THE BETTER CHOICE

Some of my best friends are lawyers. That is no joke even though for every lawyer there is at least one lawyer joke that, while close to the truth, misses the mark. Next to clergy lawyers are the most ridiculed and maligned professionals. For every ten clergy depicted on television, nine are absolute idiots or complete fools. Lawyers, at least on television, get a better break. Lucky them.

All that notwithstanding, someone once observed – and not in any way slandering or maligning lawyers – that as Christians we are called to be witnesses, not lawyers. And that we are. The problem, of course, is that too many of us who profess to be Christians and far too many of us who are in positions of leadership, namely we clergy (and bishops, too), spend an inordinate amount of time and energy in being lawyers than in being a witness to our faith.

Playing lawyer (and, of course, judge and jury), is the easier way. One does not have to be a lawyer to stand in judgment of another, to call someone to task for not living out her faith as she is supposed to do, to proclaim certain actions to be sinful and those who commit them to be sinners. One does not have to stand in the pulpit to be a bully. All one has to do is open one’s mouth in critique and criticism.

That is not to say that we should be uncritical or, even worse, ignore wrongs when we see them being done, when we observe sin being committed. Silence in the face of wrong is just as sinful as the wrong being committed. It takes courage to call a spade a spade, to confront the guilty party.

Most of us fail mightily in this regard. We excuse ourselves by claiming another person’s sin or misdeed is none of our business. Jesus was never silent in the face of sin and wrongdoing. He got himself nailed because of his honesty and outspokenness, but he knew he had no other choice. He had to speak no matter how difficult that would be and no matter the consequences to his personal wellbeing. So do we.

However, the point at hand is that is all to easy to take another person or a group of people to task, to name them as sinners while taking the high ground and proclaiming oneself to be free of that particular sin. It is much more difficult to plug away at our faith, living it as best we can from day to day, failing often, asking for forgiveness even more often, and letting our loving actions speak to those who may be less so.

We are indeed called to be witnesses and are instructed to leave the judging to God. If we want to take anyone to task, if we want to put anyone on the witness stand and grill that person with a skillful lawyerly cross exanimation, the first person who should take the stand is ourself. If we held ourselves to the same standards as we hold others, both we and they might be better off and better people.

We are called to be witnesses to our faith in Jesus, first, last and always. If we have any time left over, we might use it to rest rather than pretend we are the prosecuting attorney.

FORGIVENESS: THE FINAL FORM OF LOVE

Reinhold Niebuhr, in his The Irony of American History, opined: “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love: forgiveness.”

The cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are extensions of the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. Practicing them enables us to be more faithful, more hopeful and more loving. Both sets of virtues take work, hard work and we never, ever, at least not in this lifetime, ever become proficient in practicing any one of them. We are always learning how to be more of whatever that virtue is at the moment on which we are focusing our attention.

Thus, as Niebuhr observed years ago, because we have learned that being virtuous is a reward in and of itself, that it benefits us; and because we have also learned that we will never be an expert in any one virtue, in any virtue, in our lifetime, we are saved from despair by hope. Hope reminds us that while we will never be perfect, we can always get better. That is all God asks of us and all that we can ask of ourselves. We must not ever give up on trying to be more virtuous.

Even more, even though the truly beautiful or the humblest of the holiest stand out as examples of what perfection may be like, there is too much imperfection around us, even cheek-by-jowl to the beautiful and living next door to the saint that we are left to wonder why we should try to so hard to be so good. The world today does not seem to be any better, any more beautiful, any more anything than it was in Jesus’ time or at any time. It may not be worse, but it is a test of our faith to hang in there to do whatever we can to make some semblance of a difference in our little corner of this world.

The task is so great that no one can do it alone, not even Jesus, which is why he gathered disciples around him and them left them the task to continue the completion of his work. But that work cannot be done alone. It must be done with and in and through community. Doing so demands that those who are part of that community, that church, that congregation, however large or small it is, must love one another and not be at enmity with others.

That work is still incomplete because they and we and everyone in between have failed at least in some way to do his or her or our part. We have not been as virtuous as we know we could have been or should have been and the road ahead, given our past unfaithfulness, does not look any better. What allows us to move on is the knowledge that we have been forgiven by God for our failures. The task that lies before each and every one of us to accept that forgiveness, to forgive one another and to live more faithfully, more hopefully and more lovingly every single day.

CROSSES AND THORNS

In Second Corinthians Paul reflected on what he called his thorn in the flesh that constantly bugged him. It got so bad that he finally had to ask God to do something, that something being to rid him of this ailment. That God would not do. Instead, God simply reminded Paul that God’s grace would suffice. It would be all he needed to endure the pain and go on. And so it was.

We’ve all been there, perhaps, in fact, are there. We all endure those thorns in the flesh, pains in the neck, or whatever we happened to call them at the moment. They are real. They hurt. And they are not going to go away. Paul had to live with his thorn in the flesh and so do we. God reminded Paul and God reminds us that even though the pain remains, God’s grace and our cooperation with that grace will keep us going.

There are times when we confuse those thorns in the flesh by calling them crosses we have to bear. They are not. There is a real distinction between crosses and thorns. Those thorns that pain us come with the territory of being human. They can range from dealing with teenage daughters who not only think you are an idiot but tell you so on a regular basis, to a boss who thinks everyone should sell his soul to the company, to the muscle aches and pains that kick in when we try to get up from bed or a chair.

Those thorns in the flesh come from without and from within and are part and parcel of human existence. We may be able to lessen the pain with exercise and vitamins. It may go away with time as the teenagers grow into adults and eventually apologize for the pain they caused and thank you for not killing them when you had every right to do so. It may resolve itself when we get a new boss. The point is that we do not freely choose to endure the pain, the thorn. It arises and we have no choice but to deal with it as best we can and with God’s grace.

Crosses, on the other hand are also painful but quite different. We never, ever have to carry a cross, and cross of any size or shape. We freely choose to carry that cross. Jesus did not have to carry his. He could have walked away. He could have ceased upsetting those who were so angry about his words and deeds. But Jesus freely chose to continue his ministry of love and concern and service to all knowing that in the end he would have to pay for it and pay dearly. A cross, a very real one, awaited him. He knew it but he did what he had to do. He chose to carry that cross.

And so do we. We can refuse to do so as well. No one forces us to do that which is painful: to help the person in need, to walk the extra mile or give the shirt off our back wherever those miles might take us and however much of a sacrifice we might have to make. Yet, as we soon discover when freely giving of ourselves, those crosses are really not all that burdensome and they are often very good for us.

So, too, are those thorns whether realize it at the time or not. When my daughters were teenagers they seemed like heavy crosses to bear. We endured one another, often painfully. Now? Who cares? They love me.  I love them and we have all moved on.

OUR UNUNDERSTANDABLE GOD

One of the givens of having faith in God is that the more we think we understand our God, the less we do. Even more and perhaps more frightening is that the stronger our faith becomes, the stronger our doubts. On the other hand, the more we have our God locked into a box, clearly understood and clearly defined, the less likely we are to be correct. Having faith does not mean we have all the answers any more than it means that we understand the God in whom we place our faith.

Rabbi Daniel F. Polish in an article in America put it this way – “This is a most challenging kind of faith: to live with a God we cannot fully understand, whose actions we explain at our own peril. This God is at the center of our lives. This may be a rockier path to walk than that of either simplistic absolutism or of atheism, but it is the faith of honest men and women, a faith defined by spiritual humility.”

The opposite of spiritual humility, of humility in general, is pride. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and determine who is the one who is humble enough to admit uncertainty about God and God’s will and God’s ways and who is the one so wrapped in his or her own sense of certainty that pride has come to the fore. The truth is that pride often masquerades as humility just as the desire for power wraps itself in fine theological clothing – on any side of any issue, especially about God.

One of the glories of the Episcopal Church, of true Anglicanism, is its theological and sociological breadth. Our sign says “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.” Notice, there is no asterisk on the sign and no small print at the bottom naming those who are not welcomed. Liberals and conservatives and everyone in between, high church and low church and those of no church are welcomed to become part of us. We are all sorts and conditions of people, which is how God created us.

None of us, I repeat, none of us, no one of us, has a lock on the truth or a lock on God. And as much as we sometimes think we come close to understanding God, in reality we haven’t a clue. We make our God into our personal image and likeness and then determine that those who have a different image and understanding to be heretics and to not be welcomed among us. We even encourage them to go their separate ways or we deliberately (and sometimes officially) separate ourselves from them.

That may sound harsh but how else do we explain why there are so many denominations even in Christendom? None of this is pretty and all of it is sad. But it all stems both from our trying to get a handle on the God we worship and profess to follow and obey and the insidious nature of pride that drives us to either deny God exists or claims to understand what God thinks and wants.

As Rabbi Polish asserts, having faith in God often, if not always, means walking a rocky road. We trip over ourselves, over our certainties and uncertainties, over our pride, even over one another. It means being humble enough to admit that we’ll never get everything right and never, ever understand our God and that that’s okay with God.

GOD DOES NOT KNOW THE FUTURE

It seems heretical, I know, to say that God does not know what tomorrow will bring, or even this afternoon. For if God already knows what anyone of us is going to think or say or do at any time in the future (from this moment on), then it means that we have no free will. It means that God has already determined all our thoughts, words and actions –and has since the day we were conceived.

But, no pun intended, that is inconceivable. We are not robots doing what God has programmed us to do. We are human beings with free will who do what we want to do and accept the consequences of those words and actions. God may be pleased or saddened by them, but God does not interfere with our choices. But that does not mean God is absent from our lives.

Our God is God of the present. For God the past is the past and can’t be undone, only to be forgiven or to be thankful – for which God is. God is, if you will, an ever-present IS. God is and always is at every moment in time. What the future, even this afternoon, will be is determined by each one of us. God’s will is that whatever we think, say or do is out of love for God, others and self. But we determine that, not God.

But that does not mean God is not involved, that God sort of stands off on the side and watches creation and take care of itself. God is intimately involved in creation and in each one of us but only in so far as we let God. Climate change, for instance, is as much in our hands as it is in God’s, maybe even more so. Our life is more in our hands than in God’s, but God is involved if we allow God to be.

Isn’t that why we pray? Yes, we pray that God’s will will be done in our lives here on earth, but we have to be willing to do our part: to do what we believe is God’s will even if we are not always sure what that will is. And when we do not know what God’s will might be, we pray that our will will be God’s will.

Let me give you a very personal example. I have recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The treatment calls for two years of hormone therapy and 44 radiation blasts, five days a week until completed. I don’t have to undergo treatment. The choice is mine. I’ve lived a great life for 82+years, totally blessed beyond anything I deserve. But I’m not done living. So I will do my part. My doctor will do her part. The rest is in God’s hands.

Does God want my treatment to be successful so that I can live many more years or is God satisfied that I have lived long enough? I don’t know. That’s why I pray daily that it is God’s will that my treatment is successful. In this matter, I want my will to be God’s will. If it is, I will be thankful. If it is not, I will be thankful for the life God has allowed me to live. What the future brings, no one knows, not even God, but that’s okay. What is important is the present and living it to the fullest, which I intend to do, God willing.

FOCUSING ON OUR GIFTS

When our daughters were growing up, there was a natural rivalry among them. Each wanted to vie for our undivided attention, to be thought of as the “favorite”, with whatever perks that designation might have brought with it. They may have truly understood and even knew that we loved each of them equally, but that never stopped them from at least wanting to be Number One in our eyes.

All that goes, no doubt, with not being an only child. Not only was there a sense of rivalry among them for our love and attention, there was also a little but of jealousy present as well, an envy of the other. Each of the girls had her own gifts – physical, mental and spiritual. The problem was that they seemed to under-appreciate their own gifts and talents while envying those of one or more of their sisters’. I suspect that during those times when they were at each other’s throats or could not stand to be in the same room with a particular sister it was because of this sense of inferiority, of not possessing what the other had.

Three of our daughters could roll out of bed and do cartwheels. The other two were lucky if they didn’t fall out of bed. The two non-athletes, however, had their own gifts which made the other three jealous. As parents all we could do was stand back and watch – and pray that the envy did not progress into more than jealous outbursts. We often made valiant attempts trying to get them to focus on their own gifts rather than those of a sister, but mostly it was a waste of words and a waste of time. They saw what they wanted to see and blinded themselves to what they should truly have focused on.

But, then, don’t we all? Who of us has not found ourselves envying what another has? I’m not talking about material possessions even though such envy does also come to the fore more often than we would like to admit. Rather, there are too many occasions when we envy the gifts and talents of others while either totally overlooking or totally taking for granted those with which we are blessed.

This, too, probably goes along with being human. Whenever we recognize the gifts and talents another possesses, we, at the same time, realize that we are somehow less than we could be, or think we could be. Those of us who sing mostly off-key and who couldn’t play a musical instrument if our life depended on it believe we would be a better person and certainly more fulfilled if we could do one or both.

What we forget when we focus on another’s gifts rather than those of our own is that we are gifted in the way we are, with some gifts and not others, because that is the way God created us. It was God’s choice not to give us a voice likely Sinatra or a musical talent like even a person who sits in the third row of the high school band.

What God expects of us and what we should demand of ourselves is that we be thankful for the gifts with which we have been blessed, focus on them and then use them to the best of our ability. If we do that, we will have enough on our plate and won’t have time to be envious of anyone else.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN

Every morning a close friend of mine sends out a “Thought for the Day” to a few friends. Thankfully, I am one of them. For example: “If you don’t make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness.” Or, “You never look good trying to make someone else look bad.” Or, from Charlotte Bronte: “Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth it has always been a sign that you are alive.”

My favorite: “The world needs more people who light up a room with hope instead of filling it with complaints about the darkness.” There are so many who will not let the sunshine in because they believe that focusing on the bad around us is what everyone wants to hear. When we read the paper, when we listen to the news, all we seem to read and hear is about the bad news, when, in reality, there is so much more good news than bad; so much more.

All we have to do to acknowledge this truth us to examine our own lives. We have so much more to be thankful for than to complain about. Yes, we all have complaints, sometimes, it seems, even more than our fair share, or so we believe. We also have more to be thankful for than, perhaps, our fair share, even though we are often reluctant to admit to that truth. But it is only when we let the sunshine in do we perceive this truth.

Sometimes that is not easy, is it? Why? Because somehow the bad always seems worse than the good. As I age, my body tells me in no uncertain terms that the aches and pains I am now feeling, aches and pains I never felt before, are not going to go away. I can moan and groan and complain, but that will not do any good. They are here to stay. But I am here: blessed to have lived this long, blessed beyond anything I have deserved. Amid my aches and pains the sun shines every day. And I thank God every day for that.

The blessings of my life make any complaints seem trivial and, in all honesty, selfish. My guess this is true for so many of us, perhaps all who read these words. Yes, there are problems in this world, mostly of our own making and mostly because those of us who are so blessed hoard our blessings instead of sharing them with those less blessed. We even strive for more at their expense.

As Christians we are to be a people of hope, a people who will do all we can to let the sun shine in on those for whom there is so much darkness for whatever reason there is. We can stand around and complain about the bad, blame others for it and forget about the good. But that serves no one. When we focus on the bad, forget about the good, we only make everything worse. We cover hope with darkness.

We are called to light up whatever room we are in with the light of hope. That was Jesus’ message. It is what the Kingdom of God is all about. When we live as a people of hope, when we let the sunshine in, we give light to the darkness. So we must.