“Living from the Core”

Sixteen years ago, I ruptured a disc in my lower back, so my doctor sent me to a physical therapist to help heal the disc and relieve the pain I was having. The physical therapist looked at the MRI of my back and said, “Yep, you have ruptured your disc. So, here is what we are going to do. We are going to strengthen your core because if the core muscles of your abdominals, hips and back are strong then you will be better balanced when you are walking and moving, and you will have better support for your back.”

          Sounded great to me until we began doing core exercises: laying on my back and raising and lowering an exercise ball with my legs, standing on one leg for balance while moving my other leg in front, side, back, side, front called a star, and an exercise called the plank. It took awhile to figure out how any of these were going to strengthen my core and heal my back, but over time as I did them slowly, intentionally and with discipline over the next several weeks and months the pain ended, and I noticed I was better balanced when I walked, and I was sitting straighter. I, also, came to realize that all the movement and power of my body originates in the core whether swinging a golf club, a tennis racket, running, jumping, or even just walking. The core is the place of balance, a stable center of gravity, good posture, and protection for the spine because it is the center of our bodies and if we want to live physically healthy and active lives then we live from our core outward.       

          The same can be said about the rest of our lives as well. When Jesus warns his disciples and the crowd gathered around him to beware of some of the Pharisees and scribes saying, “Listen to what the scribes and the Pharisees teach because they sit on the seat of Moses, but do not act as they act’ he is teaching them to live from their core, live from the God center of their lives unlike what the Pharisees and scribes were doing. 

 Now, I will tell you the Pharisees and scribes Jesus was criticizing were not every Pharisee or every scribe. Jesus was criticizing those who they thought they were exceptional, who thought they were religious role models, spiritual superstars, paragons of piety, clergy celebrities, God’s own Dream Team. Those Pharisees and scribes were more than happy to have the place of honor at banquets, the best seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings of people in the marketplace that showed they were respected and honored as people who were superior to everyone else. These were the ones who sat on the seat of the great prophet Moses as if they had been hand picked by God like Joshua was to be teachers and prophets in the mold of Moses. They dressed as wise teachers of Torah with broad Tehillim which, were small leather boxes containing portions of Torah, broadly across their foreheads or arms and long fringes on their prayer shawls, so everyone could see just how pious they were. They were the height of arrogance and they had sold their integrity for wealth, status, power, and celebrity.

Now, Jesus is not taking cheap shots at these Pharisees and scribes only because they say one thing and do something else. Rather, because they are so caught up in their self-justifying, self-righteous, oppressive rule making and barrier building behaviors they blind themselves to the way God is actively working in their midst through Jesus and they lead God’s people away from God. Those Pharisees and scribes have forgotten that honesty is telling the truth to ourselves and others and integrity is living that truth from the center of your life outward.

Unfortunately, God is no longer at the center of their lives. Jesus is not the first to criticize those teachers, priests and rulers of Israel who have divided hearts and who lead God’s people away from living with God at the center of their lives. Every true prophet of ancient Israel including Micah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were called by God to criticize priests, teachers, and rulers for being hypocrites, who sell their integrity for money, for power, and for status. They were also called to criticize judges who take bribes instead of judging fairly and equitably without regard for status or power. The clergy fail to teach the Torah and instead turn worshipping God into a business, motivated by money and celebrity while community leaders consider justice to be totally repulsive preferring instead to neglect the most vulnerable and powerless in favor of ingratiating themselves to the wealthy and powerful while mouthing pious platitudes and clichés assuming they will be secure forever their status and power in society. Sounds kinda contemporary does not it.

Of course, as the prophets point out if the people do not change the direction they are going, then God will change all of it for them by allowing Israel to be like a field plowed under and Jerusalem a city that is leveled until the noise of buying and selling in the marketplace, the sounds of children laughing and playing in the streets, the songs of lament and praise in the temple are all stilled, so that the silence of the living God is matched by the silence of a city that has died.

           Jesus is calling and teaching his followers and everyone in the crowd to also change the direction of their lives by centering their lives on God and God’s Torah and not by looking at those Pharisees and the scribes, who are hypocrites, as role models.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas says, “Show me how a person behaves, in the smallest, most everyday practices of life, and that tells you all you need to know about what is most valuable in that person’s life.”

So, instead of being arrogant, seeking status, power and wealth, Jesus recommends humility. “The greatest among you will be your servant,” he teaches. “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus does this to remind his followers and the crowd and us that God does not call us to follow Christ for privilege, rather we are chosen to serve. We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful. We are called to center our lives in God and live from our center the authentic life of the faithful people of God.

An authentic life lived according to God’s Word made flesh and God’s word in scripture. When Jesus affirms what the Pharisees and scribes are teaching, he is affirming that they are indeed teaching Torah. But what Jesus is really affirming is the authority of scripture as the rule for our faith and life and the witness without parallel of God’s self-revelation to human beings down through centuries and revealed in Jesus Christ. When Jesus tells us we have a teacher he is pointing us to himself. Jesus is our teacher because Jesus lives what he teaches, he perfectly embodied everything he taught. Especially, what it means to let go of pride and arrogance, so one might serve God and God’s agenda. Jesus said, “I am the way” and he pointed us to that way when he rejected sitting at the head table, when he rejected the tempter’s offer of power and status, when he tied a towel around his waist to wash his disciples’ feet like a servant, and when he gave up the power to avoid suffering on the cross, and instead willingly offered his life on the cross of death, so we might have life and have it in abundance.

          One of the ways we answer Jesus’ call to serve God is by serving others like Paul Farmer. Paul Farmer grew up in a trailer park in Florida, went to school at Duke University and Harvard Medical School, and ended up with an M.D. and a Ph.D. He could’ve decided to practice medicine in an elite and lucrative practice anywhere in the country, but in his mid-30s he was working in Boston for a third of the year and living in a church rectory in a slum, while the rest of the year he worked without pay in Haiti, providing medical care to poor farmers who had lost their land to a hydroelectric dam. In 1987, he co-founded the nonprofit Partners in Health with Ophelia Dahl, Jim Jong Kim, Todd McCormack, and Tom White that by 2003 was treating 1,000 patients per day in the Haitian countryside, free of charge, and was also working to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis among prisoners in Siberia and in the slums of Peru. Partners in Health are a community health care model that has reached 3.1 million patients in clinics throughout the world, has provided 2.1 million women with check-ups, and have home health care workers visit 2.2 million homes in some of the poorest communities in Rwanda, Peru, Sierra Leone, Kazakhstan, and the Navajo Nation.

Of course, not all of us feel called to medical missions or missions in foreign countries, but we can live our God centered lives outward in faithfulness, which sometimes leads to unexpected moments of clarity, compassion, and grace.

Susi Lockard wrote in the May–June 2008 issue of The Upper Room about how when her children were infants and, “I rocked them to sleep, I sang to them and prayed for them. I remember holding my 14-month-old son and praying for his future relationships with his roommates, his friends, his wife. For years, I came back to the same prayer. When my son went off to college, I could not wait to hear about his roommate. “Well, Mom, he is a recovering drug addict. He was sent here for a year of rehabilitation and is studying art, taking part in sports, and trying to re-enter normal life.” I felt as if God had let me down, and my disappointment came through. “I do not understand. I have prayed for 18 years for you to have a good roommate who would have a good influence in your life.”

My son, wiser than I, answered, “Maybe his mother was praying the same prayer.” Susi’s son knew that he had been nurtured all his life and now had a chance to nurture a young man with serious problems. Susi thought her son needed a strong Christian friend; God knew that her son needed to be a strong Christian friend.

 “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted,” may we all strive to live from the core, from the God- center of our lives.

 

Sixteen years ago, I ruptured a disc in my lower back, so my doctor sent me to a physical therapist to help heal the disc and relieve the pain I was having. The physical therapist looked at the MRI of my back and said, “Yep, you have ruptured your disc. So, here is what we are going to do. We are going to strengthen your core because if the core muscles of your abdominals, hips and back are strong then you will be better balanced when you are walking and moving, and you will have better support for your back.”

          Sounded great to me until we began doing core exercises: laying on my back and raising and lowering an exercise ball with my legs, standing on one leg for balance while moving my other leg in front, side, back, side, front called a star, and an exercise called the plank. It took awhile to figure out how any of these were going to strengthen my core and heal my back, but over time as I did them slowly, intentionally and with discipline over the next several weeks and months the pain ended, and I noticed I was better balanced when I walked, and I was sitting straighter. I, also, came to realize that all the movement and power of my body originates in the core whether swinging a golf club, a tennis racket, running, jumping, or even just walking. The core is the place of balance, a stable center of gravity, good posture, and protection for the spine because it is the center of our bodies and if we want to live physically healthy and active lives then we live from our core outward.       

          The same can be said about the rest of our lives as well. When Jesus warns his disciples and the crowd gathered around him to beware of some of the Pharisees and scribes saying, “Listen to what the scribes and the Pharisees teach because they sit on the seat of Moses, but do not act as they act’ he is teaching them to live from their core, live from the God center of their lives unlike what the Pharisees and scribes were doing. 

 Now, I will tell you the Pharisees and scribes Jesus was criticizing were not every Pharisee or every scribe. Jesus was criticizing those who they thought they were exceptional, who thought they were religious role models, spiritual superstars, paragons of piety, clergy celebrities, God’s own Dream Team. Those Pharisees and scribes were more than happy to have the place of honor at banquets, the best seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings of people in the marketplace that showed they were respected and honored as people who were superior to everyone else. These were the ones who sat on the seat of the great prophet Moses as if they had been hand picked by God like Joshua was to be teachers and prophets in the mold of Moses. They dressed as wise teachers of Torah with broad Tehillim which, were small leather boxes containing portions of Torah, broadly across their foreheads or arms and long fringes on their prayer shawls, so everyone could see just how pious they were. They were the height of arrogance and they had sold their integrity for wealth, status, power, and celebrity.

Now, Jesus is not taking cheap shots at these Pharisees and scribes only because they say one thing and do something else. Rather, because they are so caught up in their self-justifying, self-righteous, oppressive rule making and barrier building behaviors they blind themselves to the way God is actively working in their midst through Jesus and they lead God’s people away from God. Those Pharisees and scribes have forgotten that honesty is telling the truth to ourselves and others and integrity is living that truth from the center of your life outward.

Unfortunately, God is no longer at the center of their lives. Jesus is not the first to criticize those teachers, priests and rulers of Israel who have divided hearts and who lead God’s people away from living with God at the center of their lives. Every true prophet of ancient Israel including Micah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were called by God to criticize priests, teachers, and rulers for being hypocrites, who sell their integrity for money, for power, and for status. They were also called to criticize judges who take bribes instead of judging fairly and equitably without regard for status or power. The clergy fail to teach the Torah and instead turn worshipping God into a business, motivated by money and celebrity while community leaders consider justice to be totally repulsive preferring instead to neglect the most vulnerable and powerless in favor of ingratiating themselves to the wealthy and powerful while mouthing pious platitudes and clichés assuming they will be secure forever their status and power in society. Sounds kinda contemporary does not it.

Of course, as the prophets point out if the people do not change the direction they are going, then God will change all of it for them by allowing Israel to be like a field plowed under and Jerusalem a city that is leveled until the noise of buying and selling in the marketplace, the sounds of children laughing and playing in the streets, the songs of lament and praise in the temple are all stilled, so that the silence of the living God is matched by the silence of a city that has died.

           Jesus is calling and teaching his followers and everyone in the crowd to also change the direction of their lives by centering their lives on God and God’s Torah and not by looking at those Pharisees and the scribes, who are hypocrites, as role models.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas says, “Show me how a person behaves, in the smallest, most everyday practices of life, and that tells you all you need to know about what is most valuable in that person’s life.”

So, instead of being arrogant, seeking status, power and wealth, Jesus recommends humility. “The greatest among you will be your servant,” he teaches. “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus does this to remind his followers and the crowd and us that God does not call us to follow Christ for privilege, rather we are chosen to serve. We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful. We are called to center our lives in God and live from our center the authentic life of the faithful people of God.

An authentic life lived according to God’s Word made flesh and God’s word in scripture. When Jesus affirms what the Pharisees and scribes are teaching, he is affirming that they are indeed teaching Torah. But what Jesus is really affirming is the authority of scripture as the rule for our faith and life and the witness without parallel of God’s self-revelation to human beings down through centuries and revealed in Jesus Christ. When Jesus tells us we have a teacher he is pointing us to himself. Jesus is our teacher because Jesus lives what he teaches, he perfectly embodied everything he taught. Especially, what it means to let go of pride and arrogance, so one might serve God and God’s agenda. Jesus said, “I am the way” and he pointed us to that way when he rejected sitting at the head table, when he rejected the tempter’s offer of power and status, when he tied a towel around his waist to wash his disciples’ feet like a servant, and when he gave up the power to avoid suffering on the cross, and instead willingly offered his life on the cross of death, so we might have life and have it in abundance.

          One of the ways we answer Jesus’ call to serve God is by serving others like Paul Farmer. Paul Farmer grew up in a trailer park in Florida, went to school at Duke University and Harvard Medical School, and ended up with an M.D. and a Ph.D. He could’ve decided to practice medicine in an elite and lucrative practice anywhere in the country, but in his mid-30s he was working in Boston for a third of the year and living in a church rectory in a slum, while the rest of the year he worked without pay in Haiti, providing medical care to poor farmers who had lost their land to a hydroelectric dam. In 1987, he co-founded the nonprofit Partners in Health with Ophelia Dahl, Jim Jong Kim, Todd McCormack, and Tom White that by 2003 was treating 1,000 patients per day in the Haitian countryside, free of charge, and was also working to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis among prisoners in Siberia and in the slums of Peru. Partners in Health are a community health care model that has reached 3.1 million patients in clinics throughout the world, has provided 2.1 million women with check-ups, and have home health care workers visit 2.2 million homes in some of the poorest communities in Rwanda, Peru, Sierra Leone, Kazakhstan, and the Navajo Nation.

Of course, not all of us feel called to medical missions or missions in foreign countries, but we can live our God centered lives outward in faithfulness, which sometimes leads to unexpected moments of clarity, compassion, and grace.

Susi Lockard wrote in the May–June 2008 issue of The Upper Room about how when her children were infants and, “I rocked them to sleep, I sang to them and prayed for them. I remember holding my 14-month-old son and praying for his future relationships with his roommates, his friends, his wife. For years, I came back to the same prayer. When my son went off to college, I could not wait to hear about his roommate. “Well, Mom, he is a recovering drug addict. He was sent here for a year of rehabilitation and is studying art, taking part in sports, and trying to re-enter normal life.” I felt as if God had let me down, and my disappointment came through. “I do not understand. I have prayed for 18 years for you to have a good roommate who would have a good influence in your life.”

My son, wiser than I, answered, “Maybe his mother was praying the same prayer.” Susi’s son knew that he had been nurtured all his life and now had a chance to nurture a young man with serious problems. Susi thought her son needed a strong Christian friend; God knew that her son needed to be a strong Christian friend.

 “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted,” may we all strive to live from the core, from the God- center of our lives.

 

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“Serving Others by Opening Doors”

Moses stands staring across the Promised Land, seeing the homes, villages, cities and territories the tribes of Israel will inhabit and live within, seeing, perhaps, the vision of the future God intends for the people Israel and the whole world. This vision from the top of Mt. Nebo is a gift of God’s grace to Moses because he will not step across the Jordan River with the Israelites. This is as close as he comes before he dies and is buried in, as scripture tells us, an unknown place.

          Oh, the people will mourn his death for thirty days before they are led through the waters of the Jordan River by their new leader Joshua to begin the next part of their life’s journey, even as they begin receiving the land promised to them by God through their ancestors Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, and their children who are the twelve tribes of Israel.

Yet will they comprehend everything Moses has taught them? Will they for example, remember the lessons taught them as they wandered with their parents and grandparents for forty years in the wilderness? Will they remember their wandering was because of the choice their grandparents made to reject the land of promise and reject God by refusing to enter the promised land the first time? Will they comprehend how God’s Torah, God’s teachings that Moses taught them in Sinai and repeated as they stood outside the promised land, opens up the promises of God, explains God’s intentions, lays out the way for God’s people to live together, saying what is necessary to realize the promise of blessed abundance and a sustainable life lived on the land on which they will dwell? Will they comprehend that Torah does not guarantee land and security and blessing, it just invites and offers it by describing the path toward it? Also, will they comprehend the kind of leadership Moses embodied as he led a rag tag people-some of whom were Hebrews and some of whom were not Hebrews, but all of whom were also slaves In Egypt and who decided to get out of Dodge when the getting’ was good, walking through the waters of the Red Sea which becomes the dividing line separating their past from their future? Did they grasp the significance of this leadership that had to deal with complaints, whining, threats, and rejection while at the same time Moses was leading these people as God called and taught him to do?

From my perspective I doubt they did and I say this because none of the commentators and scholars I have studied and some of the textbooks on organizational behavior I have read and used as well all the other books on leadership I have studied ever discuss Moses’ leadership, except those who wrongly credit Moses for creating the pyramid organizational scheme for modern corporate and church leadership that has been largely found ineffective and useless in this our time of shifting from modernity to post-modernity, which has been opening our eyes to the reality that the world is pluralistic and not monolithic, and that the church’s crisis of a lost identity and a loss of purposefulness is the result of our not knowing who we are or why God created the church.

Yet, Moses’ leadership was quite extraordinary because at a time of absolute power and control invested in one person, who could wield that power and control in service to their own selfish agenda, Moses did not do that. Rather, Moses was faithful to God’s agenda. He listened to the needs of the people and he encouraged and developed new leaders to help in that mission, mentoring the leader who would take over after he was gone. He listened as the people  vented their disagreement with the direction they were going and he listened to their alternatives, while still seeking ways to bring the people to the place of well being and health and wholeness by teaching them God’s way to live, so everyone in the community would have enough. He also did not allow the community’s failures to keep the community paralyzed and stuck because he reminded them of their history and God’s vision for their future and their children’s future and their children’s children’s future, inviting them into the epic quest of teaching the rest of humanity scattered throughout the world how abundant, tranquil and complete life is when communities live according to God’s teaching. Also, he showed the people with his life the persistent faithfulness of never giving up on trusting and following God, who never gives up on them.

While Moses is celebrated and revered as the prophet par excellence, that is until Jesus shows up, and is remembered as Israel’s first great leader, I believe he is really an example of the servant-leader, one who isn’t concerned about having power over people, but one seeking to do good for people and opening doors for people to walk through into the future God intends for them.

This is clear when we look at the 11 characteristics servant leaders possess, compiled by Dan Wheeler and John Barbato based on the work of Robert Greenleaf and Larry Spears. The first characteristic servant leaders have is a calling, the place where one’s passion and the needs of the community or world meet, compelling that person to act for the benefit of other people. For Presbyterians, call is what happens when a person with abilities gifted to her or him hears God calling them to use those abilities to serve God’s agenda in the world by engaging God’s mission of peace, of health, well being and wholeness for every person through the vocation God has equipped them to do. Certainly, Moses was called by God to use his strength for doing right and challenging the authority of the oppressor and to keep following God’s agenda, while letting go of his own self-interest for the sake of others.

Second, servant leaders actively listen, seeking first to understand and letting the other person know they are valued and heard, then encouraging the people to share their ideas.

Third, servant leaders express empathy by walking with other people amid life situations which may be mundane or challenging, but always understanding what is happening in the lives of others and how it affects them. Fourth, servant leaders seek ways for healing to occur, have an awareness of self, other folks and the world around them, by creating an environment encouraging emotional mending that is part of the community they serve’s healing to wholeness.

Fifth, servant leaders have a keen awareness of what is happening around them and this awareness informs their opinions and decisions. Sixth, servant leaders are persuasive. They persuade people to act, rather than using the power of authority to force people to do what the leader wants them to do. Just as God is persuades people to go in the direction God wants them to go, so do servant leaders. God does coerce and neither do servant leaders. Rather, the servant leader offers compelling reasons for people to follow their direction. Seventh, servant leaders conceptualize the world, events, and  imagines the possibilities for the future then encourages people to dream great dreams, opening up the creative process to everyone in the community and teaching the people to avoid getting bogged down in the weeds of day-to-day- realities and operations.

Eighth, the servant leader has the foresight to recognize the consequences of choices and to envision the future by seeing the patterns in the environment and anticipating what the future will bring.

Ninth, the servant leader is a good steward of the community’s resources by preparing the community to reach out into the larger community to serve the health, the well-being and sustainability of the whole community, knowing that the health and well-being of community of faith is directly affected by the health and well-being of the entire community. Tenth, the servant leader is committed to guiding people to develop their abilities as fully as possible and see them grow because the servant leader values each person and believes each person is essential to the growth of the community. This is especially important as they seek to mentor the future leaders of the community, particularly those who will take leadership positions like Joshua did or like Jesus’ disciples will do following his ascension.

Finally, servant leaders build community by fostering the unity of the community into a cohesive oneness that lives with integrity, so that who they say they are is reflected in what they do and how they live. In other words, they walk the talk.

However, as much as Moses is a great example of servant leadership, it is Jesus who is the ultimate example and, indeed teaches the twelve disciples that if they want to be great, they need to be the servant of all because he did not believe equality with God and all the power such equality might be his to use was something to be grasped, but was, instead, something to let go, so he could come to serve God by serving humanity, which is the reality of the two great commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength, and being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Jesus is the ultimate servant leader, who, as William Blake wrote, opens the doors of perception, so everything will appear to women and men as it really is, that is the infinite, the full reality of God’s presence and grace permeating all life.

If the church, the universal Christian church, is to emerge from its current crisis of lost identity and purposefulness and if the Presbyterian Church specifically desires to really live into the Reformed tradition’s watch words of ‘being reformed and always willing to be re-formed, re-shaped, by the Holy Spirit” then we might want to pay close attention to Moses and Jesus’ servant leadership practices because in doing so, our lights will shine, revealing more clearly that we are the image and likeness of God dwelling within a creation God called good and complete. And then, we too shall dwell in the peace we are seeking.

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A Rule of Love

          A scribe walks up to Jesus and asks, “What is the first commandment?”

          “The Lord is our God, The Lord alone. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (“Matthew 22:39, John 15:17 NKJV)

          And, as one rabbi taught, “Everything else is conversation.”

          Jesus places the Ten Commandments into one inseparable relationship with his answer. Every image we have of the Ten commandments depicts two tables. On one table is how we are to live our life before God and the other is how we live together as a community. Yet, the two tables are inseparable. One cannot love God without loving one’s neighbor and one cannot love one’s neighbor without loving God. Choosing to emphasize one at the expense of the other is contrary to what God intends the people of God to do.

Yet too often we do just that. Indeed, many Christians create displays of the ten commandments like the one Roy Moore did when he was running for public office in Alabama. He created a display that weighs 5,280 pounds or about five hundred pounds per commandment, so when he brings this monument to public appearances it needs to be loaded on the back of a flatbed truck. Joshua Green, writing in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago, notes that whenever the truck returns to Alabama, “a 57-foot yellow I-beam crane that spans the ceiling of the Clark Memorials warehouse drops down to retrieve the Rock from its chariot, and even this one — a five-ton crane/ — buckles visibly under the weight.”

“I know,” as Professor Tom Long writes, “that Jesus once scolded the Pharisees for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, but somehow this I-beam-bending version of the Decalogue seems way out of proportion.”

          But it makes the perfect point about the way the Ten Commandments have become a heavy burden in our contemporary culture. Every conversation I hear about them has some commentator wagging a finger at another person saying, “thou shalt not!” as if the commandments were created by God to be a moral imperative, a checklist for deciding whether someone is getting into heaven or not, rather than being the structure forming and shaping a community of health and well-being. Of course, for other folks, the commandments are a legalistic framework used to place heavy yokes publicly on the necks of rebellious children or a society out of control. I mean listen to the words of Luther’s Small Catechism, “God threatens to punish everyone who breaks these commandments. We should be afraid of His anger because of this and not violate such commandments.” (“The Ten Commandments – Bible Hub”)

I suppose all these understandings of the Decalogue makes a two-and-a-half-ton rock sitting on the bed of a truck seem to be about a perfect symbol for what the Ten Commandments might be. Especially, since we seem to have forgotten that the Babylonians’ gods were heavy idols that had to be trucked around, “These things you carry,” Isaiah chided the Israelites, “are loaded as burdens on weary animals” (Isa. 46:1).

          The problem is that all the ways we use the Ten Commandments or the ten words as they are referred to in Hebrew scripture fails to recognize they are about liberation and are God’s rule of love. They are given as an expression of God’s liberating the people from slavery out of the love God has for people. Indeed, the reading begins with, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of slavery.” God liberates the Hebrews from slavery, then freely provides them all they need for life, including how to be free and loving as a community of health, well-being, mutuality, loving-kindness, and wholeness. Indeed, as Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament scholar, points out, “these ten commands are to be the bedrock of God’s intention for Israel, from which all other commands in Israel is understood to be derivative. “

          Also, these commands are created to establish a social rule contrasted with that of pharaoh, so that the people do not attempt to replicate the governance of pharaoh with its coercion, brutality, dehumanization of other peoples, and exploitation of other peoples within the community. Thus, this community of God’s people are to practice God’s justice instead of pharaoh’s injustice and to establish neighborly well-being instead of coercion, fear, and exploitation.

 You see, God does not intend to re-enslave people with these commands, but to set them free as if to say, “you are free not to need any other gods or even to make 5,280-pound images of God to truck around. You are free to rest on the seventh day because you, your animals, your servants, your land all need rest from productivity, so you can all be healthy and enjoy a long life. You are no longer at the mercy of an oppressor working you to death and you are not something to be used up or consumed until there is nothing left of you. You, the powerless, are free from the rapacious capacity of the strong because I, the Lord, have set limits to the acquisitive capacity of members of the community. You are free from some members who want to take what another member of the community needs for life.

 You are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols made of stones or wood; free from solving every problem with violence and you can instead look for ways to solve problems with other people and tribes, so everyone wins and gets what they need for life because there is abundance for all. You are free to find ways to sustain life for yourselves, for neighbors and for all creation. You are free from having to covet what your neighbor has because you both have everything you need for life and, by the way, you are free from having to compare yourself with your neighbor or find your self-worth based upon what you or your neighbor owns or can do because you are loved just as you are and you are free to celebrate other people’s gifts because you have valuable gifts, too.

          Or as another theologian has written “You want to make an idol of this God, an image of bird, snake, tree, pole, money, fame, or pleasure? This God will have none of that because this is the God who brought you out of slavery. You want to trivialize the name of this God by slapping God’s name onto any fool thing you already want to do, thereby baptizing your idiocy with a divine seal of approval, thereby enslaving oneself in the bondage of self-satisfied power. God will have none of that either, for that is also a kind of slavery from which you need to be free.”

“God says, I want you free, because I am in the freedom business. All the ways you can imagine falling back into slavery and death, God is there to call you out to freedom and life, because that is who God is. God is life and freedom. It is God who has brought us out of the house of slavery and God can surely do so again, bringing us the lasting freedom of grace.

          Not only that, but God’s good news of life should be like music with the Ten Commandments the dance steps that set us moving together, as Tom Long has suggested. They are supposed to be our wings, so we might soar on the wind of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the reasons Luther, also, suggested to change the language of the commandments from “thou shalt not” to more positive language that evokes the freedom God’s love intends for us to enjoy, so instead of “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor” perhaps ‘find joy in telling the truth, being honest and upholding the goodness and good name of your neighbor as if pronouncing a blessing upon your neighbor.”

          Also, if we want to pass this good news of freedom and life to our children, then we are going to have to be creative; more creative than hanging the Ten Commandments on a wall, memorizing them in order or hauling them around on a flatbed truck. I suggest we create stories because as Robert Wuthnow writes, “”Stories do more than keep memories alive. Sometimes these stories become so implanted in our minds that they act back upon us, directly and powerfully.”

          Wuthnow tells the story of Jack Casey, a volunteer firefighter and ambulance attendant who, as a child, had to have some of his teeth extracted under general anesthesia. Jack was terrified, but a nurse standing nearby said to him, “Don’t worry, I’ll be here right beside you no matter what happens.” When he woke up from the surgery, she had kept her word, and she was still standing beside him.

This experience of being cared for by the nurse stayed with him, and 20 years later his ambulance crew was called to the scene of an accident. The driver was pinned upside down in his pickup truck, and Jack crawled inside to try to get him out of the wreckage. Gasoline was dripping onto both Jack and the driver, and there was a danger of fire because power tools were being used to free the driver, the whole time, the driver was crying out about how scared of dying he was, and Jack kept saying to him, recalling what the nurse had said so many years before, “Look, don’t worry, I’m right here with you, I’m not going anywhere.” Later, after the truck driver had been safely rescued, he was incredulous. “You were an idiot “he said to Jack. “You know that thing could have exploded, and we’d have both been burned up.” In reply, Jack simply said he felt he just could not leave him.

This is how the commandments are supposed to work, as Tom Long says it, “We have the experience of being cared for, the experience of being set free and loved, preserved in a story. Then, comes the life shaped ethically around that story. A nurse saying, “I’ll be right here beside you” becomes the action of a man risking his life for a stranger because he knows in his bones that he just cannot leave him.”

 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you . . . out of the house of slavery” prompts us to live lives shaped by the love and freedom created by God,” asserts Tom Long.

And I got to believe living God’s joyous freedom and love held within the Ten Commandments is much better than carrying around tons of dreary duty, just hoping the wheels do not come off the flatbed truck of our lives.

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“In Whom Do You Trust?”

The 1920’s were a roaring time of new ideas, new wealth being amassed as the stock market climbed higher and higher, new music of jazz set the tone and beat, as did the flapper and the new dances of the young. This was a time of rapid change and growing optimism as many people in America sought to move from World War to a time of unending abundance and peace.

            Chicago was caught up in the rapid changes and seeming growth without end as it expanded its limits by swallowing up the little towns and villages near it. What had been prairie before were now the fertile fields where houses called bungalows sprang up like daffodils in spring. In one small town, a high school was established even before there was a building constructed to house it.

            Caught up in the frenzy of the moment and sure that this prosperity was a firm fixture of their new reality, the men and women of a church that had been around for about 50 years saw this as a time of opportunity and challenge, so they began building. They built a chapel, a gymnasium, theater, kitchen, Sunday school rooms and more. Every single square foot was used by the high school as well as by the members of the congregation because it was growing and growing.”

             They were like the Hebrews who quickly packed the belongings they could carry and accepted all the gold, jewelry, and ornaments of their Egyptian neighbors then left Egypt and the Pharaoh’s mud pits, practices of genocide, taxes and oppression to follow the pillar of clouds marking God’s presence and following Moses to this new land of promised milk and honey.

            Life was very good! The excitement of leaving and the thrill of freedom made them giggle and find new ways of expressing this uncontainable joy! They would have their own land and their own vineyards, and they would rule themselves. The nightmare of Egypt was over! Everything was going to be different and wonderful! Life was going to be filled with abundance and peace. God is good!

            Then came the crash of 1929. All the money being made from the buying and selling of stocks came to a screeching halt. The unending boom of the stock market crashed and splintered like a mirror dropped on the floor. The bubble finally burst. A good many people lost everything. All their money, their homes, and their way of living. A lot of companies went out of business. People lost their jobs in massive layoffs and plant closings. A long drought and poor crop rotation and soil conservation in Oklahoma and Texas finally hit its peak. Drying the land out so much that prime farmland became just dust and blew away.  Farmers couldn’t grow crops, and many lost their farms and had to move. It was a very hard time. It was a time of dislocation and disorientation as people struggled to make sense of all that was happening to them.

Even the church that had grown with such optimism and accepted the challenges and opportunity offered it during the fleeting and illusory prosperity of the years before suffered. Many of the women and men were unemployed. Some were barely hanging onto their own homes while others were scrambling to stay afloat. The trustees, who take care of the church buildings, openly despaired because they didn’t think they could make the mortgage payments used to finance the new building.  They saw no way out of this terrible situation. Many men and women of the church felt real despair and were afraid and didn’t know what to do because they thought the church might have to close.

            The Hebrews reached the Red Sea and saw how wide it was and how deep it was then turned around to see the Pharaoh’s army of chariots gaining on them. For generations they had been taught, like you are, that they were God’s chosen people, people of God’s promise, people who were going to participate in God’s future for the world, and people who were to be blessing to the world. Just days before they witnessed God acting on their behalf by causing plagues upon their oppressors and giving them Moses to lead them out of Pharaoh’s land toward the land God promised to them. But, as they camped by a place called Migdol next to the Red Sea, they saw the sea and they saw the army bearing down on them. They saw no way of escaping the army. Chariots move faster than people on foot. This was not what they expected to have happen. Yes, the pillar of smoke was behind them, shielding them from Pharaoh’s army at least, maybe for a night, but clouds cannot stop spears. Water vapor is no hindrance to a horse and chariot. How could a future that seemed so bright and promising just the days before turn into the nightmare they plainly envisioned? This was not supposed to be happening to them! They were God’s chosen people! How will they bless anyone if they are destroyed?

            In the despair and fear of this dislocation and disorientation of the way they thought the world was going to be, they cried out to the Lord to help them and to save them. They spoke loud cries of anger, of why, and of pleading their helplessness and their vulnerability. They implored the Lord to act to save them. “How can I praise you if I am in the Sheol?” they cried. The also cried out to Moses, “What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt. Didn’t we tell you to leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? That we’d be better off not changing or taking this way through the wilderness to the land promised us? “

But, Moses said, “Don’t be afraid, stand firm and see the deliverance that the Lord will do for you today.” All they had to was to pray to God and trust that God who heard their cries of anguish in the mud pits of Pharaoh’s oppression and who brought them this far would save them if they continued following Moses along the way Moses was taking them.

            They women of the Chicago church gathered and wondered aloud what would happen if everyone in the church prayed together at 10 o’clock each morning? What if everyone just stopped what they were doing at 10 in the morning and prayed for God’s help, with this overwhelming debt and the chaos of the times.

            The Session thought it was a good idea and so did most of the congregation. So that’s what they all did. But that’s not all they did. They had ice cream socials, Wednesday night suppers, buy a book for the library drives, and such, but mostly what they did was pray and ask God to help them get through and overcome this trouble.

            You know, the Hebrews, also, just didn’t stand around watching the army coming at them. They were not paralyzed in their fear and despair. They saw Moses stand up on a big Rock and spread out his hand and lift the big rod God gave him and right before their eyes the sea parted and there was a dry path to walk over to the other side. All the Hebrews did just that. They all walked, maybe a few ran, to the other side even knowing the Pharaoh’s chariot army was beating down on them. In the end, the Hebrews were all on the opposite shore of the sea and were safe when Moses raised his arms and rod, and the waters came back together again. They were safe. The situation that seemed so hopeless was transformed into a new situation with hope for a future of well-being in this new land Moses was showing them. They could see at that moment the real possibility of a new way of life because the danger, the trouble was gone, and they weren’t afraid anymore.

            The same thing happened in that Chicago church. All those ice cream socials and library book drives and suppers were more successful than anyone imagined was possible. Money even seemed to come from the most unexpected places. They were able to pay off the mortgage ahead of schedule. To celebrate this new orientation of their lives the people of the church gathered in a great worship service of celebration and praise.

“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him,” sang Moses and the Hebrews at their worship service and celebration.

For the congregation this was a defining moment of their life together. Older members would retell this story of when “we all prayed together at 10 am every morning” whenever new troubles threatened the church. They repeated the story to the next generation because it confirmed their identity as part of this congregation who cried aloud to God and who God had answered by bringing them out of trouble to give them a new future.  You see, the people of this congregation knew deep within them that they didn’t do the impossible, God did. All they did was raise their hands and voices in prayer, then do what they could do and trusted God to help them.

Just the way the Hebrews had done. The Hebrews knew it was not Moses’ arms outstretched or the rod he held that parted the sea and made a way out of no way for them. It was God who did it. The rod and Moses spreading his hands was just a way for God to do what God intended to do just as the suppers, ice cream socials, and library drives were just a way for God to work through the people of the congregation. God didn’t need to have Moses hands to part of the sea and God didn’t need the people to have dinners and things, God could have saved the Hebrews without Moses’ help and could have saved that congregation without their help, but God doesn’t choose to do that.

            If you think about all of the Lord’s saving acts in Scripture-sparing the first born of the children of Israel, parting the sea, giving manna in the wilderness, Jesus being born and growing up in a family, going out among the people and teaching and leading people-were all done to build a deep and intimate relationship with people, so they would learn to trust God and by trusting God they will know that God is always with them, hearing cries for help, working on their behalf, so they might have everything they need to live in God’s kingdom of peace.

God wants persons to know they can live their lives depending upon God’s presence as a refuge in a hostile world, relying on God’s promises to act, God’s compassion and unfailing love without worry. anxiety and fear. God wants all people to know the Lord is God of life and wills life for all people. God wants all people to realize that the power to deliver people comes from God working through people, by transforming their efforts aimed at making life possible during the good times and in those times of despair, trouble, dislocation, and disorientation and accomplishing the impossible by creating a new possibility for life. God wants persons to know they can be communities of faith; communities of trust-trusting God with their very lives and their futures.

May we be those people.

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All Land Is Sacred

Where, O God, can I flee from you?

          Where, O God, can I go and hide from you?

          These are the psalmist’s questions reflecting a radical monotheism that is relational. This is a song of a relationship between psalmist and God that covers the entire breadth of human existence in terms of God’s presence, knowledge and power, the giving and nurturing of an awareness of the Lord as the total environment of life as well as the teaching and confessing that “my times, O God, are in your hands,” according to James Mays’ commentary. This intensely personal devotional song portrays the human self in the light of the work of God as well as God’s work and person as the foundation for the human person’s life. This is not an abstract or systematic writing about who God is and what God does, rather it is the intimate relationship where the psalmist is completely known by God. The Hebrew word translated as “know” indicates this knowledge of God is intimate and deep from the moment of being formed in the womb through birth and into the long daily routines of awakening and sleeping, going out from home, and coming back home, working, and resting and eating. Nothing is hidden from God and there is nowhere to go to get away from God. The psalmist is never free of God; however, neither is he a prisoner of God. Rather he is free to live for and with God, as Mays describes this relationship.

          Reading this personal psalm of God being the totality of a person’s life and the encompassing environment for all life contrasts and highlights the foolishness of Jonah, who goes to great lengths to hide from God because he refuses to be the prophet to Nineveh that God has called him to be. Instead, he runs in the opposite direction, tries to hide from God aboard a boat, then in the middle of storm convinces the crew that they can calm the storm by throwing him overboard into the sea, which they do. Then, in the sea he is swallowed by a great fish, as described in Hebrew. It is while he is in the great fish that Jonah prayers a prayer of thanksgiving to God for saving his life, which is humorous because he has been trying to hide from God, trying to hide from the Creator of the Universe. Of course, Jonah’s prayer is answered, and the great fish vomits him up onto shore where he begins walking to Nineveh to be the prophet God has called him to be, although he complains to God throughout his time of ministry in Nineveh.

          So, when Jesus couples Jonah’s story with Jesus’ death and resurrection it is a sign that God’s transformative love is a call to remember how near we are to God’s love and remember the power of God to transform life as well as remembering the unconditional nature of God’s love to forgive and embrace those who change the direction of their life even if it means God seeking us in the depth of our sorrows and our desire to hide ourselves away from everything and everyone, including God, to lift us up out of our miry bog and to place us on a dry, level plain, so we might continue to live for and with God in a greater awareness of God’s encompassing presence and trusting God to sustain life now and for eternity.

          What the psalmist is also calling us to realize with the focus on geography, the focus on God being the total environment of life and the focus on God’s participation in our own personal creation is that all life is sacred and connected to each other in relationships of interdependence where what happens to one member of creation impacts and influences other members of creation.

This is profoundly true in our relationship with the land that we are tasked by God to till, tend, and protect and to care for, so it remains able to nurture life and sustain life and which various passages of scripture point out is often a mirror of our relationships within families and within whole communities.

          Cain’s slaying of his brother Abel is but one example of this mirroring effect. Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain is the oldest and is a farmer while his younger brother Abel is a keeper of sheep. They both bring to God offerings from their respective vocations. Abel’s is accepted by God while Cain’s is rejected by God. Cain is angry, dejected and is warned by God that “sin is prowling like a wild animal waiting to overcome you, but you must master it.” Thus, Cain has a choice either to master sin or be mastered by sin. Still feeling the rage of his anger, Cain invites his brother into a field and kills him, then walks away. However, the voice of the dirt that absorbed Abel’s blood cries out to God with its own sorrow and grief for the blood spilled in violence because anger, resentment, and rejection had all grown to such overwhelming proportions that Cain could not master sin, but instead sin mastered him. It mastered even his response to God’s question, “where is your brother?” and his retort, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Keeper, the word has more meanings than one who keeps. It means “to exercise loving care for, to watch over, to guard, to preserve, to protect, to tend to the needs of another, to save a life, to sustain life.”

          This was the same word “shamar,” in the Hebrew, used in Genesis earlier to describe God’s expectations for the man and woman and their descendants to keep the garden, keeping it able to be fruitful by their serving the land and all creation as they tend to the land’s needs and protecting the land from those elements that might destroy it, making the land unable to be productive and unable to sustain life.

Now, as the land that absorbed Abel’s blood cries out in sorrow and grief, the fractured and broken relationship of the brothers was, also, given voice as the land’s pollution from violence mirrored the pollution of sin Cain experienced. In the same way that the mark on Cain signified his identity as one who ended life, the infertility of the sacred land, scarred by the blood seeping into it, identifies it as land unable to nurture life or sustain life.

          Similarly, Walter Bruggemann, Old Testament scholar and theologian, makes this same point about land mirroring the broken and fractured relationships within families and within the community in his work “The Land: Place as Gift, Promise and Challenge in Biblical Faith” using the themes of contamination of the land, of excluding people from the land and possessing land to fulfill selfish economic actions without regard for the community, and of the defilement of the land. He begins, of course, with Moses’ farewell speech about faithfully living God’s teachings and God’s way of life as the foundation for staying long in the land promised and given to the Hebrews while being unfaithful to God’s way is the basis for the Israelites being exiled from the land and losing the land. Thus, the way the community lives its daily life in all their various relationships impacts what happens with the land.

          I doubt that we are strangers to this conversation if we consider how brown field industrial sites have physically divided communities and economically divided communities into those who have more than they need for life and those who do not even have the necessities needed to sustain life. Not to mention making the contaminated land unable to be used for the nurturing of life and the sustaining of life. We might also hear in this conversation the call to reflect about how brown field industrial sites also violates the command to love your neighbor as yourself and violates God’s call to keep the land. Or, perhaps we might consider the way “mountaintop removal strip mining and the accompanying filling up of valleys with the debris from mountain top  is the most destructive way to mine coal, creating unhealthy living conditions for people in nearby communities, eliminating not only  forests and streams but altering a whole ecosystem that can never be restored as well as forever changing the communities where people live,” according to Kentuckians for Commonwealth. How does this action comport with loving our neighbors or keeping, tending, or lovingly caring for creation as God has called humankind to do?

          How does any of the environmental disasters we have witnessed whether from the BP oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, Love Canal, the Chernobyl or the Three Mile Island disasters, or the pollution of rivers by coal mining companies, to name just a few, square with an understanding of our responsibility for the keeping and caring and protecting of the land given to us by God, not to mention the psalmist’s declaration that God is the total environment for life?

          As the Seasons of the Spirit commentary reminds us, our choices have consequences for the land. Sacred ground can become scarred ground, whether by shedding blood or by poisoning the soil. So the question for Christians today in light of climate change, Arctic permafrost melting and rising ocean levels is, will we hear the voice of the land crying out to us for restorative justice and peace or will we keep pouring the blood of human violence, contamination, defilement and greed into its mouth, so that we do not have to hear the land’s voice crying out to us or to listen to God teaching us the way for life to be nurtured and sustained?

          How we answer that question will have consequences for how much longer the land will nurture and sustain life for us, our children, and all future generations.

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“On the Way”

A number of years ago at a conference Eugene Peterson told the story of the day he was in his backyard with his lawnmower tipped on its side. As he tells it, “I was trying to get the blade off, so I could sharpen it. I had my biggest wrench attached to the nut but could not budge it. I got a four-foot pipe and slipped it over the wrench handle to give me leverage, and I leaned on that still unsuccessfully. Next, I took a large rock and banged on the pipe. By this time, I was beginning to get emotionally involved with my lawnmower.”

          Until his neighbor walked over and said that he had a lawnmower like Peterson’s once and that, if he remembered correctly, the threads on the bolt went the other way. So as Peterson says, “I reversed my exertions and sure enough, the nut turned easily. I was glad to find out I was wrong.” Peterson was saved from frustration and failure and may never have gotten the job done no matter how hard he tried doing it his way.

          Psalm 121 is like the neighbor who notices we are going the wrong way on our lifelong journey of faith and says gently and in a quiet voice, “hmm, er, I think you might want to try going the other way. Here let me show you.”

          The very first few lines set us on the right path with the observation that the pilgrim looks to the hills, the mountains, the horizon, the path in the distance and wonders, “from where will my help come? Where will my guidance, my protection, my guardian of life come from? In ancient Israel, pilgrims would have looked to the hills wondering where the thieves, the desperadoes, the robbers, or the lions were going to come from. Traveling on foot to Jerusalem was a perilous journey, which was why pilgrims traveled in large family groups and village groups as a measure of protection against the perils of roaming, hungry wild animals, or roving bands of greedy, hungry wild humans. We hear this concern and anxiety clearly in the opening sentence, but later in the psalm we will hear about other possibilities for injury for people making a pilgrimage like spraining an ankle from a loose stone, sunstroke from walking out in the open grassland and desert areas in the hot sun as well as the fatigue and anxiety of trying to reach one’s destination may grow to pressures that effect our emotional well-being-described by ancient writers as Moon stroke-which is by the way where we get our notion of lunacy; Luna being Latin for moon.

          Of course, we could update these possibilities for injury with a person with handgun or piece of explosive turning the travel plans of three hundred air passengers into disaster. Diseases like Ebola and cancer can break through our pharmaceutical defenses and invade our bodies with crippling effect, even diseases we thought were no longer a threat can make a comeback such as the plague or smallpox. An accident in a car or a fall from a step ladder can change our plans for a Saturday afternoon quickly.

          Yet, the possibility for injury is not the only thought on the minds of pilgrims when they look to hills and mountains, since Palestine like other ancient places were overrun with popular pagan worship and much of this pagan worship was practiced on hilltop shrines, grottoes, even groves of trees were planted as places for worship of various gods and goddesses. Within these hilltop shrines were places where sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided, so people would be lured to engage is acts of worship that enhanced fertility of the land by mimicking the acts of Baal and other pagan gods and goddesses. Some acts of worship would make you feel good, protect you from evil with spells, rituals, enchantments against the perils of the road. As Peterson writes in his “Long Obedience Toward the Same Direction,” “Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go to the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god. Are you fearful of the malign influences of moonlight? Go to the moon priestess and buy an amulet. Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the mischief of demons.”

          While we might scoff at the ancient travelers for their superstition, what about the advertisers promising to delay aging creams, pharmaceuticals that will alleviate a wide range of disease symptoms and shouldn’t we ask our doctors to give them to us or cool body sculpting processes to give you the body you want without any effort? The hucksters promoting life-changing products on television, internet sites or magazines at Wegman’s check out counters. The politicians whose mantra is “trust me I’ll protect you and your family,” while passing laws that will destroy whole communities, who will traumatize children and parents and are busy raising money to stay in office by repeating those same lies repeatedly.

          Our anxieties, fears, diseases, trials, tribulations and traumas are real and we should be crying out, “Help,” but if we focus on the hills or what’s on the hills to be our help, our sources of guidance, the protector and guardian of our lives and all life we will be let down, we will be betrayed because the hills and mountains for all their quiet strength and beauty are just hills and mountains and for all the promises of safety and protection against the perils of our life long road trip the priests, priestesses, con artists and hucksters are very just lies or as the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “Truly hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains.”

          Our friendly, quiet neighbor Psalm 121 speaks clearly and simply where our help will come from-the maker of heaven and earth. The Lord. The Creator of all life in the beginning and each day. It is not in worship of flowers, stars, mountains, or organs, in religions that make the best of what it finds on the hills. It is in the Lord who creates life, not in creation because the Lord is always present. The Lord does not doze off or leave us to our own devices or allow evil to overcome us. God does not get tired and disgusted by our meandering obedience and leave us to fulfill some false prophecy in the Middle East. God’s interest in us does not wax and wane in response to our spiritual temperature. This was in part the point of Jesus asking his disciples while standing among the hilltop shrines above Caesarea Philippi, “who do people say I am?’ Do the people get that I am God with them? That I have come to heal them with God’s grace? This is, also, the point the psalm is making: that the Lord is with us, guarding us in our beginnings and our endings, when we leave home, and we arrive at our destination. Sun, moon, trees, rocks, and human created idols have no power. They are not able to inflict evil upon us because God guards us from every evil. The promise of Psalm 121 is not that we will never have trials or troubles, fears or not ever stub our toes, but that none of this-no accidents, no distress, no disease, no person will have the power to separate us from God and God’s purposes in us. This is the basis for the petition in the Lord’s Prayer. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” and it is a prayer that is answered every day, sometimes several times a day in the lives of those who walk in the way of faith.

          What Psalm 121 invites us to do is not only to take our fears, our trials, troubles, trauma, the accidents, the anxieties of life seriously, but to take God more seriously as the source of life, the guardian, the protector of our life and all life by daily living God’s path of life where we affirm the each step we walk, each breath we take we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know and celebrate God is our bridge over life’s troubled waters and telling the Christian story by describing the God who preserves, accompanies and keeps life, so that whatever we experience we know God is with us as Luther wrote in his hymn, “And though this world, with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.”

          Life is created and shaped by God and the life of faith is a daily exploration of the constant and countless ways in which God’s love and grace is experienced. This is the blessing of Psalm 121. May it be so for you as it has been for me.

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Voices of Silence from the Edge

“Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence.”

 Silence, as Paul Simon wrote, can be a cancer preventing people from hearing each other, may be the oppression that keeps criticism and truth telling stomped down, or can be the way prophetic words are seen and heard and acted upon in places of poverty, or can be the realization of the truth contained within the mystic Rumi’s question, “Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places.”

              Yet, silence may be the very thing we crave when the legion of voices taunting us, screaming at us, confusing us, never leaving us alone, until we are driven to such distraction and mind fragmenting chaos that people want nothing more than to drive us out to the edges of the community and chain us to a tree in the wilderness where death permeates every breath we take.

          Silence may also be the very thing we crave when fear, the exhaustion of running away from both success and failure drops us to our knees in the far edge of a desert wilderness where only a small tree or a cave may shelter us from the harshness we experience. The wilderness is a place where we need food and water to nourish us and where we need the strong encouragement to stand up and go and live our purpose.

          Silence may also be the very thing we crave when the disorientation of grief over an ending sends us out into the wilderness of discernment, the wilderness of thoughtful reflection, so we might find the anchor we need to stop feeling as though we are free floating like an unmoored boat bobbing in the sea. Or we feel lost as if we are meandering in a maze.

          This silence we crave is found in the wilderness, whether an actual place or simply time spent in solitude away from the daily hassles, but wherever it is, it is on the far edge of life because that is where God finds us, nourishes us, encourages us, heals us then leads us back to the place where we will live our life’s purpose, our reason for existence, our new why.

          Both Elijah and the man from Gerasene experience God’s actions and voice on their far edge and both are transformed by God’s actions, and both are sent back to their communities. While their stories end up being remarkably similar and give us some ideas about our relationship with God and how God may be or will be acting in silence on the far edges of our lives, their stories have very different beginnings.

Elijah had just proven to 450 Baal prophets that Yahweh, the Lord of the universe is the only real God in existence. Baal is nothing more than an idol, incapable of creating or sustaining life. As Jeremiah would later taunt the Judeans, Baal is just like a tree or a rock, nothing more. Elijah does this by challenging the 450 Baal prophets to a sacrificial worship contest to see whether Yahweh or Baal could light a huge bonfire altar with sacrificial animal on top. Of course, Baal does not light the fire even with the Baal prophets dancing around it. Then, Elijah repairs the altar to the Lord using twelve large stones to represent the tribes of Israel, digs a trench around the altar, filling it with a years’ supply of seeds. Finally, Elijah places the sacrificial animal on the wood invites all the Israelites gathered on Mt Carmel to pour water on the wood three times before praying for the Lord to set the wood on fire and consume the sacrifice, so the people would know that the Lord is God. Of course, the Lord does light the wood on fire by a lightning strike. Elijah has won the debate! The people fall on their faces to worship God. Then, we are told Elijah solidifies the win by killing all 450 Baal prophets in accordance with Deuteronomic law that says the community must execute any prophet that leads God’s people to worship idols. Afterwards Elijah tells King Ahab the three-year drought will be over, so get ready to celebrate God and God’s goodness. However, Ahab goes to tell Queen Jezebel, who introduced Baal worship, how Elijah proved Baal was no god and how he killed the Baal prophets. Jezebel sends out the message to Elijah,’ you killed my prophets, so I’m going to kill you.”

Now, I don’t know what Elijah thought was going to happen, but clearly being killed wasn’t it. Maybe, he expected Jezebel to turn toward God and give up worshipping Baal. That might explain him being so overwhelmed by fear that he runs and runs and runs until he ends up in the Exodus wilderness of Mt. Sinai on a journey that mirrors the Israelites journey from slavery and genocide in Egypt through the wilderness to the land of milk and honey, the land of abundance of life for all. Like the Hebrews, the wilderness will be the place where God teaches Elijah to trust God. First by trusting that God will feed Elijah, that God will give him sustenance for the 40 day and night journey just like God gave the Hebrews food and water during their 40-year journey. More importantly, Elijah will learn that God comes not in the grand displays of earthquake, wind, and fire as Moses experienced, but God may also come in a fine, sheer silence. Coming to the prophet with a word of vocation, with a call to go back to God’s people to anoint one person for prophetic ministry and anoint another for a ministry task.

 Elijah learns to trust that God is the God of life, but that sometimes it is valuable to seek a critical distance-to take a step back- from our fears and the distractions of our lives, so we might slow down, be still, be calm out in a place of a fine, sheer silence and listen for God’s voice speaking to us the wisdom of God’s unconditional love calling us to go and live our life’s unique purpose among God’s people, all of whom also have a unique purpose given them by God, because doing so roots us in God’s garden of life where our lives will blossom fully just like the peonies and the lilacs do.

Elijah ran away from his community, but the Gerasene man was driven away by his community. He was chained and shackled naked in the tombs because the Gerasene community was afraid of him and thought him to be a wild, dangerous beast unfit to live within the Gerasene community because he was possessed by a legion of demons that tormented him so fiercely that demons drove him to break his chains and shackles and run out into the wilds, into the far edges of life. Indeed, his life was on the far edge, and it really doesn’t matter whether we say it was because of demons possessing him or a mental illness possessing him the effect on the man and his community was the same.

Now before arriving on the Gerasene shore, Jesus had traveled across a storm-tossed lake in a boat the disciples feared would be capsized by the violent waves crashing in over them. So, of course, in their fear they woke Jesus up and said, “Master, we’re all going to die” or words to that effect. Naturally, Jesus stands up, stretches, calms the storm, silences the waves of the lake, and rebukes his disciples for their lack of faith, their lack of trust in him.

When Jesus steps ashore he is confronted by the demoniacs holding the man prisoner within his own body and mind. Like he did with the storm Jesus calms the storm-tossed man by commanding the demons to leave and go into some pigs. The demons do this and, as we know, they jump off a cliff and die. When Jesus calms the storm inside this man, he brings him into the fine, sheer silence of God.

 But Jesus actually does more than that. You see, Jesus heals the man so completely that the people of the village do not recognize him anymore. They heard the witness of the swineherds, who told them about what Jesus had done with the demons and the pigs, so they came to see for themselves. When they arrived, they saw Jesus and this stranger sitting together. The man was healed, healthy, made whole and was now wearing clothes and listening to Jesus. The people of the community have no idea who the man is until they are told. Indeed, the man is so transformed the villagers are afraid of him and of Jesus, who sent the demons into the pigs.” I mean if Jesus can do that, what else might he do? What might he do to us,” they say. So out of their fear, they drive Jesus away.

Standing on the shore in silence, the man wants to come with Jesus, but Jesus gives him a calling to go, leave the far edge of life for village of Gerasene, so he can tell the villagers and everyone else he meets about what God has done for him. He, a Gentile, is to be a witness for Christ. He is to tell the story of how God healed him, made him whole without first asking if he was worthy enough to be healed or if he was among the “right” people. He was healed to wholeness by God because he was a person in need of healing. God reached out to him in unconditional love to heal and make him whole. This was the story he was to tell the villagers and everyone else. This was his purpose for life, his reason for existing, his why.

The Gerasene man and Elijah point us to the value of silence, stillness, of taking a step back to create a critical distance for thoughtful reflection and response as the way to stop running through the mazes of a harried and fearful life and instead focus on our faith in God, our trust in God. Trusting God will calm our storm-tossed lives, will nourish us, will heal us and make us whole, so we will be ready to go back to our community with a purpose for life, with the reason for our existence. When we fully live our God given purpose our lives will fully blossom and show people that God is the God of life for every person and all creation.

As a poet writes, “God’s wisdom is the voice of unconditional love from the edges of life, not heard by many, responded to by less, and followed by few. Therefore, be aware, listen and hear in your center Wisdom’s voice calling for unconditional love from the edge. Then in thought, word or deed be this gift to the other person; unconditional love from your center to the other’s person’s center in the fine, sheer, healing silence of God.      

This is our purpose, our reason for existence as a compassionate Christian community. May we blossom fully into being it.        

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“Hungering for Great Treasure”

There is no lack of odd treasures or prizes that people will pursue with passion and single-minded purpose. For example, the most sought-after treasure in all of tennis is a dish that is a little more than 18 inches in diameter. Of course, it is made of sterling silver and around the rim appears the goddess Minerva, with symbols for the liberal arts: arithmetic, astrology, dialectic, geometry, grammar, music and rhetoric.

Curiously, there’s nothing on the dish about tennis. Which is strange, given the fact that this trophy is awarded to the ladies’ singles champion at Wimbledon, the tennis tournament that ended just a few weeks ago.  The Venus Rosewater Dish. That’s what the trophy is called, and the “Venus” part was there long before Venus Williams won it three times.

The dish was made in 1864 and has been awarded to the singles champ since 1886.  Yet, if you were to run across this dish in an art gallery, you might say, “Huh?” It looks like something that should be propped up in your grandmother’s china cabinet. But if you’re a tennis player, the Dish is a precious treasure, a holy grail, a pearl of great value. Players from around the world push themselves to their physical and mental limits — training, practicing, focusing, competing — hoping to be able to play at Wimbledon, the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. And all the way, they are dreaming of the Venus Rosewater Dish. Of course, this trophy is not unique. There are many treasures or prizes that people pursue with passion and single-minded purpose.

Consider: The Borg-Warner Trophy that has been awarded to the winner of the Indianapolis 500 since 1936. On it are the sculpted faces of each winner, and the cup’s hollow body is reportedly able to hold 48 cans of beer.

The Green Jacket, has been given to the winner of the Masters Golf Tournament since 1949. Winners are thrilled to wear the coveted Green Jacket, even though it’s not the kind of jacket you’d wear unless you were in an Irish pub — or had just won the Masters.

 An Olive Wreath, placed on the heads of Boston Marathon winners since 1897. These olive branches are cut from groves in Marathon, Greece, the scene of the battle from which the original marathoner, a man named Pheidippides, ran to announce the Athenian victory in 490 B.C. Then he dropped dead.

Or, in the story from Genesis this morning, Jacob seeks Rachel, who for him is a treasure worth fourteen years of his life. What all these treasures have in common is the passion, the hungering after the treasure with a single-minded determination, the attitude of how valuable the treasure is and the certainty that this treasure will change the lives of those who win it or receive it.

  Equally compelling is the hunger for deep spiritual connectivity, a deepening experience of being connected to God and through God to others. According to George Gallup, “eight out of ten Americans express a desire for spiritual growth.” This is clearly evident in the growth of books, cds, and tapes about spirituality, about how to be more spiritual, the way being spiritual can help you at work, get more out of life, about the way the neuro-connectivity of spiritual experiences create within us a deeper awareness of who we are and our purpose for living.

This hunger is expressed sometimes the way Sam Keen writes, “We have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have a sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.”  

Or it is expressed by people seeking to comprehend an experience like the woman who came to a spirituality fair in England and happened upon the booth where a Christian congregation had set up to offer intercessory prayers to the fair’s participants. The woman came up and talked about a vision she had of angel, who came and spoke to her about how God loves her. What she wanted was help in understanding what this meant because she wasn’t a Christian and had no idea what to make of this experience.

All these folks are right in line with those folks seeking another set of rather peculiar treasures that people pursue with passion and purpose, using every ounce of their heart, soul, mind and strength. The single unifying theme is that these treasures are all illustrations of or metaphors for the kingdom of God. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field,” says Jesus, “which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). Jesus goes on to say, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (v. 46). 

The kingdom of heaven is like the Venus Rosewater Dish, a treasure hidden in a field, the America’s Cup, a pearl of great value, a World Series Ring, like finding the technology stock you bought in the 1980s for $50 and suddenly realizing you are a millionaire. It is like the owner of DeBeers finally finding the perfect diamond and selling a billion dollar empire to have it.  It is like the harassed physician tired of the HMOs, selling home and BMW and finding bliss in a mission in Sudan refugee camps. It is like the crack addict waking up with a clear head and is free to choose a new life. It is like a woman conversing with an angel assuring her of God’s love for her.

But the question for all of us is this, are we pursuing the kingdom of God with the passion of Wimbledon tennis players, America’s Cup sailors and World Series sluggers? Are we hungering for God’s great treasure?

Where are our attitudes, determination and desire? Where’s the sense that we are on a mission? It takes focus and passion to pursue a heavenly treasure. The person who finds treasure in a field “goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (v. 44). The merchant who found a pearl of great value “went and sold all that he had and bought it” (v. 45). That’s focus. That’s sacrifice. That’s passion and purpose.

You have to admire the determination of A.J. Jacobs, an editor for Esquire magazine, who decided to spend a year living the Bible — literally He packed away any of his clothes that were made of mixed fibers, since this is prohibited in Leviticus 19:19. He made a commitment to stop lying, speaking evil, gossiping, complaining and despising his neighbor — hard to do in New York City I guess. He did this because he was impressed by the power of religion as “an enduring force,” and he was determined to explore his own religious background. What amazed him was how this focus and passion changed him.

As he was learning to pray one day, he stood up before tasting his lunch of hummus and pita bread, closed his eyes and said, “I’d like to thank God for the land that he provided so that this food might be grown.” Now you might think that this prayer would be enough, especially for a beginner. But he found that his gratitude went further. “I’d like to thank the farmer who grew the chickpeas for this hummus,” he said. “And the worker who picked the chickpeas. And the truckers who drove them to the store. And the old Italian lady who sold the hummus to me at Zingone’s deli and told me, ‘Lots of love.’”

A.J. Jacobs discovered that giving thanks to God feels good. It makes him feel more connected, more grateful, more grounded, and more aware of his place in the world. Prayer reminds him that food doesn’t spontaneously appear in his refrigerator, and that he’s lucky to have food at all. These are good insights, and they are making A.J. Jacobs the person God created him to be. But none of this would have happened if he had not focused on living the Bible for a year.

So … where’s our focus? Our sacrifice? Our passion and purpose? What’s your Venus Rosewater Dish? Earthly treasures are easy to identify, whether they might be winning championships or achieving sales goals, losing weight or gaining an advanced degree. But heavenly treasures? These are a bit more difficult to visualize. Still, give it a try. Imagine yourself living by the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount for a year. Picture yourself digging into the parables of Jesus or the letters of Paul. Commit yourself to starting each day with prayer, treating your neighbor, as you would like to be treated, or serving Jesus Christ by serving the hungry or the homeless. Or better yet commit to seven practices that will keep you spiritually fit, 1. Honest to God prayer that expresses, exhilaration and exhaustion; 2. Balancing your schedule with Sabbath and action, silence, and speech; 3. Self- nurturing spiritual practices in community and in solitude; 4, Spiritual mentoring and healthy friendships with appropriate boundaries; 5. transforming failure by mining gifts in weaknesses and strengths; 6. Integrating the mystical, the political, intellectual and the physical into your whole person; and 7. a life mission that links personal passion with some need in the world.

Each of these is a worthwhile goal, and each requires determination, desire, and a sense of mission. Each will challenge you, reward you and turn you ever so slowly into the person Christ is calling us to be. Remember God is pursuing us no matter how feeble or intense we are in our pursuit of God. “That is the mystery of grace,” writes Tammy Wiens.

God is pursing us because the stakes are high. Every choice we make has consequences. “Again,” says Jesus, “the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad” (vv. 47-48). So, it will be at the end of time, says Jesus, when the angels of God separate the evil from the righteous. You must pick your treasure well, warns Jesus.

So, make it a heavenly treasure. The good news is that we don’t have to win any world championships to live a life that is pleasing to God. Jesus describes the kingdom of God as a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows into “the greatest of shrubs” (vv. 31-32). And he says that the kingdom “is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (v. 33). The point is that small acts of love and faithfulness can transform the world around us, changing ourselves and our communities, so all that we are is responding to all that God is.

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“Weeds Among the Wheat”

A few years ago my wife and I were walking through the woods and I saw several small, but very lovely flowers.

            “Look at these purple flowers. Aren’t they great?” I said.

            “Yeah. For weeds they are kinda pretty.” She said.

            “C’mon, those can’t be weeds. They look just like flowers.”

            “Nope, they’re weeds. But very lovely looking weeds.”

            I remembered a few years ago that I was mowing the grass and saw several very large green, spiny leafed plants with a bunch of tiny white balls on the end of each leaf. I thought, “Well, what are those weeds doing among her wild flowers? They’re ugly and out of place, so I’ll just yank them up and put them on top of the grass clippings and she’ll thank me for being helpful.”

            That evening at dinner, my wife asked in the general sort of way wives and mothers do, “Who pulled out my flowers? Well, who indeed had pulled out her flowers!

            “What flowers?” I asked.

            “The ones laying on the grass clippings by the curb?” she said.

            “Those were flowers?” I asked.

            “Of course, it’s a flower. What’d you think it was?”

            “A weed. That’s why I pulled it out.”

            That’s the problem, you see. Sometimes you can’t tell the weeds from the flowers. So, when you pull out what you think are weeds you might be just pulling out flowers instead. This is the same problem the servants of the farmer in Jesus’ parable had. They came out to the fields where the farmer had sown good seed, only to discover weeds growing amongst the wheat. Perplexed they went to the farmer, “Master didn’t you plant good seed in your field?”

            “Of course,” he answered. “Then, where did those weeds come from?” the servants asked.

            “An enemy has sowed weeds in my field.” Now, these were not ordinary weeds. These were darnel, an annual grass that with its’ long slender bristles looks very much like wheat. Of course, it isn’t wheat. It just looks like wheat. The other thing to know is that darnel has roots that entangle themselves around the roots of other plants. So, when the servants volunteered to pull the weeds out of the field, the farmer says, “No! For in gathering the weeds, you will uproot the wheat along with them. Just let them both grow together until the harvest.”

            “Really? You let the weeds grow with the wheat? Doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Every gardener knows you pull the weeds out of the garden because if you don’t, the weeds will take over the garden and choke out the good plants. Leaving the weeds in the field, you run the risk of everything being destroyed. Not only that, but there will be weed seeds to plague the farmer with more weeds next year. Nope. The servants are right. Let’s get rid of them. Let’s pull those inconvenient and potentially destructive weeds out of the field right now!”

            “No! The farmer is adamant. Let the weeds grow along with the wheat and when the harvest rolls around, I’ll deal with the weeds by having the reapers come in and separate the weeds from the wheat. Then, we’ll bundle them up and burn them in a big fire.” Okay, end story. Except this story is a Jesus’ parable and it is one, which is about the kingdom of heaven. Yet, as the parable stands it’s a bit hard to grasp what Jesus is trying to teach his disciples, including us disciples.

            Good news! Jesus explains this parable a few moments later when he and the disciples go into a house alone. Jesus tells us that the man who sows the seed is the Son of Man-Jesus; the field is the world. The enemy is the devil or Satan. The good seed-the wheat-are the children of the kingdom and the weeds are the children of the evil one. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. So, at the end of the age Jesus-the Christ, God with us will send down angels to collect all the causes of sin and the evildoers out of the world. They will be taken and put into a fiery furnace where they will weep and gnash their teeth forever.

            Well, all righty then! This is a parable about what happens to evildoers. God finally answers Job’s question, “Why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer?” Well, Jesus says, the wicked will get theirs at the end of the age and the good will get their reward.  So, this parable is about God’s judgment.

            Or is it? Jesus doesn’t really explain the entire parable. He only explains the smallest portion of the parable. There is a whole lot more going on in this parable. First, the kingdom of heaven is like a man sowing good seed. If that man is Jesus-God with us- and the good seed are the children of the kingdom whose lives are the flowering and fructifying grains of wheat growing and maturing and the field is the entire world, all of creation, then Jesus is saying the kingdom of heaven is already planted within creation and is growing and coming to life in the lives of people and communities. We aren’t waiting for the kingdom of God to come into being. It is here already. This goes along with the parable of the yeast and the bread. The yeast is the Word of God (Jesus), who creates life; the flour is the world and the when the yeast is dissolved in water and added to the flour it becomes dough. The kingdom of God, you see, is hidden with creation; it pervades creation, and is at this very moment creating life within it. Just as yeast cannot be separated from the dough; neither can the kingdom of God be separated from creation because God-The Father-the Son-and the Holy Spirit- is intimately connected to creation and active within creation’s life. That’s part of what is happening with Jacob in the wilderness. God is letting Jacob know that even though he is separated form his family-he is not separated from God, who will protect him and bless him. He need not be afraid of how his future unfolds because God has already blessed his future with life.

            Which brings us to the second big unexplained part, “the enemy sows the seed when everyone is asleep then goes away.” As Robert Capron, an Episcopal priest writes, “Since the weeds in no way seem to interfere with the growing of the wheat, it is the word ‘enemy’ that should be the crux of the interpretation.” The enemy comes. Sows weeds. Leaves. That’s it. We never hear about him anymore. The wheat is in the field, the kingdom of God is in the world, and the only thing God’s enemy can do is sow darnel; a weed that masquerades as wheat and gets tangled up with wheat. The weed isn’t wheat, it’s not ever going to be wheat, yet it causes a great deal of confusion, anxiety, and frustration for the servants because they are so focused on the weeds and getting rid of the weeds.

            Which is exactly what the enemy wants. The enemy-you can call him the devil, Satan, those who oppose God’s will, whatever-can only sow something that masquerades as the reality. It isn’t reality. It is a counterfeit reality and has nothing to do with God. But that’s what happens with evil. It gets mixed up and tangled up with God’s reality and sometimes we can’t tell the difference. Like some of the Pharisees and the chief priests and the scribes. They see Jesus heal, hear Jesus teach, and watch as he east with all kinds of people-no one in their right mind would be caught dead with-and all they see is a weed and all they want to do is to pull it out of the field. Get rid of it before it takes over. Does anyone really think they all knew for certain that Jesus was God with us? Of course not. It’s just that they were so focused on evil and being pure to keep sin at bay that they have bought into the counterfeit reality and, now they can’t see the wheat for the weeds.

            Sadly, the truth is we do the same thing. We can’t tell the difference between good people and those with evil intent. The foolishness and failure of racial profiling to determine who’s a criminal or a terrorist and who isn’t ought to teach us that. No one who saw the hijackers knew they were terrorists. No one in Israel can tell ahead of time who is a suicide bomber and who isn’t, and they’ve had a lot of practice trying to figure it out. Look at how the church has treated people over the last several thousand years who they thought were witches. We’ll dunk you in water to see if you drown, if you don’t, you’re a witch and if you do-oh well our bad. How stupid and ignorant is that? Not to mention theologically disgraceful. If to prove you’re faithful to God, you must die, denies the fact that God is about creating life and the one who opposes God is all about destroying life. Therefore, killing people to find out whether they are godly or not means those who do the killing are on the side of evil.

            Evil does exist and we will confront evil in our lives, Jesus has said that. Even within the same person good and evil can exist together. But our response as servants of God isn’t to try and pull it out, wipe it out of the world, or destroy it because we will only succeed in destroying the good with the bad. That’s one of the reasons evil wrecks havoc in the world because the servants of God see what they think are weeds and decide they just gotta pull it out of the world. Destroy it before it destroys the world. But every time we do that, we destroy the good. Which is exactly what the evil one wants to happen. It wants confusion, fear, anxiety, over reaction, and chaos that destroys life. Evil wants us to take him more seriously than we do God.

The truth is evil is not more powerful than God. It has no real positive power of its own. That’s why Jesus said the enemy sowed weeds and left. That’s as much as he can do. God has already won the battle with evil. It’s over!  That’s the promise and the reality of the resurrection. 

We need to stop taking evil more seriously than we do God and focus on what God is doing in the world to bring life into desolate places. We need to affirm the reality that God’s kingdom is here and we’re living according to God’s kingdom values now! We need to talk about God’s powerful love that conquers all the hurts, the hang-ups, and the destructive habits we have, or we’ve seen others struggle against. We need to talk about God’s unconditional and steadfast love that is with us and all people every moment of every day and to reinforce the true reality that each person we meet is God’s child, who is valuable, who is wanted, who has a purpose and place in this community. We need to talk about how God is so faithful and is present with us that we never need fear that God will abandon us like others may have done.

We need to focus our living and our being on God, so the light ignited within us by God in Jesus Christ will shine brightly, illuminating the truth and the reality that God’s glory and power oversees the world.

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Radical Hospitality

There was once a monastery that had been a vibrant center of spiritual awakening and life as an old story tells us.  It was a place where the town’s people would come for worship in the chapel, to have picnics on the lawns, to walk in the gardens or the forest behind the monastery.

     But that had been many years before. Now, the gardens were overgrown with weeds, the walkways were taken over by grass, the building was crumbling, none of the town’s people came for worship in the chapel, and only five brothers and the Abbott, all over the age of 80 remained. Clearly, this was a dying order.

     Deep in the forests stood the hermitage of the rabbi from a nearby village. Whenever the rabbi came to his hermitage, the old monks could sense his presence and would whisper among themselves, “The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods.”

     On one such occasion the old Abbott decided to visit the rabbi and ask him for his advice about what the monks could do. After all the rabbi was a learned and wise man, able to discern the right path to take in many situations. “Perhaps, he’d know what we might do to save the order,” the old Abbott told the monks. So, after dinner he went into the forest and walked to the rabbi’s hermitage.

     The rabbi greeted him warmly. “My old friend,” the rabbi said,” how are you?”

     “Not so well,” said the Abbott and he explained to the rabbi the reason for his visit. The rabbi listened and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. It is the same for me in town. They just don’t seem to come anymore. I don’t have an answer for you. But, stay awhile and let’s visit.”

     So, the Abbott stayed, and they talked, they read scripture, had tea, prayed, and cried together. The Abbott realized how late it had gotten and stood to leave. He was just starting to go out the door when the rabbi spoke.

     “I am sorry I don’t have advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that one of you is the Messiah.”

     The Abbott thought it was an odd thing to say, but as he walked through the forest, he pondered what the rabbi meant. “One of you is the Messiah.” He entered the monastery and all the monks gathered around him. “What did the rabbi say? Did he have some advice for us? What are we supposed to do, did he say?”

     “No, he did not know what we are to do,” the Abbott said softly, “But, right at the end, as I was leaving, he said a most curious and cryptic thing. One of us is the Messiah. But I don’t know what he meant.” 

     Each of the monks walked away to their room muttering,” One of us is the Messiah?” Over the next few days and weeks each monk thought deeply about what the rabbi had said. ”One of us is the Messiah?” they thought. Does he mean one of us monks? If so, which one? Did he mean the abbot? yes, of course, he meant Father Abbot. He is a great leader. On the other hand, could he mean Brother Thomas. Certainly, brother Thomas is a holy man. A man of light. He could not have meant Brother Eldred! Eldred is so grumpy, but you know when you think about it, he is right most of the time. Maybe he meant Brother Eldred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive a real nobody, yet he is always near you when you need him. He just appears. I know he couldn’t have possibly meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet. O God, not me. I couldn’t be that much for you. Could I? Then, the monks began treating each other with extraordinary respect and love on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on off the chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

     A spirit of extraordinary respect and love permeated the monastery as though it were floating in the very air the old monks breathed. Soon, the monastery seemed more alive. The monks repaired the walkways, mowed the grass, and planted flowers that blossomed in a grand array of colors. Their worship reflected this wonderful spirit in a deepening of prayer.  This wonderful spirit drifted down into the town. The townspeople felt drawn by the spirit of respect and love to the old monastery and began coming back to sit on the grass, have picnics with their families, even to worship with the monks, and some of the young men began talking with the monks and a few joined the order, then a few more joined the order until at last the monastery was once again a vibrant center of light, spirituality, and life.

         What a beautiful story of transformation. A worshipping community that was struggling to survive in the middle of their barrenness becomes transformed into being once again a thriving, life nurturing, and life sustaining community of hope. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? And, the transformation seems so simple, doesn’t it?

     Yet, what we do not hear in the story is the struggle to live toward the fulfillment of the promise that “one of you is the Messiah” with a faith, with trust that is willing to relinquish control of the present for the sake of a new Genesis to come to fruition in the future.

We know there is a struggle to move from barrenness to abundance because in this story we hear the echoes of Abraham and Sarah’s struggles with barrenness and God’s promise to them of land that includes within it the promise of a child because land is never for just the present generation it is for the generations coming after us.

But Sarah and Abraham have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the promise to be fulfilled ever since they began this journey from barrenness to abundance leaving Ur for the land God will show them, which has really been a journey of hope. The challenge however has been to be faithful to God in the middle of this waiting. I think that is why Sarah laughs at the Oaks of Mamre because she has been waiting and waiting and she has come to doubt the promise will ever be fulfilled.

You see, in the beginning of the journey of hope it sounds as simple as Jesus telling his disciples when he sends them out “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.” That is easy to understand. 

When people in the villages see the disciples and offer them hospitality, they are offering hospitality to Christ because the disciples were representing Christ. They were acting as his ambassadors. Just as our ambassador to the United Nations is the symbol of the presence and the voice of the government and nation of the United States, so too the disciples were the symbol of Christ’s presence with the people they meet along their journey. They are no longer acting solely for themselves.

The disciples are acting for Christ, so they are supposed to act toward the people they meet in the same way Jesus acted toward people. That was why Jesus told his disciples to go to the house of Israel and proclaim the good news,” the kingdom of heaven is near.”  That is what Jesus was doing. That was, also, why Jesus gave them the ability and empowered them to heal the sick, to cleanse the unclean, to cast out demons, and to bring people who were dead back to life. Because that was what Jesus was doing in his life and it was what he would be doing in his death on the cross and in his resurrection to new life.

     The disciples are to walk into villages and be thinking; “I am representing Jesus, so how would Jesus act? What would he say to this person or that person? And, they had to remember this even when people didn’t treat them very well. And they needed to remember that Jesus never wanted anything from people. He wasn’t looking for acclaim, a pat on the back, a movie, a book deal, or wealth. Rather, Jesus came to serve other people, not to be served by them. He looked to their needs first without regard for his own needs.

From the 5,000 people Jesus fed with a loaf of bread and two fish to the woman who was about to be stoned. Jesus saw the great crowd who followed him, listened all day to his teaching, and who were far from their homes without resources to feed themselves, so he asked the question, “How are we going to feed these people?”  He listened as the crowd of men, who wanted to stone the woman accused of adultery, ask him the question about whether it was okay for them to do this. His answer was simple, ”The one who is without sin may cast the first stone.” Then, when the men dropped their rocks and walked away Jesus, who was without sin and who might have condemned her did not, instead he gave her the gift of mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness, freeing her to see herself and her life differently. He saw desperation in the eyes of a father, whose child was sick and maybe dying and acted to heal her. He mourned with Mary and Martha. He rejoiced with the families of the bride and groom at a wedding celebration. He even took the time to talk to children all the while reminding the adults how important children are and how vulnerable they are. Jesus, also, included everyone in his teaching and at the dinner table. Women, children, and men. He didn’t ask them a lot of qualifying questions to see if they met some purity standard. He didn’t even seem to be concerned about whether they agreed with him or not. He ate meals with tax collectors and with Pharisees and scribes. Around his table everyone was invited, had a place, was welcome to be with him and to share the meal provided.

  Each person Jesus encountered he treated with loving kindness, treating them as important, worthwhile, gifted persons, who deserved love, respect, and compassion just because they are alive and are God’s creation, whom God loves steadfastly, without limit or condition.

     The disciples had to remember all of this because Jesus was teaching them to see people not through their eyes with their vision from their understanding of the world, but to see the world through Christ’s eyes and with Christ’s understanding of the world, so they might see each person as Christ sees them. For Christ was not simply sending them out to do what he was doing, he was sending them out bearing the gift Christ was bringing.

     The gift of God’s grace. The gift we cannot earn nor the gift we can claim to deserve. It is a gift we can only receive with gratitude and trust. This is what the disciples were bringing into all the homes of the villagers, who welcomed them and showed them hospitality. Who invited them into their homes as strangers and treated them with loving kindness, warmth, and an invitation to be at home as valued and trusted members of the community. Persons who are of equal worth and dignity as is every person in the community.

     You see the villagers did not know they were going to be receiving Christ much less that they would be receiving this wonderful gift. They were acting out of an understanding of hospitality that aimed to turn strangers into friends. An understanding that hospitality is a form of healing and care giving extended in food, shelter, and good conversation. They knew they were providing a safe place where people may be healed from the bruises and buffeting of a culture which devalues and diminishes a person’s very being.  They also knew that hospitality does not begin in food, but in conversation, in encounter, in eye contact and attentive listening. Indeed, attentiveness means to wait, to give time to another person. Time to hear what the hesitant person might want to say, time for the other person to be at home, and time for thoughtfully receiving the gift of presence the guest brings with them. To receive a person with this hospitality is to be aware that just as Abraham had entertained angels and God under the shade of the oaks at Mamre, so too they might be receiving God and the good gifts God brings into their homes. Just as they did each day when they breathed in air, when they saw the sun rise, when they ate food, and when they gazed around at their families, friends, and, yes, even the strangers traveling through their village.

     This was the kind of hospitality Paul urged his fellow disciples to extend to one another because it was a way of proclaiming the gospel-the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God-but also as visibly living the way Christ welcomes them to his table and to himself.

     And that is the real point of that beautiful story of transformation. The transformation of the monastery did not come just because the monks treated each other better or nicer. Nor did transformation happen because they followed the latest fad, the next new thing, the newest book by the newest church growth guru, or the newest technological gadget. Transformation does not happen because of technique.

Transformation happens when everything said and all that is done, when all our attention is away from the struggle and is, instead centered in Christ. When we lift eyes upward and keep our vision on Christ, so that we, too, see every person as Christ sees them. When we extend hospitality to other persons as if the other person was Christ and when we live visibly the good news that the kingdom of God is near, welcoming all people into new life as Christ welcomes us around his table of blessing. May it be so here in this place at this time.       

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