ENJOYING WHAT GOD'S DONE FOR US

My favorite contemporary theologian, the late Robert Capon, in his last tome, The Fingerprints of God, reminds us, as the title indicates, that God's fingerprints can be found everywhere one looks from the beginning of time and not just at certain specific moments in history.

When we read Scripture, we are wont to believe God's interaction into history is sort of the hit-and-miss variety. God shows up at the beginning and creates the world, intervenes in the Garden, comes back around Noah's time, takes a long break until he makes a pact with Abraham -- and that is only for starters. As for God's being seen elsewhere in the world, or anywhere in the world, or at all, well...only for those who have the eyes of faith to see.

For it is faith that gives us those all-seeing eyes, gives us the ability to see God at work in our lives and all around us, gives us the ability to enjoy what God has already done for us and is still doing for us day in and day out -- which is precisely Capon's definition of faith. He says that "faith doesn't do anything; it simply enables believers to enjoy what Jesus has already done for them." The emphasis is on "enjoy" and on "already done." What God is still doing for us is icing on the cake, if you will.

What God, Jesus, has already done for us is forgive us for sins committed past, present and future. Faith says that we do not have to do anything to have our sins forgiven. In fact, we cannot do anything. Either God forgives our sins in Jesus or we are stuck with them. Anything we might do or want to do or think we have to do to get God to forgive our sins will always come up short and will never be enough.

And if that were the case, if we had to do something to obtain forgiveness, then faith in God would not be enjoyable in the least, and neither would trying to live a faith-filled live -- because that would be an impossibility. We would be worrying every minute of every day that we weren't getting it right, which, of course, is impossible to do anyway.

Thus, in order to enjoy this life God has given us, we have faith that however much we mess up -- and we all mess up big time at times -- we can go on knowing that we have already been forgiven in and through Jesus. That doesn’t justify the messing-up. It simply allows us to be able to pick ourselves up and move on rather than getting stuck in remorse and even fear of some kind of retribution on God’s part.

Capon's irreverent view of this life (and for which I have always enjoyed reading his works) is one giant cocktail party where everyone is toasting God's love and forgiveness. Not a bad picture even if, personally, cocktail parties leave much to be desired. One big pizza party would be more to my liking and imagining, but you get the point.

Because of Jesus's birth, life, death and resurrection and our faith in that, all we have to do is enjoy the fact that we are forgiven sinners. I'll have a slice of pizza to that, or maybe even two. And you?

FIRE AND WATER

Recently I have been rereading Ronald Rolheiser's The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. It is probably the best work on spirituality that I have ever read. That is why it deserves a reread. There is just too much there to comprehend the first time through.

Rolheiser maintains that in each one of us there is a never-ending desire, a fundamental dis-ease, that will not allow us to be satisfied, ever. It is akin to running with wolves, having a fire in the belly. We cannot explain it; we just know it is there. Spirituality, he says, is what we do with this unrest, this dis-ease, this fire, this desire to keep on running, never standing still, if you will.

But as with any fire, if it gets out of control, we can be consumed by whatever it is that is driving us. So there is a need to have water ready to toss on the fire, not to put it out, but to keep it under control. Spirituality is about how we channel our desires, whatever they are and however we define or understand them, so that we do not get out of control, subsumed, consumed, by our desires. That, in a way, is what sin is all about: it is about giving in to an all-consuming desire to do or say something even though we know that to do so is wrong.

The opposite of being spiritual is to have no energy, to be unable to do anything, to lose all zest for living, to be a couch potato. Spirituality, then, has to keep us glued together so that we do not roll up into a ball and die. A healthy spirituality keeps us, he says, both energized and glued together.

A healthy spirituality does that. I don't know about you, but it seems that sometimes I am either so glued together that I am stuck or so loose that I am not sure which way to turn. Most of the time I am somewhere in the middle, neither stuck nor loose. Spirituality is about making choices. Healthy spirituality is about making the right choices, or at least making more right choices than wrong choices.

This drive, which Rolheiser calls "eros," is soul, soul that gives us energy. But it is also the glue that keeps us together. It puts fire in our veins and keeps us energized; and it adds water to the mix and keeps us glued together. There is chaos and there is order. It is the creative tension between the two, between fire and water that both keeps us alive and keeps us safe.

All this, I suspect, sounds rather esoteric, and maybe so.  Our own spirituality is something we never quite get a handle on. We know what it is even if we cannot define it or even describe it. We know when we are on fire and we know when we seem stuck in the mud. And we often do not know what to do about either.

And this is only for starters! We do have to recognize what is going on inside us if we want to even begin to understand ourselves. If there is any consolation, even the greatest saints had problems with their spiritual lives. So will/do we.

LEARNING HOW TO RECEIVE

The church is really good at reminding us that it is better to give than to receive. We take up collections every Sunday, have special offerings to purchase a new organ or to build a home for a family. We ask for funds on a regular basis for the Rector to use for helping others and ask for donations to support children in other lands so that they can have a decent education -- and the list seems go on and on and on.

We have bake sales and bazaars, book sales and rummage sales, car washes and spaghetti dinners, and anything else anyone can think of to raise needed monies for needed causes. Then, of course, there is the annual Every Member Canvas that is fast approaching.

All this is not a criticism. It is simply the truth. There are better ways, I suspect, to raise funds, but that is not my issue at the moment. Nor do I wish to debate the fact that it is better to give than to receive. It truly is and we all know it.

But sometimes we can get the impression that there is something wrong in receiving; we sometimes give that impression as well. We sometimes believe that if we are on the receiving end of someone else's giving, we are somehow inferior to, that we are of lesser worth than, the giver. That is nonsense, of course, but we do sometimes give that impression as givers and have that feeling as receivers.

We also often feel that when given a gift, we have to reciprocate somehow in some way. We find it difficult, at times, believing that a gift is given with no strings attached, that it is given simply out of the love.

Neither giving nor receiving comes easy. Why that is true, I am not sure. But I do find it to be true. As children we have to be taught to share our toys with others. In fact, as children we find it easier to take than to give, to hoard rather than to share. It takes a lot of time and teaching for us to realize how good it is to share what we have, share from our abundance with those who have less.

What we then assume is that because it is good to give, it must be bad, or at least not as good, to receive. So now we have to learn how to receive and learn that it is just as good to receive as it is to give and that there is nothing wrong with being on the receiving end. That is a truly difficult lesson to learn.

We are on the receiving end more often than we think. We receive gifts of love, kindness and caring; we receive homecooked meals and calls and letters. We receive everyday gifts every day. We receive perhaps as much as we give, and maybe even more.

What we fail to understand, I think, is that a gift is a gift is a gift. Difference in kind or degree or need makes no difference. It makes no difference if I need a meal because I can no longer cook than if I need a hug because I just need one. Gifts are gifts. It does not really matter who gives them or how much we need them. We simply need to receive them thankfully and joyfully.

STAYING GROUNDED

It's hard to be humble when everyone thinks you're wonderful. I am not speaking of myself, of course. Yeah, right. I suspect that we all have a little trouble with humility now and then. We all like to think or want to think that we are a little better than we are and certainly better than others think we are or perceive us to be. It certainly helps when we are having a bad day for whatever reason we are.

It is easy to live under the illusion that because we are not all that bad, that we are pretty good, that we are even wonderful and that God loves us just as we are. The truth is that we are pretty good and sometimes do wondrous things and that God always loves us. In fact, as the late evangelist Luis Palau once very astutely observed, "God is not disillusioned with us."

Oh, that was only the first part of his observation. The second half? "He never had any illusions to begin with." Talk about a blow to our pride. Palau hits us over the head with a sledgehammer with that. But we need to be reminded that we need to stay grounded. God knows us better than we know ourselves. We are mere mortals after all. We are God's gift and we are God's gift to the world -- just like everyone else.

I remember way back when I was first ordained. Humility was not one of my virtues even though I thought I was ever so humble. You see, I had all the answers and I knew I had all the answers. All you had to do was ask me and I would and could tell you what was wrong with the church and what should be done. In fact, there were times when I stood in the pulpit and smugly pontificated about some issue. I had a lot to learn and a lot of growing up to do. I am ever thankful to all those kind and loving people who hit me over the head with a sledgehammer when I became too full of myself.

All this reminded me of what a mother of another newly ordained priest said to her son as he was basking in all the praise people were heaping on him. She said, "I used to think priests knew everything. Now I worry because you are a priest and I know you don't know anything." That was a sledgehammer if I ever heard one! Now I have to wonder if my own mother thought the same thing about me. She probably did but was too kind to say it. She simply prayed every day that I would not make a fool of myself and save her from the embarrassment I might cause to the family.

Of course, now that I am older and wiser and more mature and have over fifty years of experience, I definitely have all the answers. Just ask me. Come to think of it, isn’t that what my audacity in writing and sending reflections like this seems somehow in some way to indicate?

Seriously, it is so easy to live with the delusion that we are wiser than we really are or worse than we really are. When I think about it, I am not sure which is worse. Staying grounded, being honest with ourselves both about our failings and shortcomings and our God-given gifts is a never-ending battle. It is only through the grace of God that our pride does not do us in more often than it should.