MORE THAN SKIN DEEP

Rachel Joyce in her novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry tells the story of a retired gentleman who goes on both an unlikely and unintended pilgrimage. Harold Fry receives a letter from a former colleague who tells him that she is dying of cancer. He writes her a letter to cheer her up and promises to come see her, encouraging her to hang on until he gets there hoping that his visit will somehow lift her spirits and perhaps even reverse the cancer.

Harold writes the letter, places it an envelope, puts a stamp on the envelope and heads to the mailbox to send it on its way. When Harold arrives at the mailbox, instead of depositing the letter, he keeps on walking, eventually all the way to the nursing home where she resides – 500 miles away.

Harold has no change of clothes and his yachting shoes are not made for such excursions, certainly not 500 miles worth. He has no cell phone, indispensable these days, and little cash; but he does have a credit card which he uses to find lodging along the way when he can’t sleep under trees and pay for food to keep up his strength for the journey. The only problem is that he knows the money he is spending (wasting? he wonders) is depleting the retirement funds he and his wife are counting on to see them through the rest of their lives.

No one knows about Harold’s adventure in the beginning, not even his wife. But eventually word gets out and he begins to attract hangers-on who make part of the journey with him. He also attracts the attention of the press, print and video. He becomes a curiosity piece to many. But he also becomes somewhat of a folk hero as well. Joyce writes: “They believed in him. They looked at his yachting shoes, and listened to what he said, and they made a decision in their hearts and minds to ignore the evidence and to imagine something bigger and something infinitely more beautiful than the obvious.”

What people, at least some people, began to see in Harold went much further than skin deep. They saw what was not visibly obvious to those who see no further than their own noses, as it were. Those who saw with different eyes were able to look beyond the outward appearances and into the depths of this man, this pilgrim, and see so much more. And they knew deep in their hearts that if there were so much more to Harold Fry, then there was so much more to the one who looked back at them every morning in the bathroom mirror. And that gave them hope.

In many ways in his own unacknowledged awareness Harold Fry was a Christ figure. Jesus was constantly reminding those who could not see in themselves what he saw in them: they were good people, people loved by God even though society thought them to be losers, sinners, foolish, whatever. Jesus always looked beyond the surface, beyond the outer appearances, beyond the skin, deep into the person him- or herself. So must we.

We need to see in ourselves and see in others what Jesus sees no matter what the outward appearances may be: a child of God, beloved of God.

 

IT’S NOT DIRECTED TOWARD ME

Church attendance is down all over the world. That is obvious, the megachurches notwithstanding whose members exit the back door as quickly as they enter the front.  There are, no doubt, many reasons for this, much of it the fault of the church itself. Perhaps it is cyclical. Perhaps we are in one of those downturns in the outward observance of religious practices. Perhaps we are awaiting the next Great Awakening to revive church life. Perhaps. Only time will tell.

In the meantime it is always good to explore why less and less people are attending church, especially in the West, the “sophisticated and educated” part of the world. Are we in the West so wise not to be so foolish to think that organized religion is all that important in our daily lives? Have we not found meaning and fulfillment outside the church structure and found guidance for our lives outside of church dogma? Many seem to think so.

Many people these days, according to the poll-takers, claim that while they are not religious, meaning they do not belong to or attend a church, assert that they are indeed spiritual people: spiritual but not religious. Perhaps they are. They claim to get more out of sitting on a bank of a creek soaking in all of God’s creation than they do going to a worship service at some church. They assert that a quiet Sunday at home, reading the paper, drinking a latte they hurried down to the nearest Starbucks to purchase, conversing with their spouse is more fulfilling than formal worship. Besides, they say, “I don’t get anything out of worship.”

They are probably right. To get something out of worship we have to put something in to it. And what we have to put into worship is ourselves. Even more, and the main point of all this, is that worship is not directed toward the worshipper. It is directed to the one we gather to worship in the first place: God. We come to church to worship God, not to be entertained, not to be calmed by the rippling sounds of the creek or the soothing taste of that latte in our hands. Worship was never meant to be entertaining or even soothing.

We call our worship service liturgy. The root meaning of that word in Greek is “public service”. In other words, it means work. Liturgy is truly the work of the people. Worship is to be work, our work of worshipping our God. In fact, when we have concluded our worship, we should be tired, even exhausted because we have put so much of ourselves into that service. Worship is not so much about getting something out of what we are doing as it is about putting all of ourselves into what we are doing. It is indeed work.

It is easy to be spiritual. It is a walk in the park, literally and figuratively. Being spiritual is centering on the self and is all about oneself. It is directed inward. It is difficult, hard work, to be religious, to do what is necessary to be the person God created us to be. Why? Because being religious means being centered outside ourselves: on God and on others. That does not mean that one cannot be religious and spiritual at the same time. In fact, when we are living out our faith, when we are worshipping our God, it is indeed, in word and in deed, a deeply religious and spiritual experience.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Frank, or maybe it’s Ernest, I’m not sure who is who, is reading the newspaper (in the Frank & Ernest comic strip by Bob Thaves), asks, “What concerns you more about politicians, unanswered questions or unquestioned answers?” Lest anyone’s hackles get aroused, let us all admit that while politicians are experts at both not answering specific questions with specific answers and insisting their answers to specific questions be unquestioned, so are we all.

We citizens are even more guilty when we demand of our politicians, our elected leaders, that they give us a simple and short answer to a very difficult and convoluted issue. We want answers and we want answers now and we want the answer to be as least painful to us individually as possible, no pain being the preferred choice. We know in our heads that that is impossible, but that is what we would like and what we want to hear.

There are no simple, easy answers to the many and varied questions, issues, that confront us as a nation, as a world, as a church, even as individual people. What is even more difficult to deal with is that there will always be more questions than answers and that when we have resolved this question, this issue, another will follow right on its heels and probably be even more difficult.

That said, the point of Thaves’ strip is still valid. No one has all the answers: not the President, not the Pope, not you or me. Further, just because we may be in a position of power does not give us the right to believe our answer should go unquestioned or that our response of “because I said so” is sufficient.  Ignoring the question only makes the matter worse because it won’t go away and make it even more difficult to resolve.

And no one answer is the answer. This world, this life, is too complicated for simple, easy, uncomplicated solutions to complex issues. We know that. We know that in our own lives. Personal issues are almost always very complex and cannot be resolved with simple answers. Why? Because more than one person is usually involved in the problem and its resolution. The more people involved, the more complicated and the more difficult the resolution.

And even when the only person involved is our self, when the issue at hand is very and strictly personal, even then the correct response, while simply given, is hardly ever easy to fulfill. The problem of being overweight is simple: eat less. The problem of over-spending is to spend less. The problem of being unkind all too often is to change our ways. The problem can be simply stated and the resolution simply given, but that does not mean it will be easy for us to actually resolve the problem.

The further issue is that we are often our own worst enemy. We do not like to admit that we are both part of the problem and we are also part of the solution, whatever the problem. While we can blame and castigate our politicians for acting like the politicians Frank and Ernest think them to be, all too often in our personal lives in many ways we are they.