THE HUBRIS OF THE PRESENT MOMENT

When I was in seminary, the food in the dining hall was served family style. There was no buffet or cafeteria style dining as there is in most colleges and universities today. What was placed on the table was what was for breakfast or lunch or dinner. There was no ordering pizza in or dispenser machines where we could buy junk food. In fact, back then there was really no such thing as junk food or at least the opportunity to stuff ourselves with unhealthy food.

During my twelve years of high school, college and theology my seminary employed the same chef. And during those twelve years the menu varied only slightly every two weeks. The food wasn’t bad. It was just the same. Thus, on those many occasions when we sat down to eat and looked at what was being served, we could smile and say, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” And it wasn’t going to either.

Sometimes, however, those of my generation think back on those days and from time to time even long for them. Life was much simpler them, choices much fewer, times much slower. Now life seems almost too complicated, with too many choices and moving all too fast. We ask: “It can’t get any better than this?” And we think, “It could if we could go back to what once was.”

But we can’t and we deceive ourselves if we think the good old days were all that good. We only seem to be able to remember the good of those days and easily and readily blot out the bad. No one of us would give up the conveniences we have today, the speed of communication, the ease of travel, the choice of meals, even the fast food and junk food that clogs the arteries and puts inches around the waist and cholesterol in the veins.

None of us would trade today for yesterday no matter how much we complain or how wonderful our remembrances. On the other hand, to reflect on what is and to assert that it truly can’t get any better than this is, to quote a writer whose name I have forgotten, to succumb to the hubris of the present moment. It is to forget that the present is built upon the past and that the future will be built upon the here and now. It can and it will get better than this.

To be all caught up in the moment can sometimes lead us into false pride and bravado so that we fail to see our own inadequacies and shortcomings. The chef back at my seminary must have assumed that the meals he was serving were the best and that no one could cook better than he. That is why we were subjected to the same old same old. But someone came along and proved him wrong.

Times change. That is inevitable. People change. Likewise. The past was good. The present is better than the past, our fond memories notwithstanding. The future will be better than now, our hubris of the present moment even as a given. (We should be proud of what we have accomplished, should we not?) But it can get better than this. It must, if we are to fulfill our responsibilities as children of God and if together we use, to the best of our ability, the gifts with which God has blessed us.

MAYBE WE ALL NEED TO BE WOKE

During the last political campaign the word woke was bandied around to define anyone who was deemed a liberal – whatever that word means or meant to those who used the term in a disparaging manner. No one ever seemed to define the term but only to use it in a demeaning manner and to point out that woke policies were bad for the country and should be avoided at all costs.

Maybe they were and are wrong. Maybe we should all be woke. Maybe we have been woke all along and never knew it. Maybe to be woke means waking up to new realities, new understanding of the world and what is going on in the world around us, waking up to understanding what our responsibilities are to one anther in this world, waking up to what it means to be a Christian.

Maybe those who disparage those they consider woke do so because it lets them off the hook when it comes to dealing with societal issues they would rather ignore because they are too difficult to address – and, of course, too expensive, as if cost suddenly becomes a factor when it is someone else on whom the money – and one’s tax dollars – are being spent. When the issue is our own personal problem, we have little or no qualms about the expense, especially if the government is paying the bill.

The truth is that we all, deep inside ourselves, would rather not have to wake up to what is demanded of us by our faith. It costs too much in the way of giving our time or our money or our God-given abilities to address the issue or issues at hand. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. If the issues and our responsibilities to address those issues are not front and center, it is all to easy to ignore them and, perhaps, write them off as woke and therefore somehow too political.

That, of course, is to ignore the body politic with the realization that we are all in this world together, that we are responsible one to another, whether we like it or not. It is not an issue of we-and-they but of us-and-us. Jesus was constantly being confronted by those who used the law to keep them from their responsibilities to help those who needed help. He never let them get away with it, much to their chagrin.

Our faith won’t let is either, much to our chagrin. Again, we can all find reasons, perhaps sound and logical reasons, why an issue is not our issue. And when we do, we give it a name and walk away. It is only when we woke (that word again) up to what is really behind both our excuses and the issue itself that we begin to take it seriously. Giving an issue a name – like woke – only keeps us divided and prevents us from doing what we can, as little as that sometimes is, to help solve the problem.

Jesus’s message was all about getting our attention to the needs of the last, the least and the lowly of this world, that we will be judged on how we responded to those needs, on how we should judge ourselves. Maybe Jesus’s message was and is that we should all be woke: be awake to what our faith, and maybe even our politics, is calling us to do, even demanding that we do, no matter how difficult and whether we like it or not.

POSSESIONS CAN LEAVE US EMPTY HANDED

Sometimes we all have a difficulty with sharing our possessions. We are like the little child who grabs the ball from his younger brother and says, “That’s mine!” and will not, under any circumstances, share it. Even when Mom or Dad tries to explain why he should share his ball with his brother, he resists. He can neither understand why he has to nor will he give in even under parental orders.

Again, such selfishness is not the sole prerogative of children. Adults are just as susceptible to holding on to what they have and being unwilling to share it with anyone, even a sibling or parent, as are children. There has to be some specific possessive gene within each of us that makes us so. Yes, some people are less prone to hoarding possessions than others, but even the greatest of saints is tempted to do so and even gives in on occasion.

When we find ourselves doing such hoarding, what we will also discover, if we stop to think about what we are doing and why, is that we are preventing ourselves from gaining something more and something even more valuable. For when we close our hands, literally and figuratively around something, some possession, we are then unable to open those same hands to receive anything from another, from others.

When we unclasp those hands to let loose of something, they are then opened to receive back from another thanks and love, friendship and support. It is so true that it is only in giving that we receive because it is only in opening our hands that they can reach out and receive something from another. What is received, we soon learn, or if we have learned are again reminded, is always more valuable than that which we have let go.

Over the years I have saved over 200 lives having donated over twenty-five gallons of blood. I did not hoard my blood but shared it. What I have received in return is the knowledge that I have indeed saved that many lives, but even more, I benefited from giving. My blood and blood pressure got tested every two months. The truth is that even in my generosity I had been somewhat selfish.

The point is that even in totally selfless giving, there is always a modicum of selfishness. Thus, that is why it is also true that there is more pleasure in giving than in receiving because, again, we always get back more than we give, even if what we get back seems at first glance to be so much less. We give gifts because doing so gives us pleasure, makes us feel good in the process and even makes us feel good about ourselves.

The saddest people in the world are not those who have nothing but those who seem to have everything but are unwilling and even unable to share something, even some small piece of their abundance, with anyone. They hold their hands so tightly around their possessions that they literally squeeze the life out of them, the life those possessions could be giving to those in need and, at the same time, squeeze the life out of themselves. It is sad but it happens and it can happen to us. That possessive gene can rear its ugly head and grab us by the neck when we least expect it. Beware!

 

CONFESSION DOES NOT EXCUSE

It is never easy to take the high moral ground as much as we preachers are tempted to do. We can all name several famous, now infamous, clergy who have railed against moral transgressions only to be caught transgressing themselves, much to their shame. Every last one of us is a sinner. It goes with the territory of being human.

Thus, we all have sins to confess, moral transgressions for which we are ashamed. It does take guts to stand before other sinful, fallible human beings and confess to our transgressions, even when we cannot deny them, especially if they happen to become front-page news and/or fodder for holier-than-thou talk show pundits. We sinned. We were caught. Now we confess, tears streaming down our faces in humiliation.

We now want to think it’s over and done with. We think that confessing to our sins is punishment enough, that the press, the media, the public, and even those we have offended the most – spouse, children, family – should accept our confession, our sorrow and then allow us to move on as if our courage in confessing was and is enough. It isn’t nor should it be. It should only be the beginning.

For when we are caught in a lie, whatever that lie, that sin, courage is not the issue. There is no one else to blame, even as much as we would like to blame society or human nature or bad genes for our misconduct. We did it. We did it knowingly and willingly. Everyone knows we did it. We cannot blame anyone else because there is no one else to blame. To refuse to accept the blame is not courage but cowardice.

However, standing up to our sins, confessing that, yes, we did it and there is no excuse for what we did, is only the first step. It is not the last step nor is it the only step, as much as we would like it to be. Punishment follows. The problem, of course, is that we want to believe that because we have confessed to an obvious transgression, we are now excused from having to pay any penalty, from being punished.

That’s not courage. That’s hypocrisy. What is even more hypocritical is when we lambaste those who have publicly sinned while engaging in our own immoral and/or illicit activity.  Confession is always the first step in getting back on track even when we have no choice but to confess because there is no way to deny our transgression. Believing that confession now makes us exempt from any sort of punishment other than the humiliation of being caught is an even worse offense.

We live in an era where public confession of public misdeeds is deemed sufficient. It is not because it only leads to worse offenses in the future. It’s akin to confessing to the State Trooper who has just flagged us down for speeding that, yes, we were indeed speeding and believing that, because we owned up to our offense, we should not get a ticket. If the Trooper is kind and let’s us off with a warning, odds are that sooner rather than later, we will be stopped again. Had we received the deserved ticket and the points, we would be less inclined to speed in the future. Escaping deserved punishment does not make us better. It often, sadly, leads to greater transgressions, as we all can attest.