FEAR AND HATE

Years ago when I was the Ecumenical Officer in the Diocese, I attended the National Workshops on Christian Unity. The purpose of these gatherings is to promote Christian unity among the various denominations throughout the country. This disunity is truly a scandal as we are to be one in Christ. Of course, the greater scandal is that this disunity has caused fear and hatred among Christians.

The theme for one of those gatherings was to address this issue: “Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:10). Over the years we have come closer to one another but we are not one. There is still that fear that in doing so, we will lose something of who we are. Of course, trying to decide what that something is leaves one wondering why that is so important to us.

We have come a long way over the years. While we may fear the unknown, and rightly so, we have not degenerated into hate. Franciscan Richard Rohr in one of his recent mediations reflected that fear is almost always behind hate. If we are afraid of someone, truly afraid, that fear easily becomes hate. Why has there been and still is such a hatred of the Jewish people? Because people were and are afraid of them? Why? Because they have been and are so successful as the world deems success: power, money, etc.?

In our political arena if we can generate fear of those opposed to us, fear that they will cause our lifestyle to go to hell in a handcart and worse, we can easily come to hate them, and make no bones about it. That in and of itself is frightening. Past and present history tells us what happens when people begin to hate one another. Mass shootings, bombings, wars are all the result of a hate for those being attacked. And that hate was the result of a fear that was somehow fostered in the minds of the attackers.

Fear has to be nipped in the bud before it turns into hate. And the only way to do that is through love. We may never arrive at John’s hope that all fear will be cast out because we will never perfectly love. That only comes in the life to come. But in the here-and-now, even an imperfect love is better that no love and certainly better that hate.

But how do you even begin to love who cause you to fear? How do you love the fear-mongers, especially those who know exactly what they are doing? Unlike my colleagues at the National Workshop, they want to divide, not become one. They don’t want to work and sacrifice, even compromise, for the sake of oneness and love for one another. They want you to be afraid the enemy will take away what you have and not work together to make things better for everyone.

It's a hard call because it is indeed hard. My only solution is to pray for those who are afraid and especially for those inciting the fear that can only lead to hatred. I hard to do that, but I have no choice. It is what my faith calls me to do.

GRACE AND MERCY

A wise person once observed that grace is when God gives us something that we do not deserve and mercy is when God does not give us what we do deserve. But, then, none of us needed a wise person to make this observation for us. We have observed up front and personal in our own lives, most probably on a daily basis. The sad truth is that we are usually not aware of most, if any, of this.

We are blessed, you and I, and abundantly so. And, for the most part, we take these blessing for granted. Now we will not be so bold to assert that we deserve these blessings from God, although we sometimes act as if we do. It seems it is only on those rare occasions when we stop, step back and reflect about just how blessed we really are that we realize that we have done little or nothing to deserve what we have received except for the grace of God.

Why are we so blessed, so graced, while so many others around us and around the world are not? They did not do anything to cause their loss of blessings and we really did nothing to merit ours. All we can do is be thankful, grateful and humbled by how blessed we are and do all we can to help those who seem, and certainly are, so deserving of God’s grace but are not. That is not so say they are not blessed. It is to say that when we compare our blessings with so many others, there is no comparison and it simply does not seem fair.

The other side of the coin, if you will, is the realization that God, in God’s infinite mercy, has spared us from much pain and suffering that we truly did deserve – and continues to do so. It is almost as if we have a guardian angel steering us away from the places and people that will lead us down the wrong path and cause us pain and suffering. Even more, when we ignore those angelic warnings and get ourselves into a real mess, for some reason God spares us from much, if not all, of the pain we deserved.

God’s mercy saves us from ourselves. And like the realization of just how blessed we are by God’s grace, it is only when we stop and reflect how often God has spared us from the pain and suffering our words and actions truly merited that we are thankful and grateful and humbled. Again, it does not seem fair that others suffer more than they deserve while God’s mercy saves from the suffering we truly do deserve.

Grace and mercy: God’s constant gifts that, if you are like me, we tend to take for granted and overlook. My guess is that God does not expect us to be constantly aware of God’s grace and mercy but simply to pause every once in a while to reflect just how active God has been as is in our lives every day. What God does expect, or at least hope for, is that we are thankful, grateful and humbled. It’s the least we can do. But it is a starter. At this moment in time, if we’ve never or hardly ever reflected on God’s grace and mercy, it may be enough, may be. Enough said.

IT’S ALL QUITE SIMPLE

A group of us usually gather at a local restaurant after the early Sunday Eucharist. A few weeks ago I was seated next to our Senior Warden who proceeded to tell me a joke she had just shared with our Rector. Let me share it with you even if you have already heard it because it made me think about what it means to be a Christian. Here goes:

Forrest Gump is standing at the Pearly Gates waiting to get in. St. Peter tells him he has to answer three questions in order to get in. The first question: How many days of the week begin with “T”? Forrest’s response: “Two – today and tomorrow?” St. Peter reluctantly agreed. Second question: How many seconds in a year? Forrest’s response: “Twelve – January second, February second…” Not the answer he was expecting but another reluctant agreement from St. Peter. Third and final question: What is God’s first name? Answer: “Andy.” St. Peter was at a loss to understand. Forrest broke out into song to explain: “Andy walks with me. Andy talks with me…” St. Peter opened the gates to Forrest.

Okay, corny joke and a long way to get to my point. Forrest’s answers were so simple even if the second question needed a computer and the last one could only be answered by “God only knows.” But the simple truth, as Forrest would probably tell us, is that living out our faith and understanding what it means to live out our faith is not rocket science. It’s simple – and is the whole message of the entire Bible summed up in one sentence: love God above all else and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

That doesn’t mean it is easy, as we have all learned through daily living. We inherently know what we are to do, how we are to live, as followers of Jesus. And we strive to live that life each and every day. And each and every day we fail to one degree or another. No one of us is perfect nor does God expect us to be perfect. What God expects of us and we should expect of ourselves is to be as good as we can.

I recently looked over the catalogue from my seminary to see what the theologians were studying these days. They are getting a great education just as I believe I had. But all those years studying scripture, moral theology, the sacraments and even canon law and everything I learned and those seminarians are learning today boils down to that one sentence, no more and no less.

And when they and I stand in the pulpit to proclaim the Gospel message, everything we say boils down to that message. If it is something else, if the words are contrary to that message, Jesus’ message, then we are failing to do what we have been ordained to do. And when we, priest and people, live contrary to that message, we fail to live out what we have proclaimed by our baptism that we are commissioned to do. But when we do, as we have learned when we do, we find life and we find life in its abundance. Isn’t that why we keep trying to live it as best we can even as we fail every day?

WONDERFULLY HARD

My Old Testament professor, who was also the Hebrew teacher, told us that we need not learn that language if we never intended to be scholars. Since I only wanted to be a simple parish priest, I did not. In hindsight, I wish I had at least learned to read Hebrew, but that’s water over the dam. Thus, when it comes to defining Hebrew words, I have to trust those who know – which is simply an introduction to my reflection.

I learned that the Hebrew word for hard is the same word for wonderful. Imagine that! Something that is hard is also wonderful. It is wonderfully hard. If you think about, it has a ring of truth. If something is easy for us, we usually don’t give it much thought and we probably don’t take as much delight in it as we could or should. We just take whatever pleasure or joy that the task gives for granted and move on.

But if some task is hard, whatever the task, we have to concentrate on what we are doing simply because the task at hand is indeed hard, difficult. It takes serious attention if we want to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. Otherwise, we will make a mess of what we are doing and will probably never complete the task. We know this to be true because we have learned the hard way.

Yet, when we have given it our all, when we have been fully physically and mentally present at the task at hand and done what needed to be done, we came away with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment even if we are bone tired and exhausted from our efforts. We also know this is true because we have learned from our experiences that it is the truth.

When something is wonderfully hard, there is an inner peace and enjoyment that is difficult if not impossible to put into words; nor do we have the need to do so. Why? Because the experience and the effort was and always will be very personal. Yes, others may and probably will have benefited from our efforts, and that is one of the driving forces for our actions. But we did not set out to do what we did simply because we were looking for some personal satisfaction. We did what we did because, in our eyes, it had to be done.

It is only when we have completed the task at hand that we can sit back and reflect. What we learn is that we accomplished what we did, as hard and as difficult as it was, because of the grace of God; the grace that put us in the position to be able to do what needed to be done; the grace and strength to accomplish the deed; the grace to make the effort when so much of us wanted to walk away and let another take up the difficult task.

We truly learn the hard way. We learn that the hard way is probably the only way to learn and that is why we need the grace of God to do what needs to be done and why we can say to ourselves afterwards, “That was a wonderfully hard experience!”

THE EMPTY TOMB

The symbol for Christmas is the star – or the manger or, in the secular world, the tree. The symbol for Good Friday is the cross, either bare or with a corpus-in-agony on it. The symbol for Easter is an empty tomb. Nothingness and yet everythingness. As Frederick Buechner writes: “You can’t depict or domesticate emptiness. You can’t make it into pageants and string it with lights. It doesn’t move people to give presents to each other or sing old songs. It ebbs and flows all around us, the Eastertide….

“He rose. A few saw him briefly and talked to him. If it is true, there is nothing left to say. If it is not true, there is nothing left to say. For believers and unbelievers both, life has never been the same again. For some, neither has death. What is left now is the emptiness. There are those who, like Magdalen, will never stop searching it till they find his face.”  (Whistling in the Dark)

And there will be those who will spend their lives whistling in the dark because of their refusal to open their eyes and see something, nay everything, in the emptiness of the tomb. For when our eyes are opened, we see not the darkness of a tomb, empty or otherwise; rather, we see the brightness of the glory of God in all of creation. More importantly, we find the face of Christ when we see that face in and on the face of every person our eyes behold.

If all that is true, there is nothing left to say, as Buechner says. All that needs to be said is said. Our search for the one who once occupied that now-empty tomb has ended. We have found him. We see him. We encounter him every time we open our eyes to the light. If it is not true, if the tomb was never empty, then there is not much that one can say or even needs to say. So the question asked to believer and unbeliever alike is quite simple: “When the stone is rolled back, what do you see?”

The problem for non-believers is that they don’t believe; but that’s their problem. They have to deal with it and answer for it. But at least what they can and do say is that they do not see what we claim to see. Our problem is greater. We know what we see when we look into that empty tomb. We see resurrection and new life – for Jesus, for us, for everyone. Our search is over. We see the face of Jesus everywhere we look – when we open our eyes to see.

The temptation is not to, to shut our eyes to the brightness of the empty tomb and the responsibility that emptiness brings to our own lives. There are times when we in fact do give into that temptation and begin to act as if, as if, the tomb was never empty, even as we know it was and is.

The Feast of the Empty Tomb, Easter, is the celebration of our discovery of the fullness of life itself, our life now and the life of the community of believers whose lives are now living proof to the resurrection. “The tomb is empty. Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!” No more can be said. No more needs to be said except “Alleluia!” and the living out of that Alleluia in our daily lives.

 

MY NAME IS CAIAPHAS

In Mel Gibson’s long-ago movie of the passion of Jesus the hero, of course, is Jesus. The villain is the High priest, Caiaphas. The true villain in the real story, if there is indeed one true villain, is Pilate. Pilate was not the philosophical bon vivant Gibson portrays him to be but rather a ruthless, uncaring, me-first-and-damn-everyone-else-no-matter-the-cost-just- to-save-my-job ruler. Pilate washed his hands of the whole mess when he could have simply prevented it. That makes him Villain Number One.

Caiaphas, on the other hand, was not nearly as evil as Gibson depicts. Caiaphas’ job was to protect his people from further incursions by the Romans into what little freedom they had. Caiaphas was basically a good man, a man of deep faith, a man who cared about his people. Whether or not he was also well beloved, we do not know. He was probably a little power hungry. After all, he held the job for eighteen years when it was usually a one-year position. But if he had been doing a lousy job, the other ambitious priests among the Sanhedrin would have forced him out.

Caiaphas, I think, honestly believed his was doing the right thing both for his people and his faith in getting rid of Jesus, or at least making the attempt to shut Jesus up. If it meant that Jesus had to die because he would not cease his preaching and his gathering of followers, then so be it. The evil in having one innocent man killed was outweighed by the good that would come from keeping the Romans off their backs and allowing the people to practice their faith in relative peace. If Caiaphas was Villain Number Two, his villainy pales in comparison to that of Pilate.

Yet, when I reflect upon this man who, thanks to Gibson, has been receiving a bad press almost 2000 years after his death, I must sadly admit I see much of myself in Caiaphas. Power is alluring, corrupting. And those of us who are given power and authority -- and clergy are no exceptions, often take advantage of that power – and clergy are often the rule. Every division, controversy, schism in the church has been clergy led. The round collar and/or the purple shirt are just as seductive as were Caiaphas’ fine phylacteries. I know that if I am not careful, when I am on a power trip, my name is Caiaphas.

And yet there are times when I am worse than Caiaphas, who did the wrong thing for the right reason, or so he thought or so his love of power convinced him. Perhaps he didn’t know better. He didn’t have a clue who Jesus was. But I do. Caiaphas may have had a good excuse for doing something that was wrong. I do not. I know better. I know Jesus, who he is and what he desires and demands of me. When I do not do what my faith demands or do what I know I should not, I have the hammer in one hand and the nail in the other. I am one up on Caiaphas.

It is no consolation that I am not alone in any or all of this. The only consolation is that I am forgiven; forgiven when I use my authority for a selfish reason; forgiven when I do the wrong thing for what seems a right reason; forgiven for being worse than Caiaphas; forgiven. And because I am forgiven, I can always become better, less selfish and more loving. And I must. Must we all.

 

 

FIVE PEOPLE, FIVE LESSONS

 If heaven, as Mitch Albom wrote several years ago in his the five people you meet in heaven, is where all our yesterdays will finally make sense – and I do believe that is part of what we will learn in the life to come -- what lessons will those five people teach us now that it is too late to learn them? In other words, had we known and lived out those lessons in this life, would this life have made more sense to us as we lived it?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Even when we know why something turned out the way it did, we still have to live with the results. Our foolishness and sinfulness get us into many messes. When we are up to our necks in an alligator pit, we may fully know how we got there. That is no consolation as long as the alligators are aiming to eat us alive. What we have to do is get out of that pit ASAP. Then we can kick ourselves for being so stupid in the first place, for getting ourselves into that mess when we knew better.

Then, too, how often have we said to ourselves, once safely out of the pit, blood pressure back to normal, “This surely has been a good lesson for me,” and then found ourselves back in that alligator pit once again? Lessons learned are often lessons ignored. We study history to learn its lessons so that we will be spared the pain of learning them from firsthand experience. Nevertheless, history repeats itself, as we all know firsthand.

Yet, we still desire to learn more about ways to save ourselves from pain and suffering and to make this life both better and more understandable. So Albom’s five heavenly people remind us of at least five lessons we have already learned but which we often forget when rushing from here to there, which is how we end up in all those alligator pits in the first place.

First: there are no random acts. We are all connected because we can no more separate one life from another than we can separate a breeze from the wind. Every act, intentional or accidental has consequences with unperceived and never-ending results. Second: sacrifice is a part of life. (The word means “to make holy” which is what we become through sacrifice and only through sacrifice.) Third: When hurt, as we all are, we need to forgive, now, unconditionally and unasked. To not forgive is to live in the past, which prevents living in the present.

Fourth: Love has no end even when the ones we love die. Love lives on in our memory and in us. Fifth, whoever we are is who we are supposed to be. Wanting to be someone else is simply a waste of time and prevents us from living who we are to the fullest at every moment in our lives.

Life’s little lessons? Heaven’s little lessons? To be sure, simple but profound. I would like to assert that one of these lessons is more important than the others or that they could be listed in order of importance, but I cannot. The truth is, I think, they are interconnected and cannot be separated one from another. Albom gave me a whole lot to think about back then and he is still giving me a whole lot to think about, and my guess is that I will still thinking for years to come, God willing. You, too?

 

IF ONLY

Life, my life at least, would be so much easier if everyone agreed with me. If everyone thought like me, reasoned like me, understood as I understand, why preaching and teaching would be a piece of cake. We would all be on the same wavelength and be able to get to the core of any problem very quickly. Wouldn’t that be wonderful for me! However, it might not be so wonderful for someone else.

We all would like others to agree with us, to think and understand as we do, to see life and all life is about from our particular perspective. Then there would be less disagreement, less dissension and division and, perhaps, even true peace in this world. But no two peoples and no two people think alike, operate with the same mindset, the same principles, the same belief system simply because we are unique. We are each one of a kind. That is the way God created us. That is the way we are. That is the way we will always be. That is why we will never be of one mind on everything.

The reason why I believe what I believe is the result of almost eighty-two years of living: eighty-two years of unique thoughts and experiences. Since I have not experienced everything there is to experience and not thought about everything there is to think about, there are still great gaps in my education and in my understanding. And so it is with everyone else. Thus, when my gap meets your understanding or your gap, or vice versa, we will no doubt disagree because we cannot see what the other sees.

If only we could, but we cannot. That is why while we must stand up for our beliefs and convictions, we cannot and must not negate or belittle those who do not see or understand the way we do. We may try to convince another about the truth of which we are convicted, but we may not succeed. Some truths are only arrived at through a lifetime of thinking, experiencing and learning. Sometimes they are never arrived at.

And sometimes what we believe to be true may indeed be false, may be wrong. We may go to our grave believing something to be true that we discover in eternity to be false. And we may only discover in death that what we thought was false was in fact quite true. Life would be so much easier if we all knew the whole truth and lived our lives based on nothing but the truth. If only.

In the meantime, as each of us struggles to discover the truth, we have to agree to disagree on some matters, perhaps even on some issues of faith and morality. We do not have all the answers because we have not yet asked all the questions and because we will never fully understand God and God’s ways. We must never try to force our beliefs on anyone but must live our beliefs to the fullest. We will never convince another simply because we have the better argument. We will convince another by the way we live out our faith.

Jesus never convinced nor converted anyone by trying to change his or her mind. He tried to change the way they lived and he did it by modeling that lifestyle. So did the early church. So must we today. If only there were an easier way, but there is not.

 

FREE AGENCY

As a sports’ fan I hate free agency. I relish the days when players stayed with the same teams almost forever, for better – the Steelers of the ‘70s, and for worse – the Pirates of the ‘50s. Yes, it was an owners’ market in those days. If you did not like the pay, too bad: we own you. Now, it seems, the shoe is on the other foot. The players dictate. Such is the free market, I guess.

But sports is sports and the outcome of any sporting event has little or no effect on the rest of the world even if it seems the stock market rises and falls on which conference, the AFC or the NFC, wins the Super Bowl. Free agency may lead to better contracts. It has not led to better team loyalty. That does not exist any more, not as far as the players are concerned anyway. Why we fans put up with it is anyone’s guess.

But this phenomenon of free agency in sports has carried over into all of life. I read a report a while back asserting that this generation of students will have five to seven careers before they retire: careers not jobs. Talk about free agency. Job loyalty seems to be a thing of the past, for better or for worse. As with sports, so with every other profession, there are pros and cons about this penchant for moving on once the job gets boring or until a better offer comes along.

What is somewhat frightening, at least to my vocation and me, is that free agency has also invaded the church and perhaps to a wider degree than the rest of society. My children do not feel in any way obligated to worship as adults as they worshipped when they lived at home, if they feel obliged to worship at all. And if and when they do feel some urging to try out a church, they may begin with the tried and true of their past. But if it is not of their liking, they are likely to go somewhere else that is much more to where they happen to be at a particular point in their lives.

Brand loyalty is gone and gone forever, it seems. I don’t know if all denominations are like us, made up of more than half who were not born and raised in it. But they are all getting there. Like sports, so with church, the players are now in charge and not the owners. The owners (the clergy, although we never owned anything and the only authority we had [or may still have] was what was given to us by the players/people) have to listen to what the players/people want or else they will [have to] go somewhere else.

That does not mean we take a straw poll, test the wind and see which way we will go next in order to bring them in. That only works until the product gets stale or someone offers something more enticing. The temptation, however, is to play to the crowd in these days of free agency in religious affiliation. The greater temptation is to abrogate responsibility in order to please. Given our fickleness as human beings what may be pleasing today may be just the opposite tomorrow.

The old ways are not working too well and the new ways seem to be too much of passing fancies in order to please. Is it any wonder we’re confused and not sure just what to do?

 

IT'S NOT ABOUT US

It’s not about us. It really is not about us. We think it is. All too often we act as if it is; but it really isn’t, if we truly understand what our faith is all about. It’s really about everyone else. It’s not about us. Think about it as a mantra: “It’s not about us.” Repeat it and repeat it and repeat it until it finally begins to at least break the hard outer shell of our natural resistance. It’s not about us.

When it is about us, whenever we are about ourselves first, the other and/or others are a forgotten, neglected, overlooked or dismissed second. It is easy to do, of course, this thinking that what we are about, whatever it is we are about, is about us. Yes, whatever we do has to be about us, but only to a degree and not first and foremost. If it is totally not about us, we will not have anything to do with it.

For instance, when we engage in outreach ministries, those ministries are not about us. They are primarily about those to whom we minister. Yet we get something out of doing them else we would not do them. We are not that altruistic. No one of us is totally selfless. We can’t be. The self is part and parcel of the unselfish act of ministering to others. And so there is always a personal reward in doing for the other, ministering to the other, whatever that ministry entails.

The same is true, however, for whatever else we are about as a church: worship, education, fellowship, and so on that, on the surface, seem to be about us. We want our worship to be fulfilling and uplifting. We want our educational opportunities to challenge us and inform us so that we can better understand and thus live out our faith. We want our gathering experiences to enliven us and give us a sense of support and encouragement so to better live out our faith.

Yet whatever we do, it is not about us. It is about those who are not yet part of us, those who have not yet heard the Good News of Jesus Christ, those who really think that what we do is about us and not about them because that’s the message we seem to be giving and they seem to be hearing. And who can blame them? Perception is reality whether we like it or not.

The reality, the truth, is that to be engaged in Christian ministry the other comes first. The other must come first. What may be good for us may not be good for the other. That does not mean we do what we believe is wrong. What it means is that oftentimes we have to give in to our desire to please ourselves first and foremost and give it over to opening our hearts – and community – to others, especially to those outside.

None of this is anything new. It is simply a reminder of something we often forget, especially when in the process of dreaming about how we can become a better person, a better Christian, a better Christian community of faith. Whenever we put the other first, whoever that other is, whether inside or outside our faith community, we may not get the answer that is most pleasing. We will get the answer that is both most loving and the right one as well. 

PROPHET...AND FOR PROFIT

 For some crazy reason I can still remember taking a Latin vocabulary test way back when. My professor read off the English words he wanted is to translate into Latin one of which was profit. What he failed to do was spell profit. Those of us who had no idea what the Latin was for profit wrote propheta = prophet. When the tests came back, he humbly had to accept propheta. He wanted lucrum. How interesting! Back to that in a moment.

Were I to ask most anyone today to define prophet, my suspicion is that I would hear something like, “a person who foretells the future,” which would be wrong. No one can foretell what will be. A prophet is someone who speaks for God. Yes, Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and Amos usually did foretell the future, but it did not take anyone special to foretell what they foretold. All Isaiah, Amos and all the other prophets foretold was that if the people kept on sinning, their sins would come back to haunt them.

Not rocket science is it? The only future any of the prophets was concerned about was the immediate future. The people were disobeying their God and they knew it. And if they did not know it, the prophets were sent not only to remind them of their responsibilities and duties but also to warn them that if they kept on sinning, God would not protect them when it came time to pay the piper.

Again, not rocket science; moreover, we are all prophets in the same vein as an Amos. We warn those we love (prophesy to them) as those who loved us warned us (prophesied to us) that sin and selfishness always catch up to us and we will reap the results of those actions. God wants us, those who love us want us, and we ourselves should want to cease the sinfulness and get right with God and one another.

That is all prophecy is. It is not the foretelling of some distant future. Amos did not predict some far-off event several hundred years later. The Book of Revelation does not predict something about to happen 2000 years later. Amos was written to his contemporaries who were disobeying God. John wrote Revelation to those who were being or about to be persecuted. The Book of Revelation has no reference to any time other that to the time at hand when it was written.

That is not the same as saying it has no relevance. Just as Amos warned and reminded his people that they needed to amend their lives, so he reminds us today. As John encouraged the people who were being persecuted for their faith to remain strong and promised them God would see them through, so John reminds us today of God’s ever-present grace and strength when we find it difficult to live out the demands of our faith.

What is happening today is that there are those who are were like my classmates and me in that Latin class. They are distorting prophet for profit (Latin: lucrum from which we derive lucre, as in “filthy lucre”). To assert that Revelation was written about events that would take place 2000 years later is to say John was lying to the people of the seven churches to whom he wrote. It would be as if he were saying, “Times are tough. But have courage. In 2000 years God will make all this right.” It would be as if Amos said, “You better get right with God because in 1000 years your sins are going to catch up with you.” Nonsense!

We are all prophets when we live our lives as we should. There should be no profit, lucre, in being a prophet. In fact, it is often very painful in so many ways, as we have all learned from experience.

 

FORGETTING HOW TO DREAM

A friend of mine in Pennsylvania was sort of a recluse. He wandered in and out of his small apartment mostly to the grocery store, sometimes to church and, when he could not avoid it any longer because of his health, to the doctor. He spent much of his time thinking and writing, mostly poetry. On occasion I was a recipient of some of his poems. They come typed – typed, not computer-generated. He did not own one because he could not afford one.

David, as with all poets, lived in his own world, but he also had a way of seeing into our world and seeing what we sometimes cannot and often will not see. That’s the upside of poetry. The downside is that sometimes the words poets employ are so obtuse that even if we want to see with their eyes, we cannot because we cannot go where they are. Their words seem to block the path. But not always.

A while back David sent me a letter to which he added a page containing four short poems. One was titled simply, “Journal Entry”.  He writes: “Vision and dollars are in conflict: / When there are lots of dollars, / There is no vision; / When there are no dollars / There is lots of vision.”

That I can understand. It may have taken David’s poetry to paint the picture, but at least this time the words don’t obfuscate his meaning. He cannot be clearer can he? When one’s financial resources are slim, who does not dream about what life would be like if one only had a little more money? There is no telling what s/he would do, what deeds s/he would accomplish! On the other hand, when financial resources are abundant, one does not need to dream of what might be because one can have whatever one wants and have it right now. 

That is not to say that it is only the financially strapped who dream of what might be. Nor is it to say that the Bill Gates’ of this world live in and think about only the present. While David’s words may be a slight exaggeration of reality, sadly he was still not far off the mark. What is even sadder is when we have forgotten how to dream. The church, sadly, is all too often a vivid example of that.

Churches always seem to be one lost pledge away from debt, if they are not already there. Budgets are bare boned. There is no fluff. We want to dream of what we could be if we only had more people and more dollars, what it would be like if we had an unlimited source of funds. But we do not dream because we seem to have forgotten how.

What if, for instance -- to dream the impossible dream -- every person suddenly tithed, even half-tithed, gave 5%? Would we have even the foggiest vision of what to do with those financial resources? When dollars are scarce, we do not dream about what could be, should be, because we have forgotten how to dream. Might it be that dollars are scarce precisely because we do not have a vision of what can – and should – be? Perhaps we need to learn how to dream again. For when we do, not even the sky will be the limit and no dream will be impossible.

 

TORN BETWEEN TWO LOVES

E. B. White: “If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.” It surely does, does it not?

It does because these two desires are all too often, if not polar opposites, certainly contradictory. When we enjoy what the world has to offer, we do not necessarily improve the world, make it better for everyone. In fact, in our enjoyment of the world we often do more harm than good. That is not a political observation but a proven and scientific fact. In our enjoyment of Mother Nature we have often destroyed much of what She has to offer for our enjoyment.

On the other hand, working to improve the world does not necessarily bring with it much joy. It takes hard work to clean streams, purify the environment and eradicate poverty and it takes even more in the way of personal sacrifice. As White suggests, working to improve the world takes work on a personal level, which means sacrifice, which means living with less. Less may indeed be more and, in fact, it truly is. But once we have gotten used to more, it is neither easy nor pleasurable to try to live with less. It is often a real pain.

Environmental issues aside, so it often seems with all of life, especially our lives as Christians.: it can be and often is a real pain. God created this world for our enjoyment and pleasure. God gave it to us to take care of and use well, certainly not to misuse or abuse. God also gave us the life we have, our personal lives, to enjoy. God did not create us to live in pain, to suffer and be miserable. Yet, often the pain and suffering that comes our way is the direct result of abusing or misusing the very life we have: our bodies, our minds, our beings.

We are torn between work and play. We would love to make our work into play, or at least come to the point where we really enjoy what we are doing. On the other hand we never have the desire to make our play into some form of work. Likewise, doing good is always pleasurable but it is also often painful, sometimes physically painful. We are often torn between doing a good deed that involves some pain, and not doing it in order to save ourselves the physical pain involved. Think Jesus on the cross.

Loving who we are, loving our vocation, our calling, makes the living out of that calling enjoyable even when it is difficult and painful. But not always; and that is the crux of the problem. That is, as the word crux means, the cross we choose to bear. If we could plan our day, we would love to make sure that all we say and do builds up and does not tear down. If we could remove any pain and suffering involved, we would love to do that as well. But we can do neither, not totally, and, given our sinfulness, not always. And so we rise in the morning knowing, as we plan our day, there will be crosses to bear, choices to be made, and that often we will be torn between two loves. That may not be a pleasant thought but it is also the truth from which we cannot run.

IN COMPARISON TO WHAT?

My wife tells me I am wonderful. Those are wonderful words to hear. The other night as we were falling off to sleep, she told me again that I was wonderful. My first thought, at least at that moment, was to say, “In comparison to what?” But being the wise man I sometimes am, I shut my mouth and cuddled up to her even closer. That was not the right time for any philosophical discussion about what she meant. I knew what she meant.

But the truth is the question can still be asked, perhaps should be asked. We all make value judgments about people and places and things. We make value judgments about how people think and act and respond, about what they said or did not say, or what they did or should have done. We make them instinctively and automatically. That is natural and expected given who we are as rational beings.

But what do we use as a guide when making such value statements such as, “You are wonderful” or “That was foolish” or “This feels great” or “That was a mistake”? Wonderful compared to what? Foolish compared to what? Great compared to what? Mistake compared to what? Who sets the parameters for judging? Who sets the tone? Is what is wonderful for one person merely mundane for another? Is what is wise for one, foolishness for another? Is what is great for one, merely so-so for another? Is what is right for one person, wrong for another?

Is there a moral arbiter, a consensus determiner, out there who can help us measure our emotions and keep us on the right track when it comes to knowing good from bad, right from wrong, foolish from wise? Even more importantly, do we wish there were? Do we want someone else to determine for us how we should feel or think or react?

Life certainly would be simpler if there were such a guide or guidelines or both. Then when my wife tells me how wonderful I am, both of us would know exactly what she means. Then when I make a fool of myself – as I would do were I to ask her what she means – I would then know just how foolish I was, or would become dare I ask such a foolish question in the first place. Guides and guidelines would prevent much of the messiness of daily life.

But life is lived in messiness. Life is lived not knowing what everything and everyone means. Life is lived in the discovery of what “wonderful” and “foolish” and “great” and “mistake” all mean. Were it otherwise, we would not call it “life” but rather something less than being fully alive and fully human. The temptation is always to dissect, define and delineate; and we often succumb to those temptations, often to our later regret.

That is not to say there are no guidelines or guides. Jesus’ words and actions certainly hang over everything we say or do. Yet we are not Jesus. We are who we are: wonderful, foolish, doers of great deeds and mistake prone as well. Come judgement day we will not be judged as to how well we compared to Jesus, but how well we lived our life as a disciple of Jesus. It’s messier that way, but it also happens to be God’s way, which is certainly some consolation when we get into trouble because we asked a foolish question.

THE HORIZONTAL AND THE VERTICLE

The cross, in more ways than one, represents who we are as Christians and what it means to be a Christian. On one level it reminds us that the cross and all that it symbolizes is part and parcel of the living out of our faith. It is a reminder that no one is immune to carrying a cross and no one escapes from his or her fair share. As for Jesus, so with us as his followers: we, too, have to take up our crosses daily and follow our Lord.

On another level the cross is a reminder of the horizontal and vertical relationships that are also part and parcel of our lives as Christians. The horizontal beam signifies our relationship one to another in this world of ours. It is a time-centered relationship. We meet and encounter one another at various points of time, interacting as we do.

These encounters are all too often regulated by the clock. We are engaged in a lively conversation, take a glance at our watch and say, “Oops. Gotta go. Have another appointment in ten minutes.” And off we go to another meeting or another something else and on the way check the calendar on our cell phone to see how much time we can give to this meeting or this item on our agenda.

Thus, it is not without a sense of truth that Gary Eberle observes in Sacred Time and the Search for Meaning: “People treat their daily planners [cell phones] the way monks and nuns used to treat their prayer books. They keep them close at all times. They clasp them with missionary zeal as they head from meeting to meeting…yet none of this points beyond our horizontal realm to the vertical realm in which we also live.”

For as Christians the vertical beam of the cross reminds us why we are doing what we are doing and gives meaning and life to the horizontal realm. Without the vertical realm the horizontal realm becomes simply a chasing after something, whatever that something is, that in the end will have no meaning and bring no lasting pleasure or satisfaction. With the vertical in place, everything we do has meaning even if it is sometimes too regulated by the clock, and will be pleasing and satisfying even if it does not turn out the way we had hoped or planned.

Jesus never intended to die on the cross and his followers never intended to be put to death because they believed in him and followed his commands. Yet even in suffering and dying they knew what they were doing and why and they were not doing so in vain even if it seemed to everyone else they were fools. They understood the vertical and horizontal relationship of being a Christian, a both-and and not an either-or.

The calendar on my cell phone may be my guide through my daily rounds, be a record of whatever I do and am supposed to do in the present moment and in the days and weeks to come. And if you are like me, sad to say for all of us, I feel naked without my phone. But if that is all it is, if it is only a way of keeping me focused on the here-and-now but not a reminder that what I am doing is goodly and Godly, and that that is truly what is presently and ultimately important, then I had better toss it and refocus my attention on what is truly important.

IT'S NOT DISSONANCE BUT SWEET MUSIC TO THE EARS

Opera? I can take it or leave it, mostly leave it, my totally Italian genes notwithstanding. Rap? I don’t even consider that music, much to the disagreement of some of my daughters (who shall remain nameless) who used to drive me almost insane by blaring that noise from their rooms. Hip Hop? Please. Country, R&B and Jazz I can take on occasion. I love the music of the Forties, probably because I was truly weaned on it in my mother’s lap. I cut my eyeteeth on Rock and Roll and received the bulk of my education with Folk Music and its messages playing in the background. Classical music is great on a regular basis; Disco once a week and Heavy Metal never.

Imagine being in an auditorium with one huge orchestra playing all these types of music and playing all of them all at one time. It would be dissonance to the nth degree. Even if we could tune in to that part of the orchestra playing our kind of music, that which we did not like, or even consider music, would drown out what we did appreciate. No one would ever consider the music being played sweet music, if it were considered music at all. It would simply be noise, horrible noise!

Take that imagery in another direction and apply it to the church and we might come to the same conclusion. There would be those who would staunchly maintain that the music being played in the church today contains so much dissonance that all they want to do is simply distance themselves from it. If not that, they want to find a room where only their music of choice is being played. And, of course, there are those who don’t want any music at all.

The church, if it is anything, at least in the Anglican Tradition (and, I would maintain, in the very tradition of Jesus) is not a symphony orchestra playing one kind of music with reeds and horns and percussion instruments all on the same page. Rather the church has been and always was and will be more like a bunch of bands together on the same stage, each playing/doing its own thing and yet making not dissonance but truly very sweet music together.

That’s the Anglican Way, the Episcopal Way, Jesus’ Way. It’s not an easy way or the only way, but it is the best way – I believe. It is not a way that says anything goes. Rather it is a way that says that I may not like your music and you may detest mine, but we are all in the same band. What we each have to do is at least be willing to listen to the other’s music even if we will never, ever come to like it or maybe even understand how anyone could even dare call it music.

Of course this means we have to be willing to play in the same band or sit in the same auditorium/church pew with those whose taste in music is so contrary at times to ours. It means we have to take their music seriously just as we ask them to take ours. It is much more comfortable and much more tempting for me to simply play my Oldies station than to punch the roaming switch to see what comes up next. But that’s our church: playing dissonance to some but really making sweet music – if we are willing to let our ears hear it and our minds welcome it.

 

BOB AND BERTHA

We have added two new members to our family thanks to our middle daughter. Their names are Bob and Bertha. Actually Bob’s full name, given to him by grandson Carter, who also typed his name in on our computer, is Bob the Vacume 4 (phonetic spelling). They came as Christmas and House-Warming presents and they are, as one might assume by Bob’s full name, a robotic sweeper (Bob) and a robotic mop (Bertha).

As I write this, Bertha is back in her resting place in my office recharging after having mopped all the floors, or at least the floors she can get to which, unfortunately, because we will still have to do those, is not all of them. She won’t go over carpets to get to the floors. Bob, on the other hand, knows no bounds. To be honest, both do very good jobs for which we are thankful.

To be even more honest, I truly feel guilty when we tell them to get to work. I mean, it’s no great of a deal to vacuum or mop the floors. Well, to be truly honest, I vacuum and Arlena mops, but neither of us works up a sweat when vacuuming or mopping. And I certainly don’t want our daughter to feel guilty because she gifted us with something she knew we really would appreciate. And we do, of course.

Bob and Bertha are simply another example of AI taking overt our lives. Our washer and dryer, stove and refrigerator and dishwasher and probably even the microwave are all capable of being connected to our phone or tablet or this computer I am now using. None of them are because I know, I know, I know I will somehow do something to lock one or all of them and not be able to use because I will not know how to unlock them. Better safe than sorry or, given my age, even foolish.

Yes, I truly appreciate everything that AI is capable of doing and has already been doing in my life, like my phone and computer. The phone gives a sense of security and the computer as well as the phone allows for easy access to other people and needed – and unneeded – information. My car basically runs on a computer which, of course, costs a fortune to repair when a chip goes haywire. But that’s another story.

The doomsday sayers are warning us that AI will take over our lives and perhaps it will take over much of it. But no one of us wants to go back to typewriters or surgery suites without the latest in AI. We love what AI can do and does for us for which we should be thankful. So thank you Bob and Bertha.

However, there is one thing Bob and Bertha nor any AI device cannot do and that is love us. Only we, with real intelligence, not artificial, can do that. And while we may wonder or even fear where AI will lead us, we know that love, in all its imperfections, is a wonder to behold and casts out any fear that we may have. I like what AI does but that’s as far as it goes. We love and need to be loved by one another. That’s the bottom line!

GUESS WHO'S THE BAIT?

We are all called to be carpenters in the sense that we are to be bridge builders between one another. That is especially true these days when it seems that the divide is so great that building a bride is well nigh impossible. And if it seems impossible, we usually do not make any effort to even try to start building that bridge. Yet, whether we like it or not, and, of course, we really do not, as Christians that is our responsibility.

But how do we do this? How do we even start when the task seems to be so great, so difficult, when it seems that it will be a waste of time because we will be rejected? It seems to me that in this task we must, along with our carpenter’s hat, put on another hat, if you will. That is the hat of a fisherman.

During the last few weeks I have been thinking about this notion that each of us is called in and through our baptism to be carpenters to build bridges but also to be fishermen, to fish for others and bring them to the faith. I have been reflecting on the fact that most of us, perhaps all of us, are, in fact, if the truth were told, reluctant fisherman. It occurs to me that there is one hard and constant fact why this is true. I will get to that in a moment.

I'm not a fisherman, but I do know that the fishermen I know go to great lengths to use the right bait to catch whatever fish it is they happen to be pursuing at the moment. I have seen tackle boxes that are awash with some of the most magnificent colors under the rainbow and stuffed with the most wondrous lures one can imagine -- all in pursuit of an elusive fish. True fishermen, it seems, will expend no amount of time or money to land that big one.

Should not that same philosophy be ours as Christian fishermen? Of course! But why the reluctance? It seems to be that there is one over-riding and all-abiding reason why we are reluctant fisherman. We have discovered what the bait is or, perhaps better, who is the bait. We are! Each of us is the bait. Each of us is that lure that entices others to come and see what we have found. Or we are not.

Fish, I understand, usually do not chase after false bait. There has to be some allure to the lure or else they will swim away no matter how hungry they are. The same analogy holds, I believe, when it comes to our faith. If we are the bait that attracts others to the faith, our way of life must be so enticing that someone will grab the hook. For that person to grab hook, line and sinker, the bait has to be overwhelming. We will have to overwhelm the other by the way we live out our faith in Jesus.

Somewhere deep down inside we know that. That frightens us because we do not think it is possible. But it is. Unlike those tackle boxes filled with exotic and expensive lures, our box seems to be filled only with common worms. But worms catch fish and that’s all that matters. Catching others by the way we live out our life of faith is the way bridges are built and probably the only way bridges are built.

We are the bait. Others come to Jesus only through us. Think what it would/could be like if we were more -- and constantly -- aware of this truth! Have a Blessed and Bait-full New Year.