FOUR NOT-S0-EASY PIECES

My wife and I like to work jigsaw puzzles. The bigger, the better. The more pieces, the more challenging. The problem, of course, is that whenever we set out a puzzle, it will consume us until we complete it, often putting aside chores that really demand our attention. In that, I don’t think we are different than anyone else who likes to work puzzles of any kind, jigsaw, crossword, Sudoku, and so forth.

Life itself is often a puzzle. It is made up of many bits and pieces that we want to fit together to make a whole, certainly hoping that all the pieces will do so. Loose ends are not of our liking, at least not of my liking, speaking only for myself. If I – if we? – can find a simple plan to make life, especially our life as a Christian, fall easily into place, I/we would like to know that plan.

I found one in four steps, four pieces, if you will, but not so easy ones. The Collect for Proper 17 prays thusly: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

The first piece of the puzzle in trying to figure out how to follow Jesus, the first step on the road to such following, is this: the grafting in our hearts the love of God’s Name. Grafting, not thinking about it or wishing that it were so but actually making the love of God part and parcel of who we are, of our every thought and word and action. If we could not take the second step, add the second piece without having the first piece firmly in place, we would and could go no further. Making the love of God part of our being is a life-long process, but a necessary one.

The second step in the journey, the next piece in the puzzle, is to grow in true religion: true religion. There is a lot of false religion out there selling us a path to God that is easy and rewarding and exempt of pain and suffering on the one hand or one that instills fear and the threat of hell, reminding us that the path to God is very straight and very, very narrow on the other. The difficulty in walking the path is sorting out what is true and what is false, and that, too, is a life-long process.

As we grow in the love of God and walk the path of true religion, we need to be nourished by all that is good and refrain from dining on what is not, namely what feeds the soul with selfishness and hardness of heart. Separating the good from what often tastes so good but which, in the end, only leaves a sour taste in our mouths, is, again, a life-long process.

The final step in living as a follower of Jesus is to do good deeds. Doing so is the result of loving God, living out our faith as Jesus taught us to and by being fed with whatever is good and holy and just. That, too, is a life-long process. The good thing in all this is that even though all the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit perfectly, they fit enough so that we can keep on working at it the rest of our lives.

POOR PAUL, POOR ME

St. Paul was never one of my heroes, a saint that I admired and wanted to be like. It’s not that I doubted his sanctity or his devotion or anything like that. He was a great man who was indispensable to the growth of the church. He was our first real theologian even though he got some things wrong and was sometimes too hard headed for his own good and the good of the church.

Rather, I think Paul spent too much time patting himself on the back, even though he deserved all that adulation and more; and he whined too much even though he was treated horribly by foe and friend alike. Given all that, it would seem that Paul was a person one should admire and want to emulate. It would seem, even though for some reason I cannot find myself in that position.

However, I do find myself moaning and groaning for the same reason Paul did. He wanted to be a perfect example to the people he was proselytizing of someone who followed Jesus almost to the letter. But the more he tried, the more he was tempted to be and do otherwise. As he wrote in his letter to the Romans, he was constantly tempted to do that which he knew he should do and not do that which he knew he should. What is worse, all too often he gave in to those temptations. Poor Paul.

Now there is someone to whom I can and do relate! While I may not be tempted in the same way Paul was (what temptations he received he did not detail), nevertheless I often find myself in the same position of wanting to do that which I should not and not doing that which I should. Poor me. Poor all of us, because none of is exempt from being tempted to be selfish, which is what all temptations are about.

Actually, temptations in and of themselves are morally neutral They are just temptations: temptations to utter an unkind word, temptations to refuse to help when one is perfectly able, temptations to eat or drink too much, temptations of every kind and degree. They are morally neutral until we respond to them either by giving in to them or by rejecting them and moving on.

The rejecting and moving on is what is difficult. We all know that, as did Paul, from personal, firsthand experience. We’ve all been there and we’ve all done what Paul did and what Paul did not do. And like Paul, there have been times when we cried out to God to rid us of these temptations because, at least at that moment in our lives, they seemed to be so overwhelming that we were ready to give up and give in.

Yet, as Paul knew and we know, there is no escape. As long as we are alive we have free will. Because of our free will there will always be temptations to go either way: to do or not to do. But temptations are really choices. When we give in to a temptation, we are making a choice, a free will choice. We do not have to be unkind or selfish but we freely choose to do so. Like Paul we can whine because we are tempted and we can try to blame someone or something when we give in. But the truth is, like Paul, in the end, we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED

When we listen to the news, read the newspapers, even look around our neighborhoods, it is sometimes easy to believe that the world is going to hell in a handcart. Wars and uprisings, poverty and natural disasters, sickness and disease, conflict and controversy are everywhere. A peaceable world, a world where people live in harmony with one another seems so far off if not totally unrealistic and unobtainable.

When the world is perceived as such, most of us look for someone, some hero, some Lone Ranger as it were, to come riding in on a white horse to rectify it all. We know, or believe, that we cannot do it, that we are not that savior, that messiah; but surely someone has to be. The Jewish people in the Old Testament were always looking for that savior, whether in a king, a judge or even the real Messiah, to save them for the messes they were in, messes created mostly by their own sinfulness and selfishness. We are no different today.

What they forgot, what we forget, or perhaps what we all would rather discount and even deny is that we have everything we need to make this world a better world, a peaceable world. The list of what is needed is short: two hands, two feet, two eyes (Helen Keller did it with none!), two ears, a brain, a mouth and a heart full of love for God and one another. That’s all!

That’s easy to say, you say. And, of course, it is. But it is also the truth. It takes a special person, you say. And, of course, it does. It takes a real saint, you say. And, of course, it does. But why were the saints saints? As someone once observed: they were saints because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient when it was difficult to be patient, and because they pushed when they wanted to stand still, and kept silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable, That was all. It was quite simple and always will be.

We are those people, those saints, even if we would never, ever consider ourselves as such, whether in pride or humility. But saints were and are ordinary people: people with two hands and feet and ears and eyes, people who were willing to get involved in the world in which they lived – who get involved in this world. They do not stand idly by and wait for some savoir to do the work needed to be done.

So how do we get involved, we saints of God? Thomas Merton put it rather succinctly: “Before you do a darned thing just BE what you are, a Christian; then no one will have to tell you what to do. You’ll know.” We know Merton was correct. We know in our hearts what to do and what not to do. It is written there by the God who created us and who lives in us and who acts through us. We know.

We have everything we need, individually and collectively, to make this world of ours a better world, a peaceable world, where there is liberty and justice for all, ALL. Not some, not the privileged few, not the powerful: ALL. What we seemingly do not have is the will to do what needs to be done because that will involve personal sacrifice. That is sad.

GENERALIZATIONS ARE JUST THAT

"Our youths love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority – they show disrespect for their elders, and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food, and tyrannize teachers.” That was Socrates’ opinion over 2500 years ago. As the wise Ecclesiastes opined even before Socrates’ observation, there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes’ opinion was correct and valid. There is nothing new under the sun. Generation after generation not only learns from the previous generation but they also make the same mistakes as their ancestors. We learn from history, but not always and never enough. The world would be better and life would probably be so much easier if we learned from the past not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We do but not always.

Socrates, on the other hand, was generalizing and was thus generally correct in his observation of not only the youth of his time but also of all youth. While many young people love luxury and have bad manners, not all of them do. While some talk too much, don’t listen when they should, and make life miserable for their parents and teachers, not all do, not even the majority do; but enough do to make adults generalize when they should specify.

It is easy to generalize, of course. When we do, it is usually about those who disagree with us or who are simply disagreeable. Then we can write them off as being in the wrong or simply wrong because they are different. The problem, of course, is those whom we categorize also categorize us. Whenever we judge others with our sense of our own superiority, we can be reasonably certain that they are returning the favor. Just ask young people what they think about their elders if you don’t believe me!

It is not only easy but it is also safe to generalize. That way we do not have to get to know the other on a person-to-person basis. Yet that is also the only way to not only learn about the other; it is also a great way to learn about ourselves. Once we get to know someone whom we have categorized, however we have categorized that person, we will, more often than not learn that we were wrong. He didn’t fit our generalization. In the process we will have to come to grips with why we were so ready to stuff him into a box in which he obviously did not fit.

I once spent almost ten days with four teenage boys, like 24/7 with them: slept in the same room, rode in the same van, walked the same trails, ate at the same table. None of them fit Socrates’ description of his or our youth. I knew that before we went on our Journey to Adulthood Pilgrimage to the Upper Northwest with our theme of “Finding God in Nature.” We found God there and I found God living in them even if they sometimes talked too much or ate as if this were their last meal. Boys will be boys, we say, whatever that means. However, when we spend enough time with them, whether as adults with youth or youth with adults, what we will all learn is that our generalizations are just that and no more and probably just plain wrong.