Got Room for a Pep Talk?

Psalm 4

            Think back to an experience in your life when you found yourself in a “tight spot.” Or maybe take a moment to reflect on how you find yourself to be in one right now.    We can locate ourselves in such a circumstance for any number of reasons – sudden or ongoing financial difficulty, having to make a tough personal or work-related decision, enduring the heartache of a strained relationship with a loved one or friend, not managing to take care of yourself well, feeling time-crunched with too many to-do’s, and the like.  

            We can also come to feel ourselves in tight spots with God.    How does this happen?    I find it’s when you find yourself pinched by doubts and desperations because deep down you are uncertain about just how trustworthy and reliable the Almighty is.   I find it’s when you just aren’t fully convinced God is listening and loving and leading … when the Good News of Jesus Christ feels like ancient news instead of the current headline your heart needs.  Consequently, you rehearse faithful beliefs and lift up good sounding prayers while simultaneously sinking further into sin-enticed self-reliance, skepticism and, at worst, self-destruction.  

            One pastor has written about how literally being in a tight spot helped him to see the tight spot he’d been experiencing with God.   It happened about five years into his being the pastor of a brand new church development.   These five years of upstart ministry had been full of very long work weeks, of not taking days off or vacations, and of sadly coming to rely on sleeping pills.      All the while, he’d been teaching and preaching the Bible, including all those guiding passages that exhort trusting and resting in the gracious power of the Lord.  

            The stress simply burst in the middle of one particular night.   He awoke in a start with a strange sense that God had been laughing at him.    Shaken, he wondered what this unsettling experience was all about.     

            He wasn’t able to gain helpful insight about this until some space of time later when he was helping move his family into a new home.   That’s when he found himself in a physical tight spot while trying to move a very heavy desk.    By himself.   To little success.  

            So his four year old son came along and offered to help his daddy.  After a few minutes of attempting to push and pull together, and not getting very far, the boy came to a conclusion.  He blurted out, “Dad, you’re in my way!”    The pastor papa couldn’t help but laugh at this, at the cute way his son believed he could handle the burdensome work better all by himself … without the assistance of his stronger, wiser father.   

            In the middle of this amusement, he was suddenly loosed from his spiritual tight spot.   He became convicted and inspired about why he’d sensed God had been laughing in the middle of the night.    He’d been a child of God too narrowly focused on his own capacity to move along all the weighty matters, all the pushing and pulling pressures of that new church development.  He hadn’t been truly trusting in the Lord as his helper and his true strength.   

            Of course I can’t say whether or not God was actually laughing.   I suspect it was just this person’s Holy Spirit empowered way of working out how foolish he’d been for not giving God more of his burdens, not more fully practicing what he preached.   However it happened, it is an illustration of how our experiencing a spiritual tight spot can inspire us to become deeply engaged in inner dialogue with ourselves and with God concerning how well we are following our faithful convictions.     Eventually, the fruit of this self and sacred reflection may spill out in things we choose to speak and write about.  That’s how I came upon reading this desk-pushing pastor’s story.[i]   And this is also how most all my song lyrics and sermons come about.   Tight spots with God can graciously turn into truly expansive spiritual growth.

            What we have in Psalm 4 is a long ago conversation of this very sort.   And it’s a model one for all us at that.   As one scholar has noted, “the Psalmist’s self-doubt emerges in the face of conflicting beliefs” but then turns this into a “pep talk” in which “the Psalmist hears out loud his own convictions” and “models for us a way out of distress by articulating who God is and how God is for us.”   

            We read in this Scripture the tight-spot of doubt about whether or not God will answer when called upon.  We read the tight-spots shame, dishonor, and vanity can cause.  We read the tight-spot of despair concerning whether the good light of God will shine again.      For each of these familiar-to-us tight-spots, the Psalmist reports the good news that God does not abandon us because of our questioning and doubting and distrusting.   Instead, God graciously gives us room.   

             Let’s really appreciate the breadth of what this means.  The original Hebrew language word for “room” literally translates to mean “space.”   But not just space as in to politely move one seat over on a bus.    It means space as in “to release from a tight noose at the neck.”[ii]    It’s life-saving space that God gives us.    To further accentuate this dramatic point, the word we translate in English as “distress” literally means “narrow” as in “a constricted larynx.”[iii]     One fresh contemporary way of translating Psalm 4, verse 1 is to say to God, “You gave me breathing space when I was suffocating.”   

            What an amazing word to us this is.   Who doesn’t want and need room to breathe, to be, to process, to not feel judged and pressured when our faithfulness feels constricted?   We want and need this from one another, and at our core, we sure do deeply want it from God.   Psalm 4 acknowledges and celebrates that our Lord is willing not to micromanage, to let us work out all our insecurities.[iv]

            One very good and glorious reason God allows this is so that we will become open to greater gladness.   This Psalm preaches that this is gladness greater than any material good could ever inspire us to have.   Back in the Psalmist’s day, this meant even the gladness brought about by a great harvest and an abundance of wine.    Doing an inventory of spiritual gladness, of that which you are soulfully grateful for, of all the times when God not only tolerated but gave you great room to work through a spiritual tight spot … this really helps build up tremendous faithful trust.  

            When I went through a two year training program in the art of spiritual direction a couple years ago, I was taught to practice something called The Prayer of Examen.   This is a time-honored way of praying that is credited to Ignatius of Loyola around the turn of the 16^th century.   When practiced daily, it can increase our trust that God is with us, giving us room to grow, and opening us to greater gladness.    

            I’m happy to meet, discuss and help practice this in more detail anytime asked to do so, but for these concluding moments in the pulpit, let me quickly explain the process of this formative prayer.[v]   

            The overall goal of this practice is to become more aware of God’s presence and the Holy Spirit’s movement throughout the day.    This is done by intentionally making time to review the past 24 hours of your life in a special, simple way.   You begin by calmly reminding yourself that God desires to be present to you in all and through all.   Next and as objectively as possible, consider all the events and details of the day.   This opens up an opportunity to not let anything slip away from memory as well as welcomes you to key in on where you believe God’s been active.    Be sure to review what has inspired you to feel thankful throughout the day, and especially thank God for goodness and generosity.       Once reviewed, conclude by responding.   This can be done through prayerful conversation, journaling, or whatever best works as your process.  The goal of responding is to note concerns, ask God for guidance, ask for forgiveness, resolve to make changes, and the like.   

            As it goes with any kind of exercising, I’ve had only moderate success in disciplining myself to this life-enriching, faith-edifying practice.    But I know it yields great blessing and peace of mind, the kind needed to sleep at night.    Like Psalm 4, this way of praying does have a way of becoming a pep-talk … it’s just that we have got to make room for it the way God gives gives us room to breathe and to be glad through all the tight-spots we can find ourselves in.   Amen.   

           

           

           

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[i] http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2011/september/2091911.html

[ii] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/22/2012&tab=5

[iii] ibid.

[iv] ibid.

[v] base on the excellent summary available to you at http://marshill.org/pdf/sp/PrayerOfExamenLong.pdf

But Go, Tell!

Mark 16:1-8

Easter Sunday 2012

            O happy day for us all!   O family day!  O faithful day!   It’s so good to be gathered here as God’s beloved and forgiven children on this especially sacred day of worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ.   It has been quite a journey over the past several weeks.   We’ve journeyed through all of the repentant solemnity of Lent.  We’ve contemplated the inner-anguished, other-focused passion of Jesus at the Last Supper and on Good Friday.   Blessed be, now we’ve arrived here, entered into the uplifting and miraculous joy of Easter once again.   With all the beautiful, powerful, God-glorifying reminders of our Lord’s redeeming love that this day hosts, I have to wonder what we are all going to do in the days and weeks and months to come to keep up this faithful celebration …

            One thing I’ll be doing in the coming days and months – as will a good many of you, I trust – is celebrating the new major league baseball season that has just sprang into action.    Belonging to and following  Jesus while also being fanatical about the Philadelphia Phillies is part and parcel of who I am this time of year!    Being a Christ-believer and being a baseball fan of any team are not mutually exclusive activities.   In fact, I find baseball can teach us a thing or two about our walk with and celebration of the Risen Lord.   

            Consider this example from the 2011 movie, “Moneyball.”   It’s not a documentary, but it is based on the real tale of the tight-budgeted 2002 Oakland Athletics.    In their aftermath of a 2001 playoff loss to a great championship team with a seemingly unrestricted budget and a very famous name, a few of the A’s star players joined other organizations.   Faced with very little money to lure bonafide baseball stars to keep the team competitive, the team’s General Manager Billy Beane turned to a radical statistical analysis of essentially no-name talent to rebuild. 

             It’s not the success-on-a-shoestring-budget theme that has drawn my faithful attention for this Easter morning, however.    What stands out is the scene in the movie when Beane, played by Brad Pitt, is being shown a minor-league game video by a Yale graduate he’d hired, played by Jonah Hill, to help with the analysis.   In it we see actual baseball footage from a burly minor-league player named Jeremy Brown.   We watch him swing the bat, hit the ball, and Mack truck his way toward first base.  He reaches the bag, and then turns the corner to run for second base.   That’s when he takes a huge and hugely embarrassing tumble.    He then quickly scrambles on hands and knees back to touch first base in order to be called safe.   It is, as we hear in a line from the movie, “all of his nightmares coming to life.”   

            Just as some relief seems to settle in, the opposing team’s smiling first baseman leans down to try to tell him something and his first base coach does the same in a wild-arm motioning way.    It takes him a few seconds, but the he is able to receive the good news message that these two were eagerly conveying to him.    From the moment he put the ball into play, he’d totally missed something big that happened.     He’d hit a homerun and hadn’t even realized it!    With this good news fully received, he then gets up, strides into a classic dinger trot, and with a sheepish sort of grin and a couple arm pumps, crosses home plate to the cheering arms of his teammates. 

            This is a compelling, heartwarming scene to watch.  It’s a grand moment of joyous, victorious achievement.    Yet it was almost undone.   It was almost undone by that all too human lack of awareness, stumbling and scrambling.    In the movie, this scene functions as a metaphor lesson about leadership and how to successfully play a game.    For us, for us present-day real-world followers of the Risen Christ, I suggest it’s a metaphor lesson about discipleship and how we should live out the real and relevant Good News of this holy love in our world.

            Let’s go back to our Easter morning play by play from Mark’s always-in-a-hurry-to-get-to-the-big-point Gospel.    Did you notice the all too human lack of awareness, stumbling and scrambling in this biblical scene?  Did you pick-up on the rather nightmarish human response to what should have been a fully noticed and joyfully responded to dream come true? 

            Three steadfastly loving companions of Jesus had decided, or been assigned, to properly attend to his lifeless body in the tomb with anointing spices.  They went even though they had no clue about how they were going to get beyond the boulder that sealed the grave.    As we reflect on this conundrum, we should wonder why they were not remembering Jesus’ own direct words and promises about his rising again (please re-read Mark 8:31 on your own).    He’d certainly suggested that boulders and death itself were no obstacles to this.  After witnessing his execution, were they so drenched and drained in sorrow and despair that they were not able to trust in Jesus’ promised word?   Where was their faithful expectation of Good News being fulfilled?  

            We might think they were reminded of this upon their arrival, as they saw the boulder had already been absolutely rolled away.    Mark doesn’t tell us their reaction.   He only mentions that a mysterious, white robed young man greeted them.   The description of him does inspire us to think about an angel.    This bright figure then speaks very matter-of-factly, saying, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”    If you are at all visual and imaginative like me, at this point in the reading you actually find yourself looking at an empty space inside a cave of some sort.    Jesus’ loved ones are then suddenly and swiftly told not to keep staring, not to stop and stay there in the vacant, conquered tomb.    In a tone that suggests they really should have realized this, they are told to get out and go tell the Good News of Jesus fulfilling His promise to rise and go on ahead of them all.    Hovering above or beside them, however it was, the herald was commanding and clear – “But go! Tell!”   

            However, seems the angelic coach could not inspire them to get up, get out and get ahead to catch up with their Risen Christ.   These understandably sorrow-filled, shocked followers of Jesus could only tumble in faith and then scramble back to first base.   Back to a place they could grasp better.  Back to where they could call themselves safe.  

            What is it about sitting with our errors and misperceptions that can feel more secure than taking risks and moving forward as God calls us to do?    

            Maybe they just couldn’t believe their eyes … there in that body-less tomb and all.  Maybe they just couldn’t believe Jesus was true to His Word … his being the Son of God and Savior and all.   Maybe they were petrified by what Easter truly means … the world having changed forever and for the better that day and all.   Maybe they just didn’t fully realize and accept what Jesus had done for them … the victory over sin and sorrow and death and sin-induced stumbling and scrambling and all.  

            That’s what He did, though.  For them, for us.    Jesus may have physically, humanly stumbled on the way to the Cross, but his holy, liberating love played safely through the divine plan.   He did so for the sake of opening all paths to forgiveness and reconciliation with God and with one another.    He did this so we would radically believe and diligently follow His life-winning love all the way home to heavenly life here and beyond.     

            Faithful friends, it does not matter how many times we may not be fully aware of this, how many times we stumble and scramble backwards in our sin.    The holy truth never changes that Jesus has gone ahead of us, has secured our spiritual sanctity, and is always waiting on us to follow Him in a victorious trot.  

            It’s a significant part of my calling to be like the encouraging, reminding, sending voice in the empty tomb and to be like the coach telling you the homerun – the resurrection -- has happened.    It’s also a significant part of your calling as Christians to do the same for one another.      The journey with Jesus, the mission of calling ourselves and others to the safe home of God’s goodness and grace, will continue in the next 364 days and beyond.  We all just have to work on keeping ourselves aware and actively engaged in our life together as Resurrection people.

            This life was beautifully described long ago by St. Augustine.   He was a church leader back in the late 4^th and early 5^th centuries, in a place that is modern day Algeria.   Humorously enough, back then it was called … ready for this?   Hippo.    Augustine of Hippo has given us encouragement in Christ to see life in a new way.   Pay attention to the movement mentioned in the following quote from his book The City of God – “We shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and we shall love, we shall love and we shall praise, in the end which is no end.”    A more contemporary writer reflects on this and adds, “Within the resting, seeing, loving and praising there is an inexhaustible adventure of new and ceaseless discovery.  Such is the heaven for which we were created.”[i]

            Such is the heaven for which we were created, have been redeemed, and are now sustained in the Holy Spirit.   O happy day for us all!   O family day!  O faithful day!   Jesus is Risen!  We are forgiven!  Forever loved!   Amen.  

           

           

           

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[i] Michael Ramsey, Be Still and Know, p. 122.

Fooled ... at First

John 12:12-16

Palm Sunday 2012

                I’m being cautious this morning.  Very cautious.  I want to make extra sure everything that’s happening in this worship service is pretty much going as planned and expected.   On any Sunday and on any day of the week all sorts of variables can come into play and mix things up.   It’s not that I’m usually caught too off-guard by unplanned occurrences … it’s just that today I know to be even more alert to anything seemingly out of place.    After all, today is, as I’m sure you realize, not only Palm Sunday but it’s also … April Fools’ Day!

            My awareness of the need to be extra cautious today was raised higher this past week when a fellow Trustee of Camp Johnsonburg told me about something he was involved when he was younger at his home church.   It was a Sunday, it was a scheduled day for celebrating the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and it was April 1^st.   Knowing a fairly rare opportunity was at hand, he and a friend began thinking about how leftover rolls from church dinners were kept in a freezer.    Can you guess where this is going?   

            The service started.    The moment to celebrate the sacrament arrived.   The pastor spoke words of institution, “On the night of his arrest, Jesus took the bread and …”    And as the pastor reached down to pick up the soft loaf of bread he expected to be sitting there, he instead took hold of a mostly frozen bit of baked dough.    As my friend tells it, there was quite a curious look on the pastor’s face as he struggled to break it!     Afterwards, the boys fessed up and said, “April Fools’!”    Fortunately, the pastor took this innocent enough church prank lightly, told them they’d gotten him good, and the story became one they all have shared in the years since.  

            Whether a person responds to an April Fools’ joke – and any prank on any day – in a positive or negative way is certainly determined in part by their personality.    For example, despite all my punning around and love of being a goofball a lot of the time, it mostly all gets set aside when it comes to being in worship and my solemn respect for sacramental ritual.   So I may well have been unable to take a chilled chunk of holy host very lightly!      

            I believe what this sort of fun, foolish business most comes down to in the end is how well each of our personalities can tolerate tweaks to our expectations.    As we enter into all our life experiences, we bring with us culturally conditioned expectations.  These come about as the result of our sense of self and the influence of our families, our social circles and the general culture in which we live.    So it’s surprising or shocking when we see, hear and have things unfold differently.     And depending on the circumstance and the degree of shock or surprise, we can find ourselves quite vulnerable to being left feeling embarrassed, foolish. 

            The way the Gospel of John bears witness to the very first Palm Sunday, it seems one group of folks that historic day were left feeling a bit fooled.    Expectations of Jesus were high amongst many faithful Jews as Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem to fulfill his holy purpose on earth.   These expectations should have first and foremost been based on all the powerful teaching and healing those following Him had heard and witnessed.   But ironically enough, the ones who should have understood this the most – Jesus’ disciples, his closest friends – were apparently the folks whose expectations went bust.    One particular decision He made revealed something to them that was in high contrast to all the frenzied, faithful fanfare of those moments.    As the joyful, desperate cries of Hosanna were lifted up along with palm branches, as this petitioning for salvation and heralding of Jesus as royal king reached a tipping point, Jesus responded in a curious, seemingly foolish way.    He found and sat upon a small donkey. 

            By and large, the mass of Jewish faithful gathered there had not come to welcome this holy man with the awe-inspiring, populist, revolutionary reputation, entering the great sacred city settled on the simple back of a young, not very highly esteemed creature.    They had different hopes, bolder expectations.    Born from a long history of suffering oppression after oppression as a people, they expected Jesus to be astride a strong warhorse.   They expected Him to symbolically serve notice that a physical war with the occupying Roman Empire was imminent.   So what in heaven’s name was Jesus’ doing on itty bitty donkey back?   Was he pulling some kind of holy prank? 

            What kinds of expectations do you have of Jesus?   About His kind of power?  Are they ones that lead you to believe He will never disappoint, never be anyone or do anything other than what you want, what you desperately need and possibly demand him to be?  

            The disciples should have known.  They should have immediately understood why Jesus found a little donkey to carry him toward the coming crucifixion, to the awful climax of his holy incarnation.    They’d been journeying, listening, learning directly by his side.  They’d been participating in his peaceful, prayerful solidarity will all sorts of sin-suffering people – be they Jew or non-Jew, social outcasts, synagogue leaders, or slaves of Roman Centurions.     They should have known that this Nazarene was not about building up any epic human conflict.   He arrived that day in Jerusalem for the singular, sacred, soul purpose of building up eternal peace between God and all God’s children.    He arrived to inaugurate the definitive divine way of resolving all conflicts humans have with each other and with the Almighty.   The final days of his worldly walk were a bridge span to his humble self-sacrifice for the forgiveness of all the wounding, unjust, intricate webs of sin.

            By choosing to ride atop the back of a humble beast of burden, Jesus was not fooling but rather He was fulfilling.     He wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on the people, He was sending a loud, clear, precise signal about who His true identity as the long-awaited Messiah.    It’s not like he had a megaphone to speak this above the din of the massive, noisy gathering.    So He let his actions speak louder than any words as he quietly fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy from Zechariah 9:9 –“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”     This king of kings arrived for Holy Week as the Prince of Peace.

            Again, though, even the disciples didn’t at first get that this was fulfillment instead of fooling around.   Scholar William Barclay explains it was likely that they, like so many on that day, had “minds full of mob hysteria” who “looked for the Messiah of their dreams and their own wishful thinking” instead of the “Messiah whom God had sent.”[i]   

            Does the Jesus you read about in the New Testament match up with the Messiah of your dreams?   How well do you understand and accept the breadth of salvation from sin the Son of God was born to teach us and to die for?

            The good news is that John does tell us the first disciples eventually came to fully understand.    But only after all of their betrayals, the subsequent bloody business of Good Friday and the miraculous Good News of Easter morning had occurred.     

            This account is all consistent with a key characteristic of John’s Gospel.   He boldly wrote irony into his particular witness to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.    And he did it to dramatically communicate the “greatest irony of all … [that] the true king, the true Messiah, the great human being and Son of God, is a collapsed figure on a cross” whose “compassion and lowliness confront human image of power and success.”  Over and against worldly notions of powerful rule and victory, John’s irony tells that the One whom God raised from the dead was not a “splendid hero, a valiant warrior, but the lowly one who seemed less suitable as the focus of human hope and expectation.”[ii]

            Effective use of irony, like the effective use of an innocent April Fools’ Day joke, can make for a very memorable community building story.    It can add much needed perspective and help create positive, peaceful, redefining understandings.   So this Holy Week, I urge you to take time to significantly reflect on what your expectations of Jesus are.   If you find any of them enticed by sinful power plays or in any degree representing disregard for the lowliest, meekest people in our families, our neighborhoods, our state, our country, and our world … don’t be fooled!  Be sure to re-read the truth-defining irony in John 12 and join the journey of Jesus on itty bitty donkey back.    Amen.  

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[i][i] Daily Bible Commentary Series, Gospel of John

[ii] William Loader, http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MkPalm.htm

Recorded Right On the iHeart

Jeremiah 31:31-34

5^th Sunday in Lent 2012

There isn’t a very simple and concise answer to the question of who invented the first personal home computer.    There are detailed milestones we could review together, but suffice to say my 42 year life span covers most all the major developments.    I believe I’ve kept up fairly well with the insanely rapid pace of technological developments that has time-lined with my life.     And as is quite common enough for my generation, I confess I’m personally and professionally dependent on this technology and the internet it hosts.   I just have to chuckle when I occasionally remind myself that I didn’t own or much use a computer in college or even in graduate school.   

            One of the most interesting and useful developments in recent years has been the invention of the tablet computer.    This item is even more convenient than a bulky laptop.   It’s a flat, light-weight, easy to carry around item that stores and makes readily available all sorts of information for daily decision making and personal edification – from books, to documents, to photos, to graphic presentations, to emails, to calendars, and so forth and so on.   For the general masses, the biggest brand name in this biz belongs to the Apple iPad.    The newest version was released just this past week.  While I’m happy with my simpler, smaller tablet called the Kindle Fire, it was still fun to read about the latest iPad improvements – faster processing speed, cutting edge hi-resolution graphics, and countless new applications.    

            I’m wondering.  I’m wondering what will come after the tablet computer.   Will consumers need something even smaller, even more portable, even more powerful?   Will human brains become more and more and more dependent on computing devices to live healthy, productive lives?  Assuming so, how quickly will this drive demand for greater quantities of convenient innovations?    Perhaps computer chips directly implanted into our bodies and cyborg-like spectacles are up next?

            Well, that’s enough of this sort of spooky speculating!    Today, it’s that word and concept of a “tablet” that has my attention.   Be it a computer tablet or a writing tablet,    tablets are helpful for recording, remembering, processing, transmitting and creating relevant information.    So here’s a corollary, relevant faith question … did the word “tablet” mean anything to an ancient Israelite?    Can you think of one or two famous tablets from the Old Testament?

            I’m sure hoping the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments have come to mind.   Hear these words from Exodus 31, verse 18 – “When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.”  Wow, talk about a miraculous divine download!   These are also known by the name “Tablets of Testimony.”    They provided testimony about what God requires people to process for a faithfully productive life – worshipping God alone, honoring Sabbath and family, not engaging in idolatry, blasphemy, theft, murder.    Having been carved in stone, they then needed only to be presented to the people and obeyed.

            Yet these sacred laws, like the stones tablets they were etched upon, were breakable.   And so it happened as the free will and fragile faith of the ancient Israelites summoned the sledgehammer of sin time and again.    The process of God putting holy words into the hands of individual people and one nation by way of a third party did not fully produce greater fidelity and holy living upon the earth.

            The grievous consequences of having broken God’s prescribed, inscribed law is what jolts us as we read through the Book of Jeremiah.   The prophetic pronouncements rise up from a place of painfully honest anguish.   They reflect a horrible historic time in the life of the Hebrew people.  Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of a great enemy in 597 B.C., and within ten years the whole nation was in ruin.   “Cities were laid to waste, national hopes were dashed, and the faith of the people was in crisis as they were carted off into captivity.”  The Book of Jeremiah “addresses suffering, hurting exiled Israel with a repeated refrain” about present troubles being the direct result of past infidelities.[i]      The consistent, overall message is about the ever present need to repent and “return to the love and service of the God who loved and created” them.[ii]     

            This unabashedly critical word, however, is kept in balance with poetic, prophetic pronouncements of hope.    Our specific passage today is one such inspiring flourish.  It promises that better days – days of restoration – are coming, days when God will forgive and forget all sin, including the sin carried out by all previous generations.  It’s a stunning declaration about a fresh start in the covenantal grace of God.     Central to this coming righteous reboot is a new, core promise – God will no longer communicate divine law by of a third party or by engraving it on stone tablets.   In the time to come, God intends to write it directly on every human heart.

            Now let’s fast forward through the ages to the version of this holy promise we know best.   This direct download of God’s will and Word, of the Good News of God’s forgiving grace to the tablet of our hearts – that is, to the very center of our minds and emotions -- is what was begun by Jesus on the Cross, launched fully on the very first Easter, is continuously spread and connected by the power of His Holy Spirit, and will be completed upon His Second Coming.      Jesus is the very fulfillment of the “days” that were and still are “surely coming” … of the New Covenant that is for all, from the least to the greatest of human beings.    

            I’m wondering.  I’m wondering where faithful proclamation and righteous living hit the road together.   In our modern age of having massive amounts of information and all sorts of global social connections right at our fingertips, right before us on computer tablets – does it all help us in the daily and deeply personal task of turning away from our sin and turning toward our Lord in greater trust, love and service?     

            I have on my small computer tablet about five different versions of the Bible, numerous books of value to professional ministry, and access to the internet’s enormous database.   The Wednesday morning men’s Bible study group knows I like to look up New Testament Greek words on it in the middle of our discussions.   And I also keep files on the Kindle Fire where I quickly find prayer lists, pastoral to-dos, sermon illustrations and such.     It is helpful as a devotional and ministry tool.   

            Yet while this all gives access to God’s Word, it can’t perform the tasks for us regarding what is truly necessary for living a life of loving, faithful service.   It cannot do what Jeremiah preached was necessary, the very action the Israelites needed to do that led God to reject third party communication and to promise a direct etching of holy hope on our hearts.    Modern tablets and ancient stone tablets all give access, but what is additionally necessary is heartfelt internalization.   

            Staring at religious rules and mechanically processing ritualistic motions can only draw us so far into sharing the mind and life of Christ.  Our knowing and experiencing the personalized Good News being engraved on each of our hearts requires more from us.   In the very center of our entire being, we also need to continuously engage ourselves in spiritual disciplines that help us experience the holy hope being inked on our hearts by the Almighty.   We need to intentionally make time to let the Word of God seep into and saturate us so that it can readily flow out of us into all the places of this world we are in circulation.    Beyond being told and reminded in both print and preaching, every one of us needs to come to our own daily, deeply intimate awareness of just how very much God completely loves us, forgives us, and, through Christ’s Spirit, is making us holier with every breath and heartbeat.    

            In both the Old and New Testament, the heart is not only referenced to as the center for thinking, feeling, remembering, and desiring.  It is also the central part of us that chooses every course of action.   So choosing to engage in actions that open our hearts to holiness cannot be done remotely by the likes of computer processing or by rules stamped in stone.   Such decision making truly only comes from a contrite heart that beats for radical intimacy with God.  

            It’s our heart that genuinely repents of sin.  

            It’s our heart that honestly seeks the Lord in every section of our lives.  

            It’s our heart that inspires loving and forgiving as Jesus taught.  

            It’s our heart that pours us out in selfless service to the greater good.   

            Psalm 13:5 declares a reminder of all this for us -- “I trusted in Your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.”   We are also and even more so reminded in Matthew 5:8, where we hear Jesus preaching the promise that “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  

            Another way of talking about internalization is to call it “application.”    Computer iPads are so popular and useful in large part because they have a ton of helpful applications.    So if you are familiar with and daily dependent upon this sort of thing, may today be a reminder to regularly reconnect with your “iHeart,” with the center of your being where God as the great “I Am” is most directly experienced.     And whether or not computer processing is part and parcel of your daily life, we all need to use the fewer but very powerful iHeart applications found in the Bible – applications such as honest intercessory prayer, faithful study that challenges and inspires, selfless service for the greater good, and worship that stirs up powerful passion in the Lord who is always … always … directly communicating and connecting to our lives.     Amen.

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[i] William H. Willimon, The Life With God Bible NRSV Old Testament preface to Jeremiah

[ii] ibid.

The House Exchange

John 2:13-25

2^nd Sunday in Lent 2012

            There were many currency exchange houses along the way.  They popped up annually as throngs of Jewish people made pilgrimage to the Great Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover Feast.     Every adult Jewish male living within fifteen miles of Jerusalem was required by sacred law to make this pilgrimage.  Upon arrival, each and every one was required to pay taxes to the Temple.     These exchange houses on the outskirts of the city very wisely offered reasonable rates for the service of swapping foreign, ritually filthy loose change for officially sanctioned Temple shekels.       

            It’s safe to assume that Jesus made this compulsory journey to the Great Temple many times.  We can conclude that He dutifully did as was required of Him.    And He may well have stopped by any one of the conveniently located exchange houses on His way into the Holy City.   

            He certainly had time to do so on the particular pilgrimage mentioned in this morning’s Gospel lesson.    The second chapter of John tells us this particular journey was a week-long trek from Capernaum.     But based on what we are told happened when He arrived at the Great Temple, it’s a safe bet He didn’t patronize any of the pop-up exchange places.     He hadn’t been looking for any bargains, nor was He interested in doing business as usual.  

             He fully understood that He would be expected to pay his taxes.   He fully understood this requirement supported the day to day operations of the Temple’s time-honored system of offering sacrificial animal rituals on behalf of penitent pilgrims.     But this particular Passover, Jesus had no intention of dealing with conversions to Temple coins or the costs of institutionally sanctioned sacrifices.   On this visit to the Great Temple, He had no intention of paying the high priests anything in worldly currency or courtesy.

            We should understand that religious law wasn’t the only reason the Jewish people gathered together en masse for Passover.    Many also sojourned because it was tradition and a great way to be gathered together to honor and recall the people’s epic story of the exodus out of enslavement in ancient Egypt.    Specifically, they recalled the gracious moments of deliverance when God passed over the homes of their ancestors during days of sin-punishing plagues.   Back then, a bit of blood from a spring lamb above the doorpost of a faithful home was the sign of God’s protection. 

             So in addition to long-established religious law, Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem was also inspired by this potent liberation narrative of the people.   The living memory of liberation from an enslaving system likely fueled this particular journey every step of the way.    

            From what John tells us, this specific sojourn of Jesus to the Temple was not at all for the purpose of fulfilling an annual religious obligation to a religious institution.   He went to make change.   And He went absolutely filled with faithful fervor, with tremendous zeal to glorify and reveal the will of God the Father above all else.   This zeal protested the spiritual effectiveness of sacrificing lambs, and it even more so protested the fleecing of pilgrim people.   It had nothing to do with exchange houses … and everything to do with His exchanging the house of God, the Temple, with His holy body.    

            To appreciate the power of Jesus’ zeal in that historic moment, it’s helpful to know about something that has been generally written about the Great Temple by Bible scholars.    Namely, that it suffered corruption in two particular ways.   

            First, despite the convenience of exchange houses outside the city, many a spiritual pilgrim waited until they got to the Temple to swap their foreign currency for official shekels.    After all, what exchange agent could be more trustworthy than the one operating right in the Temple court, right?    But the money-changers working for the big city Temple apparently charged an exorbitant rate.    So the honest, pious, and very often quite poor pilgrims got wrangled into paying more than just their required taxes.    

            Secondly, the economic injustice was further evidenced by a rigged process for procuring sacrificial offerings.   Pilgrims were absolutely allowed to bring their own lambs to the Temple for the sacrificial offering.   This meant, however, bringing the bleating creature every step of the sojourn and so many did not do so.   The religious officials no doubt counted on this.

            They also, however, counted on the fact that even if an animal was brought in from the outside it was going to have to pass official inspection.   By law, it would only be accepted if it was regarded as perfect and unblemished.   And guess what?  There was a fee charged for the inspection.    And guess what else?   The Temple inspectors were apparently not inclined to pass any animal they inspected.   Pilgrims were therefore forced to purchase either a lamb or a pair of doves from sellers in the Temple court.    Go ahead and imagine what those prices were and who made a hefty profit!     One respected Bible scholar has called this whole entire process “bare-faced extortion at the expense of poor and humble pilgrims.”[i]    Bottom line, it seems the Temple accrued massive wealth during this mandatory religious holiday.   The good, faithful zeal pilgrims brought with them to the Passover Feast really got zapped. 

            Enter Jesus.   Enter the Son of God.   Enter the One with the authority to call out the Temple authorities for this fleecing.    In one of the most intensely dramatic scenes in Scripture, Jesus’ zeal was utterly unleashed in the outer court of the Great Temple (which, I understand, was about two football fields in length).     I enjoyed reading the way one Christian essayist described what happened as he imagined the disciple’s reaction.  He wrote, “No doubt the disciples tossed and turned a long, sleepless night that evening; it must have been terribly disconcerting to witness Jesus unhinged, throwing furniture, screaming at the top of his lungs, and flinging money into the air.  Perhaps they ran for cover with the crowd … did they look him in the eyes the next morning, or shuffle their feet, stare at the ground, and make small talk?”[ii]  

            Jesus’ holy zeal caused this great disturbance during what was otherwise a mechanically ritualistic, celebratory time -- not to simply be a nuisance or display some sort of spiritual showmanship;  not to only protest the corruption so as to hopefully transform the Temple system for the better.    He wasn’t there that particular Passover for renovation or even reform.      

            He was there to boldly, bodily declare that the existence of the Great Temple was no longer going to be needed as the place to be directly in the presence of God.  

            He was there to boldly, bodily declare an end to the time-honored sacrificial system that had become sinfully self-serving and therefore had ceased to honor the Almighty or righteously serve God’s people.   

            He was there to boldly, bodily declare that through Him, God was about to raze the ancient Temple house and its sacrificial system to the ground.    It was about to be replaced with His body—starting with the very first Easter morning – so all people would have direct, undefiled access to the merciful presence of God.     Spiritual pilgrimage henceforth would need only be made from a person’s heart to the heart of God known through Jesus, whose self-sacrifice was once … and for all.

            Stepping from the Bible to our present Lenten journeying -- if you were in the Temple that particular Passover day, on that day of house exchange, what would you have done?  Who would you have been?        

            Would you have been a Temple official, caught off guard by this disturbance, this bold challenge to your time-honored authority, spouting off defensive demands to Jesus in reply?            Would you have been a confused lamb or dove seller suddenly squeezed in the middle of an economic rebellion?   

            Or would you have been a poor, exhausted pilgrim ecstatic about someone with the right kind of honest, faithful zeal finally taking a stand for you, for liberating holy justice?    Amen.  

           

           

           

                       

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[i] William Barclay, Daily Bible Study Series, Gospel of John, Book 1

[ii] Dan Clendenin @ www.journeywithjesus.net, March 9, 2009

“Shaking A Fist While Holding Fast in Faith”

Psalm 22

Second Sunday in Lent 2012

    

            There I was again shaking a fist while holding fast in faith.   Perhaps you were doing exactly the same thing this past week.   It happens all the time, this indignant lamenting to God while at the same time hanging all hope on God.    Our hearts and minds rock back and forth between plaintiff cries and primal praise.   In the particular instance of Monday, February 27^th, the duel motion happened while reading the horrendously sad news headline coming out of Chardon, Ohio.   

            A .22 caliber pistol obeyed the hand of an extremely quiet seventeen year old by pounding ten bullets into a group of students just sitting in their High School cafeteria.    This perturbed teen from a deeply troubled home life had, I understand from reports, stolen the weapon from his uncle.    In the aftermath of this violence in which no community is completely protected, the lives of two sixteen year olds and one seventeen year old were so very suddenly, terribly sadly swiped away.     This entire news story – make that, human story -- is such a swift kick to the gut.  It’s perhaps even more acutely felt for those of us raising kids and grandkids right now that are in or about to be in high school.  

            My initial response when the news broke was to think, “No, not again.”   I felt anger before allowing any of the sadness to settle in.    The fist shaking came first.   Along with it came an inner-dialogue with our Almighty.    I didn’t blame or curse God because I accept the complex tensions between human free will and holy providence.   But I sure did let God know I was greatly aggrieved about the horror of the shooting, about all the dark dominoes that had toppled into the life and triggered the intentions of the shooter, and about the Chardon community being rapidly shot into the grip of all the grief.    I also did some self-reflection with God about the quiet, rage-filled teen from a troubled home that I was twenty-six years ago. 

            The fist shaking was held fast by faith.   I trusted God could handle the truth I was decrying.   I trusted God was already responding to this fresh bit of hell on earth with loads of loving mercy and holy comfort.  I recalled how strongly I had come to see and believe such divine care in all the other headline tragedies and personal moments cascading through my memory bank.    And through this recollection, I received fresh insight about God on the move. 

            It came in the form of reading about the humble assistant football coach who refused to be called a hero for just doing what was right and what he was trained to do in a crisis.   He told the families he was by the side of the victims, he prayed with them and that he knew God was there.   

            It came in the form of one of the mothers of a slain teen being asked what she would say to the shooter.  She replied, “I would tell him I forgive him.” She then went on to declare “It’s in God’s hands” and to report that her son’s donated organs had already saved the life of another child.  

             It came in many more forms as I read about ways the local and national community came together in the bonds of peace and love despite all the outraged cries for retribution.   

            This ever-present dance between plaintiff cries and primal praise is nothing new.   It’s the story of God’s people.   It’s found in most every passage of the Bible.   And it’s absolutely front and center in this morning’s passage, Psalm 22.    So much so that there was no way to just read a few verses from it.  We needed to experience it all, and I hope the dialogue way we offered the reading helped you hear both the deep lament and the steadfast faith.   

            The Psalmist’s life was under attack.    As a victim, he felt as dirty, down and squashable as a common worm.    He felt mocked, scorned, reduced to melted wax in a pile of disjointed bones.   The Psalmist was shaking a fist at what he descriptively identifies as encircling enemy bulls and as evildoing dogs that roll dice to lay claim to his very clothing.     Significantly, even though it very well might have been the great King David who wrote this Psalm, the lamenting voice identifies full with all of the earth’s poor and outcast.

            This entire fist shaking episode is companioned by steadfast affirmations of faithful trust in God.    It’s very important to notice that at no point in the Psalm are we told about a reversal of fortune.  The praise does not rise up from suddenly and miraculously having a safer, better life where evil has been undone.  It rises up from firm, faithful trust that God is listening, that God is indeed responding with loving mercy and justice, that God is and has been and always will be the safest haven in this sin-stained world.   The praise flows beautifully through affirmations about faithful ancestors being delivered from shame and about security in God being as intimate as a baby trusting in its mother’s breast.   This is bold affirmation that God does not despise the afflicted of any time and place.     It is clear invitation to praise and live for the Lord in whose good and holy dominion we all dwell … dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and on into the new life we have in Christ.

            We are in the church season of Lent.   We are all the wounded walking toward the final, dark, despairing hours of Jesus.   Now, whether it’s Lent or not,  if I ask a bunch of people at random if they can quote one thing Jesus said I’m guessing more than a few would answer, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”    That the all-time most faithful representative of the human race felt abandoned by God is something that really resonates with a whole lot of folks.   “Sweet Jesus, you mean you’ve had fist shaking times too?”  

            There is a problem with this, however.    Historical studies indicate that Jesus never intended for us to stop at the lament, at the fist-shaking part of his tortured time on the Cross.    In the tradition of His days, “Citing the first words of a text was a way of identifying an entire passage.”[i]  I suppose, then, it’s kind of like my saying, “Jesus loves me this I know …” and suddenly the rest of the words pop in your head.    

            So what was Jesus quoting in his final hour that He wanted us to fully recall?    Let’s go back to the first verse of Psalm 22, shall we?   “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”   Our Lord had Psalm 22 – all of it – going through His mind as he was dying for our sin.    He had endured this dire experience by identifying himself as one being mocked and scorned, whose meager clothes would gambled over, as one in complete solidarity with all the poor and outcast of the world.    Most powerfully, He bridged us to salvation by exhaling a last breath that was a resolute reminder and declaration of divine deliverance and dominion.  

            Jesus knew the power of Psalm 22 for our lives too.   It was a final teaching in the last moments of his fully embodied presence on earth.    He wanted us, His disciples, to understand that this Scripture “combines prayer and praise, language of suffering and celebration, in one arc of unity so as to say the one is not to be understood apart from the other.”[ii]     As we experience everything in our lives and learn about all that’s happening in this wonderful but also wounded world, we should not box ourselves into either only lamenting or only praising God.    Plaintiff cries and primal praises are looped together all in and around our hearts and minds.   This is nothing new.  It’s the story of God’s people.

            I’ll leave you with an inspiring quote about this from a more contemporary voice.    A man named Daniel McConchie was struck down by a hit-and-run accident back in the summer of 2007.     He survived, but was left paralyzed from the waist down.   Hear what he’s been saying since that traumatic, life-altering day …

             "God has not healed my affliction, but he has taught me the power of lamenting to him about it.   To our detriment, one of the most overlooked portions of Scripture in modern-day America are the psalms of lament. However, [King] David repeatedly demonstrated that laments make obvious our intense faith in God, that he can and will intervene in our time of need. They demonstrate just how deep our relationship with the Father really is. After all, we don't communicate our grief and mourning to strangers. We save that for those we truly know and love.”    Amen.

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[i] Theology Today, Vol. 42., No. 3, October 1985 “Prayer and Christology: Psalm 22 as Perspective on the Passion.”

[ii] ibid.