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.

A NEEDLESS WORRY

One of the greatest worries that church people have about church growth is that we will no longer be a family; we will no longer know “everybody” as we like to put it. The fact is we never did. We never did know everybody in the church if that church had a full-time rector. Early on in my ministry when I served two small missions, there were people in each mission who knew everyone in their little congregation. But not everybody knew everybody. When I moved to a small parish, no one knew everyone. And yet the fear was voiced that we would lose that family atmosphere if the church grew. It was a needless worry and not because we didn’t grow. We did.

Josh Hunt in his book Let Us Grow says this: “Research has demonstrated that in a small church the average person knows about 65 people. In the larger church, also, the average person knows the same number. In other words, the size of the congregation has nothing to do with how many people one knows. The real issue is allowing the gospel to spread wider that any particular circle of friends.”

Isn’t that freeing! We no longer have to be afraid of how big we become. We no longer have to worry about not knowing everyone. We can even admit that we never knew everyone anyway and not feel guilty about it. We did before, didn’t we? We always thought it was somehow a failure on our part if we did not know everyone in the church. We thought it was a flaw of the church if the 8:00 churchgoers did not know the 10:00 churchgoers when, in truth, the 8:00ers did not even know all of the other 8:00ers. The only way that would happen is if the church grows too small and we don’t want that!

The other issuer, as Hunt notes, is that we somehow believe that everyone in church should be a personal friend. That, too, is impossible. What is important is not who we know or how well we know them, but what we have in common. And that which we have in common is our faith in Jesus Christ. That is why we come together each week: to share our faith. If, in the process, we also share family stores and problems, all well and good. But that is not why we gather as a church family. We are a circle of faith, not a circle of friends – first. Faith first; friendship second. That is not to say that we should not invite or friends to join our circle of faith. We should, if they are truly our friends.

Friendship can grow or diminish. Friends can come and go. But faith remains. If Jesus were to inquire about our church family, he would not ask about how friendly we are but how faithful we are. That’s the true test of any parish. We may not know everyone in the directory, only about 65 or so. But we need to know if we are a faithful and faith-filled group of people, even a group of friends as well. We need not worry about the largeness of our congregation but about the largeness of our faith. The more we live out our faith, the more we will grow. It goes with the territory, as they might say. Faith begets faith. It also begets true friendship. That is something for any congregation to truly rejoice in and not worry about, is it not?

IT’S NOT A PROBLEM UNTIL IT’S MY PROBLEM

Ever since Adam and Eve got the boot from paradise (heaven-on-earth), it seems that the world has been going to hell in a handcart. The world has certainly not been all that heavenly for as long as anyone can remember: problems, problems and more problems. And for the moment it’s not from where or whence the problems have arisen. Suffice it to say that problems are usually the result of one or two reasons: selfishness or dumb luck. Either we deliberately do that which will eventually – or immediately – cause us and others or are the result if being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What does matter are the problems that confront us now and not the reasons for them in the first place. For one of the main problems with problems is that we spent so much time trying to figure out what went wrong or why it went wrong or whom to blame that we never have the time or energy to deal with the problem itself, whatever the problem.

The other problem with problems is that it is not a problem until it is my problem: until it confronts me head on, until I can no longer avoid it, escape it or try to justify it. Until then the problem is someone else’s problem. But once it is my problem, then I have no choice nut to confront it, deal with it, try to solve or understand it, live with it.

And where do we confront these problems most especially? In our family. When a problem becomes a family problem, my family’s problem (however we define problem), then it is now my problem. G. K. Chesterton once observed: “The common defense of the family is that, amid the stress and fickleness of life, it is peaceful, pleasant and at one. But there is another defense of the family, and to me evident: its defense is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and not one.” In other words, it is full of problems. In other words, we have to work at it inside the family.

Philip Yancey: “It is safe to say that I have learned more abut grace, forgiveness, diversity – and, yes, original sin – from my family than from all the theology books I have read…so troublesome issues like divorce and homosexuality [problems to some/many] take on a different cast when you confront them not in a state legislature [or a church gathering/convention] but in a family reunion.”

It is also safe to say that when problems are confronted on a very personal basis, when they are family problems – and the church is a family, is it not? – then we can begin to se those “problems” from a personal perspective and begin to deal with them with compassion and understanding, something we are unlikely to do when the problems are someone else’s problems.

We will never make earth heavenly, but we can make it a little less hellish. What we need to do is understand that every problem, is really a family problem, and thus, ours, and deal with it as best we can and not find an excuse why we should not.

THEY JUST DON’T GET IT

A while back I saw a t-shirt with this delightful observation on the back: “Heaven is where the police are British, where the chefs are Italian, where the mechanics are German, where the lovers are French and it I all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, where the chefs are British, where the mechanics are French, where the lovers are Swiss and it is all organized by the Italians.”

I suspect most of us would agree and with a smile on our face. But there would be those who would say the T-shirt was stereotyping people. Well, of course! But I would assert that the observation is more typical than stereo. Italian cuisine over British? No contest. Swiss vs. Italian governing? No contest. Italy has averaged two parliaments a year since WWII. Rather the point of the observation is that we are all different, that it takes all kinds and types of people to make up this world, this country, this church of ours. But there are those who just don’t get it.

I love the Olympics. Athletes from all over the world come together to test their skills against one another. Fierce but friendly competition because each knows the work it took to just get to the Games let alone winning a medal. I always root for the athletes from the USA but truly enjoy the side-stories of other athletes from around the world and the work and hardships they went through to make it to the Games. Every athlete deserves a medal just for making it that far.

Some would say that the tongue-in-cheek T-shirt philosophy or that behind the Olympic Games is all hokum, a pipe dream, even wrong. They would say that those of us who believe we are all equal even though we are all different, of different types and cultures, that we just don’t get it. It is they who just don’t get it. It is precisely our diversity that makes this world, and especially this country of ours, such a wonderful place to live in, even with that which is not so wonderful – and there is a lot of that to be sure.

Diversity is what makes for growth. If we all looked, thought, believed alike, it would be the most boring world to live in. If that were the case, my guess is that there would be rebels who would somehow rise up to challenge our thinking, acting and believing. The truth is we have too many rebels or rebels who rise up for the wrong reason: they want everyone to be and think and believe and act as they do. And, sadly, they often use violent means to try to force and enforce their beliefs. They will never succeed in spite of their efforts. We are just too diverse as a people.

If blame is to be found why Italians, by and large, are better cooks than the British and the Swiss are better than governing that the Italians and Norwegians are better in Winter Olympics than Summer, then that blame rests entirely on God’s shoulders. God created us different. If God wanted us to be all alike, that is the way God would have created us. Those who think otherwise just don’t get it.