Baby Snatchers

There are those who snatch the orphan child from the breast, and take as a pledge the infant of the poor… From the city the dying groan, and the throat of the wounded cries for help; yet God pays no attention to their prayer. (Job 24.9,12)

Dedicated to the memory of hundreds of murdered children and those who loved them.

During Advent our pastor asked a question that has haunted me ever since. “Can we continue to idolize violence and still believe the Gospel’s message of love?” She paused to scan the congregation. With a catch in her throat that fueled the fire of her insistence, she said, “The answer just has to be, ‘No!’” By idolizing violence, she meant faith in hostility and death over love’s decisive power to sustain life. This violence runs much deeper than movie mayhem and gangsta rap. It drills down into the marrow of our social and spiritual beings.

We participate in a culture that places nearly all of its confidence in aggression and retaliation. It’s not enough to resolve our differences in a loving, peaceful manner—in part, because doing so requires tremendous effort and sacrifice on all sides. No, we opt for the inferior alternative: settling scores. This compulsion takes root long before we reach for physical weapons. It’s the product of low biology—what the New Testament calls “the flesh”—that obsesses about survival and perceives every life challenge as a potential threat. Darwin optimistically framed this instinct as “survival of the fittest.” But, at its core, it’s a kill-or-be-killed mentality that goads us to take preemptive strikes and meet violence with violence. Thus, violence is an attitudinal issue that, if unchecked, becomes a behavioral problem. Its primary weapons are hearts and minds; fists, guns, knives, and—most commonly—words are merely hardware.

Violence always carries hidden costs that ultimately discredit its effectiveness. Years may pass before the bill comes due. But the instant our hearts and minds turn to violence—whether physical, verbal, emotional, or spiritual—the invoice is in the mail and it will arrive bearing interest. And violence doesn’t care who pays the tab, as long as it’s paid. So when excess pride in our children causes us to instill in them a ferocious competitive streak, we shouldn’t be surprised when its attendant anxiety and selfishness erupt in rage. When paranoia about safety and loss of “what’s ours” compels us to attack others, we shouldn’t be perplexed when we become targets of hostility. When fear of losing respect breeds disrespect for others, we shouldn’t be shocked when what we’re determined to preserve evaporates. Faith in violence doesn’t just look ridiculous. It is ridiculous.

Because violence can’t coexist with love, it provides no brakes to stop our slide down the slippery slope. The gaps between “venting” and berating, “defending” and bullying, “winning” and humiliating are not as wide as we imagine. If we listened more closely to how we talk, we’d get this. We talk about “letting people have it” and “crushing the competition” and “butting heads.” Even when we’re on the losing side, we glorify the violence we suffer, saying we’re “floored” by what was said to us, or “blown away” by another’s actions. Kids and sports fans have a term for our use of violent speech—“talking smack,” which gets to the nub of the issue. Saying leads to doing, and with so much of our language devoted to violence how can we not admit to its prominence on the altars of our hearts?

Giving violence different names or redefining it to highlight its extremes won’t remove its place of idolatry. When violence becomes the thing we rely on for protection and the thing we most fear, it is our god. What else but a god could persuade us to wage war in the name of peace, to assert the sanctity of our land by invading and occupying another, to exhibit self-worth by diminishing the value and rights of others? These are not instinctive responses to fear and threat; they’re conscious acts that constitute wholehearted worship of violence. And don’t be deceived: this god is a filthy liar. Nothing it promises ever pans out.

In the 24^th chapter of Job—which some scholars believe is the Bible’s oldest volume—the hero’s complaint about the violence of his day reads like our daily news. Evildoers scam widows out of their property. Poor parents scavenge to feed their children, while thugs seize fields and vineyards. (Job’s loathing for this crowd is so vehement that he accuses them of not having enough sense to come in out of the rain.) Murderers kill the poor and defenseless. Women are routinely abused. And several times, Job’s focus turns to children born into a world consumed by violence. “There are those who snatch the orphan child from the breast, and take as a pledge the infant of the poor,” verse 9 says. These baby snatchers place no value in human life. Nor do they bow to the God of love. The violence they worship deadens their senses to the agonies they cause. “From the city the dying groan, and the throat of the wounded cries for help,” Job tells us. “Yet God pays no attention to their prayer.”

That last sentence troubles us, as it should. It certainly vexes Job. The entire chapter begs the question, “Why would God allow this?” It’s the same question we ask when reading reports of children gunned down in drive-by shootings and we’re gripped with grief by grade-school massacres. Where is God? The answer may be simpler, and closer to home, than we think. We’ve replaced the God of love with the god of violence. In Matthew 6.24, Jesus explains, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” A society—including its religious right—that looks to violence to solve its problems has cast God from its presence. Before God can intervene, idolatry of violence has to be torn down. Then the love of God will return and that, in and of itself, will be the answer to our prayers.

Holy Week starts early for me this year, as Walt and I and members of our church join thousands of Chicagoans for tonight’s CROSSwalk, a sacred processional honoring the memory of over 800 young humans sacrificed to violence since 2008. Although the demonstration will be peaceful, it is intended to confront the idolatry of violence that plagues our city with baby snatchers, abusers, murderers, and war-makers. It is a fitting start to Lent’s closing act, when God’s love will challenge violence’s power and rise from death in decisive triumph.

This evening, as we hear the names of our lost called out—as we ponder the horrors of homicide and baby-snatching—we’ll want to ask, “Where is God?” But the answer to that won’t satisfy, because it’s the wrong question. With repentant hearts, we need to ask, “Can we continue to idolize violence and still believe the Gospel’s message of love?”

The answer just has to be, “No!”

You Say It

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17.20)

All of this Lenten off-loading and sorting-out has me surrounded by tall piles of junk. Here’s my short temper, and over there is my pride, and next to that, my knee-jerk negativity toward people who—in my unqualified estimation—have no clue about what’s going on in the world. Night before last I was at they gym, going through my treadmill paces, as one of those “Real Housewives” shows played on the overhead TV. I was listening to gospel music on my iPod and couldn’t hear a word they said. But just from the look of them, I decided I didn’t like these people. I automatically assumed they were silly and gauche and I thought, “If our paths crossed, I’d get away from them as fast as I could.” Just that quick, a voice in the recesses of my brain challenged me. “Really?” it asked. “You’ll go out of your way to talk to a homeless person, but you’re okay with sneering at nouveau riche folks? How can that be right?”

Lent will do that. It has a way of pulling us up short and highlighting idle assumptions that evidence how much further we have to go to be like the Lord. Jesus spent a lot of time with poor people. But He showed kindness and hospitality to wealthy and grandiose types, too. If the Samaritan woman at the well had been a Real Housewife (and she may have been), He wouldn’t have turned her away. Where do I get off imagining I can do differently? So there you go. Add unjust attitudes about the privileged few to my heaps.

After a while, it starts to feel like our shortcomings are closing in on us. Wherever we turn, there’s another mountain. Our Lenten progress reaches a standstill, because we can no longer scale the foolishness we pile up. Our first instinct is to appeal to God’s mercy (the right thing) and expect God to move our mountains for us (the wrong thing). We want God to serve our interests as a single-handed demolition crew, blow our weaknesses sky-high, and clear the way so we can get on with our lives. That’s not going to happen.

No sooner had I been chastened for my condescension than my iPod shuffled up a tune that spoke to my problem. It was a song I’d never really paid attention to, “That’s How the Lord Works,” by The Thomas Whitfield Singers. The soloist sang, “I asked God to move my mountains, but instead God increased my faith.” The choir answered, “That’s how the Lord works; that’s just like God.” I had to think about that for a minute.

The allusion, of course, is Jesus’s promise in Matthew 17.20 (repeated almost verbatim in Matthew 21.21): “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” We get all excited about the dramatic proportions of His imagery—a teeny tiny seed of faith can move impossibly huge mountains. But if we look at enormous piles of our junk, and then ask God to move them for us, are we truly following the principle Jesus lays out? “You”—not “God”—“will say to this mountain, ‘Move,’” He says.

Moving our mountains is our responsibility. God makes it possible the instant we confess belief they can be moved. The size of our faith doesn’t have to equal the scope of our problems. It just needs to plant confidence that moving mountains is not impossible. Speaking to them acknowledges that we see them for what they are. We can no longer cloak them in language of denial and justification. They are mountains. They need to move. “You say it,” Jesus promises, “and nothing will be impossible for you.”

The Devil in Our Desert

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. (Luke 4.1-2)

No Arguments, No Equivocation

I’d always been “the skinny kid” until middle age kicked me in the gut. And it was some kick. The men on both sides of my family bear their excess weight around the middle. So that’s where mine collected. Gradually, my 30-inch waist rounded up to 36. A six-inch expansion over two decades may not seem like much to a lot of folks. But it was shameful to me, as it signified lack of discipline. I wasn’t fighting temptation’s power over me. Worse yet, when I considered the only alternative—diet and exercise—I consciously surrendered to temptation. Even though I knew my behavior wasn’t healthy, I had all kinds of rationale for attitudes and behaviors that masked unwillingness to resist temptation as defiance.

First, there was the notion that monitoring my diet and working out wasn’t “me.” I’d never had to do either one. How dare changes in body chemistry force me to change! Second, I abhorred the gay stereotype of the calorie-counting gym rat. I’ve always viewed that as an indicator of vanity in some, insecurity in others. Yet it grew increasingly obvious that “defiance” of the aging process and cultural stereotypes was harming me. My corkscrew logic didn’t work. I knew that. And I had to stop pretending I didn’t.

In January, Walt announced, “We’re getting you back in shape.” Because I know he loves me—will always love me—regardless of my physique, I knew his motives were pure. What’s more, he sealed the deal by saying, “We’re going to do this together.” Now Walt has never battled his weight. So volunteering to take this journey with me moved me to act. He threw out all the junk food and assumed the onerous task of ensuring we get to the gym every day. Then we had a long talk about my behavior when he’s not around—when I’m traveling, for instance, and he’s not there to monitor what I do. “You have to commit to making right choices on your own,” he said. “When that little voice tells you it’s okay because I’m not there, you have to shut it down. No arguments. No equivocation. Just, ‘No!’” So far, things are going well. It’s not always easy or pleasant. But now that I’ve fixed my attitude, I’ve discovered overcoming temptation is its own act of defiance—the kind of defiance that chooses health over harm, strength of mind over weakness of body. If all goes well, in a few months’ time, I should be back to my old self again. Except for one big difference: getting the “real me” back will require the “current me” to change. That’s what I’m learning with each new day.

Right Choices

When we open Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 4.1-13) to read of Jesus’s wilderness temptation, we take stock of what’s actually happening. He’s just left the Jordan, where God has audibly claimed Him as God’s chosen Son. He’s never been more sure of Who He is. The stories of His miraculous conception and birth, His adolescent curiosity about godly things—all of it suddenly makes sense. And when the Spirit steers Him into the desert, He brings more than certainty of Self with Him. Based on His future encounters with the Pharisees, we know Jesus is deeply suspicious of religious stereotypes. Before He begins His ministry, He will need to reconcile the singularity of His calling with the context of His culture. It is essential that He present the “real” Jesus to the world, rather than merely defy the appearance and trappings of religious norms.

Jesus knows that God loves Him without measure. He knows God will stay with Him during this struggle. (If He doubts any of this, why go into the desert at all?) Yet, as the story advances, it’s obvious that Jesus is led into the wilderness to test His ability to make the right choices on His own. In the temptations put before Him one hears the tempter say, “You’re out here by Yourself. No one need ever know You’ve had a few momentary lapses. Why put Yourself through this?” The devil is very crafty in designing specific challenges for Jesus—three in all, each targeting a potential weakness: confidence of Self that suggests He can eat anything He pleases; the promise of commanding worldly respect by defying stereotype; and the opportunity to prove His faith in God by forcing God to rescue Him. The nature of these temptations may not reflect those we normally face. But they’re transparent in their attempts to destroy Jesus. He sees through the scam. He knows what’s promised can never be delivered. Once the devil is convinced Jesus’s faith is secure, he leaves—although Luke ends story on an ominous note, saying the struggle will resume at a more “opportune time.”

Our Responsibility

What does this story say about our lives, the tests we undergo, and the Lenten journey we undertake? First, there will be times when the Spirit leads into wildernesses where we’re tempted, intentionally to teach us the importance of making right choices. God goes with us, but leaves the decisions solely to us. Simply knowing we’re God’s beloved children doesn’t exempt us from tests. And when we’re tested, we’re wise not to dismiss it lightly. Because we’ve been immune to temptation’s harms in the past doesn’t guarantee immunity. Because we’ve never had problems with certain attitudes and behaviors doesn’t mean they will never be problematic. And we must be very conscious that we’re every bit as vulnerable as anyone else to vanities and insecurities we want to defy. We have to make right choices. It doesn’t matter who is or isn’t watching. Every decision carries real consequences that can reshape us into people we were never meant to be.

The devil in our desert knows us all too well. It knows the games we play to justify unhealthy thoughts and actions. It knows that God’s protection stops short of preventing us from harming ourselves. That’s our responsibility. Yet while decisions we make are ours alone, we are not alone. We combat the diabolical voice that says, “It’s okay—nobody’s looking,” with our Maker’s voice. Not only during Lent, but always, we hear God say, “Let’s get you into shape.” When we’re tested, we follow Jesus’s example. No arguments. No equivocation. Just, ‘No!’” Too often yielding to temptation masks itself as a better choice than doing the hard of work of self-denial and spiritual exercise. But in the end, it’s a lousy decision and we eventually discover that getting back to the “real us” will require the “current us” to change. We choose health over harm, strength of mind over weakness of body. It’s a lesson we learn and relearn with each new day.

The devil in our desert knows us all too well and targets our potential weaknesses. What we do in response to temptation is a choice we must make on our own.

Fashion Sense

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. (Colossians 3.12)

A Clean House

There is a great Southern tradition that encourages entering the New Year with a clean house—not merely a neat one, but a clean one. In the days leading up to the holiday, many Southerners take stock of all they’ve accumulated over the past year and decide what’s worth saving and what isn’t. They dig through cupboards, discarding stale items shoved into the corners. Old magazines and loose papers of no lasting value get tossed out. They inventory their closets for clothing they’ve ignored—or had no use for—during the past 12 months. Getting rid of outdated stuff makes room for new blessings. It’s an exercise in creating clarity, the means to free oneself of unnecessary encumbrances.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I’ve never known anyone who followed this custom all the way through. It’s a massive undertaking that demands enormous energy—usually in short supply coming on Christmas’s heels. But the tradition remains compelling because its intent focuses one’s thoughts about the New Year. It raises important questions about what we carry with us, along with what we don’t need, as we move forward in time. While we may not have the wherewithal to purge our homes of a year’s worth of obsolete rubbish, we can surely find time to survey our lives. Are there stale ideas cluttering our cupboards? Are we hanging onto things with no lasting value? Are our closets crammed with unbecoming attitudes and habits we should be relieved of? Entering the New Year with a clean house is a wonderful thing.

The Ugly Stuff

A big part of our trouble with letting go useless—and often detrimental—things we’ve taken on springs from not knowing what will replace them. If I discard unproductive resentments, anxieties, prejudices, and memories I’ve clung to, what’s left? Something in us fears looking at a severely thinned-out closet. Yet Sunday’s New Testament reading (Colossians 3.12-17) presents an enviable wardrobe of new fashions for the taking. In verses 12-14 we read, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” The long list of desirable clothing the writer names—compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love—is extremely helpful in two ways. First, it tells us what should be in our closets; it calls out attitudes and behaviors that define the faithful believer’s style. But it also identifies what shouldn’t be left hanging around. Anything that contradicts or compromises the qualities it describes must go. There’s no room in our closets for injustice, cruelty, pride, aggression, impatience, resentment, and hatred.

Of course, such negative traits are ugly things—too ugly for most of us to imagine ever wearing in public. But they have a way of creeping into our wardrobes because they’re all too common in fashions we see every day. They’re like trendy clothes we’ve worn in the past, donned under pressure to appear “stylish,” only to look back once the trend has faded and see how hideous and unflattering they really were. What’s more, if we’re not thorough in our resolve to toss out the ugly stuff, it tends to turn up in trivial accessories that detract from an otherwise attractive style. All it takes is a funky belt or scarf or set of earrings to throw the whole look off. What seems subtle and inconsequential at first becomes glaringly gauche. Anything that clashes with Colossians’ classic Christian look puts us at risk of ruining God’s reflection. The tiniest lapel pin can be a dead giveaway that our witness isn’t what it should be.

Wear What We Are

The style that Colossians urges us to adopt is hardly haute couture. It’s not an elitist fashion that costs more than we can afford and makes statements about our social and economic standing. Indeed, the Colossians collection is ready-to-wear, or as French designers call it, prêt-à-porter—literally, for the taking. (US merchants call it “off the rack.”) As God’s children, these qualities are readily available to us. They’re styles that we can easily understand and emulate, having experienced their grace and beauty through Christ’s power. Being recipients of God’s compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love, we know what they look like. We know how well they work together, bound, as the writer says, in perfect harmony. We know the joy they bring, how appealing they are, and how well they fit us.

The call that arises from Colossians challenges our intentions. Will we embrace a classically Christian fashion sense that mirrors all that Christ offers us? Or will we settle for quickly outmoded trends and funky touches that diminish us? Will we persist in being slaves to worldly fashions or will we clothe ourselves in keeping with our identity as holy and beloved children of God? Personally, I’ve never put much credence in the adage “you are what you wear.” But the Colossians writer invites us to view the notion in reverse, encouraging us to wear what we are.

I pray we all take time to inventory our closets during these closing hours of 2012. May we enter 2013 with clean houses and wardrobes filled to overflowing with attitudes and behaviors becoming to God and us.

Happy New Year!

Colossians urges us to adopt a classic Christian look that is becoming to God and us—and the New Year presents a prime opportunity to inventory our wardrobes.