Just in Case

Fifth Sabbath in Lent

Readings:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

In Woody Allen’s movie Love and Death, an elderly Russian Jewish woman peasant approaches a neighbor who has just been hit by lightning. She looks down on a pile of steaming ashes and pronounces “Old Nahampkin, you’re not looking so good ….”

I guess we might have said the same for Lazarus, dead in the tomb for four days before Jesus arrives to set the world topsy-turvy …. Again, as Pastor Johnson points out:

Whenever you’re traveling with Jesus, things are NOT normal ….. things you thought could or would never happen, WILL happen …. Unbelievable, wonderful things!

Because Jesus is the ultimate leader and the ultimate model of servant hood; in fact, as Pastor Johnson has pointed out repeatedly, He leads by serving!! Pastor Johnson very distinctly points out that the story of Lazarus Returns is a metaphor for The Last Supper where Jesus prepares a meal for his friends. Jesus serves his friends in preparing them a meal, in lowering himself to wash their very feet, in being in the very presence of one who will defeat death and restore life abundant, and in showcasing characters, such as Mary, who KNOW when they are in the presence of The Holy. This model for service is one Jesus presents analogies for again and again.

Laurie Beth Jones in her book, Jesus CEO, brings the same point home more than once: Jesus served the very best wine first! She pines that

“We so often save for a rainy day and only bestow affection in small droplets for people …. Perhaps knowing he wouldn’t be here long is what caused him to serve the best wine first. He poured out the best of himself to all he encountered …. So many Bible stories show God, the ultimate leader, preparing banquets, throwing parties, and bringing out the best wine to celebrate the return of an errant child, even a Good Samaritan who takes time out from his mission to assist a battered enemy on the road, saying “Anything else that this man needs, put it on my account.”

This reminded me of a story told by Pastor Johnson some years ago. He was traveling in a neighborhood near Detroit with his good friend, Dick Martzoff. Dick was approached by a beggar on the street who asked for money. Dick took out ALL the change he had in his pocket, held it out to the man, saying “Take what you need”. The beggar took it all. A few blocks later, Dick realized he had not saved out enough change to make a necessary phone call. He went back and asked the beggar for money. The man held out a handful of money, saying “Take what you need”. Dick took enough for the phone call and continued on. He did NOT hold back enough initially “just in case”.

Pastor Johnson eloquently described that we so often hold back from the extravagance shown to Jesus by Mary, always keeping some perfume in reserve, “just in case”. He also points out that whenever we’re extravagant, there’s ALWAYS somebody who’s uncomfortable with lavishness – a voice that says “not too much …. Just in case”.

Do you live in the Land of Just in Case??

When we travel with Jesus, we do not live in this Land. He understands that there will always be loaves and fish enough for all if we’ll only believe. Give first, serve first, ask questions later.

Recently, when a string of tornadoes hit Alabama, many residents were left homeless while only 150 miles away, hundreds of FEMA trailers were left unused because the federal government had not declared the tornado-stricken path a federal disaster area. Government officials were quoted as saying “the trailers could not be sent because they might be needed for more dire circumstances (yet to occur)”. How must this have sounded to those struggling with no roof over their heads, that relief, that service was being “held back …. just in case”?

As Pastor Johnson clearly points out, his favorite verse in the text is that, having had Mary pour out all the perfume extravagantly on Jesus’ feet,

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume”

A place to which we have been invited that had once been overwhelmed with the stench of rottenness and death …. and now exudes the sweet smell of perfume, extravagantly poured out in open admission of being in the presence of The Holy. The perfume IS the love of God. It can and does overpower even the stench of death … if you dole it out lavishly and don’t hold back that reserve “just in case”.

Anoint extravagantly with the costly perfume, serve the best wine first, give from your plenty, not your reserve … and offer it all with these words ‘Take what you need’ and hold back nothing ‘just in case’ …… because Jesus does not live in the Land of Just in Case. If you want to know what it is like to travel that road with Him, that road less traveled, that road en route to Emmaus, outside of Detroit or in Wauwatosa, you have to give it all.

Or, as Pastor Johnson said it:

“When God asks you to serve, how are you going to smell? Are you going to give it all … or are you going to go to ‘The Land of Just in Case’ "??

Nobody Wins Until We All Do

Readings:
Joshua 5:9-12
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Prodigal: wastefully or recklessly extravagant; profuse; lavishly abundant.

Pastor Mohn mentioned this week that the story of The Prodigal Son has been preached on as being about

The Son … perhaps wasteful in his extravagance
The Father … definitely extending a lavish abundance upon his son’s return home

… and about The Brother, who resents the profuse outpouring for his wasteful sibling.

There is a theme that runs through Pastor Mohn’s sermon, it seems to me. And it felt like this:

A brother denies a brother. As Pastor Mohn points out, the brother calls his sibling “his father’s son”, but does not call him “his brother”, a clear denial. Of the brother? Or his actions? Often as humans, we do not distinguish the two, but God calls us to. Yes, we are to be judged, perhaps by Him for our actions, but we are none of clean enough, to judge each other. As Pastor Johnson has reminded us throughout Lent, we are all imperfect and should not spend another minute pointing out the shortcomings of others. Their sin is no worse than our own, despite our rationalizations to the contrary.

So if we believe the brother is denying his brother for his actions, then what are they exactly? Pastor Mohn points the way there, as well. Very clearly. She says:

We are all selfish for our Father’s love.

I found this to be such a key recognition in this sermon. Perhaps for this reason. The Rabbi Harold Kushner, Rabbi at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, whose other books I’ve drawn from in this blog, has written a book entitled Living A Life That Matters in which he proposes that man is constantly struggling for two often diametrically opposed goals and that God replies with Two Voices.

He draws on the psychoanalyst Carl Jung who believed that “Act One of a young person’s life is the story of their setting out to conquer the world”. In this act, they are competitive, and they seek challenge. They want to prove to the world that they matter, that the world should take us seriously. They need to feel successful and important.

Then ‘Act Two of a (less) young person’s life is the realization that the world is not about to be conquered by the likes of them”. In this act, the person comes to terms with their own limitations (as does the Prodigal Son) and has a desire to do what is right and good. Our lives are a constant “tension of opposites”, as both our Pastors have often pointed out, a struggle between wanting to matter, to be rewarded for excelling, to stand out for a job well done, and wanting to do what is good and moral. Often there is no clear way to do both simultaneously.

I recently had a great conversation with Pastor Mohn’s better half, Erik Gronberg, in which he described being asked to be a part of a consortium of civic leaders trying to make their respective communities better places in which to live. He put what the head of one company said this way:

"We are in a constant struggle between “doing it right” (implication: excelling, getting the job done) and “doing the right thing” (implication: doing the moral, just, ethical thing despite the fact that it does not feed into the bottom line)."

This says it quite nicely, I think.

Rabbi Kushner then hypothesizes that:

“God speaks to us in two Voices. One is (what Erich Fromm called “Father love”) the stern, commanding voice … summoning us to be more, reach higher, demand greater things of ourselves, forbidding us to fall upon the excuse that “We’re only human”. The other Voice is (what Fromm calls “Mother love”) the voice of compassion and forgiveness, an embracing, cleansing voice, assuring us that when we have … fallen short, we are still loved. This God knows what a complicated story a human life is and loves us despite our inevitable lapses … when we know that we have done wrong (as the Prodigal Son), we need to hear the voice of God-as-mother assuring us that nothing can alienate us from His love, but when we have worked hard to be good, honest and generous, there is something lacking in this message (as it is for the Brother of the Prodigal Son). What is missing is the voice of God-as-father saying ‘You’re good, you have earned my love’. ”

In this way … “We are all selfish for our Father’s love!!!”

Kushner “emphasizes that people of either gender are capable of both kinds of love and every one of us needs to experience both kinds”.

Pastor Mohn shared another story about Erik in which he pointed out at a recent funeral that “grace is enough” in the end, perhaps to earn the love of God-as-mother. It is our mothers that often bestow grace despite the lack of our having always earned it. But, as we have been reminded often in sermons at Mount Zion:

“We can’t earn our way into heaven with good acts.”

We go there but by the grace of God, the compassion of God-as-mother, as it were.

Someone at the funeral presided over by Pastor Gronberg pegged him as a “false prophet … (because) the promise of grace is NOT enough. She doesn’t qualify. It’s about hard work.” Sound familiar?

“I work hard and you give it to them”
”She doesn’t qualify”
“I did everything I was asked to do. Now what’s in it for me?” … Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams!!

What is Ray told by the angels on the ball field? “Are you asking what’s in it for you, Ray? …. You’d better stay here …” and we all know what happens. He is given his bounty, his abundance. God provides to each of us according to our needs. As the Brother is told by the Father “You always have my love”. He will be provided for in a way that will suit him, in the end.

But our struggle with the tension of opposites, between “wanting our due” for having followed all the rules and watching others “get even more for having done less or for breaking the rules even” violates our sense of fairness and justice.

Pastor Mohn points out another great scenario in the C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in which the the White Witch will make Edmund the Most Important, but she lies and uses him to get to his siblings. Sibling rivalry born of the tension between wanting to be important and being willing to call each other Brother despite our shortcomings is a tension too tempting for the devil not to use. The devil often does not do his dirty work himself, but pits us against one another, enjoying watching us fall prey to our weaker nature.

In the end, Edmund is saved and spared and brought home to repair bonds with his family. In the end, as Pastor Mohn points out:

“Everybody gets the same mercy, the same grace, the same forgiveness”

from, as it were, God-as-mother.

There’s a story told by Laurie Beth Jones in a book I have quoted often titled Jesus, CEO. It is about a race that occurred during The Special Olympics in which a runner, about to cross the finish line, noticed a fellow runner who had fallen in the road. With the finish line clearly in view (a sign that they matter and that they are important?), this runner stopped and helped the fallen runner. They opted out of “doing it right” to “do the right thing”. With the fallen runner in his arms, they limped across the finish line together! The crowd cheered. Would that the Prodigal Son acted this way upon seeing his brother return. Would that he could call him brother rather than the son of the father. Perhaps the secret known to that runner in The Special Olympics was what Laurie Beth Jones further points out:

“These runners in The Special Olympics made me think of Jesus and his set of rules. I thought about Him choosing to tell the story about the shepherd who can not rest as long as even one sheep is still missing, despite the 99 of them which aren’t … about a father who is waiting on the road, watching for his lost son to come home, even though he has one son who is serving him ably and well … about a king holding a banquet, who will not start serving dinner until every place is filled at The Great Table … and I wonder what this world would be like if we all played by that rule: that nobody wins until we all do.”

The Road to The Party

Third Sabbath in Lent

March 11, 2007

Readings:

Isaiah 55:1-9

1 Corinthians 10:1 - 13
Luke 13:1-9

This week, Pastor Johnson points out a valuable lesson that might have been earlier hinted at in George Orwell’s Animal Farm:

“All animals are created equal, but some are created more equal than others.”

As sinners, part of our admission of this human frailty is that we hide behind pretenses that our sin is “not as bad” as that of others. From Newt Gingrich to Pope Benedict, even those charged with the public trust and the faith of the masses have slipped into that ugly world of pointing fingers, pointing fingers that only divert attention away from our sin. In the case of Pope Benedict, the finger pointed at a top shelf lyricist and baladeer, Bob Dylan, for provoking thought and insight in youthful churchgoers ….. a sin, even? Sometimes we will even point the finger at something good and useful and serving God’s purpose in the name of masking our own iniquities.

In the daily devotional from Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life, John Fischer writes this past week:

"When it comes to dealing with “common sinners” we have a tendency to be more like the Pharisees than like Jesus. A Pharisee once judged Jesus for allowing a woman of the streets to bathe his feet in perfume mixed with the tears of her sorrowful life. The Pharisee had already distanced himself from the woman because of her sin and was shocked that Jesus, as a teacher, did not do the same. Why is it so hard for us to identify with sinners and so easy to judge them when we, too, are guilty? We must stop this distancing of ourselves from sinners and start looking for common ground like Eugene Debs,who ran for president of the United States as a third party candidate in 1912. I really do like his slogan from the 1912 campaign trail. We would all be more compassionate and more merciful if we would take it on:

“As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Obviously he didn’t get elected since none of us has ever heard of him, but I believe there is a lot of truth in thinking this way about our place in the world."

We judge common sinners, as Pastor Johnson points out, because repentance is a hard swallow. Like pride. In fact, pride is often the issue. Repentance is a tough sell as it causes us embarrassment and is a blow to our pride in self. We see repentance as suffering, but hiding from it is a worse suffering. The problem is it’s hard to be honest with ourselves, it’s hard to say you’re sorry and, often, even harder to forgive.

We allow ourselves to do the “less than honest thing, the half-hearted thing”, the non-denial denial, the apology that comes with the disclaimer that there are “worse than me” just around the corner; that my sin is “not what it appears to be” because that of others is more so. Well, as pastor points out, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, ……. Whether there’s a bigger duck around the corner is of little consequence.”

We don’t have the time to worry about other peoples’ sins. We each have a fig tree in dire need of pruning and fertilizing. We need to understand that notion that “God is not finished with us yet” just because we have not born fruit as yet. It is of little use to point to other trees that need “more pruning”, more manure. We’re fruitless enough that our time and effort would be better spent taking care of our own need for maintenance than pointing out the lacking in others, especially when it is expressly done to make us feel better about who we are.

My sin is equal to your sin. It is not for us to say that “some sin is more equal than others”. As N.T. Wright says in Simply Christian:

“The line between things being right and things not being right, can’t be drawn between “us” and “them”. It runs right down through the middle of each of us.”

BUT here’s the good news. God isn’t finished with us yet!!! We get many chances, multiple bites at the apple. It’s another BIG reason not to judge others. God “isn’t done with them yet” either. If you hang it on the cross, and you proceed to open that door, you will be invited to the biggest party that ever was or will be – hosted by the Father of the prodigal son. A bountiful feast prepared for all transgressors who see the light, no matter how late, and return to the fold. God gives us way more than one chance to return to the road less traveled. God will give us more time, He will “provide you the way out” as Paul says in Corinthians, he will “let your fig tree alone one more year”. Lent is a time to realize that the tree needs pruning and upkeep AND that the clock is ticking. The cost feels too high at times, but the cost of neglect is even greater.

So Pastor Johnson tasks us this week to find someone we need to say sorry to … for when we’ve fallen short. Swallow that pride, self-serve up a dish of crow, give it up to Him, hang it on The Cross, then pass through that door to the party and the feast prepared expressly for you, by Him …. for choosing wisely.

God Alone

The Road of Truth
First Sabbath in Lent
February 24, 2007

Readings:

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Romans 10:8b - 13
Luke 4:1-13

This week, Pastor Mohn points out that when we travel the roads less traveled, we will often find ourselves traveling, from time to time, the road of truth. What is true about the world, about God, about our meaning here? For “what is true?” accompanies every part of our journey here. Our path is full of nothing more than it is full of questions!

Questions are good!

They help us take stock, seek God, they are opportunities to learn. I often use the analogy of a question to a key with my freshman college students. I bring a locked box to class and ask them what the key is. We iterate back and forth until they say “A Question”. And I ask “What’s in the box?” Some students invariably respond “The Answer”. To which I will reply “Partly”. Every once in a while a student squints their eyes and says “More keys”. And that’s usually more the truth, part (if any) of the answer and many more keys. Getting at “the truth” is a never ending proposition.

Pastor Mohn skillfully points out that part of the Road of Truth lies when questions are asked to make us stumble – to separate us from one another, making that road harder to travel. What are we to see in how Jesus encounters his tempter? When he is tempted with food when he is hungry, we see in his replies that he avoids the human desire to take charge, and NOT admit that it’s God’s road we’re traveling. Here’s a question Pastor Mohn poses: Is it our responsibility ALONE to take care of everything? Bread is a good thing for any hungry person, BUT if the bread is offered in the name of our own power, our control, our purposes, this leads us away from God.

We can be tempted toward really good things, for sure, but excess takes us OFF the path we were intended to travel. Even good things can lead us to be “off balance”. Human needs cause us to do such things as destroy our environment. Our human prioritizing, rather than the divine, leads us astray. It is our human desires that lead us to behave like Ecclesiastes and seek the answer in excess – to surround ourselves with knowledge, power, pleasure, … seemingly the more the better, no? All these, he finds out, are fleeting, do not satisfy in the long run, and, in the absence of all else, leave us lacking! As Pastor Mohn points out,

“It’s exhausting to be human!”

If only I had more food, more money, more time, more “you fill in the blank”, I’d be happy, satisfied, less tempted.

Jesus knows the struggle of traveling the road of truth – problems of being in a world where truth is NOT obvious – where things are vague, and dimly lit (as by only starlight?!). We remain desperate for control that would “make it easy”. There is an ongoing sense of irony in “the battle of science vs. religion” in which some secular scientists often are quoted as saying that those looking to the world of faith for answers find them “all too easily” in a notion of an omnipotent Deity. Yet, it is secular scientists who are often in an ongoing search for control, a control that makes explanations easy and logical.

Pastor Mohn points out that it is NOT up to us to have the answer. As she said these words, the Chapel on this Saturday night had only a handful of people, the snow was falling heavy and a blizzard forecast through the night. As people hunkered down, I was hearing again the words from an NPR radio essay from the program This I Believe. The title was “Utterly Humbled by Mystery”, the author Richard Rohr is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He offers simple and eloquent words to describe his growing lack of need for certainty in life. Along the way, he points out a different irony between secular scientists and those who find answers in their faith. And what he points out is at the center of their quest for answers, for a hint of truth:

"I believe in mystery and multiplicity. My very belief and experience of a loving and endlessly creative God has led me to trust in both. This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything. Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity. "Hints and guesses," as T.S. Eliot would say. I often spend the season of Lent in a hermitage, where I live alone for the whole 40 days. The more I am alone with the Alone, the more I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God. Paradoxes don't scare me anymore.

When I was young, I couldn't tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 63, it's all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro quo universe -- I've counseled too many prisoners, worked with too many failed marriages, faced my own dilemmas too many times and been loved gratuitously after too many failures.

Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always," someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like "principles of uncertainty" and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of "faith"!

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all.”

So … in the grand scheme of things, it’s not for us to have the answer, to be in control. It is God Alone who provides life, gives us meaningful relationship, provides “the way” when we abandon a need for control, and seeks to bless us along our paths.

The Road of Humility

Ash Wednesday

February 21, 2007

Readings:

Psalm 51
Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20b – 6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

The account from Isaiah regards fasting – what God considers humble work. In Matthew, we are tasked not to do it for the knowledge or attention of others, but to do this work quietly.

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them …. Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.”

And Isaiah says

“ … you will be called Restorer of the Streets to Living”

Pastor Johnson analogized the act of “repairing of the streets for living” to the roadside cracks and potholes that develop of a long winter, in which the process by which we make our way in the world leads to damaged roads and things that, by spring, require us to fox them. Those who fix our roads go about their work quietly. Do our thoughts ever turn to them, Pastor asks? He admits to having many a thought when watching them, not all of them generous or benevolent. Are we any different? None of us are. The workers who will soon be repairing our streets do their work, necessary work, without fanfare. Theirs is “the quiet work of filling the cracks”, of “making smooth again” the roads long torn up by travel on many a cold day that takes its toll.

We are similarly tasked to “repair the streets, again, for living”; to “stop speaking evil & pointing fingers”. We are tasked to take a different road, the “high road”, a road less traveled, for sure. The work of “repairing the streets fir living” on this road is humble work. It’s not about spotlights or getting credit. We are tasked to be driven by God’s mercy, and not any inner desire for notice or thanks. The hope is that this will make us happy, to work for the good of God, with “humble quiet”.

And the good news, and this theme will present itself again and again along the road(s) less traveled. We are not, strictly speaking, 100% ready for this work!!! My parents always told me, “If you wait ‘til you think you’re ready to have kids, to have kids, you’ll never have kids.” They said the same thing about college and marriage and a few choice other important stages of life.

In her book, Jesus CEO, Laurie Beth Jones points out that Jesus often used humans who didn’t “look the part”. She said Jesus “wasn't afraid to look foolish. See if you recognize these among ‘his chosen staff’:

A deluded engineer (designed and built an ark in the middle of the desert)
A nudist (Isaiah went naked for 3 years)
A Beggar (Elijah had to ask a widow for food)
A lunatic (King David had to act so to evade his would-be captors)
A harem girl (Queen Esther who made her way to #1 on The King’s List)
An improper woman (Jeus’ own mother who was pregnant out of wedlock)

She further claimed,

"God has little use for people whose main concern is “What will the neighbors think?” He needs disciples who are willing to sacrifice and take risks withtheir public image"

Another theme that will crop up again, along this road less traveled throughout Lent is that God can and does and will use us in “as yet unready form”. This does not, as Pastor Riggle pointed out a few weeks back, mean we are unworthy to serve God. The Scriptures point out quite the opposite in many instances. Abraham was 75 years old before God called him into active duty. There is much to the bumper sticker

“Please be patient with me. God isn’t through with me yet.”

Life’s too short to be waiting to be ready for the business of “repairing them roads”. We are tasked to do the work quietly where it is needed, by the right hand, without letting even the left hand know what the right is doing.

Pastor Johnson said he felt we each knew someone who might have a hole in their heart. Quietly, we’re to go about the job of filling it. We, each of us, have within ourselves the ability to do that! Whether we really feel ready or not.

And the Good News? If we answer the call, God will provide. He will provide, through us, cement, trowels, tar, glue and time enough to make new the cracks, and holes. We will find those tools in quiet, meditative prayer if we will stop pointing fingers and spend our time dedicating those hands to quiet, humble work that “repairs the streets for the living”.

“this road less traveled is in need of quiet workers ready to repair the way for the living …… the question is less ‘are you ready?’ than ‘are you willing?’ …. If you are, well the good news is He travels that road, and in your taking it, He will know you. He alone will see your repair handiwork, performed in His honor and through His mercy. Hopefully that will make you happy because if no one ever knows who you are, BUT God knows – you have need for nothing!”