You Suck and I Love You

I was recently challenged by someone after worship who felt that my sermon that day was saying "you're not good enough" which this person heard enough of elsewhere. "Everyone else in my life tells me I'm not good enough. I don't want to hear that from God."

Now, preaching is an inexact science given that I never know if what someone hears is what I meant to say and I always dread speaking incorrectly. (In other words, because human beings are involved in both sides of the process.) In this particular case, I was not trying to say "you're not good enough," but I think this person was correct in that I didn't make that point as well as I could have.

I had been trying to say that God helps us grow to be more loving and compassionate than we would be on our own. This is the core of a lot of Christian theology, but after listening to the critique of my words, I couldn't help but think that it's a difficult line to walk. God does love us even when we screw up, but I also believe that God calls for us to grow and "improve." Where is the line between being loved as we are and being challenged to become more?

One of the things I love about theology (especially Lutheran theology) is the concept of paradox, that two seemingly contradictory statements can both be true. (It's partly where the title of my blog comes from.) This particular paradox was obvious even to the early church leaders. In Romans 5, Paul writes that God moved first: "While we were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly... While we were sinners, Christ died for us... While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son." But at the same time, Paul writes in the next chapter that God's gift doesn't let us rest where we are: "How can we who died to sin go on living in it? [We] walk in newness of life."

My go-to line to describe this paradox is, "God loves us enough to meet us where we are, but God loves us too much to let us stay there." Which sounds good on paper, but isn't easy to live out. How do we both accept that we are worthy of being loved while also feeling motivated to change?

As I'm writing, it occurs to me that Lutheran thinking would say that being loved is the motivation to change, that knowing I'm valuable to someone automatically causes me to respond by reciprocating love. It would say it has to be this way because fear and guilt (which are typical "motivators" -- just look at political commercials) are the opposite of trusting love, which is the heart of the relationship God offers us. In other words, only love can drive me to deeper love.

And on my best days, love does drive me to grow, but I'll admit that some days, the love I need is the kind that grabs me by the lapels and slaps my face to wake me up. And sometimes it is guilt and fear that motivates me to seek love in the first place.

Perhaps faith is a constant search for the balance between these seeming opposites. Perhaps all of this is just to say that love and faith are themselves paradoxes, kind of like the statement: "Every time I find an answer about God, it just leads to more questions."

“And love is wild for reasons, and hope, though short in sight, might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise.” -Jars of Clay, "Surprise"

What Alec Baldwin Can Teach Us About Loving Our Enemies

Alec Baldwin is apparently done with the media. I learned this from a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post. Depending what you think of Alec Baldwin and his many public and political opinions, you may greet this news with joy, disappointment, or indifference (I'll take option 3 myself), but the op-ed article highlighted a fascinating quote from Baldwin's farewell interview:

"In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day. What’s the Boy Scout code? Trustworthy. Loyal. Helpful. Friendly. Courteous. Kind. Obedient. Cheerful. Thrifty. Brave. Clean. Reverent. I might be all of those things, at certain moments. But people suspect that whatever good you do, you are faking. You’re that guy. You’re that guy that says this."

I happened to read this article the week after the assigned text for preaching was Matthew 5:38-48, which includes the command to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." These have never been the easiest words of Jesus to understand or follow, but coupled with Baldwin's words, I began thinking about what specifically makes an enemy. 

I almost never use the word "enemy" to describe a person, but there are people I may be angry with or distrust or find it difficult to like. How much of that anger or distrust is tied up in my judging them by who they are on their worst day and discounting the good they do? How often do I assume that the things that annoy me about a person are the "real" side of them and the good I see is just an abnormality? (Or, on the flip side, do I always assume the best about a person and ignore obvious defects?) 

Baldwin's point is that we often let that initial opinion or the most extreme fact about a person define them for us. I don't think that's anything new, but our modern social media does spread our worst moments faster and farther than ever before. The poorly phrased thing I once said to a couple people is now said on Facebook or Twitter, never to be fully erased. The stupid thing I did before a few strangers at the mall can now be seen by a million strangers on Youtube if someone happens to catch it on their phone. The writer herself makes the same point: 

"Still, everyone’s living in public, never far from a camera or a smartphone. And all our unsuccessful gestures get caught — in print, on tape, where they can stick." (Emphasis mine)

The fact is that we are all far more complicated than any one adjective or opinion. We have a wide variety of opinions, moods, and interests and no one of them -- good or bad -- defines who an individual is. (It's similar to those who take the craziest verses from the Bible and say, "See, the whole thing is a joke," but that's another post for the future.) It's easy to forget this with celebrities or others who we only know through the snippets of their lives we see on TV, but do we apply the same thinking to those we should know better? The thing is, I know people are complex (and made in the image of a complex God), but I don't always live that way. I can very often reduce people to a label like shy, super friendly, opinionated, or liberal/conservative and make assumptions (good or bad) based on that one trait.

Perhaps loving our enemies starts with choosing to look past the labels and see them as more complicated, rounded people. Perhaps it means refusing to think that the worst in a person is all that matters or that our point of biggest disagreement is the most important thing in our relationship. After all, if someone were to report on my words and actions on my worst day, I would come across as very unsympathetic. But you might also say I would appear very... human.  And that's a trait I share with friend and enemy alike.

“Your dirt removes my blindness; your pain becomes my peace.” -Jars of Clay, "Frail"

The Weight of Ashes and the Unbearable Lightness of Bread

One of the hardest things I do in my job as pastor is Ash Wednesday worship. It's not that it's a complicated service or that it's physically demanding in any way. It's giving the ashes.

In the Christian tradition, ashes are marked on the forehead at the beginning of Lent as a sign of repentance and of our mortality. As I mark the cross on people's foreheads, I speak the words recorded as spoken by God to Adam: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." They are a reminder that we are mortal, with limited time on this earth. I am basically saying to people: Your life is precious. It's precious because it's short, so don't waste it. Or, if want to be blunt: Someday, you are going to die.

Now, imagine saying that to dozens of people while looking them in the eye.

To the person battling cancer: "You are dust..."

To the recent divorcee: "You are dust..."

To the new parents: "You are dust..."

To a child (including my own): "You are dust..."

Over the years, I've spoken those words to hundreds of people including infants and elderly, newlyweds and widows, poor and wealthy, and some who have indeed returned to the dust before that coming Easter. As I speak those words repeatedly, extending my black-stained thumb to touch the head of someone who will one day be dust, it's inevitable that at some point I start to choke back tears and feel my heart tighten within me with the weight of the moment. Your life is precious. Your life is precious. Your life is precious.

I can often get to the end of Ash Wednesday worship and be exhausted from those few minutes of ashes, but this year was different. Yesterday the ashes were answered in a way I'd never felt before.

Later in the service, we celebrate the Lord's Supper and once again, people come forward from their seats to receive these mysterious elements, a morsel and a sip that somehow contain an infinite mercy. And once again I find myself looking people in the eye and extending my hand to each of them, but this time I speak different words: "This is the Body of Christ, broken for you." And once again these words carry meaning deeper than the literal one because I am saying: Here is Jesus, the Bread of Life, who has come to feed our spiritual hunger. Here are the words -- "for you" -- that ring with good news.

What struck me for the first time this year was that in those words, I was saying the same thing as with the ashes, but in reverse. In sharing the bread I was saying: Your life is precious. It is precious because God decided it was worth the cross, so your life won't go to waste. As I repeated the words and looked at the ashes on people's heads, I felt my heart grow light and the corners of my mouth curl in joy. Your life is precious. Your life is precious. Your life is precious.

One of the things about religion that continues to drive me to explore it is the sense of paradox and mystery, that two contradictory statements can both be true (e.g. Jesus is fully God and Jesus is fully human) and that some statements can mean more than one thing. In between the ashes and the bread last night, I discovered that they carry the same message, but different meanings, and in that message is contained the heart of both Lent and Easter: Your life is precious. 

“...and life is just a dare we take.” -Jars of Clay, “Out of My Hands”

Dusting Off Our Baptism

(Note: This post first appeared in my church's newsletter.)

The congregation I grew up in had a gorgeous baptismal font. The bowl was cobalt-blue glass and the stand was made of artistic, looping brushed steel. It was evocative and symbolic…and it spent most of the time stashed in a corner or in a storage closet. It was only ever brought out when it was needed for a baptism and then it was put somewhere out of the way.

And this always bugged me. For years it bothered me just because I thought it was beautiful and deserved to be seen, but as I studied theology and became a pastor, it bothered me because it tells the wrong story of baptism. 

Baptism is an act of grace and salvation from God. In baptism, our selfish, sinful self is drowned out of us and we are marked with the cross of Christ and bound to God’s promise of eternal life, a promise that we don’t stick in a baby album, but one we return to constantly. When Martin Luther wrote about baptism, he wrote about daily returning to the waters and being reminded of that promise. He wrote that whenever we despair or believe we are unloved, we should chase away evil by crying out, “But I am baptized!” 

Like that font, baptism is beautiful and evocative and special and it deserves to be seen every day; it is not something we consider “done” and then put away in the corner to gather dust. The promises of baptism are over, under, and around everything we do in our lives, but I think we are often taught that they, like the font, only come out at special times. Trying to bridge that gap, to make us daily aware of God’s presence in our lives, even in mundane, so-called “secular” tasks, is one of the driving thoughts behind my preaching, ministry, and theology.

So then a pastor friend of mine, with whom I often discuss such topics, sent me a link to a video with the question, “What about doing this with our churches?” The video was of a researcher named Shawn Achor who was describing a process for increasing happiness by developing five daily practices. By tweaking the wording of just two of the five, we saw a way to use it to increase attentiveness to God’s presence and action in the world around us. This became what we at Martin Luther Church are calling “Cross+Training.” 

During Lent, I am inviting people to join me in Cross+Training by daily journaling or sharing 3 gratitudes, sharing a place I saw God active in the world around me, praying for 5 minutes, doing a random act of kindness, and doing exercise or a physical activity for 30 minutes. To be clear, doing this won’t make God love me more or guarantee my salvation, which has been promised to me in baptism, but I hope it will make me and those who join me more aware of those baptismal promises that attend me daily. Hopefully it brings my baptism splashing out into the middle of my activities and less likely to be something gathering dust in the corner until I "need" it. 

“Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life.” -Mumford and Sons, “White Blank Page”

Waiting for Patience (And I Want It Now!)

I've been reading through the Psalms for my personal devotions recently and stumbled upon something this week that caught my attention. It was the idea of waiting.

Psalm 31 and 33 are both psalms of praise. The writer (or writers) gives thanks for God's blessings and answer in times of trouble, but both psalms end with exhortations to "wait with hope for the Lord" as if God hasn't shown up yet. "Be strong, all who wait with hope for the LORD, and let your heart be courageous," says the first. The second ends with the words, "Let your mercy rest on us, O LORD, since we wait with hope for you."

The writer of these Psalms is praising God not because God has shown up, but because he expects God will show up. Instead of giving thanks for what God has done, he is giving thanks for what he hopes God will do. When was the last time I gave a rave review for a movie before I watched it? Or passed along compliments to the chef before the waiter brought my meal? And yet that's what the psalmist is saying. "Sure things may be bad, but isn't it awesome what God will probably do?" It's almost like Lando Calrissian telling Admiral Ackbar, "Han will have the shield down!" except he's smiling and striking a yoga pose while he says it.

In our immediate response, quick satisfaction society, have we lost our ability to wait? I like to think of myself as patient, but I get anxious when someone doesn't reply to an email or text in a time frame I think is reasonable. If a web page takes more than one second to load, I get frustrated. And if I say a prayer to God and don't get what I think is a reply by the end of the day (or sooner), I feel ignored. I certainly don't take the time to sit down and write a psalm and end it with, "Chill out. God will show up."

As I think about it, the other word that shows up in both Psalms is "hope," which is probably related to the patience they show. Hope based on trust and past experience certainly helps give me patience. However, in this skeptical, I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it, show-me-the-money age, I wonder how much hope is a trait I need to learn rather than an instinct to which I default?

I guess I envy the psalmist since patience and hope seem to be so natural for him when they often feel more alien to me. Perhaps it's a spiritual "growing edge" for me to address. All of which raises an interesting, zen-like question: If I pray for God to give me patience and hope, when should I expect an answer?

“I hope the days and clouds turn into something as they pass us by.” -Jars of Clay, "These Ordinary Days"

Zacchaeus Reimagined

When I was growing up in the church, one of the stories I remember learning in Sunday School was the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). There was even a song we would sing: "Zacchaeus was a wee, little man, and a wee little man was he..." (Anyone who knows the song, it's now stuck in your head, too. You're welcome.)

The gist of the story was that Zacchaeus was a wicked tax collector who wanted to see Jesus pass through town and so climbed a tree to see above the crowd (because he was a wee, little man). Then Jesus picks Zachy out of the crowd and invites himself to Zacchaeus' home. Little Z is then so touched by this honor that he changes his life and promises, "I will give half my money to the poor and if I have cheated anyone, I will repay them four times as much." A sinner has been saved. Jesus proclaims, "Salvation has come to this house." Roll credits. It's a perfect redemption story. Like Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol," but without the spirits and Tiny Tim.

Unless it isn't...

I recently had this story opened to me in an entirely new way by someone who pointed out one small piece of grammar: the present tense.

You see, when Zacchaeus says, "I will give half my money to the poor," which is the way many English translations write it, he's actually speaking in the present tense. If you look at the Greek text, what he literally says is, "Behold, Lord, half of my wealth I give to the poor and if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much." He's not promising to change his ways; he's describing how he's already a fair and generous person. He's not a penny-pincher like Scrooge; he's an ancient Bill Gates! Mind: blown.

When I went back to reread the rest of the story, I realized that nothing in the text says that he's a bad or wicked man. He's only described as a "tax collector" and "wealthy." And when Jesus declares, "Salvation has come to this house," the rest of his sentence is, "because this man, too, is a child of Abraham."

Suddenly everything I learned about this text is backwards. If Zacchaeus was being honest in what he said, then the point Luke is making is this: being a tax collector for the Romans would not have made him popular with his neighbors and they probably treat him as an outcast and a traitor. Still, Little Z does his job fairly and is generous with his money and when Jesus visits his house, he is honoring him before the community for being a righteous person and declares him in good standing with God. The "salvation" is that the community has a change of heart, not Zacchaeus.

This isn't a story about a sinner needing redemption, it's a warning about rushing to judgement, just like Harry Potter discovering in book seven that Professor Snape was actually a good guy all along. It is a reminder to me that knowing one thing about a person doesn't mean I know everything about a person. Those I may want to call immoral or bad may actually be kind and good people. And even if they aren't, they are still children of Abraham, beloved by the same God who puts up with me.

"When you are a stranger, hold your tongue and wager that love will set you free... until it sets you free." -Jars of Clay, "Inland"

A Critique of "Preacher" by OneRepublic

One of my Christmas gifts this year was the album "Native" by OneRepublic.  I was excited to get the album because my interest in the band has been growing ever since I had the chance to see them in Central Park this summer on our youth servant trip to New York City. My interest was further piqued when I noticed a song on the album titled "Preacher" and I eagerly listened to this song that shared a name with my profession.

The song deals with the singer as a young man and his grandfather, who was the titular preacher of the song. What I love about the song is the positive light the grandfather is shown in and the closing line of the chorus: "He was a million miles from a million dollars, but you could never spend his wealth." I love those parts because most popular media portrays my colleagues and I as an unbending hell-fire moralist (like John Lithgow in "Footloose") or as a well-meaning, but somewhat clueless grandpa figure. We are almost never portrayed as complex, real people (both men AND women) living ordinary lives. (The closest example I can think of are the Edward Norton and Ben Stiller characters in "Keeping the Faith.")

So, thumbs up for singing about pastors as down-to-earth, hard-working people, because most of us are (or try to be). But then the song includes this line: "He said God only helps those who learn to help themselves."

Ugh.

I hear this verse quoted a lot by Christians and I get it. It is an attractive idea to believe God rewards or blesses those who have first done something to deserve it. It fits in with everything else we are taught in society, right? Work hard and you'll get the promotion, etc. The phrase is simple and easy to remember and a good motivator to live properly.

And all that is fine and good, except for the fact that it isn't a Bible verse. The phrase "God helps those who help themselves" doesn't appear anywhere in scripture. (It actually comes from Greek philosophy.) In fact, when we read the Bible, we actually find God frequently helping those who can't help themselves. Many of the people God calls are cowards, dimwits, or weaklings. The chosen people of Israel (with the exception of a few glorious years under David and Solomon) are usually the schoolyard chumps, getting kicked around by their bigger and stronger neighbors. When Jesus is wandering around Palestine, he is helping and healing those who are most desperate and vulnerable and none of the Gospel writers remember him saying, "So what have you done to cure your leprosy on your own?" And, in places like the minor prophets and Matthew 25, God gets angry with humans that don't help the helpless, too (i.e. the poor, the sick, the hungry, etc.).

Rather than demanding people help themselves before gaining any divine attention, the Bible speaks of a God who seeks out the helpless and blesses them. In the church, we have a technical term for this kind of thing. We call it grace.

Grace is the belief that every good thing from God -- God's love, forgiveness, special attention in our time of need -- are not something we earn or deserve, but are a gift. They come to us not because we have "helped ourselves," but because God chooses to be generous. And this grace is a cornerstone of Christian thinking.

It's a crazy idea. It's crazy to us as industrious, goal-oriented North Americans. We want to earn things, to deserve them. But it was a crazy idea in ancient history, too. In one of the readings my church used last weekend, St. Paul tells the church in Corinth that this thinking is "a stumbling block" and "foolishness" to most of the world. While it may seem natural to us to take pride in earning rewards, or boasting in our spiritual accomplishments, grace doesn't leave any room for that. As Paul writes in that passage, "Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord."

For me, grace may grate on me when I want to take credit for the good I do, but it is good news on those days when I seem incapable of "helping myself," when I am painfully aware of my mistakes and shortcomings. On those days, hearing that God loves me and can do good in spite of me truly is a wealth that cannot be spent.

"Dreaming about the things that we could be." -OneRepublic, "Counting Stars"