(Read Matthew 18:10-14 and Psalm 139:1-18 )
On April 27th, it was my niece, Soleil’s, birthday. When my sister asked her what she wanted for her 3rd birthday, Soleil said that she either wanted a Barbie car, which means one of those big Barbie cars that she could drive herself and retails at about $300, or she wanted a ribbon for her hair.
How sweet she is, and with no concept of money at all. As you can imagine, Aunt Mandy went with buying her a ribbon for her hair. Maybe Santa will bring her the Barbie car.
Children are a great joy.
One of my favorite memories of children’s time during Sunday morning service was on Pentecost of 2006. I created a worship table with red candles to signify the Holy Spirit. I scattered red rubles all over the table as well. As a centerpiece, I placed a statue of two doves.
When the children came forward, I asked them, “Do you know what today is? Jack Milhaven replied, “Saturday!” I told him that no, it was Sunday, and not just any Sunday, but Pentecost. I explained how this was the day that we honored the Holy Spirit, who is often symbolized by a dove and a flame. The children came over to look at the worship table, and I asked them, “What’s on this table that represents the Holy Spirit?” I was hoping that they would notice the doves and the color red and the flame of the candles. But Jack gave an even better answer. What’s on the table? “Diamonds and pigeons,” Jack said. I still laugh whenever I think of that encounter.
Children are a great joy. Sure they can be demanding and unreasonable, but their innocence and openness are like life itself. Children are curious and imaginative. They are honest and excited. They are also sensitive, delicate and vulnerable.
There is a great deal of literature about how children know the secrets of life. One book by Robert Fulghum is called, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It extols such wisdom as: share everything, play fair, don’t take things that aren’t yours, and so on.
Jesus himself praises the virtue of children. In the Gospel according to Matthew, right before the parable of the lost sheep which we heard this morning, the disciples ask Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus called a child among them and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18: 1-5).
John Bradshaw, a New York Times bestselling author, wrote several books in relation to children. In the book, Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, published in 1990, Bradshaw outlines 9 wonderful qualities that children possess. They are: wonder, optimism, naivete, dependence, emotions, resilience, free play, uniqueness and love. I want to say a word about uniqueness and love.
Uniqueness is a distinct characteristic in children. Clearly, no two children are alike. When we say that children are precious, what we are actually saying is that children are rare and valuable. Every child is special, unique and wonderful in their own way. A part of a child’s uniqueness is his or her spirituality. Bradshaw says that “Spirituality involves what is deepest and most authentic in us-our true self. When we are spiritual, we are in contact with our uniqueness and specialness” (Bradshaw, John. Home Coming. NY: Bantam Books, 1992. pg. 38). Children exude who they are. They have a sense of their essential being, their I AMness, as Bradshaw calls it. Every person’s I AMness is instilled in them from the great I Am, or God.
Love is another distinct characteristic in children. “Children are naturally predisposed to love and affection” (Ibid, pg. 39). They coo and giggle with delight when we give them love, and they give their love without holding back. The heart of a child is an open heart, in which love freely flows in and out.
However, when a child is not acknowledged for his or her uniqueness and when a child is not loved and accepted unconditionally, he or she is inflicted with spiritual wounds. This is the beginning of how we lose ourselves or how we get lost in life.
In regards to uniqueness, Bradshaw writes, “The child’s natural sense of his value and dignity is very precarious, as it demands immediate mirroring and echoing from a nurturing caretaker. If the caretaker doesn’t accurately and lovingly reflect the child as he is, he will lose the sense of being special and unique” (Ibid, pg. 38). The child will fall out of touch with his or her I AMness. “The story of every man’s and every woman’s fall is how a wonderful, valuable, special, precious child lost its sense of ‘I am who I am’” (Ibid, pg. 39).
A child who is not loved for who he or she is and is not loved unconditionally suffers the deepest of all deprivations. He or she also loses the sense of I AMness. As the child grows up, the “need for love never leaves…The hunger remains and [now the wounded adult] tries to fill this void [with various attachments and addictions] (Ibid, pg. 40).
The spiritual wounds we receive as children come from many sources over many years. Psychologists say our first years of life are the most formative, and it is the people who primarily take care of us during this time that have the most influence over us. This is why mothers and fathers are so important and valued. They are the ones who look into our eyes and tell us how loved we are. They are the ones who encourage us and tell us how special we are. But no one, not even the best mother in the whole world, can perfectly ensure that her child won’t be wounded in some way. Because it’s not just parents who are responsible, it’s grandparents, siblings, teachers, classmates, friends, parents of friends, pastors, Sunday school teachers. The way that all of these people interact with a child influences the kind of adult the child will become.
John Bradshaw writes a bit of his own story in Home Coming, recalling how what happened in his childhood negatively affected the adult he turned into. He says:
I remember one Christmas Eve when I was about 11 years old, lying in my darkened room with the covers pulled up over my head and refusing to speak to my father. He had come home late, mildly drunk. I wanted to punish him for ruining our Christmas. I could not verbally express anger, since I had been taught that to do so was one of the deadly sins, and especially deadly in regard to a parent. Over the years my anger festered in the mildew of my soul. Like a hungry dog in the basement, it became ravenous and turned into rage. Most of the time I guarded it vigilantly. I was a nice guy. I was the nicest daddy you’ve ever seen—until I couldn’t take it anymore. Then I became Ivan the Terrible (Ibid, pg. 7).
Each of us here has been wounded by our childhood in some way. Perhaps you remember a time when you went up to one of your parents filled with excitement, ready to tell them something or give them a hug, and the parent responded by saying, “Not now. I’m in the middle of watching this program or paying the bills or doing the dishes.” And right then, your heart closed just a little bit more so that you never gave love quite so exuberantly again. Most parents or grandparents or teachers or whoever don’t intentionally try to hurt or wound the children in their life, but it happens all the time. Anyone who doesn’t treat you with love and kindness or reflect back to you the special person you understand yourself to be can inflict a spiritual wound, especially when we are little and vulnerable and looking for reassurance.
As adults, this sort of thing isn’t quite as hurtful because we can rationalize. We understand that people say or do thoughtless words and deeds all the time, and that it is not necessarily about us. But children, they think everything is about them, that everything reflects back to them.
And here’s the thing. Wounded children grow into wounded adults. And wounded adults get lost like a sheep that has wandered off. They develop problems in their lives as they try to cope with not feeling loved or not knowing “who they are.” In addition to their own problems, wounded adults also inflict wounds onto their innocent children. And so the cycle perpetuates itself. Then, we have generations of people who don’t know how worthy of love they are. We have generations of people who have lost the sense that they are a unique, precious child of God, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as Psalm 139:14 proclaims.
But God wants us to know how beloved and precious we are. God wants us to live knowing these things are true. God wants you to be the child you were created and intended to be when he knit you together in your mother’s womb.
The traditional interpretation of the parable of the lost sheep is that the sheep wandered off and became lost because of sin. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way to look at it is that the sheep was wounded as a child or adolescent, creating a distorted version of the self. And then, that wounded “sheep” lost his or her way and strayed from God.
But Jesus, who is the Good Shepherd, comes in search of every one of his sheep. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, comes in search of every one of us. When we have veered from the path and wandered off, he comes to find us and restore our God-likeness. Jesus comes to give us the love that we so desperately need and completely deserve. He comes to teach us again that we are unique, special and valuable in God’s sight. He comes to remind us of our I AMness so that we can live in touch with our deepest and most authentic self.
Jesus seeks us out and the Bible tells us of God’s great love for us, but we play a part in reclaiming ourselves. The sheep has to follow the shepherd once it is found. What is required of us is to go back and to think of the times when we were wounded as children, as adolescents, even in early adulthood. And to acknowledge how that has affected us. Maybe we were abused by a family member, and so we put up a wall to protect ourselves, but now, the wall only serves to keep us alone. Maybe we were ridiculed because of the clothes we wore and so we made money very important because we never wanted to give anyone a reason to ridicule us again, but now, the money has taken priority even though we live an unhappy life. Maybe we were told we were stupid or fat or worthless, and we believed it, so now we don’t even bother trying. The list goes on.
But when we know our particular hurts and wounds, then we can invite Jesus in to heal them. And he will. He will leave the whole flock of sheep just to find, just to save you or me. As it is written: “It is not the will of [our] Father in heaven that one of [us] should be lost” (Matthew 18:14). Inside of every adult is a wounded child that God wants to heal. It’s time to break the cycle.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
What Grows in Your Garden? What fills Your Heart?
Greetings in the name of the Risen King! And Happy Easter!
When God raised Jesus from the dead, God declared that life is victorious over death. Or as St. Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:54-55,57).
There is no such thing as a static, end state of our lives called death. Not in spiritual, emotional, intellectual and relational matters, and ultimately, not even in physical matters. After each death we experience, new life is born. For example, if a way that we think “dies,” a new way of thinking will be born in its place. If a relationship dies, a new relationship of some kind will blossom. The new life does not replace the old life exactly, but new life continues to emerge and take shape. Never does death have the last word. Life always follows death. This means that death is not such a bad thing, because it creates space for us to live in new ways.
Imagine a precious plot of land, where there is only so much space for plants to grow. If weeds fill 60% of the garden, flowers will only have 40% of the space to flourish. Anyone who prefers flowers to weeds knows that this is no good. But if the weeds died, the flowers would have more space to grow.
Let’s say that fear fills up 60% of our hearts, then trust only has 40% of our hearts to inhabit. That would mean that fear has more power in our lives than trust. This is no good. But if fear were to die, then in its place trust or hope or assurance could blossom.
Think back to some of the ways you have already died in this life. What grew in its place?
Our hope in a gracious and compassionate God is that the new life that blossoms is more beautiful and loving and wise than what was there before. If not, if say bitterness or hopelessness took root, then it’s time to offer that life back to God as a sacrifice. Pray this: Lord God, please give me new and redeemed life where this old and corrupt life now abides.
I think that every time we die, God sees it as an opportunity to perfect us in his love. May we not be afraid to let parts of ourselves pass away, knowing in faith, that God will restore our lives and bring us to the glory of his salvation.
Then the one sitting on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new!” (Rev. 21:5)
When God raised Jesus from the dead, God declared that life is victorious over death. Or as St. Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:54-55,57).
There is no such thing as a static, end state of our lives called death. Not in spiritual, emotional, intellectual and relational matters, and ultimately, not even in physical matters. After each death we experience, new life is born. For example, if a way that we think “dies,” a new way of thinking will be born in its place. If a relationship dies, a new relationship of some kind will blossom. The new life does not replace the old life exactly, but new life continues to emerge and take shape. Never does death have the last word. Life always follows death. This means that death is not such a bad thing, because it creates space for us to live in new ways.
Imagine a precious plot of land, where there is only so much space for plants to grow. If weeds fill 60% of the garden, flowers will only have 40% of the space to flourish. Anyone who prefers flowers to weeds knows that this is no good. But if the weeds died, the flowers would have more space to grow.
Let’s say that fear fills up 60% of our hearts, then trust only has 40% of our hearts to inhabit. That would mean that fear has more power in our lives than trust. This is no good. But if fear were to die, then in its place trust or hope or assurance could blossom.
Think back to some of the ways you have already died in this life. What grew in its place?
Our hope in a gracious and compassionate God is that the new life that blossoms is more beautiful and loving and wise than what was there before. If not, if say bitterness or hopelessness took root, then it’s time to offer that life back to God as a sacrifice. Pray this: Lord God, please give me new and redeemed life where this old and corrupt life now abides.
I think that every time we die, God sees it as an opportunity to perfect us in his love. May we not be afraid to let parts of ourselves pass away, knowing in faith, that God will restore our lives and bring us to the glory of his salvation.
Then the one sitting on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new!” (Rev. 21:5)
Monday, April 20, 2009
Don't Let Fear Stop You!
(Read John 20: 19-31)
Mahatma Gandhi said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.” Wouldn’t it be miraculous if we could each actually do the good we are capable of? Imagine how the world would change.
A similar notion is articulated by the author, Ben Herbster, who said, “The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.” Wouldn’t it be amazing if each of us could become the person we know we are somewhere deep inside of us? If we all finished what we started? Do what we say we’re going to do? If there was no such thing as working a mediocre job? No such thing as frustrated writers and artists and musicians? Oh, the possibilities within each of us.
What inhibits us from growing, from becoming the children of God we were created to be? What prevents us from reaching our full potential and using our gifts to make the world a better place? What stops us from carrying out the plans of God?
Is it Self-doubt? Or apathy? Or complacency? that dooms our lives to a continual reinforcement of the status quo? Is it the great excuse/reason of money?
I would say, “Yes.” Each of us can relate to at least one of these reasons. Lack of confidence, low self-esteem, that stops some of us. Laziness, not wanting to work too hard, that stops us too. Others of us have grown old, tired and weary. We’ve accepted our present circumstance, and no longer have the energy or desire to work towards something new. And as long as you live in today’s world, money will always be a factor in our decision-making process. The remainder of us, while the dream still remains, something inside of ourselves just won’t allow us to blossom.
But ultimately, it all comes back to fear. Fear is the root - the reason we don’t do or become. Fear is the reason we miss out on abundant life. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of lack, you name it. Fear is the evil force that holds us back.
That’s probably why Jesus said, “Do not be afraid” to his followers over and over again. Or “Fear not!” He understood the power of fear, that it can inhibit, prevent and stop even the most gifted and beautiful people from actualizing our greatest selves. Some of my favorite words of Jesus are from John 14: 27. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Sadly, this morning, In John, chapter 20, verses 19-31, we meet the disciples on the evening of that first day of the new creation, on Easter night. It is a night they should be rejoicing, a night they should be on top of the world, but instead they are cloaked in fear surrounded by locked doors.
I suppose we can’t really blame them though. They just watched their leader be taken into captivity, beaten and murdered. It’s exactly as Jesus had told them, but it was so brutal and shocking, they are left traumatized.
If you have ever experienced something traumatic, you know the horror doesn’t just go away. It stays with you for a while; it even becomes a part of you. Long after your mind has understood and rationalized what happened, your inner self remains wounded.
In addition to just witnessing the crucifixion, some of the disciples might be fearfully thinking: “If that happened to Jesus, what is going to happen to us?” Could they proclaim him the Messiah, the Son of God without fear of punishment? It would definitely be safer to say nothing, to let Jesus’ revolutionary message die with him on the cross.
This morning, not only do I want us to be able to understand what the disciples went through following the crucifixion, but I also encourage you to think about your own fear. What are you afraid of? Or better yet, in what way has fear stopped you? Is there some thing you want to do? Some way you want to be that you are not? Is there something that God is calling you to do that you are resisting?
(Some possible examples of what you might want to become: maybe its just being comfortable in your own skin, maybe its shedding your tough exterior so that you can laugh and love more, maybe you want to take the time and money and energy to learn something that you’ve always wanted to learn, maybe you want to change the way you relate to your wife or your husband or your kids or your parents, maybe you want to start treating your body better, maybe you want to start living more for other people’s benefit than your own.)
Jesus did not give his life so that we would remain afraid or trapped or without hope. The resurrection is proof that there is nothing to be afraid of. Not our own inadequacies, not the power of others, nothing. Not even death. And with God’s power, there is nothing that can hold us down. All things are possible through Christ who strengthens us.
When Jesus reveals himself to the disciples for the first time since he has been laid in the tomb, he comes into the house, not restricted by locked doors or fearful hearts, and says, “Peace be with you.” In other words, ‘Be at peace. Do not be afraid no matter how strange and unreal this moment seems. Everything is going according to plan. God is winning the victory.’
The resurrection calls us to live new lives that are blessed by God, alive in Christ, and inspired by the Holy Spirit
Even if we are afraid, even if we don’t know where we are going, we must start walking the path of new life that God is unrolling before us or that our spirits feel compelled to walk.
It’s a risk, there’s no doubt about that. But risk is part of what it means to be faithful. The thing is: we bet on God. That’s a great bet! Taking leaps of faith into new and unknown territory is what it means to be a Christian.
“We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.” -Maxwell Maltz
And I still love the story of the acorns. All the little acorns are running around. Busy doing this, busy doing that. They have their eyes set on accomplishing daily tasks upon the earth. Very few of them have taken the time to ask their hearts what it is they hope for.
And there’s one acorn in particular who feels depressed, like life in acorn-land isn’t living up to its potential. One day, we looks up at the magnificent oak tree that towers over acorn-land and he remembers, “We are that! We are meant to become like this awesome oak tree.”
A neighbor overhears him and responds, “That’s ridiculous. If we become that, then we won’t be acorns anymore.”
There are many spiritual messages in this story. You have to die to the life you know in order to be reborn again. You have to give up being an acorn to become an oak. You have to set your sights on worthy goals. You have to let your heart dream big if it wants to.
“Easter is about the ability of Christ to defeat death in whatever form it faces us.”[1] This Easter, let Christ defeat fear in our lives. Or let Christ defeat any death that has eroded or rotted out some parts of your precious life. Let Christ give you new life! “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him will not die, but will have eternal life” (John 3:16). We who believe even though we have not seen, we deserve a taste of eternity here and now.
Let me end with these inspirational words: “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste the experience, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
It’s possible. It’s all possible for you in the Living Lord. When we say, “He is risen!” may we also be proclaiming that we are risen to new life as well.
[1] Willimon, William. Pulpit Resource. January, February, March 2008. pg. 59.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.” Wouldn’t it be miraculous if we could each actually do the good we are capable of? Imagine how the world would change.
A similar notion is articulated by the author, Ben Herbster, who said, “The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.” Wouldn’t it be amazing if each of us could become the person we know we are somewhere deep inside of us? If we all finished what we started? Do what we say we’re going to do? If there was no such thing as working a mediocre job? No such thing as frustrated writers and artists and musicians? Oh, the possibilities within each of us.
What inhibits us from growing, from becoming the children of God we were created to be? What prevents us from reaching our full potential and using our gifts to make the world a better place? What stops us from carrying out the plans of God?
Is it Self-doubt? Or apathy? Or complacency? that dooms our lives to a continual reinforcement of the status quo? Is it the great excuse/reason of money?
I would say, “Yes.” Each of us can relate to at least one of these reasons. Lack of confidence, low self-esteem, that stops some of us. Laziness, not wanting to work too hard, that stops us too. Others of us have grown old, tired and weary. We’ve accepted our present circumstance, and no longer have the energy or desire to work towards something new. And as long as you live in today’s world, money will always be a factor in our decision-making process. The remainder of us, while the dream still remains, something inside of ourselves just won’t allow us to blossom.
But ultimately, it all comes back to fear. Fear is the root - the reason we don’t do or become. Fear is the reason we miss out on abundant life. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of lack, you name it. Fear is the evil force that holds us back.
That’s probably why Jesus said, “Do not be afraid” to his followers over and over again. Or “Fear not!” He understood the power of fear, that it can inhibit, prevent and stop even the most gifted and beautiful people from actualizing our greatest selves. Some of my favorite words of Jesus are from John 14: 27. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
Sadly, this morning, In John, chapter 20, verses 19-31, we meet the disciples on the evening of that first day of the new creation, on Easter night. It is a night they should be rejoicing, a night they should be on top of the world, but instead they are cloaked in fear surrounded by locked doors.
I suppose we can’t really blame them though. They just watched their leader be taken into captivity, beaten and murdered. It’s exactly as Jesus had told them, but it was so brutal and shocking, they are left traumatized.
If you have ever experienced something traumatic, you know the horror doesn’t just go away. It stays with you for a while; it even becomes a part of you. Long after your mind has understood and rationalized what happened, your inner self remains wounded.
In addition to just witnessing the crucifixion, some of the disciples might be fearfully thinking: “If that happened to Jesus, what is going to happen to us?” Could they proclaim him the Messiah, the Son of God without fear of punishment? It would definitely be safer to say nothing, to let Jesus’ revolutionary message die with him on the cross.
This morning, not only do I want us to be able to understand what the disciples went through following the crucifixion, but I also encourage you to think about your own fear. What are you afraid of? Or better yet, in what way has fear stopped you? Is there some thing you want to do? Some way you want to be that you are not? Is there something that God is calling you to do that you are resisting?
(Some possible examples of what you might want to become: maybe its just being comfortable in your own skin, maybe its shedding your tough exterior so that you can laugh and love more, maybe you want to take the time and money and energy to learn something that you’ve always wanted to learn, maybe you want to change the way you relate to your wife or your husband or your kids or your parents, maybe you want to start treating your body better, maybe you want to start living more for other people’s benefit than your own.)
Jesus did not give his life so that we would remain afraid or trapped or without hope. The resurrection is proof that there is nothing to be afraid of. Not our own inadequacies, not the power of others, nothing. Not even death. And with God’s power, there is nothing that can hold us down. All things are possible through Christ who strengthens us.
When Jesus reveals himself to the disciples for the first time since he has been laid in the tomb, he comes into the house, not restricted by locked doors or fearful hearts, and says, “Peace be with you.” In other words, ‘Be at peace. Do not be afraid no matter how strange and unreal this moment seems. Everything is going according to plan. God is winning the victory.’
The resurrection calls us to live new lives that are blessed by God, alive in Christ, and inspired by the Holy Spirit
Even if we are afraid, even if we don’t know where we are going, we must start walking the path of new life that God is unrolling before us or that our spirits feel compelled to walk.
It’s a risk, there’s no doubt about that. But risk is part of what it means to be faithful. The thing is: we bet on God. That’s a great bet! Taking leaps of faith into new and unknown territory is what it means to be a Christian.
“We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.” -Maxwell Maltz
And I still love the story of the acorns. All the little acorns are running around. Busy doing this, busy doing that. They have their eyes set on accomplishing daily tasks upon the earth. Very few of them have taken the time to ask their hearts what it is they hope for.
And there’s one acorn in particular who feels depressed, like life in acorn-land isn’t living up to its potential. One day, we looks up at the magnificent oak tree that towers over acorn-land and he remembers, “We are that! We are meant to become like this awesome oak tree.”
A neighbor overhears him and responds, “That’s ridiculous. If we become that, then we won’t be acorns anymore.”
There are many spiritual messages in this story. You have to die to the life you know in order to be reborn again. You have to give up being an acorn to become an oak. You have to set your sights on worthy goals. You have to let your heart dream big if it wants to.
“Easter is about the ability of Christ to defeat death in whatever form it faces us.”[1] This Easter, let Christ defeat fear in our lives. Or let Christ defeat any death that has eroded or rotted out some parts of your precious life. Let Christ give you new life! “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him will not die, but will have eternal life” (John 3:16). We who believe even though we have not seen, we deserve a taste of eternity here and now.
Let me end with these inspirational words: “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste the experience, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
It’s possible. It’s all possible for you in the Living Lord. When we say, “He is risen!” may we also be proclaiming that we are risen to new life as well.
[1] Willimon, William. Pulpit Resource. January, February, March 2008. pg. 59.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
He Lives! What Does This Mean?
(Read Mark 16:1-8 and 1 Cor. 15:1-11 and Acts 10:34-43)
When I was putting together the Easter basket filled with the children’s jelly bracelets, I couldn’t help but take a few for myself. I didn’t pick them based on color, but on what they said. I chose “our sin,” then “new life,” and then “strength.” It’s amazing that in just three bracelets, the journey of our spiritual life can be described . We are here to move from our old, individual and collective sinful ways of being to living a new kind of life. We are here to be transformed, to be redeemed from this body of death.
The “our sin” bracelet is colored black, and the “new life” bracelet is colored green, which is appropriate since our new life looks and feels very different from our old, sinful life. The old life is dark and dead. The new life is bright and flourishing. The old life is black, brown and gray, like winter. The new life is green, yellow and pink, like spring. The old life is marred by selfishness and violence and discord, whereas the new life is enhanced by beauty and love and harmony.
But as I thought about it, “strength” wasn’t the appropriate term to describe how we move from sin to new life, although it is a valuable companion on the journey. So I went back to the Easter basket and found the missing component – a red bracelet that said, “Jesus’ blood.” For it is by the blood of the Lamb that we are washed clean. It is by the blood of the Lamb that we are given new life.
This idea that we are saved by the blood of Jesus is a foundational Christian proclamation, although many believers find it a troublesome and challenging concept to accept. Afterall, why does our loving God need Jesus’ blood to forgive us and raise us to new life?
What I’d like to suggest is that God doesn’t need Jesus blood. His blood is a symbol for what God truly desired from Jesus and from us. What God truly desires is faithfulness. For me, Jesus’ blood is the sign of his faith. If you have heard the story of how Jesus came to be crucified, of how the Lamb was lead to the slaughter, then you know the reason he bled was because he was faithful to God, he was faithful to the message he had been given to proclaim. When Christians say, by his precious blood we have been saved, what we mean is, by his incredible faith we have been saved.
Sally Brown, a professor of mine from Princeton Theological Seminary, explains it this way in her new book, Cross Talk:
In a sermon titled “The Will of God,” master preacher [and Episcopal priest] Barbara Brown Taylor grapples with the idea that “God killed Jesus.” [In my words, that God needed his blood.] Christians must come to terms with the crucifixion, says Taylor; “according to the historical faith of the church, it happened because God wanted it to.” God’s silence at the cross – God’s failure to step in and end the horror – only seems to underscore that God “willed” for Jesus to die. The real question is not, “Did God will Jesus to die?”… but, “What, exactly, did God will?” What God willed…was not that Jesus should die, but that Jesus should pursue utter fidelity to the ways and will of God. [What I am calling his incredible faith best symbolized by the blood he shed.] It was the utter fidelity of Jesus’ life to whom and what God had called him to be and do that led to his death. It was Jesus’ fidelity to the Father’s way of being in the world that got him killed; his refusal to be other than what he was, his refusal to disclaim his identity and role [lead to the bloodshed].
Jesus could have done otherwise… He could have disclaimed his identity – as in fact frightened Peter did in his threefold denial: “I am not,’ Peter said, not once but three times. So Jesus died and Peter lived. This is the difference between [being ‘who I am’ as Jesus was and refusing to be who I am as Peter did]. If Jesus had denied himself the way Peter did, he may have lived.” [Thus], Jesus’ death was God’s will only indirectly…as the consequence of his faithful life. (Brown, Sally A. Cross Talk: Preaching Redemption Here and Now. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. pg. 65-66.)
People couldn’t handle the real Jesus, the dynamic and miraculous Son of Man that God created him to be. So we killed him, or the religious and civil authorities and mob-like masses of the day killed him. But not God!
What God did do is raise Jesus from the dead.
That’s the God we believe in. As it is written, “They put him to death by nailing him to a cross. But God raised him from death three days later…” (Acts 10: 39-40). This declares to all people in all generations that “I, the Lord your God, will have the victory! And that Jesus Christ, my Son, is raised to victory with me!” God also declared through the disciples and the Church that “you who believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will also be raised to victory! I will give you new life. I will give you my life, eternal life, forever. And I will forgive your sins,” which is to say, “I will heal and reconcile our relationship so that we can be close, as close as a Father can be to a Son.”
That’s the God we worship. Not a God who kills, but a God who raises from the dead. A God who is so powerful, a God who is so loving, that he looked at what a sinful humanity had done, and he declared with authority, “No, you will not! I, the Lord your God, am putting an end to the broken, distorted, sinful, and foolish ways you behave in this world. I, God, am having the last say.”
Brothers and sisters, the women went to the tomb early on Sunday morning, and it was empty. The angel said, “He has been raised” (Mark 16: 6). What does this mean?
It means that God, who is the source of life, who IS life, is stronger and victorious over human frailty and human death.
It means, “We will not all die, but we will all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:53).
It means, “Everyone who believes in him will have his sins forgiven through the power of his name.” (Acts 10:43).
There are many ways to proclaim this. We are redeemed! We are reborn! We are being recreated!
The prefix “re-” means “again and again.”
Again and again, God rescues us. Again and again, God revives us. Again and again, God refreshes our lives emotionally and physically and spiritually. What God declares to us this morning is that God will not ever quit on us.
You know what the resurrection means to me on a personal level? That you and I can actually fulfill our potential to be the people God intends us to be. All the barriers have been broken. Sin and death have been defeated. There are no more excuses.
Think of Peter. After the resurrection, he was a new man. The one who denied Jesus in his greatest hour of need became the rock upon which Jesus built his Church. You heard one of the many speeches he made to win disciples for Christ this morning from the book of Acts. He proclaimed the good news and declared himself a witness to everything that God had done in Jesus Christ. May this Easter be as transformative for you as the first Easter was for Peter.
And Paul. Think of Paul. It took him longer, but after the resurrection, he too became a new man. He went from doubting God’s salvific work in Jesus Christ to proclaiming it boldly across the known world. He went from being a persecutor of the Church to being our greatest evangelist. In the Scriptures, Paul says that he was one who was born at the wrong time. Maybe he thought that because he never got to meet Jesus before his death. But you know what? Paul did meet Jesus. He met him as the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus. May you encounter the Risen Lord and have an experience of Jesus that will alter your world as profoundly as Paul’s world was altered.
After all this, I realize that there was a reason I chose the yellow bracelet that says, “strength.” And that is, strength is necessary for this journey from sin to new life. Believing in Jesus doesn’t mean life will be easy. Being Jesus didn’t even make life easy. And trying to follow his example and live by faith is beyond difficult. We need strength, but the strength we need is not willful determination and grit. It is the kind of strength that Jesus showed us when he went from saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” to “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” You could say that the kind of strength we need is incredible faith.
Brothers and sisters, hear the good new:, Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead! He lives! We know what the resurrection means. The question is: will it change your life?
When I was putting together the Easter basket filled with the children’s jelly bracelets, I couldn’t help but take a few for myself. I didn’t pick them based on color, but on what they said. I chose “our sin,” then “new life,” and then “strength.” It’s amazing that in just three bracelets, the journey of our spiritual life can be described . We are here to move from our old, individual and collective sinful ways of being to living a new kind of life. We are here to be transformed, to be redeemed from this body of death.
The “our sin” bracelet is colored black, and the “new life” bracelet is colored green, which is appropriate since our new life looks and feels very different from our old, sinful life. The old life is dark and dead. The new life is bright and flourishing. The old life is black, brown and gray, like winter. The new life is green, yellow and pink, like spring. The old life is marred by selfishness and violence and discord, whereas the new life is enhanced by beauty and love and harmony.
But as I thought about it, “strength” wasn’t the appropriate term to describe how we move from sin to new life, although it is a valuable companion on the journey. So I went back to the Easter basket and found the missing component – a red bracelet that said, “Jesus’ blood.” For it is by the blood of the Lamb that we are washed clean. It is by the blood of the Lamb that we are given new life.
This idea that we are saved by the blood of Jesus is a foundational Christian proclamation, although many believers find it a troublesome and challenging concept to accept. Afterall, why does our loving God need Jesus’ blood to forgive us and raise us to new life?
What I’d like to suggest is that God doesn’t need Jesus blood. His blood is a symbol for what God truly desired from Jesus and from us. What God truly desires is faithfulness. For me, Jesus’ blood is the sign of his faith. If you have heard the story of how Jesus came to be crucified, of how the Lamb was lead to the slaughter, then you know the reason he bled was because he was faithful to God, he was faithful to the message he had been given to proclaim. When Christians say, by his precious blood we have been saved, what we mean is, by his incredible faith we have been saved.
Sally Brown, a professor of mine from Princeton Theological Seminary, explains it this way in her new book, Cross Talk:
In a sermon titled “The Will of God,” master preacher [and Episcopal priest] Barbara Brown Taylor grapples with the idea that “God killed Jesus.” [In my words, that God needed his blood.] Christians must come to terms with the crucifixion, says Taylor; “according to the historical faith of the church, it happened because God wanted it to.” God’s silence at the cross – God’s failure to step in and end the horror – only seems to underscore that God “willed” for Jesus to die. The real question is not, “Did God will Jesus to die?”… but, “What, exactly, did God will?” What God willed…was not that Jesus should die, but that Jesus should pursue utter fidelity to the ways and will of God. [What I am calling his incredible faith best symbolized by the blood he shed.] It was the utter fidelity of Jesus’ life to whom and what God had called him to be and do that led to his death. It was Jesus’ fidelity to the Father’s way of being in the world that got him killed; his refusal to be other than what he was, his refusal to disclaim his identity and role [lead to the bloodshed].
Jesus could have done otherwise… He could have disclaimed his identity – as in fact frightened Peter did in his threefold denial: “I am not,’ Peter said, not once but three times. So Jesus died and Peter lived. This is the difference between [being ‘who I am’ as Jesus was and refusing to be who I am as Peter did]. If Jesus had denied himself the way Peter did, he may have lived.” [Thus], Jesus’ death was God’s will only indirectly…as the consequence of his faithful life. (Brown, Sally A. Cross Talk: Preaching Redemption Here and Now. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. pg. 65-66.)
People couldn’t handle the real Jesus, the dynamic and miraculous Son of Man that God created him to be. So we killed him, or the religious and civil authorities and mob-like masses of the day killed him. But not God!
What God did do is raise Jesus from the dead.
That’s the God we believe in. As it is written, “They put him to death by nailing him to a cross. But God raised him from death three days later…” (Acts 10: 39-40). This declares to all people in all generations that “I, the Lord your God, will have the victory! And that Jesus Christ, my Son, is raised to victory with me!” God also declared through the disciples and the Church that “you who believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will also be raised to victory! I will give you new life. I will give you my life, eternal life, forever. And I will forgive your sins,” which is to say, “I will heal and reconcile our relationship so that we can be close, as close as a Father can be to a Son.”
That’s the God we worship. Not a God who kills, but a God who raises from the dead. A God who is so powerful, a God who is so loving, that he looked at what a sinful humanity had done, and he declared with authority, “No, you will not! I, the Lord your God, am putting an end to the broken, distorted, sinful, and foolish ways you behave in this world. I, God, am having the last say.”
Brothers and sisters, the women went to the tomb early on Sunday morning, and it was empty. The angel said, “He has been raised” (Mark 16: 6). What does this mean?
It means that God, who is the source of life, who IS life, is stronger and victorious over human frailty and human death.
It means, “We will not all die, but we will all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:53).
It means, “Everyone who believes in him will have his sins forgiven through the power of his name.” (Acts 10:43).
There are many ways to proclaim this. We are redeemed! We are reborn! We are being recreated!
The prefix “re-” means “again and again.”
Again and again, God rescues us. Again and again, God revives us. Again and again, God refreshes our lives emotionally and physically and spiritually. What God declares to us this morning is that God will not ever quit on us.
You know what the resurrection means to me on a personal level? That you and I can actually fulfill our potential to be the people God intends us to be. All the barriers have been broken. Sin and death have been defeated. There are no more excuses.
Think of Peter. After the resurrection, he was a new man. The one who denied Jesus in his greatest hour of need became the rock upon which Jesus built his Church. You heard one of the many speeches he made to win disciples for Christ this morning from the book of Acts. He proclaimed the good news and declared himself a witness to everything that God had done in Jesus Christ. May this Easter be as transformative for you as the first Easter was for Peter.
And Paul. Think of Paul. It took him longer, but after the resurrection, he too became a new man. He went from doubting God’s salvific work in Jesus Christ to proclaiming it boldly across the known world. He went from being a persecutor of the Church to being our greatest evangelist. In the Scriptures, Paul says that he was one who was born at the wrong time. Maybe he thought that because he never got to meet Jesus before his death. But you know what? Paul did meet Jesus. He met him as the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus. May you encounter the Risen Lord and have an experience of Jesus that will alter your world as profoundly as Paul’s world was altered.
After all this, I realize that there was a reason I chose the yellow bracelet that says, “strength.” And that is, strength is necessary for this journey from sin to new life. Believing in Jesus doesn’t mean life will be easy. Being Jesus didn’t even make life easy. And trying to follow his example and live by faith is beyond difficult. We need strength, but the strength we need is not willful determination and grit. It is the kind of strength that Jesus showed us when he went from saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” to “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” You could say that the kind of strength we need is incredible faith.
Brothers and sisters, hear the good new:, Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead! He lives! We know what the resurrection means. The question is: will it change your life?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
How Do We Love One Another?
On this day, Maundy Thursday, we recall the new commandment that Jesus gave right before his betrayal and death. He told us to love one another. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).
What does it mean to love one another? Of course, there are many answers to this question, such as to show genuine warmth and kindness to another person, to listen to another person, to help them in times of need, to celebrate with them in times of joy. When we think of loving another, we often think of ourselves actively doing something for that person.
The first time I ever participated in a foot washing, I learned something new about what it means to love one another. It was on a Maundy Thursday 6 years ago in 2003. I was just about to complete my first year of seminary, and I was at a worship service much like this one, where I knew some people quite well and others not at all.
I didn’t learn there was going to be a foot washing until I arrived at the service, and my first thought was, “No way.” My second thought was, “When was the last time I trimmed my toenails?” Then, I wondered if my feet smelled. It’s somewhat humorous to recall, but if you think about it, what this reveals is that I didn’t want to engage in an act of service (the foot washing being a symbolic act of service) because I was worried about myself.
When we think about it even further, the part that scared me wasn’t serving others, it was being served. I wasn’t worried about what the person’s feet whom I would have to wash would look like or smell like, but worried about the person who would be washing my feet.
The foot washing taught me that I was afraid of how other people perceived me. It taught me that I was afraid of being vulnerable. It taught me that the receiving part of loving one another was scarier than the giving part (at least at that point in my life).
When you go to wash someone’s feet, you still have control. You are the one giving, the one in charge. But when your feet are being washed you have surrendered that control and you have opened yourself up to another person. I found this to be the most humbling part of the experience. The kindness that Luke (I still remembered who washed my feet, but I don’t remember whose feet I washed!) showed to me took me off guard. I felt like I didn’t deserve his kindness.
As a Christian and as a disciple of Jesus, I am used to the act of serving others, but being served by others taught me something new about the command to love one another. To love one another is to serve and to give, but in order to allow other people the same opportunity to follow the command to serve and to give, we have to be willing to be vulnerable and to receive what is given.
I remember an old friend who used to live on the street I grew up on in Ohio. A few years ago, we were catching up. She was married and in her thirties now. She had always been kind of short and thicker, but she was very athletic in high school so she had a lot of muscle. She was still in good shape, but she started telling me how her husband always complimented her body and told her that she was beautiful, but that she didn’t believe him. She thought that she was unattractive and not beautiful at all.
I told her that she was being completely unfair to her husband. She was rejecting his love. If he felt she was beautiful, even though she didn’t conform to society’s standards of beauty, that was his heart. In his eyes, she was beautiful. Do you see how she pushed love away by not being willing to receive? We become barriers to love when we do not receive.
This is what I learned from a symbolic foot washing, much like we are doing tonight.
Since that experience, I have had a much greater awareness of the hospitality that other people are continually giving to me, and the goodness of other people. Here I am a minister, the one who is supposed to give, trying to love as Jesus loved, and what I have realized it that loving one another includes receiving, and being vulnerable, and seeing the purity of heart in others and their desire to give. I realized that to love another is to really see that person, to look at him or her and see how good and kind he or she is.
That was God’s lesson for me on that night. You may realize something similar or perhaps you will realize something different tonight. Or perhaps you will not really be affected at all. It’s the Spirit’s doing. But what it means to love one another and our ability to actually love one another, whether loving is expressed in the form of giving or receiving, is a part of the ongoing development of our spiritual lives. God’s hope is that we will all be perfected in love.
My prayer is that we will all grow richer in the ways that we love one another on this night.
What does it mean to love one another? Of course, there are many answers to this question, such as to show genuine warmth and kindness to another person, to listen to another person, to help them in times of need, to celebrate with them in times of joy. When we think of loving another, we often think of ourselves actively doing something for that person.
The first time I ever participated in a foot washing, I learned something new about what it means to love one another. It was on a Maundy Thursday 6 years ago in 2003. I was just about to complete my first year of seminary, and I was at a worship service much like this one, where I knew some people quite well and others not at all.
I didn’t learn there was going to be a foot washing until I arrived at the service, and my first thought was, “No way.” My second thought was, “When was the last time I trimmed my toenails?” Then, I wondered if my feet smelled. It’s somewhat humorous to recall, but if you think about it, what this reveals is that I didn’t want to engage in an act of service (the foot washing being a symbolic act of service) because I was worried about myself.
When we think about it even further, the part that scared me wasn’t serving others, it was being served. I wasn’t worried about what the person’s feet whom I would have to wash would look like or smell like, but worried about the person who would be washing my feet.
The foot washing taught me that I was afraid of how other people perceived me. It taught me that I was afraid of being vulnerable. It taught me that the receiving part of loving one another was scarier than the giving part (at least at that point in my life).
When you go to wash someone’s feet, you still have control. You are the one giving, the one in charge. But when your feet are being washed you have surrendered that control and you have opened yourself up to another person. I found this to be the most humbling part of the experience. The kindness that Luke (I still remembered who washed my feet, but I don’t remember whose feet I washed!) showed to me took me off guard. I felt like I didn’t deserve his kindness.
As a Christian and as a disciple of Jesus, I am used to the act of serving others, but being served by others taught me something new about the command to love one another. To love one another is to serve and to give, but in order to allow other people the same opportunity to follow the command to serve and to give, we have to be willing to be vulnerable and to receive what is given.
I remember an old friend who used to live on the street I grew up on in Ohio. A few years ago, we were catching up. She was married and in her thirties now. She had always been kind of short and thicker, but she was very athletic in high school so she had a lot of muscle. She was still in good shape, but she started telling me how her husband always complimented her body and told her that she was beautiful, but that she didn’t believe him. She thought that she was unattractive and not beautiful at all.
I told her that she was being completely unfair to her husband. She was rejecting his love. If he felt she was beautiful, even though she didn’t conform to society’s standards of beauty, that was his heart. In his eyes, she was beautiful. Do you see how she pushed love away by not being willing to receive? We become barriers to love when we do not receive.
This is what I learned from a symbolic foot washing, much like we are doing tonight.
Since that experience, I have had a much greater awareness of the hospitality that other people are continually giving to me, and the goodness of other people. Here I am a minister, the one who is supposed to give, trying to love as Jesus loved, and what I have realized it that loving one another includes receiving, and being vulnerable, and seeing the purity of heart in others and their desire to give. I realized that to love another is to really see that person, to look at him or her and see how good and kind he or she is.
That was God’s lesson for me on that night. You may realize something similar or perhaps you will realize something different tonight. Or perhaps you will not really be affected at all. It’s the Spirit’s doing. But what it means to love one another and our ability to actually love one another, whether loving is expressed in the form of giving or receiving, is a part of the ongoing development of our spiritual lives. God’s hope is that we will all be perfected in love.
My prayer is that we will all grow richer in the ways that we love one another on this night.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Stepping Out of the Darkness and Into the Light!
(Read John 3:14-21 and Ephesians 5: 3-14)
We all have secrets: fears, regrets, hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humiliations. We may not always recognize them but they are part of us – like the dreams we can’t always recall in the morning light” (3). These are the introductory words of Frank Warren in his book, PostSecret, published in 2005. Let me tell you how this book came to be.
Warren began collecting postcards as part of a community art project, and each postcard was an original drawn and lettered by an anonymous individual who revealed a secret, and then sent that secret to him. Warren left blank postcards in galleries and libraries and all over town. He developed a website to display them on. These were the instructions: “You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative.”[1]
It was a brilliant idea with a humble beginning, and the world caught on.
Why? Because Warren is right. We all have secrets. Or at least, we all hide in some way. We hide our actions; we hide our memories and betrayals; we hide our feelings, our desires, our regrets. Sometimes, this is appropriate and healthy. “It’s none of your business,” we say. But sometimes, we hide because we are afraid to be vulnerable or rejected. Sometimes, we hide because we are ashamed of what we think, do, feel, remember. Sometimes, we hide because we know we are being unhealthy or destructive. We keep a part of ourselves or our lives a secret because we fear that if people found out, they would judge us. We fear that if they really knew what was going on, they wouldn’t accept us. We fear that they won’t love us anymore.
In Biblical terms, when we hide or keep secrets because we are sinning or doing what is evil in God’s sight, we are dwelling in darkness. When we are keeping other people’s secrets or trying to protect them because they are sinning or doing what is evil in God’s sight, we are also in the darkness. Sometimes, we are in darkness because our thinking is so backward and contrary to the God of love. We are so confused or lost. Other times, we are in darkness because we are in denial of the truth.
Dwelling in darkness or hiding is not as simple as keeping big secrets from the people you love or know, although, that is a part of it. Dwelling in darkness can simply, and also crucially be, not telling the people you know, work with, serve with, love how you really feel or what you really think, what you hope for and what you feel regret about.
Many of us justify keeping secrets, telling little white lies, hiding certain thoughts and feeling because we don’t want to upset people or we don’t want them to be upset with us. But the bottom line is, when we do these things, we are refusing to be true, to be real and authentic. And God wants us to be true, to be real and to be authentic.
John 3:19-20 says that we are judged by God for this: “that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” We don’t even have to be that evil to hide from the light. For most of us, all it takes is being human, which is to be flawed, vulnerable, sinful. And because we are afraid and ashamed of being human, we hide from the light that can set us free and heal us.
Feeling like we have to keep our actions, thoughts, beliefs, memories, etc a secret is a universal feeling. So what is so amazing about Frank Warren’s postcard project is that thousands upon thousands of people responded to it. The project took on a life of its own way beyond Warren’s expectations. It’s success must have had something to do with the fact that people could be anonymous, and also, that so many people had something they really wanted to get off their chests, so many people wanted out of the darkness and into the light.
Some of the secrets on the postcards are positive:
“I believe I will accomplish something truly great in this lifetime. I am going to be 53 tomorrow” (40).
“I am so grateful to the psychiatrist I saw when I was nineteen, who told me I would be fine again. He saved my life” (41).
“I still pray for you every night, and I probably always will” (204).
“I kicked cocaine for her” (?).
But most are about people’s pain:
“I don’t know what I want but I don’t want this…” (16).
“All of my life people have told me I’m not special…I’m very easy to replace. After 43 years it has finally sunk in. I finally get it” (86).
“I wish my parents said I love you…I can’t remember hearing them say it ever” (105).
“Three years ago, I tried to kill myself…Now I’m 18 and people say that I’m happy…But I still want to die…” (40).
“I can’t tell my mom about the rape…She wouldn’t want to know. And it kills me” (37).
“Honestly, I’m glad your uncle died, because he molested me that time in the 7th grade that I spent the night at your house… He told me that I liked it. I hope he likes it in his grave” (117).
Many contain a confession:
“I give decaf to customers who are rude to me” (116).
“There was no deer. I was just driving too fast” (36).
“People think I’ve stopped lying…but I’ve just gotten better at it” (?).
“I started shooting heroin again” (65).
“I wished on a dandelion for my husband to die” (68).
“I feel guilty about sometimes wishing that I didn’t have children. I don’t dare say it out loud for fear I might trigger something bad happening to them” (126).
“He’s been in prison for two years because of what I did. Nine more to go” (20).
A few even have to do with God or church:
“Finding God is proving difficult” (54).
“I miss feeling close to God” (141).
“As a child I would sit in church and pray that the lights would fall on people, so I wouldn’t have to be there” (drawing of people running out of a church yelling, “Help!”) (130).
“I tell people I’m an atheist, but I believe I’m going to hell” (143).
“I had gay sex at church camp three times” (141).
“I tell people that I don’t believe in God, when really, I just refuse to worship a god that would let my grandfather hurt me like he did” (68).
A couple are very wise:
“Dear Frank, How I wish I could hug everyone and tell them that it’s ok. It’s ok to be scared and angry and hurt and selfish. It’s part of being human” (108-9).
And this next one hits the nail on the head. You know why so many people responded to Frank Warren and sent in their secrets? Because it is pain and hurt and torture to live in the darkness. One wise person wrote:
“Sometimes just the act of sharing a painful secret can relieve some of the pain” (70-1).
Whatever can relieve some of the pain of this life is worth doing.
Scripture tells us and Jesus calls us to come out of the darkness and to expose ourselves to the light. There is nothing that God will not forgive us for. And when we open ourselves up and allow the light to shine upon us, we find that healing and liberation come into our lives. Warren spoke to this affect when he wrote, “After seeing thousands of secrets, I understand that sometimes when we believe we are keeping a secret, that secret is actually keeping us” (2). To hide and keep secrets is imprisonment; it’s captivity; it’s death. To speak your truth is liberation and life.
Perhaps you know, or maybe you don’t know, how freeing it is to confess your ‘secrets’ to someone that you trust. When you do and that person tells you, “It’s ok. I love you,” grace washes over you. I can remember instances when I’ve done it, and the feeling of acceptance, the feeling that I can totally be myself and I am still loved, is amazing. I felt very alive and not afraid or ashamed at all. It’s when we are really willing to open up and offer our deepest truths, no matter what they are, that we enter into truly intimate and meaningful relationships.
On the last page of PostSecret, Warren wrote, “I like to believe that whenever a painful secret ends its trip to my mailbox, a much longer personal journey of healing is beginning—for all of us” (276).
If you are looking for healing and freedom, and who isn’t? Then it’s time to step out of the darkness and into the light.
One way of doing this is to reveal ourselves to the people that we love and trust. A second way to do this is to live transparent lives, lives that we will let anyone see. To live a transparent life means that you act and speak in ways that if anyone found out, you wouldn’t feel ashamed or bad. It means making choices that you can stand behind. It means allowing yourself to feel what you feel.
Living a transparent life doesn’t mean everyone will always like you or agree with you, but as long as you can own your choices and be secure with how you feel, none of that really matters.
My friends, we don’t belong in the darkness. “For once [we] were in darkness, but now in the Lord, [we] are light. Live as children of light” (Ephesians 5: 8). There is not one part of you that needs to be hidden. And if there is, then maybe it’s time to change. Maybe it’s time to be a person you feel good about being.
Remember that Jesus forgives, loves and embraces every part of you, the good, the bad and the ugly. And true disciples forgive, love and embrace each other.
The last postcard in PostSecret says, “I’ve given away all my secrets…and I feel so free” (275). The words are printed atop a beautiful drawing of a bird taking flight against a sky blue backdrop. Freedom and healing await all of us. It’s time to step out of the darkness and into the light!
[1] Warren, Frank. PostSecret. William Morrow: New York. 2005. jacket cover.
We all have secrets: fears, regrets, hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humiliations. We may not always recognize them but they are part of us – like the dreams we can’t always recall in the morning light” (3). These are the introductory words of Frank Warren in his book, PostSecret, published in 2005. Let me tell you how this book came to be.
Warren began collecting postcards as part of a community art project, and each postcard was an original drawn and lettered by an anonymous individual who revealed a secret, and then sent that secret to him. Warren left blank postcards in galleries and libraries and all over town. He developed a website to display them on. These were the instructions: “You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative.”[1]
It was a brilliant idea with a humble beginning, and the world caught on.
Why? Because Warren is right. We all have secrets. Or at least, we all hide in some way. We hide our actions; we hide our memories and betrayals; we hide our feelings, our desires, our regrets. Sometimes, this is appropriate and healthy. “It’s none of your business,” we say. But sometimes, we hide because we are afraid to be vulnerable or rejected. Sometimes, we hide because we are ashamed of what we think, do, feel, remember. Sometimes, we hide because we know we are being unhealthy or destructive. We keep a part of ourselves or our lives a secret because we fear that if people found out, they would judge us. We fear that if they really knew what was going on, they wouldn’t accept us. We fear that they won’t love us anymore.
In Biblical terms, when we hide or keep secrets because we are sinning or doing what is evil in God’s sight, we are dwelling in darkness. When we are keeping other people’s secrets or trying to protect them because they are sinning or doing what is evil in God’s sight, we are also in the darkness. Sometimes, we are in darkness because our thinking is so backward and contrary to the God of love. We are so confused or lost. Other times, we are in darkness because we are in denial of the truth.
Dwelling in darkness or hiding is not as simple as keeping big secrets from the people you love or know, although, that is a part of it. Dwelling in darkness can simply, and also crucially be, not telling the people you know, work with, serve with, love how you really feel or what you really think, what you hope for and what you feel regret about.
Many of us justify keeping secrets, telling little white lies, hiding certain thoughts and feeling because we don’t want to upset people or we don’t want them to be upset with us. But the bottom line is, when we do these things, we are refusing to be true, to be real and authentic. And God wants us to be true, to be real and to be authentic.
John 3:19-20 says that we are judged by God for this: “that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” We don’t even have to be that evil to hide from the light. For most of us, all it takes is being human, which is to be flawed, vulnerable, sinful. And because we are afraid and ashamed of being human, we hide from the light that can set us free and heal us.
Feeling like we have to keep our actions, thoughts, beliefs, memories, etc a secret is a universal feeling. So what is so amazing about Frank Warren’s postcard project is that thousands upon thousands of people responded to it. The project took on a life of its own way beyond Warren’s expectations. It’s success must have had something to do with the fact that people could be anonymous, and also, that so many people had something they really wanted to get off their chests, so many people wanted out of the darkness and into the light.
Some of the secrets on the postcards are positive:
“I believe I will accomplish something truly great in this lifetime. I am going to be 53 tomorrow” (40).
“I am so grateful to the psychiatrist I saw when I was nineteen, who told me I would be fine again. He saved my life” (41).
“I still pray for you every night, and I probably always will” (204).
“I kicked cocaine for her” (?).
But most are about people’s pain:
“I don’t know what I want but I don’t want this…” (16).
“All of my life people have told me I’m not special…I’m very easy to replace. After 43 years it has finally sunk in. I finally get it” (86).
“I wish my parents said I love you…I can’t remember hearing them say it ever” (105).
“Three years ago, I tried to kill myself…Now I’m 18 and people say that I’m happy…But I still want to die…” (40).
“I can’t tell my mom about the rape…She wouldn’t want to know. And it kills me” (37).
“Honestly, I’m glad your uncle died, because he molested me that time in the 7th grade that I spent the night at your house… He told me that I liked it. I hope he likes it in his grave” (117).
Many contain a confession:
“I give decaf to customers who are rude to me” (116).
“There was no deer. I was just driving too fast” (36).
“People think I’ve stopped lying…but I’ve just gotten better at it” (?).
“I started shooting heroin again” (65).
“I wished on a dandelion for my husband to die” (68).
“I feel guilty about sometimes wishing that I didn’t have children. I don’t dare say it out loud for fear I might trigger something bad happening to them” (126).
“He’s been in prison for two years because of what I did. Nine more to go” (20).
A few even have to do with God or church:
“Finding God is proving difficult” (54).
“I miss feeling close to God” (141).
“As a child I would sit in church and pray that the lights would fall on people, so I wouldn’t have to be there” (drawing of people running out of a church yelling, “Help!”) (130).
“I tell people I’m an atheist, but I believe I’m going to hell” (143).
“I had gay sex at church camp three times” (141).
“I tell people that I don’t believe in God, when really, I just refuse to worship a god that would let my grandfather hurt me like he did” (68).
A couple are very wise:
“Dear Frank, How I wish I could hug everyone and tell them that it’s ok. It’s ok to be scared and angry and hurt and selfish. It’s part of being human” (108-9).
And this next one hits the nail on the head. You know why so many people responded to Frank Warren and sent in their secrets? Because it is pain and hurt and torture to live in the darkness. One wise person wrote:
“Sometimes just the act of sharing a painful secret can relieve some of the pain” (70-1).
Whatever can relieve some of the pain of this life is worth doing.
Scripture tells us and Jesus calls us to come out of the darkness and to expose ourselves to the light. There is nothing that God will not forgive us for. And when we open ourselves up and allow the light to shine upon us, we find that healing and liberation come into our lives. Warren spoke to this affect when he wrote, “After seeing thousands of secrets, I understand that sometimes when we believe we are keeping a secret, that secret is actually keeping us” (2). To hide and keep secrets is imprisonment; it’s captivity; it’s death. To speak your truth is liberation and life.
Perhaps you know, or maybe you don’t know, how freeing it is to confess your ‘secrets’ to someone that you trust. When you do and that person tells you, “It’s ok. I love you,” grace washes over you. I can remember instances when I’ve done it, and the feeling of acceptance, the feeling that I can totally be myself and I am still loved, is amazing. I felt very alive and not afraid or ashamed at all. It’s when we are really willing to open up and offer our deepest truths, no matter what they are, that we enter into truly intimate and meaningful relationships.
On the last page of PostSecret, Warren wrote, “I like to believe that whenever a painful secret ends its trip to my mailbox, a much longer personal journey of healing is beginning—for all of us” (276).
If you are looking for healing and freedom, and who isn’t? Then it’s time to step out of the darkness and into the light.
One way of doing this is to reveal ourselves to the people that we love and trust. A second way to do this is to live transparent lives, lives that we will let anyone see. To live a transparent life means that you act and speak in ways that if anyone found out, you wouldn’t feel ashamed or bad. It means making choices that you can stand behind. It means allowing yourself to feel what you feel.
Living a transparent life doesn’t mean everyone will always like you or agree with you, but as long as you can own your choices and be secure with how you feel, none of that really matters.
My friends, we don’t belong in the darkness. “For once [we] were in darkness, but now in the Lord, [we] are light. Live as children of light” (Ephesians 5: 8). There is not one part of you that needs to be hidden. And if there is, then maybe it’s time to change. Maybe it’s time to be a person you feel good about being.
Remember that Jesus forgives, loves and embraces every part of you, the good, the bad and the ugly. And true disciples forgive, love and embrace each other.
The last postcard in PostSecret says, “I’ve given away all my secrets…and I feel so free” (275). The words are printed atop a beautiful drawing of a bird taking flight against a sky blue backdrop. Freedom and healing await all of us. It’s time to step out of the darkness and into the light!
[1] Warren, Frank. PostSecret. William Morrow: New York. 2005. jacket cover.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Faithful and Proactive Christian
Luke 6: 17-26 and Jeremiah 17: 5-10
In Luke, chapter 6, a great multitude has come to hear Jesus preach, to have their diseases healed, and their spirits cleansed. They are coming to him in need. That’s often how it works. It’s when something is wrong or we’re desperate that we do our best crying out for help. It's when we need saving that we turn to God. It’s when we’ve been drive to our knees that we pray.
Jesus is filled with joy when we come to him in our need. He listens compassionately to us when we cry for help. He reaches to catch us when we are falling. What distresses Jesus is when we don’t need him at all. Or at least we think we don’t. When we don’t rely on him. When we go elsewhere to get our needs met.
Imagine the scene of Luke 6: Jesus standing amongst the crowd on a level place. People everywhere trying to touch him because they know that he can help them. And he does help them. The Scripture says, “All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.”
As Jesus looks around at the scene, he notices who is among the people there and who is not. The only ones who have come in search of him are the ones who need something that only he can give. So Jesus says, blessed are you who are poor because you have come to me in your need, and I will help you. He says, blessed are you who are hungry because you have come to me in your need, and I will help you. He says, blessed are you who weep because you have come to me in your need, and I will help you.
But you see, those unfortunate people who are already rich, already filled, already laughing, they don't seek out Jesus because they don't think they need him. They are self-reliant. They have what they want without God's help, and if they are thinking anything spiritual at all, it certainly isn’t that they need a Savior. While they are satisfied in the physical world, they have lost their spiritual center. Thus, they are cursed because they do not turn to God.
As disciples of Christ, it is crucial that we turn to God in every situation we find ourselves in. When we are satisfied and well, that is our opportunity to praise God and give God thanks. When we are lacking and suffering, that is our time to trust in God's mercy and ask for help. Jesus is on the side of those who suffer. He intentionally seeks out the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the weak because it is his mission to change our broken existence and heal us until we are living abundantly as God's children.
We all know this. I'm not saying anything new here. Turn to Jesus, and he will save you. Give Jesus thanks for being our Lord and Savior. In fact, I think we know this message so well that our thinking and living has become distorted in some way. The message has become a problem. Too often, Christians take a passive role in their own lives, remaining weak and unempowered, waiting for God to come to their rescue. Waiting for God to do something, to take charge. We are continually being bombarded with the message: just give it to Jesus, give it to God, and God will take care of you, as though we have no role or responsibility for our lives and the development of God's kingdom here on earth.
Think of some of our most beloved hymn titles: God Will Take Care of You, Have Thine Own Way Lord, Trust and Obey (for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey), If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee, Only Trust Him. These songs continually affirm our reliance upon God, which is true, we do rely upon God.
My fear is that they do so in detriment to our own responsibility as the children of God. While the Christian faith is all about turning our lives over to God, we have to be careful not to slip into the kind of thinking that will strip us of all accountability for our lives. There is alot of truth to the saying: God helps those who help themselves. This is your life, and while you have given it to God, still you must be empowered to make your own decisions and active in shaping your own future. Even with a God who is Lord and Savior, you play an active role in keeping your mind, body, spirit and relationships healthy. You play an active role in creating your own destiny.
The Holy Spirit is here to guide us and empower us, and it is our job to discern the leadings of the Spirit so that we can make choices for ourselves and for others well-being. This is why God gave us free will. So that we can make choices about the kind of people we will be, about the kind of life we will lead, and about the kind of world we create. With great discernment on our part, we can use our wills to bring about God's will on this earth.
I think of Ecclesiastes 3, which says that there is a time to sow and a time to reap, a time to be born a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to cry. A time to wait for God to reveal the future and a time for you to make choices that help to create the future.
As Jesus' disciples, we are all called to be co-creators with the Creator of the world. For example, when we make a choice to give love, we create the reality of love in the world. We also create ourselves as a more loving person. The opposite is also true. When we make a choice to act in anger, we create the reality of anger in the world. We also create ourselves as a more angry person.
[That is why it is very important for us to figure out why we make the good or bad, healthy or unhealthy decisions we make, and how to change our decision making process so that we are always choosing for the good, for health, for love.]
Believing in God does not mean that you have to be a weak, unempowered, passive human being. You should never feel victimized, like how did this happen to me, because you are following Jesus. You should not be complacent in the face of your or someone else's suffering because you believe that God's will will prevail.
Let me tell you about a woman I know named Margaret. Margaret is a faithful and spirited woman, but she fell prey to the sort of thinking I am warning against. When she was married and she and her husband wanted to have a child, but could not get pregnant, she sadly concluded: It must be God's will. Then, when she unexpectedly got pregnant years later, she joyously concluded: It must be God's will. About the same time, Margaret received a promotion and a raise at her job. She had been thinking about quitting work to stay home with her baby, but instead of following her instincts, she figured that the promotion must be a sign from God. God must want her to continue working, so she concluded: It is God's will that I continue at this job. When Margaret was laid off after her son turned five, she regretted not having been home more to watch him in his earliest years. Was her regret God's will too? I don't think so. I think Margaret's major regret was her complacency, her passivity (just accepting that anything that happens is God's will). That is mistaken theology. The real regret any of us could have is that we let our lives pass us by, without being assertive and active in making our own choices and cultivating our own destinies.
People throw the term "God's will" around much to casually as if anything that happens in life is God's will. When tragic events occur, we say, there must be a good reason for it. That's not true! Yes, good things can come of tragic events, but that is no reason to rationalize the pain and suffering of people. There is no good reason why children die from hunger. There is no good reason why women are tortured and violated as the spoils of war. There is no good reason why young men are being murdered in the streets by people they don't even know. If there is a reason at all, it's not because of God. It's because evil and greed and sin exist, and we do nothing to stop them.
God has given you a mind with which to think, a heart with which to feel, a will with which to choose, and as the New Year begins, I want to encourage you to use them all. This is your life, this is our world, and we are responsible for what happens. While it is good to yield and to be open to that which presents itself, it is bad to let life pass you by or happen to you and end up feeling like a victim.
Yes, we want God's will to be done. Yes, we must reach out to Jesus for help. Yes, we trust in the Lord. At the same time, we cannot afford to passively stand by thinking that whatever happens is God's plan. God had a plan when he created you and empowered you with his Spirit. Now is the time to use what we have been given - our minds, our hearts, ours wishes and our will - to establish Christ's kingdom on this earth and be the kind of people God gave us the potential to be.
In Luke, chapter 6, a great multitude has come to hear Jesus preach, to have their diseases healed, and their spirits cleansed. They are coming to him in need. That’s often how it works. It’s when something is wrong or we’re desperate that we do our best crying out for help. It's when we need saving that we turn to God. It’s when we’ve been drive to our knees that we pray.
Jesus is filled with joy when we come to him in our need. He listens compassionately to us when we cry for help. He reaches to catch us when we are falling. What distresses Jesus is when we don’t need him at all. Or at least we think we don’t. When we don’t rely on him. When we go elsewhere to get our needs met.
Imagine the scene of Luke 6: Jesus standing amongst the crowd on a level place. People everywhere trying to touch him because they know that he can help them. And he does help them. The Scripture says, “All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.”
As Jesus looks around at the scene, he notices who is among the people there and who is not. The only ones who have come in search of him are the ones who need something that only he can give. So Jesus says, blessed are you who are poor because you have come to me in your need, and I will help you. He says, blessed are you who are hungry because you have come to me in your need, and I will help you. He says, blessed are you who weep because you have come to me in your need, and I will help you.
But you see, those unfortunate people who are already rich, already filled, already laughing, they don't seek out Jesus because they don't think they need him. They are self-reliant. They have what they want without God's help, and if they are thinking anything spiritual at all, it certainly isn’t that they need a Savior. While they are satisfied in the physical world, they have lost their spiritual center. Thus, they are cursed because they do not turn to God.
As disciples of Christ, it is crucial that we turn to God in every situation we find ourselves in. When we are satisfied and well, that is our opportunity to praise God and give God thanks. When we are lacking and suffering, that is our time to trust in God's mercy and ask for help. Jesus is on the side of those who suffer. He intentionally seeks out the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the weak because it is his mission to change our broken existence and heal us until we are living abundantly as God's children.
We all know this. I'm not saying anything new here. Turn to Jesus, and he will save you. Give Jesus thanks for being our Lord and Savior. In fact, I think we know this message so well that our thinking and living has become distorted in some way. The message has become a problem. Too often, Christians take a passive role in their own lives, remaining weak and unempowered, waiting for God to come to their rescue. Waiting for God to do something, to take charge. We are continually being bombarded with the message: just give it to Jesus, give it to God, and God will take care of you, as though we have no role or responsibility for our lives and the development of God's kingdom here on earth.
Think of some of our most beloved hymn titles: God Will Take Care of You, Have Thine Own Way Lord, Trust and Obey (for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey), If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee, Only Trust Him. These songs continually affirm our reliance upon God, which is true, we do rely upon God.
My fear is that they do so in detriment to our own responsibility as the children of God. While the Christian faith is all about turning our lives over to God, we have to be careful not to slip into the kind of thinking that will strip us of all accountability for our lives. There is alot of truth to the saying: God helps those who help themselves. This is your life, and while you have given it to God, still you must be empowered to make your own decisions and active in shaping your own future. Even with a God who is Lord and Savior, you play an active role in keeping your mind, body, spirit and relationships healthy. You play an active role in creating your own destiny.
The Holy Spirit is here to guide us and empower us, and it is our job to discern the leadings of the Spirit so that we can make choices for ourselves and for others well-being. This is why God gave us free will. So that we can make choices about the kind of people we will be, about the kind of life we will lead, and about the kind of world we create. With great discernment on our part, we can use our wills to bring about God's will on this earth.
I think of Ecclesiastes 3, which says that there is a time to sow and a time to reap, a time to be born a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to cry. A time to wait for God to reveal the future and a time for you to make choices that help to create the future.
As Jesus' disciples, we are all called to be co-creators with the Creator of the world. For example, when we make a choice to give love, we create the reality of love in the world. We also create ourselves as a more loving person. The opposite is also true. When we make a choice to act in anger, we create the reality of anger in the world. We also create ourselves as a more angry person.
[That is why it is very important for us to figure out why we make the good or bad, healthy or unhealthy decisions we make, and how to change our decision making process so that we are always choosing for the good, for health, for love.]
Believing in God does not mean that you have to be a weak, unempowered, passive human being. You should never feel victimized, like how did this happen to me, because you are following Jesus. You should not be complacent in the face of your or someone else's suffering because you believe that God's will will prevail.
Let me tell you about a woman I know named Margaret. Margaret is a faithful and spirited woman, but she fell prey to the sort of thinking I am warning against. When she was married and she and her husband wanted to have a child, but could not get pregnant, she sadly concluded: It must be God's will. Then, when she unexpectedly got pregnant years later, she joyously concluded: It must be God's will. About the same time, Margaret received a promotion and a raise at her job. She had been thinking about quitting work to stay home with her baby, but instead of following her instincts, she figured that the promotion must be a sign from God. God must want her to continue working, so she concluded: It is God's will that I continue at this job. When Margaret was laid off after her son turned five, she regretted not having been home more to watch him in his earliest years. Was her regret God's will too? I don't think so. I think Margaret's major regret was her complacency, her passivity (just accepting that anything that happens is God's will). That is mistaken theology. The real regret any of us could have is that we let our lives pass us by, without being assertive and active in making our own choices and cultivating our own destinies.
People throw the term "God's will" around much to casually as if anything that happens in life is God's will. When tragic events occur, we say, there must be a good reason for it. That's not true! Yes, good things can come of tragic events, but that is no reason to rationalize the pain and suffering of people. There is no good reason why children die from hunger. There is no good reason why women are tortured and violated as the spoils of war. There is no good reason why young men are being murdered in the streets by people they don't even know. If there is a reason at all, it's not because of God. It's because evil and greed and sin exist, and we do nothing to stop them.
God has given you a mind with which to think, a heart with which to feel, a will with which to choose, and as the New Year begins, I want to encourage you to use them all. This is your life, this is our world, and we are responsible for what happens. While it is good to yield and to be open to that which presents itself, it is bad to let life pass you by or happen to you and end up feeling like a victim.
Yes, we want God's will to be done. Yes, we must reach out to Jesus for help. Yes, we trust in the Lord. At the same time, we cannot afford to passively stand by thinking that whatever happens is God's plan. God had a plan when he created you and empowered you with his Spirit. Now is the time to use what we have been given - our minds, our hearts, ours wishes and our will - to establish Christ's kingdom on this earth and be the kind of people God gave us the potential to be.
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