Monday, February 27, 2012

The Ten Commandments of Anger Management

"The 10 Commandments of Anger Management"
Matthew 5:21-22


You have heard that it was said to the men of old, "You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment."  But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, "You fool!" shall be liable to the hell of fire.


We embark on a Lenten sermon series about what are called the Seven Deadly Sins, or the Seven Capital Sins.  They are called the Capital sins because they are the sins from which all other sins flow.  And they are called the Deadly sins because it has been considered that if you harbor them in your spirit they are lethal to the soul's life in God.  They are fatal to our connection to the divine bliss both in this life and the life to come.  To hold on to any one of these seven is to condemn yourself to hellish states of existence in the afterlife.

The first of the seven that we'll take a look at this morning is anger.

People get angry.  Ministers are people.  Thus, even ministers get angry and say or do stupid things.  One country preacher found a dead mule on his lawn.  He phoned the state board of health to have it removed.  The young man who was taking down the information found out he was talking to a preacher.  So  the young man said, somewhat  snidely, "I thought preachers were supposed to take care of the dead."
The preacher replied, "Oh, we do, but I just thought I'd call and notify the next of kin."

We say and do things, when angry, that most of the time we wish we hadn't.  We wish we could take them back, but we can't.  It's interesting to me that the word "mad" has a couple of meanings.  First, someone could say to me, "I'm mad at you," meaning they are angry with me about something.  Or secondly, they could say, "Did you hear Wing's sermon; he's gone stark, raving mad."  Which would mean I've gone off the deep end.  Both meanings have to do with losing emotional control to some degree or another.

What are we supposed to do with our anger?  If anger is a basic human emotion, and our emotions were given to us by God as part of our humanity, then how can it be called a sin?  Especially a "deadly" sin?  When we think of sin, we usually think of choices--really bad choices--that people make that lead to their or others peril.  But if anger is a human emotion, it isn't a choice.  It is what is.  Therefore, the choice of anger is in how you handle what is.  If it is a basic human emotion then we need to talk in terms of "managing" our anger.  If anger is a deadly sin, then we need to talk in terms of eliminating it all together.

And where does Jesus' statement in the Sermon of the Mount fit in here:  mortal sin, or managed emotion?  Anger and insults seem like something manageable.  But the last statement about calling someone a fool, and being thrown into the fires of hell sounds fairly mortal to me.

What Jesus says there is if you call someone "Raca!" you're liable for the fires of hell.  No one knows what Raca means.  They think it means to be totally forsaken by God.  The inference being that if you get angry to the point that you make a judgment upon someone, telling them they are even unloveable by God, that's like playing God.  If our anger gets to the point that we play God, that makes God angry.  You don't want to do that.

I've read a lot about anger this week.  I want to relate a few major points of all that I've read to Jesus' short statement about anger, so we can figure out why anger is sinful.  In one of the articles, that talked about managing anger, I found what the author called, "The Ten Commandments of Anger Management."  I'm going to take his list of 10 and add some other material so that hopefully you can come to an understanding of your own anger and why the Lord wants you to keep it under control.

Here's the first one:  Recognize anger as a signal of vulnerability - you feel devalued in some way.

Our vulnerabilities are our tender places.  They are the places in our spirits where we've been hurt or damaged.  Others may know our vulnerable spots.  Most don't.  Some people don't even know their own vulnerabilities.  If you know another person well, you know where their soft spots are--where they hurt.  When we use terms like "pushing another person's button" we're really describing their soft spot.  It's their place of emotional pain.  You push someone else's button, and what happens?  They get angry.

They get angry because, first, you hurt them where they're already hurting.  But also they are angry because you took advantage of their vulnerability.  Which means we are feeling devalued.  We assume that you don't push on someone else's vulnerable spots whom you value.  If you get your button pushed you feel that you have no value in the pushers life.  So when we get angry, we're trying to protect ourselves, and our soft spots.  We use anger to regulate our vulnerability with another person.

But what we are tempted to do with our anger is retaliate by devaluing the person who devalued us.  They pushed our button.  Out of our anger, we push buttons back.  That leads to a hurtful spiral that destroys relationship.

I think that's part of what's behind Jesus' statement about anger.  If anger is about devaluing people, or used as a weapon hurt people where they are already vulnerable, and then to launch back and devalue an aggressor, then both lose, because the relationship suffers.  What Jesus was about was strengthening relationship bonds, especially amongst "brothers and sisters"--fellow disciples.

If this is true, that leads us to the second commandment of handling our anger:  When angry, think or do something that will make you feel more valuable, i.e., worthy of appreciation.
If you're playing the angry punching bag game, there are two ways to win.  Keep punching until the other gives up; but then has anyone really won?  Or put your hands to your side, and stop your defensiveness.

That's the stark teaching of Jesus about if someone slaps you on the one cheek, offer the other as well.  By offering your other cheek to be slapped, you are actually challenging the aggressor to NOT slap you.  By putting your hands to your sides, you are challenging them to be compassionate and end the fight.  It isn't a sign of being a wimp in a fight.  It's a sign of strength, challenging the other to put down their gloves of anger as well, and end the sparring in a non-angry way.

What makes a person feel more valuable than reestablishing relationship through compassion rather than anger?  Do you feel more valuable because you have brow beat a person into submission?  Or do you feel more valuable as a human being (and a disciple) because you saved a relationship in a non-angry way?

The third commandment of anger management is:  Don't trust your judgment when angry. Anger magnifies and amplifies only the negative aspects of an issue, distorting realistic appraisal.

One of the main reasons you can’t trust your judgment when angry is because of what’s happening in your body.  When you get angry your nervous system is activated and heightened.  Your heart rate elevates.  Your blood pressure elevates.  Your eyes dilate.  Your digestion halts, as more stomach acid is pumped into your digestive system to digest any food that may be there more quickly for energy use.  Pain messages to the brain are blocked.  A hormone, epinephrine, is secreted into your brain giving you a false feeling of invinceability.  And your throat is stimulated for shouting or roaring.

All of this interferes with your brain’s ability to effectively process information.  The reason your body is doing all this activation of bodily functions is because anger is a reaction to a threat.  You have evaluated another person as an enemy, your brain perceives that, and automatically kicks all those bodily functions into high gear, getting you ready to do battle.  Your body is getting ready, but in order to do that, your cognitive, thinking functions are decreasing.  So your real enemy, when you get angry, is within, not without.

What do you find you are saying, after the angry, combative juices stop flowing?  You find yourself saying, “I’m sorry.  I just WASN’T THINKING.”  And you know what?  You’d be right.  Because your body isn’t allowing you to think when angry.

Jesus doesn’t allow us to have enemies.  If you are angry, and if you are constantly angry, then you are treating too many people as the enemy.  We aren’t allowed that, as Christians.  We are to find another way.

The fourth commandment of anger management is:  Try to see the complexity of the issue. Anger requires narrow and rigid focus that ignores or oversimplifies context.

When we get angry we, because of our anger, only see things in black and white, good or bad, right or wrong.  Most of the time, issues are more complex than that.  As I just mentioned, our thinking brains get minimized when we’re angry, so we can’t process the grey areas of a situation.  Only when we calm down, and minimize the bodily functions that are going on, can our brains return to the more complex reasoning that we need to really see and deal with our anger producing situations.

Another part of understanding the complexity of the issues involved means understanding the circumstances of anger.  There are three parts to this.

First, there is the trigger event.  Something happens that sets you off.  Let’s use the example of being cut off by another driver while driving.  One little girl asked her father, when they were driving around, “Daddy, why do the jerks and idiots only come out while you’re driving?”  The problem here is that people mistakenly think the trigger event is the cause of their anger.

The second part, is your own individual character.  This has to do with your own personality, as well as your pre-anger state.  As far as your own personality, maybe you are a highly competitive person and you see driving as a competition with others on the road.  Or maybe you’re a narcissist, and the guy who cut you off doesn’t realize who you are, and affronted your superiority.  Or maybe you have a low-frustration tolerance and it’s not just driving--everything pushes your button.  Those are all personality traits that feed anger, totally apart from the trigger event.

And thirdly, and most importantly, our anger arises from our appraisal of the situation.  How we appraise or evaluate a situation will determine our level of anger.  What do I think it means that I was cut off in traffic?  We get angry simply because we personally evaluate the situation as blameworthy, unjustified, punishable, etc.  What happens if we stop and appraise the situation differently?  Our appraisal may not be accurate.  Are we willing to accept that, and thus, derail all our anatomic anger responses?

The fifth commandment goes along with this one:  Know that your temporary state of anger has prepared you to fight when you really need to learn more, solve a problem, or, if it involves a loved one, be more compassionate.

The sixth commandment is:  Strive to understand other people's perspectives. When angry you assume the worst or outright demonize the object of your anger.

Because our anger makes the other person out to be the enemy, a further step can be taken in which we equate that person with the devil.  They are evil incarnate.  They are inhuman.  They don’t deserve to be treated humanely.  Again, we aren’t allowed by Jesus to have enemies.  And we certainly are not allowed to play God and decide, in our anger, who deserves to be demonized.

The seventh commandment is:  Don't justify your anger. Instead, consider whether it will help you act in your long-term best interest.

This is a process that happens after you have already been angry and words and maybe other household items have been let fly.  You’ve cooled down.  You understand, alarmingly, that you’ve been an idiot.  Now what do you do?  Do you try and justify your actions?  Do you rationalize in order to save face?  Or do you, because it would serve the long term interest of the relationship you just harmed, to confess and ask forgiveness?

Commandment number eight is:  Know your physical and mental resources. Anger is more likely to occur when tired, hungry, sick, confused, anxious, preoccupied, distracted, or overwhelmed.

This goes along with the fourth commandment, where I was talking about knowing your own individual characteristics.  Part of that is assessing your pre-anger state.  Were you tired?  Do you get angry most often when you are tired?  Are you really anxious about something else, and anger is simply being used as a way to discharge your heightened anxiety.  For example, if you were just driving back from the doctor’s office and they found an ominous “shadow” on your MRI, your anxiety is bound to be elevated.  Self protection ramps up, and you are more likely to get angry as a way to deal with it.  Or, in your pre-anger state, were you already angry about something else?  One anger just fed into another.

The ninth commandment says:  Focus on improving and repairing rather than blaming. It's hard to stay angry without blaming and it's harder to blame when focused on repairing and improving.

Anger and blame are the peddlers of the tandem bike of a bad situation.  We’re not wrong, bad, selfish, inconsiderate!  It’s that so-and-so.  That so-and-so may be your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your co-worker, your client.  Fearlessly ask yourself, “OK; what was my part in this escalating bad situation?”  And deal with it, as a responsible, Christian human being.  At some point, in the midst of anger you have to decide between two choices:  Do I want to be right?  Or, do I want to keep the relationship with this other person?

And the tenth and final commandment is:  When angry, remember your deepest values. Anger is about devaluing others, which is probably inconsistent with your deepest values.

I think this is the most important, and the one that gets at the heart of Jesus’ words about anger clearest.  That which will protect you against anger the best is remembering your core values as a Christian.  To get angry to the point of demeaning and devaluing another human being; to get angry to the point of treating another person as an enemy--even and especially those we love; to get angry to the point of making another person out to be the devil, and judging as if you are God, is all against the basic, core values of who you profess to be as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

If you are an angry person, if you get angry often and ferociously, then you better ask yourself a really tough question:  Have I really turned my life over to Christ or not?  Have I fully and faithfully made Christ’s core values my own?  Constant and demeaning anger points to a negative answer to those questions.

That’s why anger is such a deadly sin.  This kind of anger goes so against the core values of who we are as Christians, it kills faith.  It kills life in the church.  It kills our relationship with God, won for us at such a high price through Jesus Christ.

That's why anger is a deadly sin.

Monday, February 20, 2012

X Marks the Spot

"X Marks the Spot"
Matthew 17:1-9


I remember one time as a boy, when my father and I were driving into Seattle on the new floating bridge across Lake Washington.  He took an uncharacteristic diversion.  My father was a point A to point B kind of driver.  The exit he took wasn’t anywhere near where point B was, so I was a bit confused.  He asked me if I wanted to see the house where he lived as a boy, near the University of Washington.  I said, “Sure,” even though the decision had already been made.

I just remember that for some reason it was important for my father to show me this particular place out of his past.  What the reason was for this little side trip, I don’t know.  I was probably 11 or 12, and I was too caught up in my own kid thoughts to care.  I wish I had been paying more attention, so I would remember not just that my father had taken an odd side trip, but why it was important to him.  I never even thought to ask.  Now, I’ll never know.

I didn’t realize how important places could be for us, and how we have this need to share those places with another we think might understand.  Those places are all surrounded and infused with memories.  When I was living out my younger life, I didn’t understand that memories were being made.  Our memories become like an old parchment map upon which specific places are marked with an X where the treasure is buried.

One of the X’s the disciple Peter had on his treasure map of memories was this undistinguished mountain where he and two of his fellow disciples saw something extraordinary.  I’ve been there.  I’ve seen it.  We were driving down from Caesarea and Mt. Carmel, a place associated with Elijah the prophet.  We were in a tour bus passing this oversized hill.  Kind of a mini-mountain.  It was pock marked with rocks, and a scruff of low bushes on its sides that looked like a large man’s face with a three week growth of beard.  Our tour guide, Joseph, pointed it out as we were driving by, telling us over the loud speaker that it was the Mount of Transfiguration.  We didn’t get to go up there; I can’t remember why.

I remember looking at it and thinking about the story.  The first line of the story here in Matthew talks about how Jesus took three disciples, “...and led them up a very high mountain.”  I’m here to tell you, it’s not very high.  You read a line like that and you think the Rockies.  Here’s a picture of it.  It is a mountain, but not like we think of mountains.  It wouldn’t just be a small hike to get to the top of it.  No nice manicured trails with pleasant switchbacks.  It wasn’t, as I looked at it from the tour bus window, a mountain you just meander up.

It wasn’t because of its height; it was it’s terrain.  Rocky and scrub brush covered.  There was no good way to get up it.  It would have been a hard, tedious climb.  I could imagine the disciples grousing and complaining, asking Jesus repeatedly if they were really going all the way to the top.  Weren’t they far enough up for prayer time?  Were they there yet?  When Matthew tells us that Jesus led them up the mountain, it wasn’t a fun little hike.

They would have been pooped by the time they got to the top.  It would have been a great view once atop the mountain, overlooking Meggido Valley.  I’m sure the only view they were looking at was their tired feet and their aching bodies.

That’s one of the reasons I really like this odd story.  The disciples hike with Jesus is what the Christian life is really like.  It’s what life with Jesus really is.  We turn our lives over to Christ and we think the toughness is going to drain out of life.  Oh, we think to ourselves, there may be a hill to climb here and there, but the climb will be easy, and the terrain will be all good footing.  And when we get there we’ll have this wonderful prayer time with Jesus.

Yet that’s not the way it turns out, does it?  Life with Jesus doesn’t get easier.  A lot of times it gets more difficult  The harshness of life doesn’t go away or leave us alone.  The rolling hills we expected turn out to be mountains.  The way up is a hard climb with no clearly marked path to follow.  Just Jesus.  He’s the path.  We end up following a man, not a path.

By the time we get to the top, we could care less about having prayer time, or some great spiritual experience.  We’re tired and cranky and sore in body and spirit.  Any expectations for a great spiritual life with Jesus went out the window half way up the mountain.

But then something happened that changed all their sense of drudgery, achiness and grumbling.  Jesus changed.  I’m not sure what time of day it was.  But all of a sudden it was as bright as high noon.  The light wasn’t coming from the sun, though.  It was coming from Jesus.  It was coming from his clothes, his face.  Instead of complaining anymore, or thinking only about himself, Peter is gushing:  “Master, this is a great moment!  How good it is that we are here!”

Here.  In this place.  The significance wasn’t being lost on Peter, James and John.  They wanted to build three memorial stones to mark the place.  In 1992, driving by, I looked up at that mountain, thinking that some place up there, lost now to everyone else, an ordinary, rocky, scruffy place became holy and markedly unordinary.  Up there, Jesus, Peter, James, and John had a mostly indescribable experience.  Up there, somewhere amongst the stones and bushes, Peter was changed.  A place of achiness and complaining became a place of light and a place where the voice of God was clearly heard; a place where Jesus was clearly seen for who He is.  There, three unassuming, unexpectant, cranky disciples witnessed an unbelievable, unspeakable sight.  That place became a “holy here.”

Places are important not only because of the memories of what happened at those places, but also because of the people who have shared those places with us.  Places have historic significance where some events have happened that ended up creating an identity for us by God.  Then God provided the continuity of that identity across our life spans.  It has been at these particular places that important words have been spoken, tears have been shed, vows have been spoken and promises made, identity has been formed or honed, vocation has been defined, or a destiny has been brought into clearer vision.

One lady in a church I served came to me asking help for what she called her “sin of idolatry.”  She had recently lost her husband to cancer after 40 years of marriage.  She spent a couple of months of quiet and reflection with her sister in another state, letting the Lord take care of her grief.  One Sunday, after she had returned home, she came into the sanctuary a little late for worship.  She found a new young couple sitting in the place where she and her husband had sat for so many years.

She went on to explain to me, “For thirty-eight years I shared that pew with my husband.  I know it’s idolatrous, pastor, but I feel God is closer to me there than any where else.  There is nowhere else like that pew on earth.”

I would guess that maybe some of you have similar feelings associated with a place in the pew in this sanctuary.  Many people find strength and serenity when they are seated in their place.  It’s almost like God comes and sits down beside you when you have a place like that.

One of the reasons that is so, besides the place itself, is who we share the place with.  A place is important because of the others who are there.  Peter, James, and John got to be in on the amazing vision of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah together.  Remember Peter said, “Master, this is a great moment!  How good it is that WE are here!”  Here is where WE have been touched.  Here is where it is that WE, together, have a shared memory.  That is such an important point for congregations to understand.  Important places, and the experiences we have in them have a we-ness about them, where, together, as a community of believers, God makes Himself known.

In a book about ministry in smaller churches, Carl Dudley wrote, “Those congregations who care only for themselves are becoming smaller and smaller.  Eventually their place will have no meaning because they haven’t shared it with anyone else.”  One of the great ministries of any congregation is sharing and giving a place to those who have none.  The way that happens best is by sharing the great stories of what has happened to you in that place with those who don’t know those stories.  Indeed, faith may not be able to develop fully when the person has no place.  When we help people find their places we may be helping them come into contact with holy experiences of their own.

The widow I just mentioned ended up doing a beautiful thing.  The next Sunday she shared her spot in the pew with that young couple.  She told them a part of the story of how she and her husband made that a holy place.  She shared not only the pew, but part of her memories with the couple.  The young couple “took up residence” with the woman in that pew and the three of them became very close friends.  I like to think that some day, 40 years in the future, that young couple, then old, will do the same for some new young couple.

That’s why Peter looked back at this event on the bushy mountain top, where he witnessed the brilliance of Christ with his friends, and wrote in his second letter:

We weren’t, you know, just wishing upon a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ.  We were there for the preview!  We saw it with our own eyes:  Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father as the voice of Majestic Glory spoke:  “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight.”  We were there on the holy mountain with him!  We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears!  We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard--God’s glory, God’s voice.  The prophetic word was confirmed to us.  You’ll do well to keep focusing on it.  It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts.  (2 Peter 1:16-20, EHP)

Here Peter recounts that memorable place and event for those who may not have known about it.  He’s had a few years to think about what happened in that place, and everything it meant not just for him but for the whole church.

It was clearly a pivotal event for Peter in his own faith development.  When Peter was writing this letter, the church was under fire.  Christians were leaving the church, afraid of torturous persecution.  It was an extremely hard time to be a Christian.  So Peter shares this memory of an amazing day, on an ordinary mountain with a life changing Savior who would come again in that same blinding light, making everything right.  Peter’s memorable experience helped Christians and the church hold on in desperate times.

Thanks be to God, who in everyday places, at ordinary times, when we least expect it, meets us, transforming those places, and us, with His brilliant presence.

Monday, February 13, 2012

A Healing Look

"A Healing Look"
Mark 1:40-45


Every once in a while I run across a writer who has a unique way of describing a character’s face.  In one story, the author wrote, “Her face was as white and colorless as an icicle.”  It gives you the shivers just thinking of a face like that.  Irvin Cobb once described a character with the line, “His face looked like a face that had refused to jell and was about to run down on his clothes.”  Joseph Lincoln wrote about a character whose “face fell like a cookbook cake.”  One of my favorites is from an Oliver Wendell Holmes story in which he described a man who had “a face that looked like it had worn out four bodies.”

Isn’t it amazing how quickly we evaluate a person by just glancing at their face?  In an instant we decide if we want to keep looking at their face or turn away.  No words or thoughts; it’s all on the feeling, intuitive level.  We, just like that, make a judgment as to a person’s appeal from a quick scan of their face.

That scan would have been even more instantaneous if you were looking at the face of a leper.  The disease of leprosy appears all over the victim’s body, but is most prominent on the toes, fingers, and face.  Let’s say one of our members came down with leprosy.  Who should we give leprosy to?  Let’s give it Tonie Graber.

Now it takes a few years for leprosy to fully settle in.  At first we just notice Tonie’s face and hands are getting a little blotchy.  Little pinkish, discolored patches would appear on her skin.  Those slowly turn brown.  The skin underneath begins to thicken into tiny nodules that gradually begin to enlarge.

We don’t think too much about it.  But after a couple of years her face and fingers are getting all lumpy.  The lumps are really ugly, and they are beginning to disfigure the beauty of her face.  There is no cure.  She is helpless in the progression that is transforming her beauty into repulsive ugliness.

A couple more years and Tonie is totally unrecognizable.  A smelly discharge is constantly running down her face.  She’s lost a lot of fingers.  Toes have fallen off and she’s having trouble walking.  Her nose is one big sore and it’s basically gone.  Her eyebrows have fallen off.  Her lips have disappeared into a mass of pustule sores.  She can barely get a few words out because her throat and mouth are full of nodules.

We all know and love Tonie.  We know that underneath that repugnant exterior is a wonderful, faithful person.  She is Tonie, beautiful and talented Tonie.  But we can’t see her anymore.  All we see is a disease.  She is so hard to look at, it’s not even a face a mother can love anymore.  Is she Tonie or is she a leper?  Before, you would have had no problem looking at her, talking with her face-to-face.  After...what about after?  For Tonie, how awful it would be, to know she was the same as she’s always been, but her exterior body has been taken over by horrific disease.

Lucy Grealy has written one of the most powerful memoirs I’ve read, titled, An Autobiography of a Face.  It’s her own story from the time when she was nine years old.  At the age of nine she was diagnosed with bone cancer in the jaw.  She had to have a lot of the jawbone on the right side of her face removed.  Then began a long progression of surgeries trying to reconstruct that side of her face.  With no jawbone, the right side of her face had collapsed.  (Feel the line of your own jawbone; imagine it not there, what your face would look like.)  She wrote about that time:

This singularity of meaning--I was my face, I was ugliness--though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape.  It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life.  Everything led to it, everything receded from it--my face as personal vanishing point.  The pain other children brought with their stares engulfed every other pain in my life.  (page 7)

What happened for Lucy Grealy or for a leper is that you don’t have to look in a mirror to see your reflection.  Your reflection is given back to you every time you look into the face of someone staring at you.  You see, in their look of disgust, exactly what you look like.  Lucy Grealy wrote:

I felt there was something empty about me.  I didn’t tell anyone, not my twin sister, not my closest friends, that I had stopped looking in mirrors.  I found that I could stare straight through a mirror, allowing none of the reflection to get back at me … My trick of the eye was the result of my lifelong refusal to learn how to name the person in the mirror.  (page 221)

People like Lucy Grealy, or like the leper, probably also learned how to look through people’s staring so they didn’t have to see their reflection in the looks of horror.  How is Lucy Grealy or a leper supposed to name themselves apart from their reflections?  Who are they apart from their faces?  They are persons with feelings and thoughts and dreams and hopes.  But we never see that person because we can’t bear to look at them.

Lucy wrote these biting words of truth at the end of her book:

Society is no help.  It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else, only to leave our original faces behind to turn into ghosts that will inevitably resent and haunt us.  (page 222)

So, every time we are looking into another face, we are looking into a mirror by which we judge if we are acceptable or appealing.  If we don’t like what we see, by the way they are looking at us, or not looking at us, we try to change our face into something else, desperately hoping we will be noticed and accepted.

In the process, we are so afraid of what we will see in other’s faces that we are becoming a society that won’t look each other in the eye.  Email, texting, instant messaging, Facebook, all of that allows us the freedom from that fear by communicating with each other in a non face-to-face manner.  We can have a conversation and never have to worry about what we might see in someone else’s face when they look at us.

There is a whole other level to all this.  We don’t have to have leprosy or be disfigured by jaw cancer to worry about being seen as repulsive.  For example, let’s say you have a friend or spouse you can tell most anything to.  One day, you tell your friend about an incident in your life that is revolting and repulsive to you.  You know you are taking a huge risk.  You are taking a risk of “face”--of keeping face.

After getting this burden off your chest to your friend, what will that friend’s face reflect back to you?  Will it reflect disdain?  Disrespect?  Revulsion?  You may not be an ugly person, as beauty and handsomeness goes, but the ugliness of some past act, now known by another, may make you look like a leper to the other person.  Now, every time you look in your confidant’s face, you will be looking for a reflection or facial inflection of how they are “seeing” you.

Or if you feel like you’ve done something “leprous” everyone knows about, every time you walk down the halls of school, or the halls of work, or the sidewalks of town, or the halls of church, you are looking into each face that is looking at you, and you feel you know exactly what they are seeing.  Lepers know how you feel about them by the way you look at them.  Or, refuse to look at them.

This leper in Mark’s story came and fell at Jesus’ feet.  He probably didn’t even dare look up at Jesus because he thought he knew what he’d see in Jesus’ face.  He’d seen the look of horror and disgust a hundred times before.  He didn’t need one more.

The kneeling man with leprosy had to be surprised when he felt a hand on his shoulder.  Another human being probably hadn’t touched him in years.  Jesus looked into the man’s leprous face and what the man saw being reflected back to him was not disgust but compassion.  Not pity but respect.  Just that look from Jesus must have been healing in and of itself.  Imagine feeling so alone, so isolated, so ridiculed and then seeing someone look at you with compassion, with deep feeling and caring emotion.

Out of Jesus’ compassion the man found healing.  But let’s not be fooled about what that healing meant.  What if it didn’t mean the man’s fingers and toes grew back?  What if it didn’t mean the man’s nose magically reappeared on his face.  Or that it didn’t mean his eyebrows instantaneously grew back fuzzy and full.  The man remained as he had become, but he was disease free.  The deadly progression of it had been permanently halted.

If that were the case, we may be forced us to ask the question, “What is the most important part of healing?”  If Jesus’ healing doesn’t restore us back to our pre-disease state, but leaves us with scars, what’s the purpose of being healed?  For Lucy Grealy, when all the operations were over and nothing more could be done, and her face was still somewhat collapsed on the right side, her sense of healing came down to one question.  She was looking at some old pictures of herself, from a time when she had just had the first surgery to remove the section of cancerous jawbone.  “When I see those photos,” she wrote, “I am now filled with questions I rarely allowed myself to ask, such as, how do we go about turning into the people we were meant to be.”

Maybe that’s the answer to what is really healed for the man with leprosy by Jesus.  And possibly for us all.  Even though some scars remain, we are given a new chance to become someone, or something, that we didn’t have the chance to be before.  The man with leprosy was healed with the chance to redefine the rest of his future.

We all have scars.  Some are physical.  Some are emotional.  But scars are places that have been healed.  They are no longer active wounds.  Christ has touched us--touched our wounded places, looked upon them--and allowed us to live--even triumph!--over our wounds and the disillusionment that came with those wounds.  Christ wants us to live even with our scars staring us in the face.  Because of Jesus’ healing look and touch, the past is behind us.  A new future is before us.

When you look yourself over in the mirror, you can still concentrate on the scars.  Or, you can rejoice that because of Christ, you are healed, and you are free to be alive in a new way.  That you have been given the opportunity to become the person you were meant to be.

Monday, February 6, 2012

"At the House of Peter"

At the House of Peter
Mark 1:29-34


I’ve been to Capernaum.

It was an overcast and drizzly day.  The first part of the day, our tour group took a boat ride on Galilee Lake.  It is a lake, not a sea.  It just so happened a squall came up, whipping up some semi-truck sized waves.  While we were out in the middle of the lake, our tour guide, Joseph, a Palestinian Christian, came over the loudspeaker system on the boat.  He said, “I’m sorry, folks, but a storm has come up.  We’ll have to get out and walk from here.”  Then after a pause, he added, “Well, you are true believers aren’t you?”

At the end of the cruise we were to dock at Capernaum on the north end of Galilee Lake.  But the storm was severe enough that it capsized the dock.  We had to put back to shore where we started out.  Busses came to transport us to Capernaum.

There was still a fairly good rain coming down when we arrived.  Most people in the group ran out, snapped a few pictures and scurried back to the warmth of the bus.  I grew up in Seattle.  I’ve never let a little rain stop me from doing anything I wanted to do.  I figured I had come half way around the world to see the Holy Land.  I wasn’t going to be held back by the rain, or just settle looking at the sights from a rain spattered bus window.

Walking into Capernaum, the first building I came to was the ruins of the synagogue.  Most of the outer walls were gone, except the front wall.  The building looked to be about the same size as our sanctuary, but was rectangular in shape.  A row of stone pillars stood a quarter of the way into the interior on both sides.  Stone benches were all around the interior wall.  There were a couple of stone benches in the front.  I think I remember Joseph the tour guide saying those were reserved for dignitaries, Pharisees, or visiting Rabbi’s.  Jesus could have sat on one of those front stone benches.  The people who came for worship would have had to stand the entire service.

I stood in front, off to one side, trying to imagine Jesus sitting there, being introduced, and standing to address the worshippers.  Then, as Mark tells it, a man with an evil spirit came running in, frothing at the mouth with madness, screaming at Jesus at the top of his voice.  In my imagination, I watched the standing worshippers part like the Red Sea as the mad man stalked toward Jesus.  I watched Jesus standing calmly, but resolutely, as the man, nose-to-nose with Jesus, screamed in his face, “I know who you are: you are God’s holy messenger!”

Imagine what it would be like, to have someone screaming in your face.  Maybe some of you don’t have to imagine.  You’ve had someone berate you at point blank range.  And it wasn’t a madman.  It was someone you loved or you thought loved you.

The rain hitting my borrowed umbrella became a tense drumbeat, heightening the tension in the scene I was imagining.  I saw Jesus smile, then command the demon out of the man, leaving him limp, but free, at Jesus’ feet.

My heart was thumping as I walked back out down the middle of the rain soaked synagogue.  The vision I had just seen washed away like a water color painting.

I walked out and down the path towards the excavated town of Capernaum.  What first caught my eye was a huge sanctuary, round and modern, looking like some ET space ship hovering above a place in town.  Because Capernaum was the hometown of the apostle Peter, the building was a church that had been built in honor of him.  The altar inside sat on a glass floor.  Looking through the windowed floor, I could see right into what was believed to be Peter’s home.

The town was a honeycomb of interconnected homes that shared outer and inner walls.  Peter’s home was about the size of our chancel area here in the front of the sanctuary.  The whole town was about the size of the land our church and parking lot sits upon.  Narrow lanes made their way in and out of the honeycombed town.

Looking down through the glass altar floor, I imagined Peter’s mother-in-law curled up in a corner of the small room.  She was shivering from fever, covered by home spun blankets.  I saw Jesus come in, with Peter and the three other new disciples.  They followed Jesus with worried looks.  I saw Jesus stoop down, put out his hand and lift her up, free from her illness.

Then I watched as she became a whirlwind of activity.  She stoked the fire.  She peeled the potatoes.  She milked the goat.  She measured the flour.  She set the table.  She had been freed to carry out her service of the everyday, mundane tasks of a Palestinian woman.

I thought to myself that that is probably what I would do, what I would want if I was in the death grips of some illness.  I would long to be able to get back to my normal, everyday life as a Pastor.  I would long for my ordinary life; but after being healed, I would know it would be different.  I would be different.  A certain holiness would have been infused into my everyday because I had been healed.  That’s what I saw in Peter’s mother-in-law as I imagined her scurry about, a bit lighter in her step, music being hummed on her lips.

I walked out of the flying saucer sanctuary and strolled through the little town.  I finally came to, and stood in front of Peter’s house.  It was late afternoon.  The rain clouds gathered again.  My imagination caught hold.  I saw people coming from all over town, gathering with me in front of that door.  “All the people of the town gathered around the door of the house,” Mark the gospel writer wrote.  It would have been at least a couple of hundred people.  I was standing right in the middle of them.

So many hands, reaching, demanding, “Me, Jesus; touch me, Jesus; heal me, Jesus.”  All trying to seize the moment--a holy carpe diem.  There, in front of Peter’s house, Jesus is the moment they are trying to seize.  He touches them all, grasping each hand, holding on to them for a moment as if they are the only one.  He is oblivious to all the obvious others, looking into each individual’s eyes, healing them, calling out their demons.

In the push-and-shove of the crowd, I suddenly realize I am the only one who was not reaching out to be touched by Jesus.  My arms were slack at my side.  I was merely a spiritual voyeur.  I had come to the Holy Land looking for answers and peace.  The whole trip had fallen into my lap, a last minute gift from a minister friend in Georgia whose wife couldn’t go.  At that time in my life everything was crumbling.  I was standing on the threshold of a devastating divorce.  My preaching voice had gone dry.  I was angry about everything and didn’t know why.  Joy was just a word that followed “jowl” in the dictionary.

There I was, in the middle of the expectantly clamoring crowd, all of them demanding healing from Jesus.  But I stood as still as a pillar that I had just seen in the ruined synagogue.  I was too proud to reach out my hand.  These people had real problems--they were really sick, they were crazy with demons.  Me, I was just full of the crap of life that happens to everyone.

Then he was standing right in front of me.  Jesus had his hands steepled in front of his chin and lips like this.  He was staring at me.  Smiling an odd smile.  I couldn’t look at him.  I knew in my heart this is why I had come.  People who had been to Israel told me there would be holy moments, unexpected experiences of the sacred.  Here it was.  Here he was, staring me in the face and I couldn’t bear to look.  I felt the warmth of my tears beginning to mingle with the coldness of the raindrops on my face.

He simply asked, “What do you want?”
I shook my head, looking at the mud at my feet, and all’s I could mutter was, “I don’t know.”
“I know,” he said.  “I know what you need.”  He clasped the sides of my shoulders, I felt his strength, and I fell into his arms sobbing.  It was like all the pent up poison I had stored for years, tears from abuse, tears from loneliness, tears of rejection, tears of foolishness and failures, tears of sin, remorse and regret--all of it flowed out of me.  Tears I had never cried.  Tears I was never allowed to cry.  Tears I wouldn’t allow myself to cry.  It was like he was absorbing it all into himself.  There, in front of Peter’s house, standing with all the hungering others, I was being given what I needed most and wouldn’t reach out for.

As I was standing there, feeling the release from all my toxic tears, wondering why I had initially held back, why anyone would hold back from reaching out to Jesus, I heard my name being called.  It was my friend, Jay, saying the bus was getting ready to leave.  I said I’d be right there.  I was soaked and I was shivering.  But I realized the numbness that had been my character up to that day was gone.  I was beginning to feel alive.  “I am alive!”  I shouted up to the falling raindrops.  “Thank you, Jesus,” I whispered, facing the door of Peter’s home.

I picked up the umbrella, and ran back to the bus.