The Leper

I have met many lepers over the years.  Social pariahs, outcast by society, outcast by self, these people soldier on through life as if the import of others words does not affect them, and the attitudes toward their malady, from which its onset they are completely innocent, destroy them faster than the disease itself.

I’m not talking about the various skin diseases the Bible mentions as ‘leprosy.’  For those who had eczema, psoriasis or, yes, leprosy, life was miserable.  Not only did their outward appearance exclude them from any social, theological or emotional discourse, it cut them off from everyone else.  Everyone, that is, except those who carried the same marks of the disease.  In communities they were kept outside of villages left to wander and beg shouting “Leper!  Unclean!” so that those who would approach would know that they would be contaminated by interaction.  Imagine the shame of pronouncing your innocent guilt – being cursed with leprosy not because you’ve done anything wrong, but that’s just the way the football bounces sometimes – when those that pass by you are guiltier of worse: slander, envy, greed, lust… you’ve heard of all seven, probably, but because they occur from the inside, they can be hidden, to a point.  While these lepers wander in colonies, trapped by their skin and their words, they are left to ponder the fairness of life.  Why has it come to this?  Where did we go wrong?  What have we done to deserve ostracision and rejection?

No, we don’t have many lepers any more, what few that inhabit the earth are constrained in villages cared for by people who are the truest of living saints.  But leprosy runs rampant in every country, city, town and village in the world.  It is not chained by any human emotion and its evidence seen visibly on the epidermis.

It is old age.

Think about it.  Instead of leprosariums, we have nursing homes.  By and large, they are wonderful places inhabited by excellent people, but society has cast out the aged simply because their wrinkles are a representation of the sin of the genome.  We cannot escape death so we push those who carry the mark as far as possible from us.  What used to be a sign of wisdom and erudition is now a symbol of the curse of death.

 

Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is attained by a righteous life.  -  Proverbs 16:31

The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old.  -  Proverbs 20:29

 

Our Bible states it clearly: with age comes various benefits and for the vast majority of time, the elderly will looked with reverence.  Their opinions were always sought when any decisions were made.  They lived with their children when age dug furrows in their furrows, stamped crows’ feet around their eyes and stained their hands with liver spots.  But the leprosy of agedness has brought about the idolatry of youth like no other age.

In the last fifteen years, cosmetic surgeries have increased by almost 200 percent in the United States.  Ten billion dollars was spent, over half of which was dedicated to surgical procedures, 1.7 billion dollars on injections, 1.6 billion dollars on skin rejuvenation and a measly $360 million spent on other non-surgical procedures.[1]  Americans spent ten billion dollars on converting our epidermises to plastic, making sure our breasts don’t succumb to gravity, sucking out fat cells so our designer clothes will fit and abrading our skin so that we look ten years younger. 

Talk about a fear of death.

Vanity.  It’s all vanity wrapped in the cloak of despair.  We are uncomprehending of the life after so we are perfectly comfortable abandoning sense so that this life ‘looks’ better.  Too bad there isn’t cosmetic surgery for the soul.

I remember one ‘leper’ very well.  Her name was Katherine.  During the time between my first two years of seminary, I was required to Clinical Pastoral Education, which basically meant I had to spend the summer apart from my family and choose a place where I could learn to listen, learn to ask questions and basically crucify my own ego. 

Yes, it was that much fun. 

Our family had just increased by one as the birth of our daughter, Greta, occurred in my first year of seminary.  Needless to say Christine wasn’t all that excited about doing all the domestic activities for three children all younger than four years of age.  But, CPE was required so I opted for the place that was closest to Wartburg Theological Seminary (which didn’t seem that logical at the time).  I chose a nursing home in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  I just wanted to get my CPE over with; there were no night duties, no weekends and I had a place to stay.  Each week I’d leave Monday morning at 4:00 a.m. and return on Friday after work.

Working with elderly?  No problem.  My parents had raised us in a community and church that was predominantly crowned with glory, ahem, gray haired nobility.  From the time of the novelty of our birth, my brother, sister and I had been parcelled out to homes of various baby sitters so we were comfortable with conversing with those much older than we.  But working in a nursing home, that’s a much different story.

Most of the people that arrive in a nursing home are not there by their own accord.  Either they’ve become ill or unable, and their children have forced them into their cells, I mean rooms; or, the hospital convinces them that they are no longer able to support themselves at home.  Their home has become the enemy: the place where they raised their children, lived with their spouses, collected the dust of memories – this place is no longer available to them.  They are allowed to bring a nice recliner, perhaps, and a quilt they made fifty years ago.  The rest of it is put on the garage sale or divided between children like vultures hovering over roadkill. 

Perhaps I’m being harsh, but there is no greater damage that occurs to families when they squabble over things, whether knick knacks or Great Great Grandfather Vernon’s rocking chair.  The one who is hurting the most, the aged mother or father being confined and condemned to a foul smelling place, is left largely out of the equation.  Power of Attorney means Power of Division.  So, the elderly leper is left to sleep his or her days away interrupted by meals and sporadic games of Bingo.

I met Katherine at Bingo.  In the first few weeks of working at the nursing home (or ‘assisted living facility’ as they are called in all political correctness), I had been encouraged to interact with residents (another word I despised for some illogical reasons) or ‘inmates’ as Katherine called them.  In her wheel chair, Katherine relaxed, almost melted, into the plastic where she had sat every day.  I asked if I could sit next to her and she looked up at me through Coke bottle glasses.  Her eyes had that watery look like her eyeballs were perpetually swimming in tears. 

“Suit yourself,” she said with the typical raspy voice of the aged, “But don’t touch my cards.” 

A friendship was born.

Roughly once per day I made my way to Katherine’s ‘cell’ where we could talk, laugh, share stories of life or sometimes she would even have me play the piano for her.  It would be expected that I’d push her wheelchair.  She never asked, but she sat on that chair as if it were the throne of England.  Proud and short she sat, her legs covered by a blanket she had crocheted countless decades ago. 

One afternoon I played piano for her and as she sat to my right amidst the plastic Easter Lilies and faux palms, a tear slid down one of her cheeks.  At first she was embarrassed, but then she recovered quickly when she noticed that I had noticed.  Waving a wrinkled hand at me she said with trembling voice, “Don’t you worry about this eighty-eight year old lady.  She’s just leaking at the seams.” 

I stopped playing.  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

Pausing for a moment, she motioned for me to sit next to her wheelchair.  After capturing my eyes for a moment, she pulled back the blanket from her legs. 

She was a double amputee.  I had never noticed and never asked.

“When did that happen?” I asked after getting my bearings.  “I mean, what happened.”

Katherine covered the stumps quickly so as no other ‘inmate’ would notice.  “I’m diabetic.  They’ve been taking parts of me for years.  Pretty soon alls that I’ll have left is my heart and my head.  I’m not sure they’re worth taking.”  She coughed out a harsh laugh.  “Reid, I’m dying,” she said at last.  “I’m not sure how I feel about that, but anything is better than this,” she punctuated the statement by patting her stumps.

“It’s hard being without your legs, isn’t it?” I asked from a very youthful, inexperienced perspective.

“Not that you’d know,” she responded, “but it’s not the lack of legs that bothers me, it’s the lack of visitors.  As soon as my legs came off, my extended family stopped coming.  After a while, even my children stopped visiting.  Sure, they’d call or send a card; sometimes flowers would be delivered.  But to them, I think, I’m already dead.  They just want the mother, or sister, or aunt, or friend that used to be around thirty years ago.  But I’m not that person anymore.”

I nodded my head.  It was all I could do.

“They act as if what I’ve got is catchy.  Infections, I think that’s the word.  Not the diabetes, but old age.  They act as if when they come near me, they’ll catch my old age.  That’s the worst of it.  Not dying, but dying alone.”

Katherine died two weeks after that conversation.  She was alone when she died.

---

[1] From the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.  Notice the name of the society is all about ‘aesthetics’ – looking better.

Demons in Church

I always find it fascinating, and a little frightening, that if I read the scriptures a little closer, deeper truths will jump out at me.  It’s frightening because I don’t read the scriptures very closely very often.  Too many times I set out to read what I think I already know and end up missing the very thing that Christ is trying to transition me to do.  Take for instance the freshly scrubbed disciples’ first foray into public ministry.  Thankfully, Jesus isn’t asking them to do much but watch.

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus when into the synagogue and began to teach.  The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.  Just then a man in their synagogue who possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are – the Holy One of God!” 

“Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly, “Come out of him!”  The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this?  A new teaching – and with authority!  He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him.” 

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, that Jesus just waltzes into church, in some strange town and begins to teach.  The people seem pretty receptive – most of them anyway – they probably were tired of the pastor that they had; he’d probably been recycling sermons for quite a while, not done enough pastoral visiting.  Jesus words bring about amazement, awe from a congregation that was used to being talked at by preachers of the law.  Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?  Preachers of the law – that includes me, at times, when I recklessly pound the Bible as the way to transition to be a better person, or a better thinker.  But Jesus was not just a preacher of the law, but of the good news, the authority of the way that God was going to make it all right, and righteous, and it wouldn’t be with regards to following the law…

It was following the Christ.

But there is always one in the crowd.  Maybe more than one.  I sometimes wonder how many people in our Christian congregations worldwide who are possessed by evil spirits, those that cry out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus?  Have you come to destroy us?’  What they are saying is, “What do you want with us, Jesus?  Have you come to destroy our traditions that we’ve meticulously tended for all these millennia? Have you come to destroy the idolatry of our worship where we worship the service rather than the God who has been invited?  Have you come to destroy our comfortable lives, our comfortable places of worship, our comfortable places of repose where we imagine that you are a God that simply loves to live on the fringes of life and one who doesn’t really want to capture us with his imagination of the kingdom of heaven right here and right now?  Have you come to destroy our castles made of sand?  We know who you are, but don’t destroy all this that we’ve built!”

It works on a very personal level also.  There are parts of me, perhaps parts of all of us at times, that catch a glimpse of the Holy One, or hear the Spirit speaking the deepest crevices of our souls and we gasp and hope that Jesus is not really speaking to us.  Somehow he overlooks the evil spirit that might not necessarily possessing me but it is certainly directing my thoughts.  Whether or not its claws sink deeply into the epidermis of my psyche is irrelevant; my thoughts are often directly influenced by that still loud voice that continues to say to me sweetly (not in the exorcist kind of demonic way) “This is your life.  What does God have to do with it anyway?  Has he not given you dominion over all things?  Why would he stop at the animals?  Why not you, also?”

All too often, I tap my foot and nod my head to the rhythm of the demonic voice, “You’re right!  Why would God put me on this earth if it not to enjoy myself?  And if I’m going to enjoy myself, I’m definitely going to make hay while the hay is worth making.  I’ll get to God when I’m good and ready.”

Jesus brushes this away with a swat of his hand as if both the demons sentence and my response are a gnat swirling in front of his face.  “Be quiet.”

But my brain won’t give up that easily and the war that goes on within me when Jesus requests my silence is anything but noiseless.  Screaming loudly in the midst of a crazy life, I want to tell Jesus that sacrifice is a thing of the past.  Giving things up for the sake of religion – that’s what weak people do, and I certainly do not want to appear weak.  With a shriek, my heart, soul, mind and strength scream out in agony…

I just want to be happy.  Nothing I hear about Jesus seems to bring happiness to anyone.  I don’t want to give up any of my freedom because if I rely on Jesus, I have to relinquish my hold on control.  In that way, I am like those who have to come to terms with a God that demands something, no, demands everything.  Yet, most Christians I know seem perfectly willing proclaim their reliance on God and yet live as if every day is independence Day.  Perhaps the body of the church is possessed by its very own demon.  Perhaps that demon is Self Interest. 

But from Jesus only six words are needed:  Be Quiet.  Come out of him. 

A transition to silence.  A transition to emptiness.  You gotta fill it with something.

 

 

 

Fish Story

“Follow me.”

It wasn’t about striving to make one’s way through the world, an immense journey that ends in satisfaction or disenchantment; it was about Jesus first two words to the disciples that spoke entire worlds to those who would be disciples.  Follow me.  At this point, forget about leading, working on five year projections or mission statements or any other kind of tomfoolery that gets in the way of the correct positioning to Jesus.  The immediacy of Jesus statement still resounds to this very day.  It’s about following – practicing and imitating – the ways that Jesus portrays how God loves the world.

 I would have loved to be a professional fisherman.  There is nothing better than exiting the resort, fishing pole in hand, smell of the lake (or whatever body of water that beckons) the sound of the water and freshness of the wind every day.  Imagine what a beautiful thing to wake up to the thought that the only thing you would be doing for the day was to toss out a line, perhaps catch a few wriggling fish, toss them back and return to solid ground for a shore lunch.  I can’t imagine getting tired of the fishing life,

But I bet some of the disciples did.  It doesn’t sound like it took much convincing to have Simon and Andrew, James and John to drop their nets and hurry after the one who had been proclaiming a gospel, a good news, to the people.  Repent – drop everything and everything that you’ve known before and follow.  Mark’s recounting tells the whole story, and it doesn’t take many words for the first four to find their way into Jesus’ nets:

When he had gone a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother, John, in a boat, preparing their nets.  Without delay, he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.  Mark 1:19,20

James and John were doing what professional fishermen have to do: they have to prepare for the next day’s work.  There weren’t sitting in the coffee shop drinking their third latte as the crew assembles the boat, gets the gear ready and makes sure the coordinates to the fishing hole are entered of the GPS.  In order for life to occur, James and John have to do the hard work themselves.  Preparing nets is tedious and back-breaking work, holes are spotted and mended, and each net must be disentangled before they are tossed back out over the water.  An overlooked hole or kinked rope could mean the difference between a day’s catch and a day’s discontent.

It is no surprise that when Jesus approaches them presumably with the competition (Peter and Andrew) in tow, that James and John throw their nets to the hired men and make their leave.  Of course they would be back, but this diversion is probably something that they’d been dreaming of: no fishing for the day.  Or, more importantly, no fixing nets, no fish smell, no waves, nothing to remind them of any other day.  Now, this slightly famous person, this Jesus, is calling them from the boat telling them that they will fish like they’ve never done before.  All that they need to do is follow. 

Follow.  It really is the key word, isn’t it?  When we talk about churches who want to delve deeply into what they believe to be discipleship (ironic that the word ‘ship’ is at the end of ‘disciple’ as if somehow discipleship should be the method of locomotion for the church) we have this picture of a committee of people who sit in a dark room trying to figure out the correct conditions for when fishing for men and women will work.  They might scratch their heads taking the temperature of the water:  Do we have any volunteers who will go door to door?  Does anyone do that anymore?  What’s the weather right now?  How is the pastor doing?  Is she or he setting the course correctly?  Do people see the vision that he or she sees; do they see the storms that are brewing?  How about the equipment – has the stewardship committee been doing its job?  Do we have enough money for the correct (al)lure of programs that will draw people into the building?  Maybe more importantly, what is the condition of the boat?  Is it leaking?  Has it been taking on water or is it seaworthy?

These are all questions that most churches ask before they even begin to think about what a ‘discipleship program’ looks like, and yet how often do they (we) ask the question, “Who are we following?  Where is Christ leading us?”

For some reason, Christian discipleship in most churches looks like this with regards to the fishing analogy:

A church trolls the local waters, usually in the more affluential parts of the city, seeking the trophy fish (a.k.a young families).  Churches want to see young, middle class people, with young, middle class children to have old, middle class churches that have little connection with where God’s word is leading them.  The lure is usually a youth program or a slightly more contemporary service that sheds tradition like ballast so that the young families can see that there is something more ‘for them.’  Forget about sacrifice and forget about ‘commitment’; we’re just glad you’re here! 

The church might attract this young family, snag them, if you will, and get them to come to church for a while.  After some time together, the congregation will assume that the young family is now on board; they’ll take their picture, as if this young family truly was a trophy fish, put the picture in the newsletter like a fisherman posts his trophy snapshot on Facebook, and enjoy how much work they’ve done.

Meanwhile, this family, which now seems very much like a fish, is put in the live-well, or worse yet, dragged behind the boat, until it is half dead.  When they first attend the church, they don't remember these ideas: We just want you to know that we are not expecting anything of you other than to show up, put your tithe in the offering plate, bring your kids to youth events and join a committee.  Oh, it would be good if you could be involved in the women’s events and perhaps come to the men’s breakfast and if the kids aren’t doing anything else, they can serve meals at every opportunity.

This family, this trophy family to the church, is as good as dead and will swim away at any chance.  It’s not as if they haven’t gotten anything out of the church – they’ve gotten a good beating and a nice understanding of how church politics work – but they haven’t gotten a meeting with the Christ who longs for them to follow into deeper communal relationship.

When Christ called the disciples, he said ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men and women.’  Where is Christ leading the church today?  How are we part of the S. S. Discipleship?  How can the church of today realize and remember that when Jesus said ‘I will make you fishers of men and women’ he meant it was catch and release?

Sell! Sell! Sell!

Jesus was never particularly soft on rich people.  “Good teacher,” the young man asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

His question is one that all the faithful ask at one time or another; the rich young ruler’s words are echoed in my own thoughts.  His question resounds with the individuality that we’ve come to expect today; it is doused with a liberal dose of flattery.  “What must I do…?”  There is no need to hear what anyone else should do; the only important person is me.  All the others who are listening are inconsequential to me because I have everything – I am young, I am rich and I am in charge of a rabble much like this. I know just enough to be dangerous and I am pious enough to fake my way through the religious shallows of life.

I stand back in the shadows of this story, smirk on lips, as Jesus brings this arrogant young man back to reality.  Enough of the flattery – don’t presume to know who I am by simply because you’ve heard my name in the streets:  “Why do you call me good?”  You don’t know anything about me.  You’ve been raised in a religious family.  You can repeat the commandments, I’m sure – “Do not commit adultery.”  Interesting that Jesus puts this commandment first for the rich man because he is probably unaware that his own love affair with himself and his wealth had broken the back of the commandments in his life for most of his adult existence.   “Do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and your mother.”

Jesus doesn’t even put the commandments in the right order.  Didn’t he ace his confirmation lessons? 

My guess is that Jesus was watching this young man very closely.  Inwardly, the young man might be checking off the list of the commandments on his fingers and piously - and shallowly - examining his own life. 

You can almost see him blowing on his knuckles and polishing them on his chest.  “All these I have kept since I was a boy.”  Maybe his voice was raised so that the entire crowd could witness the blessing that would be coming from the ‘good teacher’ for his righteousness from birth.  It was obvious, wasn’t it, that he was born under a lucky star – fame, fortune and glory followed him.  Now, it was only a matter of time that God’s almighty presence would bestow spiritual glory also.”

“You still lack one thing,” Jesus says. 

Standing the in the back of the crowd, the shadows wrapping me and my voice like a blanket, hiding me from the rich ruler’s eyes, “Yes, Jesus, give it to him.  He lacks humility.  He lacks empathy.  He lacks generosity.  He lacks all the good things that any self-respecting Christian would covet – peace, patience, meekness" – I use my fingers as counting tools, checking them off in my own external judgment of this man that I so desperately want to be.  I want his looks, his past, his future, his money – I feel dis-comfortable with my own lack of resources which make me doubt God’s existence and blessing.

And in my own casting of the first stone, I would guess that Jesus eyes turn towards me and he points the same finger at me, “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.”

To contemporary western Christian culture there are no harder words that Jesus spoke.  Sell everything – not just the things that you’ve outgrown and grown to dislike – but everything.  Sell it all and give it to the poor.

Surely Jesus isn’t serious.  Selling everything would swap me positions with the poor.  Then I would be one of them.  Then I would have to depend on other people.  Then I would have to depend on God…

Then, I get it.  The impossibility of the scenario that Jesus places before us is that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God – whatever (and wherever) that is.  All the storing up that I’ve done for myself, my addiction to having enough for tomorrow and the next day, all the manna that has fallen from heaven into my lap, the blessing of God’s daily goodness, has been stored up and rotted because I have collected so much stuff that I no longer need God. 

My soul has begun to decompose under the detritus weight of my idolatry.

Those that no longer need God no longer see the kingdom of heaven as a treasure and they then fail to realize that the pressure of protecting the things with which they been gifted is a betrayal of God’s blessing in and to this world.  When all of our treasures on earth are rusting and our clothing becomes moth-eaten and moldy, we recognize how traitorous we have become.

Back to the garage sale, I guess.  

If Jesus says to the rich man (and I certainly am one of those attempting to hide in the crevices of affluence) “Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor,” I guess it’s time for one more excruciating episode of hauling what I once thought to be treasures out the door to be sold on the pavement of my driveway for less than one hundredth of what I bought them for.  Each item, whether table or table cloth, with memory attached, will be priced to sell.  Early morning garage sailors will be swarming around our lane, picking through our things before we’ve even put up the sign.  I want to slap their hands away, chastise them for their rudeness because I know in my heart of hearts that they aren’t the poor that Jesus is talking about.  I pull out the garage sale chair, watch baseball with my little girls,and hope that Jesus can see my sad face as all these memories are sold.

But then I read a little farther in the New Testament, in I Corinthians 13, the amazingly repeated scripture that is used ad nauseum at almost every wedding that I’ve officiated.  Almost always we start at verse four: love is patient and kind – check… but almost always we skip the first three verses.

Let me show you the most excellent way.

If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 

Shedding my things might be hard, but added to the recipe is a full measure of love.  That might be even more difficult.  But when we truly understand love in this world, a love that always looks outward and away from self: an agape kind of love expressed by God in his son, Jesus, the pain of loss morphs into something different.

Joy.

Not happiness.  But joyful contentedness in whatever might happen and the true blessing of shedding that which is conceivably dearest to me is a genuine need to depend on God and others.  In those dependent relationships we find freedom.  Strange, isn’t it?  The bondage of mammon enslaves us to selfishness, but the freedom of a Christian binds us to God.

What's in your Wallet?

The organ at the small country church where I serve does not run on electricity.  Before electric organs made an appearance, pump organs were all the rage.  As the organist pulls the stops out and plays the keys, her (or his) feet are in constant motion pumping the foot pedals to force air into a bladder which in turn pushes air through the pipes creating the sound.  These pump organs aren’t (and never were) designed for contemporary Christian hymns and even though some traditional churches try to play the modern songs on the pump organ, they sound much better bellowing out the old standards.  Remember those old songs?  How Great Thou Art.  Rock of Ages.  Amazing Grace.  Without even trying, the mournful sound of the pump organ returns to my brain and I hear the one song that defined my childhood churchgoing years:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.  O what a foretaste of glory divine.  Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior all the day long.  This is my, this is my song.  Praising my Savior all the day long.

The melody soars as the tune carries us along promising everything in the covenant.  We are heirs of every good thing that God has for us.  And yet most of us only know the first verse and the first words.

Blessed assurance.

I have lots of cards in my wallet.  Each one of them promises something to me.  They assure me because I bear this card, I can use it in time of need.  Beyond my driver’s license, I would guess that my most important card is my insurance card.  If anything were to happen to me (God forbid – as if by saying those words ‘God forbid’ I am somehow forbidding God to allow things to happen to me) I can be taken to the hospital, looked after, cared for, be fed and treated,

And I don’t have to pay a thing – well, that’s not entirely true. 

I just have to pay the premiums and show them the card.  Kind of like a Get Out of Jail Free card in Monopoly.  I can do whatever I want; I can buy whatever I want and if I get in any kind of trouble that would fence me in, I just show them my nice card.

That’s what some people think faith in Jesus is like.  It is something like the picture of a benevolent Jesus smiling down on us from above not caring a bit what our daily lives are like.  As long as we have the Jesus card, we can get out of jail for free.  We can do whatever we like; we can buy whatever we want and if we find ourselves in a place where we are locked in, just flash them Jesus shining face.  Manipulate the system however you want.  Didn’t Jesus say have abundant life?  Have the best of all worlds.

Mark Sayers , in his book The Road Trip that Changed the World, calls this new type of believer ‘atheistic Christians’ who profess their dedication to God on Sundays or in certain places that require their Jesus faces, but the rest of the time they live as if there is no God.  Or, if there is, he certainly agrees with all of their decisions.

They don’t really care because they’ve got

Blessed Insurance. 

Insurance is something that you have to have but something you hope you never have to use.

It’s interesting that the hymn, Blessed Assurance, has three verses and the first verse only uses the phrase ‘blessed assurance’ once.  Yes, we understand the promise of grace given to us.  But, the second two verses start with the words, ‘Perfect Submission.’ 

Submission.  Ugh.  The word that no one likes to hear.  Submit.  Put others before you.  Assurance demands submission to the one greater than yourself. 

When Satan gave Jesus the opportunity to test God to see if he really was there, Jesus response was one of submission.  Jesus didn’t need to test the adequacy of God’s steadfastness; in the mission of submission, Jesus was simply called to trust.  It is enough.  Through submission, we lose the need to feed not only ourselves.  We look outward to those who do not yet know that they’ve found a winning lottery ticket in the back alley behind their house.  The card that says, ‘You’ve won it all.’  Now go and share.

This is my story, this is my song.  For that, I’ll praise my savior all the day long.

Hunger

 

There are three kinds of hunger that humans have to deal with on a daily basis.  Some of the world battles with physical hunger, a portion of the western world loses the battle to psychological hunger and almost no one pays attention to spiritual hunger.

I’ve never really been hungry before.  That’s not to say that my stomach has relayed a message to my brain that it is, indeed, time to refuel.  Usually, though, the message is not that I’m running on empty, it is simply that my body has gotten used to eating at certain times of day.  The psychology of hunger kicks in: I am not hungry because I am hungry; I am hungry because I’m supposed to be hungry.

It is said that Australians eat five times per day and that when they do eat, it is in moderation – small proportions to take the edge off the gnawing edges of the belly.  My own stomach has grown used to this repetitive encouragement of filling my gullet and I find that even though I may have eaten a large breakfast, the Australian system of eating would require that I eat something at 10:30.   They call it morning tea.  I call it justified gluttony.  I’m not being harsh, but I’m not sure that the body needs to eat every two hours in order to wash down an inordinately small cup of tea.  As I raise my pinky finger and gaze around at the rest of those partaking, I think to myself, This is completely cultural.  If I don’t cram a scone smothered in Strawberry jam and whip cream down my throat, they will be offended.  I’m sophisticated, too.  You can tell by the four ounce cup of tea in my right hand.

They call it having a ‘cuppa.’  Just like every other phrase in Australia, it is shortened as if saying the words, ‘let’s have a cup of tea,’ would be too exhausting. 

Let’s have a cuppa while we discuss hunger, shall we?  Give me a second while I butter up two pieces of toast because I haven’t eaten for thirty-nine minutes.

In Western cultures, for the most part, we don’t have to worry as much with physical hunger.  By and large, we have enough food to go around fifty times over, but if we ever actualized what hunger does to us, we might be a little more careful with the way we spread around the calories.

I once led a youth group event where my high school kids had to come to church to stay overnight.  These events are called ‘lock-ins’ because once the youth have arrived they are not allowed to leave the premises of the church – essentially, they are locked in.  We had been doing a month long theme of understanding the epidemic of homelessness that pervaded the southwest portion of the United States.  Because winter is relatively short and not very harsh, many transient people made their way to the southwest to live out their months on the streets living in cardboard boxes, cooking over open fires started in fifty-five gallon drums. 

Because we had been studying life on the streets, our overnight at the church would go with the theme of homelessness.  In order to attend the event, the kids ‘entry fee’ was a can of food from their parents’ pantry which would be, in turn, used at the local homeless shelter.  Little did the kids know that the church would be the homeless shelter. 

As the youth arrived, everything that they had brought for the twelve hours of the lock-in (about ten changes of clothes, jewelry, perfume, walkmans (yes, it was the 90’s), snacks, extra bags of just-in-case) would be stashed in my office.  Essentially, we were making them homeless.  Earlier in the day, the chaperones and I had traveled around Mesa stopping at appliance stores gathering large boxes which would be the kids’ homes (and beds) for the night.  There would be no entertainment – no movies, no planned games, no MTV – nothing.  The kids had to fend for themselves and the only thing that they were allowed to eat for the night was the can of food that they brought. 

The kids were not informed of this particularity before they arrived.

We had a large contingent show up that night.  As usual, parents who normally have nothing to do with the life of the church dropped their kids off early, squealing off into the desert sunset, heading home to disconnect their phones so as not to be interrupted during a teenager free night. 

As the kids arrived, about forty of them, they were asked to pile up all of their belongings in a corner of the auditorium.  The cans of food that they had carried with them were to be placed in the kitchen window.  I smirked as I saw what the kids had brought for the night.  It was as I suspected – they had rummaged through their parents cupboards picking out those things that they most hated at home; cans of spinach, beets, creamed corn, a jar of pickled onions.  This was what they would be cooking for the night.  Cooking, that is, if they could figure out how to get the cans open.

A few kids showed up that I guessed would be difficult.  Dennis already had been arrested for auto theft – he was thirteen; his brother Manny was already flirting with the idea of being part of a Phoenix gang; two girls, Darla and Hannah, who had already perfected professional flirting and as they would be the oldest ones there were probably thinking that any young male would be fair game. 

I prayed a little prayer for me.

Priceless was the moment when we began to take away their belongings.  Dennis thought it was funny as Darla and Hannah began to moan loudly that they wouldn’t be able to change clothes for the night.  Desperately they tried to stop us, asking for just a few moments to pick through their bags for ‘necessities.’  To no avail.  We stayed strong.

Then, to top it all off, the largest complaint came when we told them the menu for the night.  As their eyes focused on what they had brought, it finally hit them: these are the things that we hate to eat and yet we were going to foist them off to the homeless people as if somehow they should just be thankful that we gave what we did.  Hungry people should just be happy that we are so generous.  Hungry people shouldn’t be so picky.   They were going to be hungry and they were going to perhaps understand, even just a little bit, what happens when you aren’t fed.

When people get hungry, they do things they normally wouldn’t do – even kids.  As they didn’t want to partake of spinach and beets, they decided to wait out the night and into the morning.  But as the kids noticed the edge of hunger, the anger manifested itself in other ways.  They began to fight – two boys almost got into fisticuffs over a refrigerator box.  They began to argue – a couple of the kids were not happy that can of spinach was distributed so sparsely.  They began to get tired; they learned that homelessness and hunger are not holidays from societal responsibilities, but usually structural identities put in place by ruling authorities. 

Hunger changes whole cultures.

2 Kings 6:24-30

Some time later, Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria.  There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver and a half pint of dove’s dung sold for five.  As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king.”

The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you?  From the threshing floor?  From the winepress?”  Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so that we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’  So we cooked my son and ate him.  The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes.  As he went along the wall, the people looked, and there, underneath, he had sackcloth on.

There, is real hunger – so violently present, that the people would do anything to not be hungry.  Anything – including eating their future, their children, their hope – anything.

This is not one of the Bible stories told in any Sunday school class that I’ve ever been involved in, but it is a biblical story that speaks to our present time.  We are a hungry people, a starving people, a people so hungry that we would even consume our children’s future so that we can stave off this incredible sense of emptiness that is gnawing at the edges of our consciousness.  We hunger for the Word of God, and God himself, but we are not even conscious of it.

When the devil said, ‘Turn these rocks into bread,’ Jesus response was not just, ‘No thanks, even though that sounds good, I’ll refrain,’ he also had a lesson for Satan. 

“Humankind cannot live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” 

Yes, it is true that humans can, and do, live without consuming the Bread of Life, but are they really alive?  Are they really living abundant life?

And without knowing it, while starving for the Word of life, society begins to consume its children.  Not physically, of course, but emotionally and spiritually.  Because we don’t offer Daily Bread as the main course, (we don’t even offer breadcrumbs to the kids), they begin to hunger for everything else.  Because they have no sense of the Word of God and its importance or essentialness for life, they learn to consume each other.

In the end, the devil has what he wanted in the first place:  sustainable, perpetual and unrecognized emptiness.

The consumption of our youth is visible in the church’s statistics:  Only one percent of youth have an active faith in Jesus Christ. 

In a Christian studies class, a discussion arose from a group of eight grade students wondering about the realities of the Creation story in the book of Genesis.  The discussion took place mostly between four students; the rest of them stared out the windows, drew pictures on their spiral bound notebooks or picked their noses.  Ideas floated back and forth – a literal understanding of Creation is the only one that works.  No, no, said one student.  There is too much scientific evidence to support that the world is much more wonderfully made than in six days.  Another student questioned the reality of how Adam and Even could bring out the entire human race from their genetic material.

At the sound of Adam and Eve’s names, one young boy at the very back of the class raised his hand and asked,

“You keep talking about this Adam and Eve.  Who are they?  Are they from the Lockyer Valley?”

The physical, psychological and spiritual hunger has enveloped our children in a cloud of despair and we, as adults, have done very little about it.  We have simply replied to the starving,

‘What can we do about it?  If God can’t feed them, how can we?  We’ll just put on our mourning clothes and rue the day the world changed.  We’ll reminisce about the good old days when families came to church, when there was no soccer on Sundays, when this new fangled device called the mobile phone didn’t interrupt existence.  We can’t do anything about this.’

It’s the great Christian cop out that we hold in our hands the Bread of Life, that which can feed the entire world, and we are reluctant to distribute it.  Even knowing Jesus had extraordinary powers to replicate and multiply the power of God through the Bread of Life, we are unable at best, and unwilling at worst, to save this generation of young people from starving. 

The Church is in need of transition also – to lose the mantle of yesterday’s wonder years and gain a whole new generation with dreams and visions for the future of God’s kingdom. 

Let’s feed them.

Later, as Jesus transitions us from humans who struggle with an understanding of scarcity, we will look at God’s abundance and what it means for a wide-eyed world who, for the first time in decades, may never have heard of the saving love of Jesus Christ.  But for now, let’s move to the next temptation to overcome – assurance.

A Few Days in the Wilderness

Excerpt from Chapter 4.

 

To be alone is one thing.  To endure it is another.

The foundation of western culture is an attempt to make life easier.  Progress is the currency of the lazy.  Over the last twenty years, innovation has created a culture that believes it no longer has to exert any energy.  Even the commute to work has now been subsumed by the early morning traffic on the digital superhighway.  Instead of stopping at Starbucks, McDonalds or any other coffee shop that requires a guaranteed loan to get an eight ounce cup of coffee, many flip the switch on their own coffee machine.  If they are innovative enough, they will have already purchased a coffee maker that can be set for a certain time in which to turn on.  At 8:45, hot cup of steaming coffee in hand, many workers stumble twenty feet to their office chair where they park themselves for the next ten hours stopping only to refill the coffee cup.  Some don’t even change out of their pajamas to go to work.

We have electric toothbrushes, digital watches, automatic vacuum cleaners and, of course, the ubiquitous mobile device that allows you to be connected to the world at all times but disconnected from reality at the same time.  No longer is there any stress of communication: if you don’t want to expend the energy to talk to someone, text them.  If you don’t want to read a book, Google the notes.  If you don’t want to play a CD (what’s that?) you can instantly download individual songs without having to ‘waste’ time looking for it in your CD (what’s that?) tower. 

We have sacrificed patience on the altar of progress.

When we look at the story of Jesus in the wilderness, repeating, day after day, the discipline of preparation for his vocation, the modern mind would think, why forty days?  Why couldn’t Jesus just download the savior program from his father and be ready for the next day?

When an employee is new to a business, often there is a training process.  Usually the trainee is subjected to a certain number of hours of ‘how to’ and ‘what not to do.’  More often than not, this is done either online or by video.  You would be lucky if you were only subjected to four hours.  Most of what you learn through the videos is disposable; they are simply things that the hiring body must do so that they aren’t liable later on.

The most important thing you learn?  Make the boss happy any way that you can.  Avoid being responsible for anything.  Repeat this phrase: It’s not what you know – it’s who you know.

It’s not in the plan for Jesus.  His testing is part of the on-the-job-training.  In the midst of the six week course (yes, six weeks!) he is given worst case scenarios to check on his response time.  Temptation by the devil?  Probably every day and it’s not as if the devil shows up and says, ‘Hey, Jesus, I know that you are ravenously hungry after two weeks without food, here, I’ve brought you a nice bowl of ketchup and a spoon.  Eat up.”  No, it’s the thought (it usually is the unbidden thought that is the greatest temptation) that overcomes us, hijacks our minds, hearts, souls and strength.  The devil’s wiles are never what we expect.  Our weaknesses are well known to the deceiver.  For those who struggle with alcohol, he doesn’t bring a glass of chocolate milk.  For those who have a drug addiction, it is not aspirin that sits on the dining room table.  Pornography?  I would guess the devil doesn’t show up with a J. Crew magazine.

Part of Jesus training and testing is to know the utmost limits that his humanness will stretch before breaking.  Yes, he was hungry.  Bread would be great.  But that was the easiest of the tests.  If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.  Just check.  Just be sure that God is watching over you.  He lets a lot of people down.  Cancer? Hurricane?  Divorce?  Abuse?   Ever heard of those?  You’d better make sure that he’s got your back before you sail this course, because I’m going to cruuuuushhhh you slowly and surely. 

Isn’t there a part of all of us that wishes, no, needs, to know two things about God:  that he is real and that he cares?  Don’t we test God all the time?  Just one more drink.  If God really wants me to be sober, he’ll do something to let me know.  Or, this is the last time, one last hit and then I’m done, I mean it.  That’s what God really wants and if I quit (after this time) then I know that he is real.  One last time on this website.  I’ll know I feel guilty when I look at this, but if it were really wrong, wouldn’t the computer crash when I turn it on?  That will be my sign.  And, if God doesn’t cause anything bad to happen… well, it must not be that wrong. 

Jesus, like any human, had to have struggled with this, right? 

Then, to the top of the mountain.  At the end of forty days, perhaps mind and body beginning to play tricks on him, perhaps weakening in resolve, the devil sends the last salvo, the one that all humans fall for.  You can have everything.  I control this and I can give it to whomever I choose.  Why not you, Jesus?  Why not enjoy this amazing gift of life that he’s given you in a villa by the ocean, servants everywhere at your disposal - everything that gives pleasure (even if momentary, but don’t think about that).  It’s just one moment of hesitation.  That’s all it would take and I’ll remove every physical obstacle from you.  No cross, no pain, no abandonment by friends – all that you have to do is fall on your knees and confess that God is good, but not quite good enough. 

How easy would it have been?  God is a God of forgiveness.  Surely he would forgive his own son for a moment of weakness.  They could just start over, maybe in another generation.  Maybe when the world was a little easier.  Maybe when there would be mobile phones and completely different, and less painful understanding of sacrifice.

The cliff notes version of Jesus’ encounter with the devil is in Mark; Matthew and Luke are much more patient, but today’s Christian would appreciate Mark’s version: Test taken, test passed – let’s get on to the good stuff.

But we 21^st century Christians are so incredibly impatient and so completely allergic to being in want that we skip over these two verses.  This is the beginning of Jesus’ transition – to need food, to need assurance and to need safety – we can’t skip over it. 

What is the symbolic desert that the contemporary human must be led into?  What are we lacking that must be tested?  What is our hunger?  What is behind our need for assurance?  What about our addiction to feeling safe?