Defaulting to the Good

Lent 4

Luke 15:11b-32

“The death side of things grabs our imagination and fascinates us as fear and negativity always do, I am sad to say.  We have to be taught how to look for anything infinite, positive or good, which for some reason is much more difficult.”  --Fr. Richard Rohr,  Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

In Jesus’  “Parable of the Prodigal Son” the father and the elder son see the returning prodigal through very different eyes.   The father, runs and greets his lost son, wrapping his arms around him with joy in his heart.  The elder son scoffs at the return of his brother, and sees the father’s actions toward one who has “devoured your property with prostitutes” as a personal affront.  One response is positive, the other negative.  One focuses on forgiveness and reconciliation, the other on judgment and wrath.  One sees the best, the other the worst in the situation.

Rohr, I think, is right.  We human beings quickly default to the negative.  We have a bad habit of putting the worst construction on people’s behavior, words and intentions.  We are too often quick to anger and slow to forgive.  Maybe that’s because we’ve been burned so many times.  Our default to the negative is also conditioned by the messages we hear day in and day out from the media and from one another.  Conflict, lack of civility, personal attacks and the vilification of those who are different, or of a different opinion, seem to be the way of the world these days (especially during an election year).  

Maybe that’s why it is so hard for some people to grasp the concept of God’s grace.  Jesus teaches and demonstrates that God’s love is like the father’s love.  God is the one who greets us, wraps loving arms around us, and welcomes us with joy in spite of who we are, where we’ve been or what we’ve done in the course of our lives.  God doesn’t kill the fatted calf…  God offers up the life of Jesus in order to undo our human propensity to judgment and wrath, and, in so doing, opens a way to reconciliation and life.

What would the world look like if we humans learned how to default to the infinite, the positive and the good?  What if our first response to the prodigals in our lives looked more like the father’s than the elder son’s?   What if we looked for the best in the people who cross our path?   That is the Way of Jesus.  That is the Way of forgiveness and reconciliation.  That is the Way of Life.

Rohr goes on to say this, “We have spent centuries of philosophy trying to solve the ‘problem of evil,’ yet I believe the much more confounding and astounding issue is the ‘problem of good.’  How do we account for so much gratuitous and sheer goodness in the world?  Tackling this problem would achieve much better results.”  I think the father in Jesus’ parable would agree.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

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Houses and Hens

Lent 2

Luke 13:31-35

“This is Christ’s Church.”  I said to a group of church members gathered in the worship area for an annual meeting.  We were talking about mission.  A man stood up, scowling.  “This is OUR church!”  The insistence in his voice was a little scary.  “We built it.  We support it.  We take care of it.  The church belongs to us!”  Jesus words, lamenting over Jerusalem, came to mind.  “See, your house is left to you!”  Fortunately, I did not quote Jesus’ words out loud.  I don’t think it would have helped. 

That happened a long time ago.  But I fear that, sometimes, we forget why God, through the Holy Spirit, gathers us together into churches; into communities of faith.  Sometimes I fear that our attitudes about “our” churches are not too far from this man’s – we just wouldn’t dare say it out loud or even admit it to ourselves.  Out loud, we would agree that the church belongs to Christ, but our actions and our anxieties reflect a different underlying reality.  When a church turns inward upon itself, decline and ultimately, death, is the inevitable result.  When we become possessive of the church, and  begin to think that the church is primarily there to serve us and to take care of our needs, we need to be convicted Jesus’ words, “See, your house is left to you!”

Like the mother hen, God still yearns to gather her children under her wings.   Gathering and tending the flock is an important part of what a church does.  Churches need to provide spiritual nurture and care, pray for and with one another,  visit those who are sick, lonely or bereaved, teach the Word, and gather for the worship and praise of God.  In the gathering, God forms, equips and nurtures disciples for the sake of Christ’s mission in the world.  But, the gathering is not the end point of being a church.  Following in the Way of Jesus, we are sent from our gatherings to be the Church in the world and in our daily lives.  We are sent to bear witness to the love and grace of God in word and deed.  We are sent to reach out to the broken, the lost, the lonely, the hurting and suffering, the hungry, the thirsty, and the stranger.

Gathering and sending.  Gathering and sending.  Gathering and sending.  This should be the rhythm of the Church’s life.  If we forget the gathering, the church becomes, at best, just another social service agency.  If we forget the sending, the church becomes, at best, a social club for the religiously minded.   Gathering and sending.  We need to do both.  Otherwise, our house will be left to us.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

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People of Dust

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:19-21

When I was 36 years old, I nearly died.  I should have died.  Really.   I had played racquetball with a friend on the Monday before Thanksgiving, and tore a calf muscle.  The following Thursday, I collapsed at a local restaurant.  I couldn’t breathe.  I had blood clots in both my lungs.  I have since learned that having blood clots in both lungs is about 90% fatal.  If it wasn’t for a fast-thinking nurse (thanks Nancy) at the restaurant, and the grace of God, I would have certainly died.  Since that experience, the words and reflections of our annual Ash Wednesday observance have taken on a particularly pointed meaning for me.

As the ashes are placed on our foreheads with the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”  we are reminded that we all will die.   That is one of the two things each and every one of us on this planet have in common (the other one is being born.)   We are dust.  But, so many people in our culture today do their best to ignore that, to deny it, and even defy it.

I taught “Death and Dying” for fifteen years at the college level.  It always amazed me that my classes filled to capacity almost every semester.  My students WANTED to talk about mortality…  about the mortality of others, about the death that they had witnessed, and experienced, and observed in the death-filled world around them.  But sometimes they seemed to have a very hard time grasping the truth that THEY would die.

That their time on this planet was limited.

That their time was precious,

That their relationships were precious,

That THEY were precious.

The problem is, when you deny the reality of death, when you try to ignore mortality…  it is easy, very easy, to devalue everything.  It is very easy to get to the point where we really can’t see the worth of anything; where we can no longer grasp our need for God.  For a savior.  For One who can show us the way through death.

The season of Lent is a time of penitential reflection on the limits of our lives (and the many ways we transgress those limits), and a time to be reminded of our need for God and God’s love and grace.  It is also a time of renewal as we embrace the reality of those limits and celebrate the freedom from them won by Christ.  In the passage from Matthew, Jesus reminds us where our true treasure lies – in the God who created us, and who loves us so much that God took on our frail, mortal flesh and died for us so that we might have life and have it abundantly.  God loves us so much that God gave us eternal worth, and infinite value by adopting us as children through Jesus Christ.  During Lent we are reminded that we can, and should live in the light and power of that amazing gift.

Peace,

Bishop Mike