Moving Towards Easter

The Journey through Lent is suppose to prepare us for Easter. Easter is the celebration, it seems to me, of the reality that the love of others which sacrifices self for the good of others triumphs over the evil of the selfishness of other powers. The love of Jesus for humanity, the willingness of Jesus to lay down his life, it was not taken from him, is vindicated by God's raising him from the dead. It is this reality that is to shape our own lives and actions.

Jesus said it was better to lose our lives in service than to gain the whole world. The Golden rule is to love others as much as we love ourselves. That what we want for ourselves is what we want for others. That continues to be a kind of dividing line for all of us.

There are those who struggle with their own selfishness and seek to the power and faith to work and hope for others the same kind of life they want for themselves. There are others who only want what they want for themselves. There are some who keep praying for the power to die to themselves, to sacrifice some of their ambition to make room for the ambition of others, to take some of their plenty ands give to some who have nothing.

There are others who have who only want more. There are some who think that those who are strong deserve to take from those who are weak. There are some who have many advantages who have no interest in surrendering those advantages for the welfare of others.

Easter does demand a great leap of faith to believe that those who sacrifice, those who die for the betterment of others, those who give what they have to those who do not have, are the ones who will arise in new life, are the blessed ones. When you look at the world around us, it seems obvious that only a miracle of resurrection could over come those powers of selfishness.

The Ref's Call

There are a few times when basketball games have given me examples of real ethical and moral choices.

There was a situation in Texas one year when a high school coach was faced with the need to coach his team to lose in order to qualify for the state tournament. I do not remember all the details but the team needed to lose in order to win. The big debate centered on whether or not it was appropriate in sporting events to play to lose. That presented the old question about when do the short term goals get trumped by the long term goals. "Is it okay to lie for a greater truth?" "Can you steal in order to feed your family?" "Can you commit murder of a tyrant for the good of the country?" Now certainly losing a game is not the same as murder, but in many ways the arguments are the same.

This week in the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament presented another challenge to the public. As I read about the ref's call and saw the replays, the situation certainly provide a lot of material for discussions. The game was between Syracuse, a number one seeded team, and the UNC-Ashville who was a number 16 seeded team. No number 1 has ever lost to a number 16 in the history of the tournament.

Syracuse was ahead by 3 points with about 30 seconds left in the game. UNC-Ashville was pressing Syracuse who was trying to get the ball inbounds. The ball was thrown to a Syracuse player near the side line. The UNC-Ashville player dove for the ball and collided with the Syracuse player. There are many who would make the case that the contact was a foul by the UNC-Ashville player. The ball clearly hit the hands of the Syracuse player. The ball went out of bounds. The official call was that the ball belong to Syracuse on the side line.

Years ago there was a rule that allowed the officials to call a "force out." The official could rule that the defensive played had pushed the other player out of bounds. The official could give the ball to the team that was pushed out of bounds. That rule has been removed, but it would have been a perfect rule in this situation.

The ref did not call the contact a foul. "Incidental contact" is a concept that has been emerging as a dominant response to a lot of contact in basketball over the years. But there have been many who have argued that the official used that "ignoring of the foul" as the reason for giving the ball to Syracuse for an inbound. The contact was not bad enough to justify calling a foul, but the "incidental contact" was the cause of the Syracuse player dropping the ball and so the ball should have been awarded to Syracuse.

There are others who say if the contact was not bad enough for a foul at that time of the game, then it should not have been a factor in the decision as to whom the ball was given and it should have been UNC-Ashville's ball. Thus giving UNC-Ashville another chance to try to tie the score or win.

We try to play life "by the rules" but that so often just is not possible. Two rules: foul or out of bounds and neither of them fits actually the situation and a judgment has to be made that makes no one happy. The officials would much rather see the game being decided by players on the floor making plays rather than making calls that give chances to score and change the game. The official in this case made a quick call that gave the ball back to Syracuse, did not call a foul on the UNC-Ashville player, and allowed UNC-Ashville thirty seconds more to try to make a play.

So much of life makes us all make calls that do not fit the rules. So many of the choices are somewhere in the middle between two or three rules. The desire may be there to be a straight shooter and always abide by the rules. We can even be dogmatic about "law and order" and "doing the right thing" but we only set ourselves up for disappointment and pain. The fact that we live between the rules means we need to be a lot more humble, a lot more gracious to others as they make their "calls" and a lot more open to the forgiven we need for the "calls" we make.

Goldman Sachs

Sour Grapes? Maybe. Management was not happy with his resignation letter. He sent it to the New York Times. A senior management adviser for Goldman Sachs resigned because he believed that the company he had gone to work for no longer existed. The culture of the company now was "toxic." That was his word for it. He claimed that when he went to work for the company they had their customers' best interest as their primary focus. How could they help their customers make money in the financial world. Now he claims that the only concern is how can the adviser make the most money for the company and himself. (herself as well). They joke and laugh about how to fleece the investor. They are urged to sell investors offerings or financial instruments that the company is pushing without regard to whether or not it fits the investors' financial objectives or fits into their plan.

He claimed that when he went to work for Goldman Sachs the idea was that if they made money for their customers the firm would make money. Now they just want to make money for the company and care very little about what happens to the investors. Such seemed to be the case in the subprime mortgage crisis.

The shift of focus from the investor to the company suggests to me that something like that has happened in so many of our Christian communities. People go to church with the hope of having an encounter with the Holy. They want a word from the Lord. They come seeking to be in the presence of the Almighty. The focus of the worship ought to be how can we be receptive to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst when it comes.

Holy Places are where God reveals Himself to us. "The Holy Spirit bloweth where it wills", and we are blessed when we feel the presence of the wind in our face. We keep returning to those places where the Holy has been experienced before. We cannot make it happen but we can make ourselves available to it. The more open and receptive, the more the spirit dwells in us, the more there is a readiness for worship and the holy, the more we are excited about being in that place and with those people. And others will come to share with us.

Have you ever noticed that it is not hard to draw a crowd to a place where somebody has claimed to see the face of Jesus or Mary in a soap dish, or a Pizza piece, or a spider web? People are eager to be in the place where the Holy has appeared.

But preachers, teachers, deacons, elders and others have this great desire to be helpful, to be of service, to do something, to make something happen, and so they begin to focus on the organization of the church. They start planning more and more programs. They begin to manage things. They look for new approaches, new music, new technology to make a "better service, a happier congregation, a more positive feeling.

Joining with others in the waiting and preparation for the coming of the Holy is not easy and does not always satisfy those who come because it does not happen every week on cue. Carlyle Marney, a great Southern Baptist, one said, "There are Sundays when even God does not show up for church." So the primary purpose of worship gets put aside and the focus moves to what we can control which is programs and activities and if we are luck fellowship. There is a focus on the members and how to manage their lives.

In forty years of ministry, I would probably be optimistic if I said I thought that we might have had 25 or 30 Sundays when it seemed to me that something holy and special was in the room. But that experience never happened any place but in worship with others. You keep going and waiting because it is the place where He said He would visit.

Not All In The Family

Like most creative and powerful human activities, there is much that training, effort, interest and hard work can do, but there is still an element of "giftedness" that makes a difference between good and great. You can be a good painter by hard work, but there is a "gift" needed to be a great artist. You can be a good piano player by lots of practice, but you need a special something to be special. You can be a good basketball player by doing lots of drills, but there are only a few exceptionally gifted players. You can be a good minister by hard work, but it is a gift to be a powerful and effective preacher. Some of us have tried very hard to be effective preachers, but have always known that we did not have the gift.

More often than not the gift is given to an individual and not to a family. The special talent is a "one and done" deal. Unfortunately, there are lots of cases where the children of the special talent try to follow in the gifted one's footsteps. I know this happens very often in religious circles. Without the gift, the results are not very satisfying.

This is not a new reality. "Now Eli's sons were scoundrels and had no regard for the Lord." Eli was a devout Priest for the Children of Israel back in I Samuel 2 of the Old Testament. Eli was a good priest, but his sons were self-indulgent and arrogant. The prophet's mantel does not fit very well of the prophet's son.

So perhaps it is not surprising to watch two recent developments of the children of the prophet failing to live up to the prophet's position. The Rev. Franklin Graham has been injecting himself into the political arena lately and not doing a very smooth job of it either. It is something his father managed to avoid publicly. Billy Graham obviously had a lot of impact on several politicians privately, but he managed to avoid getting caught in public debates over the faith of various candidates. Franklin has never had the preaching gift of his father and now has shown the lack of political finesse that his father had.

Even more recently have been the collapse of the Crystal Cathedral ministry of Dr.Robert Schuller. There were many of us who always doubted that Dr. Schuller was preaching the Christian message, but there was no denying that he had of gift of communication. It is the same gift that Joel Osteen is enjoying now. Joel Osteen is preaching the same positive thinking message as well. But the preaching of positive thinking was very profitable and effective for Dr. Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral as long as it was being done by Dr. Schuller. It was not a gift that was given to his family. His son tried to take his place, but he went to seminary and learned about Jesus and the church fired him because the son talked too much about this Jesus fellow. The next efforts were daughters and they could not reverse the downward spiral. The Crystal Cathedral has been sold the the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County.

More recently Dr. Schuller and his wife have resigned from the congregation of the Crystal Cathedral, which he started, because they were unable to resolve the financial problems between them and the board of trustees. The congregation has filed for bankruptcy and the board of trustees must be trying to claim the writings of Dr. Schuller, the tape of the ministry, and all the tape promotional stuff as assets to be used to pay off the debt. Dr. Schuller and his wife wanted something to pay for housing and retirement for themselves. They were not working it out. Two of his daughters and their husbands have been fired by the board of trustees as well.

There is a specialness about the gift. It is one of those evidences of unmerited blessings that are given to us. The gift is given. It is not a possession. It cannot be transferred to our children. It is often wasted on promoting or encouraging the wrong thing, but it is a gift and it does not stay in the family. It can not be obtained by hard work. Some of us got a little better by hard work, but it was not the gift. And to be honest there is a little satisfaction to watch those who have tried to capitalize off the gift of others encounter difficulties. I am not sorry to see the Crystal Cathedral experiencing these difficulties.