Monday, October 31, 2011

The Two R's

"The Two R's"
Matthew 23:1-4


I’m going to make a startling statement.  Are you ready for it?  Here it is:  we are human beings.  I know.  I know.  I know what you’re thinking.  “No way.  Not me.  I’m not one of those human beings.”  But, yes, I’m sorry to say, you are.  You are a human being.  You are part of the human condition.

Now, by telling you that you are a human being, I am also going to have to make another startling statement:  You aren’t God.  You aren’t in charge.  Final authority doesn’t rest on your shoulders.  You are not perfect.  You can’t be perfect.  You can aspire to perfection, if you’d like.  But I’m sorry to tell you, you’ll never make it.  You won’t make it because you’re not God.  You are human.

A large part of what it means to be a human being is that we mess up.  We make mistakes.  We blunder.  We make choices and decisions we wish we wouldn’t have.  Time and time again, we blow it.  We will even commit sin.  We understand this about the human condition, so we try to legislate our behavior.  We make rules.  The rules are made in an attempt to force us to become positively human most of the time, rather than become negatively human.  And there are a ton of rules.  Many are written down and put in rule books.  But a lot are not.  Rules are one of the things that separate us from the animals.

Animals don’t make rules to legislate their behavior.  For example, what rules does a lion have to follow and obey in order to be a good lion?  They hunt, they kill, they eat, they sleep, they reproduce.  That’s about it.  They don’t have a bunch of rules.  Like:  Lions can only hunt gazelles on Monday.  Or:  While hunting wildebeests, lions are only allowed to run up to 30 mph.  If they run faster than that, they have to give up their kill to the hyenas.

Animals don’t have rules.  Human beings have rules.  We have rules because we are so afraid of our humanity.  We are so afraid of our human behavior.  We are so afraid of our human condition.  We are so afraid of that part of us that messes up.  So we legislate ourselves and our behavior to the point of the ridiculous.  The problem is, and this is our human condition, if you make rules, that means that you can just as easily break the rules.  When you make a rule, you are finding out not only what you CAN’T do.  You are also finding out what you CAN do.

Are you following me on that?  Here’s an example.  When you tell a child not to take any cookies out of the cookie jar, what are you telling them?  “Hmmm, I could take a cookie out of the cookie jar when no one is looking.”  Or, if you see a sign that says, “Wet paint.  Do not touch,” what’s the first thing that pops into your head?  And what’s the first thing you do with your finger?

If you think that only happens in children, here’s another example.  On the Seattle waterfront, there’s a hotel called the Edgewater Inn.  It’s unique because it’s built out over the water.  When they built it, the owners were afraid the guests would fish off their balcony’s.  So they put up a sign on each balcony that read, “No Fishing Off The Balcony.”

Well, what happened?  People evidently saw the sign and thought, “Hmmm.  Good idea.”  And they fished off their balconies.  The hotel had a huge problem with people, especially those on the upper floors, casting their lines, with heavy weights, and not letting out enough line.  The weights would come swinging back into and crashing through the windows of the restaurant on the first floor.  Imagine enjoying a romantic dinner and having a half pound lead weight come shattering through the picture window and landing on your salmon croquet.

So they hired a consultant.  They paid this firm thousands of dollars to figure out what to do to stop this annoying problem of guests fishing off the balconies.  After the study was done, the recommendation was submitted.  Anyone have any idea what it was?  Take down the ‘No Fishing’ signs.  The hotel did that and the problem went away.

Now, if that doesn’t describe the human condition, then I don’t know what does.  The minute you make a rule, telling people what they can’t do, you are in that same stroke of the pen, telling them what they could, might, or will do.  It’s just the way we think.  Its part of our humanity.  It has always been a part of what it means being human.

In Jesus’ day, it might have been worse than it is now.  Long before Jesus, God had given the Ten Commandments.  They were God’s basic list of guiding principles for human behavior.  But the Jewish Scribes, who were put in charge of the law, the ones who tried to define what the Ten Commandments meant, went overboard in their work.

Let’s take one of the Top Ten as an example.  One of the Commandments says to keep the Sabbath holy; to not work on the Sabbath; to take a day of rest each week, because God rested on the seventh day.  OK.  It’s a great rule.  Very simple.  Very clear.  Hardly anyone follows it, but that’s another sermon.  So the Scribes started looking at the rule, and thought too much.

“What does it mean to do work or not to do work on the Sabbath?” they wondered.  What is resting and what isn’t resting?  They came up with the idea that to carry a burden is part of what it means to work.  OK, so what’s a burden?  The Scribes began spinning out all kinds of rules that were supposed to help people understand what a burden was.  For example, a burden was food equal to the weight of one dried fig; or, milk enough for one swallow; or honey enough to put on a wound; or, water enough to moisten your eyes; or, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet.  And so on, nearly into infinity.

The Scribes spent hours arguing whether a person could lift a candle and move it from one place to another on the Sabbath.  If a tailor had a needle stuck in the lapel of his coat (which is where tailors kept their sewing needles) and carried it with him on the Sabbath, was that carrying a burden?  Or, if a woman could wear a brooch on the Sabbath.  Or, if a parent could lift their infant on the Sabbath.

To the Scribes who wrote these laws and regulations, and to the Pharisees who had taken an oath to follow each law, this was the essence of religion.  Their idea was that if you could legislate human behavior to the fullest extent, then people would become truly religious.  Maybe, even happy.  When the Scribes were done, they had over 50 encyclopedia sized volumes full of their laws, based on what was originally just 10 simple laws.  Do you also get a picture of God holding his face in his hands wondering where he had gone wrong.

So, when Jesus talked about how the Scribes and Pharisees were piling heavy burdens on the people, that’s what he was talking about.  And notice, the word “burden” is key here.  Remember, the Scribes tried to define the word “burden” as they looked at all the work-related laws they developed to legislate human activity on the Sabbath.  But the burdens weren’t sewing needles, brooches, or even a little baby.  The burden became the very laws they were making about burdens!

Too bad they didn’t define burdens as guilt, sadness, worry, depression, anxiety, or loneliness.  It would be really nice to get to put those burdens down one day a week and not have to be bothered about carrying them around.  Maybe we should try that and see how it works.  Maybe we could lay those kinds of burdens down more than one day a week.

As I mentioned earlier, when you make a law, then you are also creating the opportunity and possibility of breaking that law.  The more laws you have, the more opportunities and possibilities you have for law breaking.  I think that’s the trap the Scribes and Pharisees got themselves into.  If you make a law, then you have to follow it.  And, you have to have someone designated to police all those laws.  But when you try to make laws for every possible human activity, there’s no way you can keep or police them all.

Those who make all those rules eventually find themselves in positions to break them as well.  Certainly the Scribes and Pharisees, in their attempt to keep all the laws, blew it from time to time.  They are, after all, as we have established, human beings.  If you’re trying to portray yourself as perfect, and have defined perfection as “keep all the rules,” then you are bound to come across as hypocritical, when you break a rule.

My brother in Minneapolis told me one time about an older couple he had read about in the paper up there.  They were found frozen to death in their little home.  They had had the electricity shut off because they didn’t pay their bill.  They were apparently eating dog food out of the can for their meals.

There were two ironies about this frozen couple.  The first was that in the closet was found a suitcase containing over $60,000 in cash.  The other irony was that this couple volunteered at the local community health clinic, teaching the poorer people in the Minneapolis area about proper personal hygiene, food preparation, and basically how to take care of yourself.

What it comes down to, apparently, is not what you teach.  You can still be an effective teacher spouting information, Bible verses, theology, rules, or whatever.  But how much more effective is the witness of living the same as what you teach.  Integrity is that quality where what you believe comes together with how you live.

There is something worse that can happen.  Those who make the rules begin to see themselves above the law.  As creators of the law, they think they have some kind of special privilege or status.  They fall into the trap of sanctimoniousness.  Holier than thou.  Above the law.  Makers of the law don’t necessarily have to be keepers of the law, becomes their thinking.  I think some of that must have been going on in Jesus’ day, also.  The Scribes and the Pharisees forgot they were human beings.  The began to think of themselves as Creator.  Ultimately, if you start thinking like that, you become bad examples both of humanity and divinity.

So, where is Jesus going with all this?  What, in Jesus’ mind, is he trying to get us to see about what true believing and faithful living is all about.  And what is faithfulness not about?  Clearly, Jesus is trying to get us off the kick of thinking that Godliness is next to legalism.  Rule making only results in finger pointing.  That’s not what belief in God is all about.  That’s not even what God is about.  True religion is not a list of laws, do’s and don’ts, codes and restrictions.

For Jesus, a true believer is someone who lives according to the fundamental things he/she believes.  They do what they believe.  There is no, say one thing, and do another.  You talk the talk and you walk the walk.  Again, for Jesus, simple integrity is the most profound way to be human.

For Jesus, that integrity is defined by two things.  They were the same two principles behind the Ten Commandments.  Those two qualities were the two R’s:  Reverence and Respect.  All rules boil down to two:  Have Reverence for God; and, have Respect for your fellow human beings, as well as yourself.

Reverence for God comes when we most understand God--when we most know God.  The more you know of God, the more you realize God is a God of compassion, acceptance, love and grace.  When we are being most human, that is, when we are falling on our face the hardest, making the worst mistakes, making poor choices, being sinful even, God is the one who comes with powerful grace, offering the tenderest and most understanding hand to pull us to our feet, accepting and embracing us completely, dusting us off and sending us on our human way, renewed and ready to keep on living.  The more we realize this about God, the more reverence we have toward God.  The more we are in awe of God.  The more we want to honor and draw close to that God.  We don’t have reverence for God because we are afraid of God, a God who is just waiting for us to break a rule so he can smack us up the side of the head.  No, we have reverence for God because of our understanding of the understanding love of God.

Respect for other human beings comes from the realization of just that:  that we are all human beings.  That we aren’t perfect.  That we are all struggling with what it means to be human.  That we can act towards each other just as God acts towards us.  That we can look for ways, not to smack each other on the back of the head with one of the 50 volumes of the rule books, like some uptight Pharisee.  But, instead, we can look for ways to respect each other, accept each other, embrace each other; ways to look out for each other with compassion and grace.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he listed the kinds of behaviors the Holy Spirit leads us into:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Paul then says, “There’s no law about behaving in these ways.”  You just do them, not because you have to, but because that’s what it means to be truly faithful.  And, that’s what it means to be truly human.  To be human in the best sense of the word.  To not be over burdened with a ton of rules and regulations, but instead to be guided by the two supreme human values of Reverence for God and Respect for all other human beings, including yourself.  That’s all you need.

Monday, October 24, 2011

To Know Me Is To Love Me

"To Know Me Is To Love Me"
Psalm 139

In the cartoon, Hagar The Horrible, Hagar is lamenting how no one really knows him.  “Look at me!” he shouts, mainly to himself.  “A devoted father, a loving husband, a hard-working Viking, a kind employer, an honest taxpayer--and what does it get me?”  He looks around, then continues:  “Nobody listens to me anymore!  My children think I’m strictly from the dark ages.  My wife turns a deaf ear to everything I say.  And I could talk myself blue in the face but my crew ignores me.” He pauses, then finally says, “Doesn’t anybody care?  Doesn’t anybody listen anymore?!”
Then a voice comes from the clouds and says, “I’m sorry; what were you saying?”

Psalm 139 is one of my favorites.  The psalm’s themes are fairly clear.  It is mostly about how David, the Psalmist,  sees things differently than Hagar.  If David were to talk to Hagar the Horrible, he would tell him about how God thoroughly pays attention.

David has discerned that God knows everything about him.  Whether David, whether we, would care to admit it or not, his relationship to God is a relationship of intimacy.  David would tell Hagar that God is the one who is always there, always ready to listen, always ready to respond.

David’s first line in the psalm expresses that.  He starts out by acknowledging to God, “LORD, you have examined me and you know me!”  The word “know” in Hebrew is an interesting word.  Part of the meaning has to do with the sexual relationship between a man and a woman.  In the Garden of Eden story in Genesis, we are told that “Now Adam knew Eve his wife…”  (Genesis 4:1).  Just looking at the words, we might reply that we sure hope he knew her; they were the only humans around.

In the Christmas story, Matthew tells us, concerning Joseph and Mary, that, “...he knew her not till she had borne a son…” (Matthew 1:25).  Again, just looking at the words, we might ask, “How could Joseph not know her; they were engaged!”

In both instances, though, the term, “know,” is the Hebrew term which describes the intimacy of the sexual relationship.  In Psalm 139, David the poet is using this term, and taking it out of the sexual context to describe the intimate knowledge that God has of him--of all of us.  God knows all about David, inside and out.  God sees the big picture of who David is.  God’s relationship with David, and David’s relationship with God, has extended itself beyond the merely superficial and the surface.

In an online magazine I was reading, there was an interview with a Chinese actress who was trying to make it in Hollywood.  She was asked about some of the differences she saw between the cultures of the United States and China.  One of the things she answered struck me.  She said, “In China, we take time to get to know each other.  We spend great amounts of time in conversation with other people we want to know well.  Here, in America, you meet someone once, and they assume they know all about you.  Everyone is in such a hurry; how can anyone really know anybody else?”

What an interesting observation.  What she has put her finger on is the real lack of the kind of intimacy that I’m trying to describe.  How fearful we are to be known; to disclose ourselves, our deeper feelings and emotions; to let down our guard, and be willing to share both dreams and frustrations.  In a word, to know and be known.  Especially in our relationship with God.

Intimacy with God, or with anyone else takes time.  Instead of building it slowly through a process of conversation and just being with each other, people go for the “full monty” right away.  They do the quick strip tease and think they have really accomplished intimacy.  But far from anything intimate has happened.

One humorist said, “If you want to be happy, never hold hands.  Holding hands leads to kissing.  Kissing leads to marriage.  Marriage leads to talking.  And the first thing you know you’ve said the wrong thing.”

Reading through this Psalm 139, ponder all the ways that a deeper knowing has been grown between David and God.  Ask yourself, “How many people have I allowed to “search me and know me”--to know it all?”  How many people have known when you sit down in entrenched defiance?  When you sit down under life’s weariness?  How many people know when you rise up in joy?  Or when you rise up in protest?  How many people have you traced your journey of life with, describing the places you have stopped and settled, including all the decisions, the ins and outs, that have brought you along to where you are today?  How many people know you so well, that if you were asked a question, they would know the words you were forming in answer?

I think about Royal and Shirley Elder, seventy years together.  Married when they were 20 years old they’ve been by each other’s side for 70 years.  I hope to God I just make it to my 70th birthday.  I will never be by anyone’s side for 70 years.  Not many of us will be so fortunate.  I was lamenting that to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago--that there isn’t one person I have walked with a majority of my life.  Just a person here and a person there for me.  There is no one whom I have known my whole life, who really knows me, save God.

The great fear in creating intimacy is that we won’t be loved if we open ourselves to someone else.  Once someone else knows my ins and outs, they won’t like me.  I will be spurned.  If I am known for all of who I am, then I might be seen as unloveable.  Once all my secrets are out, with someone I trust those secrets with, instead of empathy and understanding, I might have to deal with their disillusionment.  Which might come out in anger, disgust, or fear.  Yes, there’s a lot of risk in intimacy isn’t there.

That’s why I like this Psalm 139 so much.  One of the unspoken sentiments I hear coming through David’s poetry is wonder:  wonder that even though God knows him with such utter thoroughness, David still feels loved by God.  I think that’s what’s behind the words in verse 6:
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high, I cannot attain it.

David isn’t writing about God’s general knowledge, and how God knows so much that it’s incomprehensible.  David is being specific here about what God’s knowledge is all about.  It’s about David.  God knows it all--about David.  God understands it all--about David.  God sees it all--about David.  It blows David’s mind.  It blows my mind.  Because it’s not just about knowledge.  It’s about love.  It’s about knowledge and love, mixed together.  We fear that knowledge and love are like oil and water: no matter how much you shake them together, they’re never going to fully mix.  But what is just so awesome is that with God, knowledge and love are inseparable.  With God, you can’t have one without the other.  Amazing.

So we probably share David’s inability to understand how such a relationship could exist.  We demonstrate that by never attempting to see if it could really happen.  We remain lonely people, afraid to be really known, and therefore, really loved.

We hunger to be known, to be loved, to know intimacy.  But we are afraid.  We hang on the fence, standing on the side of loneliness, gazing at the side of intimacy with great longing, but never quite getting to the point of opening the gate and walking through to that other side.

We will never know what it is to be really and totally loved, until we have allowed someone to “know it all” and therefore love it all:  the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the beautiful and the ugly.  “Do you love me--because all of this is me?”  Or do you only love the part that you think is lovable, or worth loving?

On one of singer, songwriter Carly Simon’s albums there is a song that says:

I have no need of half of anything
No half time, no half a man’s attention…
Don’t give me fountains,
I need waterfalls
And, when I cry, my tears’ll fill an ocean
The pain of love, I’ll accept it all
As long as you’ll join me in that emotion
Half of lovin’ is no fun
Give it all, give it all to me
I can stand it
I am strong that way.

This notion, this reality, that God knows all about us, and yet still loves us, deeply, is almost too disturbing for David.  Thoughts of escape begin to germinate:  “Where can I go to escape your spirit?  Where can I flee to escape your presence?” David writes.

How can we be so adamant in our disbelief of love in full disclosure?  Why, instead of embracing such love, do we run away from it?  Push it away?  Try and pull darkness like a blanket over us and disappear, as David tried with God?  And when he found himself, safely hidden away in his darkness, in some remote spot of his denial and loneliness, covered there under the blanket of his incredulous imagination, on flicks a little light.  It is God, under that blanket with him.  Smiling.  Saying, “Hi; here I am.  Thought you might like a little company.”  And we are probably a strange mix of being half mad and half glad to see the Lord, who just won’t let us alone in our self-misery.

The psalmist discovers that God is going to go to great lengths to let us know that He cares about us.  That God will never let us out of His sight, no matter how much we think we need to hide, or how far we think we need to run; no matter how unloving we might be feeling, or how unlovely and unloveable we think we are.

David seems to be admitting that there are times he wants to be alone, even from this ever-loving God.  Even though David may have that desire, he recognizes the other undeniable fact:  he can’t get away from God, even if he wanted to.  Whenever David feels he desires greatest distance from God, he must still face God, face his sense of unloveableness, with this ever-present God.  There’s no getting away.

Adam and Eve, after their disobedience, are our everlasting examples.  They think they can hide from God behind a swash of bushes.  They did what God told them not to do: pick the forbidden fruit.  So they hid, as if they were hiding from disappointment and death itself.  That is what God had come to represent to them.  Feeling isolated, lost from their intimacy, thinking themselves unloved and unloveable, they run away.  They wait behind their bush in their fig leaf underwear for the inevitable.

But then the surprise.  God knows all.  They know He knows all.  They have tried to flee “ to heaven...to the world of the dead...to the wings of the morning…or to the uttermost parts of the sea.”  Anywhere.

But when God comes, He looks at the now vulnerable couple and sees them through the eyes of knowing.  That they are still known and loved, not because of them or what they did, but because of who God is.  God must have seen from the beginning that if He was going to love the people He had made, He’s going to have to love them for all that they are, and all that they aren’t, or may never be.

To know and allow yourself to be known, to love and allow yourself to be loved like that is at the heart of this kind of Godly relationship of intimacy.  It’s what it means to be close to the heart of God.

Monday, October 17, 2011

The Coin of Our Faith

"The Coin of Our Faith"
Matthew 22:15-22


I think Jesus must have been so tired at the end of the day.  Could someone get weary being the Savior?  I would imagine so.  Imagine dealing with people who don’t get it.  Who avoid getting it.  Who refuse to get it.  Who only want to come for the free side show, and avoid the message.  Can’t you just imagine Jesus breathing a deep sigh at the end of the day, and shaking his head in wonder?  Do you think there were days when he went off by himself and wept?

It must have been immensely hard to be the Savior.  Sure there was the whipping and the Cross at the end.  Unquestionably and unimaginably torturous to have to go through.  But even before then, there were lots of days and people that were just plain frustrating.

This day was going to be one of those days.

It started with a delegation of Pharisees.  This wasn’t a group of friends who decided to go see what Jesus was up to.  These men were commissioned.  They had a plan.  They weren’t going to just watch.  They were going to engage Jesus in a well thought out trap.  They were excited.  This time they would trip Jesus up.  This time they would gain enough leverage to shut him up.  You can see it in the way they walk, light of step, almost a swagger.  Smiles on their faces.  Anticipation noticeable by the way they stroked their beards.  This was going to be the day they would get Jesus.

Mixed in with this band of cunning men were some Herodians.  They, like the Pharisees, were Jews.  But they were supporters of the Herod dynasty established by the Roman emperor.  It’s been said that war makes strange bedfellows, and so it was this time in the war against Jesus.  Pharisees and Herodians

Herod was the ruler of Galilee and Perea.  His authority was set by the Emperor himself.  Herod Antipas was his name.  He was ruthless in his quest for power, having a wife, brothers and a son killed in order to keep his throne.  Some say he was paranoid.  That an irrational fear drove his ruthlessness.  It was Herod Antipas who had John the Baptist beheaded and the head delivered on a silver platter.  Antipas did this at his wife’s request.  She was tired of listening to John the Baptist railing against the fact that she was still married to Herod’s brother when she married Herod.  “Off with his head,” said the queen of spades, and Herod complied.  It was Herod Antipas who sat in authority over Jesus in the end, condemning Jesus to be beaten, and then crucified.

So, why?  Why this group of Jewish supporters of Herod mixed in with the Pharisees?  Why these Herodians who favored Roman rule in Palestine over against the Pharisees who favored nationalism, and the end to Roman domination in their land?  Why these two together?  Odd, wouldn’t you say?

When they reach Jesus, first came the platitudes.  “Teacher,” they said.  “We know that you are truthful, and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.”  Blah, blah, blah.  Isn’t it amazing how people can lie when they are talking about the truth.  This buttery statement by the Pharisees is one of the more bold-faced lies spoken to Jesus.  There wasn’t a Pharisee alive, except for maybe Nicodemus, who believed that statement.  There wasn’t a one of them who believed that Jesus taught the way of God in accordance to the truth.  They all thought Jesus was a dangerous charlatan, delusional at best, a blasphemer and liar at worst.

I try to imagine what Jesus was thinking when he heard all this effusive, manipulative set up, rolling off the Pharisee’s tongues.  I try to imagine Jesus’ face.  Did he roll his eyes and mutter, “Yeah, whatever!”  He knew he’d be shaking his head at the end of the day over this one.  Did he give a little preemptive shake of the head now?  Did he wonder to himself, These people come to me speaking of honesty.  Why can’t they just be honest and up front with me about why they’re here?  Do they not see the irony of their tactics?  Poor Jesus having to put up with people like us.

Then comes their question.  Now Jesus (and we) find out why there’s the strange mix of Pharisees with Herodians.  It’s in their question.  Their well-oiled trap.  They can’t wait to set it and watch Jesus get caught in it.  SNAP!  “Tell us then,” they ask, “what do you think?  Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Taxes.  It’s either about death or taxes.  (What we don’t see is what comes next after this story.  The day continues for Jesus when the Sadducees showed up and asked him a question about death and the after life.)  So in one day Jesus is being forced to answer questions about taxes and death.

Taxes.  One of the inevitabilities of life.  Isn’t it nice to know, in an odd sort of way, that people had tax issues way back when?  Didn’t know you could take your tax problems to Jesus did you?  Neither did Jesus.  Just think if, instead of your CPA, you could take Jesus to your next audit.  Mark Twain once said, “Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.”  Kind of hard to lie, if Jesus is right there helping you figure out the tax form.

And have you ever wondered why, in our day, you can get an extension on filing your taxes, but you don’t get a similar extension on dying?  Maybe we can ask Jesus about that too.

But on this day, the Pharisees and the Herodians asked Jesus if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar.  Caesar extracted a heavy toll on people through the head tax.  Just for being alive you were taxed.  It’s hard to avoid the red flags of the IRS.  When filling out your form you don’t want to put down anything that would catch the IRS’s attention.  Like when you write down you have some money left in your bank account after paying your taxes.  That’s a red flag.  That’s what the Pharisees and Herodians want to know about taxes:  When is enough, enough?

Now here’s the trick in their trick question.  If Jesus said, “Yes,” they should pay the Roman head tax, he would have angered and alienated the growing number of people who wanted to split with the Roman Empire and declare independence.  In other words, the Pharisees, and most of the residents.  If Jesus said yes, it would be like someone today saying, “I think our government and economic systems are just wonderful.  We should just keep on the same old track.”  Imagine saying that to all the people sitting outside the New York Stock Exchange.

But, if Jesus said, “No,” we shouldn’t pay any kind of head tax to Caesar or to the Roman Empire, he’d be sounding like a revolutionary, and he would have alienated the Roman loyalists.  For example, the Herodians.  Now you’re seeing why there were representatives there asking Jesus the question from both groups.  Either way he answered would have put him at odds with someone.  If Jesus said no to paying taxes, he also would have set himself up to be arrested by the local Roman authorities for insurrection and rebellion.  If that happened, Jesus would be out of the way.  The Pharisees and Herodians could shake hands, pat themselves on the back and go their separate ways, thinking, Job well done.

Either way, Jesus looks doomed.  Either answer will be wrong.  Until Jesus opens his mouth.

The Pharisees and the Herodians came at Jesus first with a bunch of slippery compliments.  Jesus doesn’t return the favor.  It’s only the start of the day, and already he’s had enough.  “You hypocrites!” he says.  Jesus calls them hypocrites.  I wonder how Jesus said it.  Kind of under his breath?  “Hypocrites.”  Like a shot gun blast?  “Hypocrites!”  I wonder.

You all know what a hypocrite is, don’t you.  Early on, in the Greek language and culture, to be a hypocrite was to be someone who explains something.  But it wasn’t like just reading an encyclopedia.  It was explaining by playing a role.  Thus, an actor.  It was someone who was trying to explain some truth, some information by acting it out.

Later, the philosophers talked about how human life is like a stage, upon which we are only actors.  That is hypocrites.  But we aren’t being our true selves on that stage, are we?  We are playing a role.  We are trying to portray someone or some thing we aren’t.  So the stage, and what it stood for--life--becomes a sham world where people are mostly deceivers.

By Jesus’ time, hypocrites weren’t mere actors.  They were people who lived in self-contradiction.  There was this jarring contradiction between what people believed and how they put those beliefs into practice.  So Jesus made a call.  He called this group of questioners what they were:  hypocrites.

Before we slap Jesus on the back, saying, “You tell ‘em, Lord!” we need to do a quick and honest evaluation.  Thinking of the evolution of this word hypocrite, we need to take a look at how we may have similarly evolved.  How do we treat human life as a stage?  How are we simply actors, playing out a role that has nothing to do with who we really are?  How are we creating a disconnect with what’s going on up there on the stage, with the world we walk out into after the show is over?

If we let the boundaries between the stage and reality get blurry, then our place becomes fuzzy.  Not only that, and most importantly, who we are as persons gets messed up.  There’s a loss of grounding in reality.  We lose who we are.  We just play whatever role we think is necessary, depending on whatever production we happen to be in at the time.  No continuity.  No consistency.  No integrity of character.  Just playing role after role.  That’s a hypocrite.

“Show me the coin,” Jesus then says.  Show me the money.  In that case it was the denarius.  It was a rough stamped silver coin.  It was what a normal working person would earn in one day.  One coin.  The denarius.

On each denarius was the picture of Tiberius Caesar.  Around the profile head shot of Tiberius there was an inscription.  It read, “Tiberius Caesar, divine son of Augustus, High Priest.”  So Caesar was a god.  It’s true.  It says so on every denarius.  It has to be true if it’s stamped on money.  Just like it says on our coins:  In God We Trust.

Didn’t know you were making a religious statement by carrying around money, did you.  By jingling your pocket full of change, you’re making a statement of faith.  Just like the people who carried the denarius coins around.  They were saying with their money that Tiberius is divine.  Every time they gained a coin by the sweat of their brow, they were receiving a religious token.  Every time they spent a coin at the marketplace, they were making a faith statement.  Every time they paid the head tax with the denarius they were proclaiming, “Caesar is divine!”  Just like we are.  “In God We Trust.”  It must be true.  It’s on our money.  Even agnostics and atheists can’t avoid it.  Our money proclaims the truth about what we believe:  In God We Trust.

You may not wear a cross necklace, or boast any other kind of religious jewelry.  You don’t have to.  By carrying coins, you are making a statement about where your faith ultimately lies.  Usually most people ignore it.

“Show me the money,” says Jesus.  And then, after one of the Pharisees or Herodians gave him a coin, he asked, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”  Whose image is this?

It’s important we notice those two words, image and likeness.  It’s important that Jesus used those words in particular.  The Herodians might not have caught it.  But the Pharisees, learned as they were in the scripture, would have caught it.  Jesus’ question was purposefully asked in order to take the Pharisees back to Genesis, where God said at creation, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness...” (Genesis 1:26).  The same exact words Jesus used in his question.

And then comes the kicker:  “Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  All of sudden Jesus gave them an answer to a different question.  A question the Pharisees and the Herodians should have been asking.  That question is not, “Should we be paying taxes to Caesar.”  The question should have been, “To whom do we belong?”

To whom do you belong?  Whose likeness are you?  Whose likeness is imprinted on your very being?  For Jesus the important question is a question of ownership, not taxation.  What is God’s?  What is Caesar’s?  Caesar can put his picture on little pieces of silver, and stamp his pedigree, his claim, all around himself like a halo.  But does that make it true?  All Caesar can lay claim to at the end of the day are the coins.  He can have them.  They’re his.  Who cares.  Give them to him.

But you are God’s.  The likeness and image of God is stamped on a different coin--the coin of our personhood.  The coin of our flesh and blood.  We are God’s coin, spent in faith throughout our lives.  What is given to God is whatever bears God’s image--us!  So it’s not a matter of giving up a few coins, says Jesus.  It’s a matter of giving up the whole self as God’s possession--as the coin bearing the mark of God’s image.

With a lot of things of the faith, we must make a choice: this way or that way; this choice or another.  But as God’s coin, stamped with God’s image, there is no choice.  That is what we are!  That is who we are.  Image bearers--the coin, if you will--of God.  That’s our core identity.  We can’t escape it.  We can’t deny it.  We can’t choose otherwise.  Instead of, “In God We Trust,” our coins should say, “In God I Am.”  Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk once wrote in the book, Entering The Silence, “His one Image is in us all, and we discover Him by discovering the likeness of His Image in one another.”

That’s where it’s at.  That’s what’s most important, says Jesus.  When the Pharisees and Herodians heard what Jesus said, what does the story tells us about their reaction?  “...they were stunned, and they left him and went away.”  Stunned.  Knocked up the side of the head.  Bowled over.  Staggered and stupefied.  How about you?

Monday, October 10, 2011

Garbage In, Garbage Out

"Garbage In, Garbage Out"
Philippians 4:8-9


There has been a lot of computer lingo that has developed since personal computers have become so popular.  One of my favorite bits of computer lingo is “garbage in, garbage out.”  I like it because I don’t understand a lot about computer terms; but “garbage in, garbage out,” even I can understand.  It describes the truth about computers that you can only get out of computers what you put into them.

I suppose that’s not quite as true as it was a few years ago, before the internet was born.  Now there’s all kinds of garbage coming out of computers that somebody else put in there for you to look at.  Like, cyber bullying and pornographic trash.  Pop up ads, and spam.  Yet the term still holds true: if there’s garbage in there, garbage can come out.

Paul was way ahead of this computer term when he wrote to the Philippians:  what comes out of us--out of our hearts and minds--is determined to a large extent by what we allow in.  We allow certain “data”--images, language, experiences, things we’ve seen that maybe we wish we hadn’t have, things we’ve heard, things we’ve read.  All that gets programmed into our memory bank.  It becomes a part of us.  How we behave and how we speak and the kinds of lives we lead, that which comes out of us, is certainly conditioned by what we have allowed in.

If nothing but the useless, ridiculous, trashy, even unGodly, is our main source of input, our lives will reflect that.  The output will be of the same ilk.  How could it be otherwise?  Of course, the opposite is true:  if what we allow into our hearts and souls is of the highest quality, then that is what will show up on our faces, coming out of our mouths when we speak, and shown in our living.

When I was up in Olathe a week ago, I went to a jazz concert with Ryan and his fiance, Amanda.  The concert was The Miles Davis Experience.  Miles Davis is one of the greatest jazz trumpeters/musicians, ever.  A speaker before the concert said that Miles Davis was a collaborator with other jazz greats--especially those who played instruments other than the trumpet.  The more Miles Davis understood those instruments, the more he would understand how his own fit in.  But he didn't want to find out about other instruments from just anyone.  Miles Davis was always pushing himself, musically.  So he didn't want to surround himself with mediocre musicians, but the best.  He felt like he wouldn't be pushed to be better unless he was surrounded by excellence.

I ponder my own "collaborations."  Pondering this, in relation to Paul’s words to the Philippians, I wondered about influences in my life that are leading to either mediocrity or excellence.  With whom do I collaborate as I strive for excellence in being human?  In being a more faithful Christian?  In being a pastor?  Who are the others whom I surround myself with, that either keep me at a level of mediocre living or the level of excellence that I wish to attain?  This calls for hard choices.  There are people who, by their mediocrity, would woo me to stay at that level.  Then everyone is satisfied in their mediocrity.  Our relationships have a lot to do with what kind of input we allow in, and what we don’t.  But what happens when, in our circle of relationships, we want more: excellence, for example?  Then hard choices must be made in terms of relationships.

These hard choices are what Paul is writing about in this letter.  Whatever type of influence we allow into our lives will yield a similar output from us.  Paul has given the Christians at Philippi a list of excellent and positive qualities they needed to let in to their interior life, so that it would affect their exterior living towards a more excellent life.  I would like to develop some thoughts around this list of healthy input.

The first quality that Paul says Christians are to input is whatever is true.  The word, true, in the Greek that Paul wrote, has many layers of meanings.

One layer is that to be true means to be genuine.  To be real and not fake.  It means not being like a used car salesman who pretends to be your newest best friend, but then turns around and takes advantage of you.  Genuineness has to do with bringing together what is on the outside of us with what is inside.  There has to be a sense of integrity and wholeness that rings true, rather than fake or shallow.

Another layer of being true means being upright and credible.  People want to know that they can count on you because you are an honorable person.  This means that you are a person of standards and values.  You have proper boundaries that you keep no matter what.  Holding to those high values and strong boundaries is what makes you credible.

And another layer of being true obviously carries the meaning that you can be trusted to tell the truth.  Amazingly, this is the part of being true for most people.  I’ve asked different adult Bible Study groups throughout the years, if it is possible to tell the truth all the time.  I like that one commercial that shows Abraham Lincoln, “honest Abe,” when his wife asks, “Does this dress make my backside look too big?”  He stands there, hems and haws, and finally holds up a tiny gap between his fingers muttering, “Maybe just a bit.”  And she storms out.  Telling the truth all the time, like Honest Abe, can be problematic.

Or there was a grandmother who was telling her 9 year old granddaughter the story of “The Beautiful Princess And The Frog.”  The grandmother started reading:
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who had a beautiful golden ball.  One day the golden ball fell into the well.  An ugly frog came along and retrieved it for her.  The beautiful princess was so grateful to the frog that she took it with her to her room in the palace.  During the night, the ugly frog turned into a handsome prince.

At that point in the story, the little girl said, “Hold it, just a minute, grandma!”
“What’s wrong,” the grandmother asked.  “Don’t you believe the story?”
“No!” the little girl replied.  “I don’t believe it, and I don’t think the Princess’ father believed it either!”

Sometimes even the truth is too incredible.  But the point is, it is our responsibility to fill our hearts and minds with as much of what is true as we can.  Think about what happens when we do the opposite, filling our minds with lies.  When we lie, we have two choices:  we either have to confess it; or, cover it up with another lie.  More lies are needed to support those lies.  Think of the effort it takes to keep a single lie alive.

Actor James Garner from the old TV series “Maverick” and “The Rockford Files” was asked what his greatest strength was.  He replied, without hesitation, “My honesty.”  But when he was asked about his greatest weakness, a big smile came over his face and he replied, “Lying about my honesty.”

How much more free we would be if part of our input would be things that are true, so that our output would be truth telling.

The second input that Paul lists is that of being noble or honorable.  The word “noble” was usually used in ancient times to describe the interior of temples and places of worship.  It was a word that described anything that had a state of dignity and holiness about it.

Paul wanted the believers to be the kinds of people who moved about in the world as if they were filled with the dignity and holiness like the inside of a sanctuary.  Paul wanted Christians to know they were, in actuality temples of the Holy Spirit, and when people came into contact with them, those people would go away with a sense of holy nobleness.

The third word on Paul’s list of positive inputs is justness or that which is reputable.  They are both words that describe the kind of person who has a high ethical standard and live by that standard.  They are highly moral people.

With high standards for morality comes a good reputation.  To be a person who has gained a good reputation means that you have probably had to make some hard decisions in the past.  There are many easy ways out of situations.  There are many ways that just go along with the crowd, pleasurable, comfortable, unreflective, and unthinking ways.  But in the long run, the many moral sacrifices and compromises made along the way will eventually pull you down.  Remember the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.  To fill your life with that which is just and give you a good reputation may mean going against the prevailing immoral winds of the world.  But by doing so, you will soar above it all.

Whatever is lovely is the fourth characteristic with which Paul suggests we fill our lives.  Paul is using this term in a unique way.  Normally we think of something lovely as that which draws us towards them:  a beautiful flower, leaves turning in the Fall, a work of art, a piece of music, an attractive person.

But the word that Paul is using means feeling love for that which may not necessarily be lovely.  It is the quality of loving, no matter what the objects of our loving feelings are.  It is that in us that is able to love--not the quality of something outside of us that is lovely in and of itself.

In the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, there is a conversation between two stuffed animals: the Skin Horse and Rabbit, that goes like this:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.  “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you; then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  “When you are real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” Rabbit asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to toys who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

So it is with the quality of loving that Paul is speaking to.  It doesn’t have anything to do with being attractive or even lovable.  It is the ability to show love even to the unlovely. It is the ability to pull or attract love and loveliness out of a person, and in that process make them lovable.

The next quality Paul suggests we fill our hearts with is graciousness.  This word has its origin in Jewish worship.  When the unblemished lamb was taken into the altar to be sacrificed for the sins of the people, everyone would wait outside in the sanctuary in a hushed state of prayer.

Paul is saying, then, that the kind of graciousness we need to input is like the hushed prayers of the people.  If you were to put the word into an awkward kind of definition, it would be “a gracious, hushed, prayerful kind of talking.”  It’s the quality of speaking, in which we say those kinds of things that are fit for God to hear, that don’t embarrass us or demean ourselves when we open our mouths.

The last quality mentioned by Paul is that which is worthy of praise and affirmation.  If our world is lacking in anything today, it is in this category.  There is an ongoing need for a ministry of affirmation and praise.  Of encouragement and support.  In our daily living, people find themselves more often being rejected and ridiculed in so many ways.  Why is it easier for us to tell others what’s wrong with them, rather than what’s right or good or admirable?

Jesus’ whole ministry was an example of affirmation and support.  He knew the power of an encouraging word, and how it went way further than a discouraging word in healing and acceptance.  When you look at the gospel accounts of Jesus’ conversations with people, the only ones he had a hard time with were the fault finders and the finger pointers.

So it is in our day.  It is so vital that people find the kind of affirmation that is in Christ.  The only ones who can give that kind of praise and encouragement is through you and I who say we are Jesus’ followers.  We are the ones who carry on Christ’s ministry of encouraging love.  In order to do that, says Paul, it is important to fill ourselves with a sense of praise, so that it will spill out on those around us.


Our minds and hearts will be filled with something, even by default if we aren’t careful.  Paul’s intention is that we choose the right kinds of qualities to be filled with.  When our thoughts are full of these positive characteristics, they are expanded and made richer by Christ.  The more we enrich our minds with these attitudes, the more Christ guides us to fully walk in his ways.  Let us be people full of truth, honor, good repute, lovableness, graciousness and affirmation, so that these qualities will flow out of us, and give praise to our Father in heaven.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Extreme Makeover

One of the shows I tend to watch on Saturday mornings is, “Sell This House.” This team comes to people who are trying to sell their homes, but haven't had any luck. The team walks into people’s homes that are full of clutter, or walls that are painted a gruesome color of orange or pink, or still have green shag carpet from the ’70’s. The team works with the family in terms of de-cluttering, repainting, reorganizing, and staging the house so it will be more attractive to prospective buyers. The before-and-after difference is usually fairly dramatic.

There’s a lot of those before-and-after shows on now. “The Biggest Loser,” “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Flip This House,” “Kitchen Makeover,” and the like. I think the main reason people like to watch those shows is because of the remarkable difference of what was before, and the new, remade version of the person or the place.

One of the common statements I hear on those shows is, “This has changed my life.” But I wonder. I'm sorry; I've gotten a bit cynical when I hear people say those kinds of things. I wonder if just because a person gets the interior of their house redone, or they shed 150 pounds that they really become different people. It’s entirely possible that you can lose 150 pounds and still be the same old cantankerous curmudgeon that you were before. You can get a whole new house and still remain a negative, back-stabbing, gossipy kind of person. So what’s really changed? Has life really, dramatically shifted for these people?

We are a culture so hung up on externals. If we have some major work done on our facade, we think it will also affect our heart and soul. A new dress, a new hairstyle, liposuction, or whatever, may change your mood for a short period of time, but do those kinds of changes really affect your character? You may redo a kitchen, or redecorate your home, but does that, at the same time, make you into a different human being? Do those kinds of outward, appearance changes really get deep down to who you are as a person?

Our externals orientation fools us into thinking that we can make deep changes with shallow tactics. It doesn’t take us very long, after an external change has been made, that we realize we are the same, empty, dissatisfied people we were before. Nothing meaningful has shifted.

So how can we make those deep shifts that really do help us to realize, “This has changed my life”? Paul was great about making these before-and-after descriptions. But Paul’s call for change always has to do with what’s basic to a human being, not what’s on the surface.

Like here in Ephesians. In these eleven verses. Here’s the “before” picture:
“the uncircumcision” (outsider)
without Christ
alienated
strangers
far away from God
barrier
the Law
two “men” (the old man and the new man)
hostile to God
having no hope
without God

This description is what you have to own up to, if you are going to buy into what Paul is saying here. This is the kind of person you were, at some time. I'm sure, if you're like me, you want to say, "I'm not that bad." Or you might say, "I grew up in the church and have never felt alienated from, or hostile to God." To that I say, then look at this before picture as what you would have become. All of us have this almost natural inclination to turn into this before picture at any time.

And here’s the “after” picture:
the “circumcision” (insider)
citizens
God’s household
brought near
broken down barrier
the Law canceled
one “man”
united to God

As you can see, this before-and-after list has nothing to do with how much you weigh or what your house looks like. It has to do with your relationships: your relationship to yourself, your relationship to others, and your relationship to God.

What’s interesting to me about these two lists is what Paul interlaced within them. In describing who we are, before-and-after, Paul says that Jesus “is our peace,” is “making peace,” and, “preached peace.” That’s how we move from the before picture to the after picture. The difference in who we are has to do with the peace of Christ. Peace in Jesus, made by Jesus, preached by Jesus, is the catalyst that makes the significant change from who we are, to what we can become.

The difference that Paul is describing has to do with inner peace, peace between ourselves and others, and being at peace with God. Think about your lives. Think about the kind of extreme makeover that would make a real difference in who you are. Does it not have to do with your sense of peace?

I would guess that those who are trying to alter their bodies, or alter their homes, in some quest of making an extreme makeover are really motivated by a search for peace. Peace with who they are. Trying to find peace with their place in this world of relationships. Longing to be at peace with God and things spiritual and eternal. Because THOSE are the things that really matter and are life changing, according to Paul.

So, peace with who you are. Peace with your place in the world of relationships. And peace with God. I'm only going to deal with the first level of peace this morning. Sorry, it's all I'll have time for.

Peace with yourself. The first truth about coming to a place of personal peace, according to Paul is to understand that Jesus is the one who puts us together. Being at peace has to do with whole-ness of personhood. Paul said that before we came to know Jesus, it was like we had this dividing wall within us. The wall was effective in many dysfunctional ways. Individually, the wall separated us from ourselves. That internal separation kept us from ever feeling whole, complete, or personally unified. Never quite fully ourselves. Always disjointed. Feeling uncompleted. In other words, never at peace with ourselves.

Paul uses an interesting image of this divided self. In the old Revised Standard Version of the Bible, or the King James, you’d see the terms “old man” and “new man” used in these verses. Paul uses that image throughout his letter to Ephesians. Within us is the “old man.” The old man does at least a couple of things in our internal processes.

First, the old man is the memory of all of our mess-ups and screw-ups. The old man is that part of us that won’t let us forget the things we’re ashamed of. Not only does the old man remember that stuff, the old man beats us over the head with it. The old man is that part of us that won’t let us forgive ourselves. Even though God and everyone else has forgiven us, the old man keeps whispering in our inner ear, “You don’t deserve it. Your past will drag you down the rest of your life.” That’s part of the old man’s tactics, says Paul.

The other thing the old man does to us is act as our inner critic. Those of you who are writers or artists know the inner critic all too well. It’s that nagging voice that you’ve never done good enough. This voice of the old man is the constant negative, criticism that makes us feel we will never do anything right, well, or worthwhile.

If you’re a fan of the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, you’ll remember that Calvin would often approach, with clip board in hand, his father telling him about the latest polls. In one series of strips, Calvin was looking at his clipboard, and saying to his father, “You’ll be glad to know I’ve analyzed your poor showing in the polls.”
His father, while reading the newspapers, says, “I’ll bet.”
Calvin continues: “See, your record in office is miserable and the character issue is killing you. Your basic approval rating among six-year-olds hardly registers.” Then Calvin says, “If anyone ever needed a slick ad campaign, it’s you.”
“Let me guess what you have in mind,” Calvin’s father says rolling his eyes.
“I call it, ‘The NEW Dad,’" says Calvin. "I worked up some slogans. See what you think.” Then Calvin reads the slogans off his clipboard to his father:
“Dad--Gradually he catches on.”
“Vote dad! This time, he’ll do better.”
“To forgive is divine--vote Dad.”

Calvin typifies the inner critic in us all. Clipboard in hand, we hear it’s voice about why we’re no good, unforgivable, or can’t do anything right. So when Paul talks about the “old man” that’s part of what he means: the legalist, beating yourself over the head with should's and oughts

But on the other side of this dividing wall is the "new man." The “new man” is that part of us that yearns for God, that longs for grace, that dreams about second chances. This dividing wall that Paul talks about separates that part of us that yearns to be at peace, from the part of us that can’t let go of the past, and badgers us with the inner critic. What Christ has done is break this wall down within us, so that the two come together. Under the power of Christ, the “old man” is subdued and usurped by the new man. Finally, all that the old man was, is gone. Then, Christ brings us to a place of inner peace with which to go out into the world, and engage all of our other relationships.

Paul says that in Jesus, that inner wall that is within each of us, is torn down, in Christ. In place of a divided self there is a self that is whole. One man, says Paul. In Jesus, we are put together. In Jesus, we come to that place of peace with ourselves. We never feel like we are coming at the world as a disjointed self.

In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy demanded that Linus change TV channels, threatening him if he didn't. "What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?" asks Linus.
"These five fingers," says Lucy. "Individually they're nothing but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold."
"Which channel do you want?" asks Linus. Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, "Why can't you guys get organized like that?"

That’s the inner sense of unity and peace we gain in Jesus. Apart from Jesus, we feel like five separated fingers. In Jesus, and the peace he gives us as individuals, all the parts come together, and feel stronger to stand up to the world.

Paul knew that if Christ is going to make a difference, it’s got to start in our own lives. It’s got to start with that inner part of us that always seems to feel dis-settled and disjointed. The divided self has to go. The only way to bring peace and a sense of wholeness is through Christ. In Christ, from that place of peace, we are ready to really live.