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.