THINGS WONDERFUL AND EXCITING

Years ago I had received a call to another church. It was an exciting time in my life as all new ventures are. It was also a little frightening as all new ventures are. We may know what we are in for but we really do not know all that we are in for. The job maybe the same; our responsibilities may be the same even if enlarged; but the people we will be working with are not the same. One never knows. All we can do is hope for the best and do our best.

While in that transition mode from moving to my present position to the next one, I received a copy of the newsletter from the parish I had been called to serve. The Associate Rector, who himself was moving, wrote a piece where he said that while he was getting in place in his new parish, the parish I was coming to would, in his words, “be breaking in a new Rector who will bring new things, things wonderful and exciting. Things neither you nor I could imagine or hope for will be yours.”

When I read those words, I almost choked, or rather wanted to choke him. But since he was there where I was going and I was still in place where I was, I picked up the phone and asked him what he was doing, setting me up, making me out to be a miracle worker: new and wonderful and exciting things! He merely laughed and laughed. Whether any or all of that was accomplished while I served as Rector is not for me to decide.

However, if, in fact, new and wonderful and exciting things happened while I served as Rector, it was not because of me. It was because of the people of the parish. They are the ones who made and continue to make things happen. One can be the best leader ever; but if there are no followers, nothing gets done. It is the followers, those who follow the leader, who make wonderful and exciting things happen.

That is true everywhere. Read the Bible: God chose wonderful leaders. But the success of the leaders depended not on their abilities alone but mostly on the willingness of those they were called to lead to, in fact, follow. When the people did, wonderful and exciting things happened. When they did not, disaster usually followed. The leader could do only so much.

We are all leaders and we are all followers. We all have responsibility over others if only to lead by example. When we are in a position of called leadership, we must do the best we can so that those who are to follow us will do so and so that wonderful and exciting things happen. And when we are in a position to follow that leader, we must do all we can to help make wonderful and exciting things happen. It is a joint venture.

Life is a joint venture. God call us to be leaders and followers. It does not matter which one we are in the present moment: leader or follower. If we do the best we can, use our God-given gifts as best we can, new and wonderful and exciting things will happen.

GOD DOES NOT NEED TO BE ENTERTAINED

And neither do we, certainly not when it comes to worshiping God. First, God. God does not need to be praised or even worshipped by us. God does not need anything in the sense that you and I have needs: food, clothing, shelter, love. God has everything because God is everything. To assume or even assert that God needs our praise and our worship is to misunderstand God.

We are the ones who need to worship and praise our God. It comes from our very being as children of God. We have an inborn need to praise and thank our parents for parenting us, for giving themselves to us in love. Even when our parents were not the best of parents – what parent is really “the best” given our innate proclivity to be selfish? – there was and still is a need in us to praise and thank them if, for nothing else, putting up with us when we were so selfish. Over the years on my visitation rounds many an adult has said to me, “I wonder why parents didn’t kill me as a teenager.” Enough said.

In the same way we need to praise and worship and certainly give thanks to God for all God has done and continues to do for us and especially for putting up with us as a loving parent for all the selfish deeds we have committed over the years and still do. What is amazing is that God continues to bless us and forgive us even as we continue in our selfishness even if those selfish actions are, if you will, no big deal in the grand scheme of things in this life. Nevertheless, God’s forgiveness does not seem to prevent us from still needing to ask for that always-granted forgiveness.

That is why worship is to be worship. God does not need to be entertained when we worship and neither do we. That is not to say that worship is to be dull and boring but it is to say that we do not need to feel joyful and uplifted when we worship. It’s like coming to our parents and asking them to forgive us with a smile on our face and asking them to feel good about our transgressions. Worship is not about us. It is about God and God does not expect a smile on our faces as we ask forgiveness.

In worship we are to come to grips with who we are and who God is. God is not our buddy or best friend but a loving parent who wants us to recognize our failings and shortcomings, confess them, understand that we have been forgiven and give thanks for God’s love and forgiveness. Granted, I am an old fogy and love ritual and hate anything that smacks of entertainment; but I stand by my point.

Sometimes we miss the whole point of worship in that, again, it is not about us. It is about God and our relationship with God and how we express that relationship. When our worship is completed, we need to feel that we have indeed worshipped God, worshipped, not entertained God or even been entertained. Somehow our culture seems to have lost that understanding of what the worship of our God is all about. It is not surprising, I suspect, but it is sad.

I AM JUDAS

Judas has taken a bum rap, at least in my estimation. Somewhere years ago I read an observation made by Tim Rice, the lyricist for Jesus Christ, Superstar.  Rice said that after doing his research for the musical, he came to the conclusion that Judas was the most intelligent of all the followers of Jesus and that, in fact, Judas truly loved Jesus.

So what happened? Why did Judas betray Jesus? Well, I don’t think he betrayed Jesus leading to Jesus’ death so much as he wanted to save Jesus from himself. Judas and the rest of the followers of Jesus were doing so because they believed Jesus was the Messiah, the one who would lead Israel in a military triumph over the Romans and make Israel the ruling nation of the world.

As Jesus’ ministry was progressing, Judas was wise enough to realize that if Jesus persisted in antagonizing the authorities, both religious and civil, he was going to end up being killed before he could organize enough followers to proceed in the overthrow of the government. So he devised a plan to keep Jesus alive by “betraying” him to the authorities. His hope, I believe, was for Jesus to come to his senses while under arrest and simply back off on the rhetoric so that he would be released.

That did not happen. And when Jesus was condemned to death, Judas, in absolute grief over his mistake, took his own life. The sad part in all of this is that in trying to save the messenger, Judas missed the message. Peter, on the other hand, did not try to save the messenger but tried to save his own skin by denying three times that he knew Jesus. But he had heard the message about forgiveness. Judas, sadly did not. Imagine what great a saint we would be honoring in Judas if, after the resurrection, he came to Jesus and humbly asked for forgiveness which would have been lovingly granted!

If we want to insist that Judas betrayed Jesus, then I am right there with him. Every time I/we do what we know the message of Jesus forbids us to do, every time we are unloving, sinful, selfish, like Judas we betray Jesus. We deny, like Peter, that we ever knew the man. But, hopefully, unlike Judas and like Peter, we come to our senses, humbly admit our failings and ask for forgiveness which is lovingly granted.

Judas is a reminder that in so many ways we are all just like him. Sometimes we do the right thing for all the wrong reasons and we do the wrong thing for all the right reasons. Sometimes we are too smart for our own good at the expense of others. Would that we could always know the consequences of our words and actions before we said or did anything. It is only in hindsight that we do.

But when that hindsight kicks in, when we come to our senses and realize what we have done, hopefully we will be humble enough to admit our mistakes, learn from them, and ask for forgiveness. Would that Judas had done so. But, like him, we can relate.

I AM THOMAS

The story of Thomas the Apostle is quite familiar. It is read on the second Sunday after Easter every year, not once every three years as all the other Gospel passages are. It is the story about a man who doubted, a man like each and every one of us. Perhaps that is why it is read every year, read as a reminder that if we have any inclination to take Thomas to task for his doubts, we had better reconsider such thoughts. For the truth is, each one of us can say, “I am Thomas.”

What that is also to say, and I think this is why the Common Lectionary which is used in moist denominations, is that we all need to be reminded that no matter how strong we think our faith is, it isn’t as strong as it could be. It is also a reminder that even the greatest believer has his or her doubts. Remember not too long ago when it was reported that Mother Teresa spent her whole life and ministry filled with doubt about God and her faith in God? If a saint like that can have doubts, we all can and we all do.

Thomas’ problem and maybe even Sister Teresa’s and certainly mine is that all too often there is the need to reduce not only the resurrection but everything else to our human standards of touch and sight. If we cannot see it, if we cannot touch it, then maybe it is not real. Thomas wanted to touch the risen Jesus. Mother Teresa want to grab hold of the God she believed in just to make sure there really is a God to believe in even if we cannot reach out and physically touch that God.

There is northing wrong or even sinful about that. We are human beings, physical people and we deal in the physical, what we can see and touch. When we get into the realm of the spiritual, well, that is when we begin to have doubts. But we live in the spiritual as well, do we not? We live in a world where we must trust one another and trust is not something that can be materialized. It cannot be felt. It can only be experienced.

Trust allows us to be mystified, to be enchanted, to enable doubts to be resolved. We are mystified why others love us especially when we often do not love ourselves but learn to trust that they do. We are enchanted by God’s creation which we cannot for the life of us understand much of any of it. We simply stand there in awe and believe, trusting that God has the world in God’s own hands. Our doubts about whatever it is that causes them are resolved when we finally trust that those doubts will be resolved.

Thomas learned a hard lesson the hard way. He was forced to face his doubts. Once that lesson was learned, he could leave that upper room and go out to preach the Gospel, even die for it, because he experienced the truth. Mother Teresa, like us, I think, did not let her doubts control her, but faced them every day. Those doubts, however, never prevented her from continuing her ministry of service because she trusted God more that she trusted herself. So must we; for like Thomas and Mother Teresa we are forced to face our doubts each and every day. They are part of life.