What have they done to the Story?

It was a Muslim woman student at Duke University who raised the question. She was amazed at what she saw at Christmas time. My memory seems to recall that she made her observations in the campus newspaper. But she found it incredible that Christians put up with Christmas. She wondered why in the world Christians have allowed Christmas to be such a mess. She seemed to suggest, and the reaction of Muslims to cartoons of Mohammad seem to support her idea, that Muslims would not allow or tolerate their Holy celebrations to be so commercialized by the culture and perverted by Santa Claus.

The celebration of Christmas in most Christian congregations does seem to have forgotten an awful lot of the story in the New Testament, and when efforts are made to reintroduce the lost dimensions of the Christmas story from the scriptures the response is that we want Christmas to be a happy time. Because when you read the story in the New Testament there are a lot of hard and challenging things that need to be heard.

There is John the Baptist out there in the wilderness calling for good people to repent and be baptized. His character is rather harsh and wild. His language is not very pleasant, sweet or mild. He insults the leaders of the community, and he laughs at our claims to have privileges because of our race or class. You have a pregnant young woman traveling with child on a long journey. They can not find shelter for the night so they get a stable. She gives birth. This could not have been easy or warm and tender.

Luke makes every effort to pin this story to a particular event about the birth of particular child that happened at a particular time in history. For Luke this is no "once upon a time" or "Long, Long ago in a galaxy far, far away." You may not believe the story but this is a story about a particular child. This is not Santa Claus.

And there is a terrible consequence to his birth. The battle begins immediately. The kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God begin a horrible conflict at Christmas that is still waging and only the Easter story gives us some hope as to which side wins. Clint Eastwood made the movie Mystic River about two men from the same neighborhood. One is on the side of law and order and the other makes his own laws. At the end of the movie there is a parade down main street and one is on one side of the street and the other is on the other. The parade is the sign that the battle between good and evil goes on. Well, Herod's slaughter of all of the young male children under two years old is the first battle between the kingdom of God as presented in Jesus and the kingdoms of this world. Where is that story in the Christmas celebrations we have?

The young woman is right about one thing. Unless we Christian people get serious about knowing our own story, about knowing the Bible, about knowing our own creeds and doctrines the Christian faith and teaching our children the stories of the Bible, there is not much future left for the Christian church as we know it today. It is a story about salvation and a future but you would never know it begins at Christmas.

A Different Word for It.

In the movie, The Invention of the Lie" there is a society in which every one says one the truth. Everything anyone says is the truth so everyone believes what a person says. In the movie, if you told the bank you had 800 dollars in your account, the clerk believes you and give you 800 dollars. There is one man who when his mother is dying in a hospital cannot stand to see his mother so upset and troubled about the thought of dying and just disappearing. One moment you are and the next moment you are nothing. So he begins to tell her a vision of what happens after death. He paints for her the standard vision of heaven with mansions, golden streets, and banquets for all. She believes him and dies happily.

It turns out that all the nurses and doctors have been listening to him and they also believe that he is telling the truth. They want to hear more. The word spreads and people flock to his home to hear about mansions in the sky and the vision of heaven. He comes forth with his complete version of Judaism and Christianity. Man in the sky, who controls things, who has a good place and a bad place, and he judges. It is a wildly amusing scene as he tries to deal with all the questions and ramifications. Of course, at the end of the movie he has to tell his "girl friend" that he does not really know, that he made it up. That it was a lie.

My sadness is the word "lie." We are using that word so much now. The South Carolina Congress man who yelled at Obama during the State of the Nation speech. The different sides of the health care debate are calling each other liars. It is a loaded word and a painful word.

Those in the political world know very well that issues are much too complex and complicated to be able to be described in right or wrong, yes or no categories. The reduction of future benefits is not a cut in current services. To stop the rate of growth in a thing is not to reduce the present rate of something. To increase the number of people covered by a law does not increase the burden on those already covered by that law. To say that the health care program will not cover illegal immigrants is not the same as saying that they will not get emergency health care in emergency rooms. Issues are so multi layered.

Those who express their faith in all religions are speaking of things that are not verifiable in the scientific sense but they are not speaking untruths in the scientific verifiable sense either. The professions of faith in the realities of religion are not, it seems to me, in the same category as "is it raining." If the sun is shining and I tell you it is raining, it must be a joke or it is a lie. But for me to tell you that there is a new and better reality prepared for us after death is a hope and faith proclamation that
can not be discredited as untrue any more than I can "prove" that it is true. But it does not seem to me that those faith statements should be described or attacked as lies. The Muslims who die in holy wars have been promised that they would be greeted by seven virgins as their reward. Who knows? As Blood Sweat and Tears once said, We will never know by living, only by dying will tell." I will not call it a lie. It is a version of a hope that I do not share, but I will not insult the faith by calling it a lie.

Why Would You Tell This?

I had never seen him before in my life. I was coming out of a restaurant in a small rural North Carolina town. I had been taken to lunch by the fellowship committee of the church I preached in. I was wearing a clerical collar. He asks me "Episcopalian?" No, I said. "I'm a Presbyterian, but we sometimes wear these too." I pointed to the collar.

He then proceeded to tell me that his brother had been an active member of a Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. He gave the name of the church, and I had heard of it. He said that his brother and the family had made all the arrangements to have their children baptized at that church. A couple of weeks before those baptisms were scheduled the minister announced that his wife was pregnant. The congregation was all full of warm affection for him and his wife.

Then on the day that the baptisms were scheduled; the children all dressed and the family there for the baptisms, during the announcements that came before the Baptisms the minister announced that he and his wife had had tests run on the baby and discovered it was a girl. They wanted a boy, and so had the baby aborted. The man telling me this story said his brother immediately grabbed his children, got up and left the Sanctuary and never returned.

I don't know why that man told me that story. I don't know of any reason he would not be telling me the truth. There were too "many rabbits" running around for me to know what to say and how to respond. But the question that has stayed utmost in my mind was why a minister would tell his congregation that kind of personal stuff? I realize I am very old school. When I learned preaching we were told to make ourselves the examples in a sermon about once a year. "Keep the "I" pronouns out of your sermons. Of course, the message is now to make the sermon personal, but this seems way too much personal stuff. The whole ethical debate about that minister's choice is another matter. It does not seem to me to be a matter for public proclamation during a morning worship service. Why did he have to tell them all of that? What do you think?

Do Different?

It has been observed that we live going forward, but we only find meaning in our lives by looking backward. We may not see the reason for things as they happen and as we have to face them, but when we get some distance on things and look back we see how life has been fulfilled.

Maybe it is the work of retirement to look back and see how things have gone. One obvious pattern in my life has been the constant moving. We moved about every five or six years at the beginning of my life and I ended up repeating that movement with my family. The moving made me a bit introverted, but they also made me independent and they provided lots of evidence that people do have many ways of doing things. Traditions and customs may be different but there are a lot of similarities in every place.


There has been a lot of attention given to the affirmation that we are all given a Purpose and our lives should be Purpose Driven. Looking back in my life I see that there were a number of events that moved me in a particular direction, and a number of choices that would have made possible a number of different careers. I have always thought that I might have enjoyed being a lawyer if I had not chosen ministry. I have also considered that I would have enjoyed buying run down real estate and "rehabing" it and selling it. But I have never felt that I had a single clear purpose in life; that I had one particular destiny that I had to fulfill. I had a woman tell me not long ago that we "are on this earth for a purpose and when it is done we will die." That may be so, but I have no idea what that purpose is.


My own conviction on that is that each of us has the great purpose to work to make a better community for all of us. Each of us has the calling to enrich the lives of all of us, because the time we have is short and what we can do is limited but we have a way of putting our efforts on the side of that which makes that time healthier, more enjoyable, safer for all of us or we can make it a hell of a mess for people. We can not do everything and we cannot do it all, but what we can do is something and we will find our own lives better if we do what we can.

Too much stuff

My prophet friend, Jimmy Buffet, the song writer, complained that "Now times are tough, I got too much stuff." He was complaining that the time and effort to keep up with all of it, to keep it safe, to use it, and to pay for it consumed too much of his life and so he had little time for relaxation and leisure.

So I found it very interesting to find a quote from about a hundred years ago that sounded very much the same. "People forget that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it, and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lose the sense of surprise, and surprise is the secret of joy."

Joy comes from those "ah" moments that are not expected. The great joy we get from giving a gift to somebody of something very special but which was not expected by the recipient. The joy we have when somebody compliments our work when we were not expecting it. Maybe that is why some people still do not want to know the sex of their baby before it is born.

Then there is the great delight in being able to take time to think about, to savor it, to relive it, to let it soak in. What kind of joy is it when the coach says that the great unexpected victory will have to be forgotten and the focus has to be the next game. There ought to be a bye week after those kind of games. The great pleasure comes in allowing the surprise to soak into and through our lives. To take time to immerse the soul in the event and to accept it and appreciate it. To say thanks to the world for it.

If the quote has any truth in it, then perhaps the fascination with more stuff, instant messages, constant games, texting, and trying to live 24/7, always wanting to do things and go places, ultimately works against our deepest and best joy. Be still and enjoy the surprises in your lives.

New Meaning for an Old Rite?

The email edition of the Scotsman newspaper from Edinburgh had a story about Halloween costumes. The headline said that nobody wanted their children to grow up to be skeletons, ghosts, or dragons. This year children were being sent out in costumes of lords, lawyers, ambassadors and doctors. The idea being, so it seems, to plant in the mind of the child an ambition. As I understand the old Halloween origins these costumes would be a dramatic change in purpose of the holiday.

I have no way of knowing if my information is correct, but when I did look into this holiday, I found that Halloween was basically a community rite of confession. On this time of All Saints Day, the fear was that the spirits of the dead would rise up and roam the world. They would be coming back to "get even." The restless spirits of the dead would come back to earth to settle up scores with those who offended them in life. The spirits of the dead came back seeking out those who had "done them wrong." The living would put out lights and scary objects in hopes of keeping the spirits away. The living would put on masks and costumes in hopes that the disguises would make it hard for the spirits to find them. The spirits of the dead do not like bright lights, we are told. The masks and costumes would make it hard for the spirits to find the people they were looking for. The Spirits of the dead only had a very brief time to look so any delay was welcomed.

So in a sense, to put on a mask, to put out lights, to wear a custom was a confession that one had done somebody wrong. At least, it was the fear that the dead spirits might have a grudge against you. To fear the return of the dead was to acknowledge that one had done some things that the dead might not have liked and had taken exception to. In the end it was to affirm that "all of us have sinned" and that we were frightened by the thought of the revenge of the dead.

That is what I read when I studied the history of Halloween. But Halloween has taken a beating over the last forty years. All those conservative Christians who believed it was fraternizing with the devil. All those link it with Thanksgiving and make it a find of fall festival. Now to suggest it is an early career indicator. It has come a long way, baby.

Not that easy to say.

The other day I saw a quote that said, "Forgiveness was too easy." That quote has been troubling me for several days. My suspicion is that whoever said that had never tried it. In fact, my suspicion is that the speaker had probably never said "I'm sorry" either. Because while we try to believe that "sticks and stones may break our bones, and word can never harm us." Sticks and stones are a lot easier to take than to say or hearing certain words. The human interaction between saying "I am sorry" and "I forgive you" is probably the hardest human transaction.

Two powerful examples of the difficulty have been shown in recent movies. There was a movie, The Flash of Genius, about the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. He was so excited about his idea and he showed the big three auto industry. They smiled, stole his idea, and refused to do business with him. He fought in court for years, and the night before the jury would decide the companies offer him thirty million dollars to drop the suit. He refused. He said all he ever had wanted was for them to acknowledge that it was his idea, that they had stolen his idea, and they were sorry. They had refused. The jury found in his favor and he got twelve million dollars. But the auto industry never admitted the thief or apologized.

The current movie, Food, Inc, has the story of a woman who is advocating better food inspection and more health restriction on the food industry because her son Kevin died of ecoli bacteria. She and many others have been pushing a Kevin Law in congress. She said all she wants is for the food industry to admit that some of their food has problems and to say they are sorry. They have been fighting that law for years. It still has not passed.

But the same refusal to say "I'm sorry" and for the other to say "I forgive you" is seen in most divorce cases. The same refusal to apologize and to say "I'm sorry" and to forgive is seen in most parent-teenager estrangement. The same refusal to say "I'm sorry" is seen in the refusal of countries to ask forgiveness for starting wars or for invasions. Only recently has the Japanese government apologized for their part in World War II.

That the whole transaction of confession and forgiveness is not easy is part of the message of the Christian faith. If it had been easy to achieve, there would have been no need for a Cross.

Theology and Science

One of the guest lecturers at the Yale Convocation this year is a Dr. Michael Welker whose interest is in the dialogue between science and religion. That is a dialogue that has never had a very smooth experience. Dr. Welker indicated that some of the problems are that both side celebrate even the smallest interest in each other, but never take that interest seriously; that both sides have very poor understanding of each other; and they have a very hard time coming to common ground to discuss.

In his first lecture Dr. Welker talked some about the creation question.He spent a great deal of time on the Genesis creation account in Genesis 1. Of course, he talked about the problems of how do you have light and night without sun and moon, and some of the other more traditional problems. But the found to his satisfaction some very basic positions which would allow the discussion of evolution and human dominance in creation with science.

The second lecture was concerned about finding some common ground with the question of who are human beings. Theology has to have an explanation of human life that can talk with science about the human being. Again he tried to clear away a lot of simplistic solutions to this question. He was eager to affirm that the human experience is amazing creative, diverse and complex. Then he suggested that St. Paul's works provided us a starting point for dealing with the complexities of human life. He went through all of Paul's words like body, flesh, spirit, mind, soul, heart, and pointed out that Paul did not have these as simple one sided concepts. But he suggested that understanding them gave us a starting point for dialogue.

It was this second lecture that really gave me some concern about the major topic. If we are going to have a discussion between theology and science, then it seems to me that we have to have a discussion first with ourselves about theology. Because while the first lecture might well have been accepted by the Jewish and Muslim theologians as it was rooted in the Old Testament, the second lecture immediately made "theology" a captive of Christianity. How do we have a right to enter into that discussion with science as the only theology? Certainly the questions of origin, purpose, and end of life are questions science and "non-science" need to discuss. There are dimensions in human life that are mysteries that are not fully explained by science descriptions of life, but isn't there some need to try to look beyond the divisions of religions to get to a larger theological base to begin discussion with science?

Two Kinds of Mysteries

If I want a great, snappy read on an airplane or on vacation, I can always get a Robert Parker Spencer paperback. If I want a little more complexity, then one of the Alphabet mysteries or Hellerman paperbacks will work. There are lots of other great writers whose works are sold as mystery books. If I want a more realistic mystery in which there are solutions but not justice or closure, then Ian Rankin is my favorite. These are the mysteries that most of us enjoy.They are the mysteries that most of our television programs pursue. They are the mysteries we expect to be solved. Somebody done somebody wrong, and we expect to find out who by the end of the book or the show.

These are the kind of mysteries that science seeks to provide solutions for. These are the mysteries of medicine in which there is a disease and we want research to find out what causes these diseases and what can prevent them. There is a problem and we expect that given enough time and enough intelligence there will be an explanation and a solution.

But there is another kind of mystery which fascinates us all. There is the mystery that always grows larger rather than comes to a solution. There is the mystery that captivates and enchants and never comes to the end. John Denver said "Life ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle?" and that is one of the mysteries that is never "solved." There is the mystery of the human personality. We are forever meeting people who live next door to us and suddenly they do something so strange we are simple amazed. All the neighbors say, "She was a very quiet and responsible citizen. We never expected that from her." Try as we may, we could never find out what caused that to happen. Isn't that part of our fascination with sports because they are always a mystery? Recently Serena Williams lost to a qualifier and Serena said,"I played against a woman who played better than she had ever played before."

For many people some of the great classical music is a mystery. They may know the score inside and out, but every time they hear it they hear something different. They are moved by a different section. The piece is a mystery that keeps opening up before them dimensions that they had not known were there before.

To be reminded that there are these two different kinds of mystery is necessary when we come to talk about the religious dimension of life. The question of God is a mystery which some people want to solve and to settle. But the question of God and the whole spiritual dimension of life is the mystery which ought to keep leading us into new questions, new wonders, new concerns, new hopes, and new vistas.

There are the mysteries that can be solved and the mysteries that only lead to more mysteries. The question of God is the mystery that leads to every other mystery.

Sad Day for Preaching

The news article I read said that there were 450 people who left that day. 450 former members of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida left that church and started a new church. Dr. James Kennedy was always one of my enemies. He was a Presbyterian minister who shared with me the name Christian and yet who stood for and promoted everything I was against. He was successful in the categories of the world. My father-in-law loved him. He had a t.v. program. He had more than 2,000 members and he was considered one of the bedrocks of the conservative evangelical Christian political block.

But he died and the church called a new minister. They called one of the grandsons of Billy Graham. They called a young man who had all of the same theological positions. The article said that there was not a hair's breadth of difference between the new minister and Dr. Kennedy. But more than 400 of the former members left to start a new church because they could not stand the new minister.

They could not stand the style of the new minister. It was all about style. Content did not matter. The new minister did not wear a pulpit robe. The new minister sometimes had not shaved for a couple of days. It is in all of the movies and television programs. The stars have a couple of days growth of beard. The new minister did not always stand for formality and traditions of the old church. The theology did not matter. It was all about style.

While I do not endorse or support the theology of that congregation, there is a great sadness that the content of preaching is here made secondary to the style of preaching. One would have hoped that people come to hear the Word of God preached to them and would rejoice if they have it preached to them. Regardless of whether it is in royal robes or a Bermuda shorts. But more than 450 members of one of the strongest conservative church believes that style is more important than content. Or so it appears from the newspaper article.

It would seem to me that it is a sad day for preaching.

Stay Very Near

For some reason I had an responsibility to read Psalm 26. The first line goes "Give me justice, O Lord, for I have lived my life without reproach." And the rest of the Psalm continues pretty much in that same vain. "I live in truth. I have not sat with sinners...I wash my hands in innocence....I love the beauty of the temple.... so don't sweep me away with the sinners." Deep down in this prayer to God is the understanding that being good is supposed to be rewarded. Good is rewarded. Bad is punished.

Barbara Brown Taylor is always saying that the Bible is really a conversation about God by people who care about God. So it is interesting to remember when Job got all his troubles and his wife told him to curse God and die, Job says something to the effect, "Hey, Are we just to accept good from God and not take the bad from God as well." Job seems rooted in the sovereignty of God. God is the boss. There is only one God and God is Lord of all history, so whatever comes comes within the providence and framework of God's creation. If we are going to enjoy the good we have to be willing to take the bad. It is that kind of world in Job's mind. Our character and conduct do not directly affect what comes to us. All Job really wants to do is to fight for his reputation, and when God comes to visit God does say that Job was the one who spoke the truth.

One also remembers that Jesus told the story of a man who sounded very much like the speaker of Psalm 26. The Pharisee goes up to the Temple to pray and sees another man, called the Publican, and thanks God that he is not like that Publican. The Pharisee proceeds to tell God all of his virtues and how wonderful he is. The Publican is reported to have only begged for forgiveness, and Jesus says the Publican got his wish.

All this discussion in the Bible about conduct and blessings or lack of blessings came back to me as I listened to the letter to the Pope from Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy asks for the prayers of the Pope and proceeds to tell the Pope all of the reasons why the Pope would want to pray for him: "I have done my best to champion the causes of the poor... I have worked to welcome the immigrant...I have opposed the death penalty...I am still working, while sick, on a comprehensive health care package...I have always been a faithful Catholic..."

Senator Kennedy's letter sounds like the Psalm, The Pharisee, and my own prayers. Somehow we cannot get away from that notion that if we are good we will get blessings and that evil will be punished. We are constantly talking about the outrage of when bad things happen to good people. It just frustrates us no end.

The one thing that I think the conversation about God by people who care agree upon is that the promise of God is that God will not abandon us. Job does not get answers he gets a visit. Jesus' good conduct got him crucified. Jesus does not give us answers, Jesus promises "Lo, I am with you always even to the close of the age." Elijah in the cave heard the voice, Be still and know that I am God. As we live in this world full of sorrow and woe, the message is that there is one with us who care about us, who has suffered as we suffer, and who will not desert us nor forsake us. It is good to know we have a friend.

The Conflict

There seems to be a general consensus that the intensity of the "conflict" is heating up. There have been observations that we may be getting close to another civil war. The Speaker of the House begged for a reduction in the violent rhetoric because she knows that such language leads to violent actions. There are many who suggest that our conflict is more vicious, more aggressive, meaner, nastier than in previous generations.

Heaven knows that right now we have a lot to fight over. Maybe that is one of the reasons for thinking our conflicts are worse. Too many things have been put on the table to fight about: health care reform, immigration reform, financial regulations, bail outs, climate control, and the fighting of terrorists. Each of them is a major contentious issue which pits large portions of people against others.

There is an underlying common thread in all those issues: the struggle between those who believe we need to have "government" help us manage society and those who believe that we are better with less government intervention. I think that is a theological question because it is rooted in a theological concept of human life. Are we good people who will do good if given a chance or are we really like St. Paul sinners who seek to do good, but find that the evil that they do not want to do keeps showing up? Those who want to have less government believe we are all nice and kind people who will do good if left alone. Unlimited freedom will result in unlimited good (or so it sounds to me when I hear them telling their side). The other side believes that individuals and groups need protection from the abuse of power, wealth, and size because power, wealth and size tend to do harm if left unregulated. (Think sub prime meltdown rooted in greed.Think Ponzi schemes. Think airline corporations failure to maintain airplanes. Think tainted milk and sheet rock, think auto industry's opposition to increased gas mileage.)

The Christian confession of sin would suggest that most Christians would understand that the evil in each of us needs to be watched by the rest of us so that we can help each other. The evil in each of us does manage to show up just as much in government as it does in corporate America which is why each of us has to be involved in elections and in the debates on major issues. We all do have to watch all of us in government, but that is not the same as fighting for less government. Only demanding better government.

Jesus in the wilderness had conflict with Satan over whose world it really is? Satan claims it is his and that it can only be run and governed by his means. Jesus lived and believed that it is really God's world and it can only be truly governed and fulfilled by his means. It seems to me that is still the real conflict we are fighting, whose kingdom is it, and whose means do we use to fulfill and bless it.

Which is it? Divine Justice or bad thinking?

This one has all the ear marks of divine irony all over it. It is a simple story. For the last two do-it-yourself projects I have not had to buy a new tool. That is unusual for d-i-y projects. A project is always supposed to involve getting another tool. But I have done two major projects without a new tool. So the do-it-yourselfer gods "owed" me two tools.

I am now in the middle of a project for a new desk that involves major amounts of sanding. So I got out all of my sanding equipment. I discovered that I had about 20 sanding belts that measured 3" x 21". I looked at my sanders and I had a 3" x 24" machine and a 3"x18". But I did not have a 3" x 21" machine. I may have had one earlier, but I did not have one at the moment. So I think, "If I buy a new 3" x 21" machine I can have two different grades of sanding belts: one on the 3" x 24" and one on the 3" by 21". (The 3" x 18" is one of those cheap ones that I really rarely use.) So I go and buy a Rockwell 3" x 21" new belt sander.

The concept was great and worked wonderfully well for the first round of 60 grit on one and 80 grit on the other. When I started using the 3" x 21" belts that I had for the 120 and 150 grit, the belts began to break at the seam almost immediately. The glue had dried and they just came apart in less than 10 seconds on the machine. Now I have no belts that will work on the 3" x 21" belt sander I bought. I will now have to buy more belts for the 3" x 21" belt sander.

Was this Divine justice for the greed that I had that talked myself into needing a new machine that I really did not need. The 3" x 24" would have done the job. I was just going to have to change belts more often. A little extra work. Cosmic irony? Another example of Murphy's laws? Or maybe just bad thinking on my part? Rationalization? Does God get involved at this level? Or has God set up the cosmic irony thing to take care of these kinds of petty sins? Did I get my just deserves? Lots of people seemed to believe that God works at this level and yet do not see it at the larger level.

Or maybe this project is divine justice in that it has gotten me a new tool, and it has made me buy a whole bunch of new belts as well. I guess maybe the do-it-yourself gods will say they are even. That is two things: the sander and the belts. Is that Divine grace? One way or the other it sure made me think about it.

Some Random Thoughts on Health Care

Maybe it is because everybody else is doing it, but I thought I would reflect upon the medical health care I have. I have good health care because I have socialized medicine. I have medicare. But I also have a supplement which is expensive and I have to buy insurance for my wife and that is expensive.

But that private health care does not give me and my doctor solo responsibility for my health care nor my wife's health care. The first major problem for us is the health care's constant pressure to use generic drugs when they do not work for my wife. Betty, my wife, has constantly complained that she and her doctor talk about her problems. The doctor gives her a prescription for a drug and the health care program demands that she try the generic. It does not work or has side-effects which are not acceptable. There is then a major fight wiht the insurance company for her to be able to use the original drug and to have the insurance company cover it.

The second way in which my health care is not a decision made by my doctor and me is that there is this long list of pre-approval procedures. Again the insurance company refused to pay on first submission a procedure that the doctor ordered for Betty because we had not gotten prior approval. Why should the doctor's orders have to be checked with the insurance company? The insurance company is interfering with my health care decisions which ought to be between me and my doctor.

The third way in which my health care is already controlled by forces outside of the doctor-patient relationship is that there are some procedures and operations that they will not cover. I am not talking about cosmetic or vanity procedures. There are major health treatment programs that the insurance companies consider wasteful and therefore they will not cover.

The fourth way that my health care does not allow me complete freedom of choice in my health care is that they tell me that there are certain doctors who are "in network" (which means they will accept the insurance's pay schedules) and others who are "out of network". If I go to a doctor of my choice who is out of network, then I have to pay more of the costs for that treatment. So that the idea that I now have absolute freedom to choose my doctor is a myth.

My socialized medicine, Medicare, has not given me the same restrictions as my private insurance. The argument that a public option program would limit and restrict my choices is one of those lies that is meant to make me believe that my current system is free choice and it certainly isn't.

Those are ways that the current system already has other powers between my doctor and my health care. From the hospital's and the doctor's perspective I can not understand why we have all this pretense about the surgery costing $10,000 (an example) but the insurance companies have worked a deal where they will only allow half of that and they pay 80% of the amount they allow. What kind of game is that?

There are a number of problems which I have never had to face. I have never had to change jobs and worry about what that change did to my insurance. I have never had to apply for new insurance with a "previous condition." I have had friends who had to decide whether to get a cancer treatment done at a hospital which was forty-five minutes away, and have that treatment covered as a hospital visit; or get the medicine from a drug store and give it to himself and have it covered as a prescription. The difference in each treatment was about $1,000.00

There are a few basic facts for me: 1) Our current health care system is not working. We pay more per person than any industrialized country for health care. The costs are rising faster than the cost of living. The health care is not that much better (and depressingly low in some categories) than those other countries. 2)We have known and talked about the need for health care reform for more than 60 years. How long does it take us to solve a problem? 3)We need to return the medical practice to the doctors, not the insurance companies. 4) We need to find a way to hold medical people accountable for major mistakes without the risks of multi-million dollar law suits. 5)We need to find a way to cover all people with a basic medical policy. Now it is the time. We need to get it done.

Not read much

Vacations are wonderful things. They give one a great change of pace. They give great joy in providing a different routine, and they give one the great joy and comfort of returning to the familiar and the old routine. So it has been good to go, and it is good to be home.

My guess would be that most Presbyterian ministers and maybe lots of other ministers know that Martin Luther did not have much respect or appreciation for the book of the Bible called James. He called it an "epistle of straw" because it did talk much about Jesus. It has a lot of advice about living and doing the Christian faith, and not much about salvation by faith alone. Maybe that is the reason that the book of James is not read or preached very much.

Or maybe it is because in this day and in this culture nobody wants to hear what James has to say because James has a great deal to say about civil speech. James says that Christian people ought to be "quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger." In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus also says something about anger being the same as Murder and that when that anger causes one to call another human being a "fool" you are liable for the hell of fire.

Christians will not engage in angry, hurtful or destructive speech. No wonder we do not want to hear James preached. I am not one who knows how to judge our generation with other generations. I know that Thomas Nash and others in previous generations had some pretty hot and vicious speech. I know that during the Civil Rights and the War in Vietnam the speech and the protests were loud and confrontational. But it also seems to me that there is a level of harshness, a new level of viciousness, a new arrogance of the right of free speech that does not want to listen. The "over the top language;" the ability to make incredible accusations anonymously on the Internet; the ease with which people now talk while plays, concerts, and other presentations are being presented; the language and words that are now so commonly used, all seem to be at the worst level possible.

The praise for Ted Kennedy seemed to have as one major component the fact that he could engage in civil debate about issues. He could engage those on the other side of issues in a constructive and polite debate. One concludes that he was praised for this gift because so few seem to have it now.

James is that book that talks about bridling one's tongue. That in response to the gift of grace to us one of the great gifts of grace we can give to others is the gift of listening to them and then responding to them in a controlled and civil way. No wonder nobody wants to listen to James now.

There in Print

I have just finished reading a book by a writer named Susan Isaacs. The name of the book is Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir. A recommendation came from Cathleen Falsani in the Chicago paper. Falsani also recommended The Help which I found to be wonderful.

Susan Isaacs must represent all of the people who have been screwed up by religion. She tries almost every form of church and it misled, misunderstood, and made miserable by almost all of them. She is a devout seeker after God and it seems everybody has a wrong answer for her. She has a nice wit about her and her writing is clever and sharp. She finds some balance and hope at the end of her story, but she has still not found that sense that she is in and doing the "will of God" for her life. I ended the book with a great sadness for her that the church and the people of God have so tormented her.

There was one passage in the book that I was very surprised to see. It is an observation that I have been making and feeling for a long time. It is perhaps the reason why Susan never got any good help in her quest to know God. It is the reason why Bible studies in churches are never about the Bible.

The person Susan talks with about her problems, a man named Rudy says to Susan, "It is not you, Susan. The American Church is messed up. Of course, there are millions of loving Christians with real, honest faith. But the American church on a whole has become more concerned with the American dream than with Christ's dream for us. We've been selling programs and products aimed at self-improvement and personal fulfillment. Yes, Jesus came to give us abundant life. But he didn't come to sell stuff. The church sold you stuff, Susan. You got robbed."

One has to wonder why, if even Susan Isaacs can see the problem with our churches, we can not find the will to become what we are called to be, a community of people seeking to live in the goodness and kindness of God.

That Explains Something

A neighboring pastor asked the question on Facebook. He wanted some help in making plans for the coming September. He has been holding a weekly Bible Study at his church and he asked for suggestions. On his Facebook site he got a lot of help, but there was a strange consistency. Nobody suggested any books of the Bible. This was to be a Bible Study group and the pastor wanted suggestions on which book of the Bible might be interesting to a group, and all the suggestions were things other than the Bible.

There were lots of good suggestions. There was a suggestion about a study of the seven major sins. That is a good series. We did that in my previous congregation for Lent. It was a good program and it was a helpful discussion about the attitudes and desires of sin, and not the specific acts that are sins. There were good suggestions about a number of popular books that would make a good study. Still coming are suggestions like Purpose Driven Life, The Shack, the Prayer of Jabez, and others. Nothing wrong with these books. I knew a pastor who had a Wednesday morning round table discussion group that read all kinds of things. But this was a request for Bible Study, and he got no suggestions.

There is a great concern among most of the religious leaders that I read about the lack of Biblical knowledge in the congregations. Teachers of preachers tell students that they will have to do more explaining of the Biblical story when they want to use the Bible because most people in the congregation will not be familiar with the Biblical stories. Sunday School Classes seem to find other things to teach besides the Biblical stories. Of course, one notices that lots of preachers do not even use the Bible as the text of their sermons any more.

The lack of suggestions for good Biblical studies in response to that inquiry is just another clue as to why nobody knows the Bible. When those pastors had Bible studies, they did not study the Bible.

The Main Thing

Being a male and being one who has enjoyed sports, I do think there are lessons that are available and valuable for those who play them. I have often heard it said that one learns about team work, one learns about hard work, and one learns how to handle losses. Those are good lessons to learn, but the lesson I have been thinking about because of two parables in the New Testament is the lesson about the main thing. There is a story about the man who finds a treasurer in a field and goes, sells all he has and buys the field. There is another story about a man who collects pearls but when he finds this one amazing pearl, he sells all his other pearls and buys this one great pearl.

The lesson of the main things is that so many little things have to be sacrificed for the main thing. It is a lesson that applies to all great arts and endeavours but perhaps it is seen by more in the pursuit of Championships. To achieve the great goal means that lots of little pleasures, activities, entertainments, and hobbies have to be forsaken. The main thing demands our full attention. The main thing also directs us to lots of other activities.

Certainly one of the moral evils in our society today is that we are encouraged to try to have it all, to sacrifice the main thing for lots of little things. Our advertisements keep promoting thousands of little things: hair removal devices, nose hair cutters, thousands of different ways to cook a sandwich, little bungee chords to hold paint cans to ladders, and on and on. So much stuff, so many things that we lose sight of the main thing.

Perhaps that is why so often you hear about people needing to find themselves or to get their acts together. They suddenly realize that they have become so fragmented that they have no main thing and no center. Could it be that that is why the Westminster Confess begins with exactly that question, "What is the chief end of Man?" None of the little things are necessarily evil in and of themselves. But when they keep us from ever finding our main thing they loose "anarchy upon the land"(Yeats) and cause waste in our own lives.

Pressures

Jimmy Buffet has a line in a song about something being "another example of love in decline." This is another example of the difficult choices that life presses in on people. I have been attending clinics to become qualified to officiate volleyball games on the High School level or lower. The Booking Agents have been repeating over and over that they will not use, and no booking agent is supposed to use, officials who are not qualified. The first requirement is to be registered with the state high school association. The official position is that no unregistered official may work any games. Unregistered equals unqualified.

But here is a region that is covered by a booking agent who has about seventy to eighty high schools in his region. These are the large high schools with strong programs and they want four officials at each game. But there are not that many registered officials withing his agency. The booking agent is always on the hunt for new officials, but the deadline is passed for registration for this year. The state test has been given and is not repeated until next year. The schools want their games officiated. The booking agent feels the pressure to find officials. The temptation to use unregistered officials becomes very great.

The other part of the story is that there were four deaths in sporting events last year. One of those deaths happened in a contest in which an unregistered official was working. There is no public information that the unregistered official did anything to contribute to the death of the athlete. But in the great emotional upheaval of the parents, the fact that an unregistered official was working that game will be a significant part of the wrongful death action brought against the school, the state association, the booking agent, and the official.

The pressure to use whoever is available versus the reason why such officials ought not to be used. We human beings live in a complicated and complex world of choices and demands. It is so easy to sit back and pompously declare what should and should not be done. But in the ebb and flow of our lives the choices are much harder and the "rightness" becomes less absolute. Certainly there are situations on the far ends of the spectrum which can be resolved quickly and easily, but I think most of our lives are in the middle in mess and we try to do the best we can. It is also why we need forgiveness for we frequently discover that we have made choices that were not helpful, wise or good. Like the booking agent, trying to provide officials so that high schools could play, who sent that unregistered official and now finds that there is this horrible mess.

location, location, location

Real Estate people say those are the only rules of good real estate: location, location, location. No matter what the building or the business, if it is in the wrong location, it will not succeed. Since I know nothing about real estate, I will have to accept that as accurate. What worries me in so many people I know in the community in which I live is that the location has become a limitation to them.

They grow up, they have friends, they find a survival job and they let that become the world for them. It is amazing how many people in the community in which I live have never been out of the county, much less the state. They have never seen the ocean. They have never seen the mountains. They have never seen great rivers or ten lane highways. Television is no substitute for going.

Two stories were told recently to me. One was a young woman who had grown up in Wilmington and went to college in Boone, NC. She lasted less than a semester. She went home because it was too cold and there were no places to shop. Her location had become a limitation. She could not see the advantages and the opportunities of a new place. The second story is almost identical A young woman got a full scholarship to college. All expenses paid. College was not something her family could have given her. She did not last more than a week. She had to come home. The home location had become a limitation.

Another group of people have taken off for a mission trip. The place they are going is not one that normally comes to mind as a place that is desperately in need of mission work. The kind of work they will do in a week is not particularly impressive. But they are going. There has never been for me much evidence that mission trips did much good for anybody but the people who go on them.

The major benefit of mission trips is that it has a way of expanding our locations. In small ways it begins to get you to thinking that the focus of your Christian service is not limited to the boundaries of your city limits. It introduces you to other Christian people in other parts of the country or world which links you to the world wide community of the Christian faith. Mission trips help us discover just how hard it is to really help other people regardless of location. The ministry of helping is not as easy as we would like to think. Mission trips go because we want to be obedient to our Lord. Jesus says "Go into all the world..."


There is always much that may be done in the location where we are. We will all have to pick a location for our ministries because we cannot minister everywhere. But to allow the location to become a prison from which you cannot escape is to miss out on the wonderful mysteries and blessings that God has created all around the world. It is a magnificent world and part of being faithful to the Creator is to enjoy as much of it as one is given the opportunity to enjoy.

Public Deaths

I do remember the emotional response of the country when John F. Kennedy was shot. But at the same time it seems to me that as a culture and as a society there has been a significant shift in the way that death is handled in public. When I was coming through high school and college, and there was a death of a student or a young person, there were no grief counselors who came to school. We did not have assemblies to talk about the youth. It was never mentioned, but I am guessing that administration people thought that if you had problems, you would see your own spiritual adviser, your minister, or your family.
I also do not remember the now common tradition of creating shrines in various places. Those who mourn now bring to the spot of the accident or go to the home or stand by the locker and fill it with flowers, pictures, candles and other mementos. The public gatherings at those sites and shared sorrows and emotions is certainly different from a wake in a person's home.
I have no way of knowing if one way is better than another. I am not making any judgments about the changes that I think I see. I am only observing that it seems to me that the way we handle death is different now.
The emotional response to John F. Kennedy was one thing. The public weeping for Princess Di was a bit of a surprise to me. The long death watch for the Pope and all the masses gathered seemed a bit more appropriate considering the character of the man and his position. But the public response to Michael Jackson's death continues to be an example of what I think is the change we have made in our response to death. We are creating and developing new public liturgies and rituals for the handling of death and grief because either the old ones do not work now or because society no longer knows about them. There have to be liturgies to handle the great emotional events in our lives, and it certainly appears to me that our liturgy for handling death is changing.

Amazing

I am not really convinced that it is something new. Garrison Keilor once suggested that people have an amazing ability to ignore what they do not want to see. I am suspect he is very accurate with that comment. What has brought it to my awareness is the resumption of the debate between Conservatives and Liberals.

Here we have just had one of the largest and most difficult crisis in the financial systems of this country and there is lots of talk about how to fix the problems. On the one side I hear from the Conservative side that we need to leave it to private enterprise. "Government Control is Socialism. Government has never been able to run anything well. Do you want your finances run like Amtrak or the Post Office?" We need to get government out of it. The same argument is made about the auto industry. The government is trying to take over the auto industry and run the whole show. We need to leave it to private business. So the argument goes.

But the facts seem to me to be that it is private business which got us into this mess. Wasn't it private banks, real estate brokers, and all manner of creative unregulated financial people who created this mess? Wasn't it the Board of Directors of these auto industries who managed their companies into problems?

The facts just never seem to make any difference in the debates. The Liberals never acknowledge the facts against their arguments either. There seems to me to be enough facts that the more programs you develop to help those in poverty the more people we have in poverty. And we have been funding major social programs for ages and the numbers never decline. Every N.C. governor has wanted to be the Education Governor and the improvement never seems to match the investments.

I do not have any solutions to all these problems but I suspect that we might make a lot more progress on the issues if both sides would allow the facts to affect their theory. I do not see the facts that say Tax Cuts produce jobs. We just finished eight years of Bush cuts and somehow we ended up with a major economic collapse. The facts seem to suggest that it will be a lot harder to close Guantanamo than the liberals thought.

It is an amazing thing to me how we can continue to hold to our pet theories and ignore the facts that ought to make us consider that we need to somehow adapt or change or modify what we want.

The Resistance to Grace

I think it is what got him killed. All this talk about grace, about forgiveness, about the amazing equality of God's love for all people. I think that is what got Jesus killed. As I was taught "grace" is defined as "an unmerited goodness." We have a lot of conversations about "what happens when bad things happen to good people" but I seldom hear conversations about grace which is "when good things happen to bad people."

As human beings in our culture we just have a horrible time with the idea that we are sinners. The evidence continues to come in that evil can be found in every home and in each person, but we just keep right on believing that we are nice, good people. Naturally, if we are good people, we deserve good things. So the whole concept of there being something good given to us that we do not deserve does not register. How many ads on t.v. and radio have you heard that says you need to get the "vacation" you "deserve," or that you get the body you deserve, or that you need the kind of legal defense that you are entitled to? I hear them all the time.

The corollary to our notion that we are good, nice, worthy people who deserve what we have is that there are a lot of others who are not like us. They are unworthy. They are the evil ones. They deserve to be punished. They deserve to be restricted and controlled. Thus to be told that they are going to be given the same gifts of acceptance and forgiveness seems to be an outrageous statement. How dare someone put "them" in the same group with "us." And the demand that we are supposed to want in our ethics for them the same gifts of forgiveness, acceptance, and love is just too absurd.

The gift of grace to us is not needed and offensive because it insinuates that we are not worthy of it. We want we what deserve. The gift of grace to others is so offensive because how dare God give to them what he is giving to us. It is no wonder that the preaching of grace and God's love and forgiveness never seems to attract a very large or sustained crowd. Yet it is the sweet sweet blessing to all who come to some profound crisis in life and see themselves as they really are. "O wretched man, that I am, who can deliver me from the power of darkness?" and there is a word that grace has already been offered to those who are ready to receive it.

Always from too many perspectives

There are lots of reasons why we are not the ones who get to judge how things are going. There are lots of reasons why the direction and the quality of things is not in our power to decide. Those are the same reasons why God suggested we should not be the ones to eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. We may now know what they are but we can not say which is which.

We cannot say and are not the ones to make the judgements because we don't know the end yet. In a discussion not long ago some one remarked about a museum finally reopening an exhibit of marble ruins. "You better see them quickly because they are still falling apart. The "best wisdom for restitution at the time" turned out to be absolutely horrible and they are decaying rapidly." Our best now maybe turn out later to be our worst. What is bad now may ended up being the best thing for us. We have not seen it all yet so it is hard to know how to judge a story till we see how it ends.

We are invited to "glorify God and enjoy Her forever" and leave the judging to God because we don't know the whole story yet. Because we have real trouble keeping in proper relationship the big picture and the little pictures. Do I judge life on the basis of my own experiences. Do I celebrate and rave about the goodness of life because my first grandson has been born healthy and well? Do I look at my life and say with arrogance "God is Good. All the Time." Are the judgments about good and evil to be made from my small perspective? What I have seen and lived has been good.

But the little picture of others is not nearly as wonderful and blessed as mine has been. But then again, is it my mistake to make that judgment? I do not know how they see their own lives. But I do know that others have commented on their personal pictures and have cursed the darkness.

Those are but pieces of the picture that must be included for there is a big picture of world history, of hunger in Africa, wars in the Middle East, airplane crashes, and a host of other major concerns. Those apparent negatives would have to be matched by major positives, efforts to cure AIDS, the elimination of polio, the rise in health conditions in various countries. There have been major positives that have to be considered.

How do you decide who is good and who is evil? How do you say that you life is a blessing or a curse? When do you make the judgment? How do you weigh all of the events. In the end, it seems all I can do is just bear witness as to what has happened in my own life. The world God has created has made available to me a good and blessed life, and I am grateful to a merciful God.

And Then What?

A friend of mine from my college days sent me a YouTube video which graphically recorded the declining fertility rate in all Western European nations and the dramatic increase in the population of all Western European countries of Muslims. By some figure like by 2025 more than half of the population of most Western European countries will be Muslims. My friend was very pessimistic about the future of the world. It was a video dramatic enough to get one to thinking.

My college courses in World History never really covered the world. Those courses only dealt with the history from the Fertile crescent westward. They never talked about the Far East and India. But there was one very obvious fact in the history we did read. That fact was that empires rise and fall. A civilization comes together and dominates the whole Western European land mass for a couple of hundred years and then fades away. Nobody has stayed on top forever.

There is also the fact in American History that a very large part of our population has believed that we were a special instrument of God's providence. We were a special creation by God to bless the world. We had a "manifest destiny" to cover the continent. We have a statue that says we are the haven for all the world's oppressed. Many of us see ourselves as a Christian nation with a divine duty to redeem the world. God shed his grace on us and we have been blessed by God for the good of the world.

Are there theologians and Christian scholars who are pondering the theological implications of the demise of the United States? Are there Christian thinkers who are exploring our role in the world as a "has been" power? Is that the time we call upon the great Exile tradition and see ourselves as being forsaken by God because we were not faithful or is that when we see the providence of God working in the world a new thing through the powers of the Far East and the powers of the Muslims? Of course, the fall of America could coincide with Armageddon and the beginning of the rapture. I suspect the last idea may be the shape that current preaching in many places takes. Does the providence of God's love and grace have a next chapter in the world after the fall of the United States? How would that demise of the United States be explained in our present theological climate?

More Evidence of Failure

A local congregation here in Henderson has paid for an ad in the paper to praise and honor one of their members. The newspaper's editorial staff picked it up and ran an editorial about the man and about the church's tribute to his Christian witness. It was a small breathe of fresh grace for those of us who are struggling to live a Christian witness. But it is such a small speck of light in what appears to be a flood of negative light.

The Republic of Ireland has finally published a study that has been ten years in the making that documents seventy years of abuse, mistreatment, rape, and cruelty to children in the Catholic run Foster Homes, Homes for Unwed Mothers, and Orphanages. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland is experiencing a kind of economic melt down in its Presbyterian Mutual Fund. Certainly some fall should be expected in these economic times, but the fall has exposed real problems.

There is a passage in Scripture where St. Paul advises Christians not to be involved in the court system as they ought to be able to resolve their own issues in their own community. St. Paul says Christians are going to be the ones who judge the rest of the world so why should Christians go and be judged by others. But the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America is taking every congregation which wants to leave to court to grab the property. There is a segment of the Riverside Church in New York City which is taking the rest of the church to court to protest the new salary of the new minister. (No one ever protests the paying of a minister too little.)

Christians behaving badly continue to ruin the effectiveness of the Christian message. And it is all around us. My hunch would be that every person who posts on that site called "Home in Henderson" would claim to be a Christian person, but there is no place where there is more meanness, more bigotry, more cruelty, more slander,and more gossip than on that site. If we wonder why the Christian faith is being deserted by the young, there may be evidence that they do not see it making any difference in the way most of the people who call themselves that act.

When there are more tributes to Christian witnesses and fewer negative stories the Christian story might have a chance.

A Long Way to Go!

Fleming Rutledge tells the story of a young girl who goes into a jewelry store in New York and wants to buy a necklace. She wants a nice silver necklace. The clerk shows her one. She says she want one with a cross on it, and she wants one with that little man on it. The clerk says, "Are you Catholic?" The girl is a bit surprised but says no, she just thinks that little man on the cross gives the necklace a little special flair. Who is telling her the story about that little man?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life announced the results of a survey they took. I don't know anything about the Pew Forum so I don't know what their agenda may be, but they report that those people who go to church an average of twice or more a month are much more likely to support torture and water boarding than those who do not go to church. The more you hear the story of Jesus and his love for his enemies apparently the more eager you are to torture your own enemies. Who is telling these people the story about Jesus?

I was called and selected to be among those first interviewed to be on two juries concerning the death penalty. Because I was a minister I kept thinking that the prosecuting lawyers would question me about my attitude about the death penalty. They asked a lot of questions about a lot of things and when it came time to exercise their privileges to excuse jurors, I was excused both times by the defense attorneys. I was very surprised. When I mentioned this to some attorney friends they told me that defense attorneys have profiled clergy as being very harsh and heartless jurors. Clergy vote to "hang them high and fried them toasty." Needless to say, I was shocked. People who spend their lives reading and telling others about a God who loves and forgives have no forgiveness or mercy in their souls.

Man, it seems to me that we still have a long, long way to go.

Abiding in Love

John's Gospel in the 15th chapter talks about our "abiding" in Christ. He is the vine and we are the branches, and we are to "abide" in that relationship. Strikes me that we do not often hear the word "abide" used very much, but we have a lot of situations where the concept is promoted. There are a host of people who have abides as N.C. State fans through thick and thin. There are people who have abided, stayed faithful, to the State Basketball program from Norman Sloan, Les Robinson, Herb Sendek, and now Sidney Lowe. They have stayed strong supporters in good times and bad. They have abided in their loyalty. We have Financial Planners who are urging us to "abide" in our financial plans. Do not panic. Do not do anything rash. Simple abide in the plan you made in previous times. John says that Jesus told his disciples to abide in him. To continue to follow him. As we abide in Christ, the love of God will abide in us through Christ and it will manifest itself in our sharing God's love for all creation. As we abide in Christ, the love of God flows through us and we engage in works of compassion and justice on behalf of others.

So what good is that to me? What is in it for me? Why should I care about doing works of compassion and justice for others? Well, apart from the fact that when compassion and justice are done for others it means there is more compassion and justice in the world and you benefit from that, but that is not the reason given by John. In his first letter he says that that love flowing through us casts out fear. As we dwell in Christ and the love of God flows through us into those deeds we lose our fears.

I think we lose three great fears. The fear of insignificance. It seems to me that one of our culture's greatest fear is that we do not matter. Isn't that what MySpace,Facebook, and Twitter are all about. That somebody out there knows and cares that I am going to lunch. There are billions of people in a world with millions of stars. All we are is "dust in the wind." As the love of God flows through us and we care for others, we live in the contentment that God loves us and we are making a difference in the lives of others.

The fear of not being good enough. If we matter and what we do matters, then there is the fear that we may not measure up. The fear of failure. That we will be put in the goat section. But if we abide in the love of God in Jesus and that gift of forgiveness and salvation is ours then we don't have to worry about being good enough. We are not saved by our works. God's love is an act in Jesus to be a remedy for our sin, so we lose that fear.

The fear of the stranger, the foreigner, the unknown. As we abide in God's love and let the love flow through us in our works of compassion for others, we share in the love of God for all His creation, and we no longer immediately believe everything different is evil.

So while we are "abiding" in the love of God in Jesus, that love dwells in us and flows through us into our loving others and that perfect love casts out all fears. It is one of the most common greetings in the New Testament, "Fear not."

Trashed Some Old Friends

My father worked for a couple of years travelling as a salesman for D.C. Heath Book publishing company. Freud might say that my interests in books came from my longing for my father. But I have enjoyed books for a long time. I worked at Princeton Theological Seminary at the Theological Book Agency for all three years of my Seminary education. I managed the Book Agency my senior year. I got a lot of books at Seminary cost. I spent a lot of money on books.

One of the major expenses in each of my calls was the moving expenses. Each calling church was shocked by the moving expenses because there were so many books. When I put them all up in the library of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, one of the male members of the church, an intellectual himself, said, "That is a fabulous library you have there. Too bad this congregation is not interested in that sort of things." Ouch!

So now one of the biggest issues I have is what to do with all of those books now that I am retired. There are many great scholarly books that I have seldom looked at but which I always kept so that I would have resources to look up the answers to questions that somebody might ask me. My intellectual security blanket. There are lots of novels and books that I have read, and I doubt that I will ever re-read. There are commentaries and Biblical study material that I still may want to use as I get invited to preach from time to time.

But this morning for the first time, I took a box of books to the county dump. They were old friends, but I had no need for them. There was my Freshman-in-college English anthology. But I had carried it with me for forty years. There were some other books that just did not measure up. I am sending to third world seminary many of the "classic" books, like the Theology of the New Testament by Bultmann or some of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. I am giving to the local library many of the novels and good history books.

But I trashed some of my old friends today in the dump. It has to be done. I guess even now I find it hard to let go of that security blanket. Those books were a part of the self-imagine, part of my self-concept. But they have to go. They may have even been idols as I may have been tempted to put more importance on them than on the reality that I was a child of God who mattered even without books or even if I did not know the answer, or even if I was wrong. Maybe it is a good thing I have to start getting rid of all those books, and I can finally begin to be free to be a simple child of God who matters. But it sure was hard tossing that box into the dumpster. I still got a lot more to dump.

Something More

While working in my shop on a woodworking project, I put on an old CD of the songs of Jim Croce. A wonderful trip down memory lane was enjoyed as I sanded and glued stuff together. "Leroy Brown", "Alabama Rain", the dangers of messing with the wife of jealous man, and the heartbreak of the loss of a wife and a best friend at the same time were great to hear again.

But then there was one of his songs that always seem so deeply theological that I wonder what the story is behind it in Croce's life. I am not sure that it was played and heard as much when Croce was alive, and I am not sure people would call it one of his favorites. The song is the "Dear John" message to a young woman who was expecting a whole lot more from her boy friend than the singer could give. It is called "Lover's Cross." "I never was much of a martyr and a regular guy would not do, I can't hang upon no Lover's Cross for you." Then he hopes that she will be able to find somebody who can fit the bill for her, but "he will have to be some kind of super Guy, or maybe a super God."

My mind races towards Good Friday. Is the song suggesting that there is a limit to our human love and that Paul is probably right that there are not many places where one person will die for another person? That what happened on Good Friday had to have in it something more than just a human love for humanity. That a regular guy would not do, but that there was something present in the Cross that was a "super God." Jim Croce's song acknowledges that for some of us we do not have the love or the endurance or the ability to make those kinds of sacrifices. On the Lover's Cross on Good Friday there something more than just an innocent man who got caught in a bad place.

Labels All Mixed Up

My first job as a minister was at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C. I was an assistant minister. It did not take me very long in that position, working with the Pastor, to discover that in the world of theology and politics, the labels are all mixed up. Those who are called "conservatives" should really be called "liberals" and those called "liberals" should really be called "conservatives."

I still think that the labels are all mixed up. Labels do have a way of changing and names given to groups stay the same but the groups often change. But basically, it seems to me that it is the Christian who most wants to be faithful to the story of Jesus, i.e. the most conservative Christian, who wants to conserve the message of Jesus, who ends up being the most liberal in the political arena. It is the Christian who is called the most conservative who ends up being the one who engages in the most twisting and changing of the Biblical story.

Take the debate about marriage currently alive in our political process. Those who are called "conservatives" declare that the Bible demands that marriage be between one man and one woman. It is the "liberal" Christian who is supposed to be twisting and distorting the Biblical story to suggest that marriage in the Bible has no such narrow definition. But if one reads the Bible carefully, there is the Creation story of Adam and Eve where it is declared that a man needs a helpmate. So there is presented the idea of one man and one woman. But no sooner do you leave that story than you begin to have the story of the patriarchs who have multiple wives. Then there are the stories of David and Solomon who have lots of wives. These are all people God continues to bless. Family arrangements come in all shapes and forms in the Biblical, and one must not forget the "arrangement" of Mary and Joseph in the birth of Jesus. Those who are called "conservatives" edit and pick the portion of the Bible they want and are thus the "liberals" who are changing the story, while those who are called "liberals" are really the ones who want to conserve the whole body of tradition.

The Christian who wants to live and maintain the Beatitudes in life, to conserve the ethical values of that sermon, will be described as a flaming liberal in our current political cultures, while the one called a conservative Christian will be the one who makes the most adaptations to the tradition.

The labels are all mixed up and backwards, but the differences remain the same and the struggle to be faithful would not be any easier if we got the labels right. Jesus invites us to follow him and that is not easy no matter what we call ourselves.

"All Things in Common"

If there is an aspect to the Christian faith that "scares the pants" off most of us, it is the hint of "socialism" in Acts. The early Christians gathered together in community and shared all of their possessions. Each contributed as was able; each took what was needed. The story of the couple who sold their farm and tried to pretend that they had given all of the proceeds to the "pool" is a very scary story. It cost them their lives.

This notion that we are all in this together and need to share all of our resources together may be traced through the Old Testament prophets as well. The health and well being of a society is how it cares for all of its people. The anger of the prophets at the business leaders who grabbed the land of the small homeowner by fraud and foreclosure is the heart of Amos.

There is a fundamental reality that this is God's creation and we are all his children and so we must all care for each other and make sure we are enjoy and participate in the blessings of creation. Obviously there are going to be some who have more than others, but there has to be a constant concern that the gap between the rich and the poor does not become too wide.

G.K. Chesterton in June of l921 was writing about the industrial revolution and the economic energies of that time. "It was a race of competition, of commercial adventures, of scientific inventions, and one which was run not only boldly but blindly; by men who shut their eyes to all other realities -- to agriculture, to art, to religion, to the romance of living. But above all they shut their eyes to the one thing which demanded most attention in a democracy, or anything attempting to be a democracy. They shut their eyes to the distribution as distinct from the accumulation of wealth. They said that Birmingham was growing richer when they meant that one man in Birmingham was growing richer, and ten men were growing poorer. They would not see that their machine of capitalism was not creating capitalists but proletarians, was not making merchants but beggars."

It is this aspect of the Christian faith which now looks at the last ten to fifteen years in this country and sheds a tear that we have not focused on the one thing that we need to focus on if we are to be Christian people; "the distribution as distinct from accumulation of wealth." In the last decade the rich have gotten much richer, the middle class has shrunk, and the poor have gotten poorer. The rich have gotten richer by a machine of capitalism that has suddenly collapsed and put all of us in jeopardy. There is a reality that we are all in this together, and if we will not share the blessings then we will all share the pain.

The Christian faith does believe that there is a great fulfilment of the intentions of creation when we hold all things in common, that we understand that we are all entitled to benefit from the blessings of creation. One of our disciplines as people of faith is to watch that the distribution of wealth does not become evil.

Do we ever listen to ourselves?

Sitting in the congregation of a Holy Week Service, being the one who listened instead of speaking, I had to marvel at the patience of the people in the pews. Or the deafness of the people in the pews. Or maybe it is the hope of the people in the pews. But it was amazing to me to listen to what we sang and said.

The first hymn was When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, on which the Prince of Glory die, my richest gain I count but lost, .... And yet I am not sure that in these economic times any of us would be willing to lose our jobs or homes or car or 401(k) for our Christian faith. Think about George Beverly Shea singing "I would rather have Jesus, than silver or gold..." and yet I suspect that when push came to pull that would not be the choice many of us could make. I am not sure I could go all the way with that.

The next piece of music was "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red, and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world." Oh, Muslim children? Hispanic children who are born here by illegal immigrants? Gay children (gays had to be born sometime), children in our welfare system? African children? And then if that statement is true does it mean that Jesus' death on the cross brought salvation to all those children too? Does that song suggest universalism? Do we really listen to what we sing.

The last hymn was "My Jesus I love Thee, I know thou art Mine..." My first encounter with this kind of language was when Paul Scherer, one of my heroes, said "Hogwash, Blessed Assurance Jesus is Mine, is a heresy, Blessed Disturbance, we are His." Jesus is not ours. If there is any hope it is in our being His. He claims us as his children, not that we "own" him.

This same confusion was told to a friend of mine who has a mountain of difficulties she is living through. Her friend told her that she was in the midst of a great battle between God and Satan, and She would have to be strong, keep the faith, to make sure that God won. So the great hope of God's victory of death and evil is now resting on the shoulders of my friend and if she does not "keep the faith" God will lose to Satan. Who wants that kind of God? If my friend has any hope it is that God will stay faithful to her while she rages in pain, doubt and frustration at the life she has been given.

Perhaps it is a sign of the patience and love of God that He will allow so many confusing and contradictory to be said about him by his friends. No wonder some people have so much trouble with the question of faith.

Heaven - new life?

Easter always does it. At least, it should. Easter and talk of the resurrection ought to provoke from us some reflections on life after death. What is this resurrection? What is this new life that is being talked about? Where is this paradise that Jesus promises the thief that they will share? If Easter does not do it for us, then usually the death of a loved one does.

It is one of those questions that we ought to reflect upon and discuss, but we need to be careful about what we claim this paradise, this heaven, this new life will look like. A lot of questions and very little dogma. It was several years ago when Eric Clapton lost his young son that he wrote about "Tears in Heaven." There he ponders the question of time, age, and personality. Would his young son remember his father's name? What age will they both be when Eric gets to heaven? Who will be different in heaven? "Will he know my name?" "Will he be the same?" Will we be able to recognize others? Not long ago I was listening to some old CD's and heard in a song, "Will We Burn in Heaven, like we do down here?" I am not sure exactly what that means but I took it to mean will there be passions and desires in heaven? We will want something so badly we can taste it? Certainly there would be those who might suggest that if there are no emotions and passions then heaven will be rather bland and boring. A friend told me during March Madness that heaven is where every team wins. Which may sound good at the beginning, but soon loses its favor when winning would then mean nothing. Streets of gold loose their value when all the streets are gold.

The image that has always carried me was the child in the womb. For nine months it is total darkness, food provided through a tube, and always wet, but suddenly with birth comes light, dryness, eating and air. Nothing in the new life is like the old life, except that everything that was being done in the darkness and the wet was preparation for the new. If the child in the womb had questions, like why didn't I have anything to play with? Those questions just disappear and become unimportant in the new place. My faith hopes for something of the same thing at death. We will be born into a new life that this one has been preparing us for but is totally different. But like the child in the womb I have no more knowledge of what that new life will look like than she does. The best I know is "In life and death, we belong to God."

The Smaller Different World

One of the facts of my life is that I have moved almost every five years of my life until I came to Henderson,N.C. and we have now been here almost 16 years. While that has made maintaining friendships difficult, it has had the blessing of showing me how many different ways in this country we can do things, and it has shown me how very much we are all alike.

I have had the blessing of being able to travel to different countries. I have been to Mexico, Costa Rica, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Turkey, Italy, and Canada. Again, the education has been how much variety there is in doing the same things. All children play with dolls, but the dolls are look so different. We all keep warm in the winter, but the way it is done is so different.

Vance Granville Community College had a Cultural Fair about a week ago. That fair brought to Vance County the educational opportunities that all my travelling has given me. There in that room was a chance to see how many different ways there are to do the same thing. And some of the ways that other people do things are really good. At least it looked that way by the number of people who came by the Latin American booth to get food.

The Cultural Fair at Vance Granville Community College is a little piece of what we are all beginning to understand. Especially in light of the G-20 meeting in London. This is a great world getting smaller. There are more and more people who want better education, better homes, better transportation. better quality of life. There are lots of ways of doing those things, but some of those ways will have to change if we hope to preserve the earth.

God has given us a great planet and many resources. One of the greatest resources is the variety and creativity of all these different cultures and traditions. We are invited by God to be stewards of the earth. We have only a few years left to do that or we will have passed the tipping point for the preservation of all of us. God has given us a great world. God has given us great creativity in an amazing variety of cultures. Now we have to all come together to find the best way forward for the good of all of us. One thing is for sure. The American current standard of living and the way we support that standard of living cannot be the standard for the next three billion people in India and China. Out of the God-given creativity of all of us we have to find a different way.

March Madness

In the amazing mix of current events: The Bonus anger at AIG; The Lenten Discipline, The Basketball Madness and The Economic melt down; the reality began to surface that they might all lead to Easter. Rather, that Easter is the message that dominates them all.

While Congress and the public is outraged by the distribution of bonuses to the executives at AIG, there are some in Washington who want to urge us not to waste time looking back, but to focus on how to make the banking, investment, and financial system better. "Let us use our passion for the correcting and restructuring of the system to give it new and better life."

If there is one mantra among coaches of the better teams it is that players must always focus on the "next play." Do not waste time worrying about a missed shot or a bad pass. "My fault" and move on. Focus on the next play ahead, don't waste time feeling bad about the last play. There is another play ahead and you can make it good.

The Economic crisis and the subprime mess has tempted lots of people to want to look back and assign blame and inflict punishment, but there are those others who suggest that this crisis brings us an amazing opportunity to make a whole new world. Now that so much has been cleared away, now is a perfect time to invest in clean, renewable energy, look at the coming possibilities. Now is a great time to lower our expectations and ideas of what is the "good life." Now is a time change the way we do health care. After World War II and Germany had been bombed, they made giant strides ahead because they built new modern production facilities. The economic crisis says don't waste time looking back, look at the new wide open future before you, a new creation awaits.

The Lenten Discipline is the journey towards Easter, and there is tucked inside of that the same lack of passion for looking back and assigning blame or inflicting punishment. Jesus says on the Cross, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they are doing." Next play. Look ahead. The Resurrection declares that there is a chance for a better outcome. For you and for me, for the world and for humanity there is a chance for a new life, there is a gift of a new possibility, there is the offering of an future that can be better. As the story is told in the Gospels there is little interest in assigning guilt and pointing fingers. Maybe in Acts and some of Paul's letters there begins to be the "blame game." But the message of the good news is that there is a next play. The bad plays, the mistakes, the evil does not have to be focused on. There is no benefit in all that looking back. There is, even in a horrible death, the opportunity for the next play. Welcome it, rejoice in it, and live in it. There is a new life that you can live better.

Justice?

I think it may be the only ending of its kind that I have seen in the last six or seven years. I am thinking of the ending of the movie the Gran Torino. The old man with cancer gets himself killed by the gang of hoods, and the movie shows the hoods being taken away by the Police. One of the policemen tell the neighbor youths that the case is a "lock" because there were lots of witnesses.

The movie turns the bad guys over to the our criminal justice system with implied confidence. That is not how the bad guy usually gets it. In other movies that I have seen and in the mystery novels that I have read, that is usually not the case. There are two much more typical endings. The most typical is the "good guy" in some major action-filled climax in which they battle to the death. The Revelation of St. John style of resolution. The good guy usually pulling out a victory in the last second. The second ending is much more common in the books I read. I just finished T is for Trespass by Grafton. As the police arrive, the evil woman jumps out of the hotel window and commits suicide. P.D. James, Dorothy Sayers, Martha Grimes, Ian Rankin and many others tend to have the bad guy die in some other way, but the "bad guy" is seldom surrendered to the criminal justice system. Ian Rankin even has taken to having the "bad person" slip away and avoid any legal or public punishment.

Is it a lack of faith in the criminal justice system, that the makers of these movies and writers of these stories do not believe that the reader will be happy to have the evil one end up in our criminal justice system? No one thinks that Madoff will be appropriately punished by the criminal justice system for his fraud. Is it more of a statement that in this world there are no clear cut, good guys - bad guys, and the struggle between good and evil continues on. Mystic River, the movie, seemed to suggest that that is the river of life, a mix between good and evil. They struggle on different sides of the street and the flow of the struggle is never ended.

Certainly one of the great engines of the desire and hope for Heaven is that there will finally be a fair and just resolution to this conflict between good and evil. That there will finally be a place where all of the little and great evils will be sifted and there will be a complete and appropriate balancing of the justice that each of us claims we want. One of the things that makes mystery novels so much fun is to see each writers vision of justice.

The Joy of Doubts

There is an L.A. religious reporter who has written a book about how his experiences with religion have caused him to lose his faith. He now calls himself a “reluctant atheist.” There is a movie called “Doubt” about a nun who was so arrogant and sure of her own righteousness that she ruins a whole parish and school. The power of the movie is at the end she cracks into tears and acknowledges that she too has doubts. There is a scholar at UNC who is one of the foremost authorities on Biblical manuscripts and early church documents who was once an fanatical evangelical who has become a bitter revengeful scholar because he discovered that the church he was a part of lied to him about the authority of scripture. The church told him the Bible was infallible, with no errors, and in his scholarship he discovered that they could not make that claim stick.

History shows a very depressing and sad story of the destruction and death that has been caused by those who were absolutely sure they were right. The pain and suffering that has been caused by leaders and groups who claimed to have the absolute truth and refused to entertain any questions or admit any mysteries is enough to make many people reject the whole idea of faith and religion.

There is no denying that the faith groups, which make those kinds of claim, attract a lot of people. The insecurity and fears of the human soul desperately want and hunger for that kind of certainty. To trust one’s immortality to an ambiguous creed that says “perhaps” or “maybe” just is not good enough for some people.

And yet there are Biblical stories that suggest that lots of the Biblical characters had to live with uncertainty, with unanswered questions, with something less than full absolute confidence. Abraham had to live a long time on the basis of a promise that had not been fulfilled. Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt for more than forty years and the people of Israel were never convinced completely that Moses knew what he was doing.

But in the middle of this Lenten season we are reminded that Peter and the rest of the disciples were caught in a great conflict between claiming that Jesus looked to them like the Messiah, but that Jesus talked to them about a death and a sacrifice that raised all kinds of questions for the disciples. They were not sure, and when the moment of arrest came, they fled.

But there are two moments in this Lenten journey that gives us a powerful example of the faith that is never completely, one hundred percent sure all of the time. One is in the garden where Jesus is not sure he wants to go through with this, and asks if there isn’t some other way. And the second is the cry of Jesus on the Cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Sounds like Jesus is not sure where God is or what God is doing. There is a moment of doubt and uncertainty in the heart and mind of Jesus.

A living and dynamic faith is living in the tension of trust and obey in the midst of wonder, doubt, mystery and hope. There is an energy and a power in a faith that is full of curiosity, asking questions to which it does not have the answers, trusting oneself to a mystery and love that one cannot prove and cannot describe. How else can one be surprised by joy if one always knows what is right?

Graceland

Perhaps it is a sign of the times. In the last month I have seen more lists of favorite things than I have seen in ten years. Perhaps it is a development out of our hard times. If I have no money to worry about what new gadgets and toys to buy, I will play with my old toys. Perhaps there are always periods of reflections when people stop and look back and rank their favorites. But I have seen in three or four places lists of favorite books, lists of favorite movies, lists of records (some people still have records) and lists of favorite Cd's or tunes.

One of my reactions is to wonder about myself as I could not tell you the top ten movies that I have enjoyed in my life. I could not name the ten or five best albums in my life. I hardly know the real names to most of the songs I liked. I was never one of those people who knew the director of a movie. Even now when the credits start to roll, I leave the theater. I never knew who the people were in the Four Tops or the Supremes. I have not found that these things marked my life in pivotal ways. Maybe the reality is that they marked it much more significantly because I was not consciously aware of the shaping.

But one person's list of top five albums had in it an album by Paul Simon and was the album was Graceland. While I do not know what Paul Simon intended by the song by the same name, but there is a line that I think is pure gospel. "There are reasons to believe that we all maybe received in Graceland." I immediately think of the Kingdom of God as Graceland, the land of Grace, and I do believe that there are good reasons to believe that we all, all people, may be received into Graceland. Because if we are all saved by Grace, and not by works, and if God is gracious and loving, then there are good reasons to believe as Paul Simon says, "we all maybe received in Graceland."

Grace is everywhere. Enjoy. The real hell is that grace is all around and we refuse to see it, accept it and share it.