Monday, February 28, 2011

"Live, NOW!"

"Live, NOW"
Matthew 6:34


Do you remember the movie, “Dead Poet’s Society”?  It came out back in 1989.  Maybe it wasn’t your kind of movie.  It starred Robin Williams--one of his first serious roles.  He played Mr. Keating, who was a new teacher at an East Coast prep school for boys.  He had been a student at the same school when he was a boy.  He came back to the school as the English Literature teacher.

Soon after he arrives at the school, he takes his class to the school’s Honor’s Room.  Trophies filled the cases won by past classmates in exceptional times.  Pictures of teams and individual students from the school’s past were also in the display cases.  Some were 75 years old, dating back to the school’s beginning.

As the students were looking at all the pictures and awards, Mr. Keating reads them a poem by Robert Herrick.  The poem is titled, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.”

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
(Robert Herrick)
 
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he 's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he 's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

The people in the pictures that Mr. Keating’s class were looking at are all dead.  Mr. Keating uses the poem he just recited and asks questions of his students about the people in those pictures:
Did they realize their dreams?
Did they squander their opportunities?

Then Mr. Keating gathers all his students in a huddle and tells them, “Carpe Diem.”  He tells them it’s a Latin term that means, “Seize the day,” or, “Seize the moment.”  Which is what the poem is all about.

It is what Jesus’s statement is all about.  This is how the Message Bible has it:
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up, when the time comes.

To seize the day, to live in the moment, to concentrate on the here and now, is not a new thought.  We hear words like Jesus’ and we say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”  We acknowledge the wisdom behind Carpe Diem, but we still live lives filled with anxiety and fear, either focused on the past or the future, missing what’s right in front of our noses.

We hear the three words, Seize the Day, but what we really hear in our anxious minds is, Seize the future.  Even if that future is only the next day.  Talk to people who have faced cancer.  Talk to people who have had a sudden and frightening brush with near death.  A car accident or whatever.  Living with those kinds of experiences, those people will tell you, makes each day precious.  But why do we have to face cancer, or almost die in an accident to wake us up to that truth?

Our anxious minds create so many fears about the future.  We are afraid the future will be just a repeat of the past.  That’s the conclusion the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes came to:  There’s noting new under the sun.  Everything that happened before, will happen all over again.  It’s all one big circle of experience, over and over again.  Blah, blah, blah.

OR we’re afraid that the future won’t happen like we hope it will.  We get this mental picture, or a detailed road map of what we want our future to be.  We get all anxious that it might just not turn out like we expect.  We might lose our job.  The stock market may go in the sewer and your retirement is gone.  You might get some form of dementia and you won’t remember anything and get to enjoy the future you planned.

OR we may be afraid that the future is going to unfold without us.  That was one of my father’s fears.  That he would die before he got to enjoy what he had ahead of him.  And then, in a weird tragic way, his fear came true.  At 67, soon after he retired, he dropped dead of a heart attack while playing golf.  Time, and the future he thought he’d get to have, rolled on without him.

OR, one of the more prevalent fears of the future is the misguided notion that your real life is somewhere out there in the future.  Author, Stephen Leacock, once wrote:
The child says, “When I’m bigger...”   But what is that?  The big child says, “When I grow up...,” and then, grown up, says, “When I get married...”  The thought changes to, “When I get a job...” then, “When I retire...”  And when retirement comes, there is the looking back over the landscape of time.  Somehow he missed it all, and it is gone.”

That’s our anxiety about the future.  The opposite is also just as true.  Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “So do not be anxious about yesterday,” either.  If Jesus would have said that, I, for one, would have understood that.  That’s the direction my anxiety usually takes.

Here’s what looking back, all the time, did to me.  It resurfaced my guilt and anger.  But what does guilt and anger do for us?  You remember the story of Lot’s wife.  The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are being destroyed by God.  God, before the destruction takes place, tells Lot to take his family and get out of there.  DON’T LOOK BACK, God tells Lot.

What does Lot’s wife do?  She looks back.  And at that moment of looking back, and ruminating over what lay behind her, instead of being conscious that at that moment she’s alive--instead, she looks back and get’s paralyzed.  She turns into a pillar of salt.  She is forever frozen in that backward gaze.  I did that, and then I’d get mad at myself for looking back and allowing myself to get bogged down with things of the past.

Do you remember the story, “A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens?  It’s been made into many movies, my favorite was done by the Muppets.  If you haven’t seen “A Muppet Christmas Carol,” rent it.  It’s hilarious.

Anyway, remember Scrooge is visited by three different ghosts on Christmas Eve.  One is the ghost of Christmas past.  Do you remember what that ghost looked like?  It was covered with chains.  The chains represented all the bad choices that were forged in his past, that now he felt he couldn’t escape.  Isn’t that a great picture of what happens when we won’t let go of the past--the past wraps us up in these chain-created-memories that drag us down, and make us live much smaller lives.

Here’s the thing.  A side truth to what Jesus is telling us is that we can’t control time.  We do not have influence on time, whatsoever.  Only God can control time.  For us, time just is.  That’s it.  We can’t make time go away.  We can’t make it go backwards.  We can’t make it speed up.  And contrary to popular belief, we can’t even waste time.

What we waste is not time, but ourselves.  We waste ourselves in the time we have.  The tragedy doesn’t have to do with time at all.  The tragedy has more to do with wasting what we could do, right now, but do not; what we could become, right now, but do not.

We waste ourselves in time by thinking our real life is in the future and never living in the now.  We waste ourselves in time by thinking we will never be free of the chains of the past, and rob ourselves of living today.

In the book of Exodus, the pivotal story of salvation is the Hebrew people escaping slavery from Egypt.  Moses and Aaron get the people, in a mass Exodus, out of Egypt.  They head out into the unknown, towards the land God promised they would have for their very own.

But once out in the Sinai peninsula, while they’re wandering around, they run out of food.  They get anxious.  They start grumbling to Moses, asking him why he brought them out in the desert to die.  Why weren’t they back in Egypt?  At least as slaves, they got fed.

So God hears their grumbling and rains down the manna from heaven.  It’s a flakey bread like substance, that they pick up each day so they won’t starve.  That’s their instruction:  to pick up only what they need for that day, and trust God to give them more on the next day, when they need it.  But some don’t listen.  Their anxiety and lack of trust causes them to hoard a couple of extra baskets of the stuff.  Only to wake up the next day and discover what they hoarded has rotten and putrid.

In the article, “The Sacrament of Time,” using the experience of the manna as a symbol, author Kristen Ingram wrote, “Time is like manna, and must be plucked up every day or it rots.”  But you can only pick up enough time for today; you don’t get to pick up any time for tomorrow.

In “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” the room-sized shaggy muppet who is the ghost of Christmas present, tells Scrooge, “Have you ever noticed how everything seems wonderful right now?”  But that presumes that you have a consciousness of the present moment, and noticing what’s going on that moment is what makes it holy.  What makes all of living holy.

Nothing else exists except for what is right now.  That is what makes right now holy.  The past is gone.  The future hasn’t even happened yet.  Acting coach and movie star, Lee Strasberg tells actors he’s dealing with:
Go from moment to moment; each and every second is precious on the screen and on the stage.  Don’t waste a single moment by thinking about what will happen in the next scene.

Strasberg is only echoing Jesus’ words.  A misguided life is one that gets bogged down in yesterday’s, “If only...”  Or, shoulda, coulda, woulda’s.  A misguided life gets too enchanted by the “what if...” of the future.

Carpe Deum!  Seize the day!  Live NOW!  Fill yourselves with the here and now.  Because our God is a God of this present, wondrous moment.  This is where God is--in the right now.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Perfectly Imperfect

Perfectly Imperfect
Matthew 5:48


I used to be arrogant, but now I’m perfect.

Or maybe I should say, I used to try to be perfect, but now I’m arrogant.  I’m just kidding, of course.  I’ve never had an elevated sense of myself.  Just the opposite.  But I was somewhat of a perfectionist about myself.  It took me a long time to realize I was never going to make it.  I was never going to be perfect.  That I was fundamentally flawed.  Every thing I did was flawed.

Why was that so hard to accept for so long?  Why did I beat myself up because I could never quite grasp that for which I was reaching:  some self-created sense of perfection.  Why did it take so long to become comfortable with myself for what I was:  a human being who was OK, and lovable, even if I wasn’t a 10.  Why was nothing I ever did quite good enough, in my own eyes?  How come I could allow others to be imperfect?  I could even help people celebrate their humanness, their imperfection.  But I couldn’t do that for myself.

I confess, Jesus didn’t help me with my problem.  On one hand, it seems to me, that Jesus was compassionate toward people’s shortcomings and imperfections.  There were some gross misbehaviors--some glaring imperfections--that he was very lenient with.  He was forgiving and caring.

So why, on the other hand, did Jesus make this statement:  “You must be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect”?  Didn’t Jesus realize the frustration that statement was going to cause?  That people like me would come along and try to fulfill that impossible quest?  Didn’t Jesus realize that perfectionism becomes a passion--a driving force that feeds on itself?  That trying to be perfect slowly but surely consumes a person, not to mention make life miserable for everyone around them?

My turning away from perfectionism and perfectionistic attitudes came about from two Christian sources:  Alcoholics Anonymous, in dealing with being a child of an alcoholic; and, the writings of the so-called ancient desert Fathers.  The Desert Fathers were the monks who went out into the desert by themselves to live and pray and encounter God, outside the boundaries of civilization.

The Desert Fathers were trying to guard themselves against what they called “the three passions.”  At first I thought they must have been talking about sex, since all of the Desert Fathers were celibate.  But I was wrong.  The three passions they sought to bring under control were perfectionism, judgementalism, and despair.

If the Desert Fathers, these spiritual giants, these disciplined men of the faith, were trying to keep themselves from perfectionism, then what was I doing trying to be so perfect?  And what did they do with Jesus’ statement?  You’d think the opposite would be true.  You’d think they were trying to fulfill Jesus’ words, not work against them.

They realized, though, that perfectionism is a passion.  It is a negative energy that destroys life, rather than make life fulfilling.  Take, for example, a guy who was the son of one of the members of the church in Colby where I served for 11 years.  This guy was moving up his professional ladder to a vice-president position.  He was poised as next in line to be CEO.  He displayed energy and drive.  He was showcased as a role model to new employees.  Everyone was enamored by his focus on perfect performance.

Yet, no one really felt close to that guy.  No one in the company and no one at home.  His wife and two children certainly didn’t.  On those weekends when he was not on the road or at the office, he brought work home.  He demanded that he be allowed to use his family’s time so he could perfect his reports and memos.  After all, he reasoned perfectly to himself, he was doing all this for his family.  The bitter irony was that trying harder and harder for perfection and recognition alienated the people he hoped would love him.

Here’s another example.  Lucy, in the “Peanuts” comic strip, sort of comes to that realization.  In the first frame, Lucy is leaning on Schroeder's piano and she says, "I have examined my life and found it to be without flaw."  In the second frame, she turns to Schroeder, still intent on his piano playing, and tells him, "Therefore, I'm going to hold a ceremony and present myself with a medal..."  Continuing in the third frame she says, "I will then give a very moving acceptance speech...after that I'll greet myself in the receiving line..."  Then finally in the last frame she states, "When you're perfect, you have to do everything yourself."

"When you're perfect, you have to do everything yourself."  Isn’t that the truth?!  It’s the truth because perfectionists, like Lucy, come up with their own definitions of what perfect is.  Once you make up your own definitions, you try to achieve them.  But it just doesn’t work.

The harder truth to face is that there is nothing perfect.  Everything is flawed and affected by disintegration.  Because everything and everyone is controlled by its environment, nothing can stand perfectly alone to remain perfect.  It is affected and influenced by the interaction with others, who are just as flawed.  That interaction always elicits a flawed response--according to your definition of perfection.

For example, when my kids were much younger, I would ask them to take turns with the dishes.  Because I always washed dishes by hand (because that’s the perfect way) they would either wash or dry.  Part of my strategy was to also have some one-on-one time with them while we did the dishes together.

I remember one time the dishes were stacking up, and Ryan hadn’t shown up to help dry.  I said, “Ryan, come help dry and put the dishes away, please.”  His response was, “Just a second.”  Well, after about 10,000 seconds had passed, the dishes were still sitting in the drainer.

Sometimes I’d have to yell at him to get in the kitchen, NOW!  My perfectionistic idea was that when a father asks a son to do something, his son should drop everything he’s doing and immediately comply with his father’s wishes.  The “perfect” reply is not, “Just a second,” but, “I’m on my way.”

But I had to come to learn that Ryan worked on a different idea of what it means to perfectly put the dishes away.  Ryan eventually got the job done.  And well.  The dishes got dried, and they got put away.  But when he was ready to do the job.  So I had to evaluate, what’s most important here?  That the dishes got put away according to my idea of how it should be done, or his?  The dishes were put away.  Isn’t that all that’s important?

The point is, perfectionists ideas of what is perfect are usually their own, and not shared by too many other people.  What is perfect to one person is merely what they are most comfortable with.  Perfect is something defined by our own outlook.  It is determined by our own habits and notions that have come to us according to our upbringing.  Most, if not all notions of perfection are not, by any means, universally agreed upon.

The Christian Desert Fathers saw a destructive tornado forming around the attitude of perfectionism.  If you tie your self-esteem to your perfectionistic attitudes, then you’ll only allow yourself to feel good about yourself when you have done something perfectly.  But how often does that happen?  The only way you can feel better about yourself is to achieve even more perfectly.

But because nothing is perfect, frustration and worse is the result.  Perfectionists become self-punishers.  They will never win.  Ed Vargo, a major league baseball umpire once said of his job, “We’re supposed to be perfect our first day on the job, and then show constant improvement.”  It’s a terrible rat race for a non-existent prize.

Those who struggle with being a perfectionist also know about another “p” word:  procrastination.  Perfectionists can be passionate procrastinators.  They are so afraid of making a mistake, or not doing something perfectly.  So things keep getting put off.  If you know a prolific procrastinator, you might be actually dealing with a perfectionist.

Perfectionists hide behind all sorts of false excuses when they are really just afraid.  When perfectionism leads to procrastination, procrastination leads to paralysis.  Instead of just putting things off, there is the fear of being imperfect.  So nothing gets done.  All the gears get jammed and locked in place.  The only task that the perfectionist can pretend to perform perfectly is the one that he or she leaves entirely undone.

There is no prize, but there is a sane alternative.  It has been taught me by friends and parishioners who have battled alcoholism through AA, and from a lot of reading about adult children of alcoholics.  One thing they talk about is the relief of being average.  There is a certain relief to allowing yourself to grasp the gift of averageness.  If you stopped and thought about it, average is what you are and what you do most of the time.  Half the time you do better, and half you may do worse.  It’s a more realistic outlook.

The choice is to aim for progress rather than perfection.  Reality dictates that we are always on the way, never at the same place.  That’s one of the great truths we will see as we read Pilgrim’s Progress together during Lent.  The only thing that matters, really, is the direction we are moving.  Life is not one big command performance at which you have to nail it, as if that’s the only chance you’re going to get.  I felt bad for Christina Aguilera at the singing of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago.  That’s got to be everyone’s biggest fear, who gets to sing that song in front of so many people.  But she will get another chance.  She got back up in front of a world stage at the Grammy awards last Monday and nailed her song.  You get up, you keep going.

Life is more like a continuing series of experiments.  Some of them will fail.  Some of them will succeed.  It’s more important to take time to concentrate on the progress you’ve made.  Celebrate the progress you make today, rather than worry about the ways you think you’ve been imperfect.  How much more sane is the outlook of making progress instead of trying to become perfect?

So where does all this put us with Jesus’ statement?  I think what I’m talking about, in terms of progress, is closer to Jesus’ meaning.  A lot of the translations use the word perfect.  But the Greek word Jesus spoke has more the meaning of being complete or completed.  It means seeing something through all the way to the end in an undivided way.  When Jesus was dying on the cross, one of his last statements was, “It is finished.”  The word “finished,” in Greek is the same word used here for “perfect.”  What Jesus was saying on the cross was, “It is completed.  I have seen this through all the way to the end.  I haven’t wavered one way or the other, but saw it straight through to the end.”

That’s why I like The Message translation in this verse from Matthew:
“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up.  You’re kingdom subjects.  Now live like it.  Live out your God-created identity...”

To be “perfect,” then is to live a life that fulfills, that completes, and brings to completion the best you, as God intends.  It means being on a journey throughout life that seeks to make undivided progress all the way to the end where you can say, also, “It is finished.”  It is complete.  I have seen my life through to the end, as God wanted me to.

We will stumble along the way.  But even our stumbling can be with a forward momentum.  When we get up, we are still heading in the right direction.  Still making progress.  Still undivided in our resolve to make progress in our faith in God, in our love for God, and in our love for each other.

Monday, February 14, 2011

"Changing The Color Tags"

"Changing the Color Tags"
Matthew 5:21-24


If I asked for a show of hands in response to the question, “How many of you have murdered someone?” I don’t think I’d see any hands.  Maybe some of you have fought in a time of war and have had the unpleasant duty of killing others who were the enemy.  Thank you, for allowing yourself to be put in that position, to protect us, and our freedoms.  But what I am talking about here is more the idea of premeditated murder.  I doubt if anyone here has been involved in that kind of crime.

When Jesus quoted from the 10 Commandments, “Do not murder,” we can all self-assuredly, and with some amount of self-satisfaction, profess to have upheld that one.  It doesn’t say we haven’t thought about it, possibly, from time-to-time.  We run across people who are criminally hurtful and physically abusive.  We can imagine a better world without them in it.

The pastor I worked with, when I was in San Jose, CA, was once asked, in a Sunday School class about marriage, if divorce had ever crossed his mind.  He quickly replied, “Never.”  But then he added, “Murder, yes, divorce, no.”

His response reminded me of the story about the high school student who asked his father to help him write a term paper on the theme of how wars get started.  “Well, now,” his father began, “let’s suppose we got into a quarrel with Canada.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the boy’s mother interrupted.  “Why should we quarrel with Canada?”
“That’s besides the point,” her husband said.  “I was merely using an example...”
“Well if you had an ounce of brains you wouldn’t think up such stupid examples,” interrupted the mother.
“Who do yo think you’re talking to?” shouted the father.  “I wanted to teach my son...”
“YOUR son!?” the mother screamed.  “I suppose I had nothing to do with his being here.  You just found him someplace...”
“Mom; Dad; please,” the boy pleadingly interrupted.  “Forget it.  I just figured out for myself how wars get started.”

What the boy found out was that there are often deep feelings and hurtful words exchanged between people way before the taking of a life happens.  We may not have ever let those feelings have their way and end up murdering someone.  So, according to the letter of the law, we have never murdered.  Very few people carry out that violent act.  Yet, can we not identify with the feelings that lead up to such an act?

Our sense of God’s will and our individual morality keeps us from taking another person’s life.  But we still give vent to our angry feelings in other ways that are just on this side of God’s will and personal morality.

For example, we call people names.  When our anger begins to boil, in order to not let it get away from us, we vent a little steam by calling the object of our wrath some derogatory name.  We walk away feeling a little better, proud of the fact that we didn’t become physically violent.  Instead we indulged in a little “harmless” character assassination.

We may not call people names to their faces.  It’s usually behind their back, or in a group where we know we will be reinforced, and therefore “justified” in our feelings of disgruntlement.

There was a man who was invited to speak at a women’s organization.  Afterwards, the women asked him if he would stand in a reception line following his speech.  All the ladies coming through the line were very complimentary of his speech.

Pretty soon, a little boy came through the line and was standing in front of the speaker.  He looked straight at the man and said, “Your speech stunk!”  There were other ladies coming through the line so the man just ignored the boy.  But a little while later the boy came through the line a second time.  Again, he stood directly in front of the man and said, “We heard all your jokes before--and they weren’t funny.”

Well, that bothered the man a bit, but there were still people in line, so he continued shaking hands and greeting the ladies.  Then the boy got in line for a third time.  He got up to the speaker, and this time said, “You’ll never be invited back here again!”  At that point the man really didn’t know what to do.  He figured the boy was too little to hit, and he was too embarrassed to let the ladies see a grown man cry, so he shrugged it off, and continued greeting the ladies.

Wouldn’t you know it, a little while later he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the bratty kid was in line for a fourth time.  At this point the mother must have finally noticed him too, because she came running over to the speaker.  She grabbed the boy, just as he was getting ready to say something else.  Not knowing what the boy had been saying, the mother said, “This is my son, Lenny.  Please don’t pay any attention to him.  He’s at that age where he simply repeats everything he hears.”

For some reason, we get a lot more satisfaction out of behind-the-back character assassination, especially in a group atmosphere.  Maybe we feel less guilty, or more justified if there are others who share our feelings.

I’ve talked to youth groups a lot about this kind of talk.  I’ve asked them what names they use to vent their anger.  I’ve accumulated quite a list over the years.  Some were old standards, passed down from generation to generation.  Others were quite inventive.  Most of those I couldn’t find in a dictionary.  I didn’t think I wanted to find them anyway.

They were a bit more graphic than the terms that Jesus used as examples of the name-calling and character assassination of his day.  “Fool,” or “worthless,” are fairly tame compared to some of the names I have used in my more angry times.

Jesus was talking about the moral fool.  Someone who constantly cared nothing for God and God’s ways.  Someone who appeared to have no sense of right and wrong.  And part of what Jesus is saying here is that even though it may be clear to everyone that such-and-such is a so-and-so, we are not allowed the freedom to mouth off about it.  That kind of judgement is left to God, who is the only one who sees the big picture.

Often we don’t know the whole story.  Our judgements are made on such little knowledge of the person and their situation.  Such judgements, and name calling are usually made out of anger.  We haven’t the right to condemn a person as God-less, or a “lost soul” in any way.  There is only One who is able to make that evaluation.  And it ain’t us.

The other name that Jesus uses as an example of name-calling judgement is “raca.”  This word, usually translated “worthless” or, “insults,” is not so much a name-calling as it describes a negative tone of voice.  It’s the tone of scorn, hatred, defiance, or sarcasm in our voice when we speak.  It’s almost like spitting on someone.  We can make a statement in two different tones, using the same exact words, but come across with two different meanings.  That’s what “Raca” is--using a certain tone of voice that is insulting and dehumanizing.

There is power in our words and actions.  Including the tone we use.  I am sure that most of you know already from experience how words can wound just as powerfully, and sometimes just as mortally as a knife, gun, or bomb.

I’ve been kind of following some of the on-going story surrounding the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, and the others murdered in Tucson.  One of the men at the shooting was Steve Rayle.  He was the guy who was, at one time, an emergency room doctor.  He was there and saw the people getting shot.  He hid behind a concrete pillar, until the shooter was jumped and held down.

Steve Rayle immediately went to work.  He described how his emergency medical training kicked in, as he went from person to person.  He began a process of quick triage, determining who was already dead, who was wounded, but whose wounds weren’t serious; and who was wounded, but needed immediate attention to save their lives.

Triage was something that was developed on the battle field.  Doctor’s and nurses would use color tags on the wounded.  One color meant hopeless--nothing could be done to save that person.  Another color meant they would live whether they got immediate attention or not.  The third color was for those whose prognosis was iffy--they are the ones who got top priority.

Imagine how our anger and name-calling “tags” a person.  Out of our boiling anger, we mark a person with similar categories.  We may tag them as hopeless scum buckets, a label that horrifyingly may stick on them the rest of their lives.

Jesus told his disciples that this kind of unthinking name-tagging happens because of our anger.  The kind of anger Jesus is talking about is not the explosive kind.  What Jesus is talking about is the long-lived kind of anger.  It’s the kind of anger a person keeps cooking over a medium heat.  It never quite boils over, but is never turned off, either.  It’s a brooding anger which isn’t allowed to die, which refuses to be pacified, which will not forget, which may even conjure up plans for revenge.

There is an old Chinese proverb that states, “If an enemy does wrong to you, buy each of his children a drum.”  The problem with that kind of anger is that it creates the same feeling on the other side.  After your kids get drums for presents, you are immediately challenged to think of a oneupmanship way of getting back.  There will be no end of it, and no winners.

There is only one way for the spiral to end, for the anger to cool, and for the name-calling to cease.  That is to reconcile before it gets out of hand.  It is the only option given to us by our Lord.  In fact, he said that taking the initiative to reconcile ourselves to another person is more important that coming to worship.

Jesus talks about it in terms of bringing one’s offering to worship.  I don’t think he’s talking about money here.  I think he’s talking about the many kinds of animals that the Jewish people had to bring to worship to be sacrificed for the atonement of their sins.

What Jesus is saying here is that God sees our sin and recognizes it.  He wants it to be cleared.  But he wants it done in a way that will be most healing to all those concerned.  It’s not enough to just ask God for forgiveness for our name-calling anger, and the way we have hurt others.  Those involved must face each other.  The situation must be rebuilt by mutual confession and asking forgiveness.  In Jesus’ eyes, this process is more important than coming to church and going through all the religious motions.  Just think how much more worshipful coming to church will be when those relationships are returned to health and well-being.

Only when our angry name-calling, our form of color tagging people, is reconciled, will our altar gifts of seeking forgiveness from God be accepted.  We cannot just hope to go to God and seek forgiveness for what we have against another person.  God is going to make us get up and do what needs to be done first.

I read about a man, who, while serving in Iraq, was in a jeep with other soldiers that was blown up by a roadside bomb.  One leg of this soldier was mangled like a plate of spaghetti.  The triage doctor made the decision that, because he had lost so much blood, he was a hopeless case, and color-tagged him as such.  He was left to die.  But a nurse noticed he was conscious and began talking with him.  They discovered they were both from Ohio.  After getting to know him, the nurse couldn’t let him die.  She broke all the rules and changed his color tag.

After preliminary medical work, there was a two-day trip in the back of a truck and months in the hospital.  But he made it.  Even without his leg, and with complications from other wounds, he eventually began to put his life back together.  All because a nurse broke the rules and changed a tag.

Maybe the task of Christ’s followers is to go against our angry instincts and change the tags with which we have labeled others.  This may mean a personal re-evaluation as well, in terms of our attitudes and name-tagging anger.  Perhaps the most holy worship we can offer our Lord is to retag those we have labeled as hopeless.  Especially since that’s what Christ has done with our own color tag.

The Bully Girl

The Bully Girl
(based on Matthew 5:21-24


Once there was a girl who was bully.  In fact, no one knew her name.  Everyone just called her “the bully girl.”  She wasn’t bigger than the rest of the kids.  She thought she was.  She was just, plain mean to the other kids.  It seemed like she was angry all the time.  She was the kind of angry bully who liked to call other kids bad names.

One day the bully girl was at the park.  She was watching some kids kicking a soccer ball.  One boy tried to kick the soccer ball but missed.  “Ha, Ha,” the bully girl laughed.  “Club foot, club foot; you’re nothing but a club foot.”  That made the boy feel bad.  He hung his head and tried not to cry.

But something happened when the bully girl called the boy “club foot.”  The bully girl shrunk a little bit.  She got just a little bit smaller.  She didn’t know that happened to her.

She saw some other kids were playing tag.  One of the girls playing tag accidentally ran into the tetherball pole and hit her head.  It hurt a lot.  She had a bump on her forehead.  Bully girl went over to her and said, “You are a lump head, you are a lump head.”  That made the girl with the bump on her head sad.  She started to cry.  And the bully girl shrunk a little bit smaller.

When bully girl was walking home she heard the ice cream truck.  Some kids were buying ice cream.  One little boy had just bought an ice cream cone.  But one of the scoops of ice cream fell off onto the ground.  Bully girl came over and said, “Ha ha, you are  a fumble fingers, you are a fumble fingers.”  That made the boy feel even worse.  And the bully girl shrunk even smaller.

By this time bully girl was getting smaller and smaller.  She realized that she was shrinking.  But she didn’t seem to care.  It didn’t stop her from calling other kids names, and hurting their feelings.

When bully girl got home, she had called so many kids names, she had shrunk so much, she wasn’t even tall enough to open the door to her house.  She had to jump up and ring the doorbell.

When bully girl’s mother opened the door she couldn’t believe it.  Her girl was only as tall as a dog.  Bully girl’s mother screamed.  She picked up the girl, put her in the car, and drove her to the doctor’s office.

The doctor asked her how she got so small.  Bully girl said she was just having fun.  And she told the doctor about her day, and how she had called all those kids hurtful names.

“Ah,” said the doctor.  “Every time you try to make someone else feel small, it only makes YOU smaller.”  Then he asked the bully girl, “Do you want to get bigger again; like you were?”
Bully girl said, “Yes” in a very small voice.
“Then here’s what you have to do,” said the wise doctor.  “Tomorrow, you need to go to each of the kids you called a name and tell them you are sorry.”
“OK,” the bully girl squeaked in a tiny voice.

Her mom took her home.  Bully girl went right to bed.  She was too small for her bed, so she just slept on her pillow.

The next day she went back to the park.  She saw the boy playing soccer.  She told him she was sorry.  And when she did, she grew a little bit bigger.  Then she went to the girl with the bumped forehead.  Bully girl told her, “Sorry.”  And she grew a little bit bigger.  She told the boy whose ice cream fell that she was sorry.  And she got bigger even more.

By the time she had told all the other kids that she was sorry, she was back to her normal size.  When she went home, she could reach the door knob again.  She wouldn’t have to sleep on her pillow instead of her bed.

Everything was back to normal.  Except bully girl.  She didn’t want to call kids names anymore.  She didn’t want to be bully girl anymore.  She wanted to be a girl with a name.  So she decided she wasn’t going to call kids any more names.  And she hoped the other kids would start calling her by her real name.

Monday, February 7, 2011

"Please Pass The Salt"

"Please Pass The Salt"
Matthew 5:13


How many of you are trying to be on a low salt, or no salt, diet?  It’s a little hard for some of us.  I can tolerate, and probably enjoy, more salty foods than I do sweet foods.  Sugar, I can a little easier, stay away from.  Salt is another matter.

I understand that our taste buds only detect saltiness and sweetness.  All other “tasting” of flavors actually comes through our sense of smell.  So the flavors we are tasting, we are actually smelling.  Our brains get the smelling and the tasting mixed together so we can enjoy what we call flavor.

That’s one of the reasons for salting foods, either while food is being cooked or after it’s put on the table.  It enhances flavor.  It helps our taste buds catch the flavor better.  If you are on a low salt, or salt free diet, the main complaint is always, “Everything is so flavorless and bland.”  I’ve tried enhancing flavor with different spices instead of salt.  It helps for a while, and then I find myself reaching for the salt shaker again.

Another use for salt, that refrigerators and freezers have virtually eliminated, is for preservation for food.  Back in the good old days, and even in some countries today, salt was rubbed into meat and fish to keep it from rotting and decaying.  By drying meat with salt, it would still be edible for a long period of time.  Some foods are soaked in a salty brine water to keep them preserved as well.

One further use of salt, that we don’t hear about at all anymore, is its use in worship.  In the Jewish religion, and in other religions, salt was used in sacrifices and offerings to God.  It’s pure whiteness expressed a sense of holiness, and it would be sprinkled over the flame on the altar.  Or it would be sprinkled on an animal sacrifice on the altar of ancient religions as an expression and symbol of the holiness and purity of the offering.

Jesus said, “You are like salt for everyone on earth.”  I like how The Message Bible has this saying of Jesus:
Let me tell you why you are here.  You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.

I would like to think that Jesus, by making that statement, had the three uses of salt in mind:  purity; preservative; and, flavor enhancement.  Maybe Jesus only had one, or a couple of those meanings in mind.  I am going to, for our purposes this morning, assume Jesus intended all three of the uses of salt in his imagery.  What I’d like to do is develop how we can understand why we are here, as Christians--to be like salt for everyone on earth.

First, there is the use of salt as a symbol of purity.  Actress Carol Channing is best known for her role in the stage production of “Hello Dolly.”  She did over 1800 performances of that play.  She said she kept her performances fresh by imagining her father in the audience, even though he had been dead for 20 years.  To explain what she meant, she said, “It’s just the thought of his presence, of someone who knows and loves and understands me, and will not tolerate anything second-rate from me.”

That’s part of the quality of purity from saltiness that I think Jesus was talking about.  One of the things we do for each other, as Christians, is expect each other to be first-rate.  To bring that desire out of each other.  To not allow each other to slip in to second-rate beliefs or behaviors.  We, as salt, bring out the best from each other.  We are not allowing our faith and beliefs to sink to low levels.  We need other Christians around us, like Carol Channing needed the image of her father in the audience, who push us and motivate us to do and be our best in the name of Christ.

There is the story of a prophet who came to a town to preach to the people about their mediocrity.  Some people listened to his message.  Most turned away.  One afternoon a child came up to the man while he was preaching in the streets.  The child asked, “Why do you keep on shouting?  Don’t you see it’s hopeless?”
The prophet replied, “In the beginning I thought I could change people.  If I still shout, it is only to prevent the people from changing me.”

We cannot be salt, in terms of purity, for others if we are not keeping ourselves as pure as possible.  Even if we can’t affect others, then we can look after ourselves, and our individual purity.  If we are allowing ourselves to be smudged by flavorless mediocrity, then how can we hope to make an impact for purity, and for our Lord?

Sometimes we do fail.  Sometimes we become smudged and spotty.  Impure in some way.  Stained by our mistakes.  Everyone knows where our spots are.  Then, our task as salt takes on a different purpose--to restore purity.  As Christians, our actions toward those who have fallen in some way, who wish to be clean again, who wish to be forgiven, is to be salt shakers--to salt those people with the flavors of forgiveness.  Only then will they feel empowered to get back up and be salt themselves.

There was a rite in Jewish synagogues in Jesus’ time, that the one who repented of some sin had to perform.  Some later Christian churches picked up this practice as well.  If a person sinned, and repented, and wanted back into the fellowship, he/she had to lay down across the doorstep of the synagogue or church, and allow the people coming in to step on them as they entered.  Each time the repentant person was stepped on, they had to shout, “Trample upon me who am the salt which has lost its savor.”

How humiliating.  I don’t think it’s a practice Jesus would have allowed.  My idea would be to have a salt shaker on the communion table.  When someone is seeking repentance, they would come forward and have salt sprinkled on their head, and the words spoken, “You are forgiven and made pure, in the name of Christ.”  Then that person would be embraced in caring fellowship.  Forgiveness is the salt that creates purity in the church.

Remember Jesus said, “You are like salt for everyone...”  Thus, you, we together, create that character of purity.  We need each other to do that.  And one of the ways we do that is through forgiving each other--instilling a new state of purity for each other so all of us can go on.


Secondly, salt is used as preservative.  Salt kept the process of decay in check.  Thinking of that image, we ask ourselves, What is it that creates decay in my life?  What are the areas of my life that need to be salted, to be preserved, to keep the corruption in check?

I mentioned at Men’s Bible Study a couple of weeks ago about how we just get used to stuff.  We think, this is just the way things are, so we might as well get used to it.  But that’s not what Jesus wanted when he said we are the salt for all the people in the world.  Instead of just getting used to the rottenness in the world, or in our own lives, we need a saltiness that will preserve us against that decay.

After 17 months in office, President Harry Truman wrote a letter to his adult daughter.  Part of that letter said,

To be a good President I fear a man...can’t live the Sermon on the Mount.  He must be a Machiavelli, a Caesar, a Napoleon, a liar, double-crosser, and an unctuous religio, (oily, greasy religious person)  and a what-not to be successful.  So I probably won’t be, thanks be to God.  But I’m having a lot of fun trying the opposite approach.

One of the people Truman looked up to was Robert E. Lee.  Truman kept a copy of a letter that General Lee had written to his son.  Part of that letter said,

You must be frank with the world.  Frankness is the child of honesty and courage.  Just say what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right.  Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one.  Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.

Both excerpts from these letters are excellent advice.  It is advice that is salt, preserving a person from becoming corrupted by the world.  Like some fruit that rots from the inside out, decay is something that starts in the heart of a person.  It works its way from the inside out, not the other way around.

Honesty with oneself, telling the truth no matter what--even if it makes you look bad--is the salt that keeps decay of the heart in check.  The world teaches us that you get what you want by lying, or hiding in shades of the truth.  But the day we start that tactic is the day we start decaying.  Sprinkle yourselves with the salt of truth, and so preserve your lives.

And since Jesus said, “You are salt for everyone on earth,” that means that we have the responsibility to help others move towards being truth tellers.  We have a responsibility to preserve each other, and to keep decay away from our fellowship.


The last function of salt that I want to mention is that of flavor enhancement.  That’s what The Message Bible is emphasizing by saying that our purpose is to bring out all the God-flavors in life.  Jesus is saying we need to be people who add flavor to the world, not take it away.  All too often, Christians and Christianity, have become associated with the opposite:  kill joys, pale, humorless, and overly serious about everything.

There was one Roman Emperor, Julian, who had a big complaint about all the Christians in the empire.  He once said,

Have you looked at these Christians closely?  Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-chested all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition; the sun shines for them, but they do not see it; the earth offers them its fulness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and suffer.

I would hope that’s not the way anyone would describe Christians today.  I’m so glad that none of you fit that description.

There was a woman who was nursing a bed of feeble flowers.  The flowers never seemed to reach their full blooming potential.  But there was one enormous weed that sprung up almost overnight in the back of her garden.  “Pull the thing out,” ranted the husband.
“No way,” protested the wife.  “I’m relying on that weed to set an example for the flowers.”

It’s too bad that Christians sometimes have to take lessons from some “weeds” about what it means to be joyful, fun-loving, and interesting people--people of flavor.

I’ve only been snow skiing once in my life.  I’ve sent a lot of youth groups happily on their way, having organized most of the ski trips myself, but never skiing.  One winter, when we lived in Colby, my kids talked me into it.  I really don’t like outdoor, winter sports; I’m afraid of heights; and I don’t like speed, especially falling down after going too fast.  So snow skiing seemed like a natural sport for me to avoid.

Well, I took the half day lesson, learning to do all the things I don’t like doing.  And being grumpy about it.  A couple who were taking lessons in our group were having similar “fun.”  The husband kept making his wife repeat something over and over, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

Later in the day, after I had made a couple of runs, snowplowing down the hill, my legs aching, I was trying a third run.  My daughter, Kristin, who was a natural, started skiing circles around me as I went down.  I had just fallen getting off the ski lift and all these people just kept coming, skiing over me; it was like a bad Lucy show routine.  I was feeling bad about the whole experience, and now my daughter was taunting me.  She said, “Go parallel, dad!”
I said, “What the heck does that mean?”
She said, “Just put your skis together and go straight down the hill.”

My thighs were burning from doing the snow plow down the side of the mountain, and I figured, if that was the quickest way down the hill, what the heck.  It was getting warmer, so I unzipped my coat, and went parallel.  I’m telling you, because I have such a high center of gravity, I was quickly out of control.  I had on a black parka, flying loosely behind me like a cape.  I had on a black stocking cap, and black goggles.  Black ski pants.  At 6’9” I looked like Darth Vader going parallel down the mountain.  People literally caught a glimpse of me coming out of the corner of their eye, and jumped out of the way.

(It just so happens I found a picture of a guy skiing in a Darth Vader outfit.  I was going to project it up on the screen, but I want you to get a mental picture of me, flailing down the mountain, trying to keep my balance, all 6’9” of me, going parallel.)

It just so happened I noticed I was coming up on the lady who was in my lesson group earlier in the day, who was being told to say something to herself by her husband.  And as I flew by, I heard her saying to herself, out loud, “I’m having fun; I’m having fun; I’m having fun.”  Oh, man, was I with her on that one.

Sometimes we Christians need to remind ourselves, “I’m having fun; I’m having fun.”  God gave us life to enjoy, not to grump through.  God wants us to notice the sun shinning, and the beauty of the world around us, even if it’s sub-zero cold and the wind is blowing 40 miles an hour.  God wants us to feel alive, and be joyful about being alive.  It is that enjoyment of life that is the salt that we need to shake over each other daily.  At least every Sunday, so that we are always flavor-full, and not flavor-less.  We live in a depressed world, people.  That world needs US to be the reminders of joy and flavor.



Jesus said, “You are like salt for everyone on earth.”  Don’t keep it in the shaker.  Shake some around.