TEACHER, POLICEMAN, SERVANT

There are many ways to get a point across, to make known what should be done in this or that instance. The first way and the most obvious way is to be a teacher. A teacher stands in front of the class prepared to teach a lesson. She has prepared herself to use words and examples on how best to get across the lesson, is ready to answer questions if she hasn’t been clear enough. At the end of the class she hopes that the lesson she taught was understood by one and all.

What she cannot be certain of, even if she is certain everyone clearly understood the lesson, is that each student would incorporate that lesson into his or her life, never forget what was taught and then live the lesson fully and faithfully. That is the dream of every teacher and the goal of every lesson taught but it is not always the lesson learned nor the lesson lived. A teacher can only teach; she cannot do anything to make certain that the lesson is lived.

Thus, is would seem, that another person is needed to make certain that the lesson taught is the lesson lived and that is the policeman who enforces the lesson. His message is that unless we do what we have been taught to do, there will be a penalty to be paid, a punishment to be enforced. The student may not want to do what has been taught because he has been taught and he knows that it is the right thing to do but will do it because he does not want to pay the penalty for disobeying and disregarding the lesson.

Teachers can teach a lesson in words and policeman can enforce that lesson though fear but the only real way to get the lesson across is to live it. That is the role of the servant. The servant teaches by lived example and can only hope that the example of his or her life is sufficient to keep the student who has truly learned that living lesson from going astray. It is a hope but is also no guarantee.

Our goal as Christians, as followers of Jesus, is to teach as Jesus taught: in words, for certain. The only police tactics Jesus employed were to remind his students that the only thing they had to fear from not following the lesson he was teaching was the pain they would bring upon themselves if they did not. Selfishness always catches up to us. But Jesus taught mostly by the example of his life but even that was no guarantee that the lessons taught would be lessons followed.

There is a story about a mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kyle 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.’” Kyle turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”

The truth is that no matter how well the lesson has been taught to us, and no matter how deeply ingrained into the our being the lesson is, and no matter how terrible and painful the punishment is for not following that lesson, and no matter how great the example we have observed, there is still no guarantee that we will live the lesson. See above: Kyle.

PURGATORY AND HELL

When I was growing up, purgatory was assumed to be my first destination when I died. After all, being human and being a sinner I was going to die in some state of sin, hopefully not in a state of mortal sin, which would consign me to hell for eternity. There was that fear, of course, fear that if I indeed did commit a mortal sin and did not get to confession before I died, hellfire and brimstone waited my unfortunate soul.

Purgatory was the place – or at least the state of being because I had no idea what type of being I would be in death – where I would first go in order to be purgated, if that is a word, cleansed of my sins before I would be allowed into heaven. What that purgation consisted of and how long it would last and, even more, how painful it might be, was left to my imagination. But no matter how long or how painful, it would certainly be better than hell.

Purgatory is no longer of concern. It hasn’t been for a long time because purgatory is, frankly, not theological. If we believe Jesus died to save us, to free us from our sins, to forgive our sins, then our sins are forgiven. Period. If, however, we believe that when we die, we die in sin, and we do, but those sins still need to be cleansed, then what we are saying is that Jesus’ death on the cross was insufficient. I have not found anyone who would dare maintain that it wasn’t.

On the other hand, if we do not hold that Jesus died for our sins, we have to hold that God is, as we believe, love, Love Itself. And love, certainly Love, always forgives. Period. No ands, ifs or buts; no exceptions. So whether Jesus died for our sins or our sins are forgiven because God loves us unconditionally and forgives us unconditionally, there is thus no need for purgatory.

Purgatory in the life to come, that is. I still believe in purgatory and I still believe in hell. I believe that I – all of us – go through our purgatory in this life. We know, certainly believe, that our sins are forgiven. And they are. They are wiped away. But what remains and what God cannot do and will not do is wipe away the effects of our sins, the pain our selfishness causes to those we love and even to ourselves.

Going through purgatory, for me at least, is that journey from sinning, through realizing what I have done and the pain my selfishness has caused to others, especially to those I love most, coming to terms with that selfishness, doing all I can to redress the harm I have caused and resolving, to the best of my ability and with God’s grace, to not to it again. There is no guarantee, however, that I will not sin again and that I will go through another bout of purgatory, but hopefully it will be less painful the next time.

I believe in the purgatory of the here-and-now, not of the hereafter. I also believe in a hell in the hereafter, but not a hell I may be consigned to because of my sins but a hell I have freely chosen. God does not send us to hell. We freely choose to be without God for all eternity in death. Is such a choice possible?  Yes, unless we willingly and freely choose to go through the many purgatories of this life. But the choice is ours and not God’s.

BEING ON THE WAY IS THE WAY

Every parent has heard more than once the plaint from the back seat, “Are we there yet?” Children by their very nature are impatient. They have no concept of time or distance. When my sister was teaching school, on her birthday she always used to ask her first-graders how old they thought she was. Their answers ranged from 10 years to 100. They had no idea. She always appreciated the “25” response and choked on any response well past her real age at the time.

To children ten minutes is no different than ten hours, three miles no different than three hundred. What they care about is the moment. They want what they want right now, not ten minutes from now. They want grandma’s house to be right around the next bend and now twenty miles down the road. That is their way. They do not want to be on the way; they want to be there…and now.

As adults we are really no different. We want to get where we are going, wherever it is we are going, and we want to be there now. We may enjoy being on the way, but we would rather already be there: at the office, at the beach, at church, wherever. We would prefer not to have to wait fifteen minutes for our prescription to be filled, two months for the surgery just to be scheduled, six years to retirement. Right now would be best.

Our impatience with time and distance notwithstanding, the fact is that being on the way is the way, the way of life. While there will always be a destination towards which we are headed – grandma’s, retirement, even heaven – what is important is what is happening on the way. What is important is what we are doing on the way to wherever it is we are heading. What is also important is what God is doing along our way, both with us and for us on this journey.

What is also important to remember is that the road we are on is not the road to perfection: the perfect visit, the perfect day at work, the perfect life. Nothing we ever do will ever be done perfectly. We can always do something better even if it is only infinitesimally better. We will never be the perfect child, the perfect spouse, the perfect Christian. We will always fall short.

None of this means that we need not try to be better or to do better simply because we will never be perfect. It does mean that we don’t beat ourselves up over the fact that we were less than perfect, that somehow God is going to judge us harshly because we came up short, or because we come up short again and again and again. God knows our imperfections. That is why God is always with us on our journey.

That is also why we must be more attentive to what we are doing on the way rather than what is at the end of the path. We are always on the way even in death. For in death we are on the way to new life. My suspicion is that even in death, even in the resurrected life to come, we will still be on the way. We will still be growing, learning something new, experiencing something we never experienced before. Always being on the way, no matter how long it takes, is the way of life. We need to enjoy the trip.

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.