost. We learn the joys of having a sweetheart and the pain of losing them. Our parent’s arguments (or their silence) finally tears them apart. We become “every other weekend” children of people who have let go of one another.

School days end, speeches are made. We dress in strange medieval costumes while people talk about exciting beginnings and possibilities. But in our hearts we know that what is really happening is the death of the life we have always known. We are traveling down the shadowy, unknown valleys of The Great Letting Go.

We will return to its winding way many times. There will be weddings and funerals. Children will become teenagers. Love nests will fill with little birds, then one day we look around and the nest willl be empty. Promotions will give us new colleagues and old ones will be left behind. Obituaries, alumni magazines, and late night phone calls will bring news of loved ones whose life journey is over. Lost opportunities at reunion or reconciliation become a part of our lives. Finally, the time comes for our own greatest letting go. Our strength fades, our minds cloud, our health abandons us, and our breath leaves us one last time – one last expiration – and we let go.

Christ’s incarnation means salvation for humankind – but what does it mean for God? One of the lessons of the Hebrew scripture is that God does not act unilaterally. We are in relationship with a God who acts in covenant. In giving, God takes. In taking, God gives. This is not paradox – it is a description of the relationship God desires with us. “You will be mine and I will be yours.”

What does God get out of the agony of the incarnation? God learns what it means to let go. The physical torture is only part of the Passion of the Christ. There is also the pain of a person whose consciousness stretches back to the creation of the universe. Christ’s embrace is capable of gathering all of creation to himself, and yet now, having accepted the bondage of human, temporal existence, the creator of the universe has no choice but to let go.

Of home.

Of serenity.

Of a father’s courage.

Of a Mother’s embrace.

Of friends, disciples, students, and believers.

Of enemies, even. The ones who challenged his heart and sharpened his mind.

Of life itself.

One of the lessons of the incarnation for God is the experience of The Great Letting Go. In Jesus, God finally knows from the inside out what it means to truly lose and to grieve the loss. Standing at the grave of Lazarus, Jesus wept – but they were God’s tears.

The time of letting go is never far from us. Paul used to say that he had died to himself. Like a child being born, Paul had to let go of everything he had once believed to be true in order to become a new creation in Christ.

Each of us encounters The Great Letting Go many times in our lives. We may face it with anticipation or anxiety or with dread or despair – but we will never face it alone. Jesus knows the way because he has traveled it himself. Our God chose to travel the way of letting go so that even in this, we might remain in covenant. Even at our times of greatest loss, we remain God’s people – God remains our God. A God who can both rejoice and weep with us throughout the journey of our lives.

Christ’s example is our commandment and our blessing – live a life that can both embrace and let go. Put down what must be put down, and take up what must be taken up – be it a friend, a vocation, or a cross. Cling to nothing but God’s faithfulness.

And always love one another. This is Christ’s commandment. This is the vocation of a disciple. Love one another through the victories and the defeats, in strength and in weakness, in rejoicing and in mourning. Love one another in the holding, and love one in the letting go.

This is the way the world knows the “little children” of Christ. Not from their jewelry or their bumper stickers or the sign in their yard or the slogan on their sweat shirt. The world knows the children of God because they love one another.

May God grant that we might recognize that love in our own lives – that we might join with Christ in his great ministry, even as he faithfully joins with us in our Great Letting Go.

Amen

Pieta, Paula Rego, 2002.

All other images are from one of my favorite companies, Bridge Building Images. I hope you enjoy them.

Peace,
Pennsy

Family Business

2007-04-29T09:53:00.000-04:00

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one."
John 10: 22-30

Those shepherds who saw a host in the heavens and went to Bethlehem to visit a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes could not have understood who the child was, not really. But even if they had, they could never have anticipated the important role they would play in the life and ministry of the one the angel called “Christ, the Lord.”

Many times in the Gospel narratives, Jesus portrays himself as a shepherd who loves his sheep – one who would die for them. Heroic self-sacrifice is part of a shepherd’s life, but there is much more.

The shepherd is always with the sheep. When they are born, when they learn to walk, when they grow into adulthood, breed, and give birth, the shepherd is there. When they fall ill, the shepherd heals them. When they are injured, he gives them comfort. When they are lost, the shepherd seeks them out and brings them home. When they sleep, the shepherd keeps watch over them and protects them. And when their life’s journey is over the shepherd is there, too. Even in death, they are not alone.

Whenever I have heard Jesus refer to the “works” that he does, I have always thought of the miracles: water and wine and walking on the sea and waking the dead – big things. But Jesus’ public ministry lasted three years. The miracles might sell a lot of Bibles, but they are a relatively rare part of his ministry. Most of the time, Jesus is doing much less dramatic works. He teaches. He listens. He comforts people in trouble. He tells riddles. He irritates what we used to call “the establishment.” A lot of what Jesus does, modern managers might refer to as “team building.” He develops a group of leaders who can continue his work when he is gone. Most of the time, Jesus did a lot of boring stuff that had nothing to do with quieting storms and healing the blind.

While the miracles are important, the low profile, day-to-day items on Jesus’ task list are just as powerful a testimony to who he is. Jesus did not spend most of his time doing miracles and garnering publicity. He spent his days quietly shaping the characters of the women and men who would carry his ministry out into the world. The ones who heard his voice and followed revealed themselves to be his sheep. After his death, they would become his “body” in the world. They would become the church.

And what would become of them?

In the seventh chapter of his Apocalypse, John describes a vision…

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!"
Revelation 7: 9,10

The language is important here, I think. This is not a gathering of tribes or a convention. These are not delegations from every state, all expressing their identities with foam rubber cowboy hats or buttons or signs on poles. John did not see a mosaic of independent groups – he had a much more radical vision. John saw “a multitude.” He saw a great sea of humans who had come from all nations and languages in order to join this body that “no one could count.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Rev 7: 13, 14

John’s Revelation was written as a message of hope to a persecuted church. In parts of our world today, Christians are tortured and murdered for recreation or entertainment. In John’s time, this activity was not isolated in pockets of political conflagration – it was the official policy of the government that ruled what John understood to be the entire world. The church needed a message of hope. They needed to hear that Death, who seemed to rule this world as surely as Rome did, would not have the last word. They needed to know that their battered bodies and broken hearts would not be stained with grief forever. In John’s vision, they could find that hope. His portrait of the throne of heaven, is full of echoes from the Gospels. The multitude in clean white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb recall Jesus own baptism. The palms they are holding conjure images of Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a white colt. The illegal, despised, and persecuted early Christian church needed reassurance that what the Roman world seemed intent on destroying would not be destroyed. John’s letter from Patmos offered that reassurance.

The church in my country knows nothing about persecution. Politically polarized Americans who pretend to be threatened by their ideological antagonists speak blasphemy against the blood of the martyrs when we compare ourselves to them. Outside of extraordinary and rare circumstances, no American Christian is ever going to have to choose between faith and a tortured, humiliating death at the hands of people who hate everything that the church represents.

And yet, this multitude is not irrelevant to us. The message is not a dated artifact from another, ancient civilization. We may be safe from persecution, but “the great ordeal” remains. If nature abhors a vacuum, the devil hates one even more. If governments will not do his work for him, he can always find other agents to try to dismember the body of Christ. Our contemporary church’s ordeal moves from the inside out like cancer cells. Like her people, the church suffers from narcissism, addiction to substance, obesity, anxiety, depression, and the arrogance born of fear. Since feeding us to the lions no longer amuses our world, Satan has a thousand intricate ways of encouraging us to devour one another.

Each of us lives in what Islam calls jihad - not the perverted “holy war” of politicians and gangsters, but the spiritual struggle with the demons who torment us, wherever we live. We suffer casualties in that struggle, both as individuals and as the church. Hearts are broken. Faith is lost. Families are destroyed and life becomes an option to be chosen, not a gift to be treasured. Our ordeal cannot compare to the suffering of Christians in China or Sudan, but Satan can use it to destroy our faith just as surely as if we were being threatened by Pilate himself.

There are many ways to come through an ordeal, of course. You can run away. You can pretend it isn’t there, and just go about your business. Or you can look it straight in the eye and stay faithful. That sounds like the course of the multitude in white who have known hunger and thirst during lives without shelter from the weather or the elements. These are they who have chosen to answer the call of the Lamb who is also their shepherd. The people who gather at the throne of God will be those who were not frightened away from Jesus –not by the world, not by the devil, and not by their own fears and doubts. For the ones who come out of that ordeal, John’s promise remains intact…

[for] the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

We have a savior who will not send us, but will guide us to the healing waters of life. We serve a creator whose own hands will caress our cheeks and wipe away all our tears. Guidance and healing; compassion and comfort: these are the “works” Jesus did in his life. This is the family business of God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer.

This is the family business inherited by the church.

And now, it’s time to get back to business.

Amen.

Greek Shepherds is from the collection of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association

St John the Evangelist at Patmos, Hans Memling, 1479 from the Christian Art Gallery of Art History Archive.com

Want to learn more about today's persecuted church? try The Voice of the Martyrs.

The photo of The Falls of the Youghiogheny (thats "YOCK-a-gainey" for you non-pennsyltuckian speakers. Just "YOCK" if you've ever been dumped into it from a rubber raft) - in any case, the photo was pulled from visitUSA.com.

Peace,
Pennsy

Wonderful... Dreadful...

2007-04-15T10:50:00.000-04:00

The Second Sunday in the Easter Season is traditionally the day when the church picks on Thomas. Sometimes, for a change of pace the sermon might be about how Thomas gets a bum rap with the whole “Doubting T” thing.

The appeal of this approach to today’s gospel is that you don’t have to deal with the difficulties of the first part of the lesson.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
John 20: 19-23

It was the end of the first day of the week – the first Easter day. There had been no chocolate bunnies, no hard-boiled eggs, and definitely no baked ham. There was plenty of fear, though. They had seen their rabbi arrested in the middle of the night, tortured, and executed. They had seen the public sentiment toward him turn on a dime as easily as a contemporary TV audience picks a new favorite reality show. Their bellies were full of the bitterness of their own betrayals. Their friend Judas was dead – Judas, whose sin each of them had mirrored in silence or denial. The long Sabbath had been spent in terrified anticipation. They were known throughout the city. Jesus’ persecutors certainly knew who they were. It was just a matter of time before each of them would be roused from sleep, and led one by one off to prison or worse.

On the morning after the Sabbath the knock came but it was not a Roman patrol. It was the women returning from the tomb with a crazy story. A few of the men ran to confirm what the women had said. They confirmed the worst. Jesus’ body was not there. The stories of angels and mysterious strangers in the garden were apparently not told or else not believed because they all returned to the locked upper room and spent the day in fear. Word on the street was that some lunatic had stolen Jesus’ body. The disciples had no doubts about who the authorities would blame for the crime. They were dead men locked in the upper room, just as surely as Jesus had been when they sealed him in his grave.

John’s gospel reports the next events with a strangely cool, clinical eye. He merely reports facts with none of the commentary we might expect from Matthew and none of the dramatic flare that characterizes Luke. There is no wind, no flash of light, no walking through walls. Jesus simply “…came and stood among them and said. “Peace be with you.” He showed them his hands and feet and the mortal wound in his side. John tells us that only then did their fear subside and they rejoiced. (So you see Thomas wasn’t the only one who needed proof before he could believe.)

The next thing that happened was truly extraordinary and very difficult to preach about indeed. Everyone knows Luke’s cinematic story of Pentecost – the upper room, the wind, tongues of flame, preaching in strange languages, 3000 converts. John’s story of Pentecost is very different. It does not begin with special effects, but with the joyful disciples and the risen Christ repeating his blessing on them – “Peace be with you.” He then pronounces the ten words that created the religion we know as Christianity. “As the father has sent me, so I send you.” With than brief pronouncement the disciples were transformed from followers into leaders. Once Jesus had traveled to their boats and work places and their homes and said “Come.” Now he said “Go.” They were no longer Disciples of Jesus – they were Apostles of Christ.

Jesus then breathed on them, just as God had breathed life into the mud and given life to Adam. Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit into them and gave them the wonderful, dreadful responsibility for carrying on his ministry, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”Jesus had proclaimed forgiveness during his earthly life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now he had given that responsibility to the Apostles.

The responsibility is wonderful because it allows the church to offer the peace of forgiveness to the repentant. It is dreadful because it commands the church to hold the unrepentant accountable for their actions. We do not have the authority to forgive – that belongs only to God. The authority we have is to bear witness to God’s forgiveness through the suffering and resurrection of Jesus. What we may not do is bear false witness to the unrepentant by proclaiming a forgiveness God does not grant. The sinner who will not release sins chains can never be set free by the pronouncement of the church. If a man or woman desires to remain a slave to their own sin, God will not force them to repent, and the church may not deceive them by claiming that God has done so.

In spite of all our most fervent prayers and best hopes, Jesus warns that in our ministry we will encounter some folks whose conversion we must simply leave to God. No heart can receive the peace of Christ until it has been softened or even broken by sin’s burden and God’s grace.

In John’s simple rendering of the day of Pentecost, Jesus reminds us that we are to walk humbly, just as he did. We are to tell the Good News to all who will hear it not only with our words, but also with our lives. We can offer the blessing of Christ’s peace as we rejoice with other sinners who have chosen to lay their sins on the altar of God’s love.

We can do all these things, but we cannot change people’s hearts.

My wife once worked for a veterinarian. One of the painful realities of animal medicine is euthanasia. Sometimes an animal is beyond the help of the doctor’s art. The only options are to let them suffer or to put them down. For the compassionate people who do this kind of work every day, that choice takes a toll on the heart. Mrs. P had worked and grieved for many years before coming to this epiphany – you can’t save them all, but you can love them all. When one of our fellow creatures is sick with disease, we may not be able to deliver them from their illness, but we can still offer them compassion and loving-kindness until their suffering is over. That is a gift we can always give.

Likewise, when one of our fellow creatures is sick with sin, we cannot deliver them with all our art and science. But thanks to the spirit of Christ in us, we can offer them compassion and mercy until God relieves them of their burden. This is the authority given to the Apostles. This is the ministry of the church. If we are to take up Christ’s mission, we are free to rejoice with the redeemed and grieve for the lost, but in imitation of our Savior we must love them all – even the Doubting Thomases.

But his story is another subject for another day. Maybe next year.

Amen

Illustrations in this post are the work of the Swiss artist Corrine Vonaesch.

Dead Among the Living?

2007-04-08T15:04:00.000-04:00

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
Luke 24: 1-5

Easter has always seemed to me to be the Christian High Holy Day. In a culture determined to leave no stone unsold, Easter has stubbornly resisted the commercial chains that bind Yuletide like Marley’s ghost. Bunnies, chocolate, a fancy hat here and there – pretty tame stuff when compared to Halloween, let alone Christmas.

So I have always felt Easter is a day to be taken seriously. Pope Gregory may have balanced time on the fulcrum of the nativity, but in my mind, history didn’t really turn the corner until the morning Luke describes in his gospel.

Everybody knows the story. It’s early morning. The handful of Jesus’ disciples who cannot hide their identities are hiding their faces. A small party of women makes its way to the Garden to complete Jesus’ burial preparations after his hasty entombment before the Sabbath. The last thing anyone expects is to find the door open and the chamber empty.

Each gospel tells the next part in a little different way. An angel appears. A mysterious gardener speaks. For Luke, it is this pair of men in dazzling clothes. Different renderings, but one common thread – no one on that Sunday morning, not even the people who loved him best, expected to find Jesus anywhere other than in that stone hole in the earth. No one knew Jesus better than they. These men and women had walked with Jesus, fished with him, eaten with him, and slept by his side under the desert stars. They accompanied his triumphant entry into Jerusalem and his agonized last steps to Golgotha.

If anyone on earth could make such a claim, these people were the experts. They knew what Jesus was all about and they knew exactly where to find him.

And the experts were wrong.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

A person would have to be crazy to do such a thing. Yet that is just what we do when we seek Christ. We read books. We sing songs. We go to lectures and sermons where experts quote other experts. We pray old prayers. We kneel in old buildings. We run through the maze of 2000 years of traditions, rolling away stones, looking for the secret place where the body of Christ is hidden.

He is not here, but has risen.

In John’s Easter story, Jesus warns Mary, “Do not hold on to me,” yet the church clings to the Jesus we think we know, even as the living Christ rolls away the stone door of our imagination and walks out to do his work in the world. We are like a child who runs with a fist full of sugar, only to find his palm sticky and empty when he finally opens it again.

We seek the living Jesus among the dead when we cling to our opinions as if they were God's truth.

We seek the living among the dead when church is the only place where we “feel close to God.”

We seek the living among the dead when we pass up the chance to visit a sick friend so we can rush home to pray for her.

The living Christ will not stay in the cool white tomb where we can roll away the stone when we want a little visit with Jesus. He is not there.

Christ is alive and well. He is weeping with the wife who can’t stop drinking and the husband who can’t stop cheating. He starves with the refugee and shivers with the homeless. He wakes sweating in fear next to the prisoner on death row. He bends his knee to scrub public bathrooms. He knocks at my door, or comes to me on the street, begging for the money that I refuse because I know it will only go to buy more beer. He lives with the sex offender down the street who dares not answer his door for fear of being evicted again. He stays awake with the child who dreads the creaking of floorboards and footsteps in the night. Jesus is comforting the dying. He is strengthening the weary. He is giving hope to the hopeless in every home, workplace, village, and web site on earth.

And yet I go looking for him in tradition and nostalgia.

He is not here, but has risen.

There is a lot to be said for Easter Tradition. Grandma in her lavender dress. Grampa getting up early to shine his church shoes. Mom helping us to dye eggs. Dad teaching me to tie my tie. But our memories – good or bad – are not alive. They are the dead skin life sheds like a snake in the sun. They give us comfort by reminding us of what once was, but they cannot replace the challenge of living with what is. Too often we look at life like those confused women staring dumbly into an empty tomb, searching for the living God who has better things to do than stay dead.

The long darkness of Lent is past. The light of the Easter Season is upon us. God forbid we should lose the one by clinging to the other. God grant us the courage to open our hands to share the sweetness of the love we have received so freely.

God bless the church and all creation on this Holy Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord.

Alleluia!
Amen!

The Second Day

2007-04-07T13:28:00.000-04:00

Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
Psalm 24:7

Holy Saturday may be the strangest day of the church year.

It is invisible.

Thursday evening begins what is known in the liturgy as the Sacred Triduum - the holy three days. The feast begins with Maundy Thursday, followed by Good Friday, and concludes with the Great Vigil of Easter. Saturday is as quiet as the empty tomb. There is a brief liturgy for the morning, slipped in like an asterisk.

There is an ancient tradition about this day, but in our damnation-shy culture, we have soft pedaled it into silence. Mysterious reference is made to this tradition in the Apostle's Creed.

He was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell.

When I asked my parents about this unlikely phrase, they explained to me that in Greek, the word hades also meant a grave, so the creed was just affirming that Jesus spend a day in a tomb. This interpretation is so prevalent that in many parts of the contemporary church, the phrase has been altered to "He descended to the dead." He went where dead people go. He was buried.

John Calvin, who had no modern scruples about Hell interpreted the tradition another way. To him, Christ's descent into Hell was the spiritual completion of his fleshly passion. Jesus' redemptive suffering continued after his earthly death when his spirit, forsaken by the father, descended to experience the tortures of the damned in Hell. In Calvin's eyes, this made the price of redemption all the more precious and elevated Christ's sacrifice to a cosmic scale.

The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (aka The Acts of Pilate) proposed another explanation - one that has been embraced by the church for centuries. The Gospel of Nicodemus records the testimony of three men raised from the dead who came to Jerusalem to bear witness:

We then were in Hades, with all who had fallen asleep since the beginning of the world. And at the hour of midnight there rose a light as if of the sun, and shone into these dark regions; and we were all lighted up, and saw each other. And straightway our father Abraham was united with the patriarchs and the prophets, and at the same time they were filled with joy, and said to each other: This light is from a great source of light. The prophet Hesaias, who was there present, said: This light is from the Father, and from the Son, and from the Holy Spirit; about whom I prophesied when yet alive, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, the people that sat in darkness, have seen a great light.

This is not the Hades my father told me about. These souls were with the damned in Hell. With nothing but their own righteousness to commend them, they could not enter communion with God in Heaven. They had died without the redeeming blood of Christ.

Many artists have taken up this theme.Fra Angelico shows the Devil crushed under the broken down gates of Hell where Christ has flung them. Jesus' outstretched arm extends deliverance the the faithful dead. Traditionally Adam and John the Baptist are first in line.

Pieter Huys renders the "Harrowing of Hell" on a grand scale. In a graphic hell-scape reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, Huys pictures the light of Christ piercing the darkness of Hell where some are redeemed, some are past hope, and some tortured souls cannot bear to even look upon the savior as he approaches.

Some of my favorite interpretations of the "Harrowing" tradition are those of the great German engraver, Albrecht Durer. One is startled by their intimacy. Here it is the demons who are tortured by Christ's holy presence. The redeemed stand triumphant, pulled from the mouth of hell by a savior who is as much action hero as spiritual deliverer.
Durer's Christ bears the banner of a victorious warrior, reclaiming Hell's hostages to lead them home. Adam, Eve, and the Patriarchs have the look of people shocked by their own liberation, while the Baptist appears to be explaining who and what this man Jesus is, even as he did in life.

I find the etching dated 1512 to be the most beautiful of all. The violence of the destruction of Hell's gates is evident as they lie smoldering, consumed by Hell's own fire. Demons cower helplessly as Eve gazes lovingly at Adam, while the first man watches in amazement as the goat skin clad Baptist, his hands clenched in prayerful gratitude is lifted by his wrists out of the fire and into the light.

What happened on that silent Second Day? Certainly Jesus' body spent it in the hades of Joseph's tomb. It is difficult to argue with Calvin's interpretation. It is carefully reasoned and theologically unassailable.

Still, the "Harrowing" is the most firmly rooted in tradition. The image of Christ reaching his powerful arm and lifting the faithful out of the fires of Hell is inspiring for two reasons.

First, it satisfies our sense of Justice. It is unimaginable that God would allow good people to suffer forever because of their ignorance of Jesus redeeming death and resurrection. Second, it assures us that there is no depth to which we can sink that is beyond the saving grasp of Christ. Not even the gates of Hell can separate us from the God who loves us and longs for our redemption.

It is Holy Saturday - the invisible holy day. The Lenten fast is not yet complete. The resurrection is not yet accomplished.

But in the silence, God's saving work through Christ has already begun.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

Silence is All

2007-04-05T22:21:00.000-04:00

It is finished
The last word spoken
The last drop bled out

Jeers
Sobs
Now memories on that bloody hill

Filthy battle ground where
No matter the courage of the hero
The Victor
Is always
the
same

He amazed me
Giving me away
Like a favorite toy
She is yours/you are his
And the man
Barely more than a boy
Shamed me with his tears
Mine, so long dried out
Used up to water the roots of a promise
The once tender shoot
Broken and brown
Trodden into the mud and the spit and the sweat

Even the man/boy was empty now
Standing silently by
As they untangled the empty bag where my son had lived
From the thorny branch where the wind had blown him
Pierced him through
Held him fast

Everything had been arranged before hand
Bribes paid
Arrangements
The Man brought his people and they carried the husk
Empty
To a stranger's grave
Empty
Where they laid my boy
Troublesome
Beautiful
boy

The voice had said
Salvation
called me
blessed

Poor Joseph.
His eyes burned with courage and fear
that night
when he told me
He would stay

we crossed the world a hundred times
the four
Man Boy Woman Donkey
tiny boats thrown about
by the storms of kings

Nazareth
Bethlehem
Jerusalem
Egypt

always returning
but never home
never quite home again

lost him in the temple
lost
wandering the city like a madwoman
a boy?
Have I seen a boy?
Look around you woman.
Can you count all the boys in Jerusalem today?

found him
where he should have been
Where he loved to be

Joseph
silently working
hard tired hands aching
swollen
His great chest rising and falling in his sleep
then falling
and rising
no more

It is time,
I would tell him
A mother knows

I will know
He would answer

Now we both
know

They did their best,
but the filth remains

the blood
the soil
soaking through the linen
I can see his face
through the linen

why

why did you do

all

this

?

The boy/man touches my arm
time to put out the lamp
time to step out into the night air
if there is any
While they roll the stone into place
The only sound that ripples in the night
even the wind is
silent

then they go
eyes lowered
touch
nod
nothing left to say.

the man/boy waits
my new boy indulging his new mother
I am
so very
alone.

My heart is so full that it wants to scream
but silence

silence

silence

is all

I turn from the tomb
He offers his hand
I take it

should I believe?
or is he another man sent by God
to break my heart?

I want to hear the voice again.
My husband
My son
My angel

but no more voices
not for me
his words shot through me like an arrow
"It is finished"

so it is
no more songs from the handmaid of the lord
silence

silence

silence

is all

oh my beautiful child, my boy, my gentle gentle son
what would i give to hear your voice again
but he has forsaken
both of us

tonight the sword has pierced my heart

but death is not

merciful

to mothers

You have the silence of the tomb
the peace of the grave
the end of the pain

I am left alone
in the silence

the silence

the silence

Do This in Rememberance

2007-04-05T06:34:00.000-04:00

Maundy Thursday

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
1 Corinthians 10: 14-17

Your body, broken for me?

It is too much, Lord. Too cruel. Too insane. I am not worth your suffering. Why not just let me go? Leave me to my fate and look after your faithful people, the ones who have not broken your heart with their stupidity and selfishness and arrogance and ingratitude? If this is what it takes to save my life, let me die. How could I live, knowing what it cost you?

And the Lord said…

“It is not for you to decide who is worthy and who is not. I have chosen whom I have chosen and paid what I have paid for my Father’s glory. What has been broken, has been broken in hate and fear. But what has been laid down on the altar was laid down in love and in hope. The Creator has offered a sacrifice to the creature – not to worship, but to teach you how to love the imperfect in yourself and in all my beloved children. In the breaking of the bread, remember that I was willingly broken for you. To bring you home.

Go and do likewise, in remembrance of me."

Most merciful God, as we begin this most holy of seasons, grant us the vision to see your broken heart at the center of the Eucharist. A heart broken by our own sin – but a heart you allowed us to break, so that we your children might enter and dwell in it forever.

Amen

The Judgment of this World

2007-04-04T23:44:00.000-04:00

Wednesday of Holy week

‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’

After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.
John 12:27-36
When we think of judgment we are used to thinking of images like the ones Michelangelo conjured – tortured souls filled with dread as they await the word that will cast them into the lake of fire. At the center of the terrible scene sits Christ, his mother at his side. One hand is raised over his head menacingly as he prepares to speak damnation. The other is held across his chest in an almost defensive posture. His body seems to recoil at the presence of those he is about to condemn as if he cannot bear them—or perhaps it is that he cannot bear to think of the fate they have chosen.

But there is a judgment that does not wait for the end of time. Our fallen world lives each day under judgment – not one that is proclaimed by Christ, but one that we choose for ourselves. Our gift of free will allows us to choose life. We are free to live as “children of the light.” As creatures made in the image of God, we have the capacity to point our will toward our creator.

There is another direction toward which we can orient our compass. We are also free to choose “the ruler of this world”. We are free to choose our own damnation by serving the creature rather than the creator. What did Jesus mean by the phrase “the ruler of this world?” Maybe he meant Caesar. He certainly ruled the world in which Jesus lived as much as anyone. Maybe he meant the Devil. Satan is often called the ruler of this world – the one who prowls like a lion looking for souls to devour. But I think the answer is much closer than that.

Humankind has been given dominion over creation. We have the freedom and the power to shape our world in ways Jesus could not have imagined in his father’s workshop. We are the ones who choose whom to serve, whom to deny, whom to love, whom to betray. We men and women are the rulers of this world, but only for a time. Our judgment is the accounting for our stewardship of the world with which we have been entrusted.

This judgment does not wait for Christ to burst through the clouds – it is a part of the fabric of creation itself. Humankind was created to live in Eden, but our world is no garden. We kill one another, starve one another, strangle whole nations with debts they can never pay, infect one another with diseases we can never cure. Our worship of ourselves – the rulers of this world – creates imbalance in creation. The universe itself is out of joint when the creature does not submit to the creator. Faced with so cosmic a calamity, no creature has the power to set things right again. Only the intervention of the one who spoke the cosmos into existence can do that.

And tomorrow, the church will remember the three days that gave the rulers of this world the chance to set things right again. We remember the night that the Word who was with God and who was God became flesh. We remember how he grew into a man, a friend, a teacher. We remember how he gave himself into the hands of the rulers of this world and how they tried to destroy him with whips and nails and vinegar.

And we remember how on the third day, Christ Jesus defeated even the grave, raised his hand and sent death itself into the fiery pit, snatching away its sting forever.

Our judgment is all around us. Everywhere we look in our broken world, we see evidence of a universe out of joint. Creation seems to be at war with itself.

In spite of all this, we have reason to hope. We need not choose damnation. We need not stumble in the darkness. Our God has given us the freedom to choose. We can believe that sound in the night to be thunder. We can call it the voice of a magical creature. Or we can recognize it for what it is – the echoes of the glory of God as the Holy Spirit sets about the long work of transforming and perfecting a creation that has lost its way.

Tomorrow, Maundy Thursday we will break bread in remembrance.

Tonight, may God grant that we remember why and for whose sake the “bread” was broken in the first place.

Amen

Among the Olives

2007-03-31T10:55:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow the church remembers Jesus’ strange procession into Jerusalem on the back of a colt. We call it Palm Sunday. We pass out long stringy fronds. We fold them into green crucifixes which will dry and turn brown in the heat of the summer. The scripture reminds us of a joyful time - a public affirmation of Jesus’ identity that infuriated what we used to call “the establishment”. Most strange of all perhaps, we remember Jesus words about stones with voices…

When Jesus had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

"Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out." Luke 19:29-40

Along with the triumph of Palm Sunday, our liturgy remembers the Great Tragedy that is to come. The hosannas of Palm Sunday are changed into the bitter recollections of Passion Sunday…

Jesus came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial." Then he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial."

While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, "Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?" When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, "Lord, should we strike with the sword?" Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, "No more of this!" And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple police, and the elders who had come for him, "Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!" Luke 22:39-53

“This is your hour.” Those are terrifying words. A few days before, the hour had belonged to Jesus, so much so that even the stones were prepared to cry out with joy. But the morning of Palms had become the night of the Passion. The hour now belonged to the people who hated Jesus and his radical ministry. In a few hours, the filthy, tortured savior of the world who was with God and who was God would utter a loud cry and breath his last to the sounds of laughter and mockery from many of the same strangers who had cried hosanna. Such is the protean nature of humankind. Such is the steadfast nature of our savior.

The week the church calls “Holy” is full of echoes. Every time I visit it, I hear new ones. This morning, I heard the echo of olives.

The olive tree has been celebrated and referenced in the cultural works of every society. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven". Aldous Huxley wrote: "…I like them all, but especially the olive. For what it symbolizes, first of all, peace with its leaves and joy with its golden oil." Federico Garcia Lorca wrote: "Angels with long braids and hearts of olive oil." Lawrence Durrell wrote in Prospero's Cell, "The entire Mediterranean seems to rise out of the sour, pungent taste of black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat or wine, a taste as old as cold water. Only the sea itself seems as ancient a part of the region as the olive and its oil, that like no other products of nature, have shaped civilizations from remotest antiquity to the present."
The Olive Tree World

When Jesus needed courage, he went to the Mount of Olives to pray. He seemed to find both peace and strength in the company of their ancient healing branches. I am reminded of the Druids who found God in the oak trees of old Britain before the Christians came and “civilized” them. This is strange business - mystical trees, healing oil, leaves of victory and peace. It sounds a little magical, a little to Wiccan for our contemporary taste – as if Jesus were some sort of witch who looked for guidance in the mysterious powers of nature.

I’m not sure that is the lesson of Olivet, but there is no question that Jesus consecrated this ancient place with both his prayers and his blood. In a week of violence and pain, he found himself returning to a place where “the richest gift of Heaven” blossomed and bore fruit.

Deep within the madness of Holy Week, the trees of Olivet grow like a secret hiding place. We may not be able to travel to Gethsemane and walk the Via Dolorosa as Jesus did, but in our own solitude and contemplation, we can take a moment to seek God's will among the olives. Like Jesus, we can find strength in their limbs and peace in their shade. We can find healing in their oil. We can kneel on the consecrated ground where Christ knelt and give our fondest hopes and our greatest fears to God. Among the olives, there is comfort in knowing that an ancient and healing God is at work in our lives, continuing the sometimes painful work of creation and redemption, even in the midst of violence and betrayal.

Here amid the olives, as the terror of Friday morning approaches, as the terror of our own passion haunts us with fear and anxiety, we can taste the fruit of the olive and pray with Jesus…

Thy will be done.

May God grant us the courage to walk with Christ in the coming week, and all the days and nights of our lives.

Amen.

Now and Not Yet

2007-03-25T11:18:00.000-04:00

We live in a strange region of the kingdom of God – a region of Both/And - a region of Now and Not Yet.

Have you ever fallen asleep in the middle of the day, then awakened at twilight? You are in your clothes, on top of the covers. Your eyes are bleary. The windows are barely lit from outside. The clock reads 6:00 or 7:00. The house is quiet, and you have no idea if the world is going to sleep for the night or if you have just slept for fifteen hours and the dawn is about to break.

Our region of the Kingdom of God is like that twilight place. We are both awake and asleep. We live under both law and grace. We are both condemned and saved. We act with the fearful humility of convicted criminals and the joyful confidence of the children of the King.

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me: the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise. (Isaiah 43: 16-21)

Like Pharaoh’s charioteers, we are doomed to fail. All our best efforts, our education and training, our genius and skills, our perseverance and our good works will allow us to achieve things that the world calls great, but they will not save us from the grave whose walls will close over us like the sea over the horses and riders of Egypt. No matter what honors we achieve in this live, all of us will ultimately be “quenched like a wick.”

The student of history will find countless reasons for despair. Why bother? What good will my striving do? Nothing changes. Nothing matters. We are tempted to lament with the author of Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity.”

But Isaiah tells us not to be deceived by the things we think we know about what is possible. “Do not remember the former things… I am about to do a new thing.” Even as we stand on a precipice at the edge of the valley of death, the prophet tells us that we are also at the threshold of the impossible. That dim window is not twilight, but daybreak. We have not awakened just in time to see the world sink into darkness, but we have been roused to witness the coming of God’s new day. Enemies will worship together. God will make safe paths through the dangers of our world. Healing waters will flow in the most broken desiccated heart.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.

May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

(Psalm 126)

The Psalm remembers the day the prophet promised – the day God delivered the children of Israel from captivity and they returned to the home that their grandparents remembered with tears by the waters of Babylon.

The people grieved for their lost homeland, but they did not despair – they did not give up faith in God. In spite of their tears, they still sowed hope. In Babylon, they were slaves, just as they had been in Egypt. All the glories of David and Solomon could not keep their ancestors from coming full circle back to chains and whips in a foreign land. But in spite of their circumstances, God’s people held fast to their faith in the covenant God made with Israel – “They will be my people, and I will be their God.” So they sowed hope – seeds of faith in the midst of captivity. They had failed to keep up their end of the bargain and had suffered the consequences of that failure, but God’s steadfast love had not failed. The tearful seeds of faith sown in Babylon produced the sheaves of joy that the former captives carried back to Zion.

…Even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phillipians 3: 4-14)

No one understood the region of Now and Not Yet the way Paul did. In his letter to the Church at Phillipi he described his younger self as a man standing proudly on a mountain of his own virtues. His pedigree was flawless, his education elite, his behavior blameless. Then one day he looked down and saw that the mountain on which he stood was actually a pile of trash. Instead of a heroic vista overlooking God’s kingdom, Paul was standing in a dump, surrounded by rotting food and broken clay pots of his own making. Most of us would grieve to realize that all we had worked so hard to achieve in life was nothing but a pile of garbage, yet Paul considered it his great joy. He had encountered the living Christ face to face and been transformed into “a new thing.” He realized that nothing he had achieved by his own effort could compare to the prize he had received from God in Christ Jesus. Next to the promise of resurrection, and eternal life with God, Paul’s own achievements were worthless.

And yet…

And yet Paul did not stop “straining forward.” Blessed as he was by salvation, he did not consider it a reason for smug self-satisfaction. He did not wait passively for resurrection, he pressed toward it like a runner forcing herself past her threshold of endurance to sprint the last hundred yards of a marathon. Paul saw his life’s trophy case turned into a box of junk, and in response he ran even harder, not for his own glory, but for the glory of God. The Apostle from Tarsus had changed and also not changed. He was still the tireless over-achiever, the brilliant scholar, still the zealous messenger of God. But he was also the humble servant of Christ who had taken away all that he had, and in return, given him everything.

He began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country for a long time. When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants in order that they might give him his share of the produce of the vineyard; but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Next he sent another slave; that one also they beat and insulted and sent away empty-handed. And he sent still a third; this one also they wounded and threw out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they discussed it among themselves and said, ‘This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When they heard this, they said, “Heaven forbid!” But he looked at them and said, “What then does this text mean: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people. (Luke 20:9-19)

The incarnation and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus define this region of Both/And in which we live. We are the stewards of the vineyard, tending land that does not belong to us. All our achievements are because the creator of the vineyard has given us permission to be here. We owe the rightful owner everything, and yet paying our rent still chafes us. We look for loopholes in the lease. We ignore the letters and phone calls. We curse the bill collectors and send them away empty handed. In our own encounter with Christ, we meet the heir of the vineyard face to face, and we have a choice. We can welcome him as both our rightful master and our honored guest, or we can reject him – casting him out of our home as if we could make him disappear with harsh words and cast stones.

We are free to make that choice, but we are not free to choose the consequences. They will trip us up like a rock on the Damascus road and crush us like a boulder rolling down the mountain of our own achievements.

Life in the region of Now and Not Yet is not simple and it is not easy. We are tempted to choose one or the other – to deny what is to come in order to satisfy our enjoyment of what is now – or to deny what is before us in anticipation of what is to come. It is tempting, but it is not God’s will for us to live in either of these half-worlds.

The world of Now is the world where God’s work is done. Now is the place where children are raised, prisoners are visited, the hungry are fed, and the stranger is welcomed. Now is the place where each of us must run our race, straining for the goal like Paul did.

Not Yet is the world where God’s promise comes to completion. It is the place where we are given rest from our labors, and perhaps given new work to do – not creating rubbish, but treasures in the kingdom of Heaven.

The journey of Lent is coming to a close. In a few short days, we begin the week that the church calls Holy. It is tempting to succumb to despair as we retell and relive the journey from Palm Sunday to Golgatha. The journey is so tempting and so terrible that many are tempted to avoid it altogether. We wait for Easter morning, put on our lovely hats and our beautiful ties and parade off to church to celebrate the victory without acknowledging the battle.

Either choice denies the wholeness of who we are and who God would have us become. There is not one Key to the gates of the Kingdom, but two. One is the key of Now. The other is the key of Not Yet.

May the Holy Spirit grant us the courage and strength to hold them both as we build God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven – Both/And. Now and Not Yet.

Amen.