Saturday, October 26, 2019

“Doing God a Favor” - October 27, 2019




Luke 18:9-14





The man in this picture is John Betjeman.  He was poet laureate of England from 1972 until his death in 1984.  He was a devout member of the Church of England all his life, a sincere Christian.  Interestingly, his college advisor, was a man who at the time was not a Christian at the time, but eventually would come to faith in a big way, a man named C.S. Lewis.  They could not stand each other. 

Even though Betjeman flunked out of Oxford he made a lot of his student experiences, but his poetry often poked fun at the upper classes.  In a strange way, that habit may have saved his life.  According to that goldmine of unsubstantiated information, Wikipedia, the Irish Republican Army once put him on their hit list, but someone up the chain of command took him off because he admired his work.  Whether or not that’s true, just looking at this picture I get the feeling that he was one of those people who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. 

            All of this together brings me to a poem he wrote in 1940, called “In Westminster Abbey”.  There he pictures a twentieth-century version of the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.  It is a woman living in London during the Blitz.

“Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England's statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady's cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered
Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I'll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
Join the Women's Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.

Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr'd.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.”

I’m sure that God was suitably impressed.

            I wonder if there is anybody who is a religious regular, however, who doesn’t slip into that mode of thinking at least at some point.  It’s easy enough to do.  When it happens, it’s usually a lot more subtle than this woman’s monologue.  Pride – which is the name for this condition – usually starts with the simple and true observation that we do often get things right.  The Pharisee said,

“I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” [Luke 18:12]

You know, I’d be happy if more people tithed.  Like fasting, it is a healthy practice that keeps us aware of our dependence on the Lord and forces us to look at our priorities, not only in finances, but in other aspects of life.  I cannot fault the Pharisee for being glad he could do what he did.  The same way, I am glad that he wasn’t stealing, hurting others, or sleeping around.  I imagine he kept all the commandments. 

            However, the problem isn’t always in what we do, but in how we do it.  Pride shows up in the attitude that we are somehow doing God a favor when we do what is asked of us.  In the chapter of Luke right before this one Jesus asked his disciples,

“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” [Luke 17:7-10]

Losing sight of that eventually creates a kind of arrogance that should be embarrassing, at least..

            Going back to Betjeman’s poem again, the speaker looks down on pretty much everyone else.  Race, class, nationality – you name it, she has everybody pegged.  She and the Pharisee both slip very easily into

“I thank you that I am not like other people.” [Luke 18:11]

That’s one that we’ve all got going these days.  If we are doing right, if we have our priorities clear, it’s easy to see where other people are wrong, and to jump from “You are wrong,” to “You are what is wrong with this country.”  I won’t belabor that point, because I don’t need to.  Besides, I don’t want to step on my own toes.

            Jesus had a memorable word or two about that behavior. 

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?” [Matthew 7:3-4]

The tax-collector, for all his faults, was at least honest about himself and knew his place before God.  Jesus describes him

“beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” [Luke 18:13]

and goes on to say that

“this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.”  [Luke 18:14]

Don’t give up on the Pharisee, though.  He was dense, as most of us are, but Jesus told his parables as a way to get through to people who don’t hear his message in other ways. 

Pride is as much a sin as greed or theft, only more easily hidden (we tell ourselves).  Once it is seen for what it is, though, even the proud can find hope even if it means (which it inevitably does) getting taken down a step or two.  In the end, we can be thankful that Jesus points out what we fail to see (or refuse to see) on our own.  It means that instead of telling God, openly or by our attitude, how great we are, we can instead ask for the same mercy as the tax collector, and take it as the unmerited gift that it is.  As Betjeman says in another poem,

“… most of us turn slow to see
The figure hanging on a tree
And stumble on and blindly grope
Upheld by intermittent hope,
God grant before we die we all
May see the light as did St. Paul.”


Saturday, October 19, 2019

“What Good Is the Bible?” - October 20, 2019



II Timothy 3:14-4:5


            I get asked a lot of questions that I can’t answer.  Why does this or that happen?  What is heaven like?  How does God relate to people who have never heard about Jesus?  Is it wrong to kill in self-defense?  At what point does flirting become adultery?  Does buying insurance indicate a lack of faith?  How far do you obey a government that may be unjust?

I like it when someone asks me a direct question that I can answer easily.  That happened not too long ago.  Someone made a remark that I don’t remember verbatim but basically amounted to “What good is the Bible?”  At the time I gave an answer that said something along the lines that it provides us a dependable record of the interaction of God and people that gives us guidance on how to lead our lives.  I said something about how even though our circumstances change, neither human nature nor God change, so we have reliable patterns even in confusing times.  I would stand by those statements.  The thing is that the Bible itself addresses the question. 

The second letter to Timothy was written as (obviously) a letter.  When it was written it was not done with the notion that it would become part of what the letter itself calls “the sacred writings” [3:15].  To those who wrote the letter, who received the letter, and who preserved it for later reference, the term “scripture” [3:16] referred to the Hebrew scriptures that we generally now call the Old Testament.  So when II Timothy speaks about “sacred writings” and “scripture” it is not patting itself on the back or making claims for itself.  The business of assigning authority to this letter came later, from others. 

Later on, over a period of centuries, the Church sorted through a lot of writings.  There were some that we decided were not worth hanging onto.  Every so often somebody thinks they are the first to discover one of these says, “Oh!  Look!  The ‘Gospel of Thomas’!  or ‘Eugnostos the Blessed’!” as if their existence were some great secret and we have to say, “Yeah, we decided seventeen hundred years ago that they didn’t make the cut.” 

Then there were writings where we saw something special and worthwhile: writings like the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John or the letters of people like Paul and John and James.  People read them over and over and found that somehow in the process, the voice of God spoke to their hearts. 

They also used their heads, and their best judgment.  Among the tests of what would be worth keeping has been whether such writings would make a difference in the believers’ lives.  To that end, we can and do ask that they fit the criteria found in II Timothy, where the question, “What good is the Bible?” is actually asked and answered.

So here we go.

“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” [II Timothy 3:16-17]
That’s a favorite verse of fundamentalists who believe that every word of the Bible was dictated directly to the writers by the Holy Spirit.  Those who hold to that kind of understanding of inspiration necessarily get into trouble at some point where the world of the Bible differs sharply from our own.  Fundamentalism digs its heels in to oppose the teaching of evolution for that reason, and some very intelligent people will go to great lengths to try to explain away what the vast majority of scientists and reasonable people will see as evidence that it took a whole lot longer than six days for the world to take its present form and for life to arise. 

Ironically, the same mistake is made by people who would dismiss the Bible.  People who think of themselves as so much more sophisticated and wise than the Bible’s authors will scorn the scriptures as no more than a bunch of quaint stories and legends and the record of ancient civilizations that we have far surpassed.

            Inspiration, however, is not the same as dictation.  I may be inspired by the sunrise.  When I see it, I may first react simply to its beauty.  Perhaps it stops there.  Or maybe I gain an awareness of beginnings in general, or a sense that that particular day holds a chance at a fresh start.  I may take encouragement.  In time I may see one special sunrise and suddenly believe that God is making a point.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
            his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning.” [Lamentations 3:23]

Someone else might see the sunrise and see that the earth is spinning on its axis from west to east on a regular schedule.  While that is true, if it’s all that you see, in my view, you are missing the point.  Inspiration is what comes from God breathing into a human being.  (No, I don’t mean that literally, either.)  But the Bible says in Genesis that human life begins with God’s breath (which can also mean “spirit”) finding its way into what would otherwise be a lump of dirt.

            Likewise, the inspiration of the scriptures comes along multiple times, like breathing.  It arises the first time when someone has become aware of God acting in the world in some particular way.  Someone saw God at work in the lives of Abraham and Sarah and their family, or in the politics of the kingdom of Israel, or in courtship and marriage.  They set them down in what became Genesis, or I and II Chronicles, or the Song of Solomon.  The inspiration is there, and it arose in the creative meeting between the stuff of earth and the breath of God.

            But it does not end when the experience is recorded.  Sure, if you read the written words and that is all they are to you, or perhaps fine literature at best, you have something that is akin to the many other wonderful books in the world.  When you read it or hear it, though, with expectation and awareness of God, the confidence that God speaks through these words, there is room for another moment of inspiration that says something directly to you. 

            The example I like to give goes back eighteen years at this point, to a Tuesday morning in September.  It was September 11, to be exact.  I don’t need to tell you what that day was like.  But that evening I opened my Bible wondering what to say from the pulpit the next Sunday, and I started with what was the regular, appointed Old Testament selection.  It was Jeremiah 4:19-20.

“My anguish, my anguish!  I writhe in pain!
            Oh, the walls of my heart!
My heart is beating wildly;
            I cannot keep silent;
for I hear the sound of the trumpet,
            the alarm of war.
Disaster overtakes disaster,
            the whole land is laid waste.
Suddenly my tents are destroyed,
            my curtains in a moment.” 

How often, at the hardest times or at the happiest, are we given words for what lies unspeakable within our hearts.

            What good is the Bible?  Alone, it is just another book.  In the hands of faith, or even of those seeking faith, it comes alive with the breath of God.  And then God can mold us and shape us, using it as a tool to teach us how to be more human and how to be more holy.  It becomes

“useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”. [II Timothy 3:16]

It doesn’t just give us word-for-word instructions, but it teaches us the ways of life that go with faith.  It tells us of Jesus, the Messiah, God-with-us.  It puts forth how he used the scriptures to defeat temptation, even when the devil tried to misuse scripture to ensnare him.  It tells how he taught us to look beyond the letter of the law to keep its spirit.  It tells how he used the words of scripture to pray, even speaking a verse of the Psalms on the cross.

            What good is the Bible?  It gives us what we need to build one another up, and together to build the kingdom of God.  It gives us a whole set of tools to use for different tasks, and it does that

“so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” [II Timothy 3:17]
That’s what good it is.  You won’t find anything better.




Saturday, October 12, 2019

“Doing Things Out of Order” - October 13, 2019





Luke 17:11-19

            Illness often involves physical separation by its very nature.  Someone who is sick may simply be unable to get around.  It could be from physical weakness.  It could be from pain.  Even a temporary illness means not being able to get around. You’re lying in bed with the flu or some kind of fever and you hear other people downstairs or outside, and you feel not quite lonely but separate in a way that can be worse.  Or maybe you are around people and some sort of ache or pain kicks in and that’s all you can think about.  Conversation is going on around you and you try to follow what is being said, but you just can’t focus on anything but the throbbing in your left knee or the feeling that your back is about to spasm again.

            A sense of isolation often accompanies depression.  There’s a quotation from the songwriter Fiona Apple that’s all over the internet, but always as a quotation and never with a source or context, but it puts her experience of depression this way:

“When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.”
The pain of isolation may be sharpened when it is not a symptom, but something imposed on someone who is already suffering.

            At the time of Jesus, people who were afflicted with leprosy found themselves cut off from most human contact.  It was a step that was taken for the survival of the entire community, but it was not done lightly or in a knee-jerk way. 

            The book of Leviticus assigns the care of public health to the priests.  Chapters 13 and 14 give detailed instructions on how to evaluate whether a rash is just a temporary skin irritation or an indication of a more dangerous underlying disease, like leprosy, that could endanger not just the individual but everyone around them.  The Law specified a temporary period of separation to allow observation before any kind of permanent exile was imposed.  And before we condemn that step as uncaring or harsh, we have to admit that we still take same similar steps to prevent one person’s infection from turning into a general contagion.  If you have ever gone to see someone in an isolation room at the hospital, you know what it is to use a gown and mask and gloves so that there is always some sort of barrier against infection.  In extreme cases, ebola or Marburg virus, the isolation involves caregivers dressed in something like spacesuits.

            The Law also made provisions for how to certify when a disease, specifically leprosy, might have somehow cleared up.  When that happened, the person had to stay outside the settlement, for safety, and the priest would go to them to do an examination.  There would be more waiting periods to ensure that the disease wasn’t simply in remission, but eventually the healthy person could return to regular life.  When Jesus told these ten lepers,

“Go and show yourselves to the priests,” [Luke 17:14]

that is the process that he was sending them into.  Jesus being Jesus, though, he rushes things.  He sent them to the priest before they were healed.  Luke says it was

“as they went, they were made clean.” [Luke 17:14]

They went from him in faith, not having seen the miracle, but acting on his assurance.  There’s a whole sermon in that for another time.

            One of their number, though, was a Samaritan. [Luke 17:16]  Under normal circumstances, he and the other nine would have had nothing to do with one another.  But if illness often separates people, there are times when it forces them together. There are stories throughout the Bible that include groups of lepers, people who, cut off from regular society, were pushed together by need.  It was a matter of survival, and other considerations disappeared.  If you cannot use your hands any longer, you are not going to quibble over the ethnicity of the person who is willing to lift your food to your mouth.  If you cannot walk without pain, you do not care about social status when someone offers you a shoulder to lean on.  And if you have been excluded from all that you have ever known – your home, your family, your work, your friends – there will be at least some shred of comfort that comes from the understanding of those who have shared the same loss.

            Now this Samaritan man, one of the ten men healed by Jesus that day, was made physically whole, but could not show himself to the Jewish priests as he had been directed, since the stigma that they attached to his birth would keep them from having anything to do with him.  He would be healed and could return to his family and his community, but would go through the process of reincorporation among them under the guidance of Samaritan priests (who shared the same scriptures on this point), and be expected by them to remain apart from the other nine who had been with him in his trouble.  Friends were taken from him by his illness and friends were taken from him by his healing.

It’s all the more startling, then, that he returned first to thank Jesus, because he was a Jew.  Or maybe he did that first so that no one could tell him not to do it.  And it’s also startling on Jesus’ side, not only because he had dealings with a Samaritan – that happened more than once – but because he told this man,

“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” [Luke 17:19]
The official line would not have recognized this man as having faith or would have said that he had the wrong kind.  Jesus saw someone who had already taken a chance on him, and Jesus was ready to return the favor.

            Jesus saves.  He did then, and he does now.  Jesus saves on the basis of faith, which is not a matter of getting every religious ceremony correct or performing exactly the proper number of good deeds.  Faith is trust.  Faith is hearing the voice of someone who could rightfully and without a shred of hypocrisy send you away in tears but instead offers kindness and compassion that even common sense says is dangerous and inadvisable.  Faith is being equally open and willing to take him as he is, so that when he says that he is the way, the truth, and the life, you’re ready to say, “Okay, then show me what kind of life you’re talking about.”  All that business about forgiving our enemies flows from being forgiven.  All that bit about turning the other cheek comes from knowing that he did that himself.  And his promises about eternal life, even when age or accident or some sort of sickness finally does catch up with us?  Faith means taking him at his word about that, too, with the added help that his other friends have given us of having seen him return to life himself.

            That faith makes us well.  I say that not because I have a lot of confidence in people who wave their hands around and then push someone backward shouting, “In the name of Jesus!”  I say that because I have seen enough people with deeper problems than even the best doctors can address find a healing of the soul that comes just from the awareness that God is loving and merciful and on their side.  John Wesley wrote:

“It is hard to find words in the language of men to explain all the deep things of God.  Indeed, there are none that will adequately express what the children of God experience.  But perhaps one might say that the testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.”[1]


[1] Cited in Reuben Job and Norman Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Nashville: Upper Room Press, 1983), 403.

Saturday, October 5, 2019

"Who and What" - October 6, 2019




II Timothy 1:1-14


            There has been no end of dispute and argument among Christians over the past two thousand years.  Despite Jesus’ pleas, the disciples who lived and traveled with him, who learned directly from him about the kingdom of God, who saw him perform miracles, and who became the witnesses to his resurrection from death never managed to get along with one another perfectly. 

The gospels record an incident where they get into an argument among themselves about which of them is the greatest, like some sort of first-century Twitter fight.  The people who came to prominence in the Christian community just after them often had the same discussion, at times framed around the importance of different forms of ministry.  Paul had to ask the Christians in Corinth to look good and hard at the situation among them and to see that the Holy Spirit had spread a variety of gifts among them so that they could see their need of one another.

“Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?” [I Corinthians 12:29-30]

Of course, the same apostle Paul who wrote these words was just as human as them, and he is recorded as having had his arguments with one of the original disciples, Peter, and even with James, Jesus’ own brother.

            Paul’s arguments with them were over doctrine more than personality, although when you read his letters you can get a clear sense that there is at least some of that there, too.  (Read through the book of Galatians, where he recounts who said and did what to whom.  You cannot miss it.)  At base, though, he is trying to establish the faith on the basis of faith in Jesus and Jesus’ love held out for everybody.  That also forced him to recognize the difference between adversaries and enemies. 

            So, time and time across the centuries, Christians have argued and disagreed.  At times (and may God forgive us all for letting acrimony go this far) we have let anger turn into violence.  Even so, when the smoke has cleared, we have continually come back to the point where we say that there is some bond that holds us together.

            It is not that we read the same Bible.  There are books that some people judge to be authoritative and others do not.  We (“we” being the Protestants) call these “The Apocrypha”.  The Roman Catholics just consider them part of the Holy Scriptures.  But on the basis of some points in these books, the Catholics have developed the notion of purgatory, a place for souls to work out repentance after death; the Protestants emphasize, instead, the full and entire forgiveness of sin here and now through Jesus having taken our sin onto his own shoulders on the cross.  Those are major differences, and they matter.  But they are not enough that (with the exception of a few unusual people on both sides) we would say that the people on the other side of this division are not also Christians.

            It is not that we worship the same way.  Compare, if you will, the elaborate ceremonies of the Eastern Orthodox with a group of Quakers sitting down in a room and waiting silently for the Holy Spirit to speak.  You can also flip that around and have two churches that worship in ways that seem basically interchangeable, say your average United Methodist and Presbyterian congregations.  It would not be on a Sunday morning, but on some weeknight in an administrative meeting of some sort, that you would discover very different understandings of the nature of the church.  Even so, no one in these spots would go so far as to say that they, and they only, are Christian.

            What holds us together, and brings us together again when we push one another away, is not a “what” but a “who”.

“I know the one in whom I have put my trust,” [II Timothy 1:12]

Paul told Timothy.  And, yes, he also told him,

“Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me,”

but Paul told Timothy to do that

“in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”  [II Timothy 1:13]

Once upon a time, we argued over whether Christians could eat pork.  That’s all over the book of Acts.  (The Seventh Day Adventists, by the way, are often vegetarians for religious reasons.)  But no one denies that Jesus sat down to eat with sinners, and in doing so called them back to the righteousness and wholeness of God.  The Eastern and Western churches split over what language to use in worship (and that came up again at the Reformation) and also over the question of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or just from the Father.  But we never deny that the Spirit is at work to bring people everywhere to faith.  Right now, at least in our branch of Christianity, we’re arguing over the place of LGBT people.  No one on either side of that issue, however, disputes that God

“saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.” [II Timothy 1:9]

And I could go on and on.  In fact, I am sure that down the road there will arise all kinds of unforeseen differences about what it means to live according to that “holy calling”. 

            The one thing I am sure of, though, is the love of the Savior who calls.  It is the message of that love that goes out into all the world, through all his people.  So,

“Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” [II Timothy 1:14]