POSSESIONS CAN LEAVE US EMPTY HANDED

Sometimes we all have a difficulty with sharing our possessions. We are like the little child who grabs the ball from his younger brother and says, “That’s mine!” and will not, under any circumstances, share it. Even when Mom or Dad tries to explain why he should share his ball with his brother, he resists. He can neither understand why he has to nor will he give in even under parental orders.

Again, such selfishness is not the sole prerogative of children. Adults are just as susceptible to holding on to what they have and being unwilling to share it with anyone, even a sibling or parent, as are children. There has to be some specific possessive gene within each of us that makes us so. Yes, some people are less prone to hoarding possessions than others, but even the greatest of saints is tempted to do so and even gives in on occasion.

When we find ourselves doing such hoarding, what we will also discover, if we stop to think about what we are doing and why, is that we are preventing ourselves from gaining something more and something even more valuable. For when we close our hands, literally and figuratively around something, some possession, we are then unable to open those same hands to receive anything from another, from others.

When we unclasp those hands to let loose of something, they are then opened to receive back from another thanks and love, friendship and support. It is so true that it is only in giving that we receive because it is only in opening our hands that they can reach out and receive something from another. What is received, we soon learn, or if we have learned are again reminded, is always more valuable than that which we have let go.

Over the years I have saved over 200 lives having donated over twenty-five gallons of blood. I did not hoard my blood but shared it. What I have received in return is the knowledge that I have indeed saved that many lives, but even more, I benefited from giving. My blood and blood pressure got tested every two months. The truth is that even in my generosity I had been somewhat selfish.

The point is that even in totally selfless giving, there is always a modicum of selfishness. Thus, that is why it is also true that there is more pleasure in giving than in receiving because, again, we always get back more than we give, even if what we get back seems at first glance to be so much less. We give gifts because doing so gives us pleasure, makes us feel good in the process and even makes us feel good about ourselves.

The saddest people in the world are not those who have nothing but those who seem to have everything but are unwilling and even unable to share something, even some small piece of their abundance, with anyone. They hold their hands so tightly around their possessions that they literally squeeze the life out of them, the life those possessions could be giving to those in need and, at the same time, squeeze the life out of themselves. It is sad but it happens and it can happen to us. That possessive gene can rear its ugly head and grab us by the neck when we least expect it. Beware!

 

CONFESSION DOES NOT EXCUSE

It is never easy to take the high moral ground as much as we preachers are tempted to do. We can all name several famous, now infamous, clergy who have railed against moral transgressions only to be caught transgressing themselves, much to their shame. Every last one of us is a sinner. It goes with the territory of being human.

Thus, we all have sins to confess, moral transgressions for which we are ashamed. It does take guts to stand before other sinful, fallible human beings and confess to our transgressions, even when we cannot deny them, especially if they happen to become front-page news and/or fodder for holier-than-thou talk show pundits. We sinned. We were caught. Now we confess, tears streaming down our faces in humiliation.

We now want to think it’s over and done with. We think that confessing to our sins is punishment enough, that the press, the media, the public, and even those we have offended the most – spouse, children, family – should accept our confession, our sorrow and then allow us to move on as if our courage in confessing was and is enough. It isn’t nor should it be. It should only be the beginning.

For when we are caught in a lie, whatever that lie, that sin, courage is not the issue. There is no one else to blame, even as much as we would like to blame society or human nature or bad genes for our misconduct. We did it. We did it knowingly and willingly. Everyone knows we did it. We cannot blame anyone else because there is no one else to blame. To refuse to accept the blame is not courage but cowardice.

However, standing up to our sins, confessing that, yes, we did it and there is no excuse for what we did, is only the first step. It is not the last step nor is it the only step, as much as we would like it to be. Punishment follows. The problem, of course, is that we want to believe that because we have confessed to an obvious transgression, we are now excused from having to pay any penalty, from being punished.

That’s not courage. That’s hypocrisy. What is even more hypocritical is when we lambaste those who have publicly sinned while engaging in our own immoral and/or illicit activity.  Confession is always the first step in getting back on track even when we have no choice but to confess because there is no way to deny our transgression. Believing that confession now makes us exempt from any sort of punishment other than the humiliation of being caught is an even worse offense.

We live in an era where public confession of public misdeeds is deemed sufficient. It is not because it only leads to worse offenses in the future. It’s akin to confessing to the State Trooper who has just flagged us down for speeding that, yes, we were indeed speeding and believing that, because we owned up to our offense, we should not get a ticket. If the Trooper is kind and let’s us off with a warning, odds are that sooner rather than later, we will be stopped again. Had we received the deserved ticket and the points, we would be less inclined to speed in the future. Escaping deserved punishment does not make us better. It often, sadly, leads to greater transgressions, as we all can attest.

MAINTENANCE

As individuals and not simply as individual Christians each of us has a responsibility to maintain ourselves materially, physically and spiritually. We are all aware of this fact especially if we our out of shape in any one or in all of these areas. Perhaps it is at the beginning of a new year that we are even more aware of this responsibility, New Year’s Resolutions seemingly being the order of the day as the calendar changes from one year to the next.

Resolutions to do something are always in order when that which we deem to be resolved is quite pressing. We don’t make such resolutions only at the beginning of a year. When we are finally grasped by the importance of the issue at hand, we stand back and decide that we had better do something about it before the problem gets totally out of hand and we will be in over our heads.

Of course, resolutions without a plan are meaningless. Perhaps that is the reason why so many of the resolutions we make, no matter when we make them, are never fulfilled. The issue that we want and need to deal with is no simple matter. It is quite complex even if we can name it in one short sentence. “I need to lose weight.” “I need to get a job.” “I need to get my spiritual life in order.”

The problem becomes even more complex when there are multiple issues that demand our attention. If we are overweight, out of work and have little or no spiritual life, we are in for a long and difficult journey just to get ourselves to a maintenance level. That is the first step in getting our lives in order. In fact, most of us would be content simply maintaining our life on an even keel. Any growth would be a blessing.

Yet, simple maintenance is not easy as we know from daily living. When one part of our life starts to go haywire, it affects the rest of it. When we are physically ill, our spiritual life ebbs and our ability to take care of our material responsibilities is weakened. When our spirits our low, so is our resistance to any temptation to do not do what needs to be done on the job.

So how do we formulate a Plan that will help us not only get our life back on an even keel and then maintain it for a long enough time that will then allow us to plan for some growth? Would there were a simple answer, a simple one- or two-step formula for success. But there is not. The only road to maintenance is the one-step-at-a-time, one-day-at-a-time method.

Growth will only be measured in increments and any recognition of progress will be noted perhaps six months to a year later. That may not seem very encouraging but it is the truth.  Life today, in this world of ours of instant communication and constant change, is never simple. Nevertheless, change, growth is possible, if we want to make those changes necessary to maintain a sound mental, physical and spiritual life. Such change and such growth will never come easily, but it won’t come at all if we are not willing to resolve to make the effort and then do what is necessary to make that resolution a reality.

THE SEASON OF HOPE

If it is anything, Christmas is the season of hope; and isn’t that the way it should be? Those of us who are parents can remember holding our newborn in our arms and thinking and dreaming about what would be in store for this little tyke in the years to come. Our hearts and minds were filled with nothing but hope. We only wanted the best for the baby and silently promised we would do whatever would be needed to make those hopes and dreams come true.

Whether those hopes and dreams came true or whether we fulfilled our promise to do our best to help make them so is, in truth, water over the dam. We cannot go back in time and undo or redo what we should or should not have done. What is is what is. If we had more than one child, the second child benefited from the mistakes we make with the first. The more practiced a parent we were, the better parent we became.

Much in the same way, albeit it in a very different way, every year we become new parents of the Christ Child. On Christmas we hold that Child in our hands, hold our faith in that Child in our hands, and hope and pray that the coming year and years will be filled with what faith in that Child means.

Unlike our own children’s lives whose lives will be very much in their control and not ours, (even as much at times as we wish they could be – for their own good and our peace of mind), we are in control of this Child’s life as it has bearing on our own personal lives. We make and live out the decisions our faith in this Child presents to us day in and day out. Each day we are to ask ourselves if what we are saying and thinking and doing reflect what faith in this Child truly means.

As it is with our own children, so it is with the Christ Child: we don’t simply rejoice in the birth, literally or figuratively hold the C/child in our hands, hope and pray for the best, then put the C/child down and walk away. Rather, we stay intimately involved and stay involved for the long run – or at least that is what we are supposed to be doing. We cannot or should not be an absentee parent of our own children any more than we should be an absentee parent to the Christ Child.

We teach our children by our very lives, by the example of our lives. They learn both good and bad, love and hate, selflessness and selfishness from us, their parents. In the same way, we teach our faith in the Christ Child by the way we live our lives – or at least that is what we are supposed to be doing. How well we do it or how poorly is a reflection of what Christmas truly means to us.

As we gather to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child once again this Christmas, may we be filled with hope, hope that the coming year will be better than this past, hope that dreams that were dashed because of our own sinfulness or that of others or simply because of circumstances beyond our control be fulfilled this year, hope that we will do our best to model our lives on the life of that Child grown to full stature, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is my hope for you and for me. Merry Christmas.

DO WE GET THE YOKE?

Following Jesus is not always easy. But, then, we have never expected it to be. Nor did Jesus ever say or promise that it would be. In fact, he said that if we wanted to be a follower of his, we would have to carry some crosses – about which, as we have all discovered, he was not whistling Dixie, as they say. Sometimes it has been a really tough road to hoe and more often than we would like it to be.

Even so, Jesus also said that in following him “the yoke would be easy and the burden light” (Mt 11:30). My guess is that that has not always been true for anyone of us over the years. My other guess is that many, at this moment in time, find the burden of being a Christian anything but light and what seems a yoke around our necks to almost be choaking us to death. And it isn’t fun; not in the least!

If you are like me, what makes the burden, if not light, at least a whole lot easier to carry, is when we understand what Jesus meant by the yoke. When I think of a yoke in agricultural terms (and as I think Jesus was certainly alluding to), it is an instrument that fits around the next of the ox pulling a plow, but not one neck or one ox but two. When two are pulling the plow together, the row (and the road) being hoed is much easier. It doesn’t mean that it will be a piece of cake, but only that it will be easier.

And isn’t that what we have found over the course of trying, as best we could, to live out our faith? When we tried to hoe the road all by ourselves, it was always much more difficult than when we allowed someone else, some others, to, as it were, share the yoke with us. What does not need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway, Jesus has always been on the yoke with us, not to pull the load for us, but to help make it less burdensome.

That is what a Christian community is all about: each one of us pulling our share of the responsibilities of doing what our faith calls us to do, but doing it together, yoked together. Again, that does not mean the task will be very easy but it will be easier. For if we think that the task ahead is impossible, we will never even begin to tackle it. But if we know that we will have help, we will do what we are able to do.

There will always be difficult times in our lives, the result of our own selfishness and that of others. In fact, we are living in these times right now. When we stand back and look at what is demanded of us to love one another as God loves us, it almost seems overwhelming, if not impossible, a yoke too difficult to pull and a burden that is too heavy to bear. But if we pull together, as difficult as that task is, the field will be plowed and the seeds will be planted and with the grace of God and the strength of the Holy Spirit to help and support us along the way, the harvest will come. That is God’s promise and that it the truth. Believe it!

BECAUSE I SAID SO

A story, probably not true: A Presbyterian (let's pick on them for a while) minister was walking along the beach one day and stumbled upon a lamp. Picking it up and wiping it off caused the lamp to shake and smoke and a genie came out. The genie thanked the minister for freeing him from years of captivity and offered him one wish.

The minister immediately said, "You know, I've always wanted to visit the Holy Land but I'm afraid of flying. And I get seasick just thinking about boats. So could you build a highway across the Atlantic Ocean so I could drive to the Holy Land?"

The genie looked at him in shock and replied, "You've got to be kidding. Do you realize the engineering challenges that would have to be overcome to achieve that feat? Even I have limitations. Can't you think of anything else to wish for?"

The minister thought for a moment and then said, "Okay. I know what I want. I wish that all the members of the congregation I serve become tithers.”

To that the genie replied, "Did you want that to be a two-lane or four-lane highway?"

Thought you might enjoy that this being the time of the year when churches begin planning on next year’s budget. It's probably easier to make fun of tithing that to be serious about it because when the word tithe is mentioned, we tend to flinch. Or we get a little testy. We know what the word means. We also know that tithing is rather basic, rather biblical, in fact. And since our faith is biblically based, we really can't avoid the fact that we can't avoid the word and can't avoid dealing with the reality of that word. And that makes us a might bit testy.

We get testy because we do not like or want anyone telling us what we have to do with our money – have to do if we believe scripture to be the word of God. We don't mind scripture telling us that we aren't allowed to lie or cheat or steal or murder. We don't seem to mind being told what not to do. Telling us what to do, especially with our money, is another matter.

I don't know if that has always been the case. I don't know if years ago people were more willing to tithe than today. Probably not, probably because we have always been material people, judging our self-worth on the amount of possessions we have or do not have, including the amount of money in our bank accounts and not about our generosity to others. It may simply be human nature.

But we are not simply human beings. We are God's children. Everything we have has been given to us by God. Even if we believe we have earned it, we have been able to do so because God has given us the gifts and talents to do so. So, I think God does at least have some say in how God expects us to use the gifts we have been given as best we can and to share them, whether we like it or not. But then, as with our children, we adults never like to hear, "Because I said so."

A SEASON FOR REASONING

Advent is the time when we are given the time to think about the event we will celebrate at the end of this time: Christmas. If you are like me, sometimes we spend so much time doing everything we think we need to do to celebrate Christmas that we spend little or no time thinking about the meaning of the Christmas event. And then when Christmas arrives, it is quickly celebrated and just as quickly forgotten as we move on with life – and getting ready for New Year’s Day.

What we sometimes forget in our forgetting to reflect on the meaning of Christmas during this Advent season is that the real meaning of Christmas is to pervade all of life and not simply the spiritual part. Jesus was born into a very real world that is much like ours, in fact is ours, with the very same problems. The issues Jesus came to address are still with us, much to our condemnation as a people of faith. For had we and those who came before us took Jesus’ message seriously, we would not be dealing with these problems today.

But we are. Unfortunately, they have become even more compounded because we have made them into political issues rather than moral issues: problems like hunger, disease, health care, sexual issues of every kind, to name just a few for starters. These issues are not Red vs. Blue, Right vs. Left, Democrat vs. Republican, or any other category we use to decide how they should be addressed. For in debating how we should address them we almost always forget that we are taking about people and not about politics.

Jesus’ concern was first, last and always about people. It was not about political correctness or even about the Law. If there was a person in need, a person who was hungry or thirsty or who was discriminated against for any reason, that person was of immediate concern for Jesus – and, of course, should be for us. Debating how to address issues is needed just as long as we don’t forget the reason for the debate, the discussion, in the first place: meeting the needs of the people.

Jesus came among us to remind us that our life of faith is to be about a life of service one to another. No one is to be exempt from our ministry. No one. Jack Harberer, editor of Presbyterian Outlook, writes this: “Wisdom should at least teach us two things. First, in order to bear Christ’s purposes to the world, we need to advocate policies with both eyes open. While our left eye focuses on woman’s equality, the right eye needs to focus on minimizing abortions. While our left eye focuses on economic injustice, the right eye needs to focus on free enterprise. As the left eye would defend the rights of sexual minorities, the right eye needs to warn against sexual promiscuity. As the left eye attends to welcoming strangers and defending the rights of imprisoned enemy combatants, the right eye needs to sustain the rule of law and to protect against terrorism.”

Advent is the season for seeing with both eyes, for seeing as Jesus saw, for reasoning as Jesus reasoned, for refusing to allow politics or anything else to deter us from being about what Jesus was about: seeking and serving all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, loving everyone as Jesus loved. That’s not the easy way. It’s the only way.