JUST BECAUSE IT'S FREE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S FRIVOLOUS

I remember that old Smith Barney (I think it was) commercial where John Houseman (I think he was the actor) used to opine that whatever Smith Barney did they did it the old fashioned way: they earned it. Nothing frivolous about Smith Barney. No freebees with them. If it is free, it really is not worth anything. We get what we pay for -- and all the rest of those sage bits of wisdom we were raised on.

For the most part those words of wisdom are true perhaps because we make them true and have learned from experience that, in fact, there is much wisdom and truth in them. The old saw among clergy is that a parish in debt is a parish alive. If there are no real money worries, the people tend to become lax. That is not always or even for the most part true, but we tend to believe it anyway, maybe because most churches always seem to have money problems. Or, if for instance, we are given a free ticket to some event, even an event with a hard-to-get ticket, we are prone to not take that event as seriously as the one we paid full price for and had to scratch and claw just to get in line to be able to purchase that ticket.

The real truth, of course, is that the most important possessions we have as far as our faith is concerned are free gifts. We did nothing, absolutely nothing, to earn them -- like life itself, like the grace of God, like forgiveness of sins, like eternal life-in-death. Yet because they are free, we often deem them frivolous in that we truly do not appreciate them for what they are nor make use of them as we should nor believe them to be as real as they are.

It is not that we take them for granted. Would that we would. We would be better off if we did. We would be more content with life and be better able to deal with the trials and tribulations that come our way.

Rather, instead of assuming that God always forgives us and living a life of The Forgiven, we sometimes cannot understand how God or anyone else could ever forgive us for something we just said or did. Instead of assuming that God's grace will always be enough, we sometimes act as if the situation is hopeless and we are helpless. Instead of believing that the bad can be redeemed, we give up hope., and so on and on and on.

The free gifts of God are simply that: free. But that is not what is important. What is important is not that we did anything to deserve or earn them. What is important is that they are gifts of God. Because of that, they can never be frivolous, or undervalued. In fact, we cannot put a price on any of them. They should be so valuable that we treasure them as we would treasure the most priceless material possession we might wish to possess.

From a human point of view, which is the only view we have, perhaps because these God-given gifts cannot be grasped like we can grab hold of the world's most valuable diamond or cannot be earned by the sweat of our brow, we often fail to realize just how valuable they are. We do so at our own loss.

A FALSE, SILLY OR SUPERFICIAL FAITH IS BETTER THAN NO FAITH AT ALL

Believers believe. Believers don't know. Believers would like to know but can live with not knowing. That is not to say that believers are stupid or foolish or are prime candidates to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. It is simply to say that believing is better than not believing; having faith, even a weak faith, is better than having no faith at all.

People of faith, for example, believe that there is life in death, that resurrection to eternal life takes place when we die in this life. Believers have absolutely no idea what heaven is like, none whatsoever and are okay with that. If any believer says that she or he does, offer to sell him the Brooklyn Bridge and check her off your list of people to talk to when having doubts.

However, all believers, we, you and I, have some vision of what heaven, eternal life, is like. We try to imagine what it means to be raised up in death, to live forever, to be able to see God "face to face." We know, know, we will be totally surprised by what we will indeed experience in death, that our present vision will pale with what we will experience.

But we can live with both not knowing what eternal life is all about and knowing that we are in for the surprise of our lives. For in the final analysis having a false, silly or superficial vision of heaven is better than having no vision at all.

Some would object, of course, especially those who do not believe. But that's all right. That is their problem, their problem. But, in a very real way, it is also our problem. We believers have an obligation to share our belief with unbelievers. But the essence of our faith is resurrection in death to eternal life. How do we convey what we believe to another when we have no way of describing what we believe except to echo Paul and say that our minds can neither imagine it nor explain it?

What we do is try even as we fail; and fail we will. We will never be able to give more than a silly or superficial vision of heaven and the one or ones we do give will, of course, always be false. But it is not our inability to explain the unexplainable that is the issue. What is is that we have enough faith to defend the unexplainable and do it not by words but by deeds. We explain our faith in eternal life by living out our faith as fully as we can in this life.

What keeps us going is our willingness to accept that our vision of life in death, no matter how silly, superficial or false, is better than no vision at all. That vision encourages us when we doubt and fills us to overflowing when we are at the top of our faith. That vision is also what encourages those who do not believe whether we believe it or not.

If we have any doubts, consider Paul who taught his faith by living his faith and not by explaining it. Yes, he tried. But in the end he knew that the only proof of what he taught and believed was the life he lived. That was enough for him and that, in the end, is enough for us.

RIDING IN THE PASSENGER SEAT

It is probably safe to say that 99% of the time that I am in a car I am doing the driving. It is not that I do not trust anyone else to do the driving for me. My wife is a better driver than I am. It is not a macho thing either. I do not have a need to be in control. It is simply the fact that most of the time when I am in a car, I am driving. Now that we are down to one car because we now have found no need to have two, we share the driving; but I still do most of it.

On those rare occasions when I am sitting in the passenger seat, I rediscover the truth that I miss most of what I would have seen had I not been driving. I see things that I never saw before even though I have passed them hundreds of times. That is as it should be. If I were to look around while driving to see all those sights I see when I am sitting in the passenger seat, I would not have a driver's license. I might not even be alive to ponder such thoughts. 

The truth of the matter, however, is that I need to leave the driving to someone else more often than I do, literally and figuratively. I suspect we all do. It is so easy, all too easy, to get tunnel vision, to see everything from one perspective. When we become so myopic, we also so easily insist that what we see is really the truth, the whole of reality. But the truth is that we don't know the half of it because we have seen or experienced even less than that.

But the only way that we can see from another perspective is to deliberately take another seat. It is truthfully said that we cannot know how another sees life until we walk in that other person's shoes and walk in them for quite a few miles. So, too, the only way we can get another view of the reality that is our life is to be willing to deliberately take a look from another perspective. Doing so may not make us change our mind, nor does it have to because our view may be the correct one; but at least we have something to which we can compare our original beliefs.

That is not to say that what we believe is wrong. It is simply to say that, as someone else has observed, the unexamined life is really not a life worth living. The examined life presumes that we change seats every once in a while and that we change them intentionally and willingly. Those are the operative words intentionally and willingly.  It must be our choice to change seats, if you will. When we are forced to do anything, our first reaction is to resist and resist mightily. If someone forces us to examine our faith by pushing his beliefs on us, we tend to instantly close our minds to what we hear and defend our beliefs with all that we have.

But examine our life and our faith we must if only to allow ourselves to grow in that faith. Faith, like life, is never static. It either grows or it dies. It does not remain the same because faith, like life, is a living reality. Growing in our faith is akin to intentionally asking my spouse to take the wheel so that I can see some of what I have been missing when I have been in the driver's seat. We need to take a ride in the passenger seat of faith -- often.  Move over and see what you’ve been missing!

ENJOYING WHAT GOD'S DONE FOR US

My favorite contemporary theologian, the late Robert Capon, in his last tome, The Fingerprints of God, reminds us, as the title indicates, that God's fingerprints can be found everywhere one looks from the beginning of time and not just at certain specific moments in history.

When we read Scripture, we are wont to believe God's interaction into history is sort of the hit-and-miss variety. God shows up at the beginning and creates the world, intervenes in the Garden, comes back around Noah's time, takes a long break until he makes a pact with Abraham -- and that is only for starters. As for God's being seen elsewhere in the world, or anywhere in the world, or at all, well...only for those who have the eyes of faith to see.

For it is faith that gives us those all-seeing eyes, gives us the ability to see God at work in our lives and all around us, gives us the ability to enjoy what God has already done for us and is still doing for us day in and day out -- which is precisely Capon's definition of faith. He says that "faith doesn't do anything; it simply enables believers to enjoy what Jesus has already done for them." The emphasis is on "enjoy" and on "already done." What God is still doing for us is icing on the cake, if you will.

What God, Jesus, has already done for us is forgive us for sins committed past, present and future. Faith says that we do not have to do anything to have our sins forgiven. In fact, we cannot do anything. Either God forgives our sins in Jesus or we are stuck with them. Anything we might do or want to do or think we have to do to get God to forgive our sins will always come up short and will never be enough.

And if that were the case, if we had to do something to obtain forgiveness, then faith in God would not be enjoyable in the least, and neither would trying to live a faith-filled live -- because that would be an impossibility. We would be worrying every minute of every day that we weren't getting it right, which, of course, is impossible to do anyway.

Thus, in order to enjoy this life God has given us, we have faith that however much we mess up -- and we all mess up big time at times -- we can go on knowing that we have already been forgiven in and through Jesus. That doesn’t justify the messing-up. It simply allows us to be able to pick ourselves up and move on rather than getting stuck in remorse and even fear of some kind of retribution on God’s part.

Capon's irreverent view of this life (and for which I have always enjoyed reading his works) is one giant cocktail party where everyone is toasting God's love and forgiveness. Not a bad picture even if, personally, cocktail parties leave much to be desired. One big pizza party would be more to my liking and imagining, but you get the point.

Because of Jesus's birth, life, death and resurrection and our faith in that, all we have to do is enjoy the fact that we are forgiven sinners. I'll have a slice of pizza to that, or maybe even two. And you?

FIRE AND WATER

Recently I have been rereading Ronald Rolheiser's The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. It is probably the best work on spirituality that I have ever read. That is why it deserves a reread. There is just too much there to comprehend the first time through.

Rolheiser maintains that in each one of us there is a never-ending desire, a fundamental dis-ease, that will not allow us to be satisfied, ever. It is akin to running with wolves, having a fire in the belly. We cannot explain it; we just know it is there. Spirituality, he says, is what we do with this unrest, this dis-ease, this fire, this desire to keep on running, never standing still, if you will.

But as with any fire, if it gets out of control, we can be consumed by whatever it is that is driving us. So there is a need to have water ready to toss on the fire, not to put it out, but to keep it under control. Spirituality is about how we channel our desires, whatever they are and however we define or understand them, so that we do not get out of control, subsumed, consumed, by our desires. That, in a way, is what sin is all about: it is about giving in to an all-consuming desire to do or say something even though we know that to do so is wrong.

The opposite of being spiritual is to have no energy, to be unable to do anything, to lose all zest for living, to be a couch potato. Spirituality, then, has to keep us glued together so that we do not roll up into a ball and die. A healthy spirituality keeps us, he says, both energized and glued together.

A healthy spirituality does that. I don't know about you, but it seems that sometimes I am either so glued together that I am stuck or so loose that I am not sure which way to turn. Most of the time I am somewhere in the middle, neither stuck nor loose. Spirituality is about making choices. Healthy spirituality is about making the right choices, or at least making more right choices than wrong choices.

This drive, which Rolheiser calls "eros," is soul, soul that gives us energy. But it is also the glue that keeps us together. It puts fire in our veins and keeps us energized; and it adds water to the mix and keeps us glued together. There is chaos and there is order. It is the creative tension between the two, between fire and water that both keeps us alive and keeps us safe.

All this, I suspect, sounds rather esoteric, and maybe so.  Our own spirituality is something we never quite get a handle on. We know what it is even if we cannot define it or even describe it. We know when we are on fire and we know when we seem stuck in the mud. And we often do not know what to do about either.

And this is only for starters! We do have to recognize what is going on inside us if we want to even begin to understand ourselves. If there is any consolation, even the greatest saints had problems with their spiritual lives. So will/do we.

LEARNING HOW TO RECEIVE

The church is really good at reminding us that it is better to give than to receive. We take up collections every Sunday, have special offerings to purchase a new organ or to build a home for a family. We ask for funds on a regular basis for the Rector to use for helping others and ask for donations to support children in other lands so that they can have a decent education -- and the list seems go on and on and on.

We have bake sales and bazaars, book sales and rummage sales, car washes and spaghetti dinners, and anything else anyone can think of to raise needed monies for needed causes. Then, of course, there is the annual Every Member Canvas that is fast approaching.

All this is not a criticism. It is simply the truth. There are better ways, I suspect, to raise funds, but that is not my issue at the moment. Nor do I wish to debate the fact that it is better to give than to receive. It truly is and we all know it.

But sometimes we can get the impression that there is something wrong in receiving; we sometimes give that impression as well. We sometimes believe that if we are on the receiving end of someone else's giving, we are somehow inferior to, that we are of lesser worth than, the giver. That is nonsense, of course, but we do sometimes give that impression as givers and have that feeling as receivers.

We also often feel that when given a gift, we have to reciprocate somehow in some way. We find it difficult, at times, believing that a gift is given with no strings attached, that it is given simply out of the love.

Neither giving nor receiving comes easy. Why that is true, I am not sure. But I do find it to be true. As children we have to be taught to share our toys with others. In fact, as children we find it easier to take than to give, to hoard rather than to share. It takes a lot of time and teaching for us to realize how good it is to share what we have, share from our abundance with those who have less.

What we then assume is that because it is good to give, it must be bad, or at least not as good, to receive. So now we have to learn how to receive and learn that it is just as good to receive as it is to give and that there is nothing wrong with being on the receiving end. That is a truly difficult lesson to learn.

We are on the receiving end more often than we think. We receive gifts of love, kindness and caring; we receive homecooked meals and calls and letters. We receive everyday gifts every day. We receive perhaps as much as we give, and maybe even more.

What we fail to understand, I think, is that a gift is a gift is a gift. Difference in kind or degree or need makes no difference. It makes no difference if I need a meal because I can no longer cook than if I need a hug because I just need one. Gifts are gifts. It does not really matter who gives them or how much we need them. We simply need to receive them thankfully and joyfully.

STAYING GROUNDED

It's hard to be humble when everyone thinks you're wonderful. I am not speaking of myself, of course. Yeah, right. I suspect that we all have a little trouble with humility now and then. We all like to think or want to think that we are a little better than we are and certainly better than others think we are or perceive us to be. It certainly helps when we are having a bad day for whatever reason we are.

It is easy to live under the illusion that because we are not all that bad, that we are pretty good, that we are even wonderful and that God loves us just as we are. The truth is that we are pretty good and sometimes do wondrous things and that God always loves us. In fact, as the late evangelist Luis Palau once very astutely observed, "God is not disillusioned with us."

Oh, that was only the first part of his observation. The second half? "He never had any illusions to begin with." Talk about a blow to our pride. Palau hits us over the head with a sledgehammer with that. But we need to be reminded that we need to stay grounded. God knows us better than we know ourselves. We are mere mortals after all. We are God's gift and we are God's gift to the world -- just like everyone else.

I remember way back when I was first ordained. Humility was not one of my virtues even though I thought I was ever so humble. You see, I had all the answers and I knew I had all the answers. All you had to do was ask me and I would and could tell you what was wrong with the church and what should be done. In fact, there were times when I stood in the pulpit and smugly pontificated about some issue. I had a lot to learn and a lot of growing up to do. I am ever thankful to all those kind and loving people who hit me over the head with a sledgehammer when I became too full of myself.

All this reminded me of what a mother of another newly ordained priest said to her son as he was basking in all the praise people were heaping on him. She said, "I used to think priests knew everything. Now I worry because you are a priest and I know you don't know anything." That was a sledgehammer if I ever heard one! Now I have to wonder if my own mother thought the same thing about me. She probably did but was too kind to say it. She simply prayed every day that I would not make a fool of myself and save her from the embarrassment I might cause to the family.

Of course, now that I am older and wiser and more mature and have over fifty years of experience, I definitely have all the answers. Just ask me. Come to think of it, isn’t that what my audacity in writing and sending reflections like this seems somehow in some way to indicate?

Seriously, it is so easy to live with the delusion that we are wiser than we really are or worse than we really are. When I think about it, I am not sure which is worse. Staying grounded, being honest with ourselves both about our failings and shortcomings and our God-given gifts is a never-ending battle. It is only through the grace of God that our pride does not do us in more often than it should.