We are having an epidemic of detours and road closures in our neighborhood this summer. Orange barrels and detour signs are growing faster than the weeds in the garden. It’s easy to complain about the inconveniences but the detours also are a great metaphor for all the obstacles we encounter on the way to our goals. We can go victim and give up when those obstacles occur, or we can accept the challenge to get creative and find another way to get where we want to go. Sometimes those roadblocks are built of anger or pain that keep us from reaching out for the help we need. Two of the major roads leading to our church are closed this summer, just like some of our normal avenues to God seem to quit working just when we need God most. But there are always multiple ways to get to any destination if we are determined and willing to ask for directions. So, to my Jerome church family, don’t let the detours keep you from church, and to all of us, don’t let the roadblocks in life keep us from being all we can be.
Tag: fear of failue
“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real,” I Kings 19:1-15
I have a few moments in life that are free of fear and worry – I call them moments of sheer panic. But with God’s help, there’s another name for such moments – we call them “peace.”
Travelers insurance ran a series of TV commercials a few years ago about fear. One of my favorites showed a bunch of cute bunnies who are confronted by a very large menacing rattle snake. We see the panic in their little rabbit eyes. But then something strange happens. The rabbits all start laughing hysterically, and as the camera pans around to show a full view of the snake, we see why. Instead of a real rattle, this snake has a pink baby rattle duct taped to his tail. And the announcer says, “Let Travelers take the scary out of life.”
With all due respect to any of you who are in the insurance industry – we can’t really take the scary out of life thru any kind of financial instruments. We even call our investments “securities.” But as we know from the recent roller coaster recession, they aren’t always. I hasten to add that we all need insurance because insurance can take some of the pain out of accidents and life events. When Hurricane Ike took half the roof off our house a couple of years ago we were very glad to have coverage that paid most of the cost of putting a roof back over our heads. But any time we get high winds and ominous skies and the tornado sirens are wailing, it’s still scary.
I even read in the Columbus Dispatch recently that you can now buy divorce insurance. Honest, I’m not making that up. What a great wedding gift for the couple that has everything? Sort of seems like betting against your own team, doesn’t it? I’ll check with Pete Rose about that next time I see him.
The problem is that it’s not insurance we need, its assurance. We all know money can’t buy happiness (even though we keep trying). Well, you can’t buy peace of mind either. That’s putting trust in things that “thieves can steal and rust and moths can consume,” – to quote Jesus in Matthew 6. Nothing that’s finite and material can give us peace because none of that stuff will last forever.
I mentioned the prophet Elijah in my Ash Wednesday post on “Transfiguration” a few weeks ago, and his story is worth a deeper look for what it can teach us. I Kings 19 tells how Elijah learned up close and personal how scary and uncertain life can be. Remember the job description for a ‘prophet’ in the Bible is not a fortune teller, but someone who speaks God’s truth to powerful people who need to hear it, and who usually don’t want to. It’s not a job for sissies. To understand Elijah’s fear, we need the back story that precedes chapter 19. In those chapters Elijah gets engaged in a super bowl contest with the prophets of Baal, one of the pagan gods in Israel. The odds are not good in this contest. 450 prophets of Baal vs. only 1 prophet for Yahweh, and that prophet is Elijah. The contest is pretty simple. Each team calls upon their god to send fire down from heaven and ignite a big bonfire they have built around an altar. The 450 prophets of Baal go first and try everything they can think of to implore Baal to show his power. Nothing happens.
When it’s Elijah’s turn, he decides to up the ante. He pours gallons and gallons of water on the wood piled around the altar. If any of you have ever been camping and tried to build a fire with wet wood, you know how difficult that is. But Elijah calls on Yahweh, and the altar is consumed in flames. And then the story takes an ugly turn. Elijah gets a little carried away with himself and his victory. It’s sort of like football players celebrating too much after a touchdown, only much, much worse. Elijah killed all of the prophets of Baal. I’m guessing he was still a little afraid of a rematch in a BCS bowl game; so he wasn’t taking any chances. But very seriously, we need a footnote and reminder that whenever we read these kinds of Hebrew scriptures that seem to glorify vengeance we need to read them thru the filter of Jesus’ commands that we love our enemies and turn the other cheek. Violence and revenge only perpetuate more of the same until someone says “enough, this is just not working.”
And speaking of vengeance – that’s exactly where we pick up the story in I Kings 19. Verse one says, “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done.” Oops – now, Elijah is in deep do do. Ahab and Jezebel were king and queen of Israel and big fans of the false god Baal and his prophets. And Jezebel hasn’t heard Jesus’ message about loving enemies. She’s from the eye for an eye school, and when she threatens to kill Elijah he knows she means business. Let’s just say Jezebel was never in the running for Miss Congeniality.
So Elijah, quite understandably, is afraid. His flight or fight mechanism kicks in, and knowing he has no chance to win a power struggle with the wicked queen, he gets out of Dodge post haste. He goes a day’s journey into the wilderness and leaves his servant behind so he can be as alone as he feels. He is so scared and discouraged that he simply plops himself down under a solitary broom tree and asks that he might just die and get it over with.
Ever had times in your life when you are just ready to give up – when all hope is lost? Elijah is overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty. Life is coming at him fast in the form of Jezebel’s hit men, and he sees no way out. He has forgotten about the God of Moses and Ruth and Abraham and Sarah who can make a way out of no way.
There are several lessons we can learn from Elijah about coping with uncertainty in our lives:
Lesson 1: God provides for our needs.
Elijah has forgotten God, but God hasn’t forgotten Elijah. God sends room service – an angel touches him, not once but twice, and says “get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you.” And that angel is not just talking about Elijah’s trip from point A to B. He’s talking about the journey of life. When we are lost and lonely and grieving, we frequently lose our appetite or literally forget to eat. But God provides for our needs—both physical and spiritual– when we’re ready to receive them–and frequently in most unexpected ways.
Elijah eats the food provided by God, and it must have been really good food. The text tells us that “on the strength of that food Elijah went on for 40 days and nights,” Why 40? The same reason Lent is a 40-day period of preparation for Easter. 40 is a Biblical number that is used often to show us how long God provides for us; and the answer is for as long as it takes. Noah’s flood lasted 40 days and nights. The Hebrews wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. And Elijah travels for 40 days. All of that means God is with us for the long haul. The 40’s are not necessarily literal numbers but a way to remind us that God provides for us for as long as it takes, no matter how long that is.
And please note where Elijah’s journey takes him – to Mt. Horeb, the mount of God. Horeb is another Hebrew name for a mountain we know better as Mt. Sinai, the very place that Moses ascends during the Exodus to receive the 10 commandments. Just as we call that big mountain in Alaska “Denali” or “McKinley” because it was named by different tribes of people at different times, so the Hebrews had two names for this Holy place where God’s presence was found.
Elijah thought he was running away from evil, but he was really running to God. He doesn’t know it, apparently, just as we are often surprised when we stumble into God when we least expect to, because there is no place we can go that God is not already there.
Lesson 2: We are never separated from God.
And that’s another important lesson for us to learn from this story – we can run, but we can’t hide from God. God comes to Elijah in the cave where he is hiding and asks a haunting question that we all need to hear. God says, “what are you doing here Elijah?’ And Elijah takes the question, as we often do, too literally. He goes into this long sob story about how awful his life is and why he needs to hide, and how he’s the only faithful person left on the face of the earth. But the question for Elijah and for us is not so literal – it’s a life purpose and mission question – what are we doing here? What is our life purpose as individual Christians, as a church, as citizens of a troubled nation and world? What are we doing to make a difference? Hiding because we’re afraid, because life is coming at us too fast? Saving up for a rainy day instead of trusting God’s abundance and providence to meet our needs? Snarfing up all the manna from heaven we can find in case God reneges on his promise and fails to provide daily bread for us tomorrow or next week? Because we trust God to provide for us every day, the Lord’s prayer doesn’t ask for food to last us until spring or until the economy recovers – we simply pray “give us this day our DAILY bread.”
What are we doing here? Shaking in our boots, making excuses, complaining about how awful those politicians or CEO’s or terrorists, relatives, bosses, kids, spouses, teachers, coaches, preachers… are making our lives? Or are we drawing on the resources of our faith and our mighty God and living lives of faithfulness–confronting our fears and turning them over to the only one who can ever really take the scary out of life.
Lesson 3: Most Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real
Most fears are false evidence appearing real, but the only way to know that is to face them. You can’t defeat an imaginary foe. Our granddaughter once told her little brother that there were vampires living in the closet in his room. For weeks he was afraid to go into his room alone because he believed his sister’s false evidence was real. Elijah was afraid because he believed he was totally alone, doomed, abandoned by God and everyone else. He believed that he was dead meat, and as we will see, he was dead wrong on all counts. His fear was fed by false evidence appearing real.
Lesson 4: We all need time alone with God ….
The next lesson here is that Elijah needs rest – time alone with God. And we all need that. Turn off the “smart” phone and computer and Ipod and tv and telephone, and take time, regularly to relax, re-create our bodies, minds and souls. We all need vacations, sabbaticals, retreats – even Jesus did, and if he did, what makes us think we don’t? We need time to listen for God’s still small voice. As Elijah learns, God doesn’t always speak to us in earthquakes or wind or fire, but in what one translation calls “the sound of sheer silence.” In other words, if we want to hear what God is telling us, we need to shut up and listen. And that includes when we pray. Don’t just spend all your prayer time telling God things God already knows! Take time to listen.
Lesson 5: We need time alone with God… But, we can’t stay there permanently.
Next lesson, yes, we do regularly need retreats – time alone, but we can’t stay there permanently. In the Gospel accounts, when Jesus takes Peter and James and John with him for a mountain top experience and Elijah and Moses appear to them, the disciples first reaction is to homestead there. They want to build houses for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, but Jesus says, no. He knows they have much work to do down in Jerusalem and can’t stay on the mountain forever.
My church’s mission statement says “We share God’s love by words and action.” We need to walk our talk. God’s question is what are we doing here? The letter of James says “faith without works is dead.” We can’t work our way into heaven, but we also know that faith inspires lives that bear good fruit. Of course it is important to be assured of our personal and individual salvation – but that’s only half the gospel. Remember that when asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus didn’t stop with one. He said we need to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, but then he says the second is equally important — love your neighbor as yourself.
OK, I can hear what many of you are thinking. It’s the “yes, but” moment in the sermon. You’re thinking, “that’s good, Steve. We believe it, but we’ve got too much to do. There are too many problems in the world. We can’t possibly fix them all. We’d like to help and we do what we can, but we feel so alone.” When the “yes, buts” raise their ugly heads, we need to get off our buts and trust God—because …
Lesson 6: We are NEVER in this Alone!
Perhaps the most important lesson of this Elijah story is that we are never alone, even though it often feels like we are. Elijah is never alone. He is suffering, but we all suffer. It’s part of the human condition. There are two parts to this lesson – we are obviously never away from God (see point #1 above). But sometimes we feel like little Johnny who was afraid of a storm and unable to go to sleep one night. His mother went in to comfort him and reminded him that he had learned in Sunday School that God and Jesus were always with him, that he wasn’t alone. And Johnny said, “Yes, Mommy, I know, but sometimes I need somebody with skin on them.”
We all do, and the Elijah story reminds us that we never without human partners if we’re willing to see them and accept the fact that our partners in mission don’t always look the way we expect them to look. God says to Elijah later chapter 19 – “Go on your way and as you go anoint Elisha to be a prophet in your place and anoint Jehu as new king of Israel, and by the way, there are still 700 faithful people out there who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” We are never alone if we are doing God’s work.
It is so important to face our fears because fear motivates retreat. Fear shrink wraps the Gospel when it makes us afraid of being prophetic, of challenging bigotry and judgmental thinking. That kind of fear is the spark for burning flags and Korans instead of promoting dialogue and tolerance for different perspectives. Fear is what wants to throw the baby out with the bath instead of finding the good in any situation or relationship or failure or political system. Living in assurance means building on those 700 faithful ones instead of letting one evil queen or king silence the truth. Fear keeps us from getting to know others who appear so different from a distance but have the same needs for love and grace all humans have. It is so much easier to judge or fear a stereotype than someone we know as a fellow human being.
Faith is the only antidote to fear that works – it allows us to laugh at our own foolishness, just as the rabbits crack up in the Travelers’ commercial. We love and laugh at our fears because we know that God alone can take the scary out of life. How do we know that? We know the cross of Calvary and the tomb on Easter are empty. We know that in the game of life, the powers of evil and hatred and fear have a big goose egg on the scoreboard, and God’s eternal, life-giving love is off the charts. It’s a worse mismatch than OSU vs. Eastern Michigan. No contest.
Paul says it best in Romans 8 – “If God is for us, who is against us. For we know that nothing – hear that, nothing in all creation, not fear, worry, death, powers or principalities, nothing in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I leave you with a great question: If you knew you could accomplish anything God wants you to do and were guaranteed that you could not fail – what would you do with your life? Well guess what? The good news of the resurrected living Christ that we model our lives after is that we can’t fail if we have God on our side. In Christ, God has already taken the scary out of life and death once and for all.
That means we have no excuse to run and hide when life comes at us fast. God says, hey Steve, hey church, I have already conquered the world – so what are you doing here?
At Home in the Universe, II Corinthians 5:6-6:2
Do you remember what it was like to be at summer camp or some other foreign place and be so miserably homesick that you thought, and perhaps wished, that you would die? The gospel song that says, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” describes that horrible feeling for me. And homesickness is not merely a childhood disease. Adolescence, mid-life crises, old age are all life interruptions that are ways of describing recurring outbreaks of homesickness—of feeling broken, alienated and alone in a strange world where we often wonder what we’re doing here?
We try to cure our homesickness with a host of home remedies—large doses of education, exercise—be it running marathons or climbing corporate ladders, accumulating friends and/or lovers who fill our time and the lack of peace we feel. Power, money, prestige, new cars, new clothes, new houses, new jobs, new spouses, booze, beauty treatments, Grecian Formula. We try it all don’t we? And for the most part it is all a huge waste of time and money. Because when we let our defenses down and find ourselves alone with nothing to do—remember those were the times the homesickness got you at camp too? When we’re not too busy to think and feel, then the old feeling sneaks up on us and we start feeling like that motherless child again.
The sad part is that we all feel that lack of peace frequently. But we rarely let anyone know. The world is full of homesick, motherless and fatherless children, and Paul tells us in Corinthians that our job as ambassadors or instruments of peace is to comfort the homesick and assure them they can always come home again—to God, the only reliable true source of peace. The homesick need to hear that word of reconciliation now—to know that peace is not off in the distant future. It didn’t help to have some well-intentioned camp counselor tell me that my parents would pick me up at the end of summer camp on Saturday when it was only Tuesday. I wanted someone to comfort me and hold me right then. I wasn’t sure I would even live till Saturday! That’s why Paul says we are already new creatures in Christ. The day of deliverance has already come in the Prince of Peace from Nazareth.
That’s the good news we need we are to give one another. But as you well know, one homesick kid cannot cure another one. The disease will spread like an epidemic once the tears start to flow. So, if we are to be reconcilers, we need first to be reconciled to God. We need to be at peace ourselves if we have any hope of being peacemakers. We need to be made whole, cured of our own homesickness before we can help others who are lost and afraid.
We need to hear and know that there is only one cure for deep, ontological homesickness, and that cure is faith–faith that is deeper and distinguished from mere belief. Belief is holding certain ideas about something, or about life. Faith, on the other hand, is a more total and deeper response of inner peace and trust. For example, it is one thing to believe a parachute will open properly, to understand the physics of why and how parachutes work. But it is quite another thing to have enough faith or trust in a parachute to strap one on your back and jump out of a plane at 5000 feet.
Faith, according to theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith, is “a quality of human living. At its best it has taken the form of serenity and courage and loyalty and service: a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe, and to find meaning in the world and in one’s own life, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and is stable no matter what may happen.”
To be at peace means to “feel at home in the universe,” to know as the “Desiderata” says, that “You are a child of the universe, no less than the rocks the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive God to be….and keep peace with your soul.” To be at peace at home in the universe is to be at peace with oneself and God.
I have cherished a very powerful and concrete image of what it means to be at home in the universe since shortly after the space shuttle Challenger explosion in early 1986. Part of being at peace is an ability to find meaning and truth in unexpected and even tragic circumstances. For me, the final words from Commander Dick Scobee before the explosion have become a mantra for me of peaceful living. About sixty seconds after blast off Mission Control informed the Challenger crew that they were going back to full power, and Commander Scobee’s confident reply was, “Roger, Go With Full Throttle Up.”
When we are at peace we dare to live life with full throttle up, knowing as those astronauts did that there are serious risks in living. We know also that there are far more serious risks in refusing to face life’s challenges honestly and courageously. Chuck Yeager, a test pilot famous for his description of those early space pioneers who had “All the Right Stuff,” said after the Challenger explosion that “every astronaut and test pilot knows that such a tragedy can happen anytime you go up. But you can’t dwell on the danger or you would not be able to do your job.” Then he added, “There’s not much you can do about it anyway.”
Life is like that. We are all travelers on spaceship Earth, and like the Challenger 7, we are all sitting on enough firepower to blow us all to kingdom come several times over. That’s enough in itself to make us a little queasy, a little homesick, isn’t it? Even if we didn’t have to cope with the routine hassles of living—the doubts, the fears, the guilt, and the disappointments. But we all do have to cope with those things every day. And we all need a faith that will help us feel more at home and at peace in the midst of our hectic and often chaotic lives.
When I was 6 or 7 years old I discovered one sneaky cure for homesickness. I remember coming home with my family from a visit to my grandparents’ farm or my aunt and uncle’s house late in the evening. I would often fall asleep in the back seat of the car after a hard day of playing with my cousins, but I would wake up when the car pulled into our driveway. Sometimes I would pretend I was still asleep because I knew that if I did, one of my parents would carry me into the house and tuck me into my bed. It felt so good to be held in those strong, l loving arms. I felt so secure, the direct opposite of homesick. Don’t’ we all long for that kind of security and closeness at every age?
Then we grow up. We lose that peace in our necessary attempts to establish our independence. We move away, physically and intellectually from the simple belief structures that once made sense of life for us. We become, for better or worse, independent, responsible adults. And with that independence often comes the feeling of homesickness.
How do we get in that situation? It’s like a conversation I overheard between my in-laws several years ago. They were talking about how my mother-in-law used to sit right next to Dad in the car before they were married. This was in the days before bucket seats, of course. My mother-in-law was asking why that changed after they got married. My father-in-law finally just smiled and said, “Well, I’m not the one who moved.”
So it is with our human and heavenly parents. We are the ones who think we want distance and freedom. And that’s OK. We are the ones who get embarrassed when our parents want to hug and kiss us in public, and we’re much too grown up for that kid stuff. And that’s OK too. It’s all part of growing up. And we’re the ones who think God’s rules for living are too confining, too old-fashioned, and certainly our parents are. We are very sure we can do much better on our own. And that’s OK too. So we go out on our own and we blow it, not once, but several times, and that’s also OK. We learn from those experiences. But what isn’t OK is when we are too proud or guilty to admit that we were wrong or that we really do need help.
It’s hard to admit we’re wrong. People just love to say, “I told you so,” don’t they? So we don’t even try to be reconciled with family or friends or even with God because we’re afraid we’ll be rejected or ridiculed. Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians and us that just isn’t so in this passage from II Corinthians 5. “God does not hold our misdeeds against us.” We are forgiven and loved by the essence of Being itself. “The day of deliverance has already dawned.” Peace is here, now, for those who humbly accept it.
Jesus told a story once about a very homesick young man. You know the story from Luke’s Gospel (15:11-32), but you haven’t heard the letter I found recently from that young man to his father. Strangely enough, it was postmarked in Chicago. Listen:
Dear Dad,
I’m sorry it’s been so long. You’ve probably been worried sick about me, haven’t you? Well, I’ve been meaning to write, but I didn’t have any good news, and I didn’t want to worry you. I was in Florida for a year after I left home. I lost the money you gave me on some bad investments. I got mixed up in some drug dealing and spent some time in jail. Please don’t tell Mom. I’ve been bumming around the country doing odd jobs and stuff since I got out of the joint. I was living in a half-way house here in Chicago for several months till I got into a fight with one of the supervisors last week. They kicked me out.
Things are bad here, no jobs, no money. I’ve been living on the streets, eating at soup kitchens or anywhere I can find a meal. It’s a lousy way to live. But I guess I don’t deserve any better. I know now that you were right about staying in school. I’d sure do things different if I had it to do over.
I’m real sorry I hurt you and Mom. I’m embarrassed to ask this. I’ll understand if you don’t ever want to see me again. But I’m sick and cold and would appreciate it if I could come home, for just a little while. Just till I can find a job. I’ll pay you back for my room and board as soon as I can, I promise.
Your son, John
By overnight special delivery, John got a plane ticket and a letter from his father that simply said:
Dear John,
You can always come home, anytime.
I love you,
Dad
(This sermon is included in my book, “Building Peace from the Inside Out: Stories for Peacemakers and Peace Seekers,” chapter 12)
Wanted: More Collaborators, Romans 12:1-8; Exodus 1:8-2:10
Romans 12 is one of those many familiar passages in the New Testament that praises humility, collaboration and teamwork, qualities that are sorely lacking in our fearful recession-plagued society and world. What a great time to be reminded of the value our unique individual gifts can contribute to addressing complex social problems.
The Hebrew slaves in Exodus (1:8-2:10) were up an even bigger creek without a paddle than we are today, and that narrative provides a marvelous illustration of what collaboration and teamwork look like. Most of us think of Moses as the great leader of liberation for the Hebrew exodus from slavery in Egypt. He’s the one who boldly stares down Pharaoh, one of the most powerful rulers in the world, and demands freedom for God’s people. True, it helped that he had divine intervention to back him up. Those persuasive plagues God inflicts on Pharaoh’s people certainly make for memorable drama in Hollywood retellings of the Exodus story, be it the old Charlton Heston version or Disney’s animated “Prince of Egypt.”
Most people know something about Moses. Shiphrah and Puah on the other hand are far from household names, and yet without those minor characters in this drama, there would have been no Moses and no Exodus. Without the brave little slave girl, Miriam, and her courageous mother and their creative manipulation of Pharaoh’s daughter’s maternal compassion, Moses, the great liberator would not have survived the first year of life. What a wonderful twist in this story (Exodus 2:5-9) when Moses’ sister tricks Pharaoh’s daughter into giving Moses back to his mother to nurse him. The mother not only gets her son back but even gets paid for providing childcare.
The great African-American Preacher, James Forbes, preached on the Exodus story several years ago at the Schooler Institute on Preaching at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (“Let My Leaders Go,” Nov. 13, 1990). I still use a recording of that sermon regularly in the preaching classes I teach. The essence of the sermon is that without the contributions of the “minor” characters in what Forbes calls “Phase I” of the liberation process, there could have been no Phase II led by Moses and his brother Aaron.
In Romans 12 Paul says “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God— what is is good and acceptable and perfect.” The world’s order to the midwives is explicit and unambiguous. They were to kill all the Hebrew boy babies at birth. But the midwives were blessed with the ability to discern the will of God. They were not conformed to the world and “did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.” When called on the royal carpet by the King himself to account for their disobedience of his decree the midwives are not intimidated because they feared God and knew where their ultimate obedience belonged. They stand up to Pharaoh and exercise what Forbes calls “prophetic license,” telling a little white lie about how the Hebrew women are so vigorous that their babies are born before the midwives even arrive on the scene.
So Pharaoh tries a new tactic. He orders all the male Hebrew baby boys thrown into the Nile after they are born. And up steps another minor player in the drama. A slave woman gives birth to a son, hides him for three months and then does what Pharaoh has commanded, sort of. She puts her infant son into the river; only first she makes him a little boat to keep him afloat. Then she places her precious child in the most famous bulrushes in the world, strategically choosing the spot where she knows Pharaoh’s daughter will find him because she regularly bathes there.
Moses’ mother and sister exercise what Paul calls “sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” They creatively and courageously do what is necessary to preserve the life of Israel’s future liberator. What seem like insignificant actions by the midwives, the mother and sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter are all necessary components of the larger plot that unfolds many years later (Exodus 3) when God speaks to Moses in a burning bush and convinces him to step forward and confront the terrible injustice being inflicted on God’s people.
But notice that not even the great leader Moses is expected to do that daunting task alone. And no wonder. God is asking Moses to stand up to challenge one of the most powerful men in the world. And one has to wonder how complicated this situation was since Moses’ adversary is none other than the one who had raised him and provided graciously for him in his own palace for many years. Quite understandably Moses tries to talk his way out of this dangerous mission to confront the might of Pharaoh. And what does God do? Like a good coordinator, God provides a partner to fill some of Moses’ voids. Moses’ brother Aaron is recruited to join Moses’ team, bringing his own unique gifts. One of Moses’ excuses to God is that he isn’t a good public speaker; so God says, OK, we’ll get Aaron to do that part. Sound familiar? “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given us: ….. the exhorter in exhortation; … the leader in diligence.” (Rom. 12:6-8)
What daunting tasks do we face today that require partnership with others who have gifts different than our own? Whatever the challenge, personal or social, local or global, the good news is that no matter how polarized our nation and world may seem, we are “one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” We are not alone, even though it often feels that way. In these challenging times it is good to remember the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin at another crisis point in the life of the American people. At the signing of the Declaration of Independence Franklin told his fellow collaborators, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Rugged individualism and mistrust of others won’t solve complex problems. We need desperately to collaborate with each other and with God as illustrated in these two anonymous readings, one humorous, one serious, both true:
The first is a letter from a client to his insurance company.
“I am writing in response to your request for more information concerning block #11 on the insurance form which asks for “cause of injuries” wherein I put “trying to do the job alone”. You said you need more information, so I trust the following will be sufficient.
I am a bricklayer by trade and on the day of the injuries, I was working alone laying bricks around the top of a four story building when I realized that I had about 500 pounds of bricks left over. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to put them into a barrel and lower them by a pulley which was fastened to the top of the building. I secured the end of the rope at ground level and went up to the top of the building and loaded the bricks into the barrel and swung the barrel out with the bricks in it. I then went down and untied the rope, holding it securely to insure the slow descent of the barrel.
As you will note on block #6 of the insurance form, I weigh 145 pounds. Due to my shock at being jerked off the ground so swiftly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Between the second and third floors, I met the barrel coming down. This accounts for the bruises and lacerations on my upper body.
Regaining my presence of mind, I held tightly to the rope and proceeded rapidly up the side of the building, not stopping until my right hand was jammed in the pulley. This accounts for the broken thumb.
Despite the pain, I retained my presence of mind and held tightly on to the rope. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighted about 50 pounds. I again refer you to block #6 and my weight.
As you would guess I began a rapid descent. In the vicinity of the second floor, I met the barrel coming up. This explains the injuries to my legs and lower body. Slowed only slightly, I continued my descent landing on the pile of bricks. Fortunately, my back was only sprained and the internal injuries were minimal.
I am sorry to report, however, that at this point, I finally lost my presence of mind and let go of the rope, and as you can imagine, the empty barrel crashed down on me.
I trust this answers your concern. Please know that I am finished ‘trying to do the job alone.’
How about you”?
The second reading I first saw in a publication from the Roman Catholic Maryknoll Sisters.
“And the Lord said, ‘GO!’
And I said, ‘who me?’
And God said, ‘Yes you.’
And I said,
‘But I’m not ready yet
And there is studying to be done.
I’ve got this part-time job.
You know how tight my schedule is.’
And God said, ‘You’re stalling.’
Again the Lord said, ‘GO!’
And I said, ‘I don’t want to.’
And God said, ‘I Didn’t Ask If You Wanted To.’
And I said,
‘Listen I’m not the kind of person
To get involved in controversy.
Besides my friends won’t like it
And what will my roommate think?
And God said, ‘Baloney.’
And yet a third time the Lord said, ‘GO!’
And I said, ‘do I have to?’
And God said, ‘Do You Love Me?’
And I said,
‘Look I’m scared.
People are going to hate me
And cut me into little pieces.
I can’t take it all by myself.’
And God said, ‘Where Do You Think I’ll Be?’
And the Lord said, ‘GO!’
And I sighed,
‘Here I am…send me.’
I’VE GOT BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS, LUKE 4:14-30
Nationwide Insurance ran a pretty creative series of commercials a few years ago based on the slogan “life comes at you fast.” In one of my favorites there is a pastoral scene of a father swinging his little boy in an old fashioned swing made of a heavy rope and a board, tied to a sturdy oak branch. The dad pushes the little boy a couple of times, and then about the third time the boy swings back into the picture, he weighs about 250 pounds and knocks his poor father flat.
The sketchy details provided in the Gospels about the early life of Jesus remind me of that boy growing up very fast. If we combine all four Gospels, which makes what a friend of mine calls “Gospel stew,” we still only get one brief vignette of Jesus between infancy and adulthood, that being Luke’s account of Jesus in the temple with the elders when he is 12 years old. The next time we see Jesus in the Gospels is when he’s about 30 years old and being baptized by his cousin in the Jordan River.
There are lots of questions and speculation about where Jesus was during that 18 year gap because the Gospels are theology and not biography. The only true answer is that we don’t know where Jesus spent those 18 years. He may have been working in Joseph’s carpenter shop. More likely he was in some kind of religious community learning the traditions of his faith and preparing for his role as Messiah, God’s anointed one.
When he makes his first public appearance in ministry in his home town of Nazareth in Luke 4, we see immediately how challenging and dangerous being a Messiah can be.
In his first public proclamation Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah and then asserts his claim that God’s spirit is upon him. Ok so far, we’re all God’s kids, created in God’s image. That’s the good news – God’s spirit is upon all of us. But immediately, Jesus makes a wrong turn and starts explaining what it means to have the spirit of God upon him or upon us. He says he is “anointed to bring good news to the poor, release captives, restore sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.” Ok, we could maybe go for those last two – if we don’t’ think about it too much – like realizing that we are the blind that need our eyes restored or that the oppressed are going to want their share of the pie if we take our foot off their necks and let them up. But good news for the poor – what about us Lord? And release to the captives? You mean freeing the criminal element? Those potential terrorists at Guantanamo? Or folks on death row? Not so fast, Jesus.
Luke says the people still were cheering Jesus on at this point. They were “amazed at the gracious words from his mouth.” They haven’t quite figured out the catch yet. And then someone says, “Hey, wait a minute, this is Joe’s kid. We know him. He’s just a carpenter. What would he know about anything but nails and saw dust? How could the spirit of God be upon the likes of him?”
They start asking for proof. “We heard what you did in Capernaum. Show us your bag of tricks here too, Jesus!” And then Jesus goes over the edge – he pushes them too far, too fast. He starts spouting examples from the Bible, of all places, about how God has favored the Gentiles over the chosen Jews – in Sidon and Syria – and there goes the neighborhood. They are immediately filled with rage and try to throw him over a cliff. Oops. Stepped on the wrong toes there Jesus. But then, Luke’s punch line – “he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” Almost a throwaway line, but it is Luke’s way of saying, “see, he really is the Messiah and you can’t stop him, no one can.” This is a preview of things to come when they really do kill him, or thought they did; and he passes through them again and goes on his way – because Jesus’ way is God’s way, not the way of people.
So, we know very early in Jesus’ story that it’s dangerous to claim a special relationship with God. Prophets get shot and stoned and run out of town all the time. That’s the bad news. The spirit of God is upon all of us, and there’s good reason to avoid claiming our own Messiahship. We feel unworthy, the responsibility is too heavy, and besides, the Greek word for “witness” also means “martyr.” No cowards need apply.
There was a story in the Ohio news a few years ago about the power of oneness with Christ. Thomas and Cynthia Murray appealed to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland to spare the life of Gregory McKnight, a convicted murderer on death row. That’s not so unusual. Many people believe capital punishment is not a Christian response to violence. What is remarkable about the Murrays is that Mr. McKnight was convicted of kidnapping and killing their daughter, Emily, 7 years earlier. Emily was a 20 yr. old philosophy major at Kenyon College at the time of her abduction and murder. She was planning to become an Episcopal priest and was “passionately opposed to the death penalty.” Out of love and respect for their daughter and her beliefs, her parents asked for McKnight’s sentence to be commuted to life in prison. Can you imagine doing that if you were those parents? I’m not sure I could, even though I’d like to think I would have that courage and faith. The Murrays showed us the power of Christ to overcome hate and revenge with forgiveness and compassion.
Let’s back up. This story about Jesus in Nazareth comes right after his baptism. Remember Jesus was never ordained – no bishop’s hands ever weighed heavy on his head. In fact, no one had invented bishops yet. Jesus was baptized – just like you and me. So that means that the spirit of the Lord is also upon all of us, not just Jesus, and that our mission, should we choose to accept it, is also to proclaim release to the captives, good news to the poor, and sight for the blind!
Clergy sometimes tease each other about having a Messiah complex when we get a little too big for our britches and think we have to save the world in a single bound. That super pastor attitude might be reflected in this quote from one of my favorite authors, Nikos Kazantzakis. In his book, Saviors of God, Kazantzakis says, “My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar or a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: this is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, and this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.“
There certainly might be an ego problem with that kind attitude (and I’m not crazy about the militaristic metaphor); but it may not be all bad, in fact may be very good, to take our faith and personal mission that seriously. One way to do that is for all of us to realize that the first two letters of Messiah are “me”.
That may sound crazy, but there’s a lot of biblical evidence for that idea. In John 14 Jesus says it plain and clear, “I am in God, and God is in me…. “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to God.” John 14: 12 says, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.” Wow! How is that possible? Because, Jesus goes on …. “You know him (the spirit) because he abides with you and he will be in you.” (John 14: 17) And then in John 14: 20 Jesus caps it off by saying, “On that day you will know that I am in God and you in me, and I in you.”
That’s a good thing right – power. We can get Jesus and God to do whatever we want! Well, not quite – it says “whatever you ask – in my name, this I will do.” We can all think of some things that we might ask for that just might not qualify as “in Jesus’ name” right?
But there is something even more serious than that. If we are all one, i.e. “in” God and Jesus and vice versa, what does that mean for God’s expectations of us? If we are all God’s sons and daughters, as Jesus is – then are we not all Messiahs too? Messiah means “the anointed one.” Jesus was baptized by water in the Jordan. And we as Christian disciples have been baptized too – so far, all the same. The anointed part is a little trickier, or do we just make it so? Jesus says, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Don’t you suppose that’s true of all of us too?
After a United Methodist pastor baptizes someone with water, he or she says, “the Holy Spirit work within you, that being born through water and the spirit, you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. “
Whoa, that sounds a lot like pride or hubris, and we all know that pride goes before a fall; and having God’s spirit upon or within us sounds like really big pride. That’s what the angry crowd at Nazareth thought when Jesus said it. What keeps us from claiming our special relationship with God, from believing that we can do even greater things than Jesus did? Is it true humility or false humility – what a friend of mine calls the “humble bit?” That’s when we just pretend to be humble because it serves our purposes and gets us out of living up to our potential. Is it fear of what other people will think or do, or fear of what is being asked of us? When Jesus claims his Messiahship in his home town, they immediately try to kill him. That’s not a great recruiting strategy, Jesus. Is it just easier to stay in the comfort of the status quo and not make any waves? Freeing captives and such stirs up trouble. Those who are in positions of comfort now won’t be very happy if they have to share their wealth with the down and outers. Oh, yes, a little charity at Christmas time is ok, but that’s not the same as changing the socio-economic rules we live by – the ones that have the system rigged in our favor.
But, even though the costs of claiming our Messiahship are obvious – the hidden cost of not doing so is even worse.
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee” is a famous quote from St. Augustine. What does that mean? It means there is no peace, genuine peace, until we claim our true identity. To be at war within ourselves, denying our true worth and mission and purpose may keep us “safe,” but it also prevents true peace of mind and spirit from ever being possible.
Have you ever tried to keep a secret that was eating at you and hard to keep? Or told a lie and then had to work at covering it up and remembering what you had told whom, so as not to blow your cover? Pretending to be something we aren’t is very hard work,. It takes a lot of emotional energy.
Many years ago I had the privilege of playing the role of Bert Cates in a production of “Inherit the Wind.” The play was demanding and required rehearsals late every night, and each night my part required that I fall in love on stage with a lovely young woman. And then, to preserve my marriage, I had to fall back out of love again before I got home to my wife. When the play was over I was exhausted – not just from the long hours, but emotionally exhausted from pretending to be something that I wasn’t.
And that’s also what happens all the time when we are at war with our very essence; we are tired and on edge, not close to being at peace. We all want peace in our world, but peace has to start in our own souls and hearts. That means knowing and being true to who we really are. In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare describes that important truth this way:
“This above all, to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
The internal conflict, the denial of our true selves as blessed children of God, me-ssiahs, happens at a deep level when we are convinced by a theology that overemphasizes the negative aspects of human nature. Too often we hear only half the Bible, that we are horrible sinners, unworthy folks who need to “bewail our manifold sins and wickedness” (as the old Methodist communion ritual said). But deep inside we know the truth, that we are created in the very image of God. You see what an internal civil war that creates.
But Jesus comes to proclaim that truth, the very good news to the poor and the poor in spirit. And that’s all of us. When we measure our value and worth by economic standards, we inevitably feel like failures. No matter how much we have in the bank, it is never enough – it could be gone tomorrow. One good hospitalization can wipe out the largest nest egg. And the same fear and negativity is true if we buy into the notion that our basic human nature awful and terrible at our core.
We are all sinners, yes, because we are fallible human beings who live in a world full of sin. But that is not who we really are. At the heart of our nature we are God’s children, created in God’s image. We are one with our Lord and God – as we are told by the creation story in Genesis and by Jesus, our fellow Messiah. He is the anointed one who proclaims at Nazareth and here today the good news that heals our spiritual blindness, sets us free from captivity to sin and fear, and empowers us to say yes to his call and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
From Doubt to Hope, Luke 1:5-25, 57-80
[Note: This is an Advent sermon preached at Jerome UMC, Plain City/Dublin, Ohio on November 27. It is the companion piece to the drama posted earlier in the week.]
Prayer: O God, being alone with our doubts is not an easy place to be for most of us – but it’s a necessary place from time to time for reflection, prayer and time with you. Zechariah doubted your promise and needed some time out to be still and know you are God. Zechariah’s story challenges us as we begin this hectic holiday season, and we pray for the wisdom to find adequate time especially now to pray and reflect on the reason for the season. Amen.
How would you rate your level of doubt on a scale of 1-10? My doubt score changes from day to day, sometimes hour to hour. I’ve learned that some doubt is better than others; a healthy bit of skepticism can keep me from being naively gullible to a sales pitch or one of those Chicken Little alerts we all get from time to time in our email inbox. The ones that assure us the sky is falling and our computers are going to crash if we don’t send all of our passwords and personal information to someone in Bangladesh immediately and forward this dire warning to everyone in our address book. I’m most thankful for snopes.com as a resource for checking those things out before I perpetuate them.
Doubt is like yeast. It only takes a smidgen of it to influence our decisions. The doctors say, “we’re 90% sure this is nothing to worry about,” and that’s good. 90% is an A-, right? But it’s that darn 10% that convinces us we need CAT Scans and PET scans – and I don’t’ even have a cat or a pet! My dear wife, Diana, went sky diving a few years ago, and the instructor assured us it was 95% foolproof. She went up and had a once in a lifetime experience, but the 5% doubt kept me on the ground watching.
There are lots of good reasons to have doubts today – political paralysis, congressional chaos, economic uncertainty here and abroad, virtual and real time bullies, violence masquerading as entertainment, fears about changes in health care. You know the list all too well. Part of the reason doubt is epidemic is TMI – too much information—and 90% of it is bad news. The 24-7 news cycle makes it very hard to escape from it. Following the stock market creates more whip lash than riding some monster roller coaster at Cedar Point. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated it took weeks for the news of his death to reach the western parts of our country. Compare that with how quickly we know about tragedies today.
Most of us watched the 2nd plane crash into the world trade center in real time, live as it happened. God’s still small voice is hard to hear amid the information overload. There’s an easy solution to some of the TMI – I pads and I phones all have a great little app called an OFF Switch. And the good news of the Gospel is that we also have an OFF switch for I DOUBT.
One of the biggies in the doubt department is our fear and uncertainty about eternal life. We profess a belief in eternal life that is light years better than anything we have here, but we are very reluctant to reap that reward. We will seek out any possible medical treatment to postpone our passage to paradise. We sometimes even resort to eating wisely – well, not this weekend – or exercising. I’ve heard it said that exercise doesn’t make you live longer – it just seems like it. I recently saw an email about the advantages of walking that said walking every day will extend your life expectancy – so you can spend 7 more months and $30k more in a nursing home before you die. My favorite – “My grandpa starting walking 3 miles every day when he was 55 years old, and we have no idea where he is now.”
Seriously – why are we so unwilling to depart this life? Isn’t a big part of it that 10% of doubt and uncertainty about what the future holds? Eternity is a long time, and we want to get it right. Frederick Beuchner says “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.” We can’t have faith without some doubt because faith and hope are about things we can’t see or touch or feel. You don’t hope for something you already have – nobody puts something they already have on their list for Santa.
Hope implies a degree of ambiguity, and the strength of our hope depends on what evidence we have to lessen our uncertainty. Evidence is funny stuff. Two people can look at exactly the same object and see it differently depending on their perspective. The glass half full or half empty is the classic example, and what we see when we look at that glass depends on the lens through which we view it. Do we look through the lens of faith and hope or put on glasses of doubt and cynicism. What is your default position?
A communication professor of mine in grad school called this process attention switching, meaning that how we choose to think and talk about life and situations makes all the difference in how we feel about them. My favorite example from Dr. Brown was the difference between asking someone at a back yard barbeque, “Would you like a pork chop?” or instead asking, “Would you like a piece of dead pig?” Same reality, very different response.
Do we look at life through a lens of doubt or hope? Hope implies the need to wait, and that’s hard for us 21st century folks for whom instant gratification is way too slow. Next time you are on an airplane – watch how many people grab for their cell phones the second the wheels touch the tarmac. We can’t wait to know what’s happened or if someone has called us or texted us in the two hours we’ve been off line. We don’t like to wait – Black Friday is now Black Turkey day or earlier. We can’t wait till the football season is over to hire the next coach – we want our Messiah and we want him now – not four weeks from now.
Guess how long it was between the time Isaiah wrote his prophesies about the Messiah –How “the government will be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” We could use that kind of leadership in Washington or Greece or Rome – most anywhere today, right? But do you know how long it was between Isaiah’s time and Jesus’ birth – six or seven hundred years! And then Jesus wasn’t what the Jews wanted for Christmas; so they missed him and are still waiting for the Messiah. We have GPS’s that track my Fed Ex packages, and Santa’s travels on Christmas Eve. Why can’t we come up with a Messiah tracker and take doubt out of the whole process? Just think how much easier if would be to time our last minute conversions if we knew when Jesus was coming back!
The bottom line question is – what evidence do we have for being Hopeful people? The way to look for that evidence is to ask what God has done for us in the past. Notice I did not say what God has done for us lately. That’s the wrong question. God’s time table is different than ours.
The Bible is our record of God’s steadfast love and redeeming actions. Read your Bible this Advent season to remember how God over and over again saves people from their doubts and sinful behaviors. None of the leading characters in the biblical story are perfect. There’s more sibling rivalry and adultery and deceit in the Bible than a modern day soap opera. The sub-title for the Bible could well be “All of God’s Children.” But God’s love and redemption trump human doubt and dubious deeds every time. God’s grace is stronger than Moses murdering an Egyptian and Peter’s denial of Jesus. It’s even stronger than a Roman execution and the tomb that couldn’t contain our risen Lord. So that love is certainly stronger than my doubt and yours. When in doubt, pray on those things. If we focus our attention on the promises God has kept and the blessings we have received instead of on the disappointments and doubts – we have a much better chance of having an attitude of gratitude. We enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving, except for some of those annoying relatives; but making thanksgiving a way of life year round is what hopeful people do.
Now, let’s look at Zechariah’s story – thought we’d never get back there didn’t you? Luke tells us Zechariah was a priest, a godly, righteous man. Being that kind of religious person, we can assume Zechariah knew his Bible. He knew the stories of his people and how God had delivered them from Egypt and from the Exile in Babylon. He knew the story of God’s salvation history, and he most certainly would have known the foundational story of how the nation of Israel began with the birth of Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s son. That story in Genesis is so similar to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s situation that I can’t believe Zechariah could have possibly missed the connection. Abram and Sarai were old geezers too – barren, giving up hope that God’s promise that they would be the parents of a great nation could ever happen. They doubted too – they laughed at God’s messenger when they were told Sarai would conceive in her 90’s. But they weren’t laughing nine months later, and after that Abraham believed God’s promises. Genesis and Romans both tell us that Abraham’s belief was “reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 15:6, Romans 4:9) That’s very important because it is the basis for our Protestant belief in salvation, not through doing enough good works, but through faith and trust in God’s grace.
So, given all that obvious evidence, why would Zechariah fail to believe it was possible for him and Elizabeth to have a son? In a word, Doubt. We all have it. Martin Luther is famous for saying, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” God by nature is mysterious and beyond our human ability to figure things out logically. The problem Zechariah has and that Abraham had originally, and that some people have with the virgin birth, is that we think rationally and scientifically. We know AARP card carriers don’t have babies – thank God for that!
But this isn’t a biology test –it’s a theology test. And that’s what moves us from doubt to hope, from mere intellectual belief in God to 100% trust in God’s promises. Belief is something I do in my head. For example, I understand the physics of why parachutes work; I believe it. But it takes real trust and faith for me to strap one of those on my back and jump out of an airplane.
It also takes a Leap of faith to trust that God will provide for us now and forever – that we can bet our lives on god’s promises.
Advent is a season of Hope because we wait for Christmas and the birth of Christ. We remember again what our Awesome God has done and that he is a promise keeping God who gives himself 100% to become one of us – an even more outrageous miracle than Zechariah’s becoming a daddy in is golden years.
The good news is that just as Abraham and Zechariah doubted God at first, our doubts can also be transformed into hope and trust if we take time to ponder the mystery of this Christmas season. God will give us time to do that, just as he gave Zechariah quiet time to consider his choice between doubt and hope.
To be fair, we know Zechariah’s story began in doubt – but it didn’t end there. I’d like for Zechariah to come tell us the rest of his story. Come on down Zechariah, and I’ll interpret for you.
Zechariah: [excited and animated] No need to interpret. It was a real miracle! Elizabeth did indeed conceive, just as the angel said. And when her time came she gave birth to a beautiful son. Everyone expected us to name him after me, but God had told us both to name him “John,” even though no one in our family ever had that name. I guess God knew “Zechariah the Baptist” didn’t roll of the tongue as well as “John the Baptist!”
Interviewer: So, when did you get your voice back?
Zechariah: As soon as I showed my belief in God’s plan. I wrote, “His Name is John,” and immediately my voice returned, and I haven’t stopped witnessing since. I tell everyone who will listen what great things God had planned for our son. God has promised us that John will live in the wilderness and become strong so he will ready when the time comes to go before the Messiah to prepare his ways – the ways of repentance and forgiveness and salvation!
Interviewer: Thank you, Zechariah, for sharing your amazing journey from doubt to Hope.
Zechariah: Thanks be to God!
“The Gospel According to Jobs and Jesus,” Matthew 25:14-30
I wrote the first draft of his post somewhere between Nassau and Miami on the final day of a 4-day cruise that took us and 2000 new friends to Key West and Nassau and back to Miami. Like life, our trip itinerary was subject to change without notice. We were supposed go to Cozumel, Mexico, but Hurricane Rina rained on that parade. So we did a big U-turn and joined 5 other huge cruise ships in Nassau to benefit the Bahamian economy. Lots of American dollars intended for conversion to pesos went to Nassau instead. $111 of ours was spent on a tour to the obscenely over-priced Atlantis resort to see how the other .5% lives.
The huge resort can’t be missed from the cruise ship dock, and we could have gotten there by cab or ferry for a few dollars. But fear of coping with a strange city where they drive on the wrong side of the road, even if they do speak English, led me to pay the cruise line and local entrepreneurs to take us on a 10 minute ride, literally and figuratively. One of the signature features of the Atlantis Resort is a 4740 square foot suite that is located in a bridge sixteen stories up than links two of the imposing twenty-three-story towers on what some marketing genius named Paradise Island. The bridge suite rents for $25,000 per night (that’s not a typo—it’s 25K), and, in case you are interested in booking it, there’s a four night minimum stay required! Staying there is not on my bucket list, but if anyone starts an Occupy Atlantis protest, it might be a good place to spend the winter.
The opulent wastefulness within sight of the hundreds of dirt poor native merchants selling cheap souvenirs along the cruise ship dock seemed to confirm the punch line of the parable of the talents which says, “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matt.25:29). Never mind the obvious question/problem of how one can take away anything from those who have nothing, where’s the justice in that scenario? And it gets worse from there. The parable goes on to pass harsh judgment on the one-talent slave for his scarcity-inspired fear and condemns him as a “wicked, lazy worthless slave “ who is to be thrown into “the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (v. 30).
Granted, that’s a nasty slave owner speaking here, not Jesus (we hope). Makes me wonder if this parable is about the Reign of God or of Warren Buffet, or could it be both? Certainly the world rewards risk-takers and those able to think outside the box. The late Steve Jobs had 313 Apple patents to his name when he died. Jobs is an inspiring story, and the title of Chapter 1 of his new auto-biography explains much of his success–“From Abandoned to the Chosen One.” I haven’t read the book, but I’m guessing that attitude and gratitude that he was rescued to a new life by his adoptive parents (whom he calls his “real” parents) carried Steve Jobs through many failures and setbacks in his life. His much quoted commencement speech from Stanford’s 2005 graduation, advising his audience to embrace their mortality and dare to look foolish, might describe the first two slaves in the parable of the talents.
The first two slaves dared to risk all they had in order to reap an impressive return on their investments. And they are rewarded by their master with praise and a big promotion. I admire people with that kind of chutzpah. I’m more like the one-talent slave who digs a hole and buries the money to avoid the risk of losing all he had in an economic downturn. I wonder how much of our current recession is caused by that kind of fearful scarcity mentality. From small investors like me worried about shrinking retirement accounts to multi-billion dollar corporations that are hoarding their profits instead of reinvesting them in job-creating new projects, fear inspires more of the same. Isn’t there the same amount of money out there somewhere now as there was in the boom years prior to 2008? Most of it is just buried somewhere and not being circulated to create more jobs, services and products.
But the parable of the talents is about much more than economics. Fear stifles faith and creativity in every aspect of our lives, from honest, intimate relationships to athletic and career achievements. The slave with one talent buried it, and when asked why he says, “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground” (v. 25). Sounds a little like hiding one’s light under a bushel, doesn’t it? But notice another word in that sentence that’s easy to overlook—the word “your.” The talents don’t belong to the slaves but to the master, just as my house and car and other worldly goods don’t belong to me either. There’s an old hymn that describes our role as stewards of God’s creation very well. We often sing it to inspire more generous contributions in the offering plates, but it’s about all of our “possessions.” “We give thee but thine own, what ‘ere the gift may be. All that we have is thine alone, a gift O Lord from Thee.”
The good news is that we are all playing with house money. We’ve got nothing to lose. Not only is the deed to my house and my car and my 401K really not mine, neither is my life. Some wag once said, “Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’ll never get out of this life alive anyway.” That wisdom needs to be filed next to “You can’t take it (and that means any of it) with you.” Ever seen an armored car in a funeral procession?
Writer’s block is one familiar example of how fear stifles the talents God gave us. I have a slogan on my writing desk that says, “Write as if no one will read it.” That was inspired by the popular saying by William Purkey, “Dance like no one is watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” A brave honest student helped me break through my fear and publish my first book this spring. She asked me if I had published anything. I said, “No, but I have lots of good stuff in my files and my computer.” Her poignant reply really hit home. She said, “Oh, so you’re going to publish posthumously?”
We know the one-talent slave was afraid because Matthew tells us he was, but what about the first two? We aren’t told they were fearful, but it’s pretty likely since none of us are immune from fear. If those first two slaves were afraid, the difference is they acted in spite of the fear, much like the title of Susan Jeffers’ excellent book advises, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It’s possible the first two slaves used their fear of the harsh master as motivation to risk losing what they had in order to reap a greater reward. The third slave buried his talent for fear of losing it, and in the process guaranteed its potential was lost.
What dreams and goals do we have that are buried and abandoned by fear of failure? “Oh, I can’t write that book, it might not sell? I don’t dare speak that truth! People might not like it!” And by choosing not to try I guarantee failure. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. Jesus takes that to the nth degree when he says, “Those who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will save them” (Luke 17:33). Faith by definition requires risk. That’s why Paul says we are called to be “fools for Christ” (I Cor. 4:10). I love the way Bette Midler preaches that truth in “The Rose.”
“ It’s the heart, afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance .
It’s the dream, afraid of waking
That never takes the chance.
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give .
And the soul, afraid of dying
That never learns to live.” (Amanda McBroom)
The lessons are the same from Midler, Jobs, and Jesus:
• This life is finite.
• We are all abandoned by all earthly things and allegiances.
• Those who also know that we are chosen and adopted by God are able to live by faith and dare to live.
The parable says the third slave was cast into the outer darkness by his own lack of faith. It doesn’t say he has to stay there forever. Failure was his choice and so is learning to trust.
We all fall down, often. The secret is learning what an old Japanese proverb teaches, “Fall Down seven times, Get up eight.”
Peacefully Harsh 