Becoming Real

Becoming Real--February 24, 2017

“For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus.  You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:21-24)

It’s all about Jesus.  It really is. 

That’s the long and the short of it—the whole Christian life is about God making us over into the likeness of God-with-a-human-face, who is Christ Jesus. Pulling us out of the dead shells of our own ego, sometimes kicking and screaming, and leading us out by the hand as new creations.  It’s the ongoing (and quite often, slow-going) process of God getting us to leave behind our old self, our old "me-centeredness", our old wills  and wish-lists, and to be re-created as something new, something like Christ.

Makes me think of butterflies. Not just the fact that they start out as caterpillars, but that even as they emerge from the chrysalis, they intentionally struggle to get out before they unfold their wings and fly off as new creatures. I remember hearing a story somewhere about a guy who saw a new butterfly pushing its way out of its chrysalis, and how he felt pity for the way the poor creature was struggling. So he reached out and pulled the chrysalis open to make it easier for the butterfly to get out—but in a matter of hours of being freed from the confines of the chrysalis, the butterfly’s wings were still misshapen and stunted. They hadn’t gotten the strength they needed to become properly solid and flight-worthy, because they hadn’t had to struggle against the rigid chrysalis walls. And so this amazing new creation—a butterfly from a caterpillar!—was forced to walk on its six legs rather than fly, because it had never been allowed to have the growth that only comes from struggle. Imagine that—all the beauty of a butterfly’s gorgeous wings, but never being able to fly with them, because they had never gotten the strength they needed at the right time of development… because they had never struggled like they needed to.

All of a sudden, the struggle to leave behind the old shell doesn’t seem so bad. It turns out to be vital, life-giving, even. Not easy, maybe. Never easy. But vital.

Paul has the same kind of hopeful realism about our life in Christ, too. It is like shedding the old, hardened skin of a cocoon. That's me, all bent-in-on-myself, to use Luther's familiar image.  And that's all of us--curved in on ourselves, and putting up any defense we can to keep ourselves insulated that way. We build walls like that when we are afraid--not when we are faithful and free.  We turn away from others like that when we are centered on self--not when we are caught up in the selfless love of God.  We settle for such a small view of a small world, of which we think we are the center--that's what it's like to live inside a cocoon.  Of course you think you are the center of the universe and thus the most important thing in it, if you live inside a cocoon--you cannot see that there is a much wider, bigger world beyond you, unless you get outside of yourself. 

But that, of course, is exactly what the Spirit of God is up to among us....

That act of being pulled out of the old chrysalis, the old cocoon, isn’t easy, because it means leaving something behind—something that was once so close to you, you sore part of you, something that once gave you the comfortable shelter of the familiar. And it also means struggle. But the struggle itself is part of how God makes us over into the likeness of Christ. I don’t mean to glorify suffering (please, please hear me correctly on that point!), but rather to say that God has this clever way of using suffering as the tool through which God makes us into what we are meant to become. Even the struggle is redeemed. Even the suffering gets used. Even the pain can become something beautiful.

You don’t become able to love like Christ when everybody has said only nice things to you today—you learn to love like Christ when you have been mistreated, when you have had your name dragged in the mud or falsely accused, when you have been ignored or rejected. You learn to love like Jesus, in other words, when it’s hard and feels like a struggle you’d rather give up on. 

You don't learn how much bigger God's vision really are until you have been pulled out from the comfortable darkness of the cocoon in which you were the center of your own tiny little universe.  You don't get the feel for how deeply good and wide God's Reign of justice and mercy really is until you have been dethroned from your own heart, so that a crucified king and all those he loves (everybody) can be welcomed in.

You don’t become courageous like Christ when you are spared all the tense moments of potential conflict. You learn courage when you are frightened of the outcome, when you are anxious about what you are supposed to say but say it anyway, when you are afraid of what you will have to endure if you stick around rather than run away—but you do these things anyway. 

You don’t learn forgiveness when no one has wronged you—you learn what it is to show mercy when you are the one who has been slighted, wronged, or upset, and you do the hard work of letting go rather than getting a charley-horse in your soul.

It is hard to let these things happen. It can hurt. You know how the story goes with the Velveteen Rabbit: 

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Such is the way God works on us to make us into the image of Christ—it is a beautiful thing to become “Real” the way Christ is Real, but it is a beauty that looks like shabbiness to the untrained eye. It means the old self gets worn off, along with sharp edges, fragile egos, and the jagged places in our hearts where the passive-aggressiveness and pettiness resides. 

Is there struggle to become a new self that reflects the way and will of God rather than the will of self-centered me? Yep.

Is there suffering and risk and fear sometimes? Sure.

Is it worth it to become like Christ, and for once to become really Real? Absolutely.

Lord God, have at us. Make us into your own living sculptures of Christ. Make us into butterflies with real working wings after all that cocooned in the darkness. Make us really Real in you.

The Trajectory from the Kitchen

The Trajectory from the Kitchen--February 22, 2017

"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect." [Matthew 5:46-48]

I was driving home last night from the church, when the saints helped me through a sticky situation.

I don't mean any "saints" in the sense of little collectible figurines of long-dead medieval men and women in brown robes (although, in fairness, we Christians should be honest and admit that for a good chunk of the last two thousand years, we have used the word "saint" to means something like a Pokémon-style set of characters with individual special powers and abilities, whom you might unleash for different sets of problems).  I mean it was the faces of other sisters and brothers in Christ, whose lives and stories and compassion and struggles and examples I know, that helped me to see my course on a dark back road last night.

Again, I realize that might sound far more mystical or spooky than I intend it to sound.  Let be back up.  I was driving down the back roads from the church last night, just after a gathering of about two dozen folks who had shared a meal and Bible study and conversation together up there.  And after the meal and the ending prayer holding hands in a circle, I was struck by how many of those gathered had helped out.  Some had brought food.  Some had stayed late to help clean up dishes or gather up the extra papers.  Some were catching up on the needs of others as they talked.  But in all of these little moments, these little actions were not like customers leaving a movie theater or diners leaving a restaurant.  These were the actions of people who were taking little steps out of their way, beyond their own comfort or convenience, and taking time out of what little remained in their day.  There was no parade or trumpet fanfare announcing their additional help--it was just part of their own care for one another and for the group gathered.  It's just "what you do" in a church family, they would have all said, if someone had interviewed them, and they would have all thought it strange to even ask.  It becomes natural, you could say, the way setting the table at your house before dinner becomes the natural routine at your house.

In any case, there I was, headed home after all that clean-up was done, down the same back road that some of those other saints might have themselves taken ten or fifteen minutes before when they left the building that night.  And the unspoken gestures, the willingness to be led beyond what was comfortable or convenient, that was still all simmering in the back of my head as I turned down a bend in the road and saw a vehicle, a minivan, slowed to a stop in the road, and then pulling over to the edge.

Well, I'll be honest with you.  My very VERY first thought as I saw brake lights up ahead was, "Am I going to be able to get through? What is going on up there--this is usually a deserted stretch of road by a quarter of nine at night."  As I got a bit closer and saw that it was not a car accident or a deer, and it wasn't near anybody's house that someone might have been pulling into their home for the night, a second thought entered my head: "Could that be anybody from the church?" And my brain scanned through my mental recollection of who had been there at our gathering that night, and what kinds of cars I had seen in the lot, and I realized that, no, this was not going to be any of the people I had just seen up at the church. 

You know how trains of thought get going--it starts out slow and builds momentum as one thought leads to another.  But as my brain shifted from thinking, "Oh, I wonder if one of the church folks is stuck and needs a ride or a call to a tow truck or something..." to a different line of thinking: "This is going to be a stranger here... pulling over by the side of the road... relatively late in the evening... on a back gravel road... who might be doing something unsavory or illegal..." it occurred to me that it didn't exactly matter whether I knew if this was going to be someone I knew or not.  If my thought a second ago was that I should roll down my window and see if a church member needed assistance by the road, well, it seemed like I should make the same inquiry even if it wasn't someone from the church.  The critical issue was not whether the person at the roadside was a card-carrying member of my church, or whether I knew them, or whether they might one day be in a position to pay me back by helping me when my car was stranded at the roadside--the question was whether or not they had a need.  I knew that because I had just seen that lived by so many faces of the saints who helped clean up a meal, wash dishes, or put things away.  I had just lived through seeing people go practically on automatic pilot, like it was second nature, going out of their way, going to extra trouble, taking extra time, being inconvenienced by helping without being asked.  And that lived example I had just seen from a handful of ordinary saints started a trajectory for me.

Well, the thing about trajectories is that they start at one spot and keep moving in that same direction, following the same curve.  And it occurred to me that the example I had seen lived out in the church social hall a few minutes before was not simply an example of "We take care of our own... period." but rather, "We are people who are willing, without thought for what's-in-it-for-me, to be inconvenienced or take time for someone else who has the need... because that is what the followers of Jesus do."  I realized that the right lesson to learn from what I had seen in the church kitchen was decidedly not, "Christians help out other Christians" or "Church members stay after to clean up because they have a vested interest in keeping their own church kitchen clean." But rather those faces of the saints were setting me on a course now in this next situation for the next person who might or might not need help.  (Again, this is all flashing through my brain before I have even made it up to the side of the van at the edge of the road, so I hadn't made it up to the vehicle yet to roll down my window to ask.)  But the trajectory was set--love that starts within the in-group members doesn't stay put there--it follows an arc up and outward like a rocket... even sometimes when it is headed down the hill and around the bend in the road.

So I get to the van, decide that the small acts of graciousness I have just witnessed back the church are pushing me to hit the window-down button in the car door, and I call out to the van's occupants (who also have their windows down on this eerily warm February evening), and I ask, "Is everything all right?"  Granted, Shakespeare or Wordsworth, it was not.  Just the simplest, most straightforward question I could ask.  But the example I had just seen in the church kitchen wasn't about "flair" or "drama" or poetry--it was just simple, straightforward love-in-action.  Drying dishes requires nothing flowery, and asking if the van by the roadside needs help is the same, I think.

Well, the driver, charming fella that he was, just grinned and shouted back something profane that I will not repeat here.  (Let this put to rest once and for all the lie that "country folk" are statistically nicer or that "country living" is unequivocally a gentler, kinder way of life. It appears to me that honesty requires us to say that there are jerks in the city, in the suburbs, and on the back road in the woods, and that there are plenty of heartbreaking stories of drug abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, and heartbreaking poverty in rural America as there are in urban America.  Jesus has not come to save us by moving us all to a big farm, it turns out.)  Anyhow, of course, I can only guess at what unpleasant reason I was greeted with such open hostility--they may well have been doing, or about to do, something questionable, but I had no evidence other than rudeness.  And of course, as our public life is making me increasingly aware, it is not a crime to be rude or a jerk... and that was all I had on these guys in the van.  So I had no evidence of anything untoward or illicit that would warrant calling the state police to check out a back road based on an anonymous tip of a case of "first degree rudeness."  At that point, all I could do was roll my window back up and drive on.  Well, I could have yelled back or said something equally profane back (people think preachers don't know the words that get bleeped on television, but I assure you, we know them--we just try to be judicious about when they are, or are not, called for).  But the faces of those saints from up in the church kitchen kept me from escalating things.  It wasn't because I feared for my safety if I stayed to argue with these classy gents in their van--if safety were the concern, I had already crossed that bridge by stopping in the first place.  But rather, it was the love I had seen up the hill around the kitchen cabinets and sinks--it was in having seen people think a thing was worth doing regardless of the inconvenience, regardless of whether they got noticed for it, and regardless of whether they had been asked or told to help in the first place.  It was that example that showed me, quite clearly, that this exercise on the back road was worth it regardless of how it ended--the real question was not whether the people in the van "deserved" someone stopping to ask if they needed help, or whether any help was needed in the first place.  The crucial thing was the way love leads you to set aside your own person Plan A to be temporarily inconvenienced, or slowed down, or pulled out of your comfort zone.  I had just seen that happen with saints drying dishes and wrapping up food containers--I could, in the words of another old saint, "do no other" when I was the one on the way down the road seeing a situation that might need a small act of mercy.  Whether my help was needed or not, whether I was able to help or shooed away was not the issue.  It was about following the trajectory of love that had already begun.

This is what Jesus has been pulls us into all along.  The Reign of God is made of such small moments, such small actions.  Sometimes it is about the willingness and the offer is not needed--but it is there.  Sometimes it is in acts that go unnoticed by most of the people most of the time.  Sometimes it is for people we know and care about--but just as much the Reign of God leads us outward along the same trajectory of love to be present for people we will never see again, or people who meet our offer only with rudeness.  Love leads me outward from myself, from what was my Plan A, my will, and my own comfort... into something wider.  The point is not to get to be the hero or the savior--it is only to follow the trajectory of love, always outward, always forward, including more and more.

The faces of the saints taught me that... but their love did not stay pent up inside the church building.  That was the whole point. 

Lord Jesus, let your love, bounced around among the lives of your people, lead us always outward, always beyond, always further out.

An Invitation to Conversation: New Podcast with Drew Himes, "Crazy Faith Talk" Episode 1

Dear Friends,

 

I wanted to share with you a new piece that I will be a part of beginning this week, and continuing each week into the future.

 

A colleague and friend of mine, Drew Himes, and I are starting a weekly faith conversation podcast, "Crazy Faith Talk" that I'd invite you to check out, and help shape the conversation. 

For those who are already familiar with podcasts, I'll just give you the link right here. You can listen, stream, download, and follow the podcast's we...ekly postings at the link below, or listen to our first episode at the bottom of this post:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/crazyfaithtalk

 

For those who are not familiar with this format, think of it like listening to a talk radio program that you can listen to at any time, pick up and come back to later, and listen on any device with the internet. Our format, as you'll see from the Welcome Episode that is already posted, is simply a back and forth conversation between two colleagues, pastors, and friends, who are thinking through the Christian faith. Over time, we expect to explore and consider all kinds of subjects, directions, and threads of conversation, and we invite your thoughts and input, too. We are calling this weekly podcast "Crazy Faith Talk" because, well... because anybody who starts a story that says, "Let me tell you about the time God saved the world through a homeless itinerant Jewish rabbi who got executed by the empire and the respectable religious leaders of his day..." has to be willing to sound a little bit crazy. That's how you know it's the gospel...

 

So, for those who are inclined, and would like to be a part of this ongoing "table talk" on faith, please join the conversation. Drew and I would love to hear your input, your thoughts, your ideas, and your own questions about the Mystery we call God.

 

Blessings to you all tonight and always as the Mercy moves us.
SCB

The Unseen Eyelash

The Unseen Eyelash--February 21, 2017

"...we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God." [Colossians 1:9-10]

It is, as a rule in my experience, a humbling thing to be prayed for.

That is true for a number of reasons.  It is humbling, for starters, because it means letting someone else do something for you... and something that you are quite capable of doing yourself as well.  Letting someone pray for you is rather like letting someone wash your feet in that regard--you could do it yourself, but there is something holy and terrifyingly, beautifully vulnerable about letting someone in so close to your physical space as to wash your feet.  And there is something deeply intimate as well about letting someone in close enough to your soul as to let them pray for your needs.

And since prayer is itself basically asking for help already, then letting someone else pray on your behalf is something like asking someone else to ask for help on your behalf.  It requires the ability to get over yourself and to quit needing to look like a "winner" to let someone else pray for you, at least if you really understand what is happening when someone prays for you.  When someone prays for you, it is less a compliment they are paying you, and more like when someone sees an eyelash on your cheek and offers to get it for you.  It is a sign of love, yes, but also of need you may or may not be able to see yourself.

And that, of course, is the ultimate humbling of prayer.  To let someone else pray for you opens you up to what they see that you need, whether you were aware of it or not.  To let someone else pray for you is not to hand them your personal divine shopping list for them to pick up at the intercession store for you--no, it is a surrender to let them ask for the things they think and sense are most necessary to ask for of the living God... on your behalf.

Think for a moment about how it feels if you, venting about the jerks at your work and the frustrations of messy kids or distant friends, ask someone you trust to pray for you... and in the midst of naming all of those things in their prayer, your trusted prayer partner then asks that God give you patience, too, as well as everything else.  Ooooh... that cuts to the quick, doesn't it? 

Or when you are up for the promotion  at work and you ask for friends and family to pray for you, and one of them shares the words of their prayer, asking that God would give you grace to do whatever God calls you to, and that you would find fulfillment in whatever that is.  "Wait a second!"  you'll want to shout back to your friends and family, "Didn't you get the memo? We are lobbying God for a promotion, not for acceptance!  We are asking for more prestige and money, not fulfillment in what I am already doing!  Get with the official party platform here!"

So often, we are so sure that our own personal wish lists are exactly what we need, and IF we ever dare ask anyone else to pray for us, what we think we are asking for is for someone else to duplicate the list and repeat it back to God.  Apparently, we seem to think that prayer is like lobbying your local member of Congress: it's just about getting bigger numbers of people using the same form-letter message, trying to strong-arm your elected representatives to do what you want.  But that doesn't really happen if we dare to let someone else in close enough to our hearts to allow them to pray for us, does it?  No, other people bring their own perspective, their own vision, their own ability to see the eyelashes we have left on our cheeks, and to gently, lovingly, brush them away.  If I dare to let someone else pray for me, I should be prepared, not simply to get them to rubber stamp my official, authorized list of requests... I should be prepared for them to see needs in me, hurts in me, untapped gifts me, or possibilities for me, that I cannot see from inside myself.

That brings me to these words from what we call the letter to the Colossians.  Here is one of those moments where a wise, caring mentor in the faith like Saint Paul himself offers up his prayer for the people to whom he is writing.  These are clearly people he cares about, people he has spent time with, broken bread with, wept over sorrows with, and celebrated with.  These are people he has struggled with against the bluster of an arrogant empire (you get that sense given the amount of times in Colossians that Christ's great defeat of "the powers and principalities" around them are mentioned).  These are people, in other words, for whom Paul would do anything... and yet, curiously, Paul doesn't bring his apostolic heft to bear in lobbying for the Colossians' personal wish list.  Paul doesn't say, "I've got some pull with the Almighty--here, hand me your demands, and I'll bring them to God for you... and see if I can pull some strings for you."  Instead, Paul says, "I have not stopped asking God to help you see more clearly what God's will for you is."

Wait... what?  Paul noticeably does not say, "You know how you all have been wanting to have a little more money in the bank?  I put a bug in God's ear to ask for that for you."  The apostle does not pray, "Hey, Jesus, my friends in Colossae really don't want to be troubled by having to help out others around them--would you just kind of lay off on letting poor people or hungry people around them?"  Nor does he ask the divine, "Would you please keep my pals in Colossae comfortable and insulated from the troubles of others--that can be such a downer, and they are already really feeling stressed and work... and then they have to deal with picking up the kids' toys... and their cable is kind of on the fritz, too, so could you help do something about that, too?"  In fact, Paul doesn't really give any sense that he has been asking the Colossians what they think they need.  That actually seems to be the point of his prayer in the first place--Paul says he has been asking that God would give the Colossians a clearer picture of what God's will and God's reign are really like!  It's almost like Paul is saying, "God, let's be honest--these folk have no clue what they really need deep down.  But you do--give them what they need, and help them to see what you see about their needs."

Wow--what a humbling place to be: prayed for, and prayed for in particular that God would help you to see more clearly what you really needed all along.  Basically, Paul is praying that the Colossians would "get" what matters to God... which is another way of saying, lovingly of course, that they currently don't "get it."  It's rather like saying, "Jesus, on their own, these guys would be asking for ponies and Barcaloungers, or better parking spaces at the mall and shorter lines at the grocery store.  So would you please help them to see what actually matters... and then give them that?" 

There's this delightful scene in one of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books, where a group of people on prehistoric Earth are trying to invent the wheel--and they are arguing with each other about how they should paint the square object they are working on.  When one of the protagonists of the story laments that they are getting the "wheel" wrong, the crowd shouts back angrily, "Well, if you're so smart, then what color would you make it?" 

The idiocy is laughable when it is in the extreme like that, but if we are honest, so often, that is us, too, in the presence of the living God.  We with our narrow vision think that God's job is to get me a bigger tax refund, keep the boss off my back at work, get my party elected, keep me from having to interact with any unsavory or shady-looking people, or to help my kids' soccer team win the championship... and voices like Paul's say instead, "God, help them to see more and more fully what matters to you."  And if that upsets us, well, maybe we should consider the possibility that we have been fussing over the color of a square wheel.  Maybe we have been focusing on the wrong things.  And maybe what we really and truly need is someone to pray for us in such a way that points us in the right direction, rather than treating our personal wish-lists like a set of ransom demands.

Today, what if we dared to let these words from Colossians become a prayer offered up over us, too? What if you and I dared to have the humility enough to say, "Lord, God, I don't have a very clear picture of what really matters to you--help me to see that more clearly. Help me to want what you want.  Help my heart to ache where yours aches, Jesus.  Help my will become aligned with yours."?  What if we quit treating prayer like a lobbying effort, and instead looked to orient our love with the love of the living God?

Might just make a difference in what matters to you and me today, huh?

Lord Jesus, allow us to be filled with the knowledge of your will, so that we might bear fruit in every good work and lead lives that reflect your merciful embrace of the world.

Wrestling with Atticus

Wrestling with Atticus--February 20, 2017

"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" [Romans 7:19-25]

I have been wrestling with Atticus... in the mirror.

Okay, consider this your spoiler alert.  You have had nearly a year to have read Harper Lee's second published novel about the Finch family, the curious and complicated Go Set A Watchman, which came out last year, more than five and a half decades after the seminal To Kill A Mockingbird, the consciousness-waking staple of many a suburban tenth-grade English class.  So if you have not read Watchman, just consider this a fair warning: in what follows, you may discover spoilers about beloved characters you knew from back in the days when you first read about Scout, Jem, Atticus, and Boo Radley.

So here's the bind I am in: I don't know what to make of the deep disappointment and disillusionment I now feel for a fictional attorney from a fictional county in Alabama.  As a high school sophomore, Harper Lee's creation, the widowed father of two and legal defender for an innocent black man in a rape trial in the Jim Crow south, stood out like an impossible standard of moral courage.  Atticus was willing to take on a lost cause simply because it was the right thing to do.  He was a voice of compassion and wisdom in Mockingbird, and to my fifteen year old (white middle-class) mind, he was a shining example of the possibility of genuine respect and understanding between races in America. I remember being shocked at the passages in the novel where other (white) citizens of Maycomb accuse Atticus (it was shocking to my mind that this was something used as an accusation in the first place) of being a "n----- lover," because Atticus was willing to give a solid defense to his client Tom Robinson over against white accusers.  And I remember the awe and appreciation I had for Atticus knowing that he was never afraid or ashamed of being given that label, when there were lots of seemingly respectable citizens of 1930s Maycomb who were scandalized at the idea of treating "those people" as social equals to whites. My adolescent mind had to that point still been pretty well shielded from learning about the worst of the segregation-era South, but Atticus stood out even to that more sheltered earlier version of myself as a picture of moral clarity, compassion, and courage. Atticus cast a grandfatherly shadow over those formative years for me, as one more picture of what a true man was supposed to look like.

Some part of me wishes that was all there was to the story.  But of course, as the news was buzzing about in 2016, apparently Harper Lee had written another novel about Atticus and Scout, set in the 1950s when Scout is a grown woman going by her given name Jean Louise, and Atticus is an old man.  Well, of course, sequels are hardly shocking--but the twist with this second book, Go Set A Watchman, was that it had been ostensibly written before To Kill A Mockingbird, even though the characters have all aged and the novel is set later.  That makes To Kill A Mockingbird a "prequel" before that was a word, but for all the world other than Harper Lee herself, Watchman was arriving fifty years after Atticus had first appeared on the page.

And the final shock (consider this your last spoiler alert) of this second trip into the world of Maycomb, Alabama, was that as an old man, Atticus has now joined up with the local "White Citizens Council" and is looking to stop the advance of "those people," including those bus boycotters from Montgomery (that would be Martin Luther King, Jr., and company), and those who were marching for an end to segregation.  Even though buzz about the book had given me a sickening suspicion about where the story would go, I will confess that reading it felt like a gut punch.  No, not Atticus... not our Atticus.  Not the one who had taught me to walk around in another person's skin to understand them!  Not the one who was willing to become the object of mockery and threats--even the endangering of his children--in order to do what was right by defending his client! Not this man who had taught such powerful lessons, not only to me but to countless teenagers over the last fifty years whose eyes were opened by To Kill A Mockingbird! What an awful surprise--to see the people you most respected (fictional or real) revealed to be cowards and sell-outs, undermining all that you thought you had learned from them.  And worst of all to me, if it is indeed true that Harper Lee had written this book first, then in her mind, Atticus had been this man all along, even if the side we all knew and loved was all the public knew.  It meant that, rather than there being some tragic event that could have led Atticus to turn in such a bigoted direction, that streak must have been there in his fictional heart all along.

It is a difficult thing to lose faith in the people you counted on as your moral compass.  That is true whether they are living breathing persons or fictional characters. It is hard to see someone not merely selling out, but to discover that they had perhaps sold out to something awful long ago, and you had just never seen it before.  Some part of me seriously grieved last year to have lost the Atticus Finch who had lived in my imagination for twenty years before.

So... here's the fifty-thousand dollar question for me: which is the real Atticus?  The enlightened quixotic defender of Tom Robinson, or the bigoted old man who aligns himself with the "White Citizens Council"?

Or... am I forced to consider the possibility that a very clever author wants us to see both are true, and that both reside in the same character? That is a scary possibility, in all honesty, because if I recognize that a beloved literary hero can have these streaks of nobility and bigotry side by side in him, I am going to have to admit that there are parallel streaks in me, as well.  I am going to have to prepare myself, not only for the likely possibility that there are other (real) people in my life whom I have respected but who have let me down with some awful beliefs or prejudices, but I am going to have to prepare myself for the reality that there are places in myself I do not want to see the light of day, places of which I would be ashamed to admit or be forced to see.  As much as it was hard last year to read about a beloved fictional hero's clay feet, there is the yet harder task of looking at my own clay feet as well.

Of course, it turns out that this has been part of the struggle for the people of God all along.  It certainly was for Paul, the apostle responsible for half of the New Testament, who laments here in Romans 7 about the struggle within himself.  Paul has been wrestling with the Atticus in the mirror, too--he wants to live faithfully and truly in line with the way of Jesus and the character of the Reign of God.  But he also feels this tension inside between that impulse toward the path of Jesus and the pull backward into the old self-bent hatred and greed and avarice.  Paul feels the pull in both directions, wanting to love like Jesus and give himself fully to the gracious reign of God, but also yanked in the opposite course like Atticus at the White Citizens Council.  And Paul knows that it is a terrible mess to be pulled like that, when he wants to give himself fully to the way and love of Jesus.

You and I are in that boat, too.  You and I live in that tension.  I realize we have been looking all this month at the call to turn from our old self-centered aims and toward the priorities of God.  But I don't want to oversimplify that, or make it seem like it is a simple one-time choice like buying an Apple or Android.  Even if we get a moment where the clouds part and we can say clearly and courageously, "Not my will, O God, but yours," there is the tension within us all the while, with some part sincerely seeking to reorient ourselves around the mercy and justice of the living God, and some part just bent on putting "me first."  Some part of each of us would defend Tom Robinson because we know that the Kingdom of God looks like love for the marginalized and justice for the powerless... but some part of us would sell out to the White Citizens Council with Watchman's old man Atticus, too.  If we are honest, there are uncomfortable streaks of both within each of us--the faithful, courageous, grace-filled, open-eyed followers of the crucified Jesus on the one hand, and the fearful, cowardly, self-focused, closed-hearted lovers of self on the other.  We are both.  And we are going to have to live with the wrestling between two ways of being Atticus every morning when we start the day... and then as we live it out.

I want to be honest here--this is not an easy struggle.  Like the famous line of Solzhenitsyn reminds us, the line between good and evil does not run through states, or classes, or political parties, but cuts through every human heart.  Each of us is a fearful sell-out, and each of us is a faithful seeker.  It may well be in these days that you, too, have felt like you have lost some heroes, respected mentors, or friends, like I have been grieving over the Atticus of my tenth-grade literature class.  But beyond just feeling disillusioned at others, if we are honest, we are going to have to look at ourselves, too, and hold up to Jesus the jumble of mixed motives, secret shames, and honest yearning to do what is right that comes with each of us.  We are going to have to take that saint-and-sinner hodgepodge and hold it up to Jesus himself, trusting him to love us as we are, but also to heal us like a surgeon and cut away the cancers inside us that we did not want to admit were eating us alive from the inside.  We are going to have to admit that we are, each of us, part of the problem in this sinful world, and that we are striving to be a part of God's merciful movement to heal and mend.  We are going to have to trust that Jesus can love us while we are still wrestling with Atticus in the mirror, and to allow his love to give us the courage to start again, striving after God's will rather than the old bent.

Lord Jesus, we are torn between old familiar patterns of fear, self-centeredness, and hate on the one hand, and your new order of things in grace and justice.  Here we are, a jumble of everything.  Take us, Jesus.  Take us and love us into your new creations.

A Failure of Imagination

A Failure of Imagination--February 17, 2017

"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church an in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen" [Ephesians 3:20-21]

"What we've got here," begins the classic line from Cool Hand Luke, "is a failure to communicate." 

Well, that may or may not have been the trouble for Paul Newman, but for us, let me dare to suggest a different diagnosis.  Maybe at the heart of the me-centered, bent-in-on-self ("incurvatus in se," if you want to say it in Latin in Luther's lovely phrasing) mindset with which we all struggle, maybe deep down the root of it all is a failure of imagination.

You may well know that phrase already.  People talk about the lack of planning for all possible outcomes as a "failure of imagination." The idea there is that there are so many dangers out there in the world that you have to be vigilant in thinking of all the possible things that could go wrong, or all the possible threats out there, or else you will be caught off guard in the bliss of ignorance and naivete. 

But allow me to venture the notion that there is another kind of failure of imagination.  What if the reason I am so self-centered, so focused on getting "my way" and "my winning", is that I cannot imagine that there could be another way of living or seeing the world?  What if the root problem is a refusal to practice the imagination of faith that looks for how God might do bigger and bolder things than my tiny little wish-list?  What if, like the vision of the philosopher and mystic of the 16th century Giordano Bruno (who was burned at the stake for his breadth of vision), there is a universe of infinite size and beauty all around me, and I have been trying to coop it all up inside the sphere of what I can see?  What if God has been inviting us all along to see bigger, wider, deeper, and further, but we are, all of us, hung up on our narrow self-interest and tiny little problems?

The letter to the Ephesians suggests something like that--the writer calls God the one who "is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine."  Think about that for a moment. The limitations are not on God--the limitations come from how much my feeble mind can think to ask for! 

So often, our vision of the world, our picture of life, is bounded too narrowly by what we think is "practical" or "reasonable" or "common sense" or even "natural."  So often, our vision of the world is limited by my small-brained thinking that "there is only so much to go around, and therefore, I need to grab all I can for myself and my group."  So often, we say to ourselves, "That Jesus stuff about multiplying loaves and turning cheeks and giving to any who ask of you is nice... but it's just not realistic.  You have to grow up and enter the real world and learn to look out for number-one."  So often, we say, "All that stuff about wolves and lambs lying down in the new creation--that's for after we die when we get to heaven.  But for now, I had better be ready to fight for what I want, or else the boogeyman will take it away from me." 

Ah, but the letter to the Ephesians dares us to take our faith seriously.  Ephesians says, "The problem is not that God cannot preserve you if you dare to love enemies and practice radical generosity.  The problem is that you don't really believe God could or would take care of you, and so you don't dare living out Jesus' teaching because it doesn't sound realistic."  Ephesians is saying the problem is not that God cannot multiply loaves to feed the world if we dare to share our bread--the problem is that we don't really think God is up to the task, and so we hold back our lunch on the hillside, because it looks like there is not enough to go around.  The problem is not God. The problem is not that such faith is unrealistic or silly.  The problem is a failure of imagination.  We dare not really live like God is real and really active in the world, and so we immediately turn back inward to preserve our own interests.

There is a term for that, you know:  practical atheism.  That is to say, we religious folks may say we believe in God, but when it comes to our actions and priorities, we behave as though God is not real and we are on our own to protect ourselves.  We may mouth the words of creeds and dogmas, but when it comes to actually living like the Maker of the universe really has commanded us to "care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger," we invent all sorts of reasons why that doesn't really apply to me... or that is a nice idea, but can't be done in real life. 

I mean, seriously, why is it that we church-goers get devout and misty-eyed all of a sudden when there is an unexpected healing of our loved one in the hospital, and we say proudly to our friends, "It was a miracle!  God really does miracles!" but when it comes to God's vision of a world in which enemies are reconciled, where all are fed, and where "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger" are cared for, all of a sudden our faith in a wonder-working God evaporates, and we say things like, "Well, we just don't live in a world like that..."?  We have a believe in a selectively-powerful deity, it seems---a god (I will not capitalize this fictional deity) who clearly gets the credit for miraculous intervention when it is my need, my illness, my windfall to help me pay the bills, or my troubled times, but who seems strangely uninvolved or uninterested when someone raises the question of daring to live the life Jesus instructed--where enemies are loved, bread is shared, and debts are cancelled?  Why is it that all of those kinds of things seem too much to ask of God to make possible, but the cured case of cancer for which the doctors have no explanation seems perfectly reasonable to believe in?

Maybe the problem is that in my selective imagination, I am great at imagining God doing great stuff and big things for me and people like me (you know, good, upstanding, respectable religious people like me), but I cannot dare to imagine God being equally invested in lifting up the lowly, feeding the hungry, and defending that recurring triad of the marginalized in Scripture: "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger." 

So today, maybe we need to hear these words from Ephesians again, and to hear them both as a corrective and as a word of hope.  We need to hear first, that we are a bunch of hypocrites at some level, happy to think about God caring and intervening in my difficulty, but skeptical when it comes to imagining the same God getting involved in the lives of others whose suffering or heartache is outside my experience. We need to hear first from Ephesians the uncomfortable truth that just because something is not in my experience does not mean it does not matter to God, or that God cannot be passionately, fiercely, lovingly invested in attending to those needs.  In other words, we need to hear Ephesians tell us that we comfortable religious folk have been suffering from a failure of imagination.

And then... then, we can hear the hope on the other side the same coin: just because my mind and my imagination are too small or too self-absorbed to conceive of God big enough to care about all, that doesn't mean God actually is so small.  Just because I may only be able to see a small slice of the night sky through my telescope does not mean the universe really is that small. It just means I need to allow the possibility that the cosmos is bigger than I can take in.  And the same is true of the living God.  Just because I can only conceive of my own limited experience does not mean that God is bound to my narrow set of first-world concerns.  Turns out God is allowed to be bigger than my capacity to grasp.

And wouldn't you know it, but the goodness and mercy of God is even allowed to be bigger than my capacity to imagine it.

Thank God.

Lord Jesus, widen our vision, and pull our heads out from wherever we have buried them, so that we can take in a fuller view of who you are, and what your love will do today.

Kingdom First

Kingdom First--February 16, 2017

"Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." [Matthew 6:31-33]

Ok, true story.  Two days ago, at about 5:30 in the evening, my daughter looked at me with pouting lips and crossed arms and said, "I want a snack!"  And my immediate response to her was literally the following sentence: "Honey, I just told you it is dinner time.  Come right here to the table, and we will eat supper!"  And, of course, in perfect three-year-old logic, she responded angrily in frustration: "I don't want dinner!  I'm hungry--I only want a snack!"

Her hunger was real, but she was locked into how that hunger was supposed to be dealt with: not a full meal of spaghetti and meatballs and broccoli and applesauce, but a packet of fruit snacks or popcorn or something.  In her mind, only something in a brightly colored package, preferably being sold by a cartoon animal of some kind on the label, would address her hunger. 

Of course, any adult knows that a little baggie of gummy-style fruit snacks is hardly going to fill a growling tummy, while a plate of noodles and meatballs will do the trick every time.  And, probably, at some level, my daughter knew it, too.... and yet there we were anyway, with her pouting on the dining room floor, convinced that the only thing that would really meet her need was a "snack" rather than a meal. 

Now, to be honest here, the elegance of being a parent of a three-year-old is that I have the right of overruling requests that would not really be good for her.  If I caved in to my smart, beautiful (but three-year-old) daughter's demand and gave her only a package of eight raisin-sized gummy "things" in shades of neon red and orange and yellow, instead of giving her a full supper, she would have been hungry almost immediately despite her insistence that she "did not want dinner" at all, but "only a snack."  So, using my parental prerogative, guess what--she got a plate at dinner anyway, and she got some noodles and sauce and all the rest offered to her, despite her indignant look before the table blessing.  And guess what--it turns out she was hungry for dinner after all... and what do you know, but noodles and meatballs and broccoli and all the rest did the trick.  Wonder of wonders, right?

Sometimes it is a gift of grace to get overruled.

Look, with kids, this is all part of what it is to grow up.  We all went through the phase.  We all have to go through the experience of having our hopes set on some small thing, that we think will be great, only to discover our vision was too short-sighted... or the thing we thought we wanted wasn't all it was cracked up to be... or that our parents were wiser than we realized and wanted to give us what we really needed all along, but we didn't recognize it at the time... or all of the above.  All of us have been my three-year-old daughter at some point--our hopes pinned on something so narrowly that we cannot recognize at the moment that what we really need is both much bigger and also right in front of us, as available for the taking as spaghetti on a plate. 

The shame is when we get stuck in that childish view long past our time.  The shame is when we find ourselves in adulthood but still striving after a list of shiny, excitingly packaged "stuff" that never satisfies, when God has been calling us to dinner all along.  The shame is when we are spiritual toddlers convinced that we don't want a full meal--no, by golly, we are hungry! We want a snack!  And so we strive after all the things we have been told will make us happy, will make us content, will finally give us the good life.  And what do you know... they leave us feeling hungry. 

Maybe, worse than that, they leave us feeling... empty.

Jesus, of course, has never been fooled, and has been telling us all along what it is that we are aching for.  "Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness," says the NRSV.  Or, if you like, "Seek first for God's Reign in all things, and God's kind of justice..." And what do you know, but everything else you really need will come along for the ride.  Maybe Jesus knows what we really need more than we know it ourselves.  Maybe, like a toddler infatuation with colorful, cartoon-emblazoned packaging, we have consented to wanting what the voices in the marketing department have told us we should want, rather than what we really need.

See, that's just it--God's Reign, God's way of ordering things, really is the best possible life for us.  When Jesus says, "Seek first the Kingdom, and then all these things will be given to you as well," he is not saying, "Pay your dues and do something for God, and then you will win a prize." He is not saying, "Do this unpleasant chore, and then you'll be given your allowance and you can buy what you want."  Rather it's more like we are the stubborn toddlers who think that fruit snacks will fill our bellies while he has been offering us the meal that really will satisfy us.  Jesus doesn't say, "Seek first the kingdom" as a "You-scratch-God's-back-and-then-God-will-scratch-yours" kind of deal.  Rather Jesus is saying, "The hunger you are feeling is real, but you are focusing on a snack that won't deal with the empty feeling when I am offering you daily bread that will make you full."

That's why Jesus is relentless in his insistence that God's Reign come first in our lives.  It's not because God needs our labor first before God starts doling out rewards.  It's that God's Reign is what we have most needed all along.  What is out of order in our lives on our own is our refusal to let God's priorities, God's kind of gracious love, God's kind of surprising justice, God's kind of truth-telling, give shape to our thoughts and actions.  It turns out Jesus just plain knows better than we give him credit for. And Jesus knows that having more money, or more stuff, or more influence, or the illusion of greater security, or more prestige for me and my group, or whatever else... will not really make me more fulfilled in my deepest self.  Those things will only give me at best a momentary bit of flavor before they leave me feeling just as empty as before and even more disillusioned.  Anything that comes first, anything that gets first place in our lives before God's Reign is going to let us down.  The dissatisfaction I get when my new promotion turns out not to be as great as I had been hoping, or when the new romantic interest turns out to have clay feet like all the others before, or when the extra money in my paycheck still doesn't make all my problems disappear, these things are not punishments from God for picking the wrong priority--they are simply what happens when you expect a baggie of fruit snacks to fill a stomach that is hungry for a real meal.

So here's the challenge for today. We will examine our priorities.  And any place in our lives where we would put something other than "The Reign of God" in the blank space before " __________ First!", we will confess that we have been misguided.  Money first, job first, life-plan-of-climbing-up-the-ladder-of-success first, cookie-cutter-family-picture first, even country-first or church-organization-first... these are all bound to let us down.  Jesus doesn't say, "Make sure you put your new job ahead of loving your neighbor--that's just good career advice!" And he doesn't say, "Teach your kid to punch first rather than getting punched, or else they'll be losers!"  Nope, it's not about self first or money first or reputation first.  It's about allowing God's priorities to become our priorities, about letting God's values inform our own, about letting Jesus tell us, "No, the fruit snacks won't fill what is empty--trust me on this one" and then letting him give us the gift of the full meal we didn't think we wanted.

Today, what if we dared to grow up, and to let Jesus give us what he sees we have needed all along? What if we skipped the temper tantrum from not getting our way, and instead allowed the possibility that Jesus' way was better than our own from the start?  What if we dared to strive for God's rule in our lives more and more fully, inviting God to rearrange the furniture in our hearts more and more completely, before brining anything else in to our lives or our hearts?

What if, in other words, we dared to let--as the psalmist puts it--God set a table before us, even in the presence of our enemies, while our cups overflow and a meal is spread out that will really satisfy the emptiness?

Lord Jesus, let your way be first in our lives.   Let your movement animate us first in our lives.  Let your love be the first influence in our lives. 

Manna and Mercy

Manna and Mercy--February 15, 2017

"Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." [Matthew 6:9-12]

It's like being taken by the hand and led out of the cruise ship swimming pool and invited to jump into the great wide ocean that was there all along beyond the lido deck.

It's like being pulled from the living room window through which you were straining to see the moon out in the night sky, and taken out into the front yard to see the whole night sky in all its brilliance, away from the haze of light pollution from your living room TV.

That's what it's like to be pulled out from the narrow little reality of "my will" and being drawn into the wide open ocean, the sea of stars in the night sky, that is the will of God.  It is a pulling out of something, yes--but something that was ridiculously small and comparatively shallow when held up against the vast beauty that was surrounding it the whole time. 

We need to have this conversation, as we are looking all month long at turning our old question, "How do I get what I want out of life?" upside down to ask instead, "How will God get what God intends in the world, and how can I be a part of it in my life?"  We need to be clear, or maybe I need to be clear myself, about what it really means to talk about "the will of God."  Sometimes that can sound just as narrow and tremendously fatalistic--it can sound like God has a secret "correct" parking space in which you must park in order to accomplish some divine plan, or that God has a vital interest in which pair of socks you wear this morning.  Sometimes religious folks (and TV and radio preachers have this down to a science) can sound like they have special secret access to God's will for you personally, and that if you will take their recommended steps (often it involves sending money to their TV or radio ministry, ordering their latest book, subscribing to their blog, or voting for the candidate they not-too-subtly support), then they will cue you in to the secret plan of God's best parking space for you. 

This is manifestly not what I have in mind (and I don't think the New Testament writers, nor Jesus himself) has in mind when we talk about reorienting our lives around God's will.  It is not that you have to stop liking mushrooms on pizza because God's secret will is for you to start liking pineapple and ham.  And it is not that God will start sending you notes with stock tips and fashion choices for your daily outfits if only you will pray the right prayer.  Nope.  Not that.  Not at all.

But what I want to suggest is that when we are bent in on self (which is another way of saying, living for our own wish lists and seeking to get "my way"), we are actually settling for much less than is out there, and it turns out that when we allow ourselves to be reoriented around the Reign of God, we discover something that is good and beautiful and wide enough for all.

Sometimes talk of "seeking the will of God" sounds like we are going to be asked to walk on glass, or take up frowning permanently, or to stop enjoying good jokes with friends, or the taste of a cold beer, or the smell of rain, or the reassurance of the voice of someone who loves you.  And it's not that, either.  It turns out that the living God has a thing for spreading joy, all around, and that includes things like rain and friends and love and good jokes and all the rest. But God's vision, if we dare to believe the Scriptures, is wider and bigger than our narrow self-interest.  It turns out God doesn't just want me to be joyful, or just me-and-my-immediate-group, but everybody.  It turns out, God wants me to be fed, but not just me--God's will is for everybody to get to eat, not just that I get to gorge myself on supersized excess.

That's the difference: turning our orientation toward God's will rather than "my way" opens me up to recognizing that the Maker of the Universe, who sends the good gifts of sun and rain on all of us, has a reckless generosity toward all.  Now, that isn't meant to take away from my joy, but we humans have a way of sliding into petty childishness that gets upset when someone else gets something good, even if we still have whatever good things we need, too.  We have a way, like in Jesus' provocative parable of workers in the vineyard, of getting upset when someone else gets the same as we already have, even though we haven't been cheated out of anything ourselves.  We have a way of assuming the world is a zero-sum game, and that if something good happens to you, it must be bad for me--and conversely, that the only way I can feel successful enough is to label you a "loser" and myself a "winner."  That's the way children think.  That's the way petty hearts think.  That's the small-size and shallow-scope vision of someone bent in on "my way" and "Me-and-My-Group First!" that thinks there is only enough good to go around for a select few.

But the living God has a way of multiplying loaves and fishes.  The living God has a way of raining down manna from heaven each morning--enough for all, and bound to spoil and rot if you try and hoard more for just you and your little group.  The living God has a way of envisioning goodness and abundance that is enough for all.  And only only ONLY if we are stuck in petty-minded-child mode will we see it as "bad news"  to be pulled out of our narrow self-interest into something wider and bigger.  It really is like being taken by the hand from the cruise ship swimming pool to see that we are being invited to take a dip in the ocean. That's what it is to learn to pray, as Jesus teaches, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Because... did you notice what immediately follows from praying for God's Reign to come and God's will to be done?  Almost like Jesus is elaborating on what that looks like, Jesus proceeds to teach us (always in the plural--there is no "me" and "my" but "us" and "our" for Jesus) to ask for bread for the day, like manna from the old wildnerness wanderings, and forgiveness for all.  Food and forgiveness.  Manna and mercy.  And notice that in Jesus' view, these things are meant to be given all around, shared all around, and asked for all around.  I don't just ask for God to cover my food needs while my neighbor goes hungry--my neighbor going hungry will not make my food taste any better, after all.  If anything, it should make my sick to my stomach to know that my neighbor is going without.  And forgiveness is the same: Jesus teaches me not simply to ask for my own forgiveness so that I-and-I-alone can "get into heaven" because I am forgiven, but rather we ask for mercy in the plural ("forgive us") and Jesus hitches it to our practice of forgiveness of others.  That is what it looks like where God's will is done--everybody gets to eat.  Everybody gets grace.  Not that we all get to gorge ourselves on a fifth large pizza with divine blessing on our avarice.  And not that we all get license to be rotten jerks to each other because we think forgiveness means "permission to be a jerk."  But daily bread.  Daily forgiveness.  This is what God's will is... for all.

See how wide a vision that is?  See how much more beautiful it is than just me in the tiny, over-chlorinated pool on the cruise ship?  See how many more stars I can see when I am led out from the glow of the TV to the open air of the night sky?

That's what it is on this day to learn to pray, "Not my will, but yours, O God.  Not what  I thought was my wish-list, but your dream, O God, your vision, and your Reign of manna and mercy for all."  Let us step into the day this way.

Not my will, but yours, O God.  Not what I thought was my wish-list, but your dream, O God, your vision, and your Reign of manna and mercy for all.

The Sad Mountaintop View

The Sad Mountaintop View--February 14, 2017

"Love does not insist on its own way." [1 Corinthians 13:5]

What happens after you get to the top of the hill?  I suspect it turns out to be something of a letdown.

If you have ever spent any time playing the old children's game, "King of the Hill," I bet you already knew that.  King of the Hill is one of those games that is ridiculously easy to learn as a child, but which reveals something of the ridiculous world of adults, too. 

Step One: Find a mound or little hill, or if necessary, make one--any pile of sand, dirt, or rocks will do.

Step Two: You and all the other players try to climb up to the top first.

Step Three: Once you are at the top, try and keep everybody else from getting your spot on the top of the hill.

Step Four: If someone else pulls you down from the top and makes him or herself the new 'king of the hill,' repeat Steps Two and Three.  Forever.

That's it.  It's an endless loop of players all climbing over each other and clamoring to get their own way.  There is no stopwatch or time-clock ticking down.  There is no prize at the end.  Just the pride of having been on top and getting your own way longer than others did.  You are either clawing at the one who is already on top, or you are stomping on the hands of those who are trying to get your spot.

And of course, if you would actually stop to think about it for a moment while you are kicking and stomping and climbing and clawing, there's nothing particularly "good" about being on top.  It's not that the view is particularly lovely from the top of the hill--we are not talking about a majestic mountain peak, but a pile of rocks only a few feet high usually.  It's not that you really get to take it easy once you are on top of the hill--no, in fact, just the opposite.  You go on permanent defense while you try to stop or slow down everybody else who is gunning for you.  But while you are playing the game, or at least while you are climbing your way to the top to usurp the title of "King of the Hill," it can feel like the most coveted spot in the world to get up there to the top of the dirt-mound.

But you and I both know that being "king of the hill" is not all it's cracked up to be.  It's a lot less exciting once you are up there.

Maybe that's the lesson we were supposed to learn from playing "King of the Hill."  Maybe the game's lesson is to point out its own futility, so that we will know it's a waste of our lives to play it as adults.  Because... here's the thing: it's one thing to waste a fifteen or twenty minutes playing "King of the Hill" as kids who have nothing but disposable time on their hands.  But it's another thing to grow up in to adulthood and still think that "getting your way" will bring you happiness or contentment.   That's a surefire way to waste an entire lifetime.

Of course, we convince ourselves that the quest to make it to the top will be worth it.  We tell ourselves, and we are constantly told by the influence peddlers of the day that we should spend our energy and attention climbing and clawing our way up to the top.  It's just somehow... better, they say. And so even after we have grown out of climbing up to the top of a dirt pile for fun, somehow it still retains its respectability as a philosophy of life for adults.  You make your life plan.  You chart out what you want in life.  And then you climb and grab and pull and push yourself to the point where you are finally on top of the hill. You are supposed to aim for the promotion, regardless of what you have to do to anybody else to get it.  You are supposed to strive to make more and more money, regardless of how affluence poisons your soul.  You are supposed to acquire and accumulate, to get bigger and better, and from the top of your pile of stuff, you will look out on the world, and know you are... the king. And once you are up there, well, then the goal becomes... just holding onto all of it.  To believe those voices of our culture, the point of life is to get your way... and then to keep getting your way.  Do that for long enough, and you'll be seen as a "winner." And you can lull yourself to sleep at night with the pride that you are top.

So whether it's phrased as "I'm looking out for number one," or "I did it my way," or "Me-and-my-group first!", whether it's an unspoken assumption or your official stated policy, it's all still the same old sad, wearying game of "King of the Hill." 

Call that what you will, but it sure ain't the way of Jesus, and it sure ain't what genuine love looks like.  Of course, our culture has never been great at speaking truthfully about real love.  My goodness, look what we have done with the story of Saint Valentine--we've taken the life of someone who so loved Jesus and so loved other people that he was willing to be beaten and executed by the Empire of his day because they saw his allegiance to Jesus as a threat and they feared his way of sharing the Good News, and we've turned it into a day to exchange boxes of cheap chocolates and eat pastel-colored heart-shaped pieces of chalk we call candy.  Maybe we are afraid of what genuine love will cost us, too.

Paul gets it:  "Love does not insist on its own way." The Greek is even more stark:  "Love does not seek after its own."

These words from what we call First Corinthians are probably pretty familiar to our ears, because they are from that passage in 1 Corinthians 13 that is read at, well, every wedding you have every been to.  But they weren't originally meant to be marriage advice.  They aren't primarily about romance at all--they are the hallmark for all of our lives as Christians, every relationship, every interaction.  This is supposed to be our whole way of life!

Think about how radical that is--it's the deliberate overturning of the whole "King of the Hill" logic we are taught in this world.  It is a conscious revolt against the mindset of "My group first!"  It is an outlook grounded in the mercy of God, who loves us the same way, with self-giving, other-seeking love.  You'll note that Paul doesn't say, "Well, it's just in your romantic relationships and marriages that love doesn't insist on its own way--but when it comes to business, it's dog-eat-dog!" You'll note that Paul doesn't say, "Under your own roof, you should put each other first, but hey, with everybody else you meet, you have to get your own way and look out for your own interests first!"  No, there is no asterisk or fine print.  It is simply how love works... all the way around, all the way down.  The followers of Jesus are called to love by laying aside our own interests, and laying down our need to put ourselves first, not just when it's easy--with people who are like us because they are in our families--but with everybody. 

So today, if you never learned it from a childhood game on the old dirt-mound, learn it today: it is a waste of a lifetime, in all seriousness, to seek after your own way in this life.  Once you get to the top of the hill, after all that striving, you see it's been empty and vain... and yet by that point, everyone else is sinking their claws into you to pull themselves up to the top of the rock pile, too. 

Today, we are called into a new way of life, the life marked by genuine love as we have seen it in Jesus.  Today, we are called to find fulfillment by laying down our insistence on getting our own way.

Lord Jesus, your way today, please.  Your way always.  Lord Jesus, immerse us in your love.