Category: Christian Discipleship

How can you tell if you are really alive?  I couldn’t find the quote this week which I think is from Frederick Beuchner, but I remember the third and final question in the test is this:  “Is there anyone that if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer to be the one to suffer?”    I think that’s what my son meant when he told me once that he loved me so much he would “run through a wall for me.”  I’m not sure what that would accomplish, but it touches my heart every time I think about it.

The lectionary lessons for October 9 from the Hebrew Scriptures are about that kind of risk-taking love.  Both deal with a time when Moses put his life on the line for the people of Israel.

Psalm 106 is the Cliffs Notes version of the famous Golden Calf story in Exodus 32.  The Psalmist says, “They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped a cast image.  They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous things in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.  Therefore God said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before God, to turn away God’s wrath from destroying them.” (vs. 19-23)

We can all think of times when we have needed someone to stand in the breach for us, to be our advocate—to stand up to a bully or a predatory lender, to help us find our way through the morass of a complex tax code or indecipherable medical bills from a half dozen different health care providers, all for the same medical procedure.  Perhaps it’s getting help for an addiction or support in escaping from an abusive relationship, or an elderly patient needing a health care advocate.  When do you need someone to stand in the breach for you?  Who are the others around us that need us to be their voice when they cannot find their own?  Where do breach standers find the courage to put themselves on the line?

It takes great courage to speak the truth to one who has the power to do us great harm.  A whistle blower who exposes unjust practices by his employer is often very soon among the unemployed.  A witness who testifies against a criminal may risk retribution.  Christians who are called to witness to their faith need to know that the Greek word for “witness” is also the word for “martyr.”  Breach standing is not for sissies, and yet the courage of those who stand up to human forces of injustice pales in comparison to what Moses does in the Exodus 32 account.

It may help to sketch in a few more details that aren’t included in the Psalm 106 summary to   remind ourselves of the context of the Golden Calf story.  In the last few blog posts I’ve talked about the complaining the Israelites do about Moses’ leadership and his failure to provide for their comfort in the way to which they would like to become accustomed.  The Psalmist reminds us that in every case God has responded by meeting the needs of the people.  God has liberated them from slavery, fed them when they were hungry, given them a GPS in the sky to direct their travels, and provided water when they were thirsty.  Now their leader Moses has gone up on the mountain (called both Sinai and Horeb in the scriptures) to receive the 10 Commandments.

Moses is gone a lot longer than the people think he should be.  Granted 40 days does seem like a long time to get 10 Commandments.  That’s four days per commandment, but remember there were no Kinko’s where the printing could be done quickly, and God has a good union contract that provides for a day off every seven days!  The bottom line is that the people get restless and worried.  You know how hard it is to wait and worry about a loved one who is driving home late at night; or how hard it is to wait for test results from the doctor that could be a matter of life or death.  The Israelites are missing their leader, the one who has led them to freedom and they are lost without him.  They say, “Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (32:1).  Translation: Who is going to take care of us out here in the wilderness if Moses doesn’t come back?

That part of the story is understandable.   Fame is fleeting and fans are fickle.  Look how quickly a football coach is hung in effigy when his winning team starts losing or a political leader’s popularity goes south when unemployment numbers go north?  What is amazing about the story in Exodus is how quickly Moses’ brother Aaron caves in to the demands of the people.  The other part of Exodus 32:1 says, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us.”  And without hesitation, Aaron says, OK, give me your rings and any gold you have, “and he formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf” which the people proceed to bow down and worship.

I don’t know about you, but the image in my mind of this golden calf is a lot like the full-sized butter cow the dairy farmers display at the Ohio State Fair.  Influenced by the Hollywood version of this story, the picture in my mind is of a large impressive gold statue of a full-grown Holstein.  But let’s do a reality check.  These Israelites were homeless runaway slaves who fled Egypt with only what they could take in a carry on.  How much gold do you think they had?  Probably not enough to create a very big idol.  And that adds to the irony of the story.  On one hand we have Yahweh who turned the Nile into blood, sent plagues of locusts, killed off all the first-born sons of Egypt, parted the waters of the sea, fed the refugees manna from heaven, and made water come out of rocks to quench their thirst.  In the other corner we have a tiny, lifeless inanimate piece of metal.  That’s like somebody in a shiny new Lexus pulling up next to a rusty old VW bug and asking the driver if she wants to trade.  Or maybe it’s like the choice we’ll wrestle with in next week’s Gospel lesson where Jesus tells us to “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Back to Mt. Horeb where God is watching this little Golden Calf drama unfold.  God immediately pronounces destruction on these idolatrous, “stiff-necked” people (32:10).  I like to think God is as long-suffering and patient as a Cleveland sports fan, but it looks like there is a limit to God’s mercy and this seems to be it.  That is until Moses steps into the breach and argues with God.  I have trouble standing up to my wife or my grandkids, and here is Moses arguing with God.  You have to have a pretty trusting relationship to have an honest argument.  People who know how to argue fairly and speak the truth in love to each other have relationships that last.  Moses has that kind of relationship with God, sort of like Tevye in “Fiddle on the Roof.”

But as amazing as it is that Moses has the courage to argue with God, the most incredible thing is that he wins the argument!  You can read the details in verses 11-13, but my paraphrase of Moses’ case is, “Yahweh, this is going to be a PR nightmare if you go back on your promise to Abraham to make this little rag tag bunch of nomads a great nation.  How will that look back in Egypt on CNN?  You can’t afford to mess this up.”    And verse 16 says “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

Three reflections on God’s dramatic reversal:

1.  One person can make a difference.  If God can be persuaded to change, don’t let anyone tell us we can’t fight city hall.  Read John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage to see how often one person of integrity has changed the course of American history.  Or the story about a young boy saving starfish that were washed up on the beach to die by throwing them back into the ocean.  When a passerby told him he was wasting his time because there were thousands of starfish on the beach and he couldn’t make a difference, the boy picked up another starfish, threw it into the water and said, “It made a difference to that one.”

2.  What does Moses advocacy for the Israelites tell us about the power of intercessory prayer?  No, it doesn’t mean we can expect God to do whatever we ask.  A god like that would be weaker than a Golden Calf.    It does mean we all have an obligation and duty to stand in the breach for those who need an advocate; to pray without ceasing, to work for peace and justice, or as the Epistle lesson for this week (Philippians 4:1-9) tells us, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

3.  Before Psalm 106 retells the Golden Calf story it assures us that our God is a God of mercy whose “steadfast love endures forever” (Ps. 106:1), even when “both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.” (Ps. 106:6)  God gets justifiably angry at the Israelites and us for our unfaithfulness, yes, but one can be angry and still love the sinner.  Sometimes we need to be reminded of that, and that’s exactly what Moses does in his argument with God.  He reminds God of his promises and of his love for his people.  And that reminder helps God “turn from his fierce wrath and change his mind.”

We need reminders too.  Regular acts of worship and study of the Scriptures help us remember our own sin and God’s deliverance,  the promises we have made to live in the ways of peace and love with those dearest to us and with all of our sisters and brothers in the family of God.   Partaking of Holy Communion, a sacrament of remembrance, reminds us of Christ’s sacrificial love as he stood in the breach for humankind’s redemption.  And we are reminded that God has not left us alone but has given us the Holy Spirit, our eternal advocate to strengthen us so our fears do not tempt us to bow down to any false gods.

The first time I ever felt totally and absolutely alone was the night I was initiated into the Order of the Arrow in the Boy Scouts.  The initiation included a 24 hour period of silence, which was bad enough, but the hardest part of that time was the night we each had to spend alone under the stars, not knowing where we were or how close we were to any other scouts.  We were led in silence, single-file out into the remote areas of Camp Lakota near Defiance, Ohio with nothing but a sleeping bag.  Our instructions were that when tapped on the shoulder by the guide who was behind us we were to stop in that spot, bunk down for the night and not leave that spot until a guide came for us in the morning.

The Exodus passage for September 25 reminds me of that frightened young boy I was some 50 years ago.  Exodus 17 is a continuation of last week’s complaining saga in chapter 16.  This time the complaints are more specific, namely for water.  The Israelites have camped at Rephidim where, we are told, “there was no water for the people to drink.”  (Note that this story must be from one of the other sources incorporated into the Exodus account.  If God has provided food in chapter 16 it makes no sense that something as essential for human life as water would not have also been provided.  However, following the manna from Heaven story in chapter 16 with this plea for water may also be a way to show us how quickly we return to complaining after one set of needs has been met, and how we are continually dependent on God to provide for us anew each and every day.)

But the Israelites still don’t understand the source of their liberation or their dependence on God. In verse 2 we are told they “quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’”  It’s not Moses who provided food in chapter 16 and as we see it is not within Moses’ power to provide water for the thirsty pilgrims either.

I would argue that water is not the real issue here.  As important as water is for survival there’s a deeper thirst, the same one Jesus addresses with the woman at the well in John 4 when he offers her “living water.”  What’s going on in the Exodus story is that the real question behind all the murmuring and complaining comes to a head.  The Israelites seem to have finally realized they are really on their own.  There’s no 7-11 on the corner to buy Perrier when they’re thirsty.  They are in the wilderness, without identity or place, free from slavery but homeless, and like those scared Order of the Arrow scouts, feeling a strange mixture of independence and abandonment.   The bottom line question is not about water.  It comes in verse 7, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Theologically one does not have to be in a desert to experience the wilderness or to thirst for living water.

• A widow after 50 years of happy marriage wakes up on a tear-soaked pillow in an empty bed in the wilderness.
• A young vibrant father in the prime of life is struck down by a freak accident and will spend the rest of his life in the wilderness as a quadriplegic.
• An innocent 10-year old girl is told she is HIV positive from a blood transfusion and is then driven deeper into the wilderness by an unknowing Sunday School teacher who tells her class that God has sent Aids to punish promiscuity and homosexuality.  And she not only wonders if God is among us in the wilderness but who would want that kind of God there anyway?
• So does a family whose home is washed away by a flood that is labeled by their insurance company “an act of God.”

We’ve all been in the wilderness—without even leaving home:  broken-hearted by a loving relationship gone sour; frightened by the fear of unemployment in a shaky economy; helplessly watching a whole year’s crop baked to a crisp in draught-plagued summer heat; weeping over the destruction of more acres of woodlands by the bulldozers of progress or the pollution of yet more rivers and streams.

Haven’t we all murmured and asked, “Is God among us in this wilderness or not?”

It’s a legitimate question raised by the Israelites.  They are no longer able to depend on their Egyptian overlords to provide for them and are being asked to put their lives on the line and trust Yahweh and his agent, Moses.  They (and we) are like a trapeze artist who wants to know if her partner can be trusted to catch her 50 feet above the ground; or a traveler who deserves to know if the pilot is sober and qualified to fly the 737 he’s about to board; or a marriage or business partner who has a right to know if their spouse or colleague is reliable and trustworthy.

If we risk our lives on someone we want to know if they are with us or not, don’t we?  It’s OK to ask about God’s presence.  There has to be room for doubt in our lives or there is no room for genuine faith.  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [Heb. 11:1]  So, it’s OK to question God’s presence, but the problem is we often look for the wrong kind of answer to that question.  Because what we really want is for God to do for us what we want.  And sometimes the answer to our prayers is “no.”  And we feel abandoned and forsaken, like Jesus on the cross or like the Hebrews in the wilderness.  “Have you brought us out here to die?”

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer to “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” I sometimes want to say, “What good are you doing in Heaven, God.  We need you here with us in the wilderness.”  Robert Browning’s poem is comforting (“God is in his heaven and all is right with the world”) but anyone who has been out of their house or watched the 11 o’clock news knows that all is not right with the world.  Is God with us in the wilderness?

Fred Craddock says that the problem is that we want our theology to be “When the Messiah comes there will be no more suffering.”  We’ve got it backwards, says Craddock.  What the Bible really tells us over and over again is that “Where there is suffering, there the Messiah will come.”

We know that is true, but like the Israelites, we ask why does God lets us wander in the wilderness and wonder if we are abandoned?  Such times test us too and help teach us that we are not independent or self-sufficient.  We are dependent on God, but only when we feel the void in our lives, the emptiness that no human can fill, are we able to admit our dependence on God and invite God into our lives to fill the wilderness-sized hole.  I believe it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “People are like tea bags.  You can’t tell how strong they are till they are in hot water.”  Those hot water  times are when we learn that we need God.

That faith and strength is like the metaphor in the title song to the great musical “Fiddler on the Roof” (lyrics by Sheldon Harnick):

“Away above my head I see the strangest sight, a fiddler on the roof, who’s up there day and night.  He fiddles when it rains, he fiddles when it snows; I’ve never seen him rest, yet on and on he goes.

What does it mean this fiddler on the roof, who fiddles every night and fiddles every noon?  Why should he pick so curious a place to play his little fiddler’s tune?  An unexpected breeze could blow him to the ground, yet after ev’ry storm I see he’s still around.  Whatever each day brings, this odd outlandish man, he plays his simple tune, as sweetly as he can.

A fiddler on the roof, a most unlikely sight; it may not mean a thing, but then again it might!”

Is God with us in the stormy, lonely, wilderness times of our lives?  The answer is a resounding “Yes!”  Emmanuel, one of the names for Jesus, means literally “God with Us,” incarnate in human form.  In the Exodus 17 passage God answers this basic theological and existential question in a different but also life-giving form.   In verses 4-6 God responds to the murmuring Israelites.

Moses asks God for help in dealing with his rebellious people.  The mob is so angry Moses is afraid they are going to stone him.  Desperate people do such things.  But God tells Moses to take his staff and strike the rock at Horeb and “water will come out of it so that the people may drink.”  The text tells us Moses did so “in the sight of the elders of Israel.”  But notice what the text doesn’t say; it doesn’t say the water flowed out of the rock.  The story ends right there and another example of how dependent the people are on God begins in verse 9 when they are attacked by Amalek.  We are never told the water flows.  People of faith however don’t need that blank filled in with details.  We can hear the water gurgling up from the rock and taste the cool refreshing life it gives.

And in the bubbling water, we also hear the answer whispered to those who have ears to hear, “Yes, God is with us, everywhere; especially in the wilderness.”

I’m wearing one of those rubber bracelets that are popular these days to show support for all kinds of good causes.  This one is from a group called “A Complaint Free World.org” started by Rev. Will Bowen to promote a healthier, more positive attitude toward life.  The unique deal for this bracelet is that it’s interactive.  You are supposed to switch it from one wrist to the other each time you catch yourself complaining, the goal being to go 21 days without whining or bellyaching.  I wore out 3 bracelets before I made it to the three-week goal.

Coincidentally (or is it a God incident?) two of the scripture lessons for September 18 in the Revised Common Lectionary deal with complaining.  Exodus (16:2-15) begins with “The whole congregation of Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.”  This is a classic “no good deed will go unpunished” or “what have you done for me lately” story.  Moses and Aaron have risked their lives to liberate the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and the thanks they get from their ungrateful people is constant griping.  The whining former slaves go so far as to say, “We would have been better off just dying in Egypt than to have you bring us out here in the wilderness to starve to death.”  Like they were expecting the Sinai Sheraton?

The Gospel lesson (Matthew 20:1-6) is the parable that must have inspired first century collective bargaining.  Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard owner who hires some laborers early in the morning, another group at 9 am, another at noon, more at 3 pm, and a final cadre at 5 pm.  So far, so good.  One of the few things we all agree on these days is creating jobs, right?  But when the whistle blows at 6 pm and the workers line up for their pay, starting with those who only worked an hour, everyone gets paid the same wage, whether they worked an hour or 12 hours!  Not surprisingly, the folks who worked all day long in the hot sun are mildly irritated and complain that they should be paid more since they worked more.  They shout a child’s favorite complaint, “That’s not fair!”  But the landowner says, “I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Or are you envious because I am generous?”  And then Jesus concludes the parable with that curious line, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” 

I love the way my mentor Van Bogard “Bogie” Dunn interpreted that last line when I was a seminary student.  Rather than seeing this as a reversal of order from one up to one down, Bogie said that if the first are last and the last are first, that means everyone is the same—there is no first or last.  The kingdom of God is not about getting ahead, it’s about realizing that we are all equal in the eyes of God.  And if we are all equal and trust God to provide what we need and not what we want, 90% of our reasons for complaining melt away faster than an ice cream cone in the noon day sun.

One thing that intrigues me about these two passages of scripture is the seemingly illogical way God and the God-figure/landowner respond to the complainers.  The complaint of the laborers who slaved all day seems legit to our capitalistic sensibilities, does it not?  And look at how God responds to the former slaves in the Exodus passage.  Three times in 14 verses the Exodus account tells us that “God has heard your complaining.” (vs. 7, 8, and 12). That part makes sense.  We know God listens to our prayers, apparently even when we are whining.  But God’s response to the Israelites is totally unexpected.  Rather than telling them to shut up and be glad they are free from their captivity in Egypt or asking if they want some cheese with their whine, God seems to reward their grumpiness and provides manna from heaven, bread in the morning and meat in the evening.  And they don’t have to do anything to earn it.  They work even less than the 5 o’clock grape pickers in the parable.  All they have to do is go out and gather what God provides for them every day; and the only caveat is that they can’t get greedy and take more than they really need or it will spoil.  (Which of course they do, and it does.)

So the workers who seem to have a justifiable gripe come up empty handed, and the Israelite ingrates get fed.  The Exodus account reminds me of another parable Jesus told (Luke 18:1-8) about a judge who is constantly harassed by a woman with a grievance.  She finally wears the judge down and gets what she wants, not because she pleads her case so well; but because the judge is tired of listening to her complain.

Is the message here that if we complain enough God will solve our problems just to shut us up?  That’s the squeaky-wheel theology of prayer, and it has some merit.  We have had one of those Murphy’s law summers at our house when it seems that everything that can has quit working: hot water heater, car alternator, ice maker in the frig, telephone, cable TV.  Multiple times we have been promised repairs or installation services, and days or even weeks go by without satisfactory response.  I’ve learned that making phone calls with increasing levels of irritation and impatience does seem to get results in the service sector.  But is that the way it is with God? 

One possible answer is found in Luke 18:1 where Luke very clearly spells out the purpose of the parable of the persistent widow.  “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  At least when we are complaining to God we are in communication and showing some level of trust that God cares and will respond.

On the flip side of complaining, consider the famous serenity prayer that says, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”  I don’t think St. Paul was in AA, but his statement in Philippians 4:11 that he has “learned to be content in whatever state” he is in has a similar ring to it.  And so does Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, telling us not to worry about tomorrow or what we will eat or drink or wear.   He says God knows we need these things and will provide, just as God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness.

Maybe it’s a lack of faith, but I have problems with that advice.  It sounds too much like the Gospel according to Pollyanna to me and can be too easily turned into an excuse to rest on our laurels (or other parts of our anatomy).  I suppose the fear of apathy or laziness inspired the popular saying that “God helps those who help themselves,” one of those familiar phrases that Fred Craddock calls ‘almost Bible” because so many people think it’s biblical or should be.  Here’s what Wikipedia says about that saying:  “The phrase originated in ancient Greece, occurring as the moral to one of Aesop’s Fables, and later in the great tragedy authors of ancient Greek drama. It has been commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin; however the modern English wording appears earlier in Algernon Sidney’s work.  It is mistaken by many to be a Bible quote; however the phrase does not occur in the Bible. Some Christians have criticized it as actually against the Bible’s basic message of God’s grace.”

That last phrase zeros in on a key dynamic for the balancing act required in faithful living  We are called to walk a fine line between trusting God to provide but also taking initiative to meet our own needs and those of others – to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. 

Too often we use the “God helps those who help themselves” philosophy or hum a few bars of  “God will take care of you” to avoid our own responsibility for going the extra mile to meet the needs of others.  Praying for those in need is good.  It raises our awareness and can motivate us to compassionate just action.  But if our prayer stops with just delegating the problems of others to God’s to do list, sorry that won’t fly.  (And yes, I just switched my bracelet for complaining about those who behave this way.  And yes, I need to check for logs in my own eye before pointing out the speck in yours.)

Remember the full text of the Serenity Prayer asks for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” but also for “the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”   The Israelites in the wilderness couldn’t change the harsh living conditions in the desert, but when God provided food for them, they were required to change what they could — to go out for themselves and gather what God had given them. 

The bottom line is that constructive criticism is an essential Christina discipline.  Injustices will not be righted or human needs met until some whistle blowing prophet first identifies the problem.  When criticism degenerates into complaining is when we fail to respond to a problem by taking positive action to improve our own situation or that of others.

My suggestion is this:

The next time we hear someone, including ourselves, moaning and groaning about an unfair or painful situation, consider our options:

1.  We can just tune out the complainer and ignore him or her.
2. We can listen for what’s behind the complaint. Is it

• (a) One of those things up with which we have to put, i.e. something that can’t be changed and therefore must be accepted?
• (b) If it can be changed, what resources can we and the other person(s) muster or create together to help the situation?
• (c)  A quick prayer for discerning the difference between a and b is always helpful.

In that light, Exodus 16 makes a lot more sense.  When God heard the complaints of the Israelites, God didn’t reward them for being cantankerous and unreasonable.  God really listened and heard the fear and pain in their pleas and responded in love and grace to meet their needs.

May we go and do likewise.

The texts for September 11 are a great example of how relevant and timely the lectionary can be.  How interesting is it on the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. to contrast a classic Gospel lesson on forgiveness with Israel’s celebration of the crushing defeat of their hated enemies, the  Egyptians, in the waters of the Red Sea? 

I’ve been dreading this 10^th anniversary of 9/11 all year, fearing that it will be an excuse to fan the flames of fear and hatred and revenge on those who perpetrated the attacks in 2001, and even worse, on any one of Arab or Islamic heritage.   I hope I’m wrong and that this anniversary will be more about healing and understanding than about revenge.  To that end, I share this amazing story from the Jewish Talmud about the Hebrew fugitives crossing the Red Sea.

The Talmudic interpretation picks up after the Biblical account and Miriam’s song and victory dance celebrating Yahweh as a “warrior” or even worse in the older version of the Revised Standard Version, “a man of war.”  According to the Talmud God had been away that day and left the angels in charge.  God returns to find the angels joining in the celebration and cheering that they got those darn Egyptians, drowned the whole lot of them and all their horses too!  To the great surprise of the angels, God is not pleased with their celebration.  When they inquire why not, God shakes his head and says, “Don’t you understand, the Egyptians are my children too?”  And that story is told by the Jews!

Knowing how hard it will be, my prayer is that American Christians will take very seriously the challenge of Jesus to forgive and even love our enemies as we remember and commemorate the historic and tragic events of September 11, 2001.

As I said in last week’s blog on Romans 13, putting on Christ as our “armor of light” makes it possible for us to live up to  God’s expectations for us when we cannot do it on our own.  In Colossians 3, Paul spells out what some of the core qualities of Christian discipleship are.  He says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and  patience, …forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive.” (vs. 12-13)

As we consider forgiveness as a core Christian value, you may benefit more if you remember specific situations in your life where forgiveness is needed.  Take a minute to think of someone who has wronged you or hurt you; someone whose bad habits drive you crazy. (Stop and get a picture in your mind of that person.) That’s easy right?  Most of us have a long list of folks like that who have made our lives difficult.   

And now the hard part.  Call to mind a mistake you’ve made, intentional or careless, minor or major, that has hurt someone in your life.  Take time to experience the regret and the desire for peace and release from that burden.  It may be recent.  It may have been with you a very long time.  Forgiveness is the only way to ease that burden and be at peace.

A marvelous true story about forgiveness in told in the movie “The Straight Story,” about Alvin Straight, a 73 year old man who journeys from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, to visit his dying brother, Lyle.  So far, that doesn’t sound out of the ordinary, right?  What makes this story unique is that Alvin, because he no longer has a driver’s license, makes the 370 mile trip on a John Deere lawn tractor!!!  The two brothers were estranged for years and had not spoken because of stubborn pride and anger over a long-forgotten conflict.  But Lyle’s stroke convinces Alvin now is the time to make amends.  Along his journey Alvin meets a host of interesting characters who are deeply touched by his desire to make up with his brother.  When Alvin finally arrives, Lyle asks him if he has ridden “that thing” 370 miles just to see him.  Alvin replies, “Whatever it was that made us angry, I want to make peace and look up at the stars,” something they had enjoyed doing together as young boys.

Great story which reminds us that forgiveness is not easy; those who forgive must overcome obstacles, including our own resistance.  Alvin did not wait for his brother to ask for forgiveness or to apologize; he took the risk of initiating the forgiveness, even though he no longer remembered the original problem.

The most famous cliché about forgiveness is of course, “forgive and forget,” but we all know that in real life overcoming the past is never that simple.  Anthony de Mello illustrates how true that is in a humorous vignette about love’s forgetfulness:  ‘Why do you keep talking about my past mistakes?” said the husband.  “I thought you had forgiven and forgotten.”  “I have indeed, forgiven and forgotten,’ said the wife.  ‘But I want to make sure you don’t forget that I have forgiven and forgotten.”

Forgiveness is not easy – but it is an essential, core value and behavior for those who want the peace of Christ in their hearts.  Why?  Because none of us escape the pain of frustration, disappointment, betrayal, conflicts, and problems in life and in love.  That means, as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi puts it, “all of us have unhealed scar tissue that keeps our hearts closed and armored against repeated injuries.”  Reb Zalman adds, that “when we refuse to forgive someone who has wronged us, we mobilize our own inner criminal justice system to punish the offender.  As judge and jury, we sentence the person to a long prison term in a prison that we construct from the bricks and mortar of our hardened hearts.  Now as jailer and warden, we must spend as much time in prison as the prisoner we are guarding.  All the energy we put into maintaining this prison system comes out of our energy budget.  Bearing a grudge is very costly because holding long-held feelings of anger, resentment, and fear drain our energy and imprison our vitality and creativity.”  That’s why the Chinese have a saying:  “one who pursues revenge should dig two graves.”  

So much for the “don’t get mad, get even” philosophy.   Forgiveness may seem harder than revenge, but the payoff is priceless.

Diana and I were in Japan two years ago.  We saw many interesting sites and enjoyed the graciousness of the Japanese people very much.  But for me the most memorable and moving part of the trip by far was our visit to Hiroshima and the site of the first atomic bomb.  As we stood on the very spot where so much death and devastation took place, we saw pictures and read accounts of the unbelievable power unleashed on that city, of  the 70,000 people who were annihilated by the blast and perhaps 200,000 more who died later after horrible suffering from radiation poisoning.  A lot of thoughts and feelings ran thru my mind – but the strongest words were those of Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

The same words echo in my mind as 9/11 approaches again, along with the question, how is it possible to forgive such horrible acts of injustice?  Does God really expect us to forgive the Hitlers of the world?  Can victims of sexual abuse ever forgive their abusers?  Can a people that have been enslaved by others ever be reconciled with their oppressors?  Can parents ever forgive a drunk driver who kills or maims a child?  Can the families of the thousands of 9/11 victims ever forgive the terrorists who flew those planes into the twin towers or the Pentagon or that field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania?  Or the first responders who will never be fully healthy again because they chose to run to ground zero as others ran from it?  Or the millions of us who live under a heightened terrorist alert that has forever changed the way we live our lives?  Could Jesus possibly mean this kind of act of inhumane cruelty when he says, “if someone strikes you on the cheek (or the North Tower), turn to them the other as well?”

Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of the Nazi death camps offers a powerful answer to how that kind of forgiveness is possible.  Corrie’s family was among the millions executed by the Nazi’s during World War II, but she miraculously survived.  After the war she felt compelled to travel around Europe proclaiming a message of Christian forgiveness for those who exterminated so many innocent people.  One night as she got up in a church to give her testimony she looked out into the audience and felt her blood run cold.  There in the crowd was one of the very SS guards who had been responsible for the murder of her family.  She delivered her message from memory and tried to make a hasty retreat after she finished.  To her dismay she saw the former Nazi guard coming straight for her and could not avoid him.  He stretched out his hand to her and thanked her profusely for her message.  He said, “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that word of forgiveness to lift the burden of guilt I feel for what we did to your people.”  He stood there waiting to shake her hand.  Corrie says she was paralyzed.  Her hands were frozen at her side for what seemed like an eternity.  Finally she prayed, “Lord, if you want this man forgiven, you’re going to have to do it because I can’t.”   At that point, she says she felt the most amazing peace come over her.  She reached out and took the hand of her former enemy and felt a power run through her body that she had never experienced before.

“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Notice what that verse says?  “Father, forgive them….”  Just like Corrie ten Boom asks God to forgive her enemy, Jesus asks God to do the forgiving – perhaps because in his pain and agony, in his human suffering, he cannot muster the strength to do it himself?  If even Jesus has to rely on God to provide the power to forgive, how much more should we rely on that same source of mercy and forgiveness.  The scriptures tell us, that “with God all things are possible” – even forgiving unrepentant offenders and hated terrorists.

Forgiveness is a gift – and true gifts are given without strings or conditions attached.  The best part is that forgiveness is not just for those we forgive, but is a gift for ourselves that frees the giver from a terrible burden of anger, pain and being a victim to the past that cannot be changed or undone. 

I’m not saying it’s easy or quick to experience that peace.  For some it may happen in a sudden conversion experience, but for most of us, forgiveness is a process – it takes time and practice, even 70 x 7 times, patience with ourselves, unlearning old attitudes and allowing the love of Christ and God to work in our hearts.  The hurt and pain may not ever go away completely, but the more we can surrender the pain and anger and resentment at others or at our own mistakes, the more room we make in our hearts for peace and contentment.

A key to forgiveness is accepting our human imperfection.  We are all fallible human beings.  God has endowed us with a freedom of choice that guarantees we will all screw up on a regular basis.  All of us make mistakes.  That may not sound like good news, but it is – it means there’s no need to beat ourselves up for making mistakes.  Mistakes R Us – they go with the human territory, and once an unkind word is spoken, or a careless act done that injures someone else, or a foolish decision made about a job or an investment, or a relationship – that toothpaste is out of the tube and can’t be crammed back in no matter how much we wish it so.  The bomb can’t be undropped on Hiroshima; the Holocaust can’t be erased from the history books, or the dark saga of human slavery and racism in various parts of the world.  Inequality for women for most of human history can’t be ignored.  Addictions to substances, junk food or sex or power or consumption only grow stronger if they are denied.  9/11 can be remembered and heroes memorialized, but that dark day cannot be undone. 

So the first step in the healing process of forgiveness is accepting the reality of human frailty – including and most especially our own.  The famous parable of the prodigal son says the son came to his senses, realized what a mess he had made of his life, and then and only then was he able to say “I’m sorry” and accept the gift of forgiveness that his father was always ready to give.  This bad son, the prodigal, realized the need to ask for forgiveness – and he was reconciled, whereas his older brother ended up angry and bitter, because he couldn’t forgive his brother’s mistakes or the “unfair” way his father handled the situation.

So forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves and others – whether other people receive that gift or deserve it doesn’t matter – because forgiveness does more for the giver than it does for the forgiven.  If someone wrongs me and I carry a grudge and feel like a victim of that wrong for the rest of my life – who is really suffering? 

There is one more kind of forgiveness that most of us don’t think about, but it is critical to finding peace in our lives.  It’s the need to forgive God – yes, I said forgive God.  What does God need to be forgiven for?  I first discovered this aspect of forgiveness in the marvelous book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Harold Kushner.  Kushner says we need to forgive God for making an imperfect world–for the things insurance companies call “acts of God.”  Have you ever noticed that all the things in that category are bad?  Hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, sink holes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions?  

So does God need our forgiveness for life being as it is?  Maybe not, but we need to give it, for the same reason we need to forgive ourselves and others.  Because if we are angry at God for all the problems in the world and in our lives – if we blame God for innocent children suffering, for all manner of bad things that happen to good people, we will never be at peace.  And, more importantly, if we blame God for all our problems, we will never take responsibility for making things better.

Does forgiveness mean being a door mat?  Does it mean just rolling over and being passive and helpless?  No – injustices are made to be righted, crises are opportunities for service and compassion, tragedies are prime examples of times to learn from the mistakes of the past so we don’t’ make them over again.  But for those things we cannot change or even understand, forgiving God for the imperfections of our world and our own understanding of it, is the only way to find the peace that the world cannot give. 

What do we need to ask God to forgive?  What guilt do we burden ourselves with that we can surrender to God?  What anger and resentment toward others is keeping us locked into a victim mindset to our past?  What resentments toward God that keep us from total freedom and joy in life do we need to release? 

Those burdens keep us from worshipping and praising and trusting God completely – and they will do so till we acknowledge them and are reconciled with human imperfection in ourselves and in others.

Jesus said, “Father forgive them.”  Maybe in his human agony and pain he could not find the strength to forgive those enemies who were responsible for his suffering.  But he knew someone who could forgive them, and so do we.

Nowhere is the power that the fear of suffering can have on faith more evident than in Matthew 16.  Peter goes from being the rock on which Jesus will build his church (v. 18) to a “stumbling block” to Jesus just five short verses later.   How is that possible?   Because Jesus raises the ugly specter of suffering as a prerequisite for Christian discipleship.

Suffering is not my favorite thing about being a Christian. In fact, if we were to do a David Letterman top 10 list of my favorite things about being a Christian, suffering wouldn’t even be on it.   I really identify with Peter when he argues with about his need to suffer and die.  But Jesus’ reaction is swift and sharp.  He says, “Get behind me Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me.”  Pretty harsh reply from Jesus, don’t you think?   But maybe it’s not as nasty as it sounds if we look more carefully at that story.  Jesus goes on to say, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Remember the old childhood game, follow the leader?  Following requires that we get behind the leader.   In elementary school, students line up behind the teacher or other designated leader to go everywhere; it’s what followers do.  Jesus is just reminding Peter (and us) of where we need to be.  We need to get behind our leader, and this leader that we profess to follow, whose name we claim as Christians, makes it clear over and over again that cross bearing is part of what we have signed on for at our baptism.  It’s in the fine print!

For Christians, suffering goes with the territory, unless we want to give up the reward for genuine suffering, which is eternal life here and forever.  In Romans 8, Paul says, “We suffer with Christ so that we may be glorified with him.”   But we still wish it wasn’t so, don’t we?

Four years ago some members of my church gathered with other Christians on Good Friday for an annual ecumenical Cross Walk.  They process silently down the main street of Dublin, Ohio carrying a large wooden cross.    This community witness has been going on for years and all was well on Good Friday 2007 until the group realized that the communication about who was responsible for supplying the cross had broken down.  They were ready for the Cross Walk but had no cross with which to walk.  So one of the members of my church had to make a hasty trip to the church to get the cross.  After a few broken speed laws, the walk proceeded a few minutes later than planned.

When I first heard that story, I said, “That’ll preach!”  Wouldn’t we love to have Easter without the suffering and pain of Good Friday, the garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal and denial that broke Jesus’ heart long before the executioners broke his body?  I would.  I am not a fan of the no-pain-no-gain school for either exercise or theology.  If there is an easier way to get in shape than sweating and having sore muscles, I’m all over it.  And if someone can find an easy path to salvation, I’ll be the tour guide.  But, oops, there’s that nasty verse in the Sermon on the Mount, (Mt. 7:13-14) that says the wide easy freeway leads to destruction, and that’s the one without the cross.  That’s the one most people choose, because it looks easier and lots more fun in the short run.  But when it comes to matters of faith, don’t we want to focus on goals and consequences for eternity, not just the path of least resistance for today?

There are different kinds of suffering, and some are easier to deal with than others.  First, and easiest in some ways, is the kind of suffering we bring upon ourselves. Charlie Sheen comes to mind as one of this year’s nominees in that category.  Tiger Woods was last year unanimous winner.  You can think of other nominees, less famous ones, perhaps, and if we’re honest we could all be on that list at one time or another.  The difference for most of us is that we aren’t celebrities.  Our screw ups usually don’t show up the CBS Evening News or in big bold tabloid headlines for the world to read in the checkout line at Kroger’s.  But that doesn’t mean they are any less painful or hard to live with.    Mistakes have consequences which mean they usually hurt us and/or other people, and hurting is a form of suffering.  We all make bad choices, it goes with our free will that none of us want to give up.   We make bad choices that impact our health.  We drive when we are distracted by electronic gadgets or when our judgment isn’t 100%.  We say things in anger that we regret and break promises to people we love.  We give into worldly pressure to succeed or cut corners, knowing we’re violating our own values.   We may get away with it for awhile, or think we have, but sooner or later, our chickens come home to roost and we suffer.

That kind of suffering is very painful and hard to deal with, in part because there’s no one else to blame but ourselves; but at least self-inflicted suffering makes some sense.  We can understand where it comes from and why.

The second type of suffering makes less sense to me.  We only have to remember the heart-wrenching images of the Tsunami in Japan to feel the suffering of innocent, helpless people, thousands of them, minding their own business one minute and suddenly swept up in what looked like a science fiction movie about the end of the world the next.  The nuclear fallout, pun intended, adds insult to injury when we think about the irony of the only nation ever victimized by nuclear weapons now, 66 years later, experiencing the ravages of the worst nuclear accident in world history.  Sure, you could make a case for putting that suffering up in category number one.  Building nuclear reactors is risky business at best, and God help us if we don’t understand that now, but to build them in earthquake and tsunami territory, is highly questionable, as hind sight so clearly shows us.

But I digress, suffering type number 2 is the kind caused by natural disasters or criminal attacks, or lung cancer in someone who has never smoked a cigarette– the kind for which there is no justification or cause we can find.  Innocent children who are physically or emotionally or sexually abused.  Faithful spouses who are cheated on, taken advantage of and left with nothing to sustain life.  You get the picture.

This is a good place to clarify what suffering isn’t.  Shortly after the earthquake and tsunami, the governor of Tokyo made a public pronouncement that he believed this disaster was divine retribution on the people of Japan for their greed.  This gentleman is a follower of the Shinto religion, and I have no knowledge whatsoever of what Shinto theology is.  I do know there are those in most religions who resort to blaming God when we can’t figure any other way to justify or explain why bad things happen.  Christianity is not exempt from such bad theology.  We all remember the Christian preachers who claimed that hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast a few years ago because of the sin and wickedness of the Big Easy.

Please understand, I’m not saying actions don’t have consequences or that sin doesn’t cause suffering – those things are built into the natural order of things.  But that does not mean that the loving God I know and worship would kick people when they’re down by saying “Gotcha” or “Take that, sinner” over the broken and shattered ruins of a devastated life or city or nation.  When we need God’s comfort and strength and presence the very most, in times of tragedy and loss and despair, would God choose that time to teach us a lesson?  NO, that is the time that Emmanuel, God with us, carries us and comforts us.  When we suffer, God is close enough to taste the salt of our tears.

Now, I know we can find plenty of places in the Bible where we are told that God punishes sinners with plagues and boils and hell fire and damnation, and we need to deal with that problem head on.  The Bible was written over centuries by many different authors who were trying to answer the hardest questions and mysteries of life.  Those who experienced God in their suffering as punitive and judgmental wrote about that experience, and almost all of them did so without the benefit of knowing Jesus Christ, the best revelation possible for embracing our loving, forgiving, grace-full God.

We need to remind ourselves that many Jews who wrote their Bible, our Old Testament, also knew the loving, merciful side of God.  That compassionate part of God’s nature had just not come into clear focus for them as it did in the incarnation of God in Jesus.  We sometimes forget that many of the most beloved images of God – like the good shepherd of Psalm 23, come from the Hebrew Scriptures.  The very essence of Jesus’ teaching, the great commandments to love God with all one’s heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself come straight from Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18.

To go a big step further, Christians believe that suffering is not just a necessary evil but actually a positive quality of Christian life.  Romans 5:3-4 says we even boast about our suffering, not because of some masochistic streak, but because suffering produces endurance, character and hope.  It’s fairly easy to see how the first two kinds of suffering, self-inflicted and undeserved, can build endurance and maybe character, but what about hope?  We need a 3^rd kind of suffering to understand how it builds Hope, and that is what followers of Jesus do when we voluntarily take on suffering as an act of sacrificial compassion.

The reason Christians embrace and even boast about suffering, and the reason Jesus invites us to take up our cross and follow him, is that com-passion is essential to the Christian faith.  The word “compassion” comes from two Greek words that mean to suffer with.  Compassion is the kind of love Jesus came to teach and live.  Compassion is the love we feel for neighbors and enemies we don’t even know, simply because we share a common human condition.  Compassion is what we feel for the Japanese because we identify and empathize with them and share their suffering as fellow members of the human family.  We feel their pain because, as one of my students told me recently, God doesn’t have grandchildren – just children; so our fellow human beings are not cousins once or twice removed, but are siblings – brothers and sisters together with Christ.

Compassion is a key to God’s very nature.  Why else would God allow Jesus to suffer and die for us while we are yet sinners?   When John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus – that’s compassion and empathy to the max.    God becomes one of us in human form to share our existence, including our suffering.

Understanding Christian suffering as compassion helps us overcome the stumbling block that suffering and the cross can be.  Just as Jesus labels Peter’s resistance to suffering as a stumbling block, Paul describes the cross as a stumbling block for prospective Christians in I Corinthians 1:23.  Our aversion to pain and suffering is a natural component of that stumbling block, but mistakenly blaming God for our suffering only compounds the problem.

One unfortunate way this happens is when the suffering of Jesus on the cross is portrayed as a necessary sacrifice or punishment required by God for the sins of the world.  A prime example of that theology was Mel Gibson’s awful 2004 film, “The Passion of Christ.”  A God who would intentionally inflict that kind of brutal suffering on his own son is not one I want to follow.  But when we experience the cross of Christ as an act of compassion and sacrificial love, that kind of suffering is much easier to embrace and to imitate in our own lives.

The suffering of the cross for Jesus is an example writ large about how a person of faith handles suffering.  Jesus doesn’t repay evil for evil; he doesn’t lash out in violent anger when he is suffering.  He continues to live life in harmony with the will of God, bearing the ultimate suffering in love, compassion and forgiveness – staying true to the way of love which is the essence of life and of God.  How can we follow Christ’s example and take on the suffering of life with character and hope?  Paul says, “Hope does not disappoint us [even in the worst of times] because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)  We can’t line up behind Jesus and follow his lead, but God living in us can.

The cross is both a symbol of suffering and hope, because if Jesus’ life ended on Good Friday, suffering would be the final fate of human kind.  Death would define our existence.  But hold the phone; we know the rest of this story.  For those who don’t give up and leave the ball game when the score looks hopeless, there is good news.   As post-resurrection people we already know that suffering and death are not the final chapter in our story.  Thanks be to God’s ultimate, victorious will, we can endure suffering and even embrace it because we know it builds our character and makes us people of hope with Easter in our eyes.

Many years ago I did a funeral service for an elderly woman who had been in a great marriage for over 50 years.  The loss of his life-long companion was very painful for her husband, Walter, but her death was also a release from weeks of suffering from the cancer that killed her.  A few days after the funeral I stopped by to visit with Walter and I asked him how he was doing.  I’ll never forget his reply.  He said, “Steve, I’m doing OK.  I miss Myrtle terribly, but I know she’s in a better place now; so I’m smiling through my tears.”

We boast in our suffering because it is a sign of love and compassion that we voluntarily embrace as the way and truth and life of the one we are proud to call our leader – the one we take up our crosses and follow, smiling through the tears of sacrificial suffering and compassion.