A MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION – AND LESSON

A story from the Internet: "During my second month of nursing school our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: 'What is the name of the woman who cleans the school?' Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name?

"I handed in my paper leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. 'Absolutely!' said the professor. 'In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘hello.’ I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy."

           

The story reminds me of the last question on my first Old Testament test in seminary: "Who is the author of the text book?" I hadn't the foggiest. On that same test we were asked to draw a map of Israel and indicate where the Twelve Tribes were located, and by name. Needless to say, I did not do well on that test, nor did the rest of my classmates. But like that young student nurse, we learned our lesson. People and places and peoples' places in life are very important – to them – and should be to us as well.

I would like to be able to say that that first Old Testament exam sure was a lesson to me. I would like to say that. The lesson took a long time in learning. The question was important. The answer was more important, but the lesson, the learning did not come without a lot of halts and hesitations along the way. It is still too easy for me to be caught up in my own little world and not be concerned about others.

(I’ve probably told this story before because it has made a life-long impression on me.) I remember years ago arriving at a new church. It was a downtown church and many of the street people stopped for a cup of coffee and, in the winter, to get out of the cold. It was winter and a very cold one. One young man was there every day. It took me two months to learn his name because he wasn't important. What was important to me back then, or so I thought, was to learn all the names of all my parishioners. After all, they paid my salary. Larry only came for a handout.

When I finally realized what I had been doing, how unchristian I had been, I apologized to him. He was kind enough to tell me it was nothing, maybe because he was used to being ignored, maybe because he was more Christian than I was or will ever be. But, as I said, I have never forgotten that incident in my life, just as I have never forgotten that quasi-lesson my Old Testament prof perhaps unknowingly tried to teach my classmates and me all those years ago. But it took Larry, years later, for the lesson to sink in.

The people we encounter in our daily lives are all important even though we don’t think that is true. Maybe we encounter them and they us because that is God's plan for them and God’s plan for us for us. As the prof said, they deserve our attention, if all we do is say a simple pray for them.

WHAT A GREAT GOD!

Every preacher likes to be told that the sermon was great. It gives the ego a boost. Yet the preacher's ego being inflated is not the goal of the sermon. J. H. Jowett on the real goal of the sermon: "What you are after is not that folks shall say at the end of it all, 'What an excellent sermon!' That is a measured failure. You are there to have them say, when it is over, 'What a great God!' It is something for [people] not to have been in your presence but in His."

When I read that quote, I was a little ashamed. My shame came not from the fact that my goal in preaching is to receive compliments – it is not (but, to be honest, it is always nice to hear when it happens), but that I often forget what that goal is: to remind all of us, myself included, how great God is.

God is great. That is, above all else, the message of the Christmas Season. In spite of everything, in spite of our sinfulness and selfishness, in spite of the fact that we often think more of ourselves than we do of God, in spite of everything we have done and will continue to do, God loves us. As that famous passage from John reminds us, God loved us so much that he gave us His Son whose birth we celebrate during this time.

God gave us God’s Son to love us, to live and die for us, to show us by his life the type of life we, too, can and should live – from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death and every second in between. It was not an easy life for Jesus, to be sure and, as we all well know from experience, it is not an easy life for us at times. But it is the life we are called to live.

The Christmas Season is a time for remembering God's greatness, a time for giving thanks for God’s great love and God’s great Gift to us, a time to remind ourselves that our lives are to reflect God's glory and not our own by what we say and do each moment of each and every day. We do all that, or at least try to do that.  But like preachers, we often forget that we are to do it all the time and not some of the time.

Maybe we'll never get it right all the time given our humanness. No, we will not get it right all of the time. Thankfully, God knows and understands and forgives. Maybe that is why we need seasonal, if not constant, reminders of who we are, who God is, what God has given us and what we should do in response.

May we all take some time during this season to personally reflect on God's greatness and goodness and give thanks in the way God did in and through Jesus: by giving of ourselves to others even more than we already do. Giving ourselves: not giving gifts but the greatest gift of all, the gift of self. That is not always easy to do, as the Gospels remind us. But as those same Gospels also attest, the grace of God is always present, always offered. May we be open to receive it. And not only receive it, but do all we can to live it.

A blessed and grace-filled and grace-giving Christmas and every day thereafter.

DO I CAUSE ANYONE TO DOUBT

There is a scene in the Gospels where John the Baptist is in prison and begins to wonder if he has Jesus and Jesus’ message all wrong. John believed that the Messiah would be a grand military leader, round up an army of followers to take on and overthrow the Roman government. But that was not the message he was getting from what he was hearing about Jesus. So he sends some disciples to put it to Jesus point blank: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Yet, we still might ask why would John the Baptist have any doubts about who Jesus was? He had heard what Jesus was doing, namely what Jesus told John’s disciples to tell John what he was doing: the blind seeing, the lame walking, lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, even the dead being raised to life. Only the Messiah could do such things, right? Well, maybe wrong. Maybe many people can, could and do some or all of that. And maybe some were doing it even during John’s and Jesus’ time.

Why else would John need to have his disciples ask such a question? Even today blind people see again, the lame walk again, lepers and the like are cleansed, deaf people receive their hearing back or hear for the first time. Those who perform such miracles are not called the Messiah today and they were not called the Messiah back then even if they did and do Messianic deeds. Some were called doctors and some were called miracle workers but none were called the Messiah.

So if giving sight to the blind or making the lame walk is not a sign or the sign that one is the Messiah, if such great deeds can be done by the ordinary, what was it Jesus said to tell John that sealed the deal for John, let John know that Jesus was who he said he was and who John believed he was? I can’t prove this, but I think it was that last words Jesus told John’s disciples to say to John: “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

No one could take offense in what Jesus said and did, honestly take offense. It is true that many people took Jesus to task for breaking the Sabbath, for not being politically correct. But those who did knew, in the most secret places in their hearts, even if they would not admit it publicly or to anyone else, that there was nothing in what Jesus said or did for which they could take offense. Nothing.

That is what John needed to hear. That is what set Jesus apart from anyone else before or after. He simply never sinned. Even those who did or do wondrous deeds, like a Mother Theresa or a Francis of Assisi, sin and on a daily basis. They would be the first to say they do, too. Granted, their sins may pale into insignificance when compared to ours; nevertheless, they cannot or ever say, “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Neither can you or I. Jesus could and did.

We know that we sin every day, give offense to others, give them pause to doubt us and about our love and care and concern for them. Giving no offense and no reason to doubt means becoming more and more aware each day of our responsibilities to teach others by word and example. Not easy, but Jesus never said it would be. But we must try.

THE MESSAGE IS THE SAME

There are times in our lives when we all need a wake-up call. We live our lives from day to day, day in and day out, one day turning into the next, one year after another. Nothing much changes around us and we do not change. At the end of the year when we often, for one reason or another – maybe because it is the end of the year and it is something good to do – we take time to look back on the preceding three hundred sixty some days. What we often discover is that we don’t see that much has changed in our lives. This year looks very much like last and next year bodes the same. Life goes on.

Such is our life and such were the lives of the people of John the Baptist’s time. Perhaps back then those who came out to hear John only came out because he was different. He looked differently, dressed differently, ate a different menu than they did. Perhaps they had nothing better to do on the day they set out for the Jordan River. Perhaps. Once they arrived and were able to get past John’s appearance and everything else about him, many of them began to listen to what he had to say. They listened intently.

As they listened, they began to think about their own lives. They began to understand John was speaking as much to them as he was to anyone else. He wasn’t just lashing out at the people in power, although he was doing that, but it was more than that. For these mainly curiosity seekers John’s message was a wake-up call.

After they left John and went back home and took more time to reflect on what they heard, they began to examine their lives. What they discovered was a void: something was missing. And as they reflected further, what they found missing was a certain seriousness about life and about the way they lived their lives.

They discovered they had been living day to day without much thought as to why they were doing what they were doing, about what life was all about, about what their own lives were about. They discovered that they needed to take charge of their lives, to get serious with themselves and even with their God.

And they did, at least many of them did. But not all. Many of them, even after realizing John’s wake-up call was addressed to them, decided it was too much work, took too much of an effort to make any serious reforms in their lives. And so they went back to the same-old same-old. Some of those who did not, who took John’s message seriously and to heart, eventually became Jesus’ disciples. 

Nothing has changed, has it? John’s message is a real and alive and is addressed to us today just as it was to those who heard that message almost 2000 years ago. The question for them back then and for us today is one and the same: How will we respond? How will I respond? Will I listen to John’s words and take the time to seriously reflect on them, do the work to change what needs to be changed even though it may be difficult, or will I nod my head in agreement and do little or nothing?

Those who listened to John had that choice. So do you and I? What will we/I do?

OUR ATTITUDES ARE IN CHARGE

A bad attitude is almost as bad as a bad action: bad attitudes lead to bad actions and not the other way around. We do what we know is wrong because we want to do what is wrong. Our attitude at the moment of doing that wrong is compliant with the wrong about to be done. Thus, being jealous of another often leads or certainly can lead us to doing harm to the other. That does not mean a bad attitude always leads to bad and selfish actions. It simply means that such actions stem from such attitudes. If we allow such attitudes to control our lives, we know the consequences.

There is a remedy, of course, as Paul clearly notes in his letter to the Roman community. What we must do, he says, is "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:14) If we live as Jesus would live, if Jesus lives in us, we will not give in to our emotions or desires that will cause harm to others as well as to ourselves. We will live a life of self-control and not allow our attitudes or emotions to control us.

Easier, much easier, said than done, of course. To do that takes discipline and hard work, often very hard work. It does not come easily or because we desire to live in such a manner, no matter how strong such a will and desire is. Jesus regularly took time to pray, to rest, to discipline himself for his mission and ministry. All the great saints throughout history did the same. They knew how easy it is to allow our emotions to take control of our lives, how a bad attitude toward anyone or anything can lead to words and deeds later rued and regretted.

So do we, because we have been the victims of our own emotional outbursts. We have hurt others, often those closest to us, those who love us the most, because of some petty jealousy. We have said and done things that we regretted almost as soon as the words came out of our mouth or the action was done. It happens all the time and happens more than we would like to admit because, in doing so, we have to admit as well that such emotional outbursts could have been prevented had we been more disciplined in our spiritual lives.

A strong spiritual life demands that we keep on top of our emotions. Such a life will also help us do so. Thus, we need to constantly examine our emotional state to determine if we are thinking and acting as if Jesus were living in and working through us. Emotions and attitudes being what they are, bad ones can quickly grab hold of us and take control. In fact, it almost seems as if the bad attitudes are stronger than the good attitudes, and perhaps they are. That is why we must do all we can to prevent such attitudes from taking control of the moment.

As Paul would remind us, we need to grow more and more each day in the understanding and realization that others are to see Jesus in us and, even more, we are to see Jesus in us. Frightening thought, perhaps. But if we try each day, with God’s offered grace and help, to clothe ourselves in love, fill ourselves with God’s wisdom and grace, we will live as God would have us live, as we would have us live. That’s the attitude to have.

IT COMES WITH THE TERRITORY

Responsibility comes with the territory. That is the message throughout Scripture. It was the constant message of the Old Testament prophets. Jeremiah, for instance, reminded the leaders of Israel that God had selected them and put them into their positions of leadership, and God expected them to fulfill those positions to the very best of their abilities. They owed it to the people. They owed it to God and they truly, and perhaps most importantly, owed it to themselves to lead the people as they should be led, as they knew it was their responsibility to do so.

Those chosen as leaders – shepherds, Jeremiah called them – did have a choice. They did not have to accept the position. If they did not want that burden laid on their shoulders, they could hand on the torch to someone else, someone who was ready and willing to lead. God never forces anyone to assume leadership responsibilities. But once accepted, God expects only the very best.

What we all sometimes fail to realize, however, is that as a believer, as a Christian, the responsibilities of leadership come with the calling – and the acceptance of that calling – to follow Jesus. All members of the Christian community, you and I, are called to lead others to Jesus by the way we live our lives: it is leading by example. The responsibility comes through our baptism. It is to "proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ," as the Baptismal Covenant asserts.

We do not do this alone, of course. We do it "with God’s help" and with the help and support of the Christian community. When we forget that, or when we reject that help, that is when we get into trouble. When we think we have to lead alone or when we refuse the help of others and decide to go it alone, disaster awaits. We will fail. That is a given. The shepherds of Israel whom Jeremiah took to task failed because they refused God’s help and took leadership responsibilities into their own hands. That was selfish, foolish and, in the end, disastrous.

There will be times this day, for example, perhaps many times, when each of us will be called upon to teach those we encounter, often by happenstance, what it means to be a Christian and we will do so simply by the way we are living out our life at that very moment. They will not know that that is what we are doing and we will no doubt be totally unaware that that is what we are, in fact, doing. We teach by our very lives, for good or for ill, aware or unaware.

Leading by word and example, no matter who we are and no matter what our position in the Christian community, is a responsibility that comes with the territory. It is a burden at times, of course. Sometimes it is a very difficult burden, to be sure. Fulfilling the responsibility that God imposed on the prophets to remind the leaders of their responsibility was never a piece of cake. Nor is it at times for us. But it is a burden that is made lighter the more we allow God and the rest of the community to help and support us in our life of faith, just as we are there to help and support them in fulfilling their leadership responsibilities as Christians.

SLOW ON THE UPTAKE

To be honest, sometimes it takes me quite a while to get the message or get the point. After twelve years in seminary and fifty years as a priest, it somehow, and finally, dawned on me that the primary, and often only audience for Jesus during his public ministry was twelve people: the Apostles. Yes, he preached and healed and even took to task the leaders of the people whenever necessary. But he was almost totally focused on those twelve men.

Why? Because he had to convince them that his message on how to live in this world, how to make this world what God created it to be, was the one and only way to bring it about. You see, from time immemorial we have believed that in order to survive in this world, the way to succeed, was to have power over another or others. The Apostles followed Jesus because they believed he was the Messiah who would raise up a mighty military force to overthrow the Romans and make Israel what Rome was. And when that happened, they would be his right hand men and with that would come power and prestige and wealth.

Jesus had to disabuse them of that idea. No, he said, power only comes not through military might but from the might of love. Nothing else works. There is no other way to change the world or to live in this world. Like me, they, too, were slow on the uptake. They really didn’t get the message until Pentecost. Then they went out to try to get Jesus’ message across to the rest of the world. They did their best, but it seemed to be a fleeting message at best and a seemingly a false and unbelievable message at worst.

The world is still slow on the uptake. We still seem to believe that military power and prowess is the way to go. Might makes right or at least insures that the mightier we are militarily, the better off we will be. Taint necessarily so. In fact, it isn’t. Military might does not improve the lives of every citizen. In fact, it often makes it worse. Want to know how to provide health care for all? Cut military spending in half. If there is a next war, it will be over in a short time and no one will need health care. We’ll all be dead in short order from all the bombs.

But I digress, sort of. The point is still valid, I think, and I believe so would Jesus. Nothing really gets done and changes in the lives of people are not made unless it is through the power of love. That was and still is Jesus’ message – and always will be. We know that to be true because we have experienced that in our daily lives. We are who we have become because others have loved us into our being. We have done the same for them through the might of love for them, not the might of power over them.

In truth, just as it took me a long time to realize Jesus’ primary audience and why it took so long for them to get his message, so it takes a long time for us to get Jesus’ message. When we do, we begin to change at least our lives and the ones of those we love.

A THOUSAND INVISIBLE THREADS

Over the years teaching high school students and even with my own children, one of the most difficult concepts they had was comprehending how everything they do, somehow in some way sooner or later, has an effect on everyone else. They just did not seem to feel that they were that important or that their actions were all that significant to anyone else, sometimes even to them.

Of course, they were not the only ones who had such a problem. It’s not a teenage problem. If we are honest, we will have to admit that most of us tend to live in our own little corners of the world and like it that way. And in those corners we sometimes allow ourselves to become so isolated that we cannot comprehend how anything we do will have much effect on anyone else let alone the rest of the world.

Herman Melville once observed: "We cannot live for ourselves. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these fibers our actions run as causes and return as results." It truly is sometimes difficult to comprehend how our small, insignificant lives and what we do in those lives can have any real effect on anyone else let alone the rest of the world.

Because of that we all too easily either make light of our own actions – good or bad or in-between – or down play their significance until they come back to either honor us or haunt us. Then, for better or for worse, it is too late. Would that we would be more aware of just how connected, interconnected, we are one to another. Imagine what that would mean to us and to the world!

Imagine what it would mean to us, to those closest to us, to everyone else, if, before we did or said anything, we first comprehended – or at least tried to – the consequences of our actions. Imagine! It would mean that the good we do would certainly be done better enabling more and better results to occur. It would mean that the bad we do would either not take place at all or, if it did, would be less consequential. Imagine!

But we don't do that imagining because it is too difficult to comprehend. It takes too much work. It places too much responsibility on our own shoulders and in our own consciences. At least that is my excuse. Excuses, good or bad, are simply that. They still cannot deny the reality of our interconnectedness. We may not see those thousands of invisible threads, but they are there and they are real. The bad that we did hurt more than those we intended it to hurt and the good we did helped more than the person or persons we were helping.

It is only when we, you and I, begin to become more aware of our individual responsibilities one to another and beyond and begin to take those responsibilities much more seriously in our daily lives that our lives and those of others will change for the better. Like those invisible threads the change may be imperceptible and, for the most part most of the time they will be, but they will also be real, very real. And that is what ultimately matters.

LOOKING FOR HOPE

I have never been to the Holy Land but hope to get there some day. An old professor of mine said that once you have been there, once you have walked the highways and byways that Jesus walked, your life, and especially your preaching, will never be the same. You will be able to understand Scripture from a completely different perspective. After fifty₊ years of preaching, I hope I will not be too late when I finally arrive.

One of my clergy colleagues was fortunate to make such a trip. After he returned home, I  

asked him about his trip, what was most memorable. Aside from all the biblical and historical sights, he said what most impressed him were the people, especially the pilgrims like him who came to the Holy Land. He said that what they all seemed to be looking for was hope.

Looking for hope: a reason to make a pilgrimage to the holiest of cities, the birth place of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Pilgrims of every race and nationality and perhaps of every religion, and even those with no formal faith, all come. And, if my colleague is right, they all come for the same reason, whether they realize it or not: they come expectantly, looking to find something to hold on to, something to hope for, something to help make sense  out of their lives.

That is not to say that their lives are empty of meaning, that all who walk the streets of Jerusalem have lost any sense of meaning in their lives. That certainly is not true. But I think it is true to say that all of us, whether in the Holy Land or not, are looking for something. We may not know what it is that we are looking for, not able to describe or define it even to ourselves. If the truth be known, we are restless, never fully settled in our lives.

Those who go to the Holy Land deep down know why they are truly going: to find what they are restless for: God. As St. Augustine once said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in You, O Lord." People go to the Holy Land because there, more than anywhere else, there is that sense of the holy, of The Holy. And they hope to find that Holy, hope that in doing so they might be able to fill the void in their lives that they sense is there, that makes them restless.

We don't have to go the Holy Land to either look for or to find hope. And the Holy Land is not the only place in the world where hope can be found. God does not abide only in the Holy Land, in one place only. God lives and moves and has God’s being where we live and move and have our being. The Holy Land is special because it is God's special place. But wherever we are is special to God because that is where we are and that is where God is also.

Perhaps one becomes more aware of God in the Holy Land. I won’t argue with that having never been there. Perhaps what I need, perhaps what we all need to become more aware of God wherever we are. Then we will find, perhaps at last, the hope that we are looking for at that moment in time.

THE MOST DIFFICULT OF THESE IS...

When Martin Luther took the Church to task centuries ago, he did so because he knew the Church needed quite a bit of reforming. There was much corruption on the part of the leaders of the Church and much ignorance on the part of the people of the Church. It is hard to say either which party needed the more reforming or which reformation was the more difficult to do.

It would be easy to speculate that the more difficult task was to reform the hierarchy. Once one comes into power, one is very reluctant to give up that power and to change the order of that power. Self-security is a powerful incentive. History affirms that Luther's greatest opposition came from the hierarchy, so much so that he and his followers eventually split from the Church, although that was certainly not his original intention. He simply wanted to reform it.

But unless I miss my guess, in the end, the hierarchy was a piece of cake when compared to the job that needed to be done with the laity of the Church. Both reformations, clergy and laity, demanded conversion: a turning away from the old ways and turning to new ways or, certainly, back to the original ways Jesus laid out to live out our faith in him. It has always been that way and always will.

And no matter how much we want to make that conversion, it is never easy, nor is it supposed to be: not then, not now, not ever. It is always hard work. Luther knew this. He knew the difficulty. He once observed: "There are three conversions necessary: the heart, the mind, and the purse." Now unless I miss my second guess, I would assert that the most difficult conversion to make is that of the purse.

Conversion of heart and mind are interior conversions. Conversion of purse is an exterior conversion.  The former leads to the latter. We can have a true change of heart and mind when it comes to matters of the pocketbook. But to put that change of heart into practice is often most difficult, the most difficult conversion to make. And it is not just a matter of the heart. We must also be convinced that the conversion we need to make is the right thing to do.

We may, for instance, be intellectually convinced that we should – dare I use the word? –tithe. And we may be convinced in our hearts that that is what we want to do. But when it comes to putting pen to check, ah, that is most difficult. It is as if someone suddenly grabs are hand and makes it immobile. The mind says, "Write it!" The heart says, "It's the right thing to do." But the hand says, "I can't."

Who's in control here? Good question. I don't know why the conversion of purse is so difficult, the most difficult of all. How much is or is not in that purse does not seem to matter: Luther's followers were not wealthy. So tell me, why is the conversion of purse so, so, so difficult? Is it not so often not a matter of “I can’t” rather than a matter of “I won’t”? That pertains not only to the matter of the purse but to all conversions. “I want to. I know I should. But….”

Years ago I came across a store at an Outlet Mall: The Christian Discount Outlet. I could only imagine what was available at that store. Sales everywhere on everything. Imagine taking one-third off on Jesus's command that we love our God-neighbor-self equally. Why, at one-third off, we can take two out of three. If my neighbor bugs me today, I'll just love God and myself. If I am having a personal bad day with myself or with my God, one-third off the loving and I'm still okay.

           

Or how about a big 40% discount on the Ten Commandments: we only need keep six out of ten. And because this is an outlet, we can pick any six. What a deal! Count me in. And because this is my first visit, as a bonus I now only have to go the extra one-half mile instead of the full mile with the one who wants the shirt off my back. (And I'll bet there is even a mark down on that one too.)

It's almost too easy. Christianity at a discount. But it just doesn't seem right. It certainly is not fair, I mean, after all these years trying to walk the straight and narrow, telling everyone that they had better shape up or else, and now some wise guy entrepreneur comes along and undercuts me. It may be unfair, but it is certainly not un-American. We're into sales here, with this Christianity stuff. And if the church is going to succeed, nay survive, in this here marketplace, we'd better get with the program.

           

The program is, of course, more for less, even at discount prices. Nobody buys anything for full price anymore. A friend of mine in the retail field told me once that if we pay ticket price, we're being robbed. That's how he put it. And when we buy the big ticket items, why we really stand tall and argue for the best deal. We deal -- with the car salesman, the real estate agent, anyone and everyone in a position to cut the cost. Boy do we deal!

           

So why should Christianity be any different? Well, we all know why. Remember the story where the rich young man comes to Jesus and asks what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. When he says that he already does that and wants to know what more he can do (he obviously never encountered a Jewish Discount Outlet), Jesus tells him to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor and come follow him.

           

That the man cannot do and walks away. But notice what Jesus also did not and could not and did not say, "Wait a minute. Let's rethink this. Maybe we can make a deal. Maybe you only have to give away half your possessions. How does that sound?" No, no discounts available. No easy way out. No cheap grace.

           

There will always be those who want to tell us about an easier way to live out our faith.  But all they are doing is selling a bill of goods that simply aren’t any good.  If we want to know what it means to be a Christian, all we have to do is think of Jesus hanging on the cross.  That’s what it cost him -- his life. In one way or another, that is what it will cost us as well.

HONESTY IS, WELL, HONEST

My 97-year-old mother-in-law: you have to love her. She is as honest as the day is long and speaks her mind whenever her minds says she should speak up. She needs no defense. When you get to be her age, you basically have free rein to say what you believe whether the hearers likes it or not. She’s earned that freedom. For instance:

As a back ground, she has been widowed twice, both husbands WWII veterans and both suffering from PTSD when it was called “battle fatigue” back then and you were just supposed to shake it off and get on with life. Some did. Many did not, at least not a life one would want to life. When Pappy (husband Number 1) came home, he was a different man. The marriage lasted to his early death but was, to say the least, often confrontational and not easy for either of them or, at times, for their children.

That’s the background. Recently, we were sitting around the kitchen table talking about old times when the subject of the eldest son’s birth came up. Pappy was in the Pacific on a supply ship while Nanny was pregnant. Word came to her [first time hearing this] that his ship was lost at sea. Her comment, tongue in cheek and probably with a shred of truth: “Shame they found it”. We almost fell off our chairs we were laughing so hard.

Well, she was honest. Of course, if Pappy had been lost as sea, I wouldn’t be writing this as my wife would not have been my wife nor would she have been, period. We’re still laughing and Pappy probably is as well. The truth is the truth and sometimes the only response we have to the truth, as much as it might sometimes hurt, is a hardy and even heartfelt roar of laughter.

Yes, the truth hurts and sometimes being honest can seem and even be very brutal. But it beats living with a lie because the lie eventually comes back to bite us and that pain can be even worse, and usually is. We often refrain from being honest with others because we know the hurt that our words will bring. But do we have a choice? Jesus never minced words of honest criticism because those whom he chastised needed to hear what he had to say even as they did not like it one bit.

Even more, when the shoe is on the other foot, when we are the ones who are being told the truth, a truth we would rather not hear but need to, the response and how that response is made is up to us. We can lash out. We can try to retaliate in some way or another, usually finding fault with the other. Or we might laugh and admit that the other person was right on and give thanks that he or she had the courage to say what needed to be said as difficult as it was to say it.

Honesty is often hard to come by, as we all know from experience. But when others have been honest with us or we with them, we have all been the better for it. It hurts at the beginning; but it the end we will be thankful and may even have a good laugh.

WORKS FOR GOD

This summer my wife and I were delighted to have our then-almost-five-year-old grandson Carter stay with us for over a week. It was twice-a-day at the pool and once-a-day in the evening at the park and movies and games in between. He wore us out, but we wore him out as well. When his Mom asked him what the highlight of his time with us, he told her that it was going to church and seeing Pap (me) up on stage.

Wonder of wonders! But what was more wondering was when he told his pre-school teacher about his trip was when he told her that his Pap “works for God.” I can live with that compliment. It certainly makes life easier than when a young parishioner years ago thought I was God!

Yes, I do work for God. But don’t we all? Or rather aren’t we as Christians all supposed to work for God? Isn’t our life in this life to be about doing God’s work here on earth? That is the only way God gets anything done on this earth. We have to do it for God or else it will not get done. God works in and though us, whether we realize it or not, whether we like it or not.

My guess is that we have it both ways. Sometimes we are aware that we are doing God’s work and take honest pride in doing so. And sometimes we know we are deliberately not doing what God would have us do and are ashamed of ourselves for our actions. But if you are like me, sometimes it takes the voice of a child to remind us what our life is supposed to be all about.

I have no idea how Carter came to the understanding that I work for God. My wife and I never said anything to that effect and neither did his parents. But, as we know, out of the mouths of children often comes very serious and profound words of wisdom and truth, words that make us pause and reflect, words that sometimes can scare the hell out of us and the heaven back into us.

My wife and I are still reliving Carter’s time with us because he brought us so much joy. My guess is that when those memories fade over time, I will never forget the truth I had not forgotten but truly had taken for granted about what my life – all our lives – is supposed to be about. It was an innocent statement from an innocent little boy who thinks his Pap hung the moon but a statement that was as profound as could be.

We all work for God and no one’s work is more or less important than anyone else’s. We God-professionals may sometimes think our work is more Godly than that of a lay person, but we deceive ourselves if we ever think that way. Each of us has a specific task in this life in this world that God has assigned to us, a task that no one else can do except us. We do God’s work every day, every moment of every day. That can be a scary thought, but it is also rewarding and humbling as well.

BEING RICH

Sometimes when we read the Gospels, we can easily get the impression – and perhaps secretly want to get that impression – that Jesus thinks being rich is bad and that rich people are inherently selfish because that is how they became rich in the first place: they made their fortunes on the backs of others. But we would be misreading the Gospels and Jesus’ belief as well.

There is nothing inherently wrong, sinful, in being rich with material blessings, for that is what riches are: a blessing. At least that is what they are supposed to be. They can also become a curse. Just read the stories of those who has won big bucks in a lottery and ask if they thought that a blessing ensued after they hit the jackpot. When they purchased the ticket, they had dreams of all that their winnings would bring/buy. And it did buy much. It also brought many, many headaches and perhaps even some heartaches as well. Riches, an abundance of them, can be a curse.

Riches can also be a blessing and they are meant to be a blessing not only for the one who is rich but also for others who are not so blessed. Riches, material wealth and all that it brings, are a real blessing from God, the giver of all blessings. How we come about our riches may or may not matter as long as we come about them honestly. We may inherit our wealth. We may obtain it through sheer luck. We may work very hard for it. We are, in a word, rich.

Riches are deceptive. We often do not realize just how blessed we are. They are also delusional in that they somehow seduce us into believing that we somehow deserve to be so blessed, especially if we came by our material wealth by the sweat of our brow and not through family ties or lucky bounces of the lottery ball. We worked for it. We earned it. We deserve it. So we say. What we forget is that if it were not for God having first blessed us with whatever talent and ability it would take to accumulate so much, we would never have what we have.

Now what? First of all, we must be thankful to God whose gift of our life has given us the opportunity to be so materially blessed. Second, we must be aware that the main reason why we have been so blessed is that we have been chosen to share some of our blessings with those who are less blessed. It is in doing so, it is in sharing, that we are able to fulfill the requirements of the first part. We give thanks by giving, giving of our abundant blessings to those who are not so blessed.

Realizing all that, we must pause regularly to examine how well or how poorly we are using our material resources. Are we using them to help build up God’s kingdom here on earth or are we hoarding them for ourselves, forgetting why we are so blessed and, even more, forgetting that we can’t take them with us? What, indeed, are we doing with all that God has graciously and lovingly given us?

We need to constantly be thankful for our many, many blessings and to share them more and more with others so that they and we can serve God more fully and faithfully.

THE LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT

If we want to know how we will react should a real crisis occur in our lives, all we have to do is reflect on how we handle the little problems that come our way each day. If our normal response is to get right at them and tackle them as they happen, if we get on top of them before they get out of hand, more often than not we will be able to deal with the larger issues when they loom. That does not mean that it will be easy to deal with them. It simply means that we will.

On the other hand, if we procrastinate when those little problems arise, hoping they will go away all on their own or believing that they are not all that important, at least for the moment, we will likely do the same when the situation is in a crisis mode. As a result we will become so overwhelmed that we will not be able to function let alone adequately respond to the crisis at hand, if we can respond at all.

Little things do mean a lot especially when it comes to the manner in which we handle the little things in this life. Thus, if we are honest in small matters, matters of little account for which we may never be held responsible, we will be honest when it comes to larger and more important matters, matters where others do the reckoning and for which we are held accountable.

Of course, the real question to ask if there anything that is truly of little account. Everything that happens in our life, no matter how small, insignificant or seemingly inconsequential is important. Everything happens for a reason even if we cannot understand what that reason is at the moment it happens. And even then, we still have to deal with it.

Not only is it important how we respond to the issues and crises that occur in our lives, it is just as important, no, even more important, whom we choose to serve, who comes first in our lives, who or what drives us. That will truly determine, in the end, how we deal with any issue that arises. If we put ourselves first, our wants and desires, we will make choices that will benefit us often at the detriment and expense of others. But if we choose to put God first, while our wants and desires may not always be fulfilled, our needs certainly will.

We make choices every day, often without thinking much about them ahead of time. We simply react to what has happened. We want those reactions to be what our actions would have been had we given ourselves or been given enough time to ponder the right response. But for that to happen, immediately responding to little matters and making the right choices in small decisions has to be habitual.

The Christian life is to be a habit that becomes us. It is who we are. We don the habit slowly, thoughtfully, carefully. It takes time and practice and entails many mistakes. We do not wear it all at once. We have to learn how to become comfortable in it and that comes from attending to the small things when they occur and doing the small things well each time.

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

Remember the short parable about the woman loses one of her ten silver coins? She is frantic. She searches the house, sweeps it down, in search of the coin. The when she finds it, she calls her friends together and then, would you believe it, throws a party to celebrate the recovery of the lost coin and probably spends half the value of the coin in the cost of throwing the party!

One has to shake one’s head, scratch it even, trying to understand what is going on here. I do not ever remember being invited to a party by a friend who lost something valuable and then found it again and now wants to celebrate his good fortune but in doing so has to spend a great part of the cost of that once-lost item in order to do so.

It happens, I am sure, and I understand – once the details are understood. It was the custom for Palestinian women to receive ten silver coins as a wedding present. The coins may not have had much monetary value, but they were invaluable to those who received them. If a wife lost one of those coins, it was like losing part of herself. It was more symbolic than anything.

But we all understand do we not? We all have personal treasures that we cherish that mean everything to us but would have little or no meaning to anyone else, perhaps even to our spouse. Even more, we cannot explain why these treasures are so important. They just are and that is all that matters.

Thus, as with all Jesus’ parables, we should not get bogged down in the details when we try to understand his point. But we must understand those details if we want to understand that point. In this parable that point is quite obvious. In God’s eyes each and every one of us is like that lost coin. We are of infinite value. God does not take our being lost from God lightly. God will look for us until God finds us. And when we return to God, God rejoices.

That is Jesus’ point. But that is not his only point. Yes, we are infinitely valuable in God’s eyes. But at the same time we must never lose sight of the fact, no pun intended, that we should be of infinite value in our own eyes. Sometimes, sadly, we do. Sometimes we do things, sin in such a way, that we are embarrassed to even look at ourselves in the mirror. We can’t believe we did what we did. We can hardly forgive ourselves for it. And if we can’t forgive ourselves, we wonder how God could. Then in our self-loathing we begin to pull away from God.

That’s the devil, if you will, at work trying to convince us that God abandons us when we abandon God. Of course that is a lie. The saving grace, as this parable points out, is that God never pulls away from us and never allows the devil to win us over. While we may try to move away from God, God never moves away from us, thanks be to God. In the end and throughout it all, it is God’s grace and never-ending love that is the reason we can finally come to our senses, return to God by asking for forgiveness, accepting that forgiveness and then forgiving ourselves.

EXCUSES DON’T EXCUSE

If we are ever hauled into court for breaking a law and the only excuse we can come up with is that we did not know that what we did was against the law, we are going to be met with a stony indifference by the judge. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and neither is any misunderstanding of the law. Society presumes we know the laws of the land and metes out punishment based on that presumption.

The same is true when it come to the laws, the requirements, the commandments of our faith. Were we to stand before God right now, if this would be our judgment day, and try to excuse our sinful behavior by claiming we did not know or understand the laws and commandments we broke, God would certainly be a more understanding judge but would also kindly remind us that ignorance is no excuse.

It is our responsibility both as citizens and as Christians to know right from wrong, to know what the law allows and what it does not. That is a standard of all societies from time immemorial. Some societies, cultures and institutions may be more lenient or forgiving than others, but none condone irresponsible behavior, namely one’s deliberate ignorance of right and wrong.

That is not the whole point at issue here even as we often use it as the underlying excuse when we do not do what we know we should do or do what we know we should not do. There are times when we deliberately do not do what the law demands because we engage in endless disputes about the meaning of the law. We even take pleasure in taking part in such arguments. It made us look good in the eyes of our peers. It makes us seem important because we are acting as if we really know what we are talking about when we truly do not.

Yes, we need to know and understand the law, but, more importantly, we need to live it and we cannot live it if we spend all our time talking about and around it. Yes, there are those who must engage in serious discussions about the law and the commandments to determine how they apply to each generation and to changing times and knowledge and circumstances. But even those professional scholars must live out their faith each moment of each day.

None of this may seem shocking or even debatable. That is true. What is also true is that there are times in the lives of each and every one of us when we get into arguments about what our faith requires because we want to delay fulfilling those requirements. We may not think this to be a big deal until we remember that our delay may result in another person’s being hurt or not ministered to.

That, I think, is what we need to be constantly in mind of. We can always find an excuse why we cannot or should not do what our faith demands of us and try to convince ourselves that we are in the right. But we know better. We were taught better. There really is never any excuse for not doing what we need to and must do. Excuses don’t excuse no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that they do.

UNCERTAINTY NEVER ENDS

Alan Ecclestone in The Night Sky of the Lord: "It is a function of the Spirit…to enter searchingly into a man's house, and there to put questions, now like a breath, and now like a wind, to try all things that it finds there, to question their fitness to endure. The process in our own night sky is one of near gale-force winds. It is a delusion to suppose that the disturbing questions will, if ignored, go away, if suppressed, be forgotten, or that by hiding ourselves like naked Adam we escape them. It is no less delusive to expect that we shall get comforting answers to our questionings. To live with our uncertainties is not simply a necessary part of our education at all levels: it is the very truth of faith. To endure the sifting process of interrogation is the hallmark of discipleship."

           

In other words, just because we are people of faith does not mean that we have all the answers, or, if having the answer, understand that answer. We never know for sure, not in this life anyway. As Ecclestone says, it is the Holy Spirit's responsibility, thus a process of our faith, to put the question to us, whatever the question. And for people of faith, the question, the questions, tend to be God-questions.

           

We wonder why, for instance, a good God allows so much evil. We wonder why we have and can have so many choices, so much diversity, so much never-knowing-for-sure, so much uncertainty when what we want as believers is certainty. We want to know for sure, not just believe: know. We want answers here and now.

Perhaps a quote from Michel de Montaigne might help here: "Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say? He must know how to use them together and blend them. And so we must do with good and evil, which are consubstantial with our life. Our existence is impossible without this mixture, and one element is no less necessary for it than the other."

           

Maybe the problem of evil, THE God-problem, is really no problem. Maybe it is simply a fact of existence. To know the good we must know the opposite, at least in this life anyway. That does not mean that the bad, doing the bad, is justified. It simply means that the bad does and always will, in this life, exist, and it is one way that we can appreciate and want to do the good. Maybe, I'm not sure, am rather uncertain.

           

Perhaps one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to sweep us of off our feet, get our attention, so that we ask those God-questions which, in essence, become people-questions: not why does God allow so much evil but rather why do people allow and do so much evil; not why are there so many choices but, rather, why do we make the choices that we do make.

           

The Holy Spirit forces us to ask questions that we would rather not, forces us to confront problems we would rather avoid, take stock of our personal responsibility which we would rather pass off on to someone else. That may not be very comforting, but it is true. But, then, the Holy Spirit also does not leave us once we are bowled over: the Spirit remains to give us the strength to ask, to answer, to respond, in all our uncertainty         

MEETING ANGELS UNAWARE

One of my all-time favorite people was Margie Hall. She used to remind anyone who would listen that showing hospitality to strangers may be the easiest way to not only entertain angels but also to meet Jesus.

When I first arrived at Margie’s church as her new Rector, I felt my highest priority was to get to know the people of the parish. The parish had a very active outreach ministry to the downtown community in which it was located. There was always a pot of coffee on so that the street people could come in out of the cold – it was winter when I arrived: my first Sunday it was 17 below – and grab a cup of coffee. There was always someone sitting on one of the chairs outside my office sipping coffee – the longer it took, the better; a second cup was the best.

One of the regulars was a young man named Larry. Only I never learned Larry’s name, not at first. Oh, I had been introduced to Larry. But I made no effort to learn who he was. You see, Larry was not that important to me at that time. Learning Larry’s name was secondary to learning the name of those who paid my salary, until I offhandedly heard Margie preach her one-line sermon to someone. I learned and remembered Larry’s name the next day as I sat down next to him and sipped my own cup of coffee as we talked about mostly nothing.

Was Larry an angel, a messenger of God? Of course, he was, in his own way. His message was very simple and very clear: I am someone; I am not a nobody; I have a name just like everyone in this church has a name; don’t take me for granted; don’t patronize me; get to know me.

Every stranger, every person can teach us something. Everyone is somehow in some way a messenger, an angel sent from God. Sometimes that message is profound. Sometimes that message is very simple. But we cannot hear that message unless we take the time to take time to be with that stranger, that other person. That does not mean that everyone we see we have to stop and talk to. That is impossible.

What it does mean is that there are people who come into our lives who seem to be footnotes, people we can skip over because the real text of our lives can be explained without them. And so often we treat them like footnotes, if that. We simply ignore them as I did Larry way back then. But like a footnote, they give a better understanding of that text, as Larry did for me.

Something more to reflect on: we are probably thought of as a footnote in someone else’s text of life: ignored, thought not to be of any importance or significance. We are all more than that, much, much more – each and every one of us

We must never take anyone who comes into our lives for granted. We need to see Jesus in them and they need to see Jesus in us. We are God’s angels one to another, whether we are aware of that or not.

FIRE ON THE EARTH

The late, great theologian and scientist Teilhard de Chardin: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man [ad woman] will have discovered fire.” He was, I think, reflecting on Jesus’ words in Luke: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (12:49)

Jesus came to set the world on fire. His desire was to see the world ablaze in love for one another and see in come to fruition in his lifetime. That did not happen as is quite evident in our world today. It did not happen because it took the taking of his own life, his death on the cross, to get the fire going. And then, to continue to use this image, that fire was only no larger than a campfire.

Again, sadly, the truth is today, two thousand years later, while that fire has grown much larger, it still has not consumed the world. It is blazing, yes, but surely not to the degree that Jesus desired when he spoke those words in that Gospel passage. Jesus was the spark that started the fire. It was up to those who followed him to get the fire going. They did their best; but over the centuries, it has not been good enough.

And so it is up to us today to keep the fire going. We do it in the same way Jesus began the fire, at that is in and through our own lives. We have to live and give of our lives for the fire to grow. No, we do not have to lay down our lives the way Jesus did, but we must be willing to do so were that sacrifice be demanded.

Yet, the further truth is the reason why the fire Jesus kindled is not the worldwide conflagration he envisioned is that we hold back from the giving of our total selves in the living out of our faith. Were we all to live our faith as fully as Jesus lived his, the world would indeed be consumed and ablaze with faith in Jesus and our love for our God, for our neighbor and for ourselves.

All this is a wonderful image, of course. But images are based on realities. And the reality is that we are called to live out our life of faith as best we can each moment of each day of our lives. When we do, we enkindle in others that same faith. Others get caught on fire because they get too close to us – or we to them, which is how Jesus did it in his life. A fire cannot burn in a vacuum. Faith is not lived in a vacuum. We live out our faith in and among other people. The closer we get to them, the more we love them, the more susceptible they are to catching what we have.

For faith is indeed catching. That’s how we got it, if you will. We caught it from others who caught it from others as others catch it from us. We caught on fire because others shared their faith with us. We stay on fire because of that same sharing of our faith with those who are also on fire, and the fire grows larger. That was and is Jesus’s image of how his Gospel message of love is shared, grows and consumes the world. We are all part of that message, that fire, that faith. As the old camp song says, “It only takes a spark” to start the fire and to keep it going. We are to be that spark.

FAITH

The writer of Hebrews makes this observation about faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 11:1) “Blessed assurance”, as one of those old Gospel hymns reminds us. And it is blessed to have such assurance in our lives.

Faith, in and of itself, is not knowledge but it is as close to knowledge as one can get. We do not know for certain if the sun will come up tomorrow. We believe it will and so we live accordingly. We do not know for certain if we will be alive at the end of the week, but we believe we will and so live accordingly. Most of us do not know how electricity works, but we believe that when we turn the light switch on, the light will respond accordingly – unless the bulb is burned out.

Whether we realize it or not, whether atheist, agnostic or believer, we live most of our life based on faith rather than sure and certain knowledge. We know and understand very much, to be sure, but there is so much more we do not know both about the present and the future. We are finite, fallible, limited human beings who must rely on faith or else we would not dare get out of bed in the morning.

The reason for all this, of course, is that we are not God, again, whether we believe in God or not. Faith is the operative force in our lives. It is the basis for all that we do. Without faith we would be unable to love another. Without faith we would be unable to dream about the future. Without faith life itself would not only not be worth living, it would be unlivable.

Faith problems arise only when our faith is put to the test, which, thankfully, is not all that often. Of course, on the other hand, when our faith is put to the test, it is usually about something that is traumatic: a love gone sour, a job gone south, a dream gone away. It is those moments when our faith in God, in others and even in ourselves is tested that we find ourselves so out of sync that we do not know where to turn.

And yet, it is in precisely those moments that we turn to the only one to whom we can turn, the one in whom we must place our trust: God. When there is a crisis of faith because of some form of betrayal of trust, it is only our faith that keeps us from falling completely apart. Our faith in God holds us together when our faith in everything else has deserted us.

If all this is true, as I believe it is, then we must do all we can to strengthen and increase our faith: faith in others, faith in ourselves and especially our faith in God. Faith is a gift; and as with any gift, if we do not use it, we lose it. If we do not cultivate it, it will not flourish. It will wither and perhaps even die. We neglect our faith to our own peril. We are attentive to it for our own protection.

May we always be thankful for the gift of faith, never take it for granted and live it to the fullest each and every day.

A LONG TALK WITH MYSELF

If you are like me, there are times when you come to the conclusion that what you need to do is put everything else aside, find a quiet corner off someplace where you will not be disturbed and have a long talk with yourself. We go from one day to the next doing what we normally do without ever giving any real attention to what we are doing or why. We’re just doing what we usually do.

That is not to say that there is something wrong or even awry with what we are doing or even our life itself. We simply get so wound up in our daily existence that we take for granted that what we are doing is fine and dandy and even our very personal being as well. There are no big issues that consume our waking moments. Life is what it is. We’re comfortable with it. No need to worry.

But then there comes that nagging feeling that we need to take stock with ourselves, our life, our being. So we make the time and find the place and start to have a serious conversation with ourself about our life. We start off in deep thought and self-reflection but then find ourself drifting off into La La Land somewhere else and not really listening to what we had to say to ourself.

The problem, I think, is not that we truly do not want to have a serious conversation with ourself. We do want that. Our problem is that we don’t seem to have the ability any more to concentrate on any conversation, ours of anyone else’s, that takes longer than seven minutes. We need a commercial break even with ourself and we take it. We will get back to that serious conversation, we tell ourself, and leave the room.

The art of conversation, real conversation, seems to be lost. We don’t even talk anymore. We text and tweet thinking that that is real conversation when it is only on the surface. If I have the phone in my hand to text someone, why don’t I just call that person and communicate voice to voice? Texting is so much easier, I know, especially if we know that the person we want to have a conversation with has the proclivity to make a short conversation into a half-hour experience, which, of course, may not be all that bad.

Maybe there is a solution to not being able to have those conversations with ourself. Maybe we should text ourself and ask a question about our life and how it is going and then have to reply to that question. The issue will at least be staring us in the face and hopefully force us to think about what we want to say before we respond. Maybe we won’t get that deep into the conversation and maybe we won’t stay with it for very long – seven minutes – but we can keep the conversation going by not deleting the text.

I don’t know. Just some thoughts. What I do know is that we all need to have some serious and honest conversations with ourselves about who we are, what we believe and why, what we do and why. If you don’t believe me, just watch the news.

WHAT DO WE REALLY NEED?

Back in the day, way back in the day, I remember overhearing a conversation between two mothers both of whom and whose families I knew. One was talking about her son whom she said was trying to find himself. My first cynical thought was that I didn’t know he was lost, but I really knew what she meant. He was at a stage in his young life where he really did not know who he was or even what he needed. And he was not alone.

I remembered that conversation while Arlena and I were watching Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. (By the way, there tends to be a lot of good theology in Disney animations and you don’t have to dig too deeply to find it.) There was a line in one of the songs that said something like this: “You need to know who you are before you know what you need.” Isn’t that the truth?

We know there is much that we tend to want and almost believe that we need. As we are unpacking from our move, we are discovering that we have a lot of things we thought we needed but actually wanted but really did not need in the first place. Our wants and our needs got mixed up in the moment. Now Goodwill and the Vietnam Vets are becoming the beneficiaries of our non-necessities.

If there is any consolation in this, and there is very little to be honest, we are not alone. Is the issue that, like the young man in the conversation, we’re still trying to find out who we are so that we can honestly discern between wants and needs or do we ever find out who we are so that we go through life searching for an elusive answer to one of life’s fundamental questions?

Is the real life-question “Who am I?” And is there an answer? Well, there had better be. And there is. I am a priest, a husband, a father, a grandfather for starters. I could add to the list. But who am I essentially? Is there a word that envelopes each and every one of these other words that I use to describe myself? And when I find that word, will it tell me not only who I am but also what I need?

The answer for me is “yes”. And that word that describes all of me is “Christian.” What kind of Christian I am and how I live out my Christian faith aside, it still tells me all that I need to know about what my needs are. The one need I have, the one need any one of us has who claims the name “Christian” is to make certain all my words and actions are loving, loving and serving the other first and foremost.

No matter what our vocation is at the moment – priest, student, husband, wife, child, boss, etc. – everything we say and do is to be said and done in a loving and serving manner. Until we come to that understanding about our life, we are still trying to find ourselves. Finding out who we are (Christian) helps us know what we need in living out the moment. We will be given whatever we need, but we have to live it day by day.