Monday, April 27, 2015

Your Own Worst Critic

"Your Own Worst Critic"
1 John 3:18-24

I once talked with a woman who was telling me about her husband’s criticism.  Nothing she did was right, at least in his eyes.  He was most harsh with her when they were in public.  He would constantly badger her about what he saw as her shortcomings, while others looked on in sympathy and concern.  She felt humiliated and small.

I asked her how she handled it.  She said she didn’t know how she could face being in public with him, so she came up with the idea of carrying around a hand towel.  Whenever he made a humiliating, critical remark to her, she took out the towel and put it over her head.  Finally, he was so embarrassed at being with his towel covered wife, he stopped.  But, she said, even though the public criticisms had stopped, she could still see the criticalness in his eyes.  He wasn’t saying anything anymore, but he was thinking it.

You might be imagining how awful that would be to live with a husband or wife like that.  Or a boss.  Or child.  Or whomever.  Having to be around someone who is always telling you your faults and shortcomings seems an unbearable emotional load.  How do people keep going, under the deluge of relentless verbal putdowns?

Just about all of us should be able to answer that question, because most of us live with such a person.  Most of us live with someone who is constantly fault-finding.  Most of us live with someone who attacks us, condemns us, and seeks to knock us down emotionally and spiritually nearly everyday.  Most of us probably know exactly how that woman felt.  Most of us could probably carry around a towel and throw it over our heads when we are critically attacked.

Even when this person isn’t laying into us with another critical verbal barrage, we, like the woman, can see it in their eyes.  All we have to do is stand in front of a mirror and look into our own faces.  Because this overly critical person we are living with is ourselves.

In the comic strip Peanuts, Linus turned to Lucy, who was sitting next to him, and asked, “Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?”
Her response was typical Lucy:  “I just think I have the knack for seeing other people’s faults.”
Exasperated, Linus threw his hands up and asked, “What about your own faults?”
Without hesitation, Lucy answered, “I have a knack for overlooking them.”

Most of us don’t have the “knack” that Lucy does.  That is, being prone to overlooking our own faults.  If you’re like me, the opposite is probably true.  We are more ready to overlook someone else’s faults or mistakes, than we are our own.  With ourselves we are unremitting and tireless with our critical eye.

I was reading one article this week that names this self-critical part of ourselves, “the committee.”  The “committee” is your inner critic, with a host of voices accumulated from our past, that won’t shut up.  It’s the “committee” that keeps trying to remind you that you’re not good enough, not perfect enough.  It’s the “committee” that is always trying to sabotage your best efforts.

And in another article, the author wrote, “Having that inner critic is like sitting at a table and negotiating with a terrorist.”  I like that image.  No matter what good it is that you are building in life, we allow the inner terrorist to sneak in, plant a bomb of criticism and blow it up.  No matter what kind of healthy relationships we are trying to bond, we allow the inner terrorist to come along and sabotage those relationships to the point that they are irreparable. 

Did you notice those two little words I used in describing how the inner terrorist works?  They were the words, “we allow.”  In reality, the inner critic, or the inner terrorist, or the committee, or whatever you want to call it, is not some other person doing it to us; we allow it to do its work, speak its words, place its emotional bombs.  We, believe it or not, enable the inner terrorist, the committee, the inner critic.  We allow it to do what it does to us.  It is ourselves, doing it to ourselves.

I’m so glad John wrote something about the inner terrorist, the committee, in his letter.  If you have your Bibles open to this passage, you will notice that he wrote about self-criticism in the context of a larger teaching about love.

My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love.  This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it.  For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.  And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God.

John piles up three phrases that are synonyms for each other that he uses to describe the authentic life:  “practice real love,” “living truly,” and, “living in God’s reality.”  John knows that people want life at its best.  People want to live a good life.  John knows that that good life, in order for it to be good, has to be filled with love and truth and that which is of God.

John also realized that there is a lot that gets in the way of that kind of authentic life from happening.  Or rather, as I said before, there is a lot that WE ALLOW to get in the way from a Godly, loving, and true life from being ours.  And one of the main things, says John, that WE ALLOW to get in the way of life happening is “debilitating self-criticism” and “accusing or condemning ourselves.”

One popular magazine wrote this disclaimer in the “Letters To The Editor” section:
Doctor’s mistakes are buried, lawyers’ mistakes are imprisoned, accountants’ mistakes are fined, dentists’ mistakes are pulled, pharmacists’ mistakes get sick, plumbers’ mistakes get stopped up, electricians’ mistakes are shocking, carpenters’ mistakes are sawdust.  But just in case you find any mistakes in this magazine, please remember they were put there for a purpose.  We try to offer something for everyone.  Some people are always looking for something or someone to criticize, and we don’t want to disappoint them.

John realizes the same thing.  People are always looking for something and someone to criticize.  If you are like most people, at one time or another you have managed to put your foot in your mouth.  It usually happens when we are being critical of another person.

For example, there was a man sitting in the concert hall listening to a soloist perform.  He turned to the man sitting next to him and remarked, “What a terrible voice!  Do you know anything about her?”
“Yes,” the man answered; “She’s my wife.”
Trying to do some back peddling, the man choked out, “Oh, I beg your pardon.  Of course, it isn’t her voice, really.  It’s the stuff she has to sing.  I wonder who wrote that awful song?”
“I did,” was the answer.

We may be constantly critical of others, opening our mouths to change feet, but the truth of the matter, as John saw it, is that even our criticalness of others has its roots in our own inner critic.  We make life so hard on others because we are making it so hard on ourselves.  We are only projecting out, on to others, the categories of our own self-judgement.  We are only becoming the committee for others, because we have the committee inside of us.  We only assault others, because we have this inner terrorist, laying waste our own lives.

Self-judgement puts us in a prison cell--a tight spot--and attempts to bring others into that same cell with us.  It ends up destroying any semblance of love, relationship, and eventually life itself--life as God wants us to truly and really enjoy.

John describes the life of living in a prison cell of self-criticism in two ways.  He says it is to live with “worried hearts.”  Worry often has to do with things that don’t exist, or don’t have as much emotional weight as we give them.  Our inner terrorist can take this to the extreme, especially when we’ve done something we have evaluated as wrong or bad.  Instead of worrying about the negative action or words themselves, worry and the inner terrorist combine to make this huge jump in our minds.  Instead of saying to ourselves, “I’ve done something bad,” we say, “I am a bad person.”  Worry keeps us from looking simply at the mistake, and moves us into the emotionally laden and destructive self-talk that tells us there’s something deeply wrong with who we are as a person.

The other way John describes the prison cell of self-criticism is by saying that it is created because we really don’t know ourselves, or see ourselves, as God sees and knows us.  None of us sees the big picture about anything in life.  That is more true about seeing the big picture of who and what we are.  We take a part of us and think we are seeing the whole of us.  And usually the part of us we look at is the negative.  Thinking we are seeing all there is to see about ourselves, we make the awful mental leap into thinking that’s all we are.

But the truth is, we are all a mixture of good and bad, saint and sinner, holy and profane.  Self-criticism, our committee, keeps trying to tell us that we are too much of the dark side, or we aren’t enough of the light side.  We allow the committee to go overboard in thrashing us in either of those two directions.  Soon the terrorist steps in, saying, “Let me take it from here,” and we begin to lose sight of life and love and God’s reality -- the big picture -- of who we are that only God sees and tries so compassionately to get us to visualize. 

John recognizes that there may be some of the self-criticism that is valid or legitimate.  But even then, there is a way to deal with it.  Martin Luther constantly wrote about his ongoing battle and arguments with the devil.  There is a story that Luther, during one such heated conversation, threw an ink well at the devil.

Luther described one such debate with the devil, writing in his journal:
When I awoke last night, the Devil came and wanted to debate with me; he rebuked and reproached me, arguing that I was a sinner. To this I replied: Tell me something new, Devil! I already know that perfectly well; I have committed many a solid and real sin. Indeed there must be good honest sins -- not fabricated and invented ones -- for God to forgive for His beloved Son’s sake, who took all my sins upon Him so that now the sins I have committed are no longer mine but belong to Christ.

I think Luther knew the truth that John was writing about.  Yeah, there are some things about what we do that aren’t real good or real nice.  But as we are in Christ, those kinds of self-criticisms no longer define who we are.  The inner terrorist and the committee have lost the power in their voices, and we can not now allow them to do harm in our lives.

There is another Voice, a more powerful Voice in our lives that frees us from the self-inflicted prison cell of worry.  Yeah, we’ve sinned, but God has taken care of that, freeing us so that we don’t have to worry about how we think we are such awful people.  Not in God’s sight.  Not by God’s love.  That prison door has been opened by God through Jesus Christ.   Come out.

In that way, God opens the door of the prison cell by telling us that he sees the big picture of who we are and what we’ve done, good or bad.  “I see who you are, in all your breadth and depth, sun and shadow,” says God.  God wants to show us the truth of his larger perspective so that we can come out of the cell of smallness that we have allowed our self-criticism to put us in.  Our inner critic has only kept us captive with blinders, showing us a small section of the horizon of who we are.  God wants to open the whole horizon of his view of our lives so we can “practice real love...live truly, live in God’s reality.”  Not a fabricated reality of the committee’s making.

The committee and the inner terrorist have held us captive by telling us that the story we have created for ourselves, the small story of who we think we are, the small story written in strokes of self-criticism is the only story by which we can live.  John, in this letter is saying, “NO!”  There is another story by which you can write and live your lives -- it is the larger story of God’s loving and living perspective of who you are.  Martin Luther discovered it.  It is the story of forgiveness, embrace, welcome, freedom and life.  All at the hand of God.  Replace that old story with the new story written by God through Jesus Christ.

As John wrote, “And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God.”  My gosh, don’t we all cry out at hearing that statement:  “YES!  Yes!  I want, I need that so badly!”  I want to live bold and free before God.  I don’t want to just talk about love; I want to practice real love.  I want this true kind of life, living in God’s reality--not in the closed cell kind of life that I have allowed the committee and my inner terrorist to put me in.  I want out!  I’m ready for a new story!  I want to live!  Now, God!  I’m ready now.  Take care of my committee and inner terrorist for good, and replace them with your Voice, speaking to me of your full horizon of life and love!

Monday, April 20, 2015

Angels In The Stone

"Angels In The Stone"
Acts 3:1-16


One of the impressive sights in the city of Florence, Italy, is a collection of huge blocks of stone with unfinished statues carved out of them by the great Michelangelo.  In several carvings, Michelangelo had been creating the images of slaves in chains.  The figures seem to be coming right out of the rock.

On one occasion, Michelangelo was struggling to transport a huge piece of marble using poles and other riggings.  A bystander asked Michelangelo why he was going to all that trouble to move an old piece of rock.  The artist replied, "Because there is an angel in there that wants to come out."

Why bother with stones?  And why bother with people whose lives are like huge pieces of stone, with no apparent promise, future, or hope?  Lives that would have been better left on the slag heap.  Why not ignore them and try to find something, someone, with more prospects?  Why expend so much energy trying to move them around, even to the point of having to carry them on your back?  There are so many others out there who believe like most:  "The Lord helps those who help themselves."  (Which isn't in the Bible.  It is in the Quran, and is found in a few Greek plays.)  Why go to the pains of having to drag such a helpless, block of stone typed person along?

Peter and John happened upon such a stone of a man.  He had been a cripple from birth.  At least as long as anyone could remember.  And also as long as anyone could remember, someone carried this immobilized man, laid him down by one of the temple gates so he could beg.  What do you do when you see a beggar?  What do you do when you see even the Salvation Army people out ringing their bells?  Most people, not all, but most walk right past acting as if they aren't even there.

Here's a more drastic for-instance.  In 1928, there was a case that came before the courts in Massachusetts.  It concerned a man who had been walking on a boat dock.  He accidentally tripped over a rope and fell into the cold water of the bay.  He came up sputtering and yelling for help and then sank again, obviously in trouble.

His friends were too far away to get to him in time.  Only a few yards away, on another dock, was a young man sprawled on a deck chair, sunbathing.  The desperate man in the water shouted, "Help!  I can't swim!"  The sunbather, an excellent swimmer, only turned his head as the man floundered in the water, sank, came up sputtering in total panic, and then disappeared forever.

The family of the drowned man was so upset at the sunbather, they sued him.  And lost.  The court ruled the man on the dock had no legal responsibility whatsoever to try and save the drowning man's life.

It is amazing, at times, the lengths to which people will go to avoid someone one else's great need or crisis.  People like the cripple at the city gate quickly become part of the surroundings--especially when they are there day-after-day.  They become easy to ignore.  That's what we do with people who are crippled, not just in their legs, but in any fashion:  body, mind or spirit.  The most we do is carry them someplace where they can be plopped down and ignored.  We don't take care of them ourselves.  We just carry them from spot-to-spot, and set them down somewhere they will be dehumanized.

A man was telling me about the time he flew from Denver to Wichita.  He and his son had gotten on the plane, and the last person to be boarded was a young man in his late 20's.  He was carried on the plane strapped to an ambulance stretcher.

They picked him up off the stretcher and curled him into a seat in front of my friend who was telling me about this.  The young man was paralyzed from the neck down.  He was strapped in tightly but as the pilot taxied the plane onto the runway, the force pushed the paralyzed man forward into the the seat back in front of him.  The stewardess again propped him back up and the plane was soon in the air.

This was back in the good old days when there was an in-flight meal.  My friend ate his meal and then noticed the paralyzed man had had his food placed in front of him, but couldn't feed himself.  The stewardess' were busy with other concerns and none noticed his predicament.  There sat a meal of above average airline food.  But the young man had no way to enjoy it, and no one to help him.

My friend slipped into the empty seat beside the paralyzed man and asked if he would like help eating.  The young man responded with a smile and gratitude.  In between bites the young man talked about his unfortunate accident, his loneliness, his struggles, his faith and his hope.

I couldn't help but feel the power of that scene as I heard it recounted to me.  How often we, how often I, think I am doing great service by placing some kind of nourishment--whether it be actual food or spiritual food--in front of needful others and think we've done our part.  We fail to take the next step and feed, bite-by-bite, what's been placed before those who can't feed themselves.

The crippled one may recognize that the food is good, that it will satisfy their needs, but they can't enjoy it by themselves.  They need someone else to help them, spoonful by spoonful; someone who will involve themselves more directly than just putting the plate in front of a person.  So often we are like the lame man's nameless, faceless carriers who do nothing more than just ferry him from place-to-place so he can go on begging.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking.  You're thinking, some of those kinds of people don't want to be helped.  They're helpless.  They are like huge stones all kinds of people have had to lug around.  No one has been able to unlock the angel from within, no matter what kind of Michelangelo talents have been brought to bear on them.  Some of those kinds of people, especially in our day and time are leaches on the system, you may be thinking.  They could be trainable.  They could get a job somewhere.  But they choose not to.  They'd rather stay on the public dole.

Some of that is probably true.  Being lame or crippled can be an easy life.  People do carry you.  There are few, if any, real responsibilities.  No one expects much from those who are crippled, either physically or emotionally.  Crippled people find that out fairly quickly.

The lame man in our scripture story certainly didn't come to expect much from anyone else either.  Just a hand out.  A tidbit here and there.  A small share of others leftovers.  He certainly didn't expect someone to come along and throw health, wholeness or healing into his bucket.  Certainly nothing as challenging as life--the challenge to get up and walk on his own two feet.  We expect little from those who are lame, and the lame have come to expect very little from those who pass them by.  Especially in terms of expectations.

Because the expectations are so slight, the life of ease, the life of being carried by the healthy and wealthy can be very attractive for the crippled.  Real life--on your feet life--can be a scary prospect after being allowed to get away with so little for so long.

There was a man who underwent surgery after living several years in total blindness.  The operation was a success to the extent that he could now see with the help of heavy lensed glasses.  When he arrived home from the hospital, he was anxious to do something he had only dreamed about:  take a walk through his neighborhood with sight.

After walking for just a few minutes he ran back to his house, threw himself on his bed and buried his face in a pillow.  His wife asked him what was wrong.  He replied, "I couldn't take it any more.  The light hurt my eyes, and the colors were overwhelming.  It was such a drastic change that I'd almost rather be blind again."

People who are hearing impaired, after getting an ocular implant, or having their hearing restored, experience the same thing.  The noise of the world, after so much silence, can make the head feel like it's going to explode.  Gradually the brain begins to help these people compensate, like we all do naturally, so as not to see or hear everything all at once.  But until that happens there is real panic in the person trying to decide whether to enter the full world again.

What happens, though, when someone comes along with the promise of the power to crack the stone and release the angel that has been trapped within?  What happens when someone reaches into our stony lives and grasps us, pulls us to our feet and bids us to live--really live?  What happens when in the power of Jesus' name, our lives are made strong again?  Without lameness, we are challenged to get on with life!  What happens when we are given the opportunity to be healed, to be made whole, to no longer be on the fringe of life, but by the touch of the Savior, get up on our feet and get back into the center of life?

There was a survivor of a shipwreck who had spent 11 years alone on a tiny island waiting for some kind of rescue.  Then, one day, the man spotted a ship on the horizon.  He quickly lit a fire prepared for just such a moment.  The smoke went up and was seen.

The captain of the ship dispatched a small boat to the island.  As the boat reached the shore, the officer in charge said to the shipwrecked man, "The Captain sends his greetings, sir.  Also these newspapers.  Kindly read the news of the world as soon as possible and then inform the captain as to whether or not you wish to be rescued.."

Being healed, being rescued, being freed from a stony existence means getting ourselves involved in life that will be foreign to us.  The promise of walking again must have been too good to be true for the crippled man.  Being lame was the only kind of life he had ever known.  What Peter and John were offering him, by extending their hands (and with those hands the power of Jesus Christ) was life as he had never known it before.  The crippled man may not have realized what he was accepting when he took Peter's hand and allowed himself to be rescued.

So it is with all of us who are crippled by sin in one form or another.  We are lame and have known no other kind of existence.  To have faith awakened in us by the name of Jesus Christ, to be given strength and to be made completely well means that we must now be accountable and responsible for a whole new way of life.  We will not be allowed to let our lameness be our excuse for a lack of involvement in the fulness of life.  We can no longer claim any impairments as to why we are living deficiently, as to why we are living less than what we were meant and called and healed to be.

Peter said, "...what I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!"

Monday, April 13, 2015

The Laugh Shall Be First

"The Laugh Shall Be First"
John 20:19-22
1 Peter 1:8-9

One day Groucho Marx was getting off an elevator.  There happened to be a minister standing there waiting to get on.  The minister introduced himself, and while shaking Groucho's hand said, "I want to thank you for all the joy you've put into the world."
Groucho replied, "Thank you, reverend.  And I want to thank you for all the joy you've taken out of the world."

I wonder if Groucho's attitude is that of a lot of people:  that ministers (and Christians in general) are stern, unsmiling saps; that Christianity sucks the humor right out of a person; or that God never laughs.

When you think about it, human beings are the only ones among God's creatures who laugh and weep.  If the creation story in Genesis is true, and human beings were created in the image of God, then laughing and crying must be part of God's character that we carry within us.  There may be something fundamental to the Spirit of God about our ability to laugh.  In fact, says Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the great theologians of the 1900's, the very essence of sin may be the unwillingness to laugh, especially at ourselves.  It is when we take ourselves so seriously that "sin is crouching at the door."

The Monday after Easter is called Easter Monday, or Bright Monday.  The whole week after Easter is called Bright Week, and has been celebrated as one long day.  Bright Week and Bright Monday in particular is the time to celebrate the laughter of the redeemed.  Our sin has been canceled by God in Christ.  God has, through the Resurrection, endowed us with eternal life.  It's time to party.  It's time to celebrate.

All around the world, some of the Easter Monday and Bright Week festivities include: 
egg roll competitions
being doused with water
processions/parades
"smelling the breeze" (Egypt)
dancing the polka
flying kites (which were made on Holy Saturday)
picnics

If you didn't do any of that last week--celebrate this week, and keep celebrating.  Keep laughing.  Keep being filled with the joy of your salvation in Christ.

So we're going to do a lot of laughing this morning.  We're not going to succumb to Groucho Marx's evaluation of Christians.

After the church service, a little boy marched up to the Pastor and shook his hand, saying, "When I grow up, I'm going to give you some money."
"Well, thank you," the Pastor replied.  "But why are you going to give me some money?" he asked.
"Because my daddy says you're one of the poorest preachers our church has ever had."

A couple invited some friends over for dinner.  At the table, the wife turned to her six-year-old daughter and said, "Would you like to say the blessing, please?"
"I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied.
The mother said, "Just say what you hear Mommy say."
The little girl bowed her head and said, "O Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people for dinner?"

And then there was a minister who was working on his sermon.  His young son was watching him, and finally asked, "Daddy, how do you know what to say in your sermon?"
"God tells me," the father replied.
The little boy thought for a moment and then said, "Then why do you keep erasing parts of it?"

Maybe the part of our faith that we Christians are too ready to erase is our God given ability to have a sense of humor about ourselves.  If that be true, then one of the main ingredients of the grace of God may be the gift of laughter at ourselves.  Maybe the divine laughter happens in that gracious moment when how we view ourselves meets up with how God views us.

Charles Schultz has a way of making that point so well in the comic strip, Peanuts.  Snoopy has always been the God-dog in the strip.  Snoopy symbolizes the God who is always trying to snatch away security blankets, and teaching other characters how to approach life more lightly.

In one cartoon, Snoopy is feeling great.  He comes dancing into the first frame saying to himself, "Sometimes I love life so much I can't express it!"  In the second frame he continues the dance, saying, "I feel like taking the first person I meet into my arms and dance merrily through the streets."  Then in the third frame, he meets the very grumpy Lucy.  Snoopy stands silently in front of her, neither of them speaking a word.  In the fourth frame, Snoopy is dancing by himself again and saying, "I feel like taking the second person I meet into my arms, and dance merrily through the streets."

Or here's another one of Snoopy dancing:



I think Schultz was lampooning we Christians in those comics.  More often than not we are the dour Lucy's, the sour pictures of a Christianity that is overly serious, even crabby.  When we meet up with our dancing God, all we can do is stand there with piously dismal expressions, refusing to dance along with our exuberant God.

In our Christian faith we do confront so many serious problems:  sin, injustice, hunger, prejudice, hate, war, disease, as Lucy described, “a world coming apart.”  How dare someone laugh in the midst of our seriousness?!!  But maybe Resurrection laughter, God's laughter and the dance of grace is exactly how we should confront such serious matters.

In one church, a retired minister was doing the Children's Message.  A little girl came down the aisle and sat next to the old Pastor.  She looked at his white hair, his wrinkles and asked, "Did God make you?"
"Yes," he said.
Then she asked, "Did God make me, too?"
"Yes."
"Well," said the little girl, "Don't you think God is doing a better job now than he used to?"

One little boy asked his father, "Why does the minister get a month's vacation and you only get two weeks vacation a year?"
"Well, son," said the father, "if he's a good minister, he needs it.  If he isn't, the congregation needs it."

Maybe one of the ways a minister can be the best Pastor is to help the congregation laugh.  We've all heard that if you can't cry, the next best thing is to laugh.  So often we don't give ourselves permission to cry.  We think it's a sign of weakness.  So why is it that we Christians think it is unGodly also to laugh, even at the seriousness of life?

Martin Luther used to laugh at the devil to make him flee, because the one thing the devil does is take himself absolutely seriously and can't stand to be laughed at.  It is interesting that one of the most unChristian philosophers, Nietzsche, said one of the most Christian statements:  "The devil is the spirit of gravity."  Evil, is that which puts weight to everything, pressing down the joy of living, which seeks to drag the corners of your mouth down.

Who were the ones who had the hardest time with Jesus?  The seriously devout religious types--the Pharisees and teachers of Jewish religiosity.  They thought Jesus' light-hearted attitude about God and faith was sacrilegious.  The light-hearted laughter of the grace of God was beyond their dour grasp.  "How dare some upstart from Nazareth poke fun at our righteousness!"

I try to imagine the Pharisees and other legalistic types as comedic Rodney Dangerfield characters.  They are comical in their dead pan seriousness about themselves, and their inability to simply get it and enjoy life.  You can imagine a Rodney Dangerfield type Pharisee saying:

I tell 'ya I don't get no respect.  I was on an airplane that lost one of its engines.  A lady said, "You're a minister; do something!"  So I took up an offering.  I tell 'ya I don't get no respect.

I was talking to a man on death row.  I didn't know what to say as he was walking to the electric chair, so I just said, "Hey, more power to you."  I don't get no respect.

One time I was sick and couldn't preach.  My church board visited me and said, "We had a meeting and voted 10-9 to send you a get-well card.  I tell 'ya I don't get no respect.

One time I came to church with a bandaid on my face.  C.L. Meigs asked me about it.  I told him I was thinking about my sermon while shaving and accidentally cut myself.  C.L. said, "Why don't you think more about your shaving and cut your sermon."  I don't get no respect.

One time I dreamed I was preaching.  I woke up and I was.  I tell 'ya I get no respect.

The spark of the divine in the human person may just be the ability to laugh, even at what we hold most dear--maybe especially at what we hold most dear.  And that, usually, is ourselves.

Think of the important role of the court jester in the kings court who, by humor, was able to get away with poking fun at the king himself.  So a well developed sense of humor fulfills the role of a personal court jester, and through grace and wit enables us to look at ourselves in new and fresh ways--humorous ways; to enjoy ourselves as God must, sitting up in heaven laughing at the incredible things we do.

It's been told that a student once asked a rabbi why God created human beings.  Wouldn't the world have been a much better place if God stopped at the animals?  The Rabbi responded, "God created human beings because God likes a good story."  If that's true, I'd guess we supply God with a lot of comedy.

Mother Teresa wrote,

Let nothing so disturb us, so fill us with sorrow or discouragement, as to make us forfeit the joy of the Resurrection.  Joy is not simply a matter of temperament in the service of God and souls; it is always hard.  All the more reason why we should try to acquire it and make it grow in our hearts.  We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs from a heart that is in love with God.  All over the world people are hungry and thirsty for God's love.  We meet that hunger by spreading joy.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Easter Sunrise: Starting A Journey You Cannot Finish

"Starting A Journey You Cannot Finish"
Mark 16:1-8

Imagine the finality of this scene.  Jesus had been whipped within inches of his life.  He was nailed to a cross.  Probably a used cross.  The Romans executed a lot of people by crucifixion.  Wood was scarce in Israel.  They couldn't afford to build a new cross every time they crucified someone.

Within the day, by sheer loss of blood, by exhaustion, by suffocation, Jesus was dead.  Brutally dead.

The dead body was taken down off the cross.  The nails were pulled.  The ropes untied.  The rigid, rigor-mortised body quickly wrapped in a shroud.  The body thrown over and carried by a donkey--ironic, yes?--to a tomb.  A borrowed tomb.  Some other family's final resting place.

The body was laid on one of the shelves in the tomb.  There may have been other bodies in there already.  Jesus' dead body now joined them.  It was the eve of the Sabbath.  No time to bathe and wrap the body with strips of cloth and spices tucked in each fold.  It wouldn't matter.  He was dead, for goodness sake!

And the crescendo of finality, like in the "William Tell Overture" where the horns start blasting and the canons start firing:  the stone was rolled in place.  The stone would have been a huge chiseled wheel-shaped behemoth.  It would have been at the top of a small uphill incline--a slot cut in the stone to let the "door" roll smoothly.  It would have only taken maybe four to six men to get that thing rolling downward until it settled in the dip at the end of the slope.  Getting it down would have been relatively easy.  If they ever had to roll it back up the little slope, it would have been a harder thing by far.  Maybe 16 men ropes and all.  Or a four horse team.  A tug-of-war with a tombstone.  Talk about the final stroke of a final scene of a dead man's tomb.

Much more final than a modern grave.  What if, for some reason, you wanted to see one of your beloved dead again.  You stand over their grave.  Have you looked down into a grave hole before, at the graveside service.  Picked up the corner of the astroturf that covers the hole. The astroturf over the grave hole is supposed to shield you from the reality of what a couple of workers with a backhoe are about to do.  It's a long ways down there.  Six feet under, as they say.

But still, if you really wanted to see the person buried there, if you were really motivated, you could do it all by yourself.  With a shovel.  It would take a long time.  But you could eventually unearth the casket.  Not impossible.

But what about those women who started out at sunrise on the first day of the week?  As they walked to the tomb, did they all realize they had made an assumption that was so ridiculous that they should have stopped in their tracks and laughed?

Mary voiced the question they should have asked before they started out:  "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance for us?"  What were they thinking?  They had started a journey they could not finish on their own.  They had embarked on a task they could not complete by themselves.

All they knew was the compulsion to go--they had to go.  And even though there was the possibility that they may not complete what they set out to do, they would never know unless they began.  Unless they start their journey, they'll never finish.

It's one of the major themes of the salvation events in the Bible.  Abraham is instructed by God to go to a land that he will be shown.  That once Abraham arrives, he will be the father of many nations--numbers of people greater than the stars in the sky.  Abraham was to pack up his whole extended family, all their possessions, all their farm animals and head some place.

What we aren't told is how long Abraham thought about starting out on that journey.  A journey he couldn't finish on his own, because he didn't know where he was going.  God only knew.  But unless he starts the journey he'll never finish.  It was a journey he couldn't finish on his own.

Moses, who was instructed to lead a rabble of Hebrew slaves away from Egypt.  From Egypt and towards freedom.  A hard freedom.  A wandering freedom.  At some points, a murmuring, undesirable freedom.  It was a journey they couldn't finish on their own.  There was a Red Sea to cross, and a wilderness to wander around in.  It was a journey Moses and the people couldn't finish on their own.  But unless they started the journey they would never finish.

You have to start.  Which is what the women heading for the tomb did.  You have to be in awe of them for starting out their journey to the tomb, knowing they can't finish it on their own.  They’re nervous they can’t do all the work. “Who will roll away the [massive] stone?”  The stone was huge, and it was a barrier. It could easily have kept them from going at all.

God seems to delight in putting people on missions, or set them on journeys they can't finish on their own.  It's usually in the middle of that journey--like when the Hebrew people are meandering around the Sinai Desert, or the women are half way to the tomb--that they realize they've bit off way more than they can chew, and this just might be an impossible mission.

So here it is.  Most people don’t even start the journey because something, or someone, is in the way. Most of us would have stayed home that first Easter morning, just like the rest of the disciples, intimidated or afraid, or thinking we are smart enough to know we can’t move that boulder.

A large part of the Resurrection story certainly is centered on Jesus coming back to life and all that means.  But I think the other half of that is the journey to the tomb by the women.  Against all odds of ever getting into the tomb to do what they needed to do to the body, they still went.  Even though they were on a journey they couldn't finish, they still went.  Life, resurrection life, is about not holding ourselves back.  It is about showing up.  Showing up for the miracle.  Against the odds, being present for the miracle.  Of going on a journey with a dead end, but just by being on that journey you got to participate in something you could not have expected:  impossible stones rolled away, and a dead man alive and walking.

This Easter, start your journey that your mind tells you you cannot possibly finish on your own.  And then--and then--witness the miracle.

Maundy Thursday: For Freedom

"For Freedom"
Galatians 5:1

Opening Song:  "Were You There?"

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

At a university Music Department, there was a piano teacher whom the students simply and affectionately called Herman.

One night, at a University concert, a distinguished concert pianist suddenly became ill while performing.  No sooner had the artist left the stage when Herman rose from his seat in the audience, walked onstage, sat down at the piano and with great mastery, completed the performance.

Later that evening, at a post concert reception, one of the students asked Herman how he was able to perform such a demanding piece so beautifully without notice, and with no rehearsal.  Herman replied, “In 1939, when I was a budding young concert pianist, I was arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp.  Putting it mildly, the future looked bleak.  But I knew in order to keep the flicker of hope alive that I might someday play again, I needed to practice every day.  I began by fingering a piece of music on my bare-board bed late one night.  The next night I added a second piece and soon I was running through my entire collection.  I did this every night for five years.  It so happens that the piece I played tonight at the concert hall was part of my collection.  Every day I renewed my hope that I would one day be able to play my music again on a real piano, and in freedom.”

What would you do if you had your freedom?  We all might think about how we would finish this sentence:  "If I was really free, I would..."  But in answering that question, and in finishing that sentence, you would first have to decide what being free would mean for you.  And, you'd have to come face-to-face with the reality that you aren't free.  The very reason you are asking yourself that question is because you know you aren't free.

So before you decide what you'd want to do with your freedom, you first have to realize how it is that you aren't free right now.  Who or what has captured you?  What is it that is making up the walls of your captivity?

Throughout Lent, using the book, The Deeper Journey, we have explored how our captivity--our concentration camp, so-to-speak--is our false self.  The false self is the major part of us that tries to live without God.  That life without God, or keeping God on the outskirts of our lives, results in living in a concentration camp where fear is the commandant of the camp; ego protection is daily life in the camp; holding on to even the minutest possession is how we think we define our concentration camp identity; manipulating others--even those we love--is how we define power in the camp; and making distinctions between ourselves and the other inmates is the way we try to inflate our self-esteem in the camp.  All of that results in self-destruction.

The only way to break free of that--to be really free--is immerse ourselves in something bigger than ourselves.  To find ourselves in the music of the Christ-life.  By practicing the Christ-life daily, we don't just do the Christian life, we become the Christian life for others.  Our freedom, can and will become not only our freedom, but also others freedom.
    
(Song:  "Let Something Good Be Said")

Harry Houdini, the famed escape artist, issued a challenge wherever he went.  He could be locked in any jail cell in the country, he claimed, and set himself free in a short amount of time.  Always he lived up to the challenge.  But one time, something went wrong.

Houdini entered the jail cell.  The heavy, metal door clanged shut behind him.  He took a tiny piece of strong, flexible metal from his belt.  He went to work immediately, but something seemed to be unusual about this door’s lock.  For 30 minutes he worked, but got nowhere.  An hour passed, and still he had not opened the door.  By now he was drenched in sweat and panting in exasperation, but he was still unable to pick the lock.

After laboring for two hours, Houdini collapsed in frustration in front of the door he could not unlock.  Finally, the sheriff came and simply opened the door.  It had never been locked.  But in Houdini’s mind it had been locked, and that was all it took to keep him from opening the jail door.

The false self makes assumptions about life.  One of the main assumptions the false self makes is that it can get out of anything.  By our own resourcefulness; by our own intellect; by our own conniving; by our own bluster, we can meet any challenge and succeed.  Be a success!  Be a winner!  Be someone, by the false self's ego inflation, who can do anything.  You can do this!

But you know what?  Those statements are assumptions you make based on the messages your false self is squeaking in your ear.  What if you can't do this?  What if you've made a strategic misassumption about the lock you are trying to pick to get yourself out of some predicament?  And that misassumption has left you panting in exasperation.

The reason is, there are some things you can't get out of by your own ingenuity.  Like the control of the false self and its false promises.  Like sin.  Try as you may, you will be lead to the constant dead end of exasperation and depression.  You need to first let go of that false self and those false assumptions you make about yourself.  Then you will be ready for the One--the Savior--to come and open the door and let you out.  Only then will you be free.  And only then will you finally realize how easy it could have been all along.

(break:  song:  "Why Me, Lord?")

In the book, God's Smuggler, Brother Andrew tells of the time he served in the Dutch army in Indonesia.  While there he bought a young, gibbon monkey.  It became a pet for the whole barracks.  He and his friends noticed that when they touched the monkey in some areas around the waist it seemed to hurt him.  He examined the gibbon more closely and found a raised welt that went around its waist.   What he was to discover is that when the monkey was a baby, someone had tied a piece of wire around its middle and never taken it off.  As the monkey grew larger the wire became embedded in its flesh, causing it a great deal of discomfort.

That evening, Andrew began the operation.  Taking his razor, he shaved off some of the monkey's hair in a three inch wide swath at the monkey's middle.  With the other men in the barracks looking on, Andrew cut ever so gently into the tender flesh until he exposed the wire.

The gibbon lay there with the most amazing patience.  Even when it was obviously hurting, the monkey looked up with eyes that seemed to say, "I understand."  Andrew cut the wire, and slowly pulled it out.  Instantly, the monkey jumped up, did a cartwheel, danced around his shoulder, and pulled Andrew's hair in joyful happiness.

Andrew wrote, "After that, my gibbon and I were inseparable.  I think I identified with him as strongly as he with me.  I think I saw in the wire that had bound him a kind of parallel to the chain of guilt still so tight around myself--and in his release, I saw a symbol of the thing I too longed for."

A band, a wire, a chain of guilt.  It's not just Brother Andrew who struggles with that.  Seems to be a common theme for many people.  No matter how uncomfortable we are with the pain of guilt that bands us, we let it fester and remain.  It's like our guilt has been with us for as long as we can remember, and we don't know how to define ourselves differently without it.  So we just let it remain--even though it hurts.

We get touchy when others start pressing us on those places of guilt.  Our guilt becomes the basis for our ego-protection.  We don't want anyone messing with our guilt and we let them know when they're too close to it.  It's ours, dang it!  Leave it alone!  We've gotten used to it.  We know how to get around it, deny and pretend it's not there or not bothering us.  We can live with it.

But deep within us all, right in the middle of the guts of our denial and pretense there is that which is begging someone to come and take care of our guilt once and for all.  We know we can't do it.  We can't and we don't want to deal with it.  We want to just let it lie, beneath the surface.  But, please, someone, set us free from this band that just keeps getting more and more painful!  Please!!

When we're finally ready to say that, then comes Christ who through a small wound, finally sets us free from our guilt pained woundedness.  Sets us free from guilt and it's increasing pain.  Once free, we had no idea of how amazing it feels to be free of it.  We want to jump!  We want to dance!  Unafraid, we finally want to allow others to touch us!  We are free!

(Song:  "I Saw A Man")
A biologist once did an experiment with "processional caterpillars."  On the rim of a large clay pot that held a plant, he lined the caterpillars up so that the leader was head-to-end with the last caterpillar.  The plant in the pot was a variety that these caterpillars loved to eat.  Instead, the tiny creatures circled the rim of the pot, following each other, for a full week.  Not once did any of them break away to go over to the plant to eat.  Eventually, all the caterpillars died from exhaustion and starvation.

Maybe you've heard that definition of insanity:  doing the same thing, the same way, over and over expecting a different result.  Like living that concentration camp life, being a prisoner for so long.  Many of the men in those camps defined themselves by that environment.  They didn't know how to be any other way--even to the point when many of the concentration camps were freed and open, and the prisoners were free to go, many of them wouldn't leave that place.  They had become false self caterpillars going round and round.

Or like Houdini, who made one major strategic misassumption.  That misassumption wasn't just about the jail cell door that day, but also about his own hubris.  I can do this!  I've gotten myself out of every situation.  I'm in control.  He followed that trail, round and round.  This time he got no where, and he couldn't figure out why.  He could always save himself, but not this time.  Round and round we go.

And the wire band of guilt.  Wrapped around us from the time we were young.  Imperceptibly cutting into us.  Disappearing into us.  Become part of us.  Cutting deeper and deeper.  We think guilt is just the way we're supposed to be.  We've always been that way.  "That's life," we tell ourselves.  We go through life touchy and pained and we don't know why.  Round and round we go.

Round and round we go.  And then we die.  With our last breath, we wonder why.  Why didn't I give myself to something bigger than my concentration camp self?  Why wasn't I free?  Where did I go wrong, making misassumptions which led to further bad decisions?  Why wasn't I free?  How could I have let guilt cut its way into my self definition?  Why didn't I let someone cut it away?  Why wasn't I free?

Well, you aren't dead.  Yet.  But you still need to ask those why questions:  Why wasn't I free?  The freedom you yearn for can be yours.  "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

(song:  "Tramp On The Street")


The Lord's Supper

Depart In Silence