Speaking Out & Acting Out Against Violence

Beginning with a disciple’s act of striking with a sword to the beatings Jesus received to the flogging he endured to the crucifixion itself, the Passion is a story riddled with violence from beginning to end.  Everything about it is carefully orchestrated by the Romans to inflict as much pain as possible while at the same time publically humiliating Jesus as a means to discourage others from joining his cause.  It is community-sanctioned brutality of the highest order.  What does it say that the crowd wants to crucify the person who proclaims the peaceful coming of the Kingdom of God while demanding the release of an insurrectionist charged with murder?

In 2011, the Canadian born cognitive theorist Steven Pinker published a book titled The Better Angels of our Nature.  In it he argues civilization today is much less violent than at any other point in the past.  As an example, he describes one of the most popular forms of entertainment in sixteenth-century Paris: cat-burning - where a cat was put in a sling and hoisted over a fire.  Huge crowds, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals howled in pain.  This kind of sadism would be unthinkable in much of the world today.

Pinker notes:

“Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution--all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history.  But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.”

According to Pinker, violence has been in decline as human history as unfolded.  He contends today we live in “the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.”  His thinking seems to run counter to commonly held assumptions we have of the world, but is worth considering.

Here are three others whose findings tend to support Pinker’s theory.

George Gerbner, the founder of something called “Civilization Theory”, did some research into the appeal of violence in movies.  He showed one group the 1993 theatrical release of The Fugitive and another group a version in which he edited out all the graphic violence.  Gerbner asked each group to grade the movie and discovered both rated it at the same level.  His conclusion: violent content did not increase the movie’s appeal.

Scott Rigby and Richard Ryan conducted a similar test focusing on violent video games and found what Gerbner found with movies.  The presence of blood and gore did not impact players’ enjoyment of the game.

The British journalist Jamie Bartlett interviewed prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to learn what drew them into the jihad movement.  Most might think once its adherents are radicalized, violence itself is the appeal.  He discovered, however, something quite different: 

·   First, jihad extremism provides adherents a ‘fun adventure’.  Going to a training camp offers a means to test oneself, to push one’s limits, and to learn new things.

·   Second, it provides a path to become the hero of the story.  It is a way to transform oneself from a nobody into a mythical figure.  Bartlett discovered many violent extremists draw inspiration from Western movie icons.

·   And finally, it gives the adherent what might best be called “street cred” – recognition and respect from one’s peers.

The violence is not an end unto itself, but rather a means to achieve something else.  Jihad, Bartlett discovered, is not so much about furthering a particular ideology as much as it is a pursuit of very personal and private benefits.

All of this gives credence to Pinker’s contention that violence and brutality have been declining over the course human history, even in our day.  Still, he cautions (and whether you accept his thesis or not, this is his most crucial point in my estimation), the decline in violence cannot be a “license for complacency”.  He writes, “We enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to end it, and so we should work to end the appalling violence in our time.”

There is something deeply disturbing about John McGraw, a 78-year-old man, punching a 26-year-old, Rakeem Jones, at a South Carolina political rally, even if, as McGraw contends, Jones was ‘cussing’ at him.  In a 2009 newspaper article McGraw was quoted as saying, “I believe in the Scripture as a road map to a way of life.  The Bible tells us how to live, to survive.”  To survive?  Those of us who read the bible and hear it read in church every Sunday have to say a clearly as possible McGraw’s action is not all reflective of what we are taught in Holy Scripture.

The bishops of the Episcopal Church gather twice a year in retreat.  From time-to-time they issue a statement to the church which clergy are to read to the congregations they serve.  The House of Bishops met last week and unanimously agreed to issue ‘A Word to the Church’ titled “We reject the idolatrous notion that we can ensure the safety of some by sacrificing the hopes of others.”

It reads:

On Good Friday the ruling political forces of the day tortured and executed an innocent man.  They sacrificed the weak and the blameless to protect their own status and power.  On the third day Jesus was raised from the dead, revealing not only their injustice but also unmasking the lie that might makes right.

In a country still living under the shadow of the lynching tree, we are troubled by the violent forces being released by this season’s political rhetoric.  Americans are turning against their neighbors, particularly those on the margins of society.  They seek to secure their own safety and security at the expense of others.  There is legitimate reason to fear where this rhetoric and the actions arising from it might take us.

In this moment, we resemble God’s children wandering in the wilderness.  We, like they, are struggling to find our way.  They turned from following God and worshiped a golden calf constructed from their own wealth.  The current rhetoric is leading us to construct a modern false idol out of power and privilege.  We reject the idolatrous notion that we can ensure the safety of some by sacrificing the hopes of others.  No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, we must respect the dignity of every human being and we must seek the common good above all else.

We call for prayer for our country that a spirit of reconciliation will prevail and we will not betray our true selves.

2,000 years ago, people with power handled political and public discourse by inflicting horrible, excruciating pain on those voicing a dissenting opinion.  Today we remember one person who paid the ultimate price for trying to lead the world into a new reality featuring an ethic of justice, love, and mutual respect.  The reading of the Passion of Christ is without a doubt the most powerful moment of the church year.  It is gripping and emotional and leaves us speechless.  And yet, like the women at the foot of the cross who watched in silence, we too feel compelled to participate in this moment. 

After we absorb what we hear there is much about it we might say.  Here is one thing we surely must proclaim in our own day and time: intentional degradation, violence, torture, and execution have no place in the human family and most certainly cannot be considered “Christian”.

Each of us must speak this word of truth, even if few will hear.  Each of us must live this truth; finding ways – be they grand or be they ordinary – to express kindness, generosity, and respect.  As more and more people do this, the Spirit of Christ will work through us and this world will continue its path to more peaceful reality.

Let me conclude with these timeless and familiar words from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

 

Do You Smell That?

Do you need an idea for some cost-free entertainment?  Let me offer a suggestion.  Go to the Yankee Candle store in Williamsburg (but don’t buy anything because nothing there is cheap).  Walk up to a display, but don’t read any information about the candles.  Pick up one up, take off the lid, smell the aroma, and try to guess the name of the scent.  You can spend hours doing this and never come close to getting it right.  “Wait, wait, I know what this smells like, but I just can’t figure it out!”  Then you look at the label: “Oh, right, cotton pillow covers in the Caribbean moonlight.  Of course!”

Did you know that, generally speaking, women have a more acute sense of smell than men?  Here is a typical office conversation when Amy was our parish administrator:

Amy: Do you smell that?

me: No.

Amy: Really, you don’t smell that?

me: No.

Amy: You can’t smell (here you can insert one of the following – gas leak, dead squirrel in the attic, or sour milk in the refrigerator).

me: No.

And yes, my office conversational skills are just this scintillating!

Did you know that five million cells located high up in our nasal passages give us the ability to smell?  By way of comparison, a dog has about 220 million of these cells.  I read on the internet that our noses can detect over one trillion different scents, but I find it a hard to believe.  Apparently our sense of smell reaches a pinnacle when we are eight years old and then declines as we get older.  Of all the human senses, smell is the oldest.

In today’s gospel reading we hear a story filled with aromatic intrigue.  Mary, we are told, takes some very costly perfume, rubs it on Jesus’ feet, and wipes it with her hair.  All of this unfolds during a communal meal.  As with meals in our own parish hall, various groups of people are in conversation with one another.  The room is loud.  The mood is festive. 

The text tells us the house is filled with the fragrance of the anointment.  Nard is derived from a flowering plant that grows only in the mid-elevations of the Himalayas.  It was used as a perfume and had medicinal qualities.  It would have felt very soothing on Jesus’ feet.  Its aroma was so pervasive it was poured over corpses to mask the stench of decay.  When its fragrance overwhelmed the room surely all conversation stopped as the guests tried to discern the origin of the aroma.  Even olfactory-challenged me would have picked up on it!

Let’s put this story in some context.  Mary, her sister Martha, and her brother Lazarus, live in the town of Bethany; just a half hour walk from Jerusalem.  Lazarus had been very ill and actually died about a week earlier.  But Jesus called him out of the tomb and raised him from the dead.  This act meant different things to different people.  Mary and Martha were elated.  Jesus, however, could no longer move about openly for two reasons.  First, he was inundated by the masses and second, the authorities wanted to arrest him on sight.  Lazarus himself was in peril.  The authorities wanted to kill him in an effort to stop Jesus’ growing popularity.

Mary and Martha (who apparently had some means) host Jesus and his followers at their house for a meal.  No doubt they want to celebrate what Jesus has done for their family.  It is a Saturday evening.  The next day Jesus will enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey.  He will be crucified and buried in less than a week.

There are five main characters in John’s telling of this story: Jesus (of course), Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Judas.  Over the span of Jesus’ three-year-long public ministry, each has been changed.

Let’s start with Martha.  At a previous meal hosted at their house, she complained to Jesus that her sister should not be sitting at his feet listening to him, but rather should be in the kitchen helping with the preparations.  The text tells us she was concerned with “distractions.”  Jesus tells her she is troubled by “too many things”, when only a “few things” are necessary.  Apparently Martha orchestrated that meal to be a way-too-complicated event so Jesus invited her to tone it down.  My guess is Martha was a tad insecure and her massive effort was an attempt to win approval and praise. 

Fast forward to today’s story where we are told Martha “serves” those at the table.  She is not trying to do “too many things”, but rather is focused in on the tending to the needs of others.  Through her serving, she is performing the role of an ordained deacon.  Her homemaking has become her ministry and she is very good at it.  Martha invites us to ponder how we can grow in humility and service to others through the ordinary things we know and do best.

When we encountered Mary at the first meal she was sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to him teach.  It was an act unheard of in that day and age for a woman to be received as a disciple, but Jesus never shooed her away.  And now, at this meal, she has moved from passive listening to active acting.  By anointing Jesus, she takes on a priestly ministry.  One commentator describes it as “the smell of love in the face of certain betrayal.” Her act is an expression of gratitude and complete adoration.  It is lavish beyond all measure.  It is a “prodigal” act in the best sense of the word.  Mary invites us ponder the ways we might express pure adoration to God for all the good God has done for us.

Although Lazarus must have been around during the first meal, there is no mention of him in the text.  We first learn of him when he is ill and dies.  In today’s reading, we are told he is one of those reclining at the table.  Like Jesus, he has become a popular figure.  Crowds want to see the man raised from the dead, and authorities want him dead.  For his part, Lazarus is silent.  We never once hear him speak.  I wonder if his experience is so overwhelming he cannot find words to describe it.  Even though he has been brought back from the dead he does not emerge from the tomb with a ‘resurrected body’ as we see Jesus having in his post-Easter appearances.  Perhaps Lazarus is alive, but the death experience has affected his ability to speak.  It is also possible he has been affected in other physical ways not described in the text.  Lazarus invites us to ponder how age and health crises lead to limited capacities, yet still we sit at “table” with Jesus.  Diminished vitality does not necessarily mean a diminished experience of life, purpose, and ministry.

Then there is Judas.  It is hard to know if his time with Jesus has had any positive impact on his life at all.  I’d like to think so, but in the end it is not enough to overcome his demons.  When we find him at this meal, he is bitter, judgmental, and dishonest.  He fanes interest in “the poor”, but like so many people today, he is tugging at heartstrings and using guilt not to help those in need, but to feather his own nest.  The episode with the nard pushes him over the top.  Judas steals away and makes plans to hand Jesus over to the authorities.  He profits handsomely from this act, but he too will be dead within a week; taking his own life when he comes to regret the consequences of his actions.   Judas invites us to consider those areas in our lives still in need of redemption and he cautions us to ponder the potential for damage and destruction if we do not tend to them.

And finally we come to Jesus.  His entire life and ministry have brought him to this moment where he has determined to offer his own life as the ultimate witness of how God withholds nothing – not even God’s own Son – to be in whole, reconciled relationship with you, me, and all of humankind. 

Yet even in this moment, we see Jesus embracing his humanity.  He is willing to receive care and compassion from another.  Surely he knew what awaited him in Jerusalem.  Surely he was anxious about what he could not control.  Surely, like you and me, his fretfulness manifested itself in physical ways.  Surely his feet ached – callous and dry from the paths he walked.  How good must the nard have felt!  How soothing must the caressing have been!  Of all that Jesus invites us to ponder, I encourage you to consider your own physical needs.  In what ways do you acknowledge the toll your giving – your ministry – takes on you and how do you open yourself to the healing and restorative ministry of another?  Jesus needed this moment.  So do you.

Today’s reading invites us to ponder how this season of Lenten discipline has affected us.  It invites us to consider how our walk with Jesus over the past few years has changed us.  It encourages us to discern what God is doing in and through our faith community, which, like all churches, is called to be a living organism open to the Spirit.  What dynamics speak of where God is taking us?  Where are we in the story of God’s redemptive love?  How might we experience healing and wholeness?  How might we offer this to others?

Wait!  Wait!  (Sniff!  Sniff!)  Do you smell that?  Do you smell the fragrance of what God is doing in this place?  Do you smell the aroma of what God is doing in your life?

Fairness & the Prodigal Father

Let me describe a typical summer day from my childhood.  I wake up and head down the street to “the park” – a large, undeveloped property in the center of our neighborhood where kids gather all day to play games.  We choose up sides and somehow all the big kids are on one team and all us little kids are on the other.  And do you know what we say:  “These teams aren’t fair!”  Now it’s lunchtime.  My mother fixes sandwiches and chips.  I get more chips than my twin sister.  What does she say: “No fair!  Keith got more chips than me.”  Flash forward to dinner.  I ask if I can stay out later at night.  “OK”, my father says, “you can play until the street lights come on.”  “No fair,” my older sister says.  “I couldn’t stay out that late when I was his age.”

Fairness.  Do you know that capuchin monkeys prefer grapes to cucumbers?  If you give a capuchin a cucumber it will eat it, but if given a choice it will choose the grape every time.  So a researcher set up a little experiment.  He put two capuchins in a cage and each had to perform a simple task to get a grape.  Both were successful, except one got a cucumber instead.  The monkey who got the grape devoured it instantly.  The other monkey was so annoyed it threw the cucumber out of the cage.  No one likes getting the short end of the stick.

Another experiment.  A five-year-old child is given a choice.  Either he and two other children can get two treats each or he can get four treats while the others get only one.  More often than not, the five-year-old will choose the first, fair option; bristling at possibility of getting the long end of the stick.

Here is the best description of fairness I came across this week:

Fairness means treating people equitably, without bias or partiality.  It means actively working to set aside self-interest or group loyalty when rendering a judgment.  In day-to-day life, fairness manifests itself in simple ways such as taking turns, listening intently, sharing, and not taking advantage of others based on their weaknesses.

Impartiality is a key part of fairness.  Being impartial doesn’t mean having no biases—rather it means knowing what those biases are, striving to set them aside, and requesting outside perspectives as needed.

While inspired by the ideal of justice, fairness is not sameness or always following the letter of the law.  Fairness makes room for us to generate solutions and compromises based on reason and circumstance.

In today’s gospel reading we hear Jesus tell a parable with three central characters: a father and two brothers.  While the lion’s share of the story revolves around the father and the younger brother, its main point hones in on the eldest.  He is the one who cannot welcome back his sibling and resents his father’s lavish celebration.  And to be honest, it is hard to blame him because it just does not seem fair.

Even in our culture, a sibling demanding his share of the inheritance is just wrong, but in the culture of Jesus’ day it was unthinkable.  No one, but no one, would ever have been so insulting to a parent.  One bible translation puts it this way: “The younger brother says, ‘Give me what I could have if you were dead!’”  No father would honor such a request and, if a father did, he certainly would never, ever, under any circumstances welcome back his son.  It just would not happen.

But in Jesus’ story it does.  The father not only receives the son, but he actually runs to meet and embrace him.  It is almost shameful behavior in the face of such an insult.  But parables as a genre have an over-the-top quality.  The exaggerations are there to drive home the point.  The only person in the story who behaves in a way we might expect is the older brother.  He stayed.  He worked.  He was faithful.  He was dutiful.  And then his wayward brother returns, is welcomed home unconditionally, and (to make matters worse) dad throws a party for him!  I know what I would say if I was the older son: “This is not fair!”

Not only is the older son unhappy about getting the short end of the stick, the younger son seems none too concerned about getting the long end.  The Christian writer Lewis Smedes observes, “our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.”  The renowned theologian Paul Tillich wrote a comment in the margin of his bible next to this story: “When the prodigal came home, I hope he didn’t stay too long.” It is not easy to have sympathy for this young man.  What he receives is not at all appropriate to the circumstances.

I am not the first social observer to note there is a great deal of anger in our society right now, which we see being played out in the presidential primaries.  It is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of the anger, but I wonder how much of revolves around fairness.  The wealthy don’t believe the entitlement system is fair, while the poor and middle class believe the same about growing income inequality between themselves and the rich.  Women want a fair opportunity to compete with men in the workplace.  Minorities sense they are being passed over based not on performance, but rather because of skin color.  Hourly workers want to be paid a fair wage for their labor.  The average person believes his or her voice is not being heard.  This perceived lack of fairness – running across the board – spawns anger, resentment, and frustration.  It is especially challenging because what might make one person or group feel the world is more fair will only make it seem less fair to someone else.  There is no clear path to making sure three children each get the same number of chips for lunch.

I learned something this week.  Before this week I never knew the definition of the word prodigal.  I always associated it either with leaving home or returning after leaving on bad terms, but I was wrong.  Here is what I learned:

Prodigal: spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.  Synonyms include wasteful, extravagant, and imprudent.

So the younger son is called the prodigal not because he returned home, but to describe the lifestyle he chose when he took off with his share of the family’s wealth.

Now here is what is really interesting.  Prodigal can be used in a second and more positive way, although it is one not often used in today’s English:

Prodigal: having or giving something on a lavish scale.  Synonyms include generous, lavish, liberal, bounteous, and unsparing.  

Given this definition, it would be accurate and entirely appropriate to thank everyone who worked so hard putting together the prodigal reception after church last Sunday.

Who in today’s story is a prodigal in this positive sense?  The father.  We see it in the lavish party he throws for his son, but even more in the generous and unsparing way he welcomes him back.  He is a prodigal when it comes to forgiveness, reconciliation, and love.  The great contrast of the story is not the difference between the reckless ways of one son and the dutiful ways of the other.  The great contrast is between the father’s prodigal heart and the older son’s heart, which is cold and closed.

And let’s be clear about this.  The father is being fair.  He says to his grumpy first-born, “You are always with me and all that I have is yours.”  Everything he has he gives to the eldest.  How much more lavish can he be?  The only thing he cannot give him is something he has never needed: lavish forgiveness and restoration.  But know this: if and when the older son needs it, the prodigal father will lavish it on him too. 

If you wanted to choose one person in this story to emulate who would it be?  Would you choose the younger son?  Would you like to run off, live it up for a while, and then return home with your tail between your legs – humiliated and full of regret, yet still deeply loved?  Or would you choose to be like the older brother: dutiful, dependable, steady, and grounded in a sense of fairness, and resentful of others who do not abide by your ethic?  Or would you choose to be like the father: so deeply aware of how blessed you are in life that you can give lavishly of everything you have – your heart, your love, your forgiveness, your possessions, your entire being?  Who would you choose to be like?

The father in Jesus’ story is a God-figure.  His actions reveal the nature of the Holy One from whom all things flow.  We worship a Prodigal God who is generous, bountiful, and unsparing in dealing with us.  In one sense it is not fair because it is not what we deserve.  We have not merited God’s prodigal love.  But it is completely fair because it is how God loves each of us.  We are all children of God lavishly loved. 

And just as the father invited the older son to join the celebration and thus receive the greatest gift he could have as an inheritance, so too we are invited to move from fairness to a prodigal lifestyle.  And while no faith community can do this perfectly, I like where we are at St. Paul’s right now.  Last week I told the Bishop I was going to present a fascinatingly diverse group of people for confirmation.  Twenty-five folks are now a part of our 374-year long journey as a parish.  Our newest members come from all walks of life.  What they share is a desire to be a part of this community where everyone is welcome and beloved.  I like how we are living as God’s prodigal people.  May God’s bountiful love continue to reign in our midst.  May it continue to well up in each of our hearts and direct our ways in all we do.

Redeeming Suffering

It is difficult for most of us to know how the events of last Wednesday have affected the people of Waverly and one particular family who lives there.  By all accounts, Larry Turner was a good man and a stalwart member of the community.  He loved to cook, one neighbor said of him.  His congressman knew him well and described him as being an engaged and concerned citizen.  On that particular day his girlfriend’s son and daughter and the daughter’s two-year-old son were with Turner in his home – a trailer home – when a tornado ripped through the area.  Turner, the son, and the child were killed – their bodies recovered 300 yards away from their home.  The daughter was seriously injured and, the last I saw, continues to fight for her life.

It is a painful, yet all too familiar story.  We live in a world where various degrees of suffering, pain, and tragedy are all too common.   It is one of the most vexing problems of our existence and is constantly on the mind of most thinking people.  Harold Kushner, who wrote the best-selling book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, observes, “Virtually every meaningful conversation I have ever had with people on the subject of God and religion has either started with this question or has gotten around to it before long.”

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is in conversation with a group of people gathered around him.  At one point a person questions our Lord about a specific instance of one person’s inhumanity against another.  Jesus is asked about a group of Galileans Pilate ordered slaughtered while they were worshipping in the Temple.  Jesus’ response bores to the heart of the prevailing thinking of the time: Did the Galileans suffer this fate because they were sinners?

He then brings up another sad situation – this one, like the tornado – a tragedy of no one’s making.  A tower in the town of Siloam fell and eighteen people were killed.  Were these people worse sinners than those who escaped injury?  To both questions, the answer Jesus gives is no. 

This sends shock waves through the theological world of Jesus’ day.  It was commonly believed the righteous are blessed and the wicked are punished.  When a righteous person suffers – like say, the family in Waverly – it must mean the person is harboring some kind of unconfessed sin.

As absurd as this may sound, my experience in pastoral ministry is that in times of tragedy people still think this way today.  I remember talking to a person in Iowa who believed the 1993 flood was God’s way of telling farmers to stop using fertilizers that polluted the waterways.  Then there was the young mother who believed she deserved the beatings her husband inflicted because she was not a good homemaker.  And what about the man who felt his business went bankrupt because he hadn’t followed biblical principles for investing?  Jesus says no, suffering is not a form of punishment for sin.  God is not vindictive.  There is no need for people to create guilt where no basis for it exists.  

But it is what Jesus does not say that leaves us wanting.  He offers no alternative explanation.  He provides no new theological rationale for pain.  When an airplane crashes we need to know why.  When a young person collapses and dies, we need to know the cause.  When a long-time relationship ends in pain, we need to know where the fault lies.  So the silence of our Lord, in the face of our need to understand, does not sit well.

But, more and more, I find our Lord’s silence consistent with what I am coming to believe.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  I don’t know.  I don’t think anyone knows.  Simply put, there is no answer to the problem of pain.

And any person who tries to explain it to you is categorically wrong in what he or she is saying.  Most often it is either an attempt to defend God or to quiet their own anxieties.  All the reasons they offer boil down either to ‘its not God’s fault’ or ‘this is why it happened to you and not to me’.  I am now at a place in life where I don’t feel the need to defend God and I am as accepting as I can be that someday I too will suffer again.  On that day the question will not be why is this happening to me  – an innocent  – but what can I do and where will I turn to find the strength and courage I need to get through this?

Jesus does not tell us why we suffer but he does do something even more important.  He shows us what to do with our suffering.  As we walk with our Lord through the forty days of Lent, we walk with him in the midst of his agony.  We are with him as he is misunderstood and rejected.  We are with him as he is denied and betrayed.  We are with him as he sets his face toward Jerusalem and his eventual death.

What we learn as we walk with him is not the reason for misfortune, but that suffering is redeemable.  We learn, as one saint put it, our Lord has ‘sanctified pain’ – that he has found a way to make suffering the doorway to holiness.  We learn from our Lord that the Good Fridays of our lives do not have to be the final word.  We learn there is the possibility of an Easter resurrection for every pain.  And although we would never wish disaster for our friends, nor ask for it for our own instruction, we find there are lessons to be learned in the darkest moments we cannot learn in the brightness of a sunny day.  We learn some heights are only scalable from great depths.

When I am in the deep valley, of course I question how I got there.  I wonder what choices and what circumstances and what mistakes led to my situation.  Then I wonder how I will get out.  Where will I find the courage to fight through the chains and the shackles?  Where will I find the strength to go on?  It is only when I remember my help comes in the Name of the Lord that I can begin to leave the valley and return to the light of day. 

But the deeper the valley the more true it seems to be you never really leave it as much as are transformed by it.  The celebrated poet Wendell Berry understands this truth and captures it in a poem titled The Sycamore: 

In the place that is my own place, whose earth

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.

There is no year it has flourished in

that has not harmed it.  There is a hollow in it

that is its death, though its living brims whitely

at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white

of the bark.  It bears the gnarls of its history

healed over.  It has risen to a strange perfection

in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.

It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.

It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.

In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling

the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.

I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,

and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

“It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.”  The more I read Berry’s poem the more wisdom and comfort I find in it.  He points to the Christian hope that suffering is redeemable; to our belief that pain, misery, and even death itself never gets the last word.

I have found this to be true in my own life; that the pains I have suffered are redeemable; in fact I would not be the person I am today without the hurts I have known.  I did not get what I wanted from these experiences, but through the grace of God I have been given everything I need and more.  Although I would never voluntarily choose these pains, I am a better person for God’s having walked with me through them.

I hope and pray for Larry Turner’s family and friends, as well as for others who where lost, injured, or affected.  I pray someday they will know their suffering has been sanctified and redeemed.  I hope and trust and pray they will be able

The Life of "Thelo"

You will find this hard to believe, but after last week’s service, someone approached me in the Parish Hall and told me she appreciated my sermon because I made references to the original Greek language in the text.  Yes, she was a visitor, but that little bit of encouragement means I have more Greek for you this week.  Don’t worry, it won’t be too painful. 

In the five verses from Luke’s gospel we read this morning the Greek word thelo is used three times.  Thelo means ‘longing’ or ‘desire’.  Herod longs to kill Jesus, although the text translates it “wants to kill.”  Jesus longs to gather the people as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.  But Jesus says this is not Jerusalem’s thelo.  The text says they were “not willing”, but a more accurate translation would be they did not long for this.

We get why Herod longs to kill Jesus.  He is a brutish thug who will do whatever it takes to preserve his place and power.  Notice Jesus does not refer to Herod as a bear or a lion (both strong, ferocious, respectable animals), but as a fox – a weasely, little vermin that is more a nuisance than a threat.  Still, he understands just how dangerous Herod can be, after all, Herod had John the Baptist beheaded.  It is no coincidence Jesus refers to himself as a hen and the people as a brood, because these are the exact creatures foxes are most likely to target.

We get why Jesus longs to gather the people.  Deep in our hearts we trust God wants to hold us, care for us, protect us, nurture us, guard us, and guide us.  And, at some level, we get why the people did not long for Jesus because we too often turn away from God and follow the devices and desires of our own heart.

Here is what I wonder: if the people of Jerusalem did not want to be gathered up by Jesus, what exactly did they long for?  What did they desire more than being embraced by God’s own Son? 

We know what Simeon longed for.  When Mary and Joseph presented their newborn son in the Temple, the elderly Simeon took the infant Jesus in his arms and said,

Lord, you now have set your servant free,

for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior

whom you have prepared for all the world to see.

Over the course of his entire service in the Temple, Simeon longed to see Jesus, but others associated with the Temple – not so much.  They longed for liberation from Roman oppression via the restoration of the royal line of David’s kingship.  They romanticized a time some thousand years earlier when Israel was at its peak and they longed from those good old days.  They also longed for the rule of law – the Torah, to be specific.  They longed for a society regulated by the minutia of hundreds upon hundreds of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.” 

They did not long for Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God, which was born not out of the Torah, but out of the prophetic movement.  Jesus longed not for rules but rather for justice and healing.  He longed for forgiveness and compassion.  He longed to break down barriers in order to build up our common humanity.  He longed for every person to be a part of his family of faith – no matter how good or bad they may be, no matter how rich or poor, no matter if they were highly placed or humble fisher folk.  But Jesus knew his longing was not their longing.

What do you long for?  What is your deepest yearning, your most heart-felt desire?  Unlike last week’s question “Who are you”, I suspect most of us have an answer or two at the ready for this one.  We long for a restored relationship or a better job or a deeper faith.  We long for forgiveness or healing or deliverance.  What do you long for?

Let me make two observations about the thelo in our lives.  First, you can only long for something you do not have.  You may spend all winter longing for a warm vacation, but once you are sitting on a tropical beach your longing comes to an end.  That’s when you say “I have been waiting for this for a long time.”  A husband longs for his wife to be home from deployment only while she is away.  If you received what you long for, the spiritual challenge is to be grateful for it and to be a good and wise steward of it.

The second observation is the quality of our longings can vary greatly.  The priest and poet John O’Donohue wrote, “One of the deepest longings of the human soul is to be seen.”  By this I think he is saying we all long to matter to someone; we all long to lead a life that is meaningful, and we all long to be appreciated for what we do.  Taken in this way, being “seen” is deeply significant.  But in our society today, there is a different kind of longing to be “seen” best summed up by the phrase “going viral”.  People long for notoriety; a shallow and superficial experience.  Yes, they are being “seen”, but it is not significant and it doesn’t really matter.  The quality of what you long for can very greatly. 

What do you long for?  What is your thelo?

I have always liked CS Lewis’ book The Great Divorce because it is imaginative, evocative, and challenging.  In it, a group of people is taken by bus to heaven.  When they arrive, each person is given an escort to help them make sense of where they are and what they are to do.  One person’s escort murdered her husband years earlier and she refuses to go anywhere with him.  It was Lewis’ way of highlighting the importance of forgiveness and how truly difficult and demanding it can be.

A mother gets off the bus and is informed by her escort they are going to see God.  But the mother, who lost a child years earlier, insists on seeing her child first.  The mother’s deepest longing is to be reunited with her child.  It is an understandable desire.  But the escort persists the woman first must see God.  The two carry on quite a conversation about this.  The escort is not saying God demands we put God before everything else.  Rather, God is to be our deepest longing.  All else flows from this.  Lewis writes:

“No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves.  They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein.  They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.”

What do you long for?  Perhaps a more appropriate way to ask the question is “How are your deepest longings grounded in God?”  The problem for the people of Jerusalem was their longings – whatever they were – had been divorced from God.  They were grounded only in their own hopes and aspirations with no reference at all to the Holy One.  Lewis wrote this:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.  Those who seek find.  Those who knock it is opened.

When we want a biblical example of longing we need look no further than today’s reading about Abraham.  He is old and he is troubled.  He has no heir to follow him, to carry on his name, and more importantly to carry on his beliefs.  No person at the time was like Abraham.  Everyone else believed in the existence of multiple gods making manifold demands for blessings such as fertility and rain for the harvest.  Abraham was the first to hold a belief in one God; a God who directed him to do away with superstitious practices and inhumane ways.  But he and his elderly wife were childless.  They had no realistic hope of this changing.  Can you imagine the depth and varicosity of his longing?

God promises Abraham will have a son and Abraham believes.  It seems like a simple transaction, but what really is going on here?  God embraces Abraham’s longing and asks him to trust God to bring it about.  In this case, faith looks like resting in God.  It looks like letting go of anxiety and tension in order to embrace assurance and hope.  More than once Abraham will stray from this to take matters into his own hand, supposing God’s plan is to give him a son through his wife’s servant Hagar.  As you know, God comes through and Isaac is born.  But at some point, in an episode so difficult to understand it is never once commented on anywhere else in the bible, God requires Abraham to sacrifice his son to demonstrate his longing first and foremost for God.

At my worst, I think that I am supposed to have all the answers not only to your questions, but also to the questions raised by our biblical texts.  I long to have the answers.  I must confess I have never fully understood why God choose Abraham or how his acceptance of God’s promise – an acceptance which he wavered on from time to time – constitutes the ultimate example of faith found in the original covenant.  There is something there, but I think it is elusive.  We, like Abraham, have our own thelo and there is something in him for us to learn.  Perhaps it is as simple and straightforward as God’s love for us is steadfast and faithful even in the face of our doubts and missteps.  I long to know this love in my own life and I long to know what it is to live as one of a brood gathered under the wing of God’s never failing, never faltering love.