FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE

It almost goes without saying that there aren’t many good shows on television these days. As Newton Minnow observed fifty years ago, network television was then and is even now more so a “vast wasteland”.  It is even worse especially given the fact that we have over 200 channels to choose from. Back then it was only a half dozen if that. And as much a wasteland as it might have been, there were still great programs every night. Not anymore.

But there are some. One of Arlena’s and my favorites is Elementary. It is the latest version of the Sherlock Holmes series. In this one Sherlock lives in New York City in 2013. Dr. Watson is a woman and so is, as we followers have just learned, Holmes’ arch nemesis Moriarity. It makes for interesting and fun viewing. But in this version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes there is even more to the character than I have seen in other portrayals over the years.

This Holmes is brilliant, as are all of them. He is also a piece of work, as they say, as are all of them. But this Holmes is different. He is fragile. He has been broken because he believed that the one and only love in his life was dead. While he might have been able to rationalize her death, he could not deal with it internally. It ate him up so much so that he became a complete addict and had to be discharged from his duties with Scotland Yard. He moved to America to escape from his past and, thanks to his father, went through rehab and counseling and found a consulting job with the New York City Police.

Even so, this utterly brilliant man remains fragile, broken and has to be handled with care, with kid gloves – and he knows it. Because of his fragility he is wary of getting close to anyone. He feels a sexual connection to Watson but it frightens him because he knows he might lose her just he lost his one love. He does not want that to happen again. He has to be handled with care and he knows he has to handle himself with care.

But don’t we all? We are all fragile creatures, are we not? No matter how brilliant we are, no matter how strong we think we are emotionally, no matter how rich or how powerful or how anything, in the end and throughout it all, we remain fragile human beings. We need to be handled with care – all of us, each and every one of us: there are no exceptions. None.

And isn’t that good news, wonderful news, saving-grace news? That means that it is okay to be afraid. It means that we are allowed and expected to cry when tears should be flowing, tears of joy or tears of sorrow. It means that it is no sign of weakness that others come to hold our hands when those hands need to be held because it is truly a sign of strength that we allow them to do so.

What it means is that we are human and we are just like Jesus. Jesus wept. Jesus feared for his life. Jesus allowed others to minister to him. Jesus was just as fragile as you and I are. He needed to be handled with care just as he handled with care all those fragile people he encountered every day of his life. That’s why we need one another.

THE CRITIC IN US

There is a critic that lurks deep inside each and every one of us. It is part of or being and there is nothing we can do to eliminate it, nor should we. We make judgments about everything whether we realize it or not, whether we verbalize them or not. These judgments come automatically. They simply well up from somewhere within us without our having to summon them.

We watch a movie and we critique it. We eat a meal, whether we dine in or dine out, whether prepared by ourselves, by a loved one or by some anonymous chef, and we have an opinion about the food not only after we have completed the meal but even while we are eating it. A young woman walks by and we critique her outfit, her demeanor, how she is wearing her hair, and soon. It is instinctive and it is human nature to do so.

In the vast majority of those critical moments we do not dwell on our thoughts and opinions. They are quick and they are passing. Most of them are not even memorable as quick as they are and so little effect do they have on our lives on that moment in time. Here they are one second and gone the next. In fact, very few events, meals, movies, even passersby have more than a momentary effect on our lives. That is very good. We would not be able to move on in life if everything and every person transformed our being.

Some do, of course, but most do not. What we need to be aware of, however, is when we begin to dwell on the negative, when we fail to allow ourselves to see the positive that is there. For there is a positive even when it is truly difficult to discover. When we allow ourselves to block out the positive by dwelling so much on the negative, the one who gets hurt the most is ourselves. The negative pulls us down, always. It is only the positive that s uplifting. Thus, if we want to find happiness, we have to find the positive even when it is extremely hard to do so.

While critique is part of a natural response to what we see and hear, the problem is that our spontaneous critiques can easily devolve into criticism, which, by definition, is negative. Yes, “to criticize” means “to evaluate”; but the second definition means “to find fault with”. Thus, the question arises as to why this is so. Why, when we critique someone or something, do we not automatically look for the good, the positive, rather than, it seems, automatically look for the negative. Why, when critiquing a movie, a meal, a person, do we not look for reasons why it or s/he is nor four-star than reasons why not?

Jesus always tried to find the good, the positive, in everyone, especially those whom society critiqued to be losers: the poor, the sick, the outcasts. Jesus knew, and we know, that there is good in there, even if it is hard to find, even when it seems it is impossible to find. In our own personal lives, when we are down on ourselves for whatever reasons we are, the only way to rise up is to recognize the good that is in us, good that seems to be covered up by what we perceive as so much bad. That is not to say that we overlook the bad. It is to say that the only way to overcome the bad is by being aware of the good that is present. That is not easy to do, but do it we must.

SINS, DEBTS AND TRESPASSES

Most of us when we say the “Lord’s Prayer” (it is called that, of course, because it is the only prayer Jesus taught his followers – us – to say), ask God “to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. The newer translation asks God “to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. Our Presbyterian brothers and sisters normally ask God, “to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. According to most of the theologians I read, the Presbyterians have it right, or more right as the case may be.

Nevertheless, my suspicion is that, given a choice, most of us will stick with the word with which we are most familiar and, in all honesty, more comfortable: trespasses. For when we think about that word, we usually think about going into another person’s property that has a “No Trespassing” sign posted. The property is off limits. Thus, if we do in fact trespass, we know we are doing wrong and will probably get into some kind of trouble if we are caught. But let’s be honest, we do not think it’s any big deal unless the property owner has a shotgun pointed at us or is the federal government.

“Sins”, on the other hand, are a big deal. When we trespass on someone else’s property, we may be breaking the law but we don’t usually consider what we are doing as being sinful. Sin has to do with a deliberate moral failure and not a deliberate legal wrong. When we sin, we know that what we are doing is not what God would has us do, but we do it anyway, whether it is a sin of commission or a sin of omission: dog what we know we should not do or not doing what we know we should do.

In the realm of morality most of us would consider sinning as being worse than trespassing even though, in the real world, we sin more every day than we trespass: we break more moral laws than we break civil laws. Yes, we know in our heads that when we say the Lord’s Prayer and ask God to forgive us our trespasses, we are really asking God to forgive our sins. So why are we so reluctant to say so?

Even more may be our aversion to the word “debts”. We don’t owe God anything, do we? How are we so in debt to God that we have to ask God to forgive whatever debts we have? Yes, we may have financial debts, but those are not any of God’s concern are they? Or at least they are not so much a concern that we have to ask God to forgive us for getting into debt in the first place, are they?

Well, maybe; maybe if we have gotten into debt because of some sinful and foolish action. But, then, that is not the point of the prayer is it? The debts we are asking God to forgive is based on our awareness that everything we have is a gift, a freewill gift from God. What we owe God is to use those gifts and those talents to the very best of our ability. The fact that we do not always do so is the reason why we need to ask God to forgive us for not so doing.

Maybe we really need to ask God to forgive us our “sins, trespasses and debts” and will be covered. But, the other side of the coin is that we must so forgive as well.

ALL GOD CAN DO SOMETIMES IS LAUGH

There was a picture being passed around a while back, maybe still is, of a smiling, actually laughing, Jesus. I suspect many people were/are scandalized. How dare anyone dare a picture of Jesus laughing! With all the suffering going on all over the world to so many innocent people, the vast majority of them children, how could Jesus laugh? How, in fact, can any Christian laugh in such a world of so much suffering?

There is certainly nothing to laugh at in the face of suffering, especially suffering children. Jesus never smiled in such a situation. In fact, it angered him. In the 25th chapter of Matthew's Gospel Jesus warns us that we will be judged based on how we responded to those in need: the poor, the naked, the hungry, the sick. There is nothing funny about suffering. It is no laughing matter. Never was. Never is. Never will be.

There is, however, much in this life that is funny, for which we can do nothing but laugh. Just as tears flow spontaneously, so does a laugh arise spontaneously. When something strikes our funny bone, we laugh. It is just as difficult to suppress a laugh as it is to suppress a tear. We should try to do neither. We should do neither. While it is good to control our emotions, our feelings, they arise because of our God-given nature and they should be allowed to be made manifest.

If we can laugh, if we are allowed to laugh, so it is with God. As there are times when we can do nothing but smile, even guffaw with a hearty and loud laugh, so there are times when God can do nothing but laugh.  I have to believe that God indeed laughs. Thus, the closest we can visualize God laughing, I suppose, of a picture of a laughing Jesus. God laughs with us because God can do nothing else but.

Think about the times in our lives when we have done something so foolish that all we can do is laugh at ourselves. We wonder why we did what we did in the first place that made us look and feel so foolish. We may have even known ahead of time that we were walking into a situation where even angels would dare not go, but we went ahead anyway, and we came away looking like a fool. We were humiliated but all we could do was laugh right along with those laughing at us -- one such laugher being God.

God has to have a sense of humor. After all it was God who created us as we are: fallible, weak, sinful human beings who, on occasion, can and do make fools of ourselves. When we do so, God can do nothing but laugh at us and even laugh along with us. And while laughing, all God hopes for us in that we learn from our foolishness. That is all we can hope for ourselves.

We do learn, thankfully. As we grow older, we grow wiser. That does not mean we come to a point in our lives that we never make foolish decisions, commit foolish acts that can only be laughable in hindsight. God's Kingdom has not yet come. Until it does, we will keep God laughing and laughing at us, individually and collectively, until we get the message. Sometimes that's all God can do when it comes to our foolishness. For that we should be thankful and, someday, be eternally grateful.

IT'S NOT OKAY NOT TO CRY

One of the blessings of my life is that when I was a child and I got hurt, whatever the hurt, and started to cry, my Mom never said to me, "Billy, big boys don't cry". She allowed me to cry because that is what my being, my inner self, told me I was supposed to do at that moment. I hurt. I was in pain and tears spontaneously started to flow. Mom didn’t try to find an excuse for me to stop the tears. They were a part of life.

They still are. Tears well up in our eyes and we can do nothing to prevent them from so doing. Yes, once we sense the tears, we may want to do all we can to stop the flow so as to pretend to all who might see them that we are brave and strong and can control our emotions. We may fool others but we cannot fool ourselves. Nor should we. Those tears arose because something deep inside us forced them to the surface. We did not will them even if we, in some sense of foolish pride, wished they had kept to themselves.

Tears of pain when fall and get hurt, tears of joy over the birth of our child, tears of pride when the National Anthem is played at the Olympics, tears of sorrow at the death of our Mom: all these are spontaneous. They are natural and they should never be suppressed for any reason no matter how macho, how in control of our emotions we are supposed to be. If someone else is embarrassed because tears came to our eyes, that is that person's problem. If we are embarrassed by our tears, we should be ashamed.

The shortest verse in the Bible tells us simply that "Jesus wept". (John 11:35) Remember the story? Jesus' close friend Lazarus had died and Jesus came to mourn. Even though he knew what he was going to do, namely, raise Lazarus from the dead, at that moment his humanity and the emotions that are part of that humanity took over and he simply broke down and cried. That sad part in this incident is that many of those who came to mourn Lazarus looked at the weeping Jesus and instead of seeing a human being honestly overcome with grief, took him to task for not preventing Lazarus' death in the first place.

What was, and probably still is, even worse is that Jesus' raising of Lazarus got more attention than did his tears of compassion. Yet, for you and for me who want to imitate Jesus in our daily lives, the one way we can do so is to have compassion on the same people with whom Jesus was compassionate and for who he shed many tears: the sick, the naked, the lonely, the imprisoned, those in need. We will not raise people from the dead, but our tears of compassion can raise us up to do something to help those very people find resurrection and new life in the here and now.

It is not okay to not have compassion on those for whom we should have compassion and for whom we should be shedding compassionate tears. It is not okay not to cry when in pain, whatever that pain may be. Those tears that well up in us spontaneously are a call to respond in a positive, humane and Christian way using whatever gifts God has given us to do so. Sometimes all we can do is let the tears flow. Sometimes we can do more.

Big boys don't cry? That's a lie. It's a sign of our bigness that we, male or female, can and do cry.