“Owning Up” - March 31, 2019

Psalm 51:1-19

            There are only nine out of a hundred and fifty Psalms that have a line at the beginning identifying the occasion of their composition.  This is one of them, and what an occasion it was.

“A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

Here’s the story as it appears in II Samuel [11:1-13].

“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

 It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, ‘This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ So David sent messengers to fetch her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant.’

 So David sent word to Joab, ‘Send me Uriah the Hittite.’ And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, ‘Go down to your house, and wash your feet.’ Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, ‘Uriah did not go down to his house’, David said to Uriah, ‘You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?’ Uriah said to David, ‘The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.’ Then David said to Uriah, ‘Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.’ So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.” 

David was stuck, and he was desperate.  He sent Uriah back to the combat zone with a letter to his general, Joab.  It said,

“Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and die.” [II Samuel 11:15]

Joab followed orders, and Uriah died, along with several others who were totally uninvolved with the situation.  Back in Jerusalem, shortly after that, David married the grieving widow and she bore him a son.

            The coverup was complete.  A few people had died, but the king’s reputation was intact.  There was no public scandal.  Uriah’s friends and the other officers did not rise in revolt or out of fear what might happen to their own wives while they were on duty.  If there was any suspicion anywhere, David still had full deniability.  All would be forgotten quickly, at least by everyone other than Bathsheba and David.  Life could go on.  New wars could be fought.  New palace intrigues could be planned.  Maybe David would look out from his roof again the following spring, and see an even prettier woman, this time without the marital encumbrances or, as Bathsheba would have by then, a child to care for.

            Nathan the prophet, for instance, could keep bothering David with minor conflicts and problems among the people that they should have been able to sort out for themselves.  For instance,

“He came to him, and said to him, ‘There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meagre fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.’ Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’” [II Samuel 12:1-6]

That was an easy one.  “Next case!” Then

“Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’” [II Samuel 12:7]

            What do you do?  What do you do when your entire public image is shattered?  What do you do if you suddenly realize that the face you have shown to the world is shown to be a mask?  What do you do if you come face-to-face with the worst deeds of your own life, things that you have tried to put behind you and to bury so that not even you yourself have to look at them?

            What if something you have done somewhere along the line is incapable of being put right with an apology, or even some kind of reparation?  No amount of “Sorry!” could bring Uriah back to life.  No number of “Mistakes were made” could undo the destruction of Bathsheba’s reputation (not that she probably had much choice in any of this) or restore the potential damage to the trust that was vital between David and his army and his subjects as a whole.  He could no longer be the big hero, the giant-killer, the musician-king, without also being the abuser of power, with blood on his hands.

            Do you go out on the palace balcony and give a speech where you say, “People have got to know whether or not their king is a crook.  Well, I’m not a crook.”?  Do you gather all your courtiers around you and say, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Bathsheba.”? Or do you look your accuser directly in the eyes and say,

“I have sinned against the Lord.”? [II Samuel 12:13] 

That’s what David did. 

            None of us is without sin.  Remember the story of how a woman was caught in the act of adultery and dragged in front of Jesus, with the crowd demanding he pronounce sentence on her so that they could stone her.  He did not deny that was the sentence set out in the Law.  But what he said was

“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. …When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.” [John 8:7,9]

So, too, David found himself alone with God, staring at his life, hearing his conscience tell him over and over the story of his failures.  And he owned up to them.

“Have mercy on me, O God,
   according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
   blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
   and cleanse me from my sin. 

For I know my transgressions,
   and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
   and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
   and blameless when you pass judgement.
Indeed, I was born guilty,
   a sinner when my mother conceived me.” [Psalm 51:1-5]

But he also owned up to God’s power to change his life from what it was to what it could become.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
   and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
   and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
   and sustain in me a willing spirit. 

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
   and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
   O God of my salvation,
   and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.” [Psalm 51:10-14] 

            This whole episode marked the beginning of years of struggle for David as king, because there would be fallout and consequences from what he had done.  But it also brought the proclamation of a kind of mercy that he could now speak of in a clear and convincing way, of a kind of genuine righteousness that has nothing to do with our own piety or fitness, but comes directly from God and totally by God’s grace, because

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” [Psalm 51:17]

"Trust God and ..." - March 24, 2019

Psalm 37:1-9

When I read over Psalm 37 a few weeks ago, the one verse that stuck in my head, or the one part of one verse, was “Trust in God and do right.”  When I read it more closely, I saw that verse three says,

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
   so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. 

That is something very different, and I will get back to that, but I admit that I was disappointed because I had a hymn all picked out to go with trusting God and doing right, not trusting God and doing good.  In fact, I think that might be where the phrase that was stuck in my head comes from. 

It was written by Norman Mcleod, a Scottish Presbyterian who led a group of highlanders to settle in Nova Scotia in 1817.  The community moved to Cape Breton Island in 1829, and then when the same potato blight that hit Ireland hit them in 1847, they all moved to Australia and a year later to New Zealand.  They must have been a hearty bunch.  Mcleod definitely had a feisty streak, and it shows up in the hymn I was thinking about:

Courage, brother, do not stumble,
Though thy path be dark as night;
There’s a star to guide the humble:
Trust in God and do the right.
Let the road be rough and dreary,
And its end far out of sight,
Foot it bravely; strong or weary,

Trust in God, trust in God,
Trust in God and do the right.

Perish policy and cunning,
Perish all that fears the light!
Whether losing, whether winning,
Trust in God and do the right.
Trust no party, sect, or faction;
Trust no leaders in the fight;
Put in every word or action,

Trust in God, trust in God,
Trust in God and do the right.

Some will hate thee, some will love thee,
Some will flatter, some will slight;
Cease from man, and look above thee:
Trust in God and do the right.
Simple rule, and safest guiding,
Inward peace and inward might,
Star upon our path abiding,

Trust in God, trust in God,
Trust in God and do the right.

The music was written decades later by Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, who also wrote “Onward, Christian Soldiers”, and has that same punchy, go-get-‘em feeling.  Go, follow bravely!  Let’s bring in the kingdom of God!  There’s a whole catalog of those nineteenth-century songs that stir up Christian courage.

“Peal out the watchword! Silence it never!

Song of spirits, rejoicing and free!

Peal out the watchword!  Loyal forever,

King of our lives, by thy grace we will be!”

You’ve got to love that.

“Lord, we are able; our spirits are thine.

Remake them, make us, like thee, divine.

Thy guiding radiance above us shall be

A beacon to God, to love and loyalty.”

I’ll stop.  The reason I’ll stop is that Psalm 37 isn’t telling us to do right, but to do good.

            Now, those two impulses are not in conflict.  But to do good, I would suggest, is the harder of the two, in part because it doesn’t always carry the same sense of satisfaction (or maybe “dignity” would be a better word).  To do good often involves setting yourself aside in ways that call for an internal, rather than an external, struggle.

            I would point to the story of Jesus birth.  Matthew [1:18-19] tells us,

“When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”

Joseph would have been totally within his rights, totally justified, at least at that point, to make a public statement about the whole situation.  Instead, he let kindness and consideration take over, and if you put yourself in that position, it is not an easy thing to do, especially in a society where a pregnancy like that would conceivably end up with the mother becoming, at best, an outcast and, at worst, dead.  Then God called on Joseph to go even one step further, to marry Mary and to raise Jesus as his own, which he did.

“Trust in the Lord and do good.”

            The “trust” part of that is major.  Joseph had to keep on trusting God from that moment.  He had another dream, just after the visit of the Wise Men, where he was warned that Herod would try to kill the baby, so Joseph took the mother and child and they became refugees in Egypt.  He had another message in another dream a few years later, letting him know that the coast was clear, and he uprooted them again to go home.  He and Mary had another scare when Jesus was twelve years old and they took him to the temple and when the family left, Jesus stayed behind without telling anyone.  They had to turn around and search all over Jerusalem until they found him.  Tell me that wouldn’t take trust.  Imagine being entrusted with the care of the Messiah, and losing him.  For that matter, I wonder if Joseph suspected that the people who wanted Jesus dead as a child might have gotten to him then.  I wonder if he thought how careless he had been to let him get anywhere near Jerusalem, the center of danger.  I wonder if he had a hunch somewhere in the back of his mind that it could be in Jerusalem that the Messiah would be killed.  I wonder if Joseph understood that even more would be asked of Jesus than had been asked of himself, both in trust and in doing good, more than had been asked of anyone, ever.

            Back in Jerusalem, while Mary and Joseph were going frantic, Jesus had been discussing the scriptures with the teachers in the temple.  One of the passages that he knew was this psalm.  How do we know that?  He quotes it.  We didn’t read the whole psalm this morning.  We heard verse nine say,

“…those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.”

Two verses later you’ll hear, right there, words that Jesus would point to in the Beatitudes.  It says,

“…the meek shall inherit the land.”

Certainly, then, Jesus knew the rest of this passage, with its urging to trust the Lord and to do good, which he did, but also to trust the Lord when doing good would mean bearing up under injustice without giving into it, to show the ultimate inability of hatred and cruelty to overcome innocence and faith, love and mercy.

“Commit your way to the Lord;
   trust in him, and he will act.
He will make your vindication shine like the light,
   and the justice of your cause like the noonday.” [Psalm 37:5-6]

For Jesus it would even mean letting them torture and kill him, and the people there that day tossed Jesus’ failure to lash out like them and the rest of us back at him, when that failure was really the greatest success:

“He saved others; he cannot save himself.  He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.  He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to.”  [Matthew 27:42-43]

To do the good he was sent to do, he had to trust as no one else has ever done, committing his way to the Lord, committing his life to the Lord, committing even his dying to the Lord who would vindicate him on Sunday morning, but this was still Friday.

            We, with our enjoyment of being right – let’s even use the word “pride” – want to jump ahead so quickly to the victorious songs and the glory of God, so we rush past the suffering and the trouble that come first, and the ways that we learn the profound lessons of trust and humility.  We miss the songs that say,

“Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh;

teach me the struggles of the soul to bear.

To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,

teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.”

And so I’m going to leave off with that.  I’m going to leave off with the protestors sitting at the lunch counter, holding still while the crowd taunts them and spits.  I’m going to leave off with the parent holding onto the screaming child.  I’m going to stop here with the husband or wife saying, “I’m with you, but if the drinking doesn’t stop, I have to get the kids away.”  I’m going to end with the whistleblower making the phone call.  I’m going to say once more,

“Trust in the Lord and do good,”

and point to someone going us all one better, up on a cross.

"Taking Refuge" - March 17, 2019

Psalm 31

            Everybody needs a place to regroup occasionally.

“When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me
Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet (up on the roof)
I get away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat-race noise down in the street (up on the roof)
On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so …”[1]

Okay, that works for the end of a difficult day, at least for The Drifters.  Maybe you have a place like that (I hope you do): a golf course or a coffee shop, someplace where you can go to decompress or turn things off for a short while.  I say, “Turn things off,” meaning that you get away from whatever pressures might bend you out of shape.  I might as well say, “Reconnect you,” because sometimes what life’s ups and downs do is disconnect you from the things that matter.

            One of my old friends, who lives in Silicon Valley, went through a double mastectomy two years ago, with aggressive chemotherapy afterward.  As part of her healing, she began to do two things that have helped her immensely.  One is that she started spending every Friday afternoon, as she puts it, “Visiting with the redwoods.”  The other thing she does is that whenever she can, she walks a labyrinth whenever she is near one.  (She has some sort of app on her phone to locate them.)  It focuses her prayers, she says.  Those two activities help her to reconnect to what matters on a more-than-superficial level: to the earth and to God.  The word “religion”, by the way, comes from a Latin word that means to reconnect.

            It’s a part of our humanity that we need those places of safety.

            In extreme cases, it might be a matter of protecting our physical lives.  There is the familiar story about how Martin Luther, after he began to preach about how we are saved by faith in Jesus, and only by that, not by anything good works that we try to do or how pious we are, was hauled in front of Emperor Charles V.  Luther’s theology undercut the notion that it would be possible to get on God’s good side by making offerings to the Church, which was how the Vatican’s building plan was being funded with the backing of German bankers.  (Follow the money.  Luther’s preaching would mean less income for the Emperor, whom those same bankers were supporting as well.)  It was complicated.  Eventually it meant that this professor of New Testament Studies was being told face-to-face to back down by a man who controlled most of Germany, all of Spain and the Netherlands, Mexico and most of South America.  His response was, “My conscience is captive to the word of God.  I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.  Here I stand.  I cannot do otherwise.  God help me.”  He survived.  The way it worked out was that days later one of his supporters faked a kidnapping, and carried Luther off to a castle where he hid for over a year, translating the Bible into German while he was there.

            It was a place of safety, of refuge.  But the real safety, which he had declared before the Emperor, was in his relationship to God through Jesus, a relationship that he was not going to jeopardize.  The places that offer us security and a sense of peace do so insofar as they connect us to the real source of security and peace, which is the Lord.

“In you, O Lord, I seek refuge;
   do not let me ever be put to shame;
   in your righteousness deliver me.
Incline your ear to me;
   rescue me speedily.
Be a rock of refuge for me,
   a strong fortress to save me.” [Psalm 31:1-2]

Luther needed those castle walls to keep him safe, though even there he tried to disguise himself, just in case.  His sense of what God could offer him, though, was enough for him to paraphrase this Psalm in a way that we still sing.

“A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing,

Our helper he amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.”

            The time came when he had to leave his hiding place and go back to his work, and he knew that for the rest of his life he would be a target.  In some people’s eyes he was a dangerous character and a subversive and to take him out would be as good a thing as it was when the Seals took out bin Laden.  Even so, he kept that awareness that the security God offers us is an eternal security.  We have a permanent refuge which is not a place.  It is God himself. 

“You are indeed my rock and my fortress;
   for your name’s sake lead me and guide me,
take me out of the net that is hidden for me,
   for you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit my spirit;
   you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” [Psalm 31:3-5]

Again, it found its way into “A Mighty Fortress”:

“Let goods and kindred go,

This mortal life also.

The body they may kill;

God’s truth abideth still.

His kingdom is forever.”

        Since trouble does come in many forms, so do places of refuge.  If you are in fear of physical harm, thank the Lord that there are places and people who can offer protection.  Whenever there is an emotional challenge, I hope your own version of the Redwoods reaches out to you and says, “Come and rest.  Let us show you how to see the long view of things.”  I hope you have a place of prayer where you and God can speak fully and freely with one another.  Remember that you’re sitting in a place like that right now.  If you need space and silence, here it is, and not just on Sundays.  If you need to talk, that’s also fine.  If you just need to stare at the pretty colors in the windows or listen to the band playing from the field down the street, God may reach out to you that way, too.

            Most of all, though, when you need refuge for your soul, from despair or fear or guilt or shame or any of the things that assault your deepest being, there is the ultimate refuge, a person and not a place.  That is Jesus, who is not limited to one place or time and who hears whenever or wherever you call. 

“Love the Lord, all you his saints.
   The Lord preserves the faithful,
   but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
   all you who wait for the Lord.”  [Psalm 31:23-24]

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[1] “Up on the Roof” by Carole King and Jerry Goffin.

"Fear of Death" - March 10, 2019

Psalm 6

            Let’s talk about fibromyalgia.  Let’s talk about rheumatoid arthritis.  Let’s think about multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s and lupus.  Let’s consider what it means to have any of the hundred and one conditions that are chronic and don’t just go away, but linger for weeks or years or longer, until they take the stuffing completely out of someone and leave them not only in pain or incapacitated, but without enough energy to get through the day, and with a dread of the nighttime.  Let’s think about people who hear the words of the psalmist and say, “That’s me!”

“I am weary with my moaning;
   every night I flood my bed with tears;
   I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eyes waste away because of grief…” [Psalm 6:6-7]

Let’s think about their caregivers, who have a different kind of pain which is not physical but no less real.  That’s the pain of helplessness and confusion.  Sometimes it’s a strange sense of guilt for being well when someone they love is sick, for waking up rested when their spouse has had one of those horrible nights.  Or maybe there is, after all, the physical toll on them that comes from caregiving and, again, a kind of guilt for considering their own needs when that other person is so much worse off.

            A friend of mine, a retired physician who is himself in the midst of some serious medical issues right now responded to the news this past week that Alex Trebek has stage-4 pancreatic cancer with these words:

“Alex Trebek ‘might retire in 2020.’ Seriously, ‘might.’ And he’s going to ‘fight this.’ Seems to me he’ll live about 6 months if he was just diagnosed, fight or no fight (but admittedly I’m not up to date). Alex says this whether he believes it or not. It’s expected. Even if we’re heading rapidly to the exit, it’s expected. ‘It’s dignified.’

What does this say about him? About us?

How can we deal with the dying with empathy while both they and we are expected, for far too long, to just keep pretending they’ll live forever? That they’ll be better any day and get right back to work.

The standard scenario is that everybody keeps pretending until one day the Hospice Kit arrives…”[1]

One thing I hear in that is how tired and hurt the writer is, too, and a big part of it is simply that it is hard for people to acknowledge what is happening, and in the denial they distance themselves from the person who most needs them.

            Without someone there, and many times even with someone there, comes a spiritual crisis and an overwhelming fear that God, too, has given up on them and that death itself will be, not a doorway into life, but into oblivion. Faith and trust do emerge, but they can be the Promised Land that lies way over there, through the desert and across the Jordan.  Until then, they cry out:

   “O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
My soul also is struck with terror,
   while you, O Lord—how long? 

Turn, O Lord, save my life;
   deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
   in Sheol who can give you praise?” [Psalm 6:2b-5]

            One of the things that the scriptures do is give us words for this.  They give us the way to pray about it.  They do not exclude the shadows that are as much a part of life as any other – and remember that if there are shadows that means that the sun is still shining somewhere.  But the scriptures do not turn away from the realities the way that people do.  They prepare us for them, and one of those realities is that we are not here on earth forever.  The same day I read my friend’s bitter comments, I also read a quote from Eugene Peterson (who died a few months ago) that says,

“That’s the whole spiritual life.  It’s learning how to die.  And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.”[2]

That intimacy and love refer to the people around you, but also to God.  Or at least, it can.

            It may take time, and it is not possible ever to say how much or how little.  That’s why it’s a good idea to start right now, whether you’re young or old, healthy or not; whether you work in a safe situation or one that involves dangerous activities – the thing about dying is that you don’t know when it could happen.  (Woody Allen used to do a routine about what it would be like if we all got a two-minute warning, like the end of a football game.  I don’t remember the whole thing but it included running up to someone and telling them something horrible, finishing, “And if that’s not the truth, may God strike me dead!”)  The Church of England has its people pray a long litany together every year during Lent, that has this passage:

“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From all oppression, conspiracy and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared,

Good Lord, deliver us.”

            So, here’s my advice as a religious professional: before you find yourself in this situation, read over the end of this psalm.

“Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
   for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
The Lord has heard my supplication;
   the Lord accepts my prayer.
All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror;
   they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame.” [Psalm 6:8-10]

On the one hand, the writer did survive whatever illness he faced, at least long enough to compose the psalm.  On the other hand, he did eventually die.  But in between, he gained confidence in the Lord’s power to destroy his enemies.

            What greater enemy do we have than death?

            Of that, another biblical writer had this to say:

“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,

‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
   we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [Romans 8:31-39]

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[1] Used by permission of the writer.

[2] "Eugene H. Peterson Quotes." BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2019. 7 March 2019. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/eugene_h_peterson_528421

"Not Being an Obstacle" - March 6, 2019 (Ash Wednesday)

II Corinthians 5:20a-6:10

           

            Last week, National Public Radio interviewed Rose Torphy, who was visiting the Grand Canyon with her family in January, where she became a Junior Ranger and was given a Junior Ranger’s badge.  “I promise,” she had repeated, “to discover all I can about Grand Canyon National Park and to share my discoveries with others.”  Since then, she’s been wearing her badge proudly, and she told the radio reporter, “Just talking to people, they see my badge on my coat and ask how come I’m a Junior Ranger.”  That might have something to do with her age, which is 103.[1]

            It’s a great story in its way, but one thing the interviewer never got around to asking, or maybe it didn’t get past the editor, was what Mrs. Torphy had discovered about Grand Canyon National Park that she wanted to share.  That is, after all, the point of becoming a Junior Ranger.  Unfortunately, what got in the way was the reporter’s fascination with her age.  People can become condescending to those of advanced years, which is really too bad, and it can lead to missing out on some valuable interactions.

            Maybe that would have happened, given time, but it was only a five-minute piece and about thirty seconds of it was taken up reporting the number of Mrs. Torphy’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.  So much time went into reporting about the messenger that they never really got to the message.

            The church in Corinth to whom Paul wrote seems to have been full of people who were probably really impressive and admirable.  He talks about all sorts of spiritual gifts being part of their experience.  Some people were prophesying and some people were healing and some people were getting caught up in ecstatic prayer and there were some amazing teachers and some who were so generous he said they would not only give the shirt off their backs, they would give their whole body if they had to.  You need a kidney?  How about a spleen?  That’s why he said things to help them keep these gifts in perspective.

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”  [I Corinthians 13:1-3]

Pretense can be a terrible obstacle to the gospel, the idea that you have to be some kind of Super Christian to be a follower of Jesus.  What you need is love.  Otherwise you just get in the way.

            In the section of II Corinthians that we heard this evening, Paul tells them again that if they want to let people know what God has done through Jesus and continues to do through the Holy Spirit – which is what the Church’s business is all about – they need to get over themselves.  He goes ahead and mentions his own experiences, but what he highlights are his failures and troubles.  It’s not a catalog of successes.  It’s a list of difficulties.

“We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…” [II Corinthians 6:3-5]

What got him through were not gifts that show up easily, and take work to develop, but are some of the most valuable character traits anyone can have.  He pulled through

“by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and,”

he adds,

“the power of God…” [II Corinthians 6:6-7]

            It is the power of God that makes the rest possible.  It’s not us.  In my experience, at least, I can say it’s not me.  If I forgive, it’s not generally because I want to.  It is a lot simpler to hold a grudge.  The world is a whole lot easier to understand and to navigate when I can label everyone very clearly as a Good Guy or a Bad Guy.  It takes work for me to understand a disagreement from your perspective, and it may be a waste of time and energy, when I know that mine opinion is the right one, anyway.  Unless I have that divine nudge, the Holy Spirit, prodding my conscience, I’m not going to do that.  As for

“afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger”

and so forth, I’d really rather avoid them, thanks.  Yet when you follow Jesus closely enough, you end up walking in his footsteps, and he got into a lot of trouble.  Nobody’s life is without trouble and suffering of some sort, for that matter, but what makes it worthwhile is that if we face trouble, not to make ourselves great, but for the sake of God’s ways, then God’s grace will be there from the very beginning, and not just when we get stuck and start shouting for help.

“As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
   and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” [II Corinthians 6:1-2] 

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[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/01/699261929/103-year-old-becomes-grand-canyon-ranger