THE SCENT OF HEAVEN

“Something sinks around here,” she said. And something did. So we set out to look for the cause and when we found it, we did our best to remedy it, whatever that cause was. It happens all the time. Food goes bad, an animal sneaks in and then has the audacity to die and leave a smell: the list is endless. Things, everything really, eventually go bad. They outlive their life expectancy or something happens to hasten that process.

Yet nothing ever starts off as bad. Everything is good in the beginning. Everything, if you will, has the scent of heaven in it because everything is initially from God, a creation or a creature of God. This, from Jack, a good friend of mine who was geology professor at a local university for more years than he would like to count: “In my geology classes, I always said that the rocks and the landscape ‘talk’ to you. Everything you see is telling you a tale if you know how to ‘see’ and how to interpret what you're seeing.”

That is deep science but it is also deep theology and deep spiritually if you know how to look and, if you will, smell. The scent of heaven, God, is everywhere and in everything. Yet, if you are like me, it seems that our nasal passages are always stopped up. Not only that, my guess is that Jack would also say that our eyes are blind and our ears are deaf if we allow them to be. And, sadly, we often allow them to be.

As Jack’s geology students had to be intentional about what they were doing when examining rocks and landscape in order to understand what they were seeing, so we must be intentional about understanding what we are seeing or smelling or hearing. We intentionally search for the bad smell and learn why what smells so bad does and we react accordingly so as to eliminate the smell.

That is true in all aspects of our life especially in our relationships with one another. The scent of heaven is in everyone because, again, we are all children of God. The problem, of course, is that sometimes it is difficult to detect the smell of God when it seems what we are smelling in the other is anything but godly, heavenly. But that scent is there somewhere if, in Jack’s words, we know how to see and smell in order to interpret what is actually present and not just what we first observe.

As Jack’s students learned, that takes work when it comes to rocks. That takes even more work when it comes to people. When we look into the mirror, there is more to what we see than the image that is staring back at us. There is more to us than what is on the surface. We have to dig deeper, sometimes, to find out what is really there. And what we will discover is that there is a scent of heaven, an image of God, looking at us.

It is only when we see that image of God, that scent of heaven, in ourselves and in everyone we encounter, no matter our first impression or how bad the smell, that we will be able to live fully the life God created us to live.

GETTING SERIOUS

Grandson Carter is home-schooled in that, like most of his contemporaries these days, he is taught by being online with his teachers. He has a desk in his mother’s office and another in his dad’s, both of whom have been working from home for months. I know it hasn’t been easy trying to work fulltime, focused on their tasks at hand, while making sure a six-year-old stays focused on his tasks at hand.

The other day Carter was not so focused. He was being silly and so his mom said to him, “Carter, get serious.” He looked at her and said, “Mom, it’s not like we’re talking about Jesus on Christmas morning.” I mean there is serious and here is serious, or at least different degrees of seriousness. In life one has to know the difference or else one’s life can quickly get out of focus. It happens.

We are living in serious times in this country and in this world. There is nothing more serious than the pandemic. It clouds everything else and until it is under control, the cloud will remain. In the meantime, as we live under this cloud of unknowing because we do not know what the after effects will be once we come out from under it, we have to discern what is serious and what can allow us to find some sense of calm.

The problem, of course, is that not only is the pandemic very serious, there are other issues at hand that are no less serious. The riots in Washington and elsewhere remind us that for a large segment of the nation there are serious issues to be dealt with. Those who invaded the capitol building were not doing so for the fun of it. They were angry because they believed whatever they held to be important to them was being ignored. They believed no one was listening to them, or rather that the only one who was was Donald Trump. He wasn’t of course. He didn’t care. He just used them as he does everyone which is his life-long pattern, sadly to say.

What was and is needed are serious conversations, like the ones Carter has on Christmas morning about Jesus: serious conversations. The rioters need to be taken seriously: their grievances, their needs, their concerns. I don’t walk in their shoes. No one in Congress walks in their shoes. Donald Trump never walked in their shoes. Nor can anyone of us. But we can hear them out. We can have serious conversations with them.

None of those conversations will justify their riotous and deadly actions. And they need to held accountable for them. And so do their enablers in Congress. Those conversations may help us understand why they are so angry. Afterwards we may continue to disagree on how to resolve the issues that brought them to do what they did, but we have to make that effort. If we do not, nothing will change. What we seem to have lost these past few years is the ability and the willingness to enter into serious conversations with one another. That, I think, is why we are where we are today. Carter is right: there is time to get serious. Now is that time.

HOPES ANS DREAMS

We were driving down the highway when we came upon a car that had a pumper sticker that Arlena read to me that asked, “Do you remember what you once wanted to be?” Then she asked me that very question. My reply was that I wanted to play first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates. “Well, Bill,” she said, “How did that work out for you?” My terse reply: “I got cut from my Little league baseball team!”

Yes, I know, Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team right off. And, yes, I could have worked and worked at being at least a decent baseball player, but deep inside I knew I wasn’t very good and never would be. But I did think I was better than my manager thought I was. My consolation in later years was when President Obama admitted that he always thought he was a better basketball player than he really was.

We all have hopes and dreams. Some are based on realistic understandings of our abilities and some are merely pipe dreams based on wanting to be someone we truly are not meant to be nor ever can or will be. Michael was meant to play basketball. Barak Obama was meant to be a President. I was meant to be a priest even though I never thought about it back then.

Sometimes it is someone else who puts us on the path we should be walking. It was my pastor who said to me one day when I was in eight grade, “You want to be a priest, don’t you?” I do not remember my reply, but he saw something in me I never saw in myself. And isn’t that the way it normally is? Others see in us what we cannot see in ourselves. Why that is so, I have no idea. For me, I’m glad my pastor saw what he thought he saw.

The sad part, of course, is when we chase after hopes and dreams that have no way of becoming realities. There were times in my ministry when I dreamed of being a bishop. I mean, others said I looked good in purple. Isn’t that a sign?! Added to that, I’ve never met anyone, myself included, who didn’t think he or she could do a better job than the boss. The saving grace is that those foolish ideas never came to pass, for us and for those who would be the victims of our egotistical dreams.

That is not to say that hopes and dreams are foolish. They just need to be based on an honest and deep look into who we are and the gifts we have been given and the gifts we do not possess and then be thankful. It is also to say that dreams do come true but often in ways that we never imagined. Even if what we once wanted to be never came to fruition because we were not gifted to become that person or because of events beyond our control, we have become who we are.

What is important is that we are doing the best we can being the person we have become, being thankful for that, and not living with any regrets. That is all God asks of us and all we can ask of ourselves.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

The Beatles were not the first ones to tell us that the one and only way to live in this world in the way we, deep in our hearts, know we should live, is simply to love: love everyone and everything. The Old Testament’s basic law, the one from which all the other laws flow, is to love God above all else and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. All else consists in explaining footnotes.

“All you need is love.” So sang the Beatles. So says Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. He has one sermon he preaches everywhere every time. Every sermon boils down to those five words of the Beatles. So simple and yet so very profound. When we think about it, the message is not difficult to unpack. It’s a proverbial piece of cake, if you will, and one that always tastes good and has no calories.

And lest we forget or conveniently overlook, that, too, was Jesus’ one and only message in everything he said and in everything he did. Even when he was taking to task those who needed to be taken, he did so out of love, love for them and love of them, just as we did when we reprimanded our children when they misbehaved. We did so because we loved them and we took no pleasure in having to do so.

Think about his parables. The father forgave his prodigal son because he loved him even as the son thought he deserved no forgiveness. The Samaritan helped a man, who had he not been half-dead, would have refused his help because the Samaritan was a hated enemy. He helped out of love. The shepherd went after the sheep that was lost because all of God’s creatures are important and need to be cared for especially when they aren’t being especially careful themselves.

Yes, all we need is love. And, yes, that is not always easy, as we know. It is often difficult and sometimes seems impossible. How do we love someone who deliberately harms us? How do we love those who don’t want our love? Well, we just do. What’s the alternative? To hate? To do unto them what they have done unto us? Where does that get us? Well, it has gotten us to where we are in this world today. It’s not a pretty picture nor an encouraging one.

These are very troubling times, to be sure, when we seem to be so divided politically, when, in fact, we are. We need to step back and reflect on how we are responding to those who disagree with us, with those who may even despise us for what we think or believe or support. We can’t do anything about that. All we can do is speak and act in love and, as they say, let the chips fall where they may. We can do no more.

Everything Jesus said and did was out of love.  That’s what Christmas is all about. So should it be with us. Yes, indeed, all we need is love. That is what is necessary. But it is up to us who follow Jesus to act on that necessity and not simply sing or talk about it.