"A New Way To Be Human"
Matthew 6:1-6
Psychotherapist Philip Chard says of pride that given “our national plague of entitlement, combined with our go it alone approach to the world, I’d say we’re full of ourselves.” He went on to write that as a country, “...we are overrun with narcissists, egomaniacs, and spoiled brats.”
I thought about what Chard was saying. I wonder if a country is defined by who we emulate. We honor and respect our military, police and firefighters. But we emulate movie stars, entertainers, and sports figures--most of whom are self-addicted. I mean, how many award shows does one profession need? There are no award shows for plumbers: “And now the award for the best installed trap in a home setting goes to…” Why do singers and movie and television personalities need so many award shows, serving to make them even more self-infatuated?
Pope Gregory the Great, who first created this list of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrote, that in pride, man “favors himself in his thought and walks with himself...and silently utters his own praises.” But now with our country’s rampant narcissism, there are no silent praises. People hire publicists to do that for them.
In Jesus’ day, he only had to talk about people praying in public places for show. Now people act in every negative way imaginable, just to keep themselves in the spotlight and national attention.
People like Whitney Houston. Dying in her own bathwater after snorting cocaine, an addiction she evidently never kicked, gets continued headlines. A lot of those headlines talk about her deep faith. If she had such a deep faith, why is she snorting cocaine? One could ask the question if she planned her death in a sick way to get more publicity.
Like Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for the rock band, Nirvana. He committed suicide back in 1994, and left a tortured, angst-ridden suicide note that closed with the words:
Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away.
Peace, love, empathy.
Kurt Cobain
Addicted to publicity, even in death, the prideful find ways to self-destruct in self-promotion. One last string of headlines.
Pride has been the major target for prophets, priests and church theologians, almost since day one. It is the king and queen of sin, the foundation upon which all other sins are based. The reason is, as St. Augustine wrote, “Pride encourages man to displace God.” In that way, pride is not the thing worshipped in place of God; it’s the subtle but destructive inner voice that is trying to distract us thoroughly from God and towards ourselves.
It’s been a proven fact that ominously excessive pride, both individual and collective, has preceded the downfall of the world’s great empires. Based on Philip Chard’s evaluation of our country, mentioned at the start of this message, it does make one wonder if our country is headed for a great fall--and none of the kings men will be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Pride, as one of the Seven Deadly Sins does seem to be a yardstick for measuring the health of an individual or a culture.
You and I, wrestling with pride, is what I want to concentrate on this morning. The more I read about pride, the more I began to see that it has to do with struggling to understand our own humanness. Who am I? How do I define myself? The other deadly sins (anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth) are all ways I interact with the world. But pride isn’t about interaction. It’s about definition. Self-definition.
That self-definition is an ongoing process. But it seems to be ramped up at a couple of strategic stages in our life growth. As three to five year olds. As adolescents. And at mid-life, our 40’s and 50’s. Those are the times we are most active in defining and redefining who we are.
We seem to have two choices in how we construct our self-definition. God’s way; or our way. There doesn’t seem to be a third option. Each time we struggle with how we are going to define ourselves, those are the two choices. And here’s the deal: If we choose to go our way, we will lose both ourselves and God. To choose to go God’s way, at first, it appears we lose ourselves. But in the end we gain ourselves back. We are given ourselves back, by God, but we are different. It’s a different self than if we had just chosen our own way--which, by the way, is the way of pride.
This inner, self-defining struggle goes on in what one author calls our own, “pathetic, little, inner conversations.” We have conversations with ourselves. In those conversations, we’re trying to answer those basic questions of selfhood: Who am I? How do I matter in the world? How do I make myself matter in/to the world?
Our little inner conversations are our struggles at controlling our world. Not the big, wide world, but the little world of our singular lives. That’s the basis of the struggle: Is it really my world, my life? Or is it God’s world, and God’s life? If it is my life, then I get to feel all the pride when I make things go well. But then I must take all the brunt of negative consequences when I make things go really badly. Either way it goes, it’s all up to me.
That’s one way to be a human being. If we choose the prideful path of my life, then we go back and forth between pride and humiliation. As the Proverb states, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” (Proverbs 16:18).
When informed by one of his scouts that they were in for a big fight, and that there were enough Sioux to keep them busy for two or three days, General Custer replied with a smile, “I guess we’ll get through with them in one day, then.” He likewise declined help from the 7th Calvary or the aid of using Gatling guns. Well, Custer was right about one thing. One day was all it took. Custer fell as result of his pride and haughtiness. And a great fall it was, since he took his men with him.
C.S. Lewis, in his amazing book, The Great Divorce, has one of the heavenly beings say to another, “There are only two kinds of people, in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘thy will be done.’” Again, only two choices.
The choice to go God’s way as the foundation of your life against the self is called the way of humility. But even in humility, we have to watch out for pride’s subtle interference. Humility can be distorted by our own pridefulness vs. a humility that is clarified by God’s activity in history. God’s activity in history is shown, for example, in the way that God continuously chose insignificant people, who weren’t full of themselves, to carry out his historical will. Humility recognizes that there has been a lot of stuff that happened way before I came along. And there will be a lot of stuff that happens after I’m gone. All that history is controlled by God, not by my little life in the here and now.
Paul recognized this when he wrote to the uppity Corinthians, who had a huge pride problem:
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have--right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start--comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
We probably have no problem hearing these words, knowing they were written to some other church. Some other group of Christians. Not us. But what if they were? What if you were the one’s Paul called not “the brightest and the best...not influential, not from high-society”? Any inner voice telling you, “Hey, I’m a somebody; I’m not a nobody”?
That’s why pride is so insidious. We hate and despise that in others that we see in ourselves. Maybe we find it so easy to disparage pride so much, especially when we see it in others, because we see it so clearly in ourselves.
If we are ever going to move from pride to humility, then, we’re going to need a transformation. Nothing else will displace the prideful “pathetic, little, inner conversations” except for a transformation. And, as we just found out from Paul, that transformation has to happen from God’s hand through Jesus Christ. Otherwise, if we thought we effected such a transformation, it would only be fuel for our pride. We would still be in control.
There are two elements, two signs of that thorough transformation, that leads away from pride and towards humility. These two elements were identified by the desert fathers and mothers, who tried to get away from all the hubris and blow of society, escape to the desert, and wrestle with God. What these spiritual seekers found out was that they had to wrestle more with pride when they were on their own, than if they were immersed in society. They discovered there were two main ways that God effected a transformation in them through Jesus Christ, in dealing with their pride.
The first was by a willingness to learn from others. That was a sign that Christ had worked his transformation from pride to humility. It sounds like such a simple thing at first hearing. But understand that humility is a way of finding your place in relation to God and your neighbor. Humility is a way of loving both God and neighbor without allowing the need for attention, honor, gratitude, or even being right to interfere.
So being willing to learn from others means having the sight to see Christ in the other. If we greet each person as someone who carries Christ in them, then we will always have something to learn from them, no matter who they are. The Christ in them has something to teach us. If we are looking down our nose at them as insignificant, nobodies, we will miss Christ. That was one of the hallmarks of Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta--the sight to see that every one she treated was Christ in disguise, and learning from them.
This means the standards of the world no longer apply, if we are going to live the transformed life in Christ. Each person we meet can bear Christ to us in a particular way, has something to teach us.
The second sign of the transformed life that the desert monks identified is an unwillingness to stand in judgement of others. Again, this comes back to the understanding that Christ is in each person. That each person has the image of God in them. If Christ is in each person, how can anyone judge another? To do so would be judging Christ. Do you really think you can be in that position?
We do our judging so subtly or in jest, so we think it’s harmless. A man chatting with his neighbor said, “My family and I will soon be living in a better neighborhood.”
“So will we,” the neighbor said.
“Oh, are you moving, too?”
“No,” the neighbor said. “We’re staying.”
Remember we’re talking about transformation here. If we are needing transformation, or if we are trying to be disciples of that transformation for others, which is better to bring that about: prideful judgement, or humble compassion? Which motivates people better for the purposes of God?
But most importantly, to be unwilling to judge is an acknowledgement that you are not God. To judge others is to mistakenly feel like you get to hold the power of God over someone’s head. That’s pretty arrogant. Humility is the understanding that we will never have the sight or insight of God to be anyone’s judge.
As I said, these two signs of Christ’s transformation from pride to humility seem fairly simple. But think about it. To treat every person, every person, as if they carried Christ, or were Christ in disguise, and had something for you to learn, is immensely difficult. For us to get past that we need to quit looking at people as a lesser than, we have to get past the self-inflated assumption that we know it all, or at least know more than that so-and-so. To look at every person in the face and think first, “I have something to learn from this person,” rather than thinking, “What a loser,” is extremely hard.
And to be totally nonjudgemental, to not see yourself over and above, or more worthy than anyone is going to push you to the limit. To look at each person you see and see Christ in them, and therefore withhold your judgement, will transform you and how you live. To look at someone and not judge them in any way, either spoken or in your mind will stretch you to the utter limits of your being.
That’s why these are two signs of pride’s transformation. You can only demonstrate these if you are changed by Christ. If you are transformed. If your pride is taken over and transformed into humility.
As I said, we’re all struggling with our own sense and definition of our humanness. What does it mean to be a human being? How do I define myself at the most basic level? How am I having those pathetic little inner conversations in my head? How do I get God involved with that conversation so it’s not pathetic or little anymore, but has to do with something much larger than myself, and everything to do with God? In other words, how do I define myself as a human being not according to my pride, but according to the humility of God? How can I be transformed by Jesus Christ, so that pride is not the voice of my self-definition? Those are the questions that need to be asked.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
This Is Your Brain On Lust
"This Is Your Brain On Lust"
Matthew 5:27-28
You know the commandment pretty well, too: “Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.” But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices--they also corrupt.
President Jimmy Carter made this statement of Jesus fairly famous. The press was constantly trying to get some dirt on Jimmy--this apparently squeaky clean, Southern Baptist President from Plains, Georgia. Finally someone from the press corp asked about lust. Why, I don’t know. But President Carter made his now famous reply, “Yes, I have lusted after women in my heart.” Finally, they got him.
As Jimmy Carter divulged, lust is one of those secret sins. Like envy, no one ever knows that you are “lusting in your heart.” It’s something you can savor, and smack your lips over with yourself. “Undress a person with your eyes,” is another, longer way of saying “lust.” Lust also, like envy is something we can disguise even from ourselves. We can construct fantasy stories, with elaborate scenes in our hearts and never be discovered. Until you admit it in a presidential news conference.
But lust isn’t a matter just of the heart. Lust is also a matter of the brain. The largest sex organ on the body is the brain. That’s the center where it all happens. What’s amazing is that several studies, using MRI scans, have shown that the brain in lust is much like a brain on drugs. The area of the brain, where lust is activated, that “lights up” on the MRI, is the same exact area of the brain that “lights up” when an addict has just used cocaine. Lust is a drug; the more you do it, the more you use it, the more of it you have to have, until it becomes an obsession and addiction. What’s weird is that lust is the anticipation of something that may never happen. Under lust’s addiction, huge amounts of mental and emotional energy are burned uselessly. But just imagining that “something” is enough for the brain.
When a person’s sexual hormones are flowing full force in lust, the pleasure center of the brain is blown wide open. This blown pleasure center, goes into hyperdrive, and fuels idealization and projection. That is, you see what you hope someone will be, or you think you need them to be, rather than seeing the real person, flaws and all. At lust’s baser level, it is simply the desire for desire. The brain on lust, in other words, sees things that aren’t there; distorts reality just like cocaine; and keeps a person obsessed with constantly needing more, so they can feel what they’re feeling--even though lust is all a hormonally induced fantasy.
Commercials like those from Victoria’s Secret, or Axe deodorant, try to show us how we can become lustworthy. Just by wearing a certain scent under your arms, or a certain style of underwear, you can have people either secretly or overtly desiring you. That’s what those commercials are about. It isn’t about underwear or deodorant. It’s about selling lust. And notice the fantasy nature of both those recent commercials: feathered wings or crazy sexual anarchy. Isn’t it interesting that there are no commercials that show us how we can make ourselves repulsive or unlustworthy.
Let’s use another analogy. Let’s say lust is like a major river running through your life. All rivers are fed by smaller tributaries. The tributaries contribute to the power and flow of the main river they are feeding. They aren’t the river, but they are having an impact on the course of that river.
In the same way, lust, as a major river, is fed by certain tributary issues. If you are, like Jimmy Carter, dealing with lust in your heart (and brain), then you also, at the same time, have to deal with the smaller streams that feed that lust. These tributaries not only enhance lust, they also make us susceptible to lust and it’s power. So let’s look at a few of these smaller streams of the human condition that create lust.
The first is vulnerability. Being vulnerable is about being highly susceptible. It means you are more open, or fully out in the open and unprotected. Your normal defenses are down. Life is more apt to get at you.
This kind of vulnerability is usually as a result from when we’ve been wounded or weary. Life has battered itself against us too long and too fiercely. Or there’s been a frontal attack. It’s like those times you see the two football teams crash into each other on the line of scrimmage, and one of the player’s helmet pops up in the air. I always suck in a gulp of air when I see that happen because I know someone is in that pile up of 300 pound bodies without protection for their head. They are vulnerable.
If you have been wounded by life in some way, and you are vulnerable, one of the things that happens is your perspective about things gets clouded. The reason that happens is, vulnerability caused by being wounded and weary is a kind of pain. When we are in pain our judgement and decision making abilities diminish. The only thing we can think about is how to get rid of the pain, to manage the pain of being wounded and weary.
Unfortunately, there’s no pill you can take for the pain that results in vulnerability. There are medications for everything, but not vulnerability. But that doesn’t mean we stop looking for ways to take care of our pain. Lust seems to be one of those ways people seek out pain relief from vulnerability. Someone’s sweet words, leads to a gentle touch, which leads to thoughts of the distorted reality I mentioned a few moments ago. The “medicine” of lust, fully swallowed resulting in some sexual tryst to remedy the pain, turns into a mocker and a fraud. Which leaves you not less vulnerable, but more. And more in pain than before.
The second tributary that feeds the river lust is denial. Jeremiah the prophet, in writing about some of the problems in Israel in his day said,
My dear people broken and shattered,
and yet they put on band-aids,
Saying, “It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.”
But things are not “just fine”!
Do you suppose they are embarrassed
over this outrage?
Not really. They have no shame.
They don’t even know how to blush. (8:10-12)
One of the ways denial works in our sexual relationships is thinking that lust is a solution to our unaddressed problems or unmet need. That’s basically what denial is: applying the wrong solution or interpretation to a problem or crisis. It’s evading the truth with a lie we tell ourselves in order to get by.
That’s part of what was going on in Israel during Jeremiah’s time. People were broken and shattered. They coped with their political and religious problems through acting on their lusts. Their religious leaders said everything was fine. But it wasn’t. And people weren’t even embarrassed at the way they were acting upon their various lusts. As Jeremiah said, the people had forgotten how to blush, their lusting lifestyle had become so commonplace.
Jeremiah tried to lead the people away from lust and the fantasy world their lusts created, and see the truth. That’s one of the only ways to break the power of lust. Hold it up to the mirror of truth for what it is. Make it look at itself in that mirror. Accept the pain of what is seen in that mirror.
Jeremiah held up God’s perspective of what life in truth, rather than lust looked like. Once the people began to discern God’s perspective, Jeremiah replaced people’s denial and lust with that perspective of God.
A third tributary flowing into the river Lust is unfulfilled expectations. Expectations are powerful things. When we hear ourselves using words like “should” or “ought” we are finding out what our expectations are about a certain part of life. Any expectation we are holding on to makes that expectation probable. If it wasn’t probable we would be expecting it.
Or sometimes expectations are things we think are owed to us. Maybe it’s owed to us because we have a personal sense of entitlement. Or we expect something because we’ve gone through some hard times, and just because of our bad experiences, we are owed different expectations.
In 2 Kings 5, Naaman has come down with leprosy. He went to Elisha the prophet to be healed. He rides for many days. He finally gets to Elisha’s house, “with his horses and chariots arriving in style” says the story. Elisha sent out a servant to give Naaman his message and instructions. This is Naaman’s reaction:
Naaman lost his temper. He turned on his heel saying, “I thought he’d personally come out and meet me, call on the name of God, wave his hand over the diseased spot, and get rid of the disease.” … He stomped off, mad as a hornet. (2 Kings 5:9-12)
Notice, it wasn’t what Elisha did that really made Naaman angry. It was Naaman’s own expectations about what he thought should have happened. It was his sense of entitlement and his expectations about what he thought he was owed that got him angry.
Another, more current example is from writer & speaker Joni Erickson Tada. She was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident. In her book Secret Strength, Joni wrote about facing temptation.
I was in my late 20’s, single, and with every prospect of remaining so. Sometimes lust or a bit of fantasizing would seem so inviting and so easy to justify. After all, hadn’t I already given up more than most Christians just by being disabled? Didn’t my wheelchair entitle me to a little slack now and then? (But then, coming face-to-face with her expectations she had to ask other questions.) When God allows you to suffer, do you have tendency to use your trials as an excuse for sinning? Or do you feel that since you’ve given God a little extra lately by taking abuse, that He owes you a "day off?" Hard times can often lead to temptation... In our suffering the evil one is quick to come to our aid and offer one of his solutions; pursuing pleasure to numb the pain…
When a person feels cheated or let down by life, it is an easy step to expect something different, especially something better, something comforting, something healing. We do that by searching out, in subtle forms of lust, to find someone who agrees with us and our needs. Lust is a way that searches out partners who feed on each other’s sense of unmet expectations, and what they think life owes them.
The remedy for this situation is to always check your expectations not with others, but with God’s. What are God’s expectations for people in general? What are God’s expectations for you in particular?
The other remedy for this situation is to develop a long-term view of life. Lust is a short term solution to an unmet expectations. True perspective, God’s perspective is developed over time. Take your time. Take your time with God.
Lust is a huge problem. It’s an internal, invisible kind of problem that you know is going on in your heart and mind, that you think you can keep hidden from those you may be leering at.
But the main thing to remember about lust is that it’s not the main problem. Lust is the way you are choosing to cope with other issues: vulnerability, denial, unfulfilled expectations, emotional pain, ungrateful and selfish attitudes, boredom, and especially a weak commitment to Christ. Lust is a coping method that leads to self-destruction.
The question then becomes, What are more healthy, more Christlike ways of coping with your sense of vulnerability, your unfulfilled expectations, your emotional pain? As a coping method, lust is a quick fix to these other issues that are impacting your life. Lust is never a long-term solution.
More long-term solutions always rest with the Lord: patience in and with what God is doing in your life; taking the time to evaluate what God’s expectations are for you; developing God’s long term view of life, and how God makes things unfold in the best way, in the best timing; gaining the perspective that can only come through patient praying.
Matthew 5:27-28
You know the commandment pretty well, too: “Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.” But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices--they also corrupt.
President Jimmy Carter made this statement of Jesus fairly famous. The press was constantly trying to get some dirt on Jimmy--this apparently squeaky clean, Southern Baptist President from Plains, Georgia. Finally someone from the press corp asked about lust. Why, I don’t know. But President Carter made his now famous reply, “Yes, I have lusted after women in my heart.” Finally, they got him.
As Jimmy Carter divulged, lust is one of those secret sins. Like envy, no one ever knows that you are “lusting in your heart.” It’s something you can savor, and smack your lips over with yourself. “Undress a person with your eyes,” is another, longer way of saying “lust.” Lust also, like envy is something we can disguise even from ourselves. We can construct fantasy stories, with elaborate scenes in our hearts and never be discovered. Until you admit it in a presidential news conference.
But lust isn’t a matter just of the heart. Lust is also a matter of the brain. The largest sex organ on the body is the brain. That’s the center where it all happens. What’s amazing is that several studies, using MRI scans, have shown that the brain in lust is much like a brain on drugs. The area of the brain, where lust is activated, that “lights up” on the MRI, is the same exact area of the brain that “lights up” when an addict has just used cocaine. Lust is a drug; the more you do it, the more you use it, the more of it you have to have, until it becomes an obsession and addiction. What’s weird is that lust is the anticipation of something that may never happen. Under lust’s addiction, huge amounts of mental and emotional energy are burned uselessly. But just imagining that “something” is enough for the brain.
When a person’s sexual hormones are flowing full force in lust, the pleasure center of the brain is blown wide open. This blown pleasure center, goes into hyperdrive, and fuels idealization and projection. That is, you see what you hope someone will be, or you think you need them to be, rather than seeing the real person, flaws and all. At lust’s baser level, it is simply the desire for desire. The brain on lust, in other words, sees things that aren’t there; distorts reality just like cocaine; and keeps a person obsessed with constantly needing more, so they can feel what they’re feeling--even though lust is all a hormonally induced fantasy.
Commercials like those from Victoria’s Secret, or Axe deodorant, try to show us how we can become lustworthy. Just by wearing a certain scent under your arms, or a certain style of underwear, you can have people either secretly or overtly desiring you. That’s what those commercials are about. It isn’t about underwear or deodorant. It’s about selling lust. And notice the fantasy nature of both those recent commercials: feathered wings or crazy sexual anarchy. Isn’t it interesting that there are no commercials that show us how we can make ourselves repulsive or unlustworthy.
Let’s use another analogy. Let’s say lust is like a major river running through your life. All rivers are fed by smaller tributaries. The tributaries contribute to the power and flow of the main river they are feeding. They aren’t the river, but they are having an impact on the course of that river.
In the same way, lust, as a major river, is fed by certain tributary issues. If you are, like Jimmy Carter, dealing with lust in your heart (and brain), then you also, at the same time, have to deal with the smaller streams that feed that lust. These tributaries not only enhance lust, they also make us susceptible to lust and it’s power. So let’s look at a few of these smaller streams of the human condition that create lust.
The first is vulnerability. Being vulnerable is about being highly susceptible. It means you are more open, or fully out in the open and unprotected. Your normal defenses are down. Life is more apt to get at you.
This kind of vulnerability is usually as a result from when we’ve been wounded or weary. Life has battered itself against us too long and too fiercely. Or there’s been a frontal attack. It’s like those times you see the two football teams crash into each other on the line of scrimmage, and one of the player’s helmet pops up in the air. I always suck in a gulp of air when I see that happen because I know someone is in that pile up of 300 pound bodies without protection for their head. They are vulnerable.
If you have been wounded by life in some way, and you are vulnerable, one of the things that happens is your perspective about things gets clouded. The reason that happens is, vulnerability caused by being wounded and weary is a kind of pain. When we are in pain our judgement and decision making abilities diminish. The only thing we can think about is how to get rid of the pain, to manage the pain of being wounded and weary.
Unfortunately, there’s no pill you can take for the pain that results in vulnerability. There are medications for everything, but not vulnerability. But that doesn’t mean we stop looking for ways to take care of our pain. Lust seems to be one of those ways people seek out pain relief from vulnerability. Someone’s sweet words, leads to a gentle touch, which leads to thoughts of the distorted reality I mentioned a few moments ago. The “medicine” of lust, fully swallowed resulting in some sexual tryst to remedy the pain, turns into a mocker and a fraud. Which leaves you not less vulnerable, but more. And more in pain than before.
The second tributary that feeds the river lust is denial. Jeremiah the prophet, in writing about some of the problems in Israel in his day said,
My dear people broken and shattered,
and yet they put on band-aids,
Saying, “It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.”
But things are not “just fine”!
Do you suppose they are embarrassed
over this outrage?
Not really. They have no shame.
They don’t even know how to blush. (8:10-12)
One of the ways denial works in our sexual relationships is thinking that lust is a solution to our unaddressed problems or unmet need. That’s basically what denial is: applying the wrong solution or interpretation to a problem or crisis. It’s evading the truth with a lie we tell ourselves in order to get by.
That’s part of what was going on in Israel during Jeremiah’s time. People were broken and shattered. They coped with their political and religious problems through acting on their lusts. Their religious leaders said everything was fine. But it wasn’t. And people weren’t even embarrassed at the way they were acting upon their various lusts. As Jeremiah said, the people had forgotten how to blush, their lusting lifestyle had become so commonplace.
Jeremiah tried to lead the people away from lust and the fantasy world their lusts created, and see the truth. That’s one of the only ways to break the power of lust. Hold it up to the mirror of truth for what it is. Make it look at itself in that mirror. Accept the pain of what is seen in that mirror.
Jeremiah held up God’s perspective of what life in truth, rather than lust looked like. Once the people began to discern God’s perspective, Jeremiah replaced people’s denial and lust with that perspective of God.
A third tributary flowing into the river Lust is unfulfilled expectations. Expectations are powerful things. When we hear ourselves using words like “should” or “ought” we are finding out what our expectations are about a certain part of life. Any expectation we are holding on to makes that expectation probable. If it wasn’t probable we would be expecting it.
Or sometimes expectations are things we think are owed to us. Maybe it’s owed to us because we have a personal sense of entitlement. Or we expect something because we’ve gone through some hard times, and just because of our bad experiences, we are owed different expectations.
In 2 Kings 5, Naaman has come down with leprosy. He went to Elisha the prophet to be healed. He rides for many days. He finally gets to Elisha’s house, “with his horses and chariots arriving in style” says the story. Elisha sent out a servant to give Naaman his message and instructions. This is Naaman’s reaction:
Naaman lost his temper. He turned on his heel saying, “I thought he’d personally come out and meet me, call on the name of God, wave his hand over the diseased spot, and get rid of the disease.” … He stomped off, mad as a hornet. (2 Kings 5:9-12)
Notice, it wasn’t what Elisha did that really made Naaman angry. It was Naaman’s own expectations about what he thought should have happened. It was his sense of entitlement and his expectations about what he thought he was owed that got him angry.
Another, more current example is from writer & speaker Joni Erickson Tada. She was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident. In her book Secret Strength, Joni wrote about facing temptation.
I was in my late 20’s, single, and with every prospect of remaining so. Sometimes lust or a bit of fantasizing would seem so inviting and so easy to justify. After all, hadn’t I already given up more than most Christians just by being disabled? Didn’t my wheelchair entitle me to a little slack now and then? (But then, coming face-to-face with her expectations she had to ask other questions.) When God allows you to suffer, do you have tendency to use your trials as an excuse for sinning? Or do you feel that since you’ve given God a little extra lately by taking abuse, that He owes you a "day off?" Hard times can often lead to temptation... In our suffering the evil one is quick to come to our aid and offer one of his solutions; pursuing pleasure to numb the pain…
When a person feels cheated or let down by life, it is an easy step to expect something different, especially something better, something comforting, something healing. We do that by searching out, in subtle forms of lust, to find someone who agrees with us and our needs. Lust is a way that searches out partners who feed on each other’s sense of unmet expectations, and what they think life owes them.
The remedy for this situation is to always check your expectations not with others, but with God’s. What are God’s expectations for people in general? What are God’s expectations for you in particular?
The other remedy for this situation is to develop a long-term view of life. Lust is a short term solution to an unmet expectations. True perspective, God’s perspective is developed over time. Take your time. Take your time with God.
Lust is a huge problem. It’s an internal, invisible kind of problem that you know is going on in your heart and mind, that you think you can keep hidden from those you may be leering at.
But the main thing to remember about lust is that it’s not the main problem. Lust is the way you are choosing to cope with other issues: vulnerability, denial, unfulfilled expectations, emotional pain, ungrateful and selfish attitudes, boredom, and especially a weak commitment to Christ. Lust is a coping method that leads to self-destruction.
The question then becomes, What are more healthy, more Christlike ways of coping with your sense of vulnerability, your unfulfilled expectations, your emotional pain? As a coping method, lust is a quick fix to these other issues that are impacting your life. Lust is never a long-term solution.
More long-term solutions always rest with the Lord: patience in and with what God is doing in your life; taking the time to evaluate what God’s expectations are for you; developing God’s long term view of life, and how God makes things unfold in the best way, in the best timing; gaining the perspective that can only come through patient praying.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Chasing Two Rabbits
"Chasing Two Rabbits"
Matthew 6:19-21
I used to have this board game called “Wise and Otherwise.” The playing cards had a three or four wise sayings on the front of the card. But they were only half of the wise saying. These wise sayings were collected from all over the world. Then on the back of the card was the actual ending of the wise saying.
One person would read one of the first half of a wise saying. Everyone playing the game would then write down their guess for the other half of the wise saying. The player with the card would write down the actual ending of the saying and place it in the pile with the other players guesses. All of them would be read and the players would vote as to what they think the actual ending of the wise saying was.
So, are you ready to play? Here is the first half of the wise saying for this morning: “If you chase two rabbits…” Now you can have some time to think about what the second half of this saying is. I’ll ask you for your guesses at the end of the message, and tell you the real answer.
I want to challenge you this morning, not about the dangers of greed. Hopefully you all have an idea of what those are. Erich Fromm wrote in his book, Escape From Freedom, “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts a person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” That’s probably one of the better definitions of greed I’ve found. There is no end to greed, because nothing satisfies a greedy person. Nothing will ever be enough.
And greed seems to start at a young age. The poet Shel Silverstein gives us a glimpse into the child’s greedy mind in his poem, “Prayer of a Selfish Child”:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my toys to break
So none of the other kids can use ‘em.
Amen.
It doesn’t take much of an effort to lay down the particulars of greed, the dangers of greed, the deadliness to the soul from greed. The harder case to make is for living a life of simplicity, free from greed. In Jesus’ parable of the rich farmer who built larger barns to hold his accumulated stuff, hears the voice of God saying, “Tonight your soul is required of you, and now who will get all your stuff?” In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man, in hell, still doesn’t get it. When he does, it’s too late. That’s the deadly quality of greed--when you finally get it, it’s got you, and it’s too late to do anything about it.
So my message this morning is not about greed, but about simplicity. Sometimes we can find out about a thing by looking at it’s opposite. That’s what we’ll do with greed and simplicity this morning.
I want to look at several qualities that lead to a life of simplicity. If you want to lead a simple, unencumbered life, you need to get a few things right.
The first quality in leading a life of simplicity is understanding and coming to terms with the fact that we aren’t going to stay here forever. As Jesus said in our verses this morning, “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or--worse--stolen by burglars.” To be greedy, to be a hoarder of treasure here on earth is saying, at the same time, “This is where our ultimate reality lies.” We may not think that or say that out loud, but we may be living it just the same. Our greed, however slight--our acquisitiveness--belies the truth about where we think our ultimate and eternal reality lies.
The truth is what Jesus said: “Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” If your ultimate reality is going to be heaven, then that simplifies, really fast, all the stuff we are greedily trying to hold on to. That’s the first quality: knowing we aren’t here forever.
The second quality a person needs to live a life of simplicity is to have as much concern for neighbor as for self. Just as a little boy finished the cake, his mother came into the kitchen. She immediately lit into him: “Why, Bobby, you ate all the cake without even thinking of your little sister!”
“That’s not true,” Bobby said. “I was thinking of her all the time. I was thinking I was afraid she’d get here before I finished.”
We deal with greed, and move toward simplicity through hospitality. Greed is a motivation. But it is also an idolatry. Idolatry and greed are about acquisitiveness and power. As a motivation, greed is about taking what you don’t need, and what’s not yours to take.
But hospitality is about giving what one has in order to serve your neighbor. If we are motivated more by taking and acquiring, we are less motivated by giving and sharing--which is at the heart of hospitality and simplicity. Hospitality and simplicity are tests of Christian ownership. That is, how much do we desire to grasp, and how tightly are we holding on to things, rather than living in hospitality with the neighbor with open hands. To be free of grasping, to be free of eating all the cake, is to become open with giving.
Greed treats your neighbor as an enemy at worst, or a competitor in the least. Hospitality through simplicity treats the neighbor as a guest. Hospitality through simplicity is about giving access to what you have--to what the neighbor needs.
Thirdly, in order to nurture simplicity we need to notice how God takes care of the birds of the air. This is from last weeks scripture, but it bears repeating here as we look at the differences between greed and simplicity.
What we notice about the way God takes care of the birds of the air is trusting God’s daily provision. Daily, the birds find what they need. Gandhi once said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” Every day, God provides.
I don’t know how the birds of the air do this, maybe through song, but the best way to receive this daily provision of God is by saying grace. Saying grace is thanking God for all that you’ve been given--and inviting others into the knowledge and reality of God’s provision.
Saying grace is a choice. Those who are greedy may have a hard time saying grace because they can’t see what they have and have been given--they only see what they have acquired. But most importantly the greedy see what they don’t have and desire. Saying grace is a sermon that says, “How good of God to give me this.” The concentration is on God and God’s goodness, not on the selfish desire of greed.
Greed is never happy. Saying grace is at the heart of happiness and simplicity. Even the word in Greek for grace sounds like happiness: chara! Saying grace in simplicity is the seat of true pleasure and happiness--that we are truly happy with and for all that God has graced us with. Saying grace is a celebration in the community of simplicity where God is always the provider and we are the birds of the air.
And the last quality a person needs to live a life of simplicity is realizing living is about being not having. From the birds of the air we move to the wildflowers in the field. This also is from last weeks scripture. Jesus compares the wildflowers in the field to King Solomon:
Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? Even Solomon looked shabby alongside them.
The main difference between Solomon and the wildflowers is that Solomon has to put something on to display his “glory.” The more display he has, the more glory he thinks he has. That’s what leads to greed.
But the wildflowers glory is not put on--it isn’t an add on. It’s inherent in what they are. What we learn from the wildflowers in Jesus’ example is that it isn’t the add on stuff that makes for glory. It’s one’s being as it was created by God. The better we understand our being in God, the better we understand simplicity. Strip everything away. Strip everything away: who and what are you? That’s how we will all stand before God some day. Imagine yourself with nothing but your “being” before God. What is that? Who is that?
The question, then, is how do we create that kind of simplicity now, and enjoy life to the fullest? Not in greed, but in simplicity.
The comedian, Richard Pryor, said soon before he died, “There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything--millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace.”
Peace. Another word for simplicity. Another word for standing before God in the end, totally unencumbered by anything holding you back from him, because that’s the way you lived.
Now to the wise saying riddle. What did you come up with for the second half of, “If you chase two rabbits…”?
Here’s how it ends: “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape you.”
That’s the way of greed.
Matthew 6:19-21
I used to have this board game called “Wise and Otherwise.” The playing cards had a three or four wise sayings on the front of the card. But they were only half of the wise saying. These wise sayings were collected from all over the world. Then on the back of the card was the actual ending of the wise saying.
One person would read one of the first half of a wise saying. Everyone playing the game would then write down their guess for the other half of the wise saying. The player with the card would write down the actual ending of the saying and place it in the pile with the other players guesses. All of them would be read and the players would vote as to what they think the actual ending of the wise saying was.
So, are you ready to play? Here is the first half of the wise saying for this morning: “If you chase two rabbits…” Now you can have some time to think about what the second half of this saying is. I’ll ask you for your guesses at the end of the message, and tell you the real answer.
I want to challenge you this morning, not about the dangers of greed. Hopefully you all have an idea of what those are. Erich Fromm wrote in his book, Escape From Freedom, “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts a person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” That’s probably one of the better definitions of greed I’ve found. There is no end to greed, because nothing satisfies a greedy person. Nothing will ever be enough.
And greed seems to start at a young age. The poet Shel Silverstein gives us a glimpse into the child’s greedy mind in his poem, “Prayer of a Selfish Child”:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my toys to break
So none of the other kids can use ‘em.
Amen.
It doesn’t take much of an effort to lay down the particulars of greed, the dangers of greed, the deadliness to the soul from greed. The harder case to make is for living a life of simplicity, free from greed. In Jesus’ parable of the rich farmer who built larger barns to hold his accumulated stuff, hears the voice of God saying, “Tonight your soul is required of you, and now who will get all your stuff?” In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man, in hell, still doesn’t get it. When he does, it’s too late. That’s the deadly quality of greed--when you finally get it, it’s got you, and it’s too late to do anything about it.
So my message this morning is not about greed, but about simplicity. Sometimes we can find out about a thing by looking at it’s opposite. That’s what we’ll do with greed and simplicity this morning.
I want to look at several qualities that lead to a life of simplicity. If you want to lead a simple, unencumbered life, you need to get a few things right.
The first quality in leading a life of simplicity is understanding and coming to terms with the fact that we aren’t going to stay here forever. As Jesus said in our verses this morning, “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or--worse--stolen by burglars.” To be greedy, to be a hoarder of treasure here on earth is saying, at the same time, “This is where our ultimate reality lies.” We may not think that or say that out loud, but we may be living it just the same. Our greed, however slight--our acquisitiveness--belies the truth about where we think our ultimate and eternal reality lies.
The truth is what Jesus said: “Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” If your ultimate reality is going to be heaven, then that simplifies, really fast, all the stuff we are greedily trying to hold on to. That’s the first quality: knowing we aren’t here forever.
The second quality a person needs to live a life of simplicity is to have as much concern for neighbor as for self. Just as a little boy finished the cake, his mother came into the kitchen. She immediately lit into him: “Why, Bobby, you ate all the cake without even thinking of your little sister!”
“That’s not true,” Bobby said. “I was thinking of her all the time. I was thinking I was afraid she’d get here before I finished.”
We deal with greed, and move toward simplicity through hospitality. Greed is a motivation. But it is also an idolatry. Idolatry and greed are about acquisitiveness and power. As a motivation, greed is about taking what you don’t need, and what’s not yours to take.
But hospitality is about giving what one has in order to serve your neighbor. If we are motivated more by taking and acquiring, we are less motivated by giving and sharing--which is at the heart of hospitality and simplicity. Hospitality and simplicity are tests of Christian ownership. That is, how much do we desire to grasp, and how tightly are we holding on to things, rather than living in hospitality with the neighbor with open hands. To be free of grasping, to be free of eating all the cake, is to become open with giving.
Greed treats your neighbor as an enemy at worst, or a competitor in the least. Hospitality through simplicity treats the neighbor as a guest. Hospitality through simplicity is about giving access to what you have--to what the neighbor needs.
Thirdly, in order to nurture simplicity we need to notice how God takes care of the birds of the air. This is from last weeks scripture, but it bears repeating here as we look at the differences between greed and simplicity.
What we notice about the way God takes care of the birds of the air is trusting God’s daily provision. Daily, the birds find what they need. Gandhi once said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” Every day, God provides.
I don’t know how the birds of the air do this, maybe through song, but the best way to receive this daily provision of God is by saying grace. Saying grace is thanking God for all that you’ve been given--and inviting others into the knowledge and reality of God’s provision.
Saying grace is a choice. Those who are greedy may have a hard time saying grace because they can’t see what they have and have been given--they only see what they have acquired. But most importantly the greedy see what they don’t have and desire. Saying grace is a sermon that says, “How good of God to give me this.” The concentration is on God and God’s goodness, not on the selfish desire of greed.
Greed is never happy. Saying grace is at the heart of happiness and simplicity. Even the word in Greek for grace sounds like happiness: chara! Saying grace in simplicity is the seat of true pleasure and happiness--that we are truly happy with and for all that God has graced us with. Saying grace is a celebration in the community of simplicity where God is always the provider and we are the birds of the air.
And the last quality a person needs to live a life of simplicity is realizing living is about being not having. From the birds of the air we move to the wildflowers in the field. This also is from last weeks scripture. Jesus compares the wildflowers in the field to King Solomon:
Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? Even Solomon looked shabby alongside them.
The main difference between Solomon and the wildflowers is that Solomon has to put something on to display his “glory.” The more display he has, the more glory he thinks he has. That’s what leads to greed.
But the wildflowers glory is not put on--it isn’t an add on. It’s inherent in what they are. What we learn from the wildflowers in Jesus’ example is that it isn’t the add on stuff that makes for glory. It’s one’s being as it was created by God. The better we understand our being in God, the better we understand simplicity. Strip everything away. Strip everything away: who and what are you? That’s how we will all stand before God some day. Imagine yourself with nothing but your “being” before God. What is that? Who is that?
The question, then, is how do we create that kind of simplicity now, and enjoy life to the fullest? Not in greed, but in simplicity.
The comedian, Richard Pryor, said soon before he died, “There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything--millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace.”
Peace. Another word for simplicity. Another word for standing before God in the end, totally unencumbered by anything holding you back from him, because that’s the way you lived.
Now to the wise saying riddle. What did you come up with for the second half of, “If you chase two rabbits…”?
Here’s how it ends: “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape you.”
That’s the way of greed.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Food For Thought
"Food For Thought"
Matthew 6:24-34
I’m not sure how many people really consider over-eating a sin. Gluttony, morbid obesity, childhood obesity are all issues that make it into the news and comedians nightly routines as a “huge” issue. (Pun intended.) With our fixation and fear of death added in the mix, gluttony has moved from a sin to a health issue that could take years off your life. But not send you to hell, forever.
I mean, how many people really seriously consider the idea that eating too much, or enjoying your food is a crime against God. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone, in my 30 plus years of ministry, come into my office asking for pastoral counsel because they were looking forward to breakfast too much. Or because they were worrying about how much pleasure they got out of eating at a buffet the night before.
One time, when my daughter was little, we went shopping together and were coming out of a department store. My daughter was very outspokenly blunt as a child and there wasn’t much of a delay between thinking a thought and when that thought came out of her mouth. An overly rotund woman was coming in the store as we were going out, and Kristin said, way too loud, “Wow, Dad; that woman is really fat!” I quickly picked her up and walked straight for the parking lot and our car, not looking back.
I have a small sense of how the woman might have felt. One time I was in the grocery store, when we lived in Nebraska. A mom was shopping with her little girl, sitting up in the shopping cart. When I walked by, the girl said, pointing at me, “Mom, look, a giant!” The mother did what I did with Kristin that day, and quickly pushed her cart around to the next aisle.
What’s different about those two situations, as people look at those of us who are outside the norm, is most people understand I can’t do anything about being tall. I’m tall. I’m always going to be tall. I can’t make myself shorter. Nobody looks at me thinking I have a negative body issue because I’m so tall. (They think I have problems for other reasons, but not being tall.) But, we expect that obese or overweight people can, or should, do something about their problem--that they should make themselves thinner. And the other thing we don’t hear others say about obese people is a comment like, “Wow, Dad, that woman is really a sinner! She’s going to hell!”
So what is gluttony, and where does it fit on the scale between sin, health issue, lifestyle choice, or psychological problem?
Here’s the thing. The other so-called deadly sins hurt others. The ripple effects of anger, envy, greed, pride, lust, and sloth move out and effect any number of people--especially those whom we love. But who does gluttony hurt? Basically it only hurts the one who is the glutton.
The other thing is, gluttony is at the strange intersection of necessity and pleasure. We have to eat. We can’t not eat. If we are going to survive as human beings, the way God created us, we have to consume food. With gluttony, something happens that pushes a person over the line of consuming adequate daily calories to sustain your life. And crossing that line can lead to the contaminating influences of craving, obsession, or pleasure seeking. Once that line has been crossed, is that sin? A mortal sin? And where exactly is that line?
And what about the opposite? If gluttony is a sin, then is anorexia and bulimia a virtue that qualifies you for sainthood? A number of the female saints, like Claire who was allied with Francis of Assisi, were anorexic, refusing to eat as a supposed sign of their obedience to God. But is that healthy? Is that a model we want to hold up as appropriate for Christian living?
There are all kinds of reasons people overeat or under eat to excess. Morbid obesity and anorexia don’t just happen. In respect to gluttony, some people just like eating. The flavors, the textures, the aromas of food are very pleasurable. But what happens that makes people eat compulsively; or starve and purge themselves compulsively? The reasons could be many, from illness, to self-destructiveness, to the desire for self-obliteration, to intimacy issues, relationship avoidance, or socialization fears.
Over eaters, and under eaters, may have issues involving low self-esteem, or use their disorders to cope with past abuse, or are feeling some bottomless void they are trying to fill by mass quantities of unnecessary food. Certainly, if we were to look at gluttony from the stand point of psychological disorder, it seems more logical than classifying gluttony as a mortal crime against the divine order.
This whole discussion is made more complex by a statement Jesus made. In responding to the judgmental religious leaders, Jesus said, “For John came neither eating or drinking and they say, ‘He has a demon;’ the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold a glutton and a drunkard…” Jesus evidently liked his food, and was judged as an overeating glutton.
Which was really odd, since the Roman culture at that time was all about gluttony in terms of food and sex. The wealthy, when putting on a multi-day orgy of food and sex, would have what they called “vomitoriums” near the banquet hall. When someone got so full they couldn’t eat any more, their servants would haul them out to the vomitorium, put a finger down the moth of their master so they would throw up. Then haul the guy back into the feast and so he could continue eating. It’s hard, if not impossible, to imagine Jesus taking part in such a thing, as he was accused by the Pharisees. But Jesus evidently enjoyed his food.
It is important to note that it was Pope Gregory the Great who first came up with this list of Seven Deadly Sins back in the 400’s. So the list has been around a long time. But it can’t be traced back to Jesus.
For me, food, like money, is amoral. That is, there’s nothing inherently moral or immoral about food. Food just is. It’s what we do with the food that brings in the element of morality. It’s our attitude and relationship with food that creates moral and immoral situations. But food, by itself, can’t taint us with immorality or make us saints simply by eating it. The question is, can food make us sinners for eating too much of it?
So I thought it was vital to see what Jesus said about food and our relationship to it. The guidance we get is in the part of the Sermon on the Mount that Priscilla read a few moments ago. Here it is again, but from The Message:
If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job-description, careless in the care of God. And you count more to him than birds. (Matthew 6:25-26)
Instead of “fuss about” other translations use the words, “...don’t be anxious about…” Other translations use the word, “worry,” instead of fuss or anxious. I don’t know if your soul is going to be damned to eternal hell if you eat too much. What I know is Jesus saw that people experience an overabundance of anxiety; he then used the examples of how that anxiety can be caused by our relationship to food and clothing. It’s not the food that is causing the problem. It is the anxiety that is damaging the spirit of the person. It’s in understanding and dealing with the anxiety that brings us back to where God wants us in our life with him--according to Jesus.
Anxiety is a normal human reaction to the stress we experience in life. It’s normal. We are human beings. We experience tough stuff in life. That tough stuff leads to a certain level of anxiety. But if the anxiety becomes excessive, the person can become filled with dread about life. That dread can be paralyzing, and keep the person from going through everyday life freely.
Over productive anxiety, moving into the level of dread, causes panic attacks. It contributes to depression. Too much anxiety can lead to compulsive behaviors. And gluttony--over eating--is pretty much a compulsive behavior. This over productive anxiety can either take over a person’s life slowly; or, sometimes there are trigger events that kick off the anxiety, ramping it up in a person’s life. That, in turn, ramps up the panic, the dread, the depression, the compulsion and it becomes a hellish cycle.
Anxiety involves thoughts of uncontrollability and unpredictability of upcoming personal and major events. This feeling of being out of control creates a shift in attention from our ability to cope, to the fear of our inability to cope. Memories of past hurts quickly surface. Concentration shifts us to only look at negative aspects of certain events, and negative emotions.
Worries become exaggerated. Anxiety makes the person expect the worst outcome. In these situations that create normal stress, an over anxious person’s mind creates all these “what if” scenarios which are often accompanied by physical symptoms. Over eating, and under eating, are a couple of the possible physical symptoms that people use to cope with their anxiety.
What’s startling is that, even though anxiety is found in every culture, anxiety disorders are exceedingly more prevalent in Western societies--particularly America. Which says to me that there is something entirely wrong with ways we are choosing to live and cope with life. Something needs to be changed.
Jesus said, “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about…” Become anxious about… Worry about… Anxiety and fussing has at its heart, trying to live your life outside of God. Anxiety has to do with making your life about something other than God. Worry has to do with not throwing your lot entirely in with God, trusting God in every life situation. Anxiety has to do with majoring on the minors (food, clothes, etc.). It means allowing anxiety and fussing to become your God, because that is what is controlling your life.
That’s why I included the prior statement of Jesus that you can’t serve two masters. I think it has a lot to do with what Jesus says next about anxiety. Food and clothing are simply symptoms of a life controlled by anxiety. It isn’t about gluttony. It’s about centering and concentrating your vision down to one thing--God. In Jesus’ mind, you can’t serve two masters. The choice for Jesus is between anxiety over not being able to be clear about what or who you are about, and dedication to God. Who you serve. Deciding for God, “living a life of God-worship.”
According to Jesus, anxiety is caused by being divided. It’s trying to serve two masters at the same time. Anxiety comes from trying to drive your life on both sides of the street at the same time.
The way I see it, and I might be wrong here, but the way I see it, it’s not about eating too much, too little, too lavishly. I don’t know if gluttony will send you to hell for an eternity. I do know that a divided life, a life of constant fuss and anxiety, a life of worry will kill you. Excess in food is just one more indication that you’re trying to calm your anxiety about your divided life with something that isn’t God. That’s where you start getting into trouble. Trying to fill up your life on something that is not God.
Matthew 6:24-34
I’m not sure how many people really consider over-eating a sin. Gluttony, morbid obesity, childhood obesity are all issues that make it into the news and comedians nightly routines as a “huge” issue. (Pun intended.) With our fixation and fear of death added in the mix, gluttony has moved from a sin to a health issue that could take years off your life. But not send you to hell, forever.
I mean, how many people really seriously consider the idea that eating too much, or enjoying your food is a crime against God. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone, in my 30 plus years of ministry, come into my office asking for pastoral counsel because they were looking forward to breakfast too much. Or because they were worrying about how much pleasure they got out of eating at a buffet the night before.
One time, when my daughter was little, we went shopping together and were coming out of a department store. My daughter was very outspokenly blunt as a child and there wasn’t much of a delay between thinking a thought and when that thought came out of her mouth. An overly rotund woman was coming in the store as we were going out, and Kristin said, way too loud, “Wow, Dad; that woman is really fat!” I quickly picked her up and walked straight for the parking lot and our car, not looking back.
I have a small sense of how the woman might have felt. One time I was in the grocery store, when we lived in Nebraska. A mom was shopping with her little girl, sitting up in the shopping cart. When I walked by, the girl said, pointing at me, “Mom, look, a giant!” The mother did what I did with Kristin that day, and quickly pushed her cart around to the next aisle.
What’s different about those two situations, as people look at those of us who are outside the norm, is most people understand I can’t do anything about being tall. I’m tall. I’m always going to be tall. I can’t make myself shorter. Nobody looks at me thinking I have a negative body issue because I’m so tall. (They think I have problems for other reasons, but not being tall.) But, we expect that obese or overweight people can, or should, do something about their problem--that they should make themselves thinner. And the other thing we don’t hear others say about obese people is a comment like, “Wow, Dad, that woman is really a sinner! She’s going to hell!”
So what is gluttony, and where does it fit on the scale between sin, health issue, lifestyle choice, or psychological problem?
Here’s the thing. The other so-called deadly sins hurt others. The ripple effects of anger, envy, greed, pride, lust, and sloth move out and effect any number of people--especially those whom we love. But who does gluttony hurt? Basically it only hurts the one who is the glutton.
The other thing is, gluttony is at the strange intersection of necessity and pleasure. We have to eat. We can’t not eat. If we are going to survive as human beings, the way God created us, we have to consume food. With gluttony, something happens that pushes a person over the line of consuming adequate daily calories to sustain your life. And crossing that line can lead to the contaminating influences of craving, obsession, or pleasure seeking. Once that line has been crossed, is that sin? A mortal sin? And where exactly is that line?
And what about the opposite? If gluttony is a sin, then is anorexia and bulimia a virtue that qualifies you for sainthood? A number of the female saints, like Claire who was allied with Francis of Assisi, were anorexic, refusing to eat as a supposed sign of their obedience to God. But is that healthy? Is that a model we want to hold up as appropriate for Christian living?
There are all kinds of reasons people overeat or under eat to excess. Morbid obesity and anorexia don’t just happen. In respect to gluttony, some people just like eating. The flavors, the textures, the aromas of food are very pleasurable. But what happens that makes people eat compulsively; or starve and purge themselves compulsively? The reasons could be many, from illness, to self-destructiveness, to the desire for self-obliteration, to intimacy issues, relationship avoidance, or socialization fears.
Over eaters, and under eaters, may have issues involving low self-esteem, or use their disorders to cope with past abuse, or are feeling some bottomless void they are trying to fill by mass quantities of unnecessary food. Certainly, if we were to look at gluttony from the stand point of psychological disorder, it seems more logical than classifying gluttony as a mortal crime against the divine order.
This whole discussion is made more complex by a statement Jesus made. In responding to the judgmental religious leaders, Jesus said, “For John came neither eating or drinking and they say, ‘He has a demon;’ the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold a glutton and a drunkard…” Jesus evidently liked his food, and was judged as an overeating glutton.
Which was really odd, since the Roman culture at that time was all about gluttony in terms of food and sex. The wealthy, when putting on a multi-day orgy of food and sex, would have what they called “vomitoriums” near the banquet hall. When someone got so full they couldn’t eat any more, their servants would haul them out to the vomitorium, put a finger down the moth of their master so they would throw up. Then haul the guy back into the feast and so he could continue eating. It’s hard, if not impossible, to imagine Jesus taking part in such a thing, as he was accused by the Pharisees. But Jesus evidently enjoyed his food.
It is important to note that it was Pope Gregory the Great who first came up with this list of Seven Deadly Sins back in the 400’s. So the list has been around a long time. But it can’t be traced back to Jesus.
For me, food, like money, is amoral. That is, there’s nothing inherently moral or immoral about food. Food just is. It’s what we do with the food that brings in the element of morality. It’s our attitude and relationship with food that creates moral and immoral situations. But food, by itself, can’t taint us with immorality or make us saints simply by eating it. The question is, can food make us sinners for eating too much of it?
So I thought it was vital to see what Jesus said about food and our relationship to it. The guidance we get is in the part of the Sermon on the Mount that Priscilla read a few moments ago. Here it is again, but from The Message:
If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job-description, careless in the care of God. And you count more to him than birds. (Matthew 6:25-26)
Instead of “fuss about” other translations use the words, “...don’t be anxious about…” Other translations use the word, “worry,” instead of fuss or anxious. I don’t know if your soul is going to be damned to eternal hell if you eat too much. What I know is Jesus saw that people experience an overabundance of anxiety; he then used the examples of how that anxiety can be caused by our relationship to food and clothing. It’s not the food that is causing the problem. It is the anxiety that is damaging the spirit of the person. It’s in understanding and dealing with the anxiety that brings us back to where God wants us in our life with him--according to Jesus.
Anxiety is a normal human reaction to the stress we experience in life. It’s normal. We are human beings. We experience tough stuff in life. That tough stuff leads to a certain level of anxiety. But if the anxiety becomes excessive, the person can become filled with dread about life. That dread can be paralyzing, and keep the person from going through everyday life freely.
Over productive anxiety, moving into the level of dread, causes panic attacks. It contributes to depression. Too much anxiety can lead to compulsive behaviors. And gluttony--over eating--is pretty much a compulsive behavior. This over productive anxiety can either take over a person’s life slowly; or, sometimes there are trigger events that kick off the anxiety, ramping it up in a person’s life. That, in turn, ramps up the panic, the dread, the depression, the compulsion and it becomes a hellish cycle.
Anxiety involves thoughts of uncontrollability and unpredictability of upcoming personal and major events. This feeling of being out of control creates a shift in attention from our ability to cope, to the fear of our inability to cope. Memories of past hurts quickly surface. Concentration shifts us to only look at negative aspects of certain events, and negative emotions.
Worries become exaggerated. Anxiety makes the person expect the worst outcome. In these situations that create normal stress, an over anxious person’s mind creates all these “what if” scenarios which are often accompanied by physical symptoms. Over eating, and under eating, are a couple of the possible physical symptoms that people use to cope with their anxiety.
What’s startling is that, even though anxiety is found in every culture, anxiety disorders are exceedingly more prevalent in Western societies--particularly America. Which says to me that there is something entirely wrong with ways we are choosing to live and cope with life. Something needs to be changed.
Jesus said, “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about…” Become anxious about… Worry about… Anxiety and fussing has at its heart, trying to live your life outside of God. Anxiety has to do with making your life about something other than God. Worry has to do with not throwing your lot entirely in with God, trusting God in every life situation. Anxiety has to do with majoring on the minors (food, clothes, etc.). It means allowing anxiety and fussing to become your God, because that is what is controlling your life.
That’s why I included the prior statement of Jesus that you can’t serve two masters. I think it has a lot to do with what Jesus says next about anxiety. Food and clothing are simply symptoms of a life controlled by anxiety. It isn’t about gluttony. It’s about centering and concentrating your vision down to one thing--God. In Jesus’ mind, you can’t serve two masters. The choice for Jesus is between anxiety over not being able to be clear about what or who you are about, and dedication to God. Who you serve. Deciding for God, “living a life of God-worship.”
According to Jesus, anxiety is caused by being divided. It’s trying to serve two masters at the same time. Anxiety comes from trying to drive your life on both sides of the street at the same time.
The way I see it, and I might be wrong here, but the way I see it, it’s not about eating too much, too little, too lavishly. I don’t know if gluttony will send you to hell for an eternity. I do know that a divided life, a life of constant fuss and anxiety, a life of worry will kill you. Excess in food is just one more indication that you’re trying to calm your anxiety about your divided life with something that isn’t God. That’s where you start getting into trouble. Trying to fill up your life on something that is not God.
Monday, March 5, 2012
It Isn't Easy Being Green
"It Isn't Easy Being Green"
Matthew 6:22-23
Matthew 6:22-23
How many of you watched the Oscar Awards last Sunday evening? How many of you watched the red carpet pre-show? Question: What were you looking at and what were you thinking as you were watching the pre-show?
The question is, do men or women envy more strongly. Using the Oscars red carpet as an illustration, men are more envious of an offensively good looking man. The reason is not because of his looks, but what he can get with his looks--women. George Clooney shows up with a tall, super model looking blonde on his arm. But she is just one of a long line of stunning women he has had. He has never been married, and his self-infatuation with his own good looks, and what (or who) he’s been able to obtain with those good looks is probably why he’s never married. Most men would envy that.
We men seem to be able to to live with other men having grander possessions, but the thought of another man having a more interesting life with various women is, somehow, intolerable. We men don’t envy women for their money, beautiful objects, or power in the world. What we envy is other men who are able to attract the attention of these kinds of women.
Whereas men’s envy seems to be more generalized in this way, women’s envy is more personal and particular. It’s been said that truly beautiful women will have no genuine women friends. The reason is that women don’t generalize their envy about women; it’s that woman in particular they envy, which leads, a lot of the time, to a deep and personal hatred.
Like Angelina Jolie and her famous, evocatively shown off right leg on the red carpet at the Oscars,
which has now been photo shopped onto all kinds of people from the Statue of Liberty
to Darth Vader
and Napoleon Bonaparte.
And the thing about envy is it’s insidiousness. Women may say they just don’t get why Angelina would flaunt her right leg like that, and how stupid it appeared sticking it out of her high slitted dress. But in one article, by a woman, who was decrying the arrogance of Angelina’s flaunted leg, that leg was described as having “a toned and slender thigh.” Ah, ha--envy caught peaking around the corner. That’s one of the problems of envy: it comes all mixed in with other stuff, trying to make itself invisible. Envy goes so well with other sins: envy with jealousy on the rocks; envy tinged with regret; envy with a twist of anger; envy as a fuel additive to competitiveness. We mix envy in with other characteristics so people can’t see it. But it’s there.
Think about the Occupy Wall Street protestors. They’re mad at the one percent who apparently control a majority of the wealth and power in our country. The OWS people are mad they don’t have a job. They cloak their rants in the language of injustice and economic equality, or giving the little guy a chance. But how much of all the protesting is just envy, pure and simple? Envy being masked by supposed economic justice?
Some of the other Seven Deadly Sins are much more visible. It’s easy to spot Gluttony, or Sloth, or last weeks, Anger. Even Pride and Greed have a certain level of visibility to them.
Envy you can keep hidden. You can stick it in the closet of your selfhood, or throw it under your bed. But Envy, even from it’s hiding places, is peering through the crack in the closet door, or from under the mattress. Nobody can see you being envious. It all goes on in the privacy and luxury of your own head and heart.
Sam Varkin writes in his book, Malignant Self-Love:
Envy is at the core of my being: (my heart is) seething, foaming-at-the-mouth, destructive, morbid, and potent. I envy other people's happiness, possessions, accomplishments, status, spot in the limelight, contacts, you name it. I disguise my envy. I rationalize and intellectualize it.
Varkin gets at the heart of what envy is and does. Even though it is consuming him, no one knows it. No one sees it. He does everything he can to make sure of that. He expends a huge amount of energy keeping his envy behind the closet doors of his heart. That’s the destructive force of envy--it is an invisible, inner force that becomes such a compulsion, it destroys your humanity and your soul by stealth.
The power of envy is the power of comparison. It is a deep part of human nature that we compare ourselves to other people. There are upward comparisons and downward comparisons. In downward comparisons, we look at others whom we think are less than us. There’s nothing about them or about what they have that we envy. It’s sort of a reverse envy. It makes us feel good about ourselves that there are people who are, in our minds, totally unenviable. But we, by comparison, are.
The other kind of comparison is the upward comparison in which you focus on someone you think is better than you in some way. When you make an upward comparison, there are a number of different emotional reactions you might have.
Here’s how upward comparison works. One of my pleasures on Sunday morning is hearing Nick and Mike playing through a bunch of songs as they warm up for Sunday morning. They are excellent guitar players. I play guitar. One reaction to hearing them play would be to admire their skill. And I do. It’s not envy--just admiration, a mild form, perhaps of envy. A second reaction would be to wish that I could play as well--which I do wish for sometimes when I listen to them. I’m not doing anything about it. I’m not taking more guitar lessons. I’m just wishing. This kind of emotional reaction is an upwardly benign envy. I simply want what Nick and Mike have.
A third reaction would be to feel a more destructive envy in which I recognize that Nick and Mike are much better guitar players than me, and then wishing that something bad would happen: like a truck driving over their fingers--and maybe I would even be at the wheel of that truck--so they can never play ever again. The church would have to look for a new guitar player--me! That’s sick envy. Again, they would never know I was harboring such enviously destructive thoughts. It’s all internal, and I could be just as pleasant as pie to them both. But I’m letting my upward comparison create a kind of envy that is hateful, destructive, and evil.
“The eye is the lamp of the body,” Jesus said. “So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness.”
An unsound eye, is like an envious eye. Looking through the eyes of envy darkens the whole self. Again, here is more from Sam Varkin’s book, Malignant Self-Love:
My pathological spite drives me to extremes of behavior: I plot and provoke and collude and spread malicious gossip and strive to damage my opponent and reduce him. I imagine his downfall in great detail and revel in his forthcoming misery and humiliation. I spend inordinate amounts of time, resources, and mental energy on nurturing my envy and mollifying it.
That’s the darkness. That’s the unsound eye of envy that lets in no light. It clouds your vision. It distorts your idea of relationships. It sees people, not as people, but as objects, maybe at first, to admire. Then envy. Then licking your lips while seeking the destruction of another for your own purposes of self-elevation. A sick, and hidden delight in another’s failure, defeat, or fall. Envy is a gradual slippery slope. Insidious. Undermining. Slowly letting in less and less light from God, darkening the soul.
If we are to take Jesus at his word, the way to deal with envy is through the eyes and the light that comes through the eyes. We take light for granted, because there are a lot of functions that light provides.
First is visibility. Light gives us the ability to see clearly. If our visibility is hampered or darkened, we don’t see things clearly.
There was a minister who went to visit a woman one day. As they sat and chatted in her living room, he was looking out the window at her wash on the clothes line. He thought to himself, “What a dingy and dirty wash. It looks like she hasn’t even cleaned them. The sheets look dirty--everything looks dirty.”
They continued their conversation, and then it was time to go. When walking out to his car, he looked back at the wash on the clothes line. It was clean and bright. Then it hit him. It wasn’t the wash on the line that was dirty. It was the windows he was looking through. They were grimy and filmy, and it made the whole wash on the line look that way.
So the way to deal with envy is to make sure the eyes we are looking through are clear and clean. That way they will let in the greatest amount of light, and everything we look at will have the same kind of visible clarity.
Another quality of light is to create shadow. In stage and movie productions, this is called modeling. It’s using intense light and shadow to reveal three dimensional form to what’s on stage. You can’t have shadow without light. The light provides the true shape of that which we are looking at. With light comes perspective. So, if we are seeing right--if our eyes are full of light--that means we are seeing the true form of things. We are seeing the shape of our envy for what it is. With light comes the proper perspective of what we’re looking at. We are seeing how envy might be forming, and the kind of space it is taking up in our spirit. That wouldn’t happen without the light--without sound eyes.
A third quality of light is focus. A lighthouse puts focus on the rocky shore. A spotlight pinpoints a certain performer on stage apart from the other performers. A flashlight illuminates specific places you are looking at. A laser pointer can let an audience know what they should be looking at on the screen during a presentation. This quality of focus has to do with pinpointing attention. If our eye is sound, and the light of God is getting in, then it will focus attention on those areas of our life that need attention. Like envy. And, if our focus and attention are pointed in the right direction by the light, we will be seeing what we’re supposed to see, and not what we’re not to focus on.
And a fourth and final quality of light is to create mood. Certainly a few lit candles will have a different effect than a blaring search light. In a movie, if the characters are bumping around in a darkened or dimly lit house, there’s certainly a different mood then when someone comes in and turns the house lights on.
I think the same happens with the amount of the light of God that we allow in through our eyes. That was clear from the two quotes I read from Sam Varkin’s book. His mood, taken over by envy and darkness was clearly distorted. His eyes were not good, the amount of God’s light coming in was negligible, if there was any at all. The mood of his life suffered for it. Interesting to think that your outlook can be shaped by the amount of Godly light coming in through your eyes. Envious or non-envious eyes.
So envy has to do with the eyes. How we see what we see. How what we see is connected to our spirit. If our eyes are not letting in the light of God, we will be unhappy. And when we are unhappy, we cannot bear the sight of someone who is happy. That’s when envy starts knocking at the door.
With eyes that are not seeing clearly, in our unhappiness we ask, “Why me?” Then we see someone who is happy, and we ask, “Why not me?” That’s how envy begins and grows. In our sight. Out of the light. With a lack of visibility, perspective, focus, and finally a darkened mood. We are tricked into thinking we can get out of the darkness through envy. But it only takes us deeper into the darkness.
To avoid this deadly sin, keep your eyes full of the light of God.
Monday, February 27, 2012
The Ten Commandments of Anger Management
"The 10 Commandments of Anger Management"
Matthew 5:21-22
You have heard that it was said to the men of old, "You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment." But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, "You fool!" shall be liable to the hell of fire.
We embark on a Lenten sermon series about what are called the Seven Deadly Sins, or the Seven Capital Sins. They are called the Capital sins because they are the sins from which all other sins flow. And they are called the Deadly sins because it has been considered that if you harbor them in your spirit they are lethal to the soul's life in God. They are fatal to our connection to the divine bliss both in this life and the life to come. To hold on to any one of these seven is to condemn yourself to hellish states of existence in the afterlife.
The first of the seven that we'll take a look at this morning is anger.
People get angry. Ministers are people. Thus, even ministers get angry and say or do stupid things. One country preacher found a dead mule on his lawn. He phoned the state board of health to have it removed. The young man who was taking down the information found out he was talking to a preacher. So the young man said, somewhat snidely, "I thought preachers were supposed to take care of the dead."
The preacher replied, "Oh, we do, but I just thought I'd call and notify the next of kin."
We say and do things, when angry, that most of the time we wish we hadn't. We wish we could take them back, but we can't. It's interesting to me that the word "mad" has a couple of meanings. First, someone could say to me, "I'm mad at you," meaning they are angry with me about something. Or secondly, they could say, "Did you hear Wing's sermon; he's gone stark, raving mad." Which would mean I've gone off the deep end. Both meanings have to do with losing emotional control to some degree or another.
What are we supposed to do with our anger? If anger is a basic human emotion, and our emotions were given to us by God as part of our humanity, then how can it be called a sin? Especially a "deadly" sin? When we think of sin, we usually think of choices--really bad choices--that people make that lead to their or others peril. But if anger is a human emotion, it isn't a choice. It is what is. Therefore, the choice of anger is in how you handle what is. If it is a basic human emotion then we need to talk in terms of "managing" our anger. If anger is a deadly sin, then we need to talk in terms of eliminating it all together.
And where does Jesus' statement in the Sermon of the Mount fit in here: mortal sin, or managed emotion? Anger and insults seem like something manageable. But the last statement about calling someone a fool, and being thrown into the fires of hell sounds fairly mortal to me.
What Jesus says there is if you call someone "Raca!" you're liable for the fires of hell. No one knows what Raca means. They think it means to be totally forsaken by God. The inference being that if you get angry to the point that you make a judgment upon someone, telling them they are even unloveable by God, that's like playing God. If our anger gets to the point that we play God, that makes God angry. You don't want to do that.
I've read a lot about anger this week. I want to relate a few major points of all that I've read to Jesus' short statement about anger, so we can figure out why anger is sinful. In one of the articles, that talked about managing anger, I found what the author called, "The Ten Commandments of Anger Management." I'm going to take his list of 10 and add some other material so that hopefully you can come to an understanding of your own anger and why the Lord wants you to keep it under control.
Here's the first one: Recognize anger as a signal of vulnerability - you feel devalued in some way.
Our vulnerabilities are our tender places. They are the places in our spirits where we've been hurt or damaged. Others may know our vulnerable spots. Most don't. Some people don't even know their own vulnerabilities. If you know another person well, you know where their soft spots are--where they hurt. When we use terms like "pushing another person's button" we're really describing their soft spot. It's their place of emotional pain. You push someone else's button, and what happens? They get angry.
They get angry because, first, you hurt them where they're already hurting. But also they are angry because you took advantage of their vulnerability. Which means we are feeling devalued. We assume that you don't push on someone else's vulnerable spots whom you value. If you get your button pushed you feel that you have no value in the pushers life. So when we get angry, we're trying to protect ourselves, and our soft spots. We use anger to regulate our vulnerability with another person.
But what we are tempted to do with our anger is retaliate by devaluing the person who devalued us. They pushed our button. Out of our anger, we push buttons back. That leads to a hurtful spiral that destroys relationship.
I think that's part of what's behind Jesus' statement about anger. If anger is about devaluing people, or used as a weapon hurt people where they are already vulnerable, and then to launch back and devalue an aggressor, then both lose, because the relationship suffers. What Jesus was about was strengthening relationship bonds, especially amongst "brothers and sisters"--fellow disciples.
If this is true, that leads us to the second commandment of handling our anger: When angry, think or do something that will make you feel more valuable, i.e., worthy of appreciation.
If you're playing the angry punching bag game, there are two ways to win. Keep punching until the other gives up; but then has anyone really won? Or put your hands to your side, and stop your defensiveness.
That's the stark teaching of Jesus about if someone slaps you on the one cheek, offer the other as well. By offering your other cheek to be slapped, you are actually challenging the aggressor to NOT slap you. By putting your hands to your sides, you are challenging them to be compassionate and end the fight. It isn't a sign of being a wimp in a fight. It's a sign of strength, challenging the other to put down their gloves of anger as well, and end the sparring in a non-angry way.
What makes a person feel more valuable than reestablishing relationship through compassion rather than anger? Do you feel more valuable because you have brow beat a person into submission? Or do you feel more valuable as a human being (and a disciple) because you saved a relationship in a non-angry way?
The third commandment of anger management is: Don't trust your judgment when angry. Anger magnifies and amplifies only the negative aspects of an issue, distorting realistic appraisal.
One of the main reasons you can’t trust your judgment when angry is because of what’s happening in your body. When you get angry your nervous system is activated and heightened. Your heart rate elevates. Your blood pressure elevates. Your eyes dilate. Your digestion halts, as more stomach acid is pumped into your digestive system to digest any food that may be there more quickly for energy use. Pain messages to the brain are blocked. A hormone, epinephrine, is secreted into your brain giving you a false feeling of invinceability. And your throat is stimulated for shouting or roaring.
All of this interferes with your brain’s ability to effectively process information. The reason your body is doing all this activation of bodily functions is because anger is a reaction to a threat. You have evaluated another person as an enemy, your brain perceives that, and automatically kicks all those bodily functions into high gear, getting you ready to do battle. Your body is getting ready, but in order to do that, your cognitive, thinking functions are decreasing. So your real enemy, when you get angry, is within, not without.
What do you find you are saying, after the angry, combative juices stop flowing? You find yourself saying, “I’m sorry. I just WASN’T THINKING.” And you know what? You’d be right. Because your body isn’t allowing you to think when angry.
Jesus doesn’t allow us to have enemies. If you are angry, and if you are constantly angry, then you are treating too many people as the enemy. We aren’t allowed that, as Christians. We are to find another way.
The fourth commandment of anger management is: Try to see the complexity of the issue. Anger requires narrow and rigid focus that ignores or oversimplifies context.
When we get angry we, because of our anger, only see things in black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. Most of the time, issues are more complex than that. As I just mentioned, our thinking brains get minimized when we’re angry, so we can’t process the grey areas of a situation. Only when we calm down, and minimize the bodily functions that are going on, can our brains return to the more complex reasoning that we need to really see and deal with our anger producing situations.
Another part of understanding the complexity of the issues involved means understanding the circumstances of anger. There are three parts to this.
First, there is the trigger event. Something happens that sets you off. Let’s use the example of being cut off by another driver while driving. One little girl asked her father, when they were driving around, “Daddy, why do the jerks and idiots only come out while you’re driving?” The problem here is that people mistakenly think the trigger event is the cause of their anger.
The second part, is your own individual character. This has to do with your own personality, as well as your pre-anger state. As far as your own personality, maybe you are a highly competitive person and you see driving as a competition with others on the road. Or maybe you’re a narcissist, and the guy who cut you off doesn’t realize who you are, and affronted your superiority. Or maybe you have a low-frustration tolerance and it’s not just driving--everything pushes your button. Those are all personality traits that feed anger, totally apart from the trigger event.
And thirdly, and most importantly, our anger arises from our appraisal of the situation. How we appraise or evaluate a situation will determine our level of anger. What do I think it means that I was cut off in traffic? We get angry simply because we personally evaluate the situation as blameworthy, unjustified, punishable, etc. What happens if we stop and appraise the situation differently? Our appraisal may not be accurate. Are we willing to accept that, and thus, derail all our anatomic anger responses?
The fifth commandment goes along with this one: Know that your temporary state of anger has prepared you to fight when you really need to learn more, solve a problem, or, if it involves a loved one, be more compassionate.
The sixth commandment is: Strive to understand other people's perspectives. When angry you assume the worst or outright demonize the object of your anger.
Because our anger makes the other person out to be the enemy, a further step can be taken in which we equate that person with the devil. They are evil incarnate. They are inhuman. They don’t deserve to be treated humanely. Again, we aren’t allowed by Jesus to have enemies. And we certainly are not allowed to play God and decide, in our anger, who deserves to be demonized.
The seventh commandment is: Don't justify your anger. Instead, consider whether it will help you act in your long-term best interest.
This is a process that happens after you have already been angry and words and maybe other household items have been let fly. You’ve cooled down. You understand, alarmingly, that you’ve been an idiot. Now what do you do? Do you try and justify your actions? Do you rationalize in order to save face? Or do you, because it would serve the long term interest of the relationship you just harmed, to confess and ask forgiveness?
Commandment number eight is: Know your physical and mental resources. Anger is more likely to occur when tired, hungry, sick, confused, anxious, preoccupied, distracted, or overwhelmed.
This goes along with the fourth commandment, where I was talking about knowing your own individual characteristics. Part of that is assessing your pre-anger state. Were you tired? Do you get angry most often when you are tired? Are you really anxious about something else, and anger is simply being used as a way to discharge your heightened anxiety. For example, if you were just driving back from the doctor’s office and they found an ominous “shadow” on your MRI, your anxiety is bound to be elevated. Self protection ramps up, and you are more likely to get angry as a way to deal with it. Or, in your pre-anger state, were you already angry about something else? One anger just fed into another.
The ninth commandment says: Focus on improving and repairing rather than blaming. It's hard to stay angry without blaming and it's harder to blame when focused on repairing and improving.
Anger and blame are the peddlers of the tandem bike of a bad situation. We’re not wrong, bad, selfish, inconsiderate! It’s that so-and-so. That so-and-so may be your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your co-worker, your client. Fearlessly ask yourself, “OK; what was my part in this escalating bad situation?” And deal with it, as a responsible, Christian human being. At some point, in the midst of anger you have to decide between two choices: Do I want to be right? Or, do I want to keep the relationship with this other person?
And the tenth and final commandment is: When angry, remember your deepest values. Anger is about devaluing others, which is probably inconsistent with your deepest values.
I think this is the most important, and the one that gets at the heart of Jesus’ words about anger clearest. That which will protect you against anger the best is remembering your core values as a Christian. To get angry to the point of demeaning and devaluing another human being; to get angry to the point of treating another person as an enemy--even and especially those we love; to get angry to the point of making another person out to be the devil, and judging as if you are God, is all against the basic, core values of who you profess to be as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
If you are an angry person, if you get angry often and ferociously, then you better ask yourself a really tough question: Have I really turned my life over to Christ or not? Have I fully and faithfully made Christ’s core values my own? Constant and demeaning anger points to a negative answer to those questions.
That’s why anger is such a deadly sin. This kind of anger goes so against the core values of who we are as Christians, it kills faith. It kills life in the church. It kills our relationship with God, won for us at such a high price through Jesus Christ.
That's why anger is a deadly sin.
Matthew 5:21-22
You have heard that it was said to the men of old, "You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment." But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, "You fool!" shall be liable to the hell of fire.
We embark on a Lenten sermon series about what are called the Seven Deadly Sins, or the Seven Capital Sins. They are called the Capital sins because they are the sins from which all other sins flow. And they are called the Deadly sins because it has been considered that if you harbor them in your spirit they are lethal to the soul's life in God. They are fatal to our connection to the divine bliss both in this life and the life to come. To hold on to any one of these seven is to condemn yourself to hellish states of existence in the afterlife.
The first of the seven that we'll take a look at this morning is anger.
People get angry. Ministers are people. Thus, even ministers get angry and say or do stupid things. One country preacher found a dead mule on his lawn. He phoned the state board of health to have it removed. The young man who was taking down the information found out he was talking to a preacher. So the young man said, somewhat snidely, "I thought preachers were supposed to take care of the dead."
The preacher replied, "Oh, we do, but I just thought I'd call and notify the next of kin."
We say and do things, when angry, that most of the time we wish we hadn't. We wish we could take them back, but we can't. It's interesting to me that the word "mad" has a couple of meanings. First, someone could say to me, "I'm mad at you," meaning they are angry with me about something. Or secondly, they could say, "Did you hear Wing's sermon; he's gone stark, raving mad." Which would mean I've gone off the deep end. Both meanings have to do with losing emotional control to some degree or another.
What are we supposed to do with our anger? If anger is a basic human emotion, and our emotions were given to us by God as part of our humanity, then how can it be called a sin? Especially a "deadly" sin? When we think of sin, we usually think of choices--really bad choices--that people make that lead to their or others peril. But if anger is a human emotion, it isn't a choice. It is what is. Therefore, the choice of anger is in how you handle what is. If it is a basic human emotion then we need to talk in terms of "managing" our anger. If anger is a deadly sin, then we need to talk in terms of eliminating it all together.
And where does Jesus' statement in the Sermon of the Mount fit in here: mortal sin, or managed emotion? Anger and insults seem like something manageable. But the last statement about calling someone a fool, and being thrown into the fires of hell sounds fairly mortal to me.
What Jesus says there is if you call someone "Raca!" you're liable for the fires of hell. No one knows what Raca means. They think it means to be totally forsaken by God. The inference being that if you get angry to the point that you make a judgment upon someone, telling them they are even unloveable by God, that's like playing God. If our anger gets to the point that we play God, that makes God angry. You don't want to do that.
I've read a lot about anger this week. I want to relate a few major points of all that I've read to Jesus' short statement about anger, so we can figure out why anger is sinful. In one of the articles, that talked about managing anger, I found what the author called, "The Ten Commandments of Anger Management." I'm going to take his list of 10 and add some other material so that hopefully you can come to an understanding of your own anger and why the Lord wants you to keep it under control.
Here's the first one: Recognize anger as a signal of vulnerability - you feel devalued in some way.
Our vulnerabilities are our tender places. They are the places in our spirits where we've been hurt or damaged. Others may know our vulnerable spots. Most don't. Some people don't even know their own vulnerabilities. If you know another person well, you know where their soft spots are--where they hurt. When we use terms like "pushing another person's button" we're really describing their soft spot. It's their place of emotional pain. You push someone else's button, and what happens? They get angry.
They get angry because, first, you hurt them where they're already hurting. But also they are angry because you took advantage of their vulnerability. Which means we are feeling devalued. We assume that you don't push on someone else's vulnerable spots whom you value. If you get your button pushed you feel that you have no value in the pushers life. So when we get angry, we're trying to protect ourselves, and our soft spots. We use anger to regulate our vulnerability with another person.
But what we are tempted to do with our anger is retaliate by devaluing the person who devalued us. They pushed our button. Out of our anger, we push buttons back. That leads to a hurtful spiral that destroys relationship.
I think that's part of what's behind Jesus' statement about anger. If anger is about devaluing people, or used as a weapon hurt people where they are already vulnerable, and then to launch back and devalue an aggressor, then both lose, because the relationship suffers. What Jesus was about was strengthening relationship bonds, especially amongst "brothers and sisters"--fellow disciples.
If this is true, that leads us to the second commandment of handling our anger: When angry, think or do something that will make you feel more valuable, i.e., worthy of appreciation.
If you're playing the angry punching bag game, there are two ways to win. Keep punching until the other gives up; but then has anyone really won? Or put your hands to your side, and stop your defensiveness.
That's the stark teaching of Jesus about if someone slaps you on the one cheek, offer the other as well. By offering your other cheek to be slapped, you are actually challenging the aggressor to NOT slap you. By putting your hands to your sides, you are challenging them to be compassionate and end the fight. It isn't a sign of being a wimp in a fight. It's a sign of strength, challenging the other to put down their gloves of anger as well, and end the sparring in a non-angry way.
What makes a person feel more valuable than reestablishing relationship through compassion rather than anger? Do you feel more valuable because you have brow beat a person into submission? Or do you feel more valuable as a human being (and a disciple) because you saved a relationship in a non-angry way?
The third commandment of anger management is: Don't trust your judgment when angry. Anger magnifies and amplifies only the negative aspects of an issue, distorting realistic appraisal.
One of the main reasons you can’t trust your judgment when angry is because of what’s happening in your body. When you get angry your nervous system is activated and heightened. Your heart rate elevates. Your blood pressure elevates. Your eyes dilate. Your digestion halts, as more stomach acid is pumped into your digestive system to digest any food that may be there more quickly for energy use. Pain messages to the brain are blocked. A hormone, epinephrine, is secreted into your brain giving you a false feeling of invinceability. And your throat is stimulated for shouting or roaring.
All of this interferes with your brain’s ability to effectively process information. The reason your body is doing all this activation of bodily functions is because anger is a reaction to a threat. You have evaluated another person as an enemy, your brain perceives that, and automatically kicks all those bodily functions into high gear, getting you ready to do battle. Your body is getting ready, but in order to do that, your cognitive, thinking functions are decreasing. So your real enemy, when you get angry, is within, not without.
What do you find you are saying, after the angry, combative juices stop flowing? You find yourself saying, “I’m sorry. I just WASN’T THINKING.” And you know what? You’d be right. Because your body isn’t allowing you to think when angry.
Jesus doesn’t allow us to have enemies. If you are angry, and if you are constantly angry, then you are treating too many people as the enemy. We aren’t allowed that, as Christians. We are to find another way.
The fourth commandment of anger management is: Try to see the complexity of the issue. Anger requires narrow and rigid focus that ignores or oversimplifies context.
When we get angry we, because of our anger, only see things in black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. Most of the time, issues are more complex than that. As I just mentioned, our thinking brains get minimized when we’re angry, so we can’t process the grey areas of a situation. Only when we calm down, and minimize the bodily functions that are going on, can our brains return to the more complex reasoning that we need to really see and deal with our anger producing situations.
Another part of understanding the complexity of the issues involved means understanding the circumstances of anger. There are three parts to this.
First, there is the trigger event. Something happens that sets you off. Let’s use the example of being cut off by another driver while driving. One little girl asked her father, when they were driving around, “Daddy, why do the jerks and idiots only come out while you’re driving?” The problem here is that people mistakenly think the trigger event is the cause of their anger.
The second part, is your own individual character. This has to do with your own personality, as well as your pre-anger state. As far as your own personality, maybe you are a highly competitive person and you see driving as a competition with others on the road. Or maybe you’re a narcissist, and the guy who cut you off doesn’t realize who you are, and affronted your superiority. Or maybe you have a low-frustration tolerance and it’s not just driving--everything pushes your button. Those are all personality traits that feed anger, totally apart from the trigger event.
And thirdly, and most importantly, our anger arises from our appraisal of the situation. How we appraise or evaluate a situation will determine our level of anger. What do I think it means that I was cut off in traffic? We get angry simply because we personally evaluate the situation as blameworthy, unjustified, punishable, etc. What happens if we stop and appraise the situation differently? Our appraisal may not be accurate. Are we willing to accept that, and thus, derail all our anatomic anger responses?
The fifth commandment goes along with this one: Know that your temporary state of anger has prepared you to fight when you really need to learn more, solve a problem, or, if it involves a loved one, be more compassionate.
The sixth commandment is: Strive to understand other people's perspectives. When angry you assume the worst or outright demonize the object of your anger.
Because our anger makes the other person out to be the enemy, a further step can be taken in which we equate that person with the devil. They are evil incarnate. They are inhuman. They don’t deserve to be treated humanely. Again, we aren’t allowed by Jesus to have enemies. And we certainly are not allowed to play God and decide, in our anger, who deserves to be demonized.
The seventh commandment is: Don't justify your anger. Instead, consider whether it will help you act in your long-term best interest.
This is a process that happens after you have already been angry and words and maybe other household items have been let fly. You’ve cooled down. You understand, alarmingly, that you’ve been an idiot. Now what do you do? Do you try and justify your actions? Do you rationalize in order to save face? Or do you, because it would serve the long term interest of the relationship you just harmed, to confess and ask forgiveness?
Commandment number eight is: Know your physical and mental resources. Anger is more likely to occur when tired, hungry, sick, confused, anxious, preoccupied, distracted, or overwhelmed.
This goes along with the fourth commandment, where I was talking about knowing your own individual characteristics. Part of that is assessing your pre-anger state. Were you tired? Do you get angry most often when you are tired? Are you really anxious about something else, and anger is simply being used as a way to discharge your heightened anxiety. For example, if you were just driving back from the doctor’s office and they found an ominous “shadow” on your MRI, your anxiety is bound to be elevated. Self protection ramps up, and you are more likely to get angry as a way to deal with it. Or, in your pre-anger state, were you already angry about something else? One anger just fed into another.
The ninth commandment says: Focus on improving and repairing rather than blaming. It's hard to stay angry without blaming and it's harder to blame when focused on repairing and improving.
Anger and blame are the peddlers of the tandem bike of a bad situation. We’re not wrong, bad, selfish, inconsiderate! It’s that so-and-so. That so-and-so may be your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your co-worker, your client. Fearlessly ask yourself, “OK; what was my part in this escalating bad situation?” And deal with it, as a responsible, Christian human being. At some point, in the midst of anger you have to decide between two choices: Do I want to be right? Or, do I want to keep the relationship with this other person?
And the tenth and final commandment is: When angry, remember your deepest values. Anger is about devaluing others, which is probably inconsistent with your deepest values.
I think this is the most important, and the one that gets at the heart of Jesus’ words about anger clearest. That which will protect you against anger the best is remembering your core values as a Christian. To get angry to the point of demeaning and devaluing another human being; to get angry to the point of treating another person as an enemy--even and especially those we love; to get angry to the point of making another person out to be the devil, and judging as if you are God, is all against the basic, core values of who you profess to be as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
If you are an angry person, if you get angry often and ferociously, then you better ask yourself a really tough question: Have I really turned my life over to Christ or not? Have I fully and faithfully made Christ’s core values my own? Constant and demeaning anger points to a negative answer to those questions.
That’s why anger is such a deadly sin. This kind of anger goes so against the core values of who we are as Christians, it kills faith. It kills life in the church. It kills our relationship with God, won for us at such a high price through Jesus Christ.
That's why anger is a deadly sin.
Monday, February 20, 2012
X Marks the Spot
"X Marks the Spot"
Matthew 17:1-9
I remember one time as a boy, when my father and I were driving into Seattle on the new floating bridge across Lake Washington. He took an uncharacteristic diversion. My father was a point A to point B kind of driver. The exit he took wasn’t anywhere near where point B was, so I was a bit confused. He asked me if I wanted to see the house where he lived as a boy, near the University of Washington. I said, “Sure,” even though the decision had already been made.
I just remember that for some reason it was important for my father to show me this particular place out of his past. What the reason was for this little side trip, I don’t know. I was probably 11 or 12, and I was too caught up in my own kid thoughts to care. I wish I had been paying more attention, so I would remember not just that my father had taken an odd side trip, but why it was important to him. I never even thought to ask. Now, I’ll never know.
I didn’t realize how important places could be for us, and how we have this need to share those places with another we think might understand. Those places are all surrounded and infused with memories. When I was living out my younger life, I didn’t understand that memories were being made. Our memories become like an old parchment map upon which specific places are marked with an X where the treasure is buried.
One of the X’s the disciple Peter had on his treasure map of memories was this undistinguished mountain where he and two of his fellow disciples saw something extraordinary. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. We were driving down from Caesarea and Mt. Carmel, a place associated with Elijah the prophet. We were in a tour bus passing this oversized hill. Kind of a mini-mountain. It was pock marked with rocks, and a scruff of low bushes on its sides that looked like a large man’s face with a three week growth of beard. Our tour guide, Joseph, pointed it out as we were driving by, telling us over the loud speaker that it was the Mount of Transfiguration. We didn’t get to go up there; I can’t remember why.
I remember looking at it and thinking about the story. The first line of the story here in Matthew talks about how Jesus took three disciples, “...and led them up a very high mountain.” I’m here to tell you, it’s not very high. You read a line like that and you think the Rockies. Here’s a picture of it. It is a mountain, but not like we think of mountains. It wouldn’t just be a small hike to get to the top of it. No nice manicured trails with pleasant switchbacks. It wasn’t, as I looked at it from the tour bus window, a mountain you just meander up.
It wasn’t because of its height; it was it’s terrain. Rocky and scrub brush covered. There was no good way to get up it. It would have been a hard, tedious climb. I could imagine the disciples grousing and complaining, asking Jesus repeatedly if they were really going all the way to the top. Weren’t they far enough up for prayer time? Were they there yet? When Matthew tells us that Jesus led them up the mountain, it wasn’t a fun little hike.
They would have been pooped by the time they got to the top. It would have been a great view once atop the mountain, overlooking Meggido Valley. I’m sure the only view they were looking at was their tired feet and their aching bodies.
That’s one of the reasons I really like this odd story. The disciples hike with Jesus is what the Christian life is really like. It’s what life with Jesus really is. We turn our lives over to Christ and we think the toughness is going to drain out of life. Oh, we think to ourselves, there may be a hill to climb here and there, but the climb will be easy, and the terrain will be all good footing. And when we get there we’ll have this wonderful prayer time with Jesus.
Yet that’s not the way it turns out, does it? Life with Jesus doesn’t get easier. A lot of times it gets more difficult The harshness of life doesn’t go away or leave us alone. The rolling hills we expected turn out to be mountains. The way up is a hard climb with no clearly marked path to follow. Just Jesus. He’s the path. We end up following a man, not a path.
By the time we get to the top, we could care less about having prayer time, or some great spiritual experience. We’re tired and cranky and sore in body and spirit. Any expectations for a great spiritual life with Jesus went out the window half way up the mountain.
But then something happened that changed all their sense of drudgery, achiness and grumbling. Jesus changed. I’m not sure what time of day it was. But all of a sudden it was as bright as high noon. The light wasn’t coming from the sun, though. It was coming from Jesus. It was coming from his clothes, his face. Instead of complaining anymore, or thinking only about himself, Peter is gushing: “Master, this is a great moment! How good it is that we are here!”
Here. In this place. The significance wasn’t being lost on Peter, James and John. They wanted to build three memorial stones to mark the place. In 1992, driving by, I looked up at that mountain, thinking that some place up there, lost now to everyone else, an ordinary, rocky, scruffy place became holy and markedly unordinary. Up there, Jesus, Peter, James, and John had a mostly indescribable experience. Up there, somewhere amongst the stones and bushes, Peter was changed. A place of achiness and complaining became a place of light and a place where the voice of God was clearly heard; a place where Jesus was clearly seen for who He is. There, three unassuming, unexpectant, cranky disciples witnessed an unbelievable, unspeakable sight. That place became a “holy here.”
Places are important not only because of the memories of what happened at those places, but also because of the people who have shared those places with us. Places have historic significance where some events have happened that ended up creating an identity for us by God. Then God provided the continuity of that identity across our life spans. It has been at these particular places that important words have been spoken, tears have been shed, vows have been spoken and promises made, identity has been formed or honed, vocation has been defined, or a destiny has been brought into clearer vision.
One lady in a church I served came to me asking help for what she called her “sin of idolatry.” She had recently lost her husband to cancer after 40 years of marriage. She spent a couple of months of quiet and reflection with her sister in another state, letting the Lord take care of her grief. One Sunday, after she had returned home, she came into the sanctuary a little late for worship. She found a new young couple sitting in the place where she and her husband had sat for so many years.
She went on to explain to me, “For thirty-eight years I shared that pew with my husband. I know it’s idolatrous, pastor, but I feel God is closer to me there than any where else. There is nowhere else like that pew on earth.”
I would guess that maybe some of you have similar feelings associated with a place in the pew in this sanctuary. Many people find strength and serenity when they are seated in their place. It’s almost like God comes and sits down beside you when you have a place like that.
One of the reasons that is so, besides the place itself, is who we share the place with. A place is important because of the others who are there. Peter, James, and John got to be in on the amazing vision of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah together. Remember Peter said, “Master, this is a great moment! How good it is that WE are here!” Here is where WE have been touched. Here is where it is that WE, together, have a shared memory. That is such an important point for congregations to understand. Important places, and the experiences we have in them have a we-ness about them, where, together, as a community of believers, God makes Himself known.
In a book about ministry in smaller churches, Carl Dudley wrote, “Those congregations who care only for themselves are becoming smaller and smaller. Eventually their place will have no meaning because they haven’t shared it with anyone else.” One of the great ministries of any congregation is sharing and giving a place to those who have none. The way that happens best is by sharing the great stories of what has happened to you in that place with those who don’t know those stories. Indeed, faith may not be able to develop fully when the person has no place. When we help people find their places we may be helping them come into contact with holy experiences of their own.
The widow I just mentioned ended up doing a beautiful thing. The next Sunday she shared her spot in the pew with that young couple. She told them a part of the story of how she and her husband made that a holy place. She shared not only the pew, but part of her memories with the couple. The young couple “took up residence” with the woman in that pew and the three of them became very close friends. I like to think that some day, 40 years in the future, that young couple, then old, will do the same for some new young couple.
That’s why Peter looked back at this event on the bushy mountain top, where he witnessed the brilliance of Christ with his friends, and wrote in his second letter:
We weren’t, you know, just wishing upon a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ. We were there for the preview! We saw it with our own eyes: Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father as the voice of Majestic Glory spoke: “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight.” We were there on the holy mountain with him! We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears! We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard--God’s glory, God’s voice. The prophetic word was confirmed to us. You’ll do well to keep focusing on it. It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:16-20, EHP)
Here Peter recounts that memorable place and event for those who may not have known about it. He’s had a few years to think about what happened in that place, and everything it meant not just for him but for the whole church.
It was clearly a pivotal event for Peter in his own faith development. When Peter was writing this letter, the church was under fire. Christians were leaving the church, afraid of torturous persecution. It was an extremely hard time to be a Christian. So Peter shares this memory of an amazing day, on an ordinary mountain with a life changing Savior who would come again in that same blinding light, making everything right. Peter’s memorable experience helped Christians and the church hold on in desperate times.
Thanks be to God, who in everyday places, at ordinary times, when we least expect it, meets us, transforming those places, and us, with His brilliant presence.
Matthew 17:1-9
I remember one time as a boy, when my father and I were driving into Seattle on the new floating bridge across Lake Washington. He took an uncharacteristic diversion. My father was a point A to point B kind of driver. The exit he took wasn’t anywhere near where point B was, so I was a bit confused. He asked me if I wanted to see the house where he lived as a boy, near the University of Washington. I said, “Sure,” even though the decision had already been made.
I just remember that for some reason it was important for my father to show me this particular place out of his past. What the reason was for this little side trip, I don’t know. I was probably 11 or 12, and I was too caught up in my own kid thoughts to care. I wish I had been paying more attention, so I would remember not just that my father had taken an odd side trip, but why it was important to him. I never even thought to ask. Now, I’ll never know.
I didn’t realize how important places could be for us, and how we have this need to share those places with another we think might understand. Those places are all surrounded and infused with memories. When I was living out my younger life, I didn’t understand that memories were being made. Our memories become like an old parchment map upon which specific places are marked with an X where the treasure is buried.
One of the X’s the disciple Peter had on his treasure map of memories was this undistinguished mountain where he and two of his fellow disciples saw something extraordinary. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. We were driving down from Caesarea and Mt. Carmel, a place associated with Elijah the prophet. We were in a tour bus passing this oversized hill. Kind of a mini-mountain. It was pock marked with rocks, and a scruff of low bushes on its sides that looked like a large man’s face with a three week growth of beard. Our tour guide, Joseph, pointed it out as we were driving by, telling us over the loud speaker that it was the Mount of Transfiguration. We didn’t get to go up there; I can’t remember why.
I remember looking at it and thinking about the story. The first line of the story here in Matthew talks about how Jesus took three disciples, “...and led them up a very high mountain.” I’m here to tell you, it’s not very high. You read a line like that and you think the Rockies. Here’s a picture of it. It is a mountain, but not like we think of mountains. It wouldn’t just be a small hike to get to the top of it. No nice manicured trails with pleasant switchbacks. It wasn’t, as I looked at it from the tour bus window, a mountain you just meander up.
It wasn’t because of its height; it was it’s terrain. Rocky and scrub brush covered. There was no good way to get up it. It would have been a hard, tedious climb. I could imagine the disciples grousing and complaining, asking Jesus repeatedly if they were really going all the way to the top. Weren’t they far enough up for prayer time? Were they there yet? When Matthew tells us that Jesus led them up the mountain, it wasn’t a fun little hike.
They would have been pooped by the time they got to the top. It would have been a great view once atop the mountain, overlooking Meggido Valley. I’m sure the only view they were looking at was their tired feet and their aching bodies.
That’s one of the reasons I really like this odd story. The disciples hike with Jesus is what the Christian life is really like. It’s what life with Jesus really is. We turn our lives over to Christ and we think the toughness is going to drain out of life. Oh, we think to ourselves, there may be a hill to climb here and there, but the climb will be easy, and the terrain will be all good footing. And when we get there we’ll have this wonderful prayer time with Jesus.
Yet that’s not the way it turns out, does it? Life with Jesus doesn’t get easier. A lot of times it gets more difficult The harshness of life doesn’t go away or leave us alone. The rolling hills we expected turn out to be mountains. The way up is a hard climb with no clearly marked path to follow. Just Jesus. He’s the path. We end up following a man, not a path.
By the time we get to the top, we could care less about having prayer time, or some great spiritual experience. We’re tired and cranky and sore in body and spirit. Any expectations for a great spiritual life with Jesus went out the window half way up the mountain.
But then something happened that changed all their sense of drudgery, achiness and grumbling. Jesus changed. I’m not sure what time of day it was. But all of a sudden it was as bright as high noon. The light wasn’t coming from the sun, though. It was coming from Jesus. It was coming from his clothes, his face. Instead of complaining anymore, or thinking only about himself, Peter is gushing: “Master, this is a great moment! How good it is that we are here!”
Here. In this place. The significance wasn’t being lost on Peter, James and John. They wanted to build three memorial stones to mark the place. In 1992, driving by, I looked up at that mountain, thinking that some place up there, lost now to everyone else, an ordinary, rocky, scruffy place became holy and markedly unordinary. Up there, Jesus, Peter, James, and John had a mostly indescribable experience. Up there, somewhere amongst the stones and bushes, Peter was changed. A place of achiness and complaining became a place of light and a place where the voice of God was clearly heard; a place where Jesus was clearly seen for who He is. There, three unassuming, unexpectant, cranky disciples witnessed an unbelievable, unspeakable sight. That place became a “holy here.”
Places are important not only because of the memories of what happened at those places, but also because of the people who have shared those places with us. Places have historic significance where some events have happened that ended up creating an identity for us by God. Then God provided the continuity of that identity across our life spans. It has been at these particular places that important words have been spoken, tears have been shed, vows have been spoken and promises made, identity has been formed or honed, vocation has been defined, or a destiny has been brought into clearer vision.
One lady in a church I served came to me asking help for what she called her “sin of idolatry.” She had recently lost her husband to cancer after 40 years of marriage. She spent a couple of months of quiet and reflection with her sister in another state, letting the Lord take care of her grief. One Sunday, after she had returned home, she came into the sanctuary a little late for worship. She found a new young couple sitting in the place where she and her husband had sat for so many years.
She went on to explain to me, “For thirty-eight years I shared that pew with my husband. I know it’s idolatrous, pastor, but I feel God is closer to me there than any where else. There is nowhere else like that pew on earth.”
I would guess that maybe some of you have similar feelings associated with a place in the pew in this sanctuary. Many people find strength and serenity when they are seated in their place. It’s almost like God comes and sits down beside you when you have a place like that.
One of the reasons that is so, besides the place itself, is who we share the place with. A place is important because of the others who are there. Peter, James, and John got to be in on the amazing vision of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah together. Remember Peter said, “Master, this is a great moment! How good it is that WE are here!” Here is where WE have been touched. Here is where it is that WE, together, have a shared memory. That is such an important point for congregations to understand. Important places, and the experiences we have in them have a we-ness about them, where, together, as a community of believers, God makes Himself known.
In a book about ministry in smaller churches, Carl Dudley wrote, “Those congregations who care only for themselves are becoming smaller and smaller. Eventually their place will have no meaning because they haven’t shared it with anyone else.” One of the great ministries of any congregation is sharing and giving a place to those who have none. The way that happens best is by sharing the great stories of what has happened to you in that place with those who don’t know those stories. Indeed, faith may not be able to develop fully when the person has no place. When we help people find their places we may be helping them come into contact with holy experiences of their own.
The widow I just mentioned ended up doing a beautiful thing. The next Sunday she shared her spot in the pew with that young couple. She told them a part of the story of how she and her husband made that a holy place. She shared not only the pew, but part of her memories with the couple. The young couple “took up residence” with the woman in that pew and the three of them became very close friends. I like to think that some day, 40 years in the future, that young couple, then old, will do the same for some new young couple.
That’s why Peter looked back at this event on the bushy mountain top, where he witnessed the brilliance of Christ with his friends, and wrote in his second letter:
We weren’t, you know, just wishing upon a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ. We were there for the preview! We saw it with our own eyes: Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father as the voice of Majestic Glory spoke: “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight.” We were there on the holy mountain with him! We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears! We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard--God’s glory, God’s voice. The prophetic word was confirmed to us. You’ll do well to keep focusing on it. It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:16-20, EHP)
Here Peter recounts that memorable place and event for those who may not have known about it. He’s had a few years to think about what happened in that place, and everything it meant not just for him but for the whole church.
It was clearly a pivotal event for Peter in his own faith development. When Peter was writing this letter, the church was under fire. Christians were leaving the church, afraid of torturous persecution. It was an extremely hard time to be a Christian. So Peter shares this memory of an amazing day, on an ordinary mountain with a life changing Savior who would come again in that same blinding light, making everything right. Peter’s memorable experience helped Christians and the church hold on in desperate times.
Thanks be to God, who in everyday places, at ordinary times, when we least expect it, meets us, transforming those places, and us, with His brilliant presence.
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