Getting Out Alive

If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up. Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. (Psalm 27.10-11)

Under Siege

So it’s the Second Sunday of Lent and Oscar night, the one time during the year when my two greatest passions—faith and film—nod at each other in passing. (I should clarify: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t schedule its awards ceremony to coincide with Lent. Still, the two often overlap.) This year I’ve set a new personal best in seeing the nominated films. Other than two Foreign-Language nominees and four Documentary Shorts, I’ve seen everything. And what’s struck me about this year’s slate is the preponderance of movies about survival. It can be said that virtually all of the Best Picture nominees portray individuals dealing with traumatic events that threaten their wellbeing. Not all of them make it out alive. But this theme of facing horrendous odds is even more pronounced in the specialty categories.

• In addition to Beasts of the Southern Wild (my favorite film of 2012), the Live-Action Short Nominees Asad, Buzkashi Boys, Death of Shadow, and Curfew present young people whose lives are irrevocably shaped by trauma, as does War Witch (Foreign Language Film) and Inocente (Documentary Short Subject), which introduces us to a 15-year-old homeless girl whose only hope exists in her extraordinary artistic ability.
•  Literally all the Best Documentary nominees tell survival stories. Two (5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers) ponder the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. How to Survive a Plague recounts the genesis of ACT UP, the AIDS activist group that pressured the government and drug firms to develop effective treatments. The Invisible War paints a heartbreaking—and enraging—picture of veterans whose lives are forever scarred by rape while in the military. Searching for Sugar Man is the redemption tale of a 70s pop star presumed dead after his career tanked and he survived poverty as a day laborer in Detroit.
• Chasing Ice (Best Song) is a harrowing documentary that chronicles climate change’s visible impact on the planet’s survival.

The pulse that races through these films beats with the sense of being under siege. There are no easy answers in these movies. Forces beyond their characters’ control raise seemingly insurmountable barriers and we can gauge how we’re feeling about our predicaments by how few of them earn that old “ triumph of the human spirit" cliché. These pictures have been chosen for the industry’s highest honor because they speak to us in urgent, inescapable ways. And what they’re telling us is not overly optimistic.

Souls at Their Extremes

Perhaps the Oscars’ close proximity has filtered my response to this weekend’s texts. But it seems to me that they, too, present vivid portraits of endangered survival. The Old Testament (Genesis 15.1-18) recounts God’s covenant with Abraham, who’s lost all hope of fatherhood. In Psalm 27, David feels beset on all sides, yet he resists the pressure to give up by declaring, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v1) In Philippians, Paul contrasts the waywardness of those who “live as enemies of the cross of Christ” with the assurance of believers, whose “citizenship is in heaven.” “Stand firm in the Lord in this way,” he says. Then the Gospel (Luke 13.31-35) gives us the poignant moment when Jesus predicts His imminent death and mourns that, had things gone another way, His story might have ended differently. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” He cries. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Everything in these texts feels in flux and uncertain. The voices we hear are weary and confused. There are deeply struck notes of trepidation, conflict, and loneliness. The cries come from souls at their extremes, hanging on to hope against all hope, belief in spite of all evidence that things are not working out favorably. Abraham is too old to have children. David is a warrior king in retreat. The fledgling congregation at Philippi is in danger of being overtaken by heretics. And Jesus is facing certain death because His own people won’t listen to Him. To a one, these people travel rocky roads. They’re struggling to survive. And the vivid emotions that enfold them require turning to the only help they know: a God Who is personally involved in their lives, Who is a Friend that sticks closer than any sibling, Who will go with them to the end. There is optimism in these stories, but you have to look for it, because the situations they describe are bleak.

God is With Us

Reading the texts—my head swimming with movie images of children, families, nations, and a planet at grave risk—the stubborn faith that David proclaims in Psalm 27.10-11 grabbed my heart and lifted it. “If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up,” he says. “Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.” While conflicts and confusion that befall us may not achieve the epic scale of Scripture and movies, they nonetheless bring us to points of crisis when we feel our very survival is at risk. Loved ones come and go, often laying responsibility for their departure at our doors. Unforeseen circumstances threaten our inner sense of self, stability, and strength. Time keeps ticking, stacking up regrets and disappointments that erode our hope for the future. Opposing opinions and false ideologies rob our clarity of purpose. The feeling that no one listens to us creates profound grief.

If we are to survive, we have to know that God is with us. Those nearest to us may walk away, but the Lord will take us up. When we place our lives in God’s hands, we pray David’s prayer: “Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path.” God alone is able to carry us over life’s rocky roads. Only God can help us stand firm in the midst of chaos. Only God can provide stability in the time of trouble. If we emulate David’s confidence in his Maker, we will discover the truth at the end of Psalm 27: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” Whatever we face, if we place our patience and trust in God, God will take us up. We will get out alive.

Surviving life’s traumas and terrors is the binding theme in this year’s Academy Awards. And we see a similar array of survivors in Sunday’s texts.

Saying Grace

Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony… And be thankful. (Colossians 3.14-15)

Hassles and Anxieties

Last Sunday, our pastor showed us a scene from Meet the Parents, in which Ben Stiller, hoping to impress his future in-laws, offers to say grace at the dinner table. The results are less than sterling.

She followed the clip with a few questions about why we often feel so awkward when praying aloud in the presence of others—why the desire to sound sincere tends to backfire, and our words quickly become stilted and grandiose. Her observations about prayer “performance anxiety” got me thinking about how the Stiller clip will replay itself at Thanksgiving tables around the country. For many, this will be one of very few times that families will fellowship around their tables. For many more, it may be the only day of 365 that they pause to express gratitude for goodness they’ve received. And while I know of no hard data to support this suspicion, I’m thoroughly convinced the erosion of both traditions—family dinner and saying grace—significantly contributes to social decay we currently wrestle with. Conceding the “inconvenience” of spending time around the table subjects us to more inconveniences than we realize. How much harder our lives have become now that orchestrating family dinner is too hard and taking 30 seconds each day to give thanks demands too much! The hassle of family dinner and performance anxiety associated with saying grace are nothing compared to hassles and anxieties that have grown up in their absence.

Universal Compulsions

So I wondered, where do the customs of eating together and saying grace come from? While other species gather for meals, by and large, proximity to one another and ready availability of food shape their communal dining habits. Humans are rare—if not unique—in their concept of “breaking bread” as a social necessity. Until very recently, the family table was indispensible. It was where family conflicts were resolved, milestones were celebrated, cohesion as a household and membership within the larger community were secured, the lore of identity and kinship passed from one generation to the next, moral character was established, and futures were assessed. In other words, humans have always approached the family meal expecting more than nourishment. We bring big questions to the table, which get answered indirectly through the behaviors and conversations that transpire during our eating rituals. (The first Christians certainly recognized the power of sharing a common meal, which is why they placed a table—rather than an altar or idol—at the center of their worship.)

Thus it seems our compulsion to break bread together is hard-wired and can only be overridden by conscious neglect. But pairing times of nourishment with expressions of gratitude also appears to be a universal human compulsion. Virtually every world religion endorses the practice of giving thanks at mealtime. In all of its forms, “saying grace” boils down to what it sounds like: taking a moment to rehearse examples of unmerited grace and undeserved favor. No prayer more clearly captures the purity of this impulse than one we learn as children: “God is great. God is good. Let us thank God for our food.” To say grace is to invite God’s goodness to our table—to lay the gifts of life-giving food under the canopy of God’s supreme love and care for us. Saying grace isn’t a religious obligation. It’s an intentional act that makes God’s abundant presence felt in our lives—a sacred opportunity to confess faith in our Maker and Provider.

Four Thanksgivings

As Christians, we inherit grace-saying from our Jewish forebears. In Judaism, Birkat Hamazon (“Blessing on Nourishment”) is comprised of four thanksgivings: for the food; for the land of Israel; for the holy city of Jerusalem; and finally, for God’s goodness. We typically collapse this structure into a single statement that focuses on the first and last parts. (“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty.”) Yet, whether preparing our hearts for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast or simply reaching for words before a daily meal, the Jewish blessing can be very useful in easing anxieties about giving thanks to God aloud. We do this by expanding on the Jewish prayer’s basic principles.

Let us thank God not only for our food, but also for being alive and healthy and able to digest it; for the gift of labor that supplies our tables; for senses that relish what we eat; for fellowship occasioned by gathering at the table.

Let us thank God not only for where we live, but also for freedom to make that land our home; for the security of having a place in the world; for the wealth that grows out of belonging to families and communities that strive to live and prosper in peace; for the traditions and heritages that enrich our lives together.

Let us thank God not only for our holy places, but also for the promises they house; for hope that will not surrender to pessimism; for spiritual sanctuary in a world governed by greed and injustice; for beacons of righteousness that shine forth from the citadels and steeples of God’s dwelling places.

Let us be thankful, not only for God’s goodness, but also for the unmerited love and mercy it contains; for relentless blessings we enjoy and too often overlook; for daily guidance and protection given to us; for awareness that if it were not for God’s grace, we would be lost.

I pray a meaningful and rich Thanksgiving Day for all who celebrate the holiday in the US and an equally abundant blessing for those outside the States—reminding all of us of the wisdom imparted in Colossians 3:14-15:

Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

Amen.

Wonder Bread

I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. (John 6.48-50)

More than “Bigger, Stronger”

It’s funny what sticks with us as we age. I grew up during the golden age of advertising, when copywriters worked overtime to condense a product’s appeal into an indelible tagline. If memory were a canister, I could unscrew its lid and dozens of product slogans would pour out. The tagline for Wonder Bread—“Helps build strong bodies 12 ways”—ranks among the most memorable. Yet I didn’t fully appreciate how ingenious it was until researching its origins.

With sly cunning, Wonder Bread deployed a two-pronged strategy. It spent most of its ad dollars on children’s TV, securing brand loyalty among young consumers who never bought a loaf of bread in their lives, yet nonetheless influenced their parents’ buying decisions. As kids, we were constantly told to eat our vegetables, take our vitamins, and get plenty of sleep and exercise so we would “grow up to be big and strong.” The ad’s claim made Wonder Bread an easy purchase for us. But the campaign's real genius rested in its resonance with adults. What made this bread so wonderful to them was its being unlike any bread they’d ever known. It was packed with nutrients—12 in all—that staved off a raft of vitamin-deficiency diseases prevalent in their youth. What’s more, Wonder Bread was more durable than old-fashioned bread. Its preservatives allowed it to be pre-sliced without going stale. So while we heard, “Wonder Bread makes you big and strong,” our parents heard, “Wonder Bread keeps your family healthy and saves you needless expense on bread that doesn’t last.”

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus tells us in Sunday’s Gospel (John 6.35,41-51) Though everything within me resists comparing that glorious declaration to an advertising slogan, I can’t escape its parallels with Wonder Bread’s claims. Jesus is speaking to traditional Jews who’ve taken umbrage at His claim that He’s “bread that came down from heaven.” (v41) He’s calling Himself living manna—a bold move any way one slices it—and appealing to His listeners’ inherent desire to grow bigger and stronger. Remember, this is a crushed people subsisting on deficient hopes and stale ideas. They’re longing for a decisive deliverer to end their spiritual famine, not something so ordinary as heaven-sent bread to fortify their souls. They’re looking for a messiah to champion their cause, not a Prophet Who echoes Psalm 34.8’s challenge: “Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in God.” Yet the more astute of Jesus’s listeners—and we, if we’re equally astute—hear much more than “bigger, stronger” in His message. We hear, “I, the Bread of Life, will keep you healthy and save you needless expense on bread that doesn’t last.”

A Supernatural Phenomenon

While Wonder Bread quietly hinted at the inferiority of older brands, Jesus’s comparison is baldly overt: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” (v49) It turns out the manna miracle recorded in Exodus 16 probably wasn’t the supernatural manifestation many envision. It’s more probable the foodstuff from heaven was a honey-like secretion of plant lice common to the Sinai. (To this day, it’s gathered and sold as a Middle Eastern delicacy.) The arid conditions caused it to dry into resinous flakes that could be baked into sweet cakes rich in carbohydrates, with protein provided by quails flocking to snatch up what was left at day's end. But there were also drawbacks. First, manna alone didn’t make for a healthy diet. The saturated carbs boosted the Israelites’ energy; without protein, however, their stamina would fail. Second, it decayed rapidly and attracted flies that laid eggs in its resin. This made stockpiling manna impossible and discouraged the Israelites from settling for a high-carb diet that put them at high risk of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease—the worst imaginable health crisis to befall a nomadic nation. Consequently, manna was the natural phenomenon by which God sustained Israel during its wilderness journey. That is a miracle of provision all by itself.

Manna kept Israel healthy because it didn’t last. In its place, Jesus offers something infinitely superior, a supernatural phenomenon that transcends physical hunger and survival. He answers those who deride His self-proclamation as living bread with an even more outrageous claim: He has come “down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” (v50) This bread is unlike any the world has ever known. It goes beyond sustaining life; it gives birth to new life that defeats death and the myriad fears associated with it. As long as we feast on Christ’s living bread, we will continue to grow bigger and stronger, because this bread is life-giving, life-changing, and life-affirming bread. By its supernatural power over death and fear, it endows us with unparalleled health that outlasts life as we know it.

Made to Last

This bread is wonder bread. It is eternal life lived in a realm impervious to time and space. It is life that can only come from God and only be experienced as God’s expressed presence moving and shaping our lives. It builds our strength more ways than we can count. It helps us grow into bigger, sturdier people than we could possibly become on any other diet, no matter how phenomenal it may look or sound. It keeps us healthy and alive, even when physical health fails and mortality calls. And it’s replete with sound promises that replace hollow hopes, vibrant principles that replace stale ideas. It is bread made to last. In verse 51, Jesus stresses what differentiates Him from soft-focused spirituality and faddish philosophies and other flaky, sweet-tasting—yet ultimately perishable—treats that appear to fall from the sky. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” He says. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Unlike manna, the Bread of Life falls from heaven to be twice-raised, first on a criminal's cross, then from the bowels of a borrowed tomb. And out of its brokenness flows the nectar of triumphant life.

We are right to wonder at this living bread capable of supplying everything we need to experience healthy, eternal life. If you’ve not yet discovered it—or if you’ve yet to make it the mainstay of your soul’s diet—I invite you to join billions who, for nearly two millennia, have attested to its life-giving, life-changing, and life-affirming power.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

The Bread of Life supplies everything we need to experience healthy, eternal life.

Discovering Abundance

By the power at work within us [God] is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3.20)

Peanut Butter

Years back, I was asked to speak to a group of advertising and marketing students about mapping career paths. Although the invitation flattered me, I was flummoxed by it. I was the last person to tell kids how to succeed in the crazy world of agency politics and client demands, as I’d stumbled into this business with no idea how it worked or how to make it work for me. I was a film and psychology major who spent his first 10 years out of school putting little of his training to use. Before settling on a career as a marketing creative director (which I discovered as a temp typist), I’d tried my hand at dozens of things. “Are you sure I’m your guy?” I asked the professor who tendered the invitation. “I didn’t really choose this path. It sort of chose me. I only got this far because I learned a lot by not having a career path.” He chortled, “That’s why you are the guy.” He’d observed a trend that concerned him. Major agencies were recruiting his students straight out of school and running them through their cookie cutters before they acquired any real-world experience. “That can’t be good for them or our field,” he said with a sigh. I couldn’t have agreed more.

I titled my talk “Learning to Love Peanut Butter,” referring to many times when all I had was a jar of Skippy and some bread. After clocking through my résumé, I told the students that, as far as I could see, there are two types of people: hikers and explorers. Hikers find—or are given—a path and stick to it. They know where they want to go and get there sooner than explorers. Explorers, on the other hand, tend to get lost along the way. Their destination isn’t as sharply defined and the route often takes them to places where they find little clarity or comfort. “That’s how you learn to love peanut butter,” I explained. “If it’s all you’ve got, it’s as good as steak—even better than steak—because it’s all that stands between you and going hungry.” But along with loving peanut butter, explorers learn that success and abundance can’t be measured quantitatively. They’re discovered in what lack of worry about them affords: freedom, endurance, simplicity, and resilience. Reaching deep inside to see what you’ve got is how you discover all you’ve been given. Once explorers master the art of bringing everything they’ve got to the table, success—and its abundance—comes to them, often surpassing that of hikers who’ve stuck to prescribed, “tried-and-true” paths.

Sacrificial Living

Aside from followers of the oxymoronic “prosperity gospel,” most believers get queasy whenever they hear success and abundance linked with Christian faith. Jesus’s teachings are anything but a formula for worldly success. By definition, discipleship is a discipline that aspires to selflessness; its “success” can only be measured by the extent of one’s sacrifice, not one’s gains. Yet Sunday’s Gospel (John 6.1-21) and New Testament (Ephesians 3.14-21) describe how sacrificial living—made possible by departing from proven paths—reaps great success and abundance. Both texts endorse an explorer’s mentality that takes stock of all we’ve been given so that we can bring everything we’ve got to the table.

John tells the familiar story of how Jesus miraculously feeds 5000 by multiplying a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish. This massive congregation assembles at a most inconvenient time. Jesus and the disciples are exhausted. He needs some time alone with them to replenish their energy and discuss next steps in His ministry. He whisks them off to a mountainside and no sooner do they get settled than a huge crowd shows up. An ordinary leader would politely greet the uninvited horde and tell them, “I’d love to talk with you, but I’m in a very important meeting. If you go back to the seashore, I’ll get to you as soon as I possibly can.” Not Jesus. He scuttles His agenda—urgent though it is—sensing that most of the crowd has climbed the mountain with little or nothing to eat. Before anything else can happen, they’ll have to be fed. He already knows what He’s going to do. But He tosses the predicament in the disciples’ laps to see how they’ll handle it. They tell Him it’s impossible. There’s nowhere to buy bread and if there were, it would cost a fortune to feed so many people. A quick survey turns up a boy’s lunch and nothing more. Jesus tells the disciples to make the people sit down. After He gives thanks for the loaves and fish, they’re distributed to the people. Not only is His strategy successful. To the amazement of all, it yields an abundance—12 baskets overflowing with leftovers, one for every disciple.

It’s impossible to know if Paul (or the author writing in his name) recalls this story while outlining the principle of spiritual abundance in the Ephesian letter. Scholars date the epistle circa 62 CE, around the time that Mark, Matthew, and Luke pen their gospels and 30 years before John composes his. So Paul may not have even heard of this episode. Yet he is by far the greatest explorer among all the Apostles, the one who discovers success and abundance come to those who quit the beaten path and, for lack of a better phrase, learn to love peanut butter. He prays the Ephesians “may be strengthened in your inner being with power through God’s Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” (Ephesians 3.16-17) He trusts they will discover “the power to comprehend… what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (v18) With this power at work within us, he writes, God “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” These statements sound lofty until we reach down inside ourselves and discover what we’ve got is more than enough. If all we have are peanut butter and bread—if the most we can scrounge up would barely feed a growing boy—it’s still an abundance, because we’ve been given power to comprehend God is at work within us.

What’s in Your Pocket?

Of the gospels’ miracle stories, the feeding of thousands—5000 here, 4000 in another instance—strikes me as the most problematic. Living in an age when meteorological and medical phenomena are standard news, calming storms, walking on water, curing disease, and even raising the dead seem, well, not so amazing. (In a way, what we’ve learned from science since these stories were first recorded magnifies their miraculous nature by shifting the focus from their inexplicable outcomes to Jesus’s role as the catalyst that brings them about.) But there really is no explanation for how Jesus transforms one lunch into dinner for 5000. Or so I thought, until I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s exquisite sermon on this episode. In “The Problem with Miracles,” she invites us to imagine most everyone on the mountainside showed up with a little something to eat in his/her pocket. The problem was none of them thought they had enough to share.

They might have been able to keep their own food for themselves if that bread basket had not come around, full of scraps, everyone so careful not to break off too much, everyone wanting Jesus’s crazy idea to work so much that very carefully, very secretly, they all began to put their own bread in the basket, reaching in as if they were taking some out and leaving some behind instead.

Of course, we can’t say with certainty that’s how it happened. Nonetheless, the notion is fully in keeping with how God works. God leads us to places where we discover God’s power to transform the little we have into overflowing abundance. Yielding our meager talents and resources is how we enable God to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. As we ponder Sunday’s passages, I pray we’ll discover that by learning to love peanut butter, not only will we eat well. Hungry hearts that find us will also be fed.

What’s in your pocket?

God’s power at work in us transforms what little we have into more than enough.