Keep Talking

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. (Romans 12.12)

The proliferation of wireless technology has fixed it so we never shut up. With smart phone in hand, we can fill up every spare moment with conversation. Either we’re chattering away, texting like houses afire, or shooting back emails. Our time is now so consumed with communication we can’t spare a minute to spell things out. We’re well past quick-typed acronyms and emoticons. Abbreviations now litter our speech. “That’s more than I need to know” has become “TMI.” “She’s my closest friend” is reduced to “BFF.” Where did this talking sickness come from? It’s as though having the capability to talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time unscrewed our corks and we’ve lost all control over torrents of words pouring out of us. We’ve become afflicted with a bottomless need to tell everyone everything, whether or not what we have to say really needs to be said.

Now suppose all these gizmos we’re attached to could only access one number and the responder at the other end was God. Would we be as enthusiastic about technology? Would we use it as freely and frequently as we do with other people? Would lines wrap around the block, with crazed consumers camped out overnight to get their mitts on the latest iPhone? Probably not. Talking to God—or texting or emailing God or scrolling through God’s Facebook posts—doesn’t have the same appeal that bending another human’s ear has. It’s estimated that Americans, on average, spend more than an hour of each day interacting with one another through their mobile devices. Imagine how that figure would plummet if our gadgets were solely dedicated to reaching God. Would we even know how to fill an hour in conversation and exchanging messages with God?

Prayer is the mother of all wireless technologies. And nothing we’ve invented—or ever will invent—can top its reliability and effectiveness. Prayer comes with a time-tested guarantee of no dropped calls. Satellite coverage is never an issue. It never goes to voicemail. Our words never break up. We never have to worry about having the Listener’s undivided attention. It’s never too early or late to call. Indeed, prayer’s technology is so advanced that we don’t even need to open our mouths. We can pray in our heads and the unspoken things on our hearts still reach God. That’s why all our excuses for not praying more make no sense. It’s ludicrous to think we don’t have time to pray, when we can pray whenever we want to tell God something. It’s silly to confine our prayers to certain places, like church or our bedside, as if they’re celestial phone booths. No matter where we are, we are never out of God's reach.

So why aren’t we praying more? Nothing whatsoever is stopping us from staying in frequent contact with our Maker. Maybe it’s because praying feels awkward to us. Maybe we don’t spend more time in prayer because we don’t know what to say. That makes sense. But it also makes sense that the more we pray, the better we get at it. So there may be long stretches of silence. So what? It’s okay to hang on the line with God. The silence can be illuminating. It encourages us to dig deeper and articulate problems and emotions that make us uncomfortable. If what we have to say is too much for God's ears, why would we ever trust another human to handle it?

Romans 12.12 urges, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.” We can employ Lent’s focus to alert us to dozens of prayer opportunities that come our way every day. Five minutes here, fifteen there—it all adds up. When a moment to pray presents itself, make the most of it. Consider giving your friends on speed dial a break. Tell God the same things you would say to them. Bend your Creator’s ear every chance you get. Keep talking.

"I" and "We"

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. (1 John 4.11-12)

Lent invites us to participate in a global event that replicates two emblematic treks: the New Testament stories of Jesus’s 40-day sojourn in the desert and the Hebrew Bible’s account of Israel’s 40-year wilderness journey. In one, we watch as Jesus’s personal identity as God’s Chosen Son is tested and refined. In the other, we witness the formation of community, as the Israelites’ ordeal becomes a crucible that forges their identity as God’s Chosen people. While being “chosen” is central to both narratives, they play out in remarkably different ways that Lent asks us to reconcile. The great tension in Lent’s discipline urges us to examine our lives in two spheres that often generate conflict: individuality versus community, personal versus public, “I” versus “we.”

As we end our first week in this metaphorical desert, we’re apt to wonder what we’re supposed to be doing out here. Like Jesus and the Israelites, it’s too soon in this process for us to ascertain its real purpose. (And this year is different than all the previous ones, because we are different.) Ostensibly, we enter Lent in search of God—all the while knowing we will never actually see God, because no one ever has. Even so, the question that haunts us is, “How shall we meet God?” Or, put another way, “How will God find us?”

If we undertake Lent purely as a solo quest—cocooning ourselves in private introspection and prayer—we won’t complete the task it assigns to us. On the other hand, if we ignore its personal demands and treat it as a group effort, our work will also go undone. Lent’s ultimate goal is to restore awareness that God has chosen us, as individuals and a community. That is where our true identity, personally and publicly, is discovered and sustained.

Fortunately, we know where our journey culminates. No matter how circuitous this year’s route may be, it stops at the foot of the cross, where God’s love for each of us is lavishly displayed. Then it ultimately lands at the empty tomb, where resurrection empowers Christ’s followers to change the world. And there it is again: individuality and community, personal and public, “I” and “we."

First John 4.11-12 beautifully synthesizes the Lenten dynamic for us. God’s love for each of us transforms us so we can love one another. Although we will never actually see God (not in this lifetime, that is), God’s love enables others to see God in us and us to see God in them, because God lives in all of us. “And God’s love is perfected in us,” John says, which brings the personal aspects of Lent’s refining process into the picture.

We have been chosen, as individuals and a community, to discover and reveal God’s love. In this respect, Lent’s desert is neither a wasteland nor a lonely place. It runs wild with rivers of love that flow over us and through us, individually and collectively. As God’s love is perfected in each of us, God is more clearly seen by all of us. So the answer to both questions—is Lent about “me” or is at about “us”—is an emphatic “Yes!”

River of No Return

When Jesus also had been baptized and was praying the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3.21-22)

Formative Years

Earlier in the week, as we dismantled our sanctuary’s Christmas décor, I joked with our pastor about how suddenly the liturgical calendar lurches ahead. One Sunday it’s Epiphany; a week later, we’re at the Jordan, celebrating the Baptism of the Lord. “We barely get the Baby born and the before you know it, He’s grown and in the water,” I chuckled. “It does come quickly, doesn’t it?” she replied.

Because modern sensibilities put great stock in our formative years, we’re apt to feel cheated by the gospels’ relative silence regarding Jesus’s youth. We want to know more about His upbringing—what His family dynamic was like, what His boyhood friends and neighbors were like, how His human personality took shape. But the gospels don’t exhibit much interest in these details. All told, they give us four brief peeks into His story once the Magi leave. And the timing of these accounts is problematic. In Luke, we observe Jesus’s circumcision and naming eight days after He’s born, followed 32 days later by His presentation in the Temple, in keeping with Jewish custom that the mother—now “purified” and able to be seen in public after 40 days of post-natal seclusion—present herself and her child to the priests. In Matthew, we learn that Joseph and Mary whisk Jesus off to Egypt to escape Herod’s assassination attempt on the Child’s life. We’re told they remain there until the tyrant dies, roughly four years later.

Which is it? Did the Holy Family go underground until the threat passed? Or were they seen by many, basking in the adoration of two esteemed Temple prophets, Simeon and Anna, who proclaim the Infant as the fulfillment of their Messianic hopes? Since we know so little about Jesus’s childhood, we politely overlook these discrepancies and assume “all of the above.” The fourth childhood siting happens in Luke, when the 12-year-old Jesus strays from his parents to discuss theology with Temple leaders. His response to Mary’s scolding—“Did you not know I must be in My Father’s house?”—suggests early awareness of His divinity and mission. That’s all we have to tell us young Jesus knows Who He is. How He reaches this understanding isn’t explained.

The Beginning of Our Story

So we follow Jesus, now 30, to the Jordan with some frustration. Yet, thinking more about the rapid fast-forward to His baptism, it seems less jarring. John the Baptist is the last in a very long line of prophets announcing a Savior, and it’s fitting that his eyes see what his ancestors could only envision. One minute, he’s telling his followers, “One Who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of His sandals.” (Luke 3.16) The next minute, there Jesus is—the Word Made Flesh—standing before him. In this magnificent moment we witness a living example of the believer’s yearning to see Christ fully, as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13.12: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The instant Jesus appears and asks John to baptize Him, the very meaning of the Baptist’s life—concealed in a fog of prophetic faith that has sustained Israel for centuries—becomes clear. Surely John’s heart leaps with the same joy that caused him to dance inside his mother’s womb when her cousin, Mary, visited with the Christ Child resting inside her. Surely John whispers to himself, “This is why I’m here. I was born and have lived for this day!”

While differing accounts of Jesus’s birth and youth confound us, clarity surfaces when all four gospels converge on His baptism with nearly identical retellings. The writers uniformly agree that this is the signal moment—the proof-point that erases all doubt about Who Jesus is. It’s the pivotal event that leaves prophetic promises behind to grasp the reality of God’s presence, alive and at work in our world. We know what we’re looking at. But do we really see what’s going on here? Jesus humbles Himself to be baptized by a man who is too low to consider tying His shoes. He leaves the water and prays, immediately communing with His Maker, Who responds in a supernatural fashion confirming that Jesus is God’s Son—“the Beloved”—Whose obedience to God’s will pleases God. And it is in that humble obedience that our lives find their meaning and purpose. It’s here, at the Jordan—the River of No Return—that our faith is transformed from profession to confession. The Good News of the Gospel shifts focus. It’s now about us, the beginning of our story. Questions about Jesus’s formative years fall away, replaced by questions about ourselves. What brings us to this place? What compels us to follow Christ in baptism? What hopes drive us to this definitive act of faith? For even if we were baptized as infants, there comes a time in all of our lives when we confess the truth that flows in Jordan’s water: We belong to God. God loves us without restraint. Our humble obedience pleases God.

Supreme Assurance

If we follow Christ in baptism, it stands to reason we should leave the water with the same confidence in God’s love and acceptance that proclaimed Jesus as God’s Beloved Child. This breathtaking demonstration is given to us, for us, to bring clarity and meaning to our lives. It defines us every bit as much as it defines Jesus and we do ourselves a great disservice by thinking less of ourselves than what God proclaims us to be. In the turbulent three-and-a-half years that followed Christ’s baptism—when He was tempted, tried, and ridiculed to death—no doubt He reached back to this moment and its supreme assurance of God’s pleasure. No doubt the apostles did likewise as they faced unjust persecution and many of them suffered torture and death. And, as we confront the challenges of faithful living, we should do the same.

Whatever shapes us during our youth—good and bad, lovely and ugly—loses its gravity once we grasp the meaning of baptism. Following Christ, we plunge into a River of No Return and rise from its waters irrevocably changed. It matters not how others see us, what they say or think about us. There is no turning back. God claims us as beloved children. We enter the river in humble obedience; we leave it prayerfully, eager to commune with our Maker. We belong to God and God is well pleased. That’s the Good News of the Gospel.

If we follow Christ in baptism, it stands to reason we should leave the water with the same confidence in God’s love and acceptance that proclaimed Jesus as God’s Beloved Child.

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.