Good News for Rabbits and Pears

Good News for Rabbits and Pears--August 31, 2017

"As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise."  [Gal. 3:27-29]

Okay, let me say this as plainly as I know how to: God delights in "other-ness."

God loves variety.  God intends difference.  God's creative genius is best seen in the way God's universe makes room for infinite variation, difference, and diversity.

It's why there's not just one kind of fruit in the world, but apples and pears and berries and cherries and grapes and plums and on and on, each kind with their own multiplicity of variations.

It's why there are not simply generic types of animals, just one Mammal, just one kind of Bird, one Reptile, etc.  There could have been.  Scientists will tell you they can imagine other worlds that only have generic one-celled protozoa in them, floating in the water in homogenous blandness.  The world could have been a uniformly "blah" shade of taupe, for that matter--there is no reason there has to be the variety there is in the created order around us... except that the Maker of the universe delights in other-ness.

In fact, you could say, what makes the whole of creation hang together is its ability to hold together despite its mind-boggling diversity.  The planet doesn't "work" right if there are only flowers and no bees to pollinate them.  The whole doesn't hang together if there aren't penguins and fish, peaches and cranberries, foxes and rabbits, wolves and lambs.  Even in tiny variations--say, different varieties of wheat or corn--there is value when one kind is resistant to a blight that another kind is susceptible to. 

So, in other words, God's joy--and cleverness--are on full display in the created world's "otherness."  And notice there--pears are not "acceptable" as fruit because the apples pity them and think, "Well, they're trying hard to assimilate into being apple-ish like us... let's throw them a bone and let them in the fruit club."  God doesn't love rabbits because they are trying hard to be like hamsters but just haven't gotten the ears short enough yet.  Each is beloved, each is good, each is a precious thing of beauty being fully what it is.

And that is true as well in the community of Jesus' followers.  God's intention is not to puree us all up into a homogenous slurry of generic "people" who have lost their individual flavors.  The church ain't mashed potatoes.  Rather, God's intention is to hold together the whole cross-section of all the ways there are to be human: every shade of skin color, every hue on the rainbow, every kind of variation.  And God's design is not to blend us all into a uniform shade of taupe or a single flavor of vanilla.  Our belonging is not dependent on losing our distinctives, or all adopting same-ness, in appearance, in attitudes, in likes, in loves, even in outlook.  And there is no insistence on assimilation for the community of Jesus--my goodness, the whole story of the "birthday of the church" (what we call Pentecost) was a sermon given and heard in every language they could think of, rather than Peter telling everybody gathered in Jerusalem, "Hey, I've got a great message for you--once you learn Aramaic, you're gonna want to listen..."  The picture we get from the New Testament itself is of a community where each is valued for what each of us is, not for how well we do at assimilating into something else, or being blended into a vanilla shake. The audacious claim of the Gospel is that God holds all kinds of people together in a unity that accepts us exactly as we are, with all of our other-ness.  In fact God appear to have an easier time accepting (and loving and delighting in) otherness than most Christians do.

Just to be clear--we don't lose our gender or skin color or language or national background when we become a part of the community of Christ, the church.  Christians don't lose their individual particularities because they are Christians--I'm still a white male of English and German background married to a white female of German and Norwegian ancestry.  But God's intention was never to make everybody like us.  In fact, in the history and breadth of Christianity, we are surely the minority, even though we American churchgoers often unwittingly assume that the default for "Christian" is "people like me."  God forbid!  God's way isn't--and never has been--to take new faces and just put them in the blender with the rest of the church puree so it all tastes and looks the same unappetizing shade of tan. 

My welcome in the disciple community doesn't come because I have sufficiently made myself like others, or because I fit the categories that others bring, any more than someone else has to make themselves fit my demographic categories.  That's why Paul says here in Galatians, "There is no longer Greek or Jew, free or slave, male and female."  Those old lines and distinctions no longer divide us or carry any force for us within the Christian community.  These are all the categories Paul can think of--gender, race, class--and he insists that among us they carry no weight.  Our baptism into Christ defines us, he says, and makes a stronger claim on us than any other label that gets put on us or that we put on ourselves.  Before I am anything else--before I am white or male or English or middle class or married or whatever other categorization we might describe ourselves with--I am made a child of God through Christ.  I don't stop being any of those other things, but Paul would tell us that none of those other things are the basis of my belonging or my identity any longer.  The old labels used to define me just don’t stick.

The problem we face with all of these words, though, is that we have let it go as just a utopian vision and we perpetually fall short of it.  Martin Luther King, Jr. used to point out that the most segregated hour in America was the Sunday morning worship hour--a sad reality that flies in the face of all that Paul says about what it means to live in the Christian community.  For that matter, for generations, Christians have either ignored or spiritualized this passage from Galatians so that women could not have positions of leadership in the church--often with the claim that they were abiding by other scriptures that speak against women's leadership, but clearly then ignoring this passage.  We'll have to have the fuller Biblical conversation about women's leadership in church on another day, but the point here for today is that Paul gives us this radically open, profoundly beautiful picture of community in this passage, and we invent all sorts of new ways to settle for less than this genuine kind of community.   And  maybe the  worst part about all of it is that Paul doesn't describe this picture as a future possibility or a commandment of what we should be or could be if only we would strive harder at it.  This is not a utopian hypothetical community--Paul says that this is how things are for us.  In other words, God regards us already as a community where the old lines between Jew and Greek, free and slave, male and female no longer divide us.  God no longer sees those distinctions when he looks at us--he sees Christ.  He sees children of God.  And yet we somehow still settle for the divisions and distinctions and labels.  Paul seems to think that there's nothing more we need to do to create this kind of community, except to believe that it is already the case.

That's not the same as saying, "I just don't see color."  That's not how God intends it, any more than you look in the produce aisle and say, "I only see fruit."  No, part of the beauty of a pear is its pear-ness, and part of the beauty of a kiwi is what makes it different from pears, apples, and bananas.  The idea is not to lie and say, "We don't see differences," but to say that our belonging comes through God's embrace of our otherness, and not because God secretly wishes all the rabbits would try a little harder to be like the hamsters.  Our belonging is not predicated on assimilation as a past accomplishment or a promissory note--it is grounded in the joy that God takes in other-ness of every kind.

Recent events have once again shown how deep the wounds and sensitivities about race are in this country.  And making it worse perhaps are  our clumsy attempts to speak about race.  It feels sometimes like we don't really know how to relate to one another, and that even our best intentions ("I don't even see color!") are misguided because they still imagine that the right strategy is matter of pretending difference isn't there. It can feel like a lost cause to try and genuinely love people who don't already look like, think like, or talk like me.

And yet... here is Paul announcing that the Christian community exists as an alternative kind of community where the old boundary lines really can be taken down--because they have been taken down, once and for all by Christ Jesus.  Maybe the challenge for us, seeing how racially fractured our world is--not to mention all the other categories that divide us--is whether we can dare to actually trust the claim of the gospel--that the old lines need not hem us in any longer, that the old labels will not stick, and that our identity is a gift of Christ, a common gift meant to be shared with all.

If you are a pear, be a pear and know you are beloved by God as a pear.  If you are a maple tree, don't worry about trying to be like a pine--you are loved as a maple.  If you are a rabbit, don't you spend one minute trying to shorten your ears to make yourself more like a hamster--you bring joy to God exactly as God made you.

You, in all of your you-ness, bring joy to the Maker of the universe.

God of new vision, teach us to see as you see.  Train our eyes to look on your beloved and to see your beloved.  Teach us to own our particularities but not to judge by our particularities.  Teach us to rejoice that you have created a community in which the outsiders are brought in and the lowly are raised high, and we are all given the likeness of Jesus--simply as a gift.  Teach us these things, and we will praise you for them.

Learning to See...Again

Learning to See... Again--August 30, 2017

"You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?" [Gal. 3:1-5]

Sometimes, the things right in front of us are the hardest to see.

Sometimes, we need someone to point out to us the realities that have been staring us in the face all along... things like mercy.  Things like freedom.  Things like the grace of God.

For example... when God has worked in our lives in the past, have we ever gotten a bill?  Have we ever gotten an invoice marked with payment due for services rendered from the Spirit that has worked in our lives already?  Nope?  Guess what--that's what grace is like.  It's God's modus operandi, and it is always right there in front of us, all the time, except that so often we can't imagine it really could all be for free, so we refuse to see the free gifts before our eyes. We need someone, therefore, who can help us to see the free gift (ahem... that's what "mercy" and "grace" ARE) that was there all along.

This is essentially what everything boils down to for Paul--God is already acting in the lives and community of the Galatians for free--without waiting on them to follow religious rules first.  Free really means free.  And to hear Paul tell it, the Spirit has freely chosen to work and bless and surprise the Galatians for free--no pre-requisites, qualifications, or down payments first in terms of ceremonial or moral law-following.  And, perhaps shockingly for those first century Christians, the Spirit was doing it for all sorts of people--Jewish background and Gentile background, men and women, rich and poor, slave and free.  The gifts of God were all being given extravagantly, audaciously, to everybody... at no charge.

In fact, if there is anyone who is making a down payment, it is God who is making a down payment to the Galatians by giving them the Spirit--this is often how Paul talks about the presence of the Spirit in our lives, a down payment or guarantee of more to come from God.

But maybe the challenge for us today is that we lack the eyes to see where God has been working in our lives already.  Maybe we have been taught not to recognize any longer the fingerprints of God's Spirit which has been promised us and given to us.  It sounds like the evidence was quite obvious back in Paul's day--the Spirit was 'working miracles' in the Galatians' community.  Maybe we are led to ask where our miracles are that will convince us of the Spirit's presence.  Where is this Spirit in us, and where are the signs that the Spirit is doing anything among us, free or otherwise?

That's a harder question for us modern types compared to the ancient church, maybe in part because our world has taught us to give up on believing in such things, or to recognize the causes of all things as purely physical.  There are, of course, those who seem to be on a Christian vendetta against science for all of this, but perhaps the problem is not science giving physical explanations for events and realities in our world (from medical breakthroughs to astronomical wonders), but our assumption that physical explanations must rule out the presence of the Spirit at the same time.  We allow the Spirit to be present (in our minds) only in those places that science has not yet offered an explanation (they call this the "God of the gaps" approach), so it shouldn't surprise us if we have a hard time seeing the Spirit in our lives any longer--we have already determined not to recognize the presence of God in most of the things we face from day to day!  And on the other hand, there are those voices in the Christian community for whom "the Spirit" can only be identified with this or that religious experience, and if you have not had such an experience (from speaking in tongues to having your "heart strangely warmed" to leading you up the aisle at some altar call) you must not have the Spirit.  But once again, this boils down to so much painting the Spirit of the living God into a corner--a decree to God saying, "This is where I will look for you, and nowhere else.  Therefore, you cannot be all-surrounding and ever-present in our lives."

Perhaps Paul would have a harder time writing to us about the free gift of the Spirit--not because we are any harder to convince about the free-ness of God's grace (we all seem to have a hard time believing that there could possibly be such a thing as a free lunch from God), but because we have a harder time seeing the Spirit who is already active in our lives, and we have a hard time waiting for further action from the Spirit in the mean time.  Perhaps the problem is not with the Spirit, but with our vision.

Today, each of us has many encounters with people and many places of contact with community-can we use our faithful imaginations today to see how and where the Spirit of God is in them, present inside our conversation, working among the people we meet today, freely giving signs of power and truth and grace in, with, and under the events we might otherwise dismiss as the daily grind?

Living Spirit, come to us in all your freedom and work among us.  Bless this day of ours, bless those we meet today, and bless your world through us, in our words, actions, thoughts, and prayers this day.  And, we pray, bless our eyes that we might have the vision to catch a glimpse of your presence right in the thick of this very day.

Revisions from the Margins

Revisions from the Margins--August 29, 2017

"Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.  Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured." [Hebrews 13:1-3]

You have to decide at some point whether you think the teacher's red pen is something to be afraid of... or something meant to make you better.

Flash back with me, will you, to the days of your high school English teachers.  Can you remember having to hand in draft versions of essays, only to have them returned to you with a code-like amalgamation of proofreading marks and cursive letters in bold red pen? 

All of my high school English teachers were women, and I can remember the similar look of all of their handwriting as they made comments for corrections in the margins of my papers--a forgotten bit of punctuation here, or a misspelled word there.  Sometimes it was to help me see where I had flubbed a citation or left a dangling modifier.  (I remember once in a short story assignment I had to write, I intended to be describing an old photograph found in an attic being unearthed from among its wrappings, but I had put the modifying phrase in the wrong place.  My sentence read, "...found an old photograph in a frame of a woman wrapped in tissue paper..." and my teacher blushed when she asked why the woman was wrapped in tissue paper!) 

You have been there, I trust.  You wrote something, and turned it in, and then the eagle eye vision of an English teacher called your attention to something you had not seen before--some mistake that was either confusing, or embarrassing, or otherwise incorrect.  Now, if your understanding of the whole school process is that you are there as a student to be judged and to squeak through with as few red marks on your record as possible, it is indeed a fearful thing to have your essay returned to you with all of that red pen, highlighting your mistakes and mess-ups.  But if, on the other hand, you see the years of public education as something intended to make you a better writer, communicator, thinker, and human being, well then, the red marks are exactly what you need.  They are gifts of grace to help you to catch things in the future that you otherwise would have missed.  And in that case, the red pen of a good teacher is exactly what you need to learn how to see what you could not see on your own. That is to say, you and I need to be able to "see again"--to re-vise, so that we will catch what we have overlooked. You and I, we need that gift of revision from the margins of the page.

This, it turns out, it not a bad way of thinking about what the writers of the New Testament want to do with us.  Sometimes we religious folks have a way of thinking that the writers of the Bible, the prophets, apostles, and evangelists of an earlier era, were only interested in getting souls to get to heaven, like Christianity is just a matter of getting afterlife-insurance.  But that's not the case, really.  The biblical writers want to do something to us--they want to change us.  And among other things, they intend to change our vision--to help us to see from the margins what--and whom!--we have been missing and overlooking.  The voices of the New Testament are gifts like high school English teachers, whose red pen marks on the paper help us to recognize what we would have failed to see otherwise.  And in doing that, they are not just meant to be judgmental or condemning voices, but rather they are there to make our vision clearer. They are here to help us with re-vision... not just of paragraphs and punctuation, but with our very lives and love.

That's what I love about these verses from Hebrews.  They are all about changing our vision--changing the way we see the world, and the people in it.  All of it falls under the category of "mutual love," but that idea by itself needs to be fleshed out.  So that we don't mishear "love" and think only of affectionate feelings, pink hearts, or an exclusive care reserved only for in-group members, the writer of Hebrews spells out what love looks like.  And it includes... dare we say it, strangers. 

"Strangers," of course is a loaded term in the Bible.  Since the people of Israel were taught to see all of their fellow Israelites as part of one big "family," that meant a "stranger" was someone even outside of that category.  "Stranger," in the Bible, means foreigner.  And the word for "hospitality" here in Hebrews comes from the Greek roots that mean "love for strangers" or "love for what and whom is foreign."  All of that is to say, the New Testament says that love isn't love if it is limited just to people who look like me, talk like me, vote like me, and come from the same DNA as I do.  Love, if it is the real thing, includes folks I would see as "outsiders."  That is to say, love is only love if it includes people on the margins.  And in the ancient world, where it was already a given that you looked out for your own kin, the command to love strangers--to show love to "outsiders" without other conditions or caveats or fine print--was a way of saying, "We take care of everybody."

And then, to flesh out the picture even further, the writer of Hebrews helps us to see others on the margins that we are likely to have forgotten or overlooked.  "Remember those who are in prison," he says, "as though you yourself were imprisoned with them."  And not just that--put yourself in the position of those who are being tortured.   Notice here that the passage doesn't give any qualifiers as though this is only talking about "Christians who are imprisoned" or "Christians who are being persecuted."  Obviously, those folks would be in mind, but beyond that, the writer of Hebrews seems to be including anybody who is imprisoned... and anybody who is being tortured.  After all, for as early as the book of Hebrews is being written (late 1st century), it's unlikely that there is official, empire-wide policy of persecuting Christians that would have included torture or imprisonment.  That happened, to be sure, in pockets and periods of time, but wasn't a full-blown imperial policy until into the following century.  The writer of Hebrews wants us to see again--to revise--the way we see all people, especially those at the margins.

You'll note, then, that the passage doesn't make any distinction between those who are "guilty" and those who are "wrongfully" imprisoned.  And you'll notice that he doesn't give an exception with this torture business to say "well, some people really deserve it, so then it's ok," or that "it's ok to torture people if you think you can get them to give up some secret information."  That's what the Romans did.  The Romans wanted to make examples of people. The Romans did things to intimidate, whether or not it actually ever got any results.  The Romans imprisoned or tortured, not because they were so vigilant about justice, but because they were efficient and wanted to maintain control.  So no, the writer of Hebrews doesn't say that we only should care about those who are "wrongly accused" or those who "are innocent but are being tortured."  He just says, "put yourself where they are--how would you like it?"

In this age of private-prisons where incarceration becomes an industry, in this age in which we occasionally flirt with violating the Geneva Conventions or advocating torture because we want to "send a tough message to bad guys," it is worth remembering these words from Hebrews.  The New Testament wants us to see what we otherwise miss--that these people who are imprisoned, these people who are tortured, are faces, still made in the image of God.  Indeed, says the writer, some have even entertained angels without knowing it because they were willing to welcome foreigners rather than turning them away.

We need the red pen of the book of Hebrews to help us with revision--to see from the margins the people who are beloved of God who are too easily looked over: the foreigner, the outsider, the imprisoned, the forgotten.  We do just fine at seeing the celebrities, the powerful, the influential, and the familiar.  We are not in danger of forgetting to take care of ourselves or our own.  That's just our own self-interested hard-wiring.  What we do need is the wise and insightful red pen of Scripture, like these words from Hebrews, to train our eyes to see the people, the faces, the lives, we would have otherwise ignored or missed.  And like a high school English teacher's red marks on your essay, the whole point is to retrain our eyes so that we will catch the things we had previous overlooked, so that we will not overlook them anymore.

Rather than running from these words from Scripture because we don't like being shown our own failings, what if we were free from the fear of seeing our mistakes and our guilt, and instead saw that the design of Mercy always has been to transform our vision... to give us new eyes... to re-vise the way we look at the world in front of us?  What if we considered that there are faces on the margins who are beloved of God--and that we might even be able to recognize the very face of Christ or the flutter of angelic wings when we dare to care for the stranger, the prisoner, and the victims of torture? 

Where else might we find God on the margins today?

Go look.  God is already waiting there.

Lord Jesus, help us to revise our view of what is in front of us, and to see the faces and lives of those we had overlooked.  Help us to see you in the margins.

Seeing the Mess Clearly

Seeing the Mess Clearly--August 25, 2017

"Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice...." [Philippians 1:15-18]

Let me tell you about one of my favorite paintings in the whole world. It is, I should also mention, painted by a fascist.

Let me back up for a moment.  What I am about to share with you is one of my favorite paintings of all time.  I have seen the original, where it is currently housed in Columbus, Ohio.  I have a print of it that for years graced our dining room.  And I have two postcard prints of it, also from the Museum gift shop, that are firmly taped to my two church office doors.  It was painted in 1943, and its title in English is "Sunflowers in the Windstorm."  Here, in this age of instantly available media, let me share it with you:

I could go on and on about what I love about it, from the color choices in the palette, to the composition that directs your attention first to the flowers, and then to the sky, and then off the canvas to see where the sunflowers face when the sun is not visible. I could talk about how much I love the swirls of color in the sky, and the way it feels both completely natural and also surreal to me.  I love the idea of a sign of hopefulness that endures through the worst storms of the world.   I could also tell you that this painting was the primary reason I ever first planted sunflowers by the side of our old garage years ago--an act of agriculture that was inspired by art.

But I should also tell you, as I began to say before, that the painter was Emil Nolde, a German-Danish painter of the first part of the 20th century, and that he was, quite literally, a fascist.  He was a member of the Danish version of the Nazi Party from the 1920s on, was baldly racist and anti-Semitic, even down to his views about whether Jewish people could paint as well Germanic peoples.  He was a literal card-carrying Nazi.

And I have to say that to you, first of all, because I have to deal with it myself.  Knowing that fact about the creator of this painting--something of such beauty and expression--also espoused views that are not only abhorrent (to me... to the millions of people who fought the Nazis and died to stop their quest for world domination... and to the Gospel of Christ), but also views which cost countless lives, both directly through the Holocaust and through the war itself, and then through those who have died in all these decades since at the hands of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other violent groups, well, knowing that about Nolde himself presents me with a conundrum. 

It comes in the form of a question. Is it possible to value, to appreciate, even to find joy in, a piece of art like this, a work of art which, to my knowledge, contains no trace of racism or Nazism or fascist content within the canvas itself (to my knowledge, sunflowers are not capable of hatred or violence), even though its creator held unconscionable, despicable views and was so deeply flawed?  Or, from the other side, is it possible to disregard or deny the beauty and inspiration I feel every time I look at this painting, because of the fact that its creator was unapologetically supportive of a despotic political movement built on naked bigotry that was responsible for the deaths of millions?  I don't know what to do, what to make of the fact, that something so wonderful came from the same mind, and heart, and hand that, when the time came to pick sides, eagerly and willingly picked the side of evil. 

It would be like discovering Voldemort from Harry Potter also wrote haiku, or that Darth Vader crocheted doilies in his spare time.  It would be like finding out your favorite song was written by a member of ISIS, or that your favorite movie director was actively involved in the KKK. I wish we were just talking about some hypothetical, because then we could always just say, "Well, this would never happen in real life.  Only 'good' people make beautiful things. End of story."  But here is Nolde's painting, a painting which has no Nazi propaganda or hatred in itself... and there is Nolde's life itself, with a heart sold out to hatred and scapegoating.

And then there is this second, bitterly ironic wrinkle to the story.  By the mid 1930s, Nolde's artwork was rejected by the Nazis as "degenerate," and more than a thousand of his works were taken down from displays and museums, and the Nazis forbade him from painting again... even in private.  He continued, even though he was officially forbidden, to paint in secret, but always in full violation of the Nazi decree.  It was during this time that his "Sunflowers in the Windstorm" was painted, making its very existence a crime in the eyes of the Reich.

What a mess.  What a complicated, convoluted mess. 

We wish for the world, for life, to be simple and straightforward, in black and white terms, with good and evil not only always clear, but separate and in their own corners.  And instead, here is a work of beauty--the painting--that is tangled up with a personality was both mired in bigotry and then who became a victim of that same bigotry. There is no way to peel away the scandal of the person from the beauty of the painting, as much as I might wish for a world where everything is cut and dry with "good guys" creating the masterpieces and "bad guys" doing only obviously rotten things while they twirl their mustaches while wearing their black hats.  And there is no way to dismiss the beauty of the artwork, just because it was painted by a person who joined the most wicked ideological movement of the 20th century.

The bottom line here, the irreducible, unresolvable remainder, is that it is possible for people who are infected with rottenness in the heart can yet be a part of the creation of something genuinely good, genuinely beautiful, even something truly wonderful.

That isn't to say that the rottenness isn't really rotten, or that the truly wicked bentness of the heart given into hatred and violence isn't--I'll use the big guns and say the S-word--sinful.  But it is, rather a testament to the infinite power of Mercy that God can create something compellingly beautiful even through hearts that are enmeshed in what is wicked.  It doesn't mean that Nolde's views were correct, or even acceptable, just because he could paint some lovely sunflowers; and for that matter, I imagine that he has now had to discover how wrong he was, standing before the face of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But nevertheless, the power of Mercy is to create beauty and good, even through the most despicable and hateful hearts.  The extreme example I have to wrestle with in the life and art of Emil Nolde, an actual Nazi, compels me to admit that it is within the power of Grace still to work through people whose ideas and ideals I strongly oppose.  It is possible even for hearts deeply bent in on themselves to be used by God in the creation of something truly good... truly beautiful... even, dare I say it, truly of Christ.  Paul tells us as much in these verses from his letter to the Philippians, where he talks about other preachers who are spreading the Gospel with selfish motives.  He doesn't deny the rottenness in that.  He doesn't pretend that it's OK to be so bent in heart.  But neither does Paul deny that these people he deeply disagrees with are still being used to bring the beauty of Christ to people who need it.  There are folks who need to hear about the Reign of God. There are folks who need to know about the Love that will not let them go.  There are people who need to hear about the Way of Jesus, the possibility of forgiveness as a way of life, the announcement of blessing on the poor and the peacemakers.  And God can use even deeply selfish, deeply misguided souls who think they are only in it for themselves.

That also means it is possible to be used by Mercy for the sake of the Reign of God, even if you don't fully "get" it.  Selfish ambition isn't compatible with the Way of Jesus... and yet here is God using selfish, egocentric hearts to widen the beauty of the Kingdom and share the love and news of Christ.  God, it would seem, can use even deeply flawed hearts to create a masterpiece like the Kingdom--without condoning or ignoring the bent-ness in those hearts.  It's not that God winks away or shrugs off the wickedness in hearts.  It's that Mercy is just so powerful as to even be able to include the most rotten and crooked, in the creation of the masterpiece that is the Reign of God. 

Part of what this passage... and this painting... tell me, is that God is able to include and to work through people with whom I deeply disagree.  Not just on simple matter of taste, but even attitudes, beliefs, and views that seem deplorable.  It is possible that God can use people I find totally unworthy... people who also at the same time believe and do things I cannot support... and yet they can be used in the sharing of the relentless love of God.  That doesn't mean our convictions or beliefs don't matter.  It doesn't mean that God is "ok" with the selfishness, any more than the racial hatred and violence of Emil Nolde was "ok." But it means that Mercy is powerful enough to use even things, attitudes, and hearts that are opposed to the way of Mercy.  And it also gives me pause to consider that there may be places where I--despite the fact that, of course, I think that my beliefs are all correct--may be out of step with Christ.  I may well be wrong in lots of places I cannot recognize yet.  I may well be bent in my heart in ways that I do not perceive, but which God both says "No" to while also working in spite of.  And it means, too, that there may be others who name the name of Jesus who are way off base and do not see where their hearts are bent and out of sync with the way of Christ... and yet that God can include them in the work of spreading the gospel of grace.

So, for example, I will have to swallow my pride and acknowledge that...

...there are TV preachers and religious snake-oil salesmen I see or hear on the radio, whose version of the gospel is often distorted with promise of health and wealth, or full of hateful attitudes the preachers do not recognize are out of sync with Christ, can still be a way for God to reach someone with grace who was on the brink of despair and maybe only hears the Gospel for the first time as the background noise of a TV on in the other room.  I do not have to agree with the bad theology or selfish ambitions of the televangelists for God still to be able to use them.  For that matter, God doesn't even have to agree with their views still to reach someone... and then in time for that someone to grow and mature in love beyond the views of the slick, scheming televangelists.

...there are people whose politics are diametrically opposed to mine, who still can be used for Kingdom purposes, even if I do not recognize how God is doing it, and even if, deep down, the way of Christ is opposed to their views, too.  Atticus Finch, after all, had done right to defend an innocent man of color in To Kill A Mockingbird, even though the same Atticus has adopted despicable views in Go Set A Watchman. There are people who voted differently from you, and they may be way off from the values of Christ without seeing it, and they still are folded in to the Kingdom and can be used in the hands of Mercy to help create the Kingdom masterpiece.  And it is also true that there are others who look at you and your votes or attitudes or convictions and have a hard time imagining that Christ can use you while those attitudes are still in your heart. 

...it is still possible to believe what we believe, and to have good reasons for those beliefs, and yet for Mercy to reserve the right to use those who are convinced otherwise.  It is possible for God still to work through us, even where there are hatreds and bent places inside our hearts that we may not even be able to recognize (yet). We still are called to speak up and say NO to the things we are convinced are wrong, and we are still called to speak up FOR those who are victimized by others' hatreds or twisted thinking.  But while we are speaking up for what we are convinced is right, what is true, and what is of Christ, we will need to allow the possibility that God can even use folks we are convinced are dead set against the way of Christ. 

Today, then, we go out into the world still convinced of what we believe... but also allowing that the grip of Mercy is big enough to include people who don't get it.  We go out into the world able to say NO to the likes of Emil Nolde's fascism, but also able to say YES to the reality that there is beauty--genuine, undeniable beauty, in his painting, and that there is no such thing as a fascist sunflower.  We go out into the world able to articulate why we hold our particular convictions... but also aware that God is big enough that God can use people who hold views that are opposed to the values of God.  I will have to trust, in the famous words of the French theologian Teillhard de Chardin, "in the slow work of God" that can eventually get through to people I have written off as permanently despicable.  One never knows, after all, what it did to Emil Nolde and his perspective, to see the Nazis turn on him and condemn his life's work, and to discover what it felt like to be marginalized and cast out.

Today, go out into the world, and see the mess clearly, the beauty and the ugliness, where they are without dodging either.

Today, go out into the world, and look for beauty--for signs of the Reign of God--wherever you may find them. 

Even sunflowers in a windstorm.

Lord God, turn us all to you, and use even the things and hearts we thought were beyond the reach of your Mercy's power.

Seen and Unseen

Seen and Unseen--August 23, 2017

"Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also."  [1 John 4:20-21]

John makes a good point here, doesn't he?  You can't see God. 

And it's hard--not impossible, but definitely still hard--to love someone you can't see.  Out of sight, out of mind, they say.  We know how hard it can be to keep friendships or other long-distance relationships if you never get to see those who are separated from you by many miles.  You swear you'll stay in touch, and you have the best of intentions--but days and weeks become months or longer, and slowly we can lose touch with those we were certain we would always remain close with.  Old high school classmates, former mentors or protégés, friends who move away (or stayed in the same place when you moved away)--they can all slowly fade into a hazy background of "people we used to know."  And these are all examples of relationships with people we once did see and had seen at some point in the past!  Imagine how hard it would be to keep a friendship with someone you had never seen face to face!  We all have heard stories, I suppose, of people who become great lifelong friends simply as pen pals, but those seem to be the exception which proves the rule.  It is a rare bird for anybody to build a lasting relationship without ever seeing the other person--and rarer still for that kind of relationship to be of such depth that you could use the word love to describe it, even if we are not talking romance but the love of friendship.  We human beings just have a hard time (again, not impossible, but a definite harder time) sustaining lasting relationships when we do not see the person with whom we are supposed to be friends.

This is exactly John's point.  While it is not impossible for us to love someone we have never met face to face, it should certainly be easier for us to love people we have met, and with whom we interact on a daily basis.  So if we are going to say that we love God, whom we might well know, but whom we have never seen, it only makes sense that we love the fellow people of God whom we do see every day.  John doesn't say it's impossible for human beings to really love an invisible God--it's just harder, and takes practice and commitment and a healthy dose of faith.  But by comparison, there are fewer hurdles to loving people whose faces we can see and whose voices regularly speak to us in audible words.  For example, while I am loving God, I also have to believe in God--sometimes it's easy to believe that God is real, and let's be honest, sometimes there are those nagging voices of doubt that make us question whether this invisible, benevolent Creator is real or just a bit of wishful thinking.  In other words, to love God requires us to have a certain amount of faith in something unseen in the first place.  But with a friend, or to love a family member, or to love a fellow member of the Christian community, the act of faith is made considerably easier--it's not much of a stretch to believe that they exist, in any case.  You just open your eyes, and there they are.  So while there may be times when I am frustrated with my friend, or my friend is frustrated with me, at no point do we ever wrestle with doubt over whether the other person exists. 

So anyway, we Christians are people who say we love God.  And John wouldn't deny that--he would just say that if we are going to seek to love the invisible God, that had better line up with our striving to love the visible people that God has placed in our lives.  It may not be easy, either, because John's promise is not that fellow Christians (brothers or sisters, John says) will never be annoying, or insecure, or bothersome, or have rough edges.  All John guarantees us is that those other brothers and sisters are people with faces, people whom we can see and speak with and interact with.  But because we can see them, and share a common life with them, in some ways it should be easier for us to work at loving them than straining to conceive of the invisible God.  So while we continue to seek how to love God more deeply, John would tell us that loving one another comes along with the package.  There's just no other way around it.

Remembering that love is not a matter of butterfly-in-the-stomach feelings that come and go, but a conscious commitment to seek the good of the other, it is possible for us to love the brothers and sisters around us, even the ones who drive us crazy--at least if we are going to dare to take the act of faith of loving an invisible God.  It is just such a God, after all, who makes it possible for us to love anybody in the first place.

It might be, too, that because of who God really is (and how we have met God in Jesus), it will be our faith in God that enables us to see people--to really see them--that we would have ignored or turned away from otherwise.

And it might even be that, because of where Jesus promises to show up, that our faith in God enables us to see Christ in the faces of those we would have otherwise not noticed.

Go look today.

O Lord, we believe in you, and we love you as well as our shriveled hearts and little faiths are able.  But we would seek to love you more fully, and along the way to come to love the people you have placed in our lives and right before our eyes more fully as well.  We ask it in the name of Jesus, who gave your Love a human face.

Beginnings after Endings

Beginnings after Endings--August 22, 2017

 [Peter said to the crowd in Jerusalem:] "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved'." [Acts 2:14b-21]

It's like a whole world ending... and a whole new one coming to life.

That may sound overly dramatic to our ears. But in all honesty, if we take seriously what the Reign of God in Jesus is all about, it will sound to us like the ending and the beginning of a whole new world, a whole new order of things.  And once you are cued in on the new thing that Mercy is up to in the world, you cannot help but see things differently--like you are living at the overlap of the ends of the ages.... like the whole world is being made new.

Peter gets that. 

In fact, what our narrator Luke gives us here as Peter's off-the-cuff speech on the day of Pentecost is all about seeing the ending of an old world order and the beginning of a whole new creation... right in the midst of the world looking like it always had.  These words of Peter's are framed as Peter's response to the confused crowds in Jerusalem after the Spirit had been poured out on the followers of Jesus to gather in people from all languages and nations, all customs and cultures (yes, side note, that is always how the community of Jesus has been intended to look--it was multilingual and multinational from Day One).

And as Pete sees that happening, as he hears the different languages, as he sees visitors from foreign nations all across the empire coming to hear the Good News of Jesus, he sees that this is what God had been promising all along.  And Peter finally understands that even the ancient prophets of old looked ahead to a day when God would act to welcome all, to send he Spirit on all sorts of surprising folks, and to change the vision of people in unexpected places from unexpected corners.

This passage from Acts, as you might be able to tell, is largely Peter quoting from the prophet Joel, and Joel himself had been describing some future moment he calls "the Day of the Lord."  And at least on Joel's lips, that sounds at first blush like a scary moment.  The sun goes dark, the moon goes blood red--it's like the most solid, most constant things you could think of in the ancient world all suddenly get wobbly. And Joel sees these as going hand in hand with the moment when God pours out the Spirit "on all flesh."  Men and women.  Old and young.  Rich and poor.  Even those still caught under the wheel of slavery.  All people, not just a select few, or the priests, or the religious professionals. As Joel saw it, when God would do something like that, it would feel like the whole tired mess of the old world was coming to an end, and a whole new creation was being born.

Now flash forward about... oh, maybe seven hundred years, and there is Simon Peter watching the Spirit rush through his previously scaredy-cat friends (we usually call them "the Apostles," but come on, until this moment, they were all pretty cowardly when push came to shove).  And Peter sees the way even these uneducated fisherman, ex-revolutionaries and former tax collectors are given the presence of the Spirit and the ability for others to understand their words in many languages.  And Peter realizes that this is what it looks like when God sends the Spirit--everybody is welcomed.  Everybody in their own language.  Everybody as they are.  And Peter says, in effect, "This is what Joel was talking about!  This is it happening before your very eyes!" even if, to everybody else's eyes, it was just an ordinary Sunday morning at 9:00am.

It's funny to me: Peter has no problem seeing this moment, with the many languages and the wind of the Spirit rushing through them, as the fulfillment of Joel's vision--even though there are none of the scary signs that Joel had talked about.  No sun into darkness--not even a partial eclipse.  No red moon.  No blood or fire.  Not even a whiff of "smoky mist."  None of the scary celestial signs or astronomical anomalies happened that day--but still Peter is convinced that this is what Joel was talking about all along.  (This is perhaps a warning to us about how we read the prophets ourselves--sometimes religious folks want to turn the prophets into fortune tellers or Nostradamus-types, but they are just as often poets who are describing touchable, tangible human events with the startling language they need to use to get people's attention.)  Peter sees that the coming of the Spirit really is like the ending of an old regime and the beginning of something new, like the whole world was born all over again. 

And maybe even Peter himself doesn't quite grasp yet just how radical a moment this is. But it won't be long in the book of Acts before God uses this same Peter to reach out even wider to include and welcome outsiders, Gentiles, and even members of the enemy occupying army (like Cornelius the centurion, to whom Peter will be sent soon in the book of Acts).  Peter is witnessing the creation of a whole new way of being human--one that is no longer bound up with separate ethnicities or exclusion based on language.  He sees that God is creating a new kind of community based on the grip of Mercy, not on our DNA.  And that floors him.  That is like the end of a world and the start of a new humanity. Peter says, "That's what Joel was getting at all along."  Peter took his Bible seriously... but he was able to see that Joel was less interested in predicting eclipses as he was in envisioning God's Reign breaking in.

We have a way sometimes of missing the boat, we Christians.  (Surprise, surprise, right?)  We have a way of not being able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the words of these ancient poets and dreamers we call the prophets.  Instead of trying to sift through their visions looking for clues about the "end times" or trying to tie in yesterday's eclipse with some ancient scripture passage, perhaps we could listen the way Peter did--to see that the real end-of-the-world moment was also the beginning of a whole new creation, the inauguration of the Spirit-led movement of the followers of Jesus.  So often, we stifle and squelch what God has been trying to do--we end up further dividing ourselves, and acting like the old lines of language, nationality, and culture still must divide us, like the old allegiances still claim us. So often we accept those as givens, while trying to figure out what astronomical signs some old prophet was trying to predict. Instead, we ought to be hearing the prophets tell us together that God is doing a new thing--a thing meant for all, for me... for you... and for people you don't particularly like, too.

If we listen to Peter there on the day of Pentecost, we will find our eyes are changed. We will begin to see, with him, how God has begun a new creation right in the midst of the old order.  We will see that God has breathed a new breath into the universe, and just like the Spirit brooded over the waters at creation, now the same God has breathed the Spirit onto the motley crew that makes up the Kingdom.  We will see, as we look at how varied the faces, how different the voices, how many the languages and cultures and customs of people who are being gathered into God's New Thing.  We will see that the old way of living in the world--divided and segregated and isolated from one another, viewing the other with suspicion and fear--is coming to an end.  We will see that God has begun a new order of the day, and it is taking shape among us right now... right here... right before our very eyes.

One of the things I noticed about the eclipse that unfolded across our country yesterday was how it was either noticeable or ignorable, depending on whether one had the right eyesight to recognize it.  From here in western Pennsylvania, we had only 80% coverage in the eclipse, which meant that when we were right in the thick of it, you might not have even noticed.  The sky looked a little dimmer, but no darker than if it were an ordinarily cloudy day.  And if you did something foolish and ill-advised like staring at the sun without the right kind of glasses, you wouldn't have even noticed anything different, simply because of the overwhelming brightness of the sun.  But on the other hand, if you had eclipse glasses--a product that was just about everywhere if you were so inclined to get them--you could see the eclipse happening and stare in wonder and awe at the brightness of the sun transforming into a slim crescent.  Same planet.  Same sun. Same afternoon.  Same spot on earth. But the difference was whether you had the new eyesight to see what was happening right over your own head.  No eclipse glasses, and you missed a wonder that hasn't happened across the entire continental United States for a century. But with the new kind of vision that a half-decent pair of eclipse glasses afforded, you could see the sun slowly getting swallowed up by the moon and then coming out the other side like it was brand new. 

That's what Peter says we are offered as well.  That's what the Spirit gives among us, too--the gift of a new way of seeing that changes everything and includes everyone.  We will get to see signs that God is doing something new and wonderful ... and then we will get to be a part of it, too.

Great God, do your new thing among us, and help us to see it.

After the Bitter Pill

After the Bitter Pill

"As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.  He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it." [Exodus 32:19-20]

This is the conclusion I have come to, after spending my decades reading the Scriptures so far: the people of God face the truth about our past actions... but we do not weaponize it.

At least, we are not supposed to. Mercy intends to let us see one another in a new light.

That is a critical difference.  Facing the truth is admitting where I have made a mistake, or where things took a wrong turn, or what didn't go the way it should have.  But weaponizing history is when I use something from the past to attack or undercut someone else.  And for the people of God, going back even to these early days of the children of Israel fresh out of slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt and including the beloved community of Jesus, for us in the people of God, mercy allows us to see ourselves truthfully without letting our vision of the future be tethered to the failings of the past.

You and I have seen the "weaponizing" of the past plenty of times.  It's the way two spouses say they have reconciled, for example, but deep down they are really holding onto the old hurts to trot out any time some new offense comes along.  "Yeah, I lied about the gambling debts again, honey... but you had a fling with So-and-so before we were married and never told me about it!"  Or, "Yes, I left the toilet seat up--but you are always forgetting to refill the toilet paper roll!" Weaponizing history, whether it's the big events or bathroom etiquette, is when you keep going back to some past event that you had thought you moved beyond, and reopening old wounds with it--or never letting them rightly heal in the first place.  Couples, families, friends, communities, or nations that cannot speak the truth and deal with it in the first place are doomed to live with a festering wound they have agreed to ignore until it kills them... and on the other hand, those that keep using the past as a stick to beat others with get themselves stuck in old routines and roles without ever being able to start again or get better.  Neither death by festering wound nor death by relentless beating sounds very appealing.  And so the people of God are dared to see the past--and thus, also the future--through the turning point of forgiveness.  That is to say, through the new eyes of grace and truth.

A wise person I know often says that forgiveness includes taking the past offense of the other person, burying it with a shovel... and then burying the shovel.  That is to say, forgiveness--mercy--allows us to speak and to acknowledge the past, but then allows us to forgive and to move beyond.... so that no one gets permanently cast the "the helpless victim" and no one is doomed to be the perennial "villain."   Forgiveness means I refuse to keep going back to the thing that harmed our relationship--I refuse to keep weaponizing it, and I refuse to let it hold both you and me down in the company of ghosts and memories.  Weaponizing history is making the other person wear their past failures or sins like an albatross around their neck (thank you, 10th grade English teacher!  I never thought I was going to EVER need to remember anything from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"--but now I know why I read that!).  But facing history--individual or collective--allows us to see with clear eyes what happened... and then to say, "All right, so where are we going from here? And what can be left behind?"

Well, here, tucked away in the later chapters of Exodus, is one of those moments that I have come to believe gets at the critical, vital difference between weaponizing history and facing the truth about our past.  We all know the story of the golden calf.  It's one of those important, essential, basic-warning stories you learn at some point in Sunday School--often, with the mental images provided to our imagination courtesy of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments.  The freed slaves are in the wilderness, camped out at the base of Mount Sinai while Moses is up on the summit meeting with God and getting the Covenant and the commandments from Yahweh.  And in their impatience, they had consulted with Moses' Vice President of Operations and brother, Aaron, and asked Aaron to make them an idol--an image of their god to worship. This request, of course, came just as Moses was receiving the commandment not to make graven images or idols of anything, no matter what name you called it by or what god you connected it with.  The bottom line was that this golden calf moment was a time of utter failure for the people of Israel--a time when, truthfully they should have known better already, given their recent recollection of the gods of Egypt and the contrasting faithfulness of the God of their ancestors, Yahweh.

So here's a sort of test-case for society-wide remembering (and maybe a template, too, for how we deal with our past in families, in friendships, and in the closer-in relationships that matter to us).  What does God have Moses do with the history of the golden calf?  Does God instruct Moses to keep the golden calf, or to put it inside the soon-to-be-constructed Ark of the Covenant along with the other important keepsakes from the Israelites' wilderness journey?  Does God have Moses hang the golden calf around Aaron's neck like an albatross?  Is there some permanent, fixed location for the golden calf to become a monument, at which future Israelites would learn the history of the Exodus?

No... oddly enough, Moses simply makes the people swallow it.  Literally.

Moses takes the golden calf, burns it to a powder, and makes an Old Testament version of Metamucil for his people.  He makes them drink the powdered remains of their idolatry and unfaithfulness.  It is a bitter pill, but they must swallow it in order to face and recognize what they have all been complicit in.

Now not to get bogged down in potty humor, but the thing about being forced to drink your punishment is that eventually, this too shall pass.  That is to say, eventually, you can move on from that facing of a harsh truth, rather than having to constantly worry that someone will keep bringing up something you have done and apologized for, made amends for, and rectified.  Moses makes the people face up to what they have done--that they were all complicit in--but once they have consumed the bitter pill of the golden calf episode, they can move on.  The essential part of their story--the faithfulness of God who claims them--will remain, but the record of failures can be faced and then go down the drain.

This is a really crucial insight on Moses' part, because he knows that it matters how you retell and rehearse your history--whether it's a couple recounting slights or successes in a family story, or a congregation learning to tell the story of the faithful people who gave and worked and ministered, or a whole nation like the people of Israel dealing with their colossal failure and faithlessness in the golden calf episode.  Of course, Moses makes the people own up to what they have done--surely, they would never forget the taste of having to drink the cloudy, ashen water mixed with the dust of the idol.  And after that moment, there would be the storytelling--after all, the story of the golden calf has been handed down to us in written form in the book of Exodus, rather than at some shrine or museum.  Stories, after all--as well as the books in which they are written--are how you pass along your history, now matter how messy that history may be. 

So Moses has the people drink down the powdered remains of the golden calf--and then they move on--because he wants them to be defined more by the story of God's redemption and liberation than the story of their failures and sins.  Both are true, the idolatry and the exodus, but both do not have equal weight, equal ultimacy.  After the bitter pill is the promise that the living God is not giving up on this people, even though a lesser deity might have dusted off hands in disgust and walked away.  Not Yahweh. Not the God who freed the Israelites.  What needs to remain, moreso than the memory of Israel's failures, are the assurances of God's relentless faithfulness and God's enduring claim on them.

And that's exactly what Moses gives to the people.  It's not that Moses wants to undo or ignore history by having the people drink away the evidence of the golden calf--but rather, that the bigger Story that needs to be told is of a new beginning, one in which the people of God are continually led out of the ways of Egypt (slavery, idolatry, and fear) and led into a new future.  And so, throughout (like, seriously, almost every other paragraph) the rest of the books of the Law that Moses gives to the people, there are recurring references, not to the golden calf episode, but to God's liberation at the sea, or how God had rescued them from the misery of the slavery system in Pharaoh's Egypt.  At every turn, God says, basically, "Remember who you are--you are the people I have delivered, freed, chosen, and loved..." rather than, "Remember that you are crooked sinners who can never be anything other than lying idol-worshippers." 

That's of vital importance--not just in Bible times, but in our families and relationships, too.  The other day, I was working on a project and let my six-year-old son help with the hammer and nails with my guidance.  And after he kept missing the mark and striking the side of the nail, he stomped off in vital frustration, saying, "I never get it right.  I can't do it." Even into the afternoon, when I offered him a new fresh chance of working with the tools, he still was apprehensive and cautious, because he still felt shame from missing the mark earlier.  It is a true part of the story of what happened--but once it has been named and faced, we can leave it in the past, rather than becoming part of my son's identity.  There are two ways that boy can remember the day--either, "Daddy lets me work with him on projects, even when I don't get it all the way right," or "I always mess up and can't ever do any better."  Both versions acknowledge the missed mark on the hammering, but the second version puts him in a permanent rut he did not need.  It's worth asking ourselves, "What version of the story do we tell about ourselves?"  And for that matter, "How do our stories affect the way other people understand their stories?"

It is important to tell as full an account of our history as possible, but once it is told, Moses knows that it matters what of that history the people will build on, and what will be left behind.  The exodus story?  Keeper.  The pathological, systemic fear of Pharaoh's Egypt?  That can be left behind.  The memory of a God who parts the seas and saves the firstborn with the Passover Lamb's blood?  Hold onto it. The old, entrenched pattern of turning our gold into our gods?  Leave it in the desert. 

See, Israel was never in danger of forgetting its history--you can't go very long at all in the books of the Torah without at least a passing reference to God's past promises or deliverance.  The question is how that story is told and treasured, rehearsed and remembered, for the sake of the future God is creating.  And just like it is technically true either way to tell the story of my son and the hammer (either "I'm a failure" or "Daddy keeps letting me work with him even when I don't hit the nail straight), only one of those is the version I am willing to allow to inform my son's identity.

That, in a nutshell, is the way mercy teaches us to see with new eyes.  It is not that we see a pleasant lie rather than an uncomfortable truth.  Nobody--not Moses millennia ago, and not anybody now--would suggest we can forget or erase the messy sins of the past. The real question is how we use that history--and whether it is faced and then forgiven, or weaponized to force people to stay stuck in old roles ("I never get right..." "I always mess up..." "I can't ever be any more than...." "You will never amount to anything..." and so on).  After all, part of why Pharaoh's Egypt was stuck in the unending structure of slaves on the bottom and a bitter, fearful Pharaoh on top was that everyone felt they were stuck in those roles and could not imagine that things could be otherwise.

So the question for us today, whether we are talking with the people under our roof, the people in your community or congregation, or the people in a whole nation, is how we will choose to remember--will we face the past with open eyes and then let go of what we will not need to keep lugging around, or will we weaponize the past and wear it like an albatross?  In the aftermath of the golden calf story, Moses tells us that it is possible to face the truth of the past without letting it pigeonhole us into set roles from which we, or someone else around us, cannot escape. 

How can we today both "own" our history and be free from getting ourselves stuck in old ruts and casting?  How can we dare today to let mercy move us to see with new eyes?  And how do we, once we are seeing with new eyes,  allow the living God to give us vision?

Lord God, help us to see truthfully about our histories, and then to be transformed by your Merciful-ness into your own likeness.