BURNING BUSHES ARE SOMETIMES JUST BURNING BUSHES

Once one of my favorite articles of clothing had a name. I called it my "Elect-me-to-be-a-bishop-because-everyone-says-I-look-good-in-purple" sweater. Maybe I do look good in purple. That's for others to decide. As long as what I wear makes me look thinner, I'm satisfied. All someone has to say is "That outfit makes you look fat," and it gets taken to Goodwill immediately.

The last reason anyone should be elected a bishop is that the person looks good in purple. Clothing is not even skin deep. Yet there are those whose episcopal veneer is all you get. We've elected people to be bishops -- and rectors and presidents -- for all the wrong reasons. And we've paid dearly for our folly. Yet we did not start out to wind up looking foolish. We wanted to do what was right. We still do.

In wanting to do what is right, what we often do is look for a sign, even a sign from God. Moses' burning bush was a sign to him that God had chosen him and would be with him as he fulfilled God's call. In the important decisions of our lives we all would like some sign from God, some burning bush that tells us that this is God's will. We usually don't get it, not a clear sign anyway. Looking good in purple is not a clear sign. Well, maybe not. Since it is the dumbest reason for electing someone a bishop, it is a clear sign not to.

Every day we have to make decisions. Most are not momentous, only merely mundane: what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what route to take to work, and so forth. In fact, there are probably few decisions in life that are life-changing, that almost cry out for a burning bush so that we can have a clear indication of God's will for us and God's blessing upon us. But even then, we are rarely privileged to come upon that bush. What we usually get is a purple sweater: either a mixed message or no message at all, and even worse, the wrong message.

So how do we know what to do, whom to choose, what is God's will for us? Most of the time we never know for sure ahead of time. It is only in hindsight that we can determine if we made the right choice, that God was with us when we took that leap of faith. That, however, is only one side of the problem we have when making a decision. The other side is that we simply fool ourselves into believing we are doing what God wants us to do because that is really what we want to do in the first place.

We all need help in discerning what to do. Only a fool would think and act otherwise. We need the wisdom and support of other people. We need the grace of God. And we need the continued presence of the Holy Spirit. We need all of this to help us make those life-giving, faith-filling, even life-changing decisions in our lives.

We may never know for sure, never see that burning bush, but at least we won't be so foolish to believe that the call comes from the purple sweater. Our friends, our faith community will be our burning bush, unless, of course, we don't listen. But if we listen, if we support one another in our faith community in our faith journey, more often than not we will make the right decisions and do what God would have us do.

NOTHING SACRED

Granted, I have a vested interest in this: it seems that almost every television show in which either a clergy person or a dad is a character, that person comes across as either a bumbling idiot or a fool or both. They certainly are not depicted as normal human beings. But then, the last time I looked, every clergy person, every dad I have met was never more than human.

The last time I read the Bible, everybody God ever called to follow Him was totally human -- Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Martha, Mary Magdalene. God called them all, warts and all. And they remained human to the very end, which is to say that they remained sinners, filled with foibles and foolishness, just like everyone else. They were not saints, if we define "saint" as one who does not sin. Mother Theresa on her best day sinned probably seven or eight times. My best days don't even come close.

Being a Christian, being a community of Christians, being a church, is a messy business because we are all sinners. We are tempted every day by the beauty of God's creation: the body, the chocolate candy bar, the you-name-it. We are tempted to use and abuse. The more tempting something is, the more beautiful and alluring, the more we want it for ourselves, baptism, ordination, profession of faith notwithstanding. It has been that way from the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end.

We don't suddenly become sinless and immune to temptation because we believe in Jesus Christ. Would that it would be so easy. In fact, life becomes all the more difficult because now we know better. Now we know what is right and what is wrong. That does not mean that nothing is sacred, that we’ll all go to hell in a handcart and we might as well accept that fact. The struggle that we all have is that we know our failings and shortcomings, our sins, and that they do get in the way of our living out of our faith as we know we can and should. Our humanity gets in the way.

And because our humanity is so evident, we sometimes feel that we have an excuse, even a good excuse, why we cannot and even should not be a witness to our faith -- tell others about it. In fact, it is because we are so less-than-perfect that we are even better witnesses than those who are less sinful than we. We have more to tell others about how God has been working in our lives.

We may not understand how God works in us or even why, but we know that God does -every day in every way. And when we tell others about the workings of God in us, when we remind ourselves of how God works in us, we not only share our faith and our faith journey with others, we also make that journey – theirs and ours – a little easier.

One of the reasons why Mother Theresa was such a saint was that she knew she was such a sinner (at least in her own eyes and mind) and that God still loved her, forgave her and wanted her to continue doing His work, witnessing to His love by her love. Is there nothing sacred? Yes. Our humanity, foibles and all, is sacred because it is in and through our humanity that God's work is done today.

FREE TO BE YOU AND ME

For many years, eleven, in fact, I led the Senior High Camp at the Peterkin Conference Center in West Virginia. Every year we would choose a theme for the 12 or so days my staff and I had 100 or so teenagers under our supervision and care. Hormones ran wild. Teenage angst was rampant: Who am I? Who will I be today. What will I be someday? For, as the Prayer for Young Persons puts it, they were “growing up in an unsteady and confusing world.” They still are today.

One summer we used the theme from Marlo Thomas’ song Free to Be You and Me. The words were apropos back then and still are today: “There's a land that I see where the children are free/And I say it ain't far to this land from where we are./Take my hand, come with me, where the children are free/Come with me, take my hand, and we'll live,

“In a land where the river runs free/In a land through the green country/In a land to a shining sea/And you and me are free to be you and me. I see a land bright and clear, and the time's comin' near/When we'll live in this land, you and me, hand in hand./Take my hand, come along, lend your voice to my song/Come along, take my hand, sing a song.”

Some may say the words are silly or childish, but I would beg to differ. The song was a reminder to them (and to us) that as confused as they were about the present and the future (and so are we today), it would only become better if they (and we) walked hand in hand together. They (and we) cannot make this world what God created it to be all by ourself. It is a community (small and large) project. Always has been and always will be.

That is what a community of faith is all about: people of all ages, of all sorts and conditions, or all sorts of opinions, likes and dislikes, working and walking hand in hand together. We are freed up to be who we are and not who someone else wants us to be, which is so much of what those young people were dealing with back then and with they are still dealing with today.

When Jesus called together his followers, he chose people of all sorts and conditions knowing that each had a special gift for the community to be able to carry on his ministry once he left. And they did. They were free to be who each was in order for the community to be and become what it was supposed to be. It was not easy and is still not and probably never will be, but that is life in a confusing and unsteady world.

Those young people are now adults with teenagers of their own who are struggling with the same issues their parents dealt with. Unfortunately, they and we are still looking for and creating that land where the river runs free, where each of us is free to be who we are. We may never arrive at such a place, but it is a vision we need to hold onto when the going gets rough, knowing that we will make it through, as they did, only if we take one another’s hand.

NOT TO…IS TO…

Somewhere in the files that I have been collecting since seminary over 50+ years ago is a poster with this observation by Harvey Cox, retired professor at Harvard Divinity School: “Not to decide is to decide.” Very simply it means that when we have to make a decision if we should or should not do something and we put off making that decision, we have therefore made the decision that we will not to do what we were pondering about. We may change our minds later; but, for now, we have made our decision.

I was reminded about Cox’s observation during a conversation my wife and I had with some close friends. It was about being in the presence of someone or some others who are disparaging another person or group of persons. The temptation is to say nothing because you don’t want to start an argument. The thought is just to say nothing and hope to move on to another topic.

When we choose to do that, however, what we have done is tacitly agree with the statement that was made. When we have decided not to voice our disagreement, what we have done was to silently voice our agreement. There is no getting around that truth. But we do it, don’t we? We’ve all been in situations where we hear something said that we totally oppose, but don’t want to rock the boat, so to speak. And so we remain silent.

Several weeks ago I was waiting for my car to be serviced. In the area where we waited a couple were talking about the President. The gentleman (and I am using that description kindly) said that he “hated that #*#* Biden” I was stunned but decided not to ask hm why he had such hatred. Instead, I asked him to change the channel that was set to Fox News. His look was not kindly and he and his wife simply got up and left the room.

Challenging him was really the Christian response that I should have made. Perhaps he had a valid reason to hate the President and my calling him on it would have forced him to articulate his reasons. On the other hand, his reasons may simply have been from some form of bigotry and that would have forced him to acknowledge that truth. Perhaps. I will never know because I chickened out and allowed my silence to be a tacit agreement to his opinion of the President. Not to agree was to agree.

Challenging another when we disagree does not have start a fight. Simply asking “Why do you believe what you just said?” can start the conversation. It forces the other to justify the position that is being held. Yes, it is a touchy situation. Perhaps the reason that there is so much descension in our country these days is that we don’t challenge one another on why we believe what we believe.

Maybe if I had challenged that gentleman, he may have had to admit he was wrong. And maybe not. But at least he would have known that I thought he was wrong just as my decision not to was wrong. Sadly, my decision not to disagree was to agree

MAKE YOUR OWN #*#* SANDWICHES

A while back I heard a story about a priest who worked in the inner city on the east coast. He spent a great deal of his time trying to feed the homeless and transients who found their way to his city because it was located on a major highway and had more services to offer for those in need. He would go to the local grocery story and purchase fixings for sandwiches for those in need. He made the sandwiches and fed the hungry.

A colleague heard of his ministry and promptly sent him a check for $250 to help pay for the sandwiches. The priest-recipient promptly put the check into an envelope and sent it back to the donor with the message: “Make you own #*#* sandwiches!”

The priest who sent the money thought he was doing something good. And the truth is, he was. The priest who received it wanted him to do something better. It is good to help someone who is helping others. It is better to find those in need and to help them ourselves. It is easy to write a check for someone else to do ministry. It is more difficult to do the ministry ourselves.

We can’t always do that, most certainly. Sometimes all we can do is send a check. Years ago a parish family went to South Africa to do missionary work at a school. It might have been good if we could have gone with them and together do even greater work. But we could not. What we could do and what we did was support them with our prayers and provide funds to ease their burdens.

But then, back then and even now, what we are asked to do is what we can do. The Gospel, our faith, commands us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit those in prison. Sometimes we can do this ourselves and sometimes others have to do it for us because, for whatever reasons, we are not able to do so. But when we can, we must, which was the point of the priest’s returned check and note.

When I heard the story, I laughed to myself. But I also felt guilty, I had to ask myself if I am like the priest who made the sandwiches or the priest who sent the check. It is still a nagging question: what is the best thing I can do, should do? I can always do what is good but what is easier. But to do what is better and more difficult, there’s the rub. To rub elbows with the poor, the needy, whatever the need, with those less blessed, is what we are called to do. Our faith tells us we don’t really have a choice.

Yes, we do have a choice on how we are to help, not whether or not we will. The struggle will be within, as it always is: first, and most importantly, to avoid judging those who are called to serve; then to decide how to serve based on the gifts God has given us; and finally, to discern what is best to do. Do we buy the groceries and make the sandwiches and serve them to those in need or do we financially support those who are doing this ministry or both?

ENCOUNTERING THE RESURRECTION

Easter is upon us: the resurrection of Jesus, an event to remember and celebrate, a day to give thanks. It is all that and more. It is more because it must be more than even a day or an event or even a reason for doing anything. Easter, to be Easter, must be lived to be real. Otherwise, it will remain only a day, and event, a reason to for a season.

For Easter is about a person we are to encounter such as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. As long as the resurrection remained for them an event, a story, their eyes were blinded. But when they saw the resurrection as a person, their eyes were opened.

The same is true for us, is it not? We can tell the Easter story, recount the event as the Gospels do. But it was the person of Jesus who was resurrected, raised up. It is in the person of Jesus-raised-up that the resurrection is encountered and understood.

Yet, can we not go one step further and say that it is in our own person that the resurrection must be encountered, experienced, not only for us to understand Easter, but for others to understand it as well? Can we not say that the resurrection of Jesus must be lived by us, in us; and that is truly the only way that Easter can be proclaimed today? We are Easter People, you and I, not simply because we believe in the resurrection but because others encounter the resurrection in us, encounter Jesus in us.

That can be a little frightening, I think, because it puts a heavy load on our shoulders, on us as present-day heralds of the resurrection. The reason why we can do so, of course, is that Easter, the resurrection, also includes something that happened fifty days later: Pentecost. It is through, and only through, the power of the Holy Spirit, through the grace and strength of God, that we can even begin to live as Easter People. We cannot do it all on our own.

We cannot do it on our own because faith is not lived out on our own. If our faith were merely a story to be told or a catechism lesson to be learned, there would be no need for Spirit-ual help. But because faith is a person, is person-al, it can only be lived. It cannot be deciphered or told.

True faith will never be confused with stories about faithful people. That is not to say that is because people of faith sometimes tell the wrong story about what faith is when they – we – try to live out that faith. We are all less than faith-ful even everyday even as we try our best to be so faithful.

And so we struggle each day to be Easter People, to allow the Person of the Resurrection to live in and be seen in us. Every day we fail, perhaps because of our own unwillingness to do what needs to be done to make the resurrection visible. And, yet, thankfully, every day we succeed through the grace of God. Happy Easter.

THE ENEMIES OF JOY

One of my heroes is the late Henri Nouwen. He had a way of seeing through and into and beyond what most of us only see on the surface. A typical Nouwen observation: "The real enemies of our life are the 'oughts' and the 'ifs.' They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now. God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful or painful."

In other words, God is Now. The past is always passed: it is unalterable. We can lament the past but we cannot do anything about it; and while we are lamenting, we are neither moving on into the future nor able to live in the present. And the only way to get to the future is through the present, through the now and the Now that is God. For it is only in and through God that we can overcome a past that wants to drag us back. It is only through God that we can live now so that we will not have to relive the past.

Of course, that is so much easier to say than to do. It is not easy to see the sun on a cloudy day, to see through the clouds to see the sun. Nouwen again: "I have a friend who radiates joy, not because life [the now] is easy, but because he habitually recognizes God's presence in the midst of all human suffering, his own as well as others'....My friend's joy is contagious. The more I am with him, the more I catch glimpses of the sun shining through the clouds. Yes, I know there is a sun, even though the skies are covered with clouds. While my friend always spoke about the sun, I kept thinking about the clouds, until one day I realized that it was the sun that allowed me to see the clouds. Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.

Thank God for those saints who help us to see the sun for the clouds. They are the ones who help us see those enemies of joy for what they are: enemies, that which would have us live under the cloud of the past and not see the sun that lights us and leads us to a brighter and better and God-filled future.

The reason that we can see the sun for the clouds is what we are about to celebrate: the events of Holy Week. It is our past sins that holds us back, that brings a cloud over the present, that makes the future look so bleak. It is also those sins that Jesus took and takes and continues to take away because of his death and resurrection. For if our sins are not or cannot be forgiven, then there is no future to hope in and the present is surely a time for doom and gloom.

Good Friday reminds us that the past is always and will always be past, that it cannot be undone but only forgiven. Easter reminds us that no matter how bad the past, there is always resurrection, there is always new life. The enemies of joy would have us believe that we cannot be or are forgiven, would have us believe that resurrection only takes place in final death. Holy Week reminds us that we can and must always speak of the sun because the Son of God is the One whose life, death and resurrection allows us to be able to see the sun shine even on the cloudiest of days.