ALL IT TAKES IS A CUP OF COLD WATER

In my fantasies I have imagined myself (Big Ego engaged to its fullest) doing wonderful things. (I’ll spare you the humiliating details.) Even so, the truth is that in order to be able to do giant acts of goodness and righteousness, even large ones, we have to begin small. Just as we do not begin teaching children higher math but begin with simple arithmetic, so we begin doing good deeds by doing small deeds like, as Jesus tells us in the gospel, giving a glass of water to a child.

That’s no big deal, we might say. And it is not. But that is precisely Jesus’ point in all of his teachings. It is no big deal – to us. It is a big deal to a child who is thirsty and who is too small to be able to get a drink for herself.

As that child grows older we will be asked to do even greater deeds, perhaps even make great sacrifices for her. We will be able to do so and will want to do so not only because we love that child but also because over time we have done small deeds that came at no real sacrifice to us. We learned how to do great deeds from the small deeds we did. And that is the way it should be. Heroic acts of kindness are the result of being a hero for those to whom any act of kindness seems heroic.

Sometimes I think we miss that truth about how important little acts of kindness really are. It is not simply a matter of doing the little things well so that we are able to the bigger things when it is time to do them. Rather it is in the recognition that all acts of kindness and love, no matter how small, are important and they can never be taken for granted or, worse, not done simply because they are so small.

Yes, someone may come along immediately after us and give that child the glass of water, the glass we refused to give because it was no big deal and we were too much in a hurry anyway. But it was a big deal to that thirsty child and should be a deal important enough for us to, well, deal with. As a Christian our responsibility is always to do for the least first and to those who have the most last.

We know this, it is true. Jesus is simply pointing out the obvious. Yet sometimes the obvious is so obvious that we take little or no note of it. Not to belabor the obvious, perhaps this thought can be the impetus for us to take some time to reflect on those daily deeds, small though they may be, that we do for others and others do for us. Becoming more aware of just how important they are in the grand scheme of things may help us to become even more attentive to them. It may even help us to be able to accomplish even greater deeds when that time comes.

It is also a reminder, to me at least, to be thankful you for all those who, in ways large and small, helped me in my faith journey, who gave me that glass of water when I needed it and who still do.

NOT PEACE BUT A SWORD

Jesus, before sending out his disciples on missionary adventure, reminds them that he has “not come to bring peace but a sword” (Mt. 10:34). That’s rather harsh language coming from the Prince of Peace, isn’t it? It seems completely out of place. But, of course, it is not. Even people of peace have to raise their voices every now and then if only to be heard and certainly to be taken seriously, otherwise they will be written off as mere do-gooders and their words and examples ignored.

That is not always, if ever, easy. Saying what needs to be said, especially when it is the truth and when that truth makes others very, very uncomfortable, is difficult. Many people followed Jesus for a while. But when the going became rough, when more was demanded of them than they were willing to give of themselves, they simply walked away. Thus, Jesus knew that he could pull no punches if his mission and his ministry were to be carried on after he was gone.

Jesus also knew there would be conflicts among his followers, the external variety as well as the internal. There would be times when the living out of faith in Jesus might force one to make a choice between doing what the faith demands and doing what our family and friends want us to do. In fact, our faith is put to the test every day in this way. Our boss asks us to be less than honest in a project we are charged to oversee; our friends want us to go to a party with them when our parents have already said we could not; our, well, the list is endless. Our faith in Jesus’ is put to the test daily by forces – family, friends, and the like – outside of ourselves.

Our faith is also tested internally every day. We not only struggle internally with those decisions others want us to make that are against what we believe, but we also struggle internally when there is no one trying to force us into an action we know we should do. Temptations to be selfish, to put ourselves, our wants and desires, above what Jesus wants and desires of us, come more often than we realize, certainly more often than we would wish. With those temptations also come seemingly sound reasons why we should go against what our faith demands.

Yes, there will indeed be times when our faith in Jesus’ pits us against our family, our friends, even ourselves. Being strong and remaining faithful during those times will never be easy as we have all discovered. But what we have also learned is that we can remain strong and refuse to give in because God will always give us whatever grace and strength we need to remain faithful. All that is left is for us to cooperate with God’s gifts.

We know there may be times today when we will be tempted to say or do that which we know we can and must and temptations to do just the opposite. What we must do is cooperate with God’s always-offered grace and say "no" to what we should not do and “yes” to what we know in faith we should.

FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS

When I as in the active ministry, every congregation I served wanted to grow. That’s what we were supposed to do: go out and preach the Gospel and make disciples of Jesus of those who were not disciples. It was a daunting task and one which we strenuously avoided. Sharing our faith with another was just not what a proper Episcopalian (and I dare say Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc.) would do. Leave that to the evangelicals. But when their congregations grew and ours did not, we found reasons to explain away their growth – as in, as many are going out the back door as are coming in the front door, as if that left us off the hook.

Of course, the main reason we wanted to grow was, in all honesty, financial. The reason why so many of the smaller churches are closing is, well, financial. There are not enough parishioners to pay the bills. And now it’s too late. The horse is already out of the barn, as they say. Besides, what we often forget is that the ones we should be recruiting feel uncomfortable in a church. Why? Church people are rich. They have discretionary funds to give away while they hardly have enough to make ends meet.

So what did we do? What are we doing? Maybe a day care will bring in people. Maybe a free meal once a month will. Maybe this, maybe that. It doesn’t matter. If we do what we are doing to bring in new people, we’re doing it for all the wrong reasons. We do what we do as best we can because that is what we are supposed to do.

That’s preaching the Gospel. After that, let the chips fall where they fall. If people join us because they want to share in our ministry, well and good. If they simple want to benefit from it, also well and good. As Jesus once said, when we spread the seed of our faith, we really have no idea what type of ground the seed will fall on. We just scatter the seeds and leave the rest in God’s hands. That’s all we can do.

There are, of course, all kinds of programs out there on how to evangelize, how to bring people to church. The problem is that it really takes a special person to be that kind of upfront evangelist. Most church people I have served with over the years are not those kind of people. They are dyed-in-the-wool introverts. If it were not for the few-and-far-between extroverts in every parish, we would have died on the vine years ago.

The reason why we do what we do as Christians is that’s what we are supposed to do. We do not have to have any long- or short-range plan. We are to simply live out our faith as best we can wherever we are every day of our lives. We will fail. We will come up short. We may never know if we made any difference in anyone’s life.

What we do know, if we stop to think about it, is that we made a difference, and still are making a difference in our own lives. That’s what matters. That is what is important. That is all we can do. The rest we have to leave in God’s hands.

HOPE

Back in the day, meaning when I was in seminary studying theology, one of the authors I constantly read was the late Andrew Greeley. He had a knack for taking deep and often obtuse theological thoughts and ideas and making them understandable for those of us who read Karl Rahner, paragraph by paragraph, sometimes three times over, trying to understand what he was saying. With Greeley, I understood immediately. The “real” theologians mocked him, of course. Not me.

In the year I was ordained, 1969, he wrote a book he titled A Future to Hope in. As one who remembers the Turbulent 60s – war protests, civil rights actions, assassinations and the riots that followed, serious debate in the church about birth control and clerical celibacy, etc., etc. – we who were about to be ordained that spring wondered what we were getting ourselves into. What kind of future did we have? Did we really have a future to hope in? Greeley said “yes” and gave us the courage to help make it happen.

Fifty years later, under different circumstances, we are asking the same question. What does our future look like? Is it a hopeful one or not? What will our country, our world, our own personal lives look like in the years to come? Will we overcome the divisions among us that are so prevalent right now? Will our standard of living change? Will we change the way we had been living before the pandemic and incorporate the lessons we have learned because of it? What lessons have we learned, if any?

We don‘t know the answers to those questions. We don’t know what the future will be like, just as we didn’t know the answers to the many questions my classmates and I had prior to ordination and certainly did not know what the future would portent. But what we had and had in abundance was hope. Yes, it was a hope because we were young and full of energy and, I dare say speaking only for myself, rather smug. The world was waiting for us. We had the answers. All one had to do was ask.

Of course we did not. We learned the hard way. Change and lessons learn take a long, long time. But what kept us going in spite of all the setbacks and discouragements is that we never lost hope. Fifty-plus years later, I for one, still have not lost hope. There is a great future awaiting us. What it will be like we do not know. But what we do know is that it will be up to us to make that future.

We can and we will if, if we never lose hope, if we never forget that we have been given all that is necessary to solve the problems that surround us. We can’t do it alone just as my classmates and I knew we couldn’t change the church or the world alone even if and when our egos sometimes got in the way. Change is a community effort. It was then and it is now and always will be. Making the future we hope for a reality is only possible when we work together, and never let the prophets of doom and gloom discourage us. There is a future to hope in when we do our part. We must never lose hope.

MY A-GAME IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

The other day I received a text from daughter Tracy that an attempt I had made a few years ago to answer a question from grandson Carter had failed. She wrote that Crater wanted to talk to me to answer the question again and that doing so I had better be on my A-game. The question: Who made God? A-game indeed!

The truth is, I will fail again if Carter gets me on the phone and asks for an answer. I believe in God. I believe everything I say about God when I recite the various creeds, but I have no real understating of what I am saying and no way of explaining to anyone, let alone myself, what all those words mean. I am simply a believer. To non-believers I am probably a fool.

God-questions abound, especially in times like these. Why, for instance, are some infected and others not even in the same family, let alone why the disease in the first place, God being all-powerful and thus not preventing it? But then God-questions have been there ever since humanity began to believe in an all-powerful God, creator of all that was and is and will be. And non-answers have abounded as well.

Non-believers, if I may speak for them, probably believe life is a crap shoot anyway. You get what you get. You’ll get the virus or you won’t get it, mask or no mask, social distancing or no social distancing. Life is what it is and life is over when it is over so enjoy the ride as best as you can. After all, you can still wear the mask, social distance and behave and still get it, God or no God.

That, of course, is almost beside the point in trying to answer Carter’s question. My only answer is to admit that I don’t know the answer to that question just as I don’t know the answer to so much of what goes on in my life and in the world around me. Even knowing the answers, even understanding what is happening, does not make dealing with the reality of life any easier. Life still has to be lived, answers or no answers, understanding or nor understanding, belief in God or no belief at all.

I am thankful that Carter is so inquisitive. My guess is that he will be okay when I tell him that I don’t know who made God. He’ll go back to working is puzzles, playing with his computer tablet, reading his books: in other words, simply being a five-year-old. And I’ll go back, after his conversation, being a seventy-eight-year-old grandpa doing what my body and mind allow me to do. That’s all I can do.

That’s all any one of us can do. We live in the moment, as we always have and always will, with unanswered questions, strong in our faith, knowing that somehow in some way we will all get through this as best we can, just as we have gotten through life so far. And, most of all, we will get through it together, again, as we always have and as we will always do. Thanks be to the God we believe in but whom we do not understand.