What is True

Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3.21)

Darkness

Before I got to college, I had to sneak off to the movies. Our church’s by-laws strictly prohibited film-going. (Which gives you an idea how clubby its faith approach was. What kind of church has by-laws?) This, of course, made movies the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I saw everything the studios released. I often had to lie, “borrow” loose change from my mom’s purse, and cajole friends and neighbors to (unknowingly) help me dishonor my parents’ wishes. But the lure of a fairly benign off-limits activity blinded me to the fact that I was breaking God’s laws to defy an idiotic human rule.

While spending the summer with our grandmother, my brother and I convinced her to drop us off at the local cinema, where Young Frankenstein was playing. She made us promise not to tell anyone. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said. “But the church teaches against it and people will pitch a fit if they find out I took you.” On the way home, she didn’t say much as we told her how funny the film was. When we walked into the house we realized why. Her twin sister, Pearl, had dropped by to see us and, on learning where we were, took it on herself to set us straight. “You boys ought to be ashamed—and you, too,” she said to our grandmother. “If Jesus had come while you were in the theater, you’d be bound for Hell.” Really?

I challenged her: “Where does the Bible say, ‘Thou shalt not go to the movies’?” Without a second’s pause, she fired off John 3.19 from the King James Bible: “Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” So sitting in the dark theater was the problem, not defying our parents’ teaching or being exposed to unhealthy material on the screen. Grandmother jumped in. “Pearl, that doesn’t even make sense.” Wanting so much to have the last word, I added, “Mom and Dad took us to Mammoth Cave last year. It was really dark. Was that a sin?” Aunt Pearl shot back, “The truth is the truth and you can’t change it. I’d fear God if I were you!” To put a final nail in my spiritual coffin, she whipped out 2 Thessalonians 2.11-12: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Ergo, I was delusional to think it was okay to enjoy a silly comedy in the dark—and, worse than that, none other than God fed my delusion!

Living Truthfully Now

As absurd as this exchange was, I remain grateful for it to this day. Even at 14, I knew that God was too big to succumb to such small-mindedness. I knew the real truth of God and gravitated toward it, not allowing petty dogma and ignorance to sway my confidence in that God. I kept going to movies—in fact, I grew increasingly bolder about breaking the rules—because Aunt Pearl’s reproach, despite her sincere and loving intentions, convinced me I had nothing to fear. She taught me how easily being afraid of God causes us to cobble together a lot of loose scriptures to rationalize irrational fears. Looking at her anti-movie “evidence” in context (John 3.14-21; Sunday’s Gospel), it’s indubitable that Jesus teaches us not to be afraid of God. In fact, Aunt Pearl’s “be afraid, be very afraid” citation turns up no less than three verses after Jesus’s immortal promise of God’s boundless, perfect love: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (v16)

This is the Good News of the Gospel: believe God’s promise of love and life. And regardless how many times we’ve heard or quoted John 3.16, it’s beholden on us to comprehend what Jesus is saying, as His message is just as radical and earthshaking today as when He first spoke it to Nicodemus, the curious Pharisee who wanted to know what Jesus is all about. For starters, Jesus isn’t talking about Heaven or Hell. In fact, life after death doesn’t enter His conversation. He’s talking about living truthfully now and how trusting God’s promise of love brings about new life.

In the Looking

Rather soon, Jesus realizes Nicodemus is stuck on the erroneous idea that God’s love and acceptance must be earned before they can be trusted. It’s a misbegotten, Old Testament idea that has perpetually set Israel at odds with God—and Jesus wants Nicodemus to know that He’s come to uproot this rickety notion once and for all. So He takes Nicodemus back to Numbers 21.4-9 (Sunday’s Old Testament text, recently explored in the post, Snakebit), where God pledges to heal anyone stricken with snakebite if they simply look at a bronze serpent suspended on a pole. They don’t have to prove anything. God doesn’t even ask them to apologize for the grumbling that brought on the venomous scourge. They just have to look up from wherever they are and they’ll be cured. In the looking they’ll express their faith in God’s promise of healing and new life. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life,” Jesus explains in verses 14-15, going on in verse 16 to redefine the terms of God’s promise so that it includes everyone in the world. “God didn’t send the Son into the world to condemn it,” He stresses in verse 17, “but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” Jesus tells Nicodemus (and us) that God’s lavish love and new life aren’t rewards for righteous behavior. They’re promises we access by simple trust and belief.

So why doesn’t everybody in the world claim these promises as offered? Jesus answers this question with shocking candor. Many recoil from faith’s full light because they’ve grown to love the dark life, He says. They’re like cave dwellers; their adaptation to fearful darkness blinds them to God’s bright promises. It hurts their spiritual eyes to envision a world where God raises a life-giving, life-changing Christ Who welcomes and heals all who look to God in faith. They’ve developed finely tuned skills—many passed down over generations—that keep their radar on high alert. Anything that feels dangerous to them must be wrong for everyone else. As a result of feeling their way through darkness, they create evil that seeks to prevent those they love or fear from living in the light. In faith terms, they fabricate elaborate screens to block God’s light and condemn those who believe God’s promises. “But those who do what is true come to the light,” Jesus says in verse 21, “so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Living as God Lives

God promises us eternal life—a new life that we live in God, as God lives, a life that cannot be comprehended because it has neither a beginning nor end. It is a life as limitless and enduring as God’s love, whose vastness reaches out to everyone who ever lived. What is true is that God loves us eternally. God loves us now. God has always loved us, and will never stop loving us. God’s love is perfect, which 1 John 4.16-19 stresses: “We have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as God is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us.” (Emphasis added.)

The unconditional, unconventionally fearless love and life Jesus promises in John 3.16 is ours for the taking—and the living. When we forsake dark doctrines and ideologies to live truthfully as believers in God’s eternal love, we come to the light so it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God. Basically, this is just a fancy way of saying, “Let God love you for who you are, where you are right now.” As dangerously radical as some may think that is, it’s why Jesus came.

Confidence in God’s promises of love and life opens the door to live truthfully in the light.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/17/what-is-true/.

Free-Giveness

If anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but to some extent—not to exaggerate it—to all of you. This punishment by the majority is enough for such a person; so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. (2 Corinthians 5,7)

Healing They Need

Paul begins his second letter to the Corinthian church on a painful note. From the start, we sense something’s gone wrong, not only because of what he says, but also because the deft frankness typical of Paul’s style is gone out of the writing. He’s mincing words—something he very seldom does—and the strain is oddly disturbing. With unusual tact, he refrains from recounting the specifics of an incident that occasions his letter or naming the offenders behind it. As best we can tell from his introductory comments, he’s decided not to return to Corinth for a while, even though his travels would make stopping there convenient. It seems his previous visit was marred by a confrontation that threatened the church’s unity. Paul was obviously wounded, as were many in the Corinthian community, and for the sake of all, he writes to explain why he believes it would be best not to return to them until the wounds heal.

Now that the offender has been disciplined and repented of his error, Paul encourages the church to welcome him back into community. Yet Paul’s also keenly aware that many in Corinth feel very protective of him and may be reluctant to embrace the man who opposed their leader. They may continue to resent, distrust, and treat him harshly. Rather than welcome his return as an equal, they may begrudgingly allow him to rejoin them while never dismissing their low opinion of him as a troublemaker. This will not bring about healing they need, healing that will ease Paul’s mind about future visits. In 2 Corinthians 2.7, he writes, “So now instead you should forgive and console him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.”

Surpassing Pardon

It’s here that we get our first glimpse of Paul, the precise wordsmith and dynamic leader whom we admire. He replaces the Gospels’ customary word for “forgive” (aphiemi), which means “to let go, pardon”—as in forgiving a debt—with a more magnanimous one (charizomai) meaning, “give freely; impart grace; act favorably toward.” Paul asks more than usual from the Corinthians. He wants their forgiveness to surpass pardon. He urges them to dig deep into their reserves of compassion and summon the grace to restore the wrongdoer’s sense of self-worth and belonging. And he asks this for the good of all: for the man, for the Corinthians, and for himself. He concludes his supplication with this: “So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. I wrote for this reason: to test you and to know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ. And we do this so that we may not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” (v8-11)

Paul's adroit inclusion of “if I have forgiven anything” sends up a red flag that tells the Corinthians their forgiveness of the one who hurt him will make his forgiveness full and complete. Realizing this will be tough for some, he also notes that he’s watching them closely—testing them—to see if they’ll honor his request. In essence, he flips the situation, turning their willingness to extend grace to his former adversary as the litmus that proves they truly love him. Don’t stop at forgiving, he says; be free-giving.

Stuck in the Middle

I would guess that not one of us, at this moment, isn’t dealing with at least one situation that’s left us stuck in the middle somehow, stranded between our desire to stand for right while also deeply troubled about how our stance will affect those we believe are wrong. Break-ups are a classic case. When one partner wrongs another and their relationship ends, we support the wronged party. That’s an easy decision. Our response to the wrongdoer is much more complicated. We may love her/him as much or more than the other, yet our knowledge of the harm he/she caused encourages us to pull away. We hope we can forgive, offering true pardon that lets go. But we can’t bring ourselves to embrace the offender freely.

Restoration that can only be wrought by extending grace—by free giving—may ask more than we’re comfortable providing. That would look like disloyalty to the wounded person, whom we also love. But here we find Paul speaking as the hurt party, explicitly asking us to surpass lip-service pardon. “Freely give of your grace, act favorably toward, and console him,” he implores, “so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” He then tells us, “I’m waiting on your forgiveness so I can forgive.” Paul informs us that our unforgiving, ungracious attitudes and behaviors toward those who’ve harmed others actually impede both parties’ healing. In the course of this process, however, we should note that the offenders’ error has also been noted and dealt with fairly. “This punishment is enough,” verse 6 says. Once we’ve expressed our disappointment and anger, it’s time to move on to restoration. And this will indeed ask more of us than common forgiveness. We’ll need to dig deep. What’s more, we’ll have to deal with the unhappiness of those who can’t find it in themselves to give grace and favor freely. But better that than permitting our misfortune of getting stuck in the middle to delay or prevent much-needed healing and rectification.

Frank Assessment

One of Lent’s hardest tasks is offloading grudges and fears we carry because of personal injuries. Even though we pray daily, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” it’s an uphill battle to get this work done in anticipation of beholding Grace Incarnate at Calvary’s cross. We want to be free, clear, and unblocked by animosity and resentment, to know the cleansing Jesus purchased for us with His life. What we may overlook, though, are grudges we hold on behalf of others. Have we also forgiven those who’ve repented of sins against those we love, respect, or care about as victims of injustice? Are we too afraid of how we’ll be perceived to extend them the added grace that will bring about their restoration? Do we believe it is just of us to allow them to “be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow”?

What’s done cannot be undone. But the wounds it created can be healed once the harm is acknowledged and the offender repents. Lent’s call for self-examination includes frank assessment of our stance in situations that strand us in the middle. Are we mistaking dismissal and disdain for the offender as loyalty and compassion for the wounded? If so, we’re not giving freely and we’ve relinquished our middle position to become part of the problem. In conflicts that affect but don’t personally involve us, taking one side to the exclusion of the other undermines the healing of both.

Lent calls us not only to offload grudges and fears we hold as a result of personal injury. It also asks us to examine our responses as third-party observers of conflicts between others.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/12/free-giveness/.

Postscript: Questions 14 & 15

Why is often easier to forgive those who hurt us than those who hurt others?

How does our eagerness to offer compassion to the wounded while withholding it from the offender put us at risk of inflating our sense of importance—or outright pride?

Movement

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19.14)

God is Moving

Yesterday was one of those delectable spring days that make quarreling with a Chicago winter worth it. The bright sun held the temperature at a steady 60 degrees and big warm gusts blew away the cobwebs in everyone’s head. Walt and I headed out for “the Broadway stroll”—a tradition on days like this, when it seems like our entire neighborhood converges on a mile-and-a-half stretch of Broadway lined with shops and restaurants. A half-block down the street we bumped into one of many regulars we’ve got to know over the years. Elizabeth is a schizophrenic who lives in a nearby shelter. Her meds have caused her to grow a scraggly goatee and she spends most of her day seated two doors down from a Subway franchise. Like many of our neighbors, when we see her, we always stop to ask how she’s getting along. She held an unwrapped sandwich; so we asked if she was covered for dinner. “No, sir,” she said. We helped her with that, hugged her—she’s a big hugger—and I said, “We’re praying for you, Liz,” to which she answered, “I’m praying for you all, too.” Then she added, “God is moving in our lives.” We smiled in agreement. She said it again: God is moving in our lives.

As we moseyed along, Walt and I remarked a number of times about what Elizabeth told us. The purity of it wouldn’t let us alone. And as we repeated her words, the joy of an early spring day gave way to something brighter, warmer, richer. It rode on the breeze and glinted in the sunlight. We heard it in fellow pedestrians’ laughter, in the melodies of street musicians, in all the happy sounds filling the air. God is moving in our lives. There it was all around us: God. Moving. Life.

Increasingly High Hurdles

Before we left the apartment, I’d glanced at Sunday’s readings and, to be truthful, was glad to let them wait. The Old Testament text (Exodus 20.1-17) reviews The Ten Commandments. Psalm 19 extols the beauty of God’s laws. The New Testament (1 Corinthians 1.18-25) has Paul guiding his readers away from viewing the Law as an ironclad imperative, since we can never fully comprehend God’s reasons. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength,” he writes. The Gospel (John 2.13-22) recounts the infamous Temple-clearing episode, where Jesus subverts the authorities’ demand for a “sign” that He’s qualified to take the Law into His own hands by offering His upcoming death and resurrection as proof He embodies the Law.

It was apparent the lectionary wanted us to see The Ten Commandments and all the religious laws that have cropped up around them—both in Scripture and post-biblical doctrines—as something greater than codified behaviors and beliefs. But if laws and doctrines are supposed to achieve more than corral our attitudes and actions, what might their objectives be? How often do we hear good-hearted, spiritually inclined people say they want nothing to do with the Christian faith because it’s nothing but a bunch of do’s and don’ts? (A lot.) And how often do we cogently explain why following Christ is so much more than obeying an archaic set of rules? (Rarely.)

Uncertain that I could make sense of this double-bind—loving God’s laws while exercising Christian freedom from the Law—I put it out of mind. “Maybe something will come to me,” I thought, breathing a prayer something would. No less than 10 minutes later, the answer met me in Elizabeth’s profoundly assured wisdom. God is moving in our lives. The laws we so desperately want to carve in stone cannot be pinned down because the God Who issues them will neither be carved in stone nor pinned down. God moves in us constantly, responding to our movements, growing in us as we grow, perpetually challenging us, always asking more of us than we presently possess or believe we can achieve. God’s laws aren’t like our laws. They’re not given to mandate morality or deter behaviors, even though they ultimately do both. They’re meant to draw us into the process of moving with God as God moves in us. They’re not fences designed to hem us in; they’re a series of increasingly high hurdles we learn to clear so that God’s presence and purpose become increasingly evident in our lives. A good look at how The Ten Commandments are organized explains how this works.

The Degree of Difficulty

There’s a deliriously funny moment in Mel Brooks’ History of the World—Part One, when Brooks, as Moses, comes down from Mt. Sinai with three tablets. He declares, “The Lord Jehovah has given you these 15”—then he drops one of the tablets and it shatters—“oy, 10, 10 commandments for all to obey.” I mentioned the scene to Walt while telling him I was at a loss about how to approach Sunday’s texts. He said something that got me thinking. “What if there were 15,” he mused, “and the five that got away were ‘happy’ commandments like, ‘Have fun every day’ or ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself’? What if 11 through 15 were really easy commandments?” While I resist imagining they’d be as easy as those Walt invented, their placement at the bottom of the list suggests they’d be easier to obey than those above them.

If we look at The Ten Commandments in descending order, the degree of difficulty is markedly reduced as we go down the list. The bottom five are straightforward “don’ts”: don’t covet what your neighbor has; don’t tell lies about your neighbor; don’t steal; don’t commit adultery; and don’t murder. Most of these behaviors go beyond the pale for us—they’re literally unconscionable—and those that aren’t nonetheless require a conscious moral breach to disregard. As we climb the list, however, what God expects of us involves more judicious responses. “Honor your father and your mother” requires us to evaluate our motives: are we making choices for our good? Or are we reacting to parental prohibitions to prove a point? “Keep the Sabbath”: are we respecting God’s wish that we set aside a day to worship our Creator and rest from our labors? Or are we taking a day off for idle self-indulgence? “You shall not make for yourself an idol”: Do we reserve worship for God? Or are our lives overcrowded with other objects of adoration? “Have no other gods before Me”: Does faithfulness to God top our list of commitments? Or do we rank others above God? The higher up the list we go, the harder it gets. Suddenly we’re aware that this seemingly arbitrary roster of laws presents us with a process—a gantlet of sorts that gets us closer to God as we master each increasingly difficult demand.

Fixing God’s law as a monolithic wall writ large with do’s and don’ts will result in constantly crashing into it. We will never reach the place it wants to lead us, a point in life where we become intensely sensitive to God’s movement in us. Mastering God’s laws one by one is no easy task. It’s fraught with failure. We keep trying again and again. Yet only by learning to obey God’s laws can we be like Jesus, Who rose above the Law by conquering its impossible demands.

A Hurdler’s Prayer

When we come to view God’s law as a gradually difficult process, we understand why David fills Psalm 19 with high praise for God’s edicts. “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul,” he sings. “The decrees of the LORD are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring for ever; the ordinances of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.” (v7-10) With every hurdle, God’s movement in David’s life becomes more evident. And he closes his hymn to God’s expectations with a hurdler’s prayer we should all incorporate into our daily lives: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” It’s a gradual process, not a grueling list of prohibitions.

God’s laws grow more demanding in order to make God’s movement in our lives more evident.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/11/movement/.

A Better Country

They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11.16)

People of the Promise

I hadn’t counted on politics becoming a Lenten hazard. But it has. The US Republican primaries, European financial crisis, Iranian-Israeli saber rattling, Syrian tragedy, Afghani war, and ongoing human rights issues tied to industrialized Asia persistently intrude on Lent’s silence and contemplation. The world is in a bad way. We are in a bad way. Greed and power lust have poisoned the wells of compassion and empathy. Rarely do we hear officials put forth policy based on justice and righteousness. We seldom hear anyone equate political gain with moral equity and goodness. More and more, our journey across Lent’s wilderness resembles a hike through a minefield, a survey of scorched earth. Summoning the faith to find God in the midst of this is exceedingly difficult, since God adamantly resigns participation in human strife. God is there. But since this is our show, we’ve upstaged God. For me, at least, this Lenten experience could be called, “Looking for God in Hard-to-Find Places”.

Fortuitously, this year’s lectionary leads us back to our roots—to heroic Old Testament men and women whose faith hoisted them above human indifference. Their wildernesses were very real and the impact of social, economic, and political realities intruded on every aspect of their lives. Hebrews 11, one of the most glorious chapters in all of Scripture, collects their stories into an epic narrative of faith that speaks to us today in no uncertain terms. We might title it “People of the Promise”. It gives us a virtual roll call of individuals who believed God and transformed their belief into a way of seeing the world by seeing through it. As real as their hardships and dismay were, they focused on a higher reality—a new world of justice, righteousness, and peace that can, and will, result from pursuing lives of faith.

Looking Forward

The Hebrews writer refers to this new reality as a city, saying our hope in God’s promise of a better world goes back to Abraham, the founder of our faith. Verses 8-10 read, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” The author resounds this note in verse 16: “They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them.”

When we revisit the sagas of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other legends Hebrews celebrates, we’re struck by the tumultuousness of their times and yet how they seem to exist out of time. They deal with crises of conscience, family tragedies, natural and economic catastrophes, political oppression, regime change, devastating wars, enormous social shifts, and every kind of moral chaos. Through all of it, they keep looking forward, pressing their way with unyielding faith in God’s promises, desiring a better country—a heavenly one, Hebrews says, meaning a world reconciled to God’s principles and intentions. Their promised land was one of peace, justice, and equity where God could find a proper home. And their unshakable belief that this world could exist propelled them ahead. More than that, however, their faith compelled them live in the wicked world as though the promised one already existed. How did that work out for them? Verses 32-38 tell us they made tremendous strides at times; at others, they suffered great setbacks and many of them paid severely for their faith. They made “their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world,” the writer says. Yet through all of it, they held fast to God’s promises, even though, as Hebrews takes care to point out, every one of them died without seeing God’s promises come to fruition.

Will Easter Find Us Resurrected?

Lent’s call to repentance and self-examination turns our thoughts inward. We avail ourselves to its solitude and silence as a nurturing environment for inner peace and direction. But surely God brings us into the desert for more than a spiritual retuning. Surely what comes out of our experience should surpass what we gain from it personally. And it’s incumbent on us to ask, “What are we doing out here in the wilderness? What are these wilderness-wrought changes we undergo really for? Is there not a greater purpose at work here?” If we embrace the Old Testament titans’ wanderings and Jesus’s wilderness temptation as precedents, we can’t possibly accept the notion that Lent is all about us. Indeed, what happens to us during our season of consecration is meant to reshape us so that we can reshape our world. Relearning how to survive on God’s promises should, and must, rekindle our desire for a better country, a city founded on its Architect and Maker’s principles—a promised land fit for God’s presence, a new world. And thus, while we’re in Lent’s desert, we must keep looking forward, gauging our personal progress in context with how it equips us to usher in a new reality. How will we transfer the love, peace, and harmony we find to other lives and hateful, contentious, and distraught situations we enter? Will Easter find us resurrected as people of promise, even though it’s probable we won’t see the promise fulfilled in our lifetimes?

On further reflection, perhaps it’s a godsend that this Lent asks us to grapple with tensions created by pursuing faithful lives in the midst of sociopolitical strife and moral decay. Perhaps seeing a world gone wrong at every turn will return our sights to God’s promise of a righteous world, a better country—a heavenly one. Perhaps the extreme wickedness and loss of direction that surround us will galvanize our commitment to disarm minefields and replenish scorched earth. We pray this will be so, just as we pray that what the Hebrews writer says of our heroic ancestors will be said of us: God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them. Amen.

Traveling Lent’s desert makes vivid our awareness that our world has become a minefield of strife, a wasteland of scorched earth. And that begs us to ask how spiritual transformation we experience during this time will bring about a better world.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/08/a-better-country/.

Postscript: Questions 12 & 13

When does Lent stop being about us and become something greater than us that leads to a better world?

How do we transpose our renewed faith in God’s love, peace, and acceptance into promises we bring to daily life and its struggle?

Destiny vs Destination

Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14.5-6)

Finding Oneself

I met a most fascinating woman many years ago—so long ago I don’t recall her name or the occasion that brought us together. But our conversation was unlike any I’ve ever had, because her story was unlike any I’d ever heard. She was near or past 70, and had just sailed around the world on a series of tramp steamers. The instant I heard this, my movie brain kicked in. I envisioned her voyage in black-and-white, with her wandering through one exotic port of call after another. Yet when I asked her what the experience was like, she said, “It was tedious.” I would imagine an adventure on that scale being anything but tedious, I said. “Oh, but it is,” she told me, “because of the scale of it. Most of the time is spent at sea on a working ship, with a crew that more or less puts up with you. I read a lot of books, spent most of my time alone, and stared at nothing but blue sea. And while I did see a lot of the world, the touring became secondary to the rest of it. I learned that traveling the world—flying here and there—is much different than sailing around it. You have no idea how big the planet is until you do that.”

Her appearance hinted that she was a woman of means. So I asked if the adventure ever got so tedious that she considered forgetting the whole thing and flying home. “The first two or three times we put into port I battled that,” she told me. “But I eventually realized I’d bit off something bigger than sailing from point to point. The trip stopped being about any particular destination. It became about me, and what I was learning about myself in the middle of nowhere. I began to understand time and space, thinking and not thinking in new ways. I learned how to wake up every day with no greater goal than letting the day be, and being in the day.” Though she didn’t articulate it as such, her comments rang with a sense of destiny, the process of finding oneself—in her case, of finding her place in the world by discovering how big the world really is.

Letting Each Day Be

In many ways, Lent calls us into a similar adventure. We set out across a vast wilderness that may increase our opportunity to experience new and unusual things. But, for the most part, it’s a solitary, increasingly tedious journey that hones our understanding of time and space, thinking and not thinking, listening for every new sound, and most of all, letting each day be while we learn to be in the day. The longer we traverse Lent’s monotonous expanse, we’re less concerned about its destination than coming to grips with our destiny. Being here, wherever we are now, subsumes our concerns about getting there, wherever that may be—whether it’s the cross and empty tomb, or finding a place in our Christian experience that we’ve never before reached.

The struggle between fixating over destination and finding one’s destiny is as old as the Christian faith. It’s the crux of Jesus’s exchange with Thomas in John 14. Jesus is prepping the disciples for His imminent death and departure, telling them that He’s going away to prepare a place for them. “I will come again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going,” He says in verses 3 and 4. Thomas has no idea where Jesus is going and he panics to think he won’t reach the destination. “How can we know the way?” he asks. (v5) His question triggers one of Jesus’s most frequently quoted statements: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (v6)

Garbled

Regrettably, this is one of those perfect storms where context, translation, and emphasis have got so garbled it’s possible—perhaps even likely—to read the passage and come away with the exact opposite of what Jesus is saying. To sort this out, let’s start by acknowledging concessions we have to make. With the Gospels being written roughly 20-50 years after Christ’s ascension (in John’s case, 50), we accept that Jesus’s statements, much like my recounting the conversation above, are approximations based on memory, not precise quotes. One concedes they’re more apt to be condensations of lengthier talks in which Jesus explained His teachings in greater depth. Then we must also allow for additional fuzz to accumulate by way of translation. Often what began as rhetorical gets transmuted into something more literal, as with this passage.

Jesus starts by comparing God’s kingdom to a “house” with “many dwelling places” (v2)—i.e., a spiritual realm with room for all. But the King James Bible and other versions translate “dwelling places” as “mansions” or “rooms,” suggesting a literal location that sounds more like a final, celesital destination than an ever-present spiritual abode. The emphasis shifts from Jesus leading us into a new way of life—which is how the original texts read—to a foretelling of life after death and the Second Coming. In this context, Thomas’s question makes sense. Who knows how that’s supposed to work? Thus, Jesus’s response is taken as an explanation that contradicts what He’s actually saying. “I am the way, truth, and life; no one comes to the Father except through Me,” sounds a whole lot like, “Unless you’re a Christian, you’re not going to Heaven.”

Jesus expressly is not talking about Heaven and most definitely isn’t putting up guard-rails that deny access to God. He’s talking about a truthful way of life, describing the believer’s destiny in life, not a destination after death. He’s telling us we can access God by following His way, believing His truth, and receiving His life. And here’s the final twist: Jesus is speaking as God, because Jesus is God. To come to Jesus is to come to God. Not only in this passage, but throughout the Gospels—particularly in John—we hear Jesus dispute the idea of exclusion, based on His understanding as God.

One With God

In John 10, He proclaims, “I am the good shepherd. I know My own and My own know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice.” (v14-16; emphasis added) Jesus’s comments about radical inclusion split His audience. John says many of them say, “He has a demon and is out of His mind;” others, who hear the promise of all-inclusive love and acceptance, protest, “These are not the words of One Who has a demon!” (v20-21) Not long after this, Jesus reengages the religious set and takes up the inclusion topic again. Verses 26-30: “You do not believe, because you do not belong to My sheep. My sheep hear My voice. I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of My hand. What My Father has given Me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are One.” (Emphasis added)

Let’s read this closely. “Sheep that do not belong to this fold” are people outside the strictures of religious law and tradition. Yet they listen to Jesus. Jesus knows them. To them He gives (present tense) eternal life—life now and always—and promises, “they will never perish” (future tense). Destiny, not destination. “What My Father has given Me is greater than all else,” Jesus says. Anything we point to in an attempt to deny Jesus’s message of inclusion is irrelevant. Any doctrine that says anyone who believes will be rejected—whether by creed or creation—is dismantled. “No one will snatch them out of My hand,” Jesus declares. “Nor will the power to include them be snatched from the Father’s hand, because the Father and I are One.” (Those clinging to a masculine God should note Jesus’s word for “One” is gender neutral, confirming God’s inclusive will and nature.)

A Present Calling

This teaching of inclusive unity between God and Jesus, between God, Jesus, and us, climaxes in Gethsemane, where Jesus prays, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one. As You, Father, are in Me and I am in You, may they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given them, so that they may be one as We are One. I in them and You in Me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that those also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory, which You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17.20-24; emphasis added)

Jesus prays that we access a state of being that witnesses His divinity and God’s love to the world. It’s a present calling to access our destiny in Christ, to be united with God as One. Jesus prays that we who believe the Good News passed down by the Apostles will be with Him where He is, to experience His glory revealed in that moment, when Death hovers and the promise of Life will not tremble—to know that God loves us from the dawn of time and will not relinquish that love for all of eternity.

Heaven sure sounds grand; eons and eons in God’s unfiltered presence, where death and hatred and suffering no longer exist. But—oh my—how much grander is the promise that we can access our destiny in God now, that we accept Christ’s way, truth, and life and know that we belong to God! To come to Christ is to enter Christ, to be received as one with God and to live in the world as sheep of a defiantly loving Shepherd. Wherever Lent takes us, I pray we discover our breathtaking destiny in this life as we go through its process.

Lent’s desert expedition opens us to the realization that coming to Christ is about accepting our destiny in present life, rather than focusing solely on a far-off, future destination.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/06/destiny-vs-destination/.

Postscript: Questions 10 & 11

How does accepting our destiny in this life—rather than focusing our energies on reaching a far-off, future destination—reshape our concept of faith?

What does accepting our destiny in Christ require of us in the here and now?

Promises! Promises!

No distrust made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised. (Romans 4.20-21)

The Debate Team

A close friend in recovery was explaining how the tone and emphasis vary in different 12-step groups he attends. One of them, he said, spends a lot of time on Step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.” In their discussions, a phrase he didn’t understand at first kept popping up. “I decided to quit the debate team,” they’d say. I asked what they meant. “They figured out they weren’t going to make any progress as long as they argued with themselves about whether or not God exists, and wondered if God really cared about them,” he said. As long as they tried to intellectualize faith in God, they’d run in circles and couldn’t get well. “There are a lot of folks, with and without dependency issues, who need to quit the debate team,” I remarked. My friend nodded, “Yep. If you’re waiting for answers, you’ll be in a rut. At some point, you have to stop arguing and start accepting.”

His comment reminded me of something our pastor said recently: “God promises to hold our questions, to stand with us in the gray.” But we must first believe that, if we’re to know God’s presence in our questions. Without that little faith leap, our inner debates will continue. The arguments won’t go away. The doubts won’t ease. Nowhere in Scripture are we told—nor do we see—that God despises questions. Nearly every great hero in Scripture, from Abraham to Jesus and the Apostles, wants answers that never come. Even when God does reply, the answers aren’t what the askers are looking for.

When God calls Moses to lead Israel, the tongue-tied shepherd asks, “How can I convince the people to follow me?” God says, “Tell them, ‘I AM has sent you.” (Exodus 3.14) When the angel informs Mary she will bear the Christ Child, she asks, “How is this possible?” The angel explains, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (Luke 1.35) When Paul asks why God doesn’t relieve the “thorn in his flesh,” God says, “My grace is sufficient.” (2 Corinthians 12.9) Time after time, we hear people whom God uses ask God for answers; time and again, we hear God say, “You’re gonna have to trust Me with this.” In Love Wins, Rob Bell writes, “There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous.” Questions don’t scare God. They scare us and until we learn to live with them, we’ll be stranded on the debate team, making no progress toward wholeness.

Hoping Against Hope

If faith in a God Who promises to hold our questions seems like a stretch, this next bit may be a mind-bender. As a rule, God makes promises that raise new questions we can’t answer. In Sunday’s Old and New Testament readings, we revisit the story of God’s covenant with Abraham, a 99-year-old whose elderly wife, Sarah, is barren. “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you,” God vows in Genesis 17.6 Unfortunately, the chosen passage stops short of Abraham’s question. In verse 17, he laughs as he asks, “Will a son be born to a 100-year-old man? Will Sarah give birth at 90?” All God says is, “Yes,” without explaining how it will be possible. It’s a promise riddled with riddles, yet Abraham is prescient enough to resist arguing its impossibilities. He quits the debate team. He accepts God’s promise as is. And God honors it.

In Romans 4, Paul retells Abraham’s story, writing, “Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations’… He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised.” (v18-21)

Hoping against hope is one of those oblique phrases Paul likes to use when he wants us to figure something out on our own. God’s covenant with Abraham is a hopeless proposition. He and Sarah have tried for decades to get pregnant with no luck. To appease Abraham’s desire for a child, Sarah permitted him to sleep with her maid and suffered the humiliation of watching her husband rear an out-of-wedlock son. Of all the promises God could have made, God bases the covenant with Abraham on the most hopeless, emotionally charged aspect of his and Sarah’s union. Unanswerable questions had to perplex them. (When Abraham tells Sarah about God’s promise, she laughs, too.) Yet Abraham hopes against hope. He sets arguments aside. “No distrust made him waver,” Paul says.

Unsettling

All of my life I’ve heard people say, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” If only that were so. More often than not, believing what God says can be very unsettling. At some point, we have to turn from hopelessness and cling to hope that makes no earthly sense. At some point, we have to understand we may never understand. Like Moses, we answer God’s call on the strength of Who God is. Like Mary, we trust the Holy Spirit is working in us to give birth to something miraculous. Like Paul, we rely on God’s grace. And, alas, sometimes like Jesus, we hang in torment and cry, “Why have You forsaken me?” And yet, like Abraham, we also recognize trying to figure God out is our surest way to get in God’s way. “He grew strong in his faith,” Paul says, “as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced God was able to do what God promised.” That’s how we quit the debate team—realizing our inability to understand has no bearing on God’s ability to do what God promises.

Promises! Promises! The Bible overflows with them, and with them come, Questions! Questions! that rarely provide Answers! Answers! We have to learn to live with that, to accept that just because God says it and we believe it doesn’t always settle it. My friend shared another statement from one of his groups that helps greatly, I think, with how we can learn to live with God’s promises, our questions, and the absence of answers. One of the participants said, “Let God be with you now. Don’t drag God back into yesterday or push God into tomorrow. God with you now is enough.” God promises to hold our questions and stand with us in the gray. That’s a promise too wonderful to debate.

More often than not, God’s promises raise questions we can’t answer, leaving us little choice but to trust God to hold our questions and stand with us in the gray.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/04/promises-promises/.

Repost: Fasting

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. (Matthew 6.16)

Gravity and Joy

“Saints, it’s time we turn our plates over, set our wants aside, and seek God,” the pastor would say and the church would answer, “Amen!” The room would fall into stillness as believers listened intently to the pastor’s instructions. Sometimes the fast lasted a week. At other times the minister called us to fast one day a week for the indefinite future. Sometimes it was called without protocol, leaving each person to decide what, when, and how long he/she would practice self-denial. Whatever the fast’s form, what I recall most from my youth was the galvanizing mix of gravity and joy it produced. We rigorously obeyed its command to make more room and time for God’s presence in our lives. Yet we entered the prescribed test with high hopes, knowing we’d be stronger, richer, and purer when we came out.

After my need for a more affirmative faith environment led me to a “mainstream” church, I found a very similar, if less demonstrative spirit arose as the people prepared for Lent. Prior to that, since my family’s tradition didn’t observe Lent, the little I gleaned about it from friends and colleagues jaundiced my perceptions. From what I heard, Lent was a 40-day obligation to “give up” something they could easily do without (chocolate, alcohol, red meat) or shouldn’t do at all (cursing, gossiping, fibbing)—more about self-discipline than self-denial. I didn’t realize my exposure was limited to Lent lamenters, however, people whose hearts weren’t in it and apparently understood it no better than I. Once I met believers who greeted the season with the same gravity and joy I associated with fasting, Lent came to life. It was a deeply personal, yet significantly collective experience, an intensely sacred testing period begun in hope and ending in renewed strength and fervor. What’s more, I learned this mainly by observation because, unlike Lent lamenters, authentic Lent fasters don’t wear their sacrifices on their sleeves.

A Curious Business

Fasting is a curious business. Its primary focus—clearing distractions to make way for prayerful contemplation—must be preceded by prayerful contemplation of what distracts us. The verb “to fast” is interesting and enlightening in itself, as it derives from the gothic German fastan, “to hold fast.” Thus, the benefits of fasting aren’t in what we’re rid of but what remains. That’s why sacrifice is secondary to experienced fasters. Their attention literally fastens on spiritual priorities. They go into fasts having already considered what they can and can’t do without, and they concentrate on the former by denying the latter. This transforms fasting from obligation into opportunity. It becomes a season of joy and growth rather than one of angst and deprivation.

Many misconstrue fasting as a means of honoring God by voluntarily refusing to indulge in things they love. They think fasting denotes commitment and piety, and approach it as a sort of holy drudgery. By no means is fasting easy, but neither is it intended to impress God with how tough it is to give up what we don’t truly need. That’s Jesus’s message in Matthew 6. “Don’t look somber as the hypocrites do,” He says. “For they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (v16-18) Jesus’s logic completely checks out with what fasting actually means. It’s a sifting time that gets us back to what really matters. The opinions of others don’t merit the effort to make a big deal of what we’re letting go. The reward comes when what we decide to hold fast in our hearts pleases our Maker.

Essentials from Non-Essentials

Lent gives us time to separate the essentials from non-essentials. What needs to go so what remains can resume prominence in our lives? If only it were as simple as surviving from Ash Wednesday to Easter without a candy bar or tasty morsels of gossip! To get the most from our fast entails much introspection. It asks us to undertake the trial fully aware of any weakness that loosens our grip on virtues and aspirations we hold dearest. And whatever that is (or they are), that’s what we must sacrifice. When we understand what fasting is really about, we realize Lent is sacred, not somber, joyful, not lamentable. It isn’t about giving up what we’d love to keep. It’s about holding on to what we'd hate to lose.

Fasting is a sifting time. We let go of what we can’t use to hold on to what we value most.

Postscript: Question 9

Is fasting a lost art?