Yesterday, I went for a run at the local park. In the middle of the park is a generous sized pond; its circumference is 1.2 kilometers so I know exactly how far I'm running. As I ran, I saw various waterbirds, ibises, reed runners, ducks and geese, swimming contentedly in various patterns near the shore picking through the weeds for bugs and pond scum alike. In the middle of the pond are two islands with beautiful trees gracing the islets like toupees on a submerged head. It's a nice place to run laps, but sometimes there are things there that make me scratch my head.
As I was coming down the hill to the park, I spotted a man and his best friend - his dog. This scene probably plays itself out time and time again throughout every town and city where dogs and people walk, but the man's best friend was in the middle of a bowel movement carefully laying a log cabin in the middle of the grass while his watcher stood above him gazing at the setting sun over the pond. Then, when the dog had finished adding the roof to his cabin, the man looked around intently to see if anyone was watching...
And then he moved on leaving Fido's steaming summer home alongside the path.
Oh no he didn't. I'm not one who is usually a stickler for rules, but there was something about the man's attitude that frustrated me more than the actual dump left glistening in the grass. I cleared my throat and he saw me coming. So he kept going. Oh, yeah, I'm going to give this man a piece of my mind. He knows the rules. He looked around before leaving the crap there. It's my moral obligation to do this, to stick it to him, to rub his face in the mess that he left. That will make him think twice about leaving his dog's excrement in the park next time.
I ran faster to catch up with him and the pooch, and in my righteousness I was concocting various biting remarks for his inability to pick up after himself. And then I passed him. It was apparent that he knew what he had done wrong, but he gave me the death stare as if willing me to say something so that he could respond in kind and escalate my own inflated sense of self-righteousness. Maybe it was self-preservation, maybe something else, but all that I could do was smile. It was not a smile of commiseration (I didn't know why he was in such a hurry) but of condescension. I don't need to say anything because I've got the law on my side. I could destroy you if I wanted to. I kept running.
The longer I think about yesterday's episode, the more I think about how I was wrong. I acted like a modern day Pharisee. How many times have I done something that was not necessarily within the rules - left my own metaphorical steaming mess behind - and someone has not pointed it out to me? How many times do I sit in judgment over those who are in a hurry because I am not currently being caught in the midst of my sin.
Jesus seemed to catch people in the act all the time but instead of acting like the Pharisees, he responded with grace - go and sin no more. (As if that is possible). He didn't rub their faces in it, creating a dislike for him (nobody likes to have their face rubbed in their own sin). Unlike the disciples, he didn't demand God to send destruction from above; he didn't complain about the mess that has been left.
He just cleaned it up.
He picked up all the crap and got rid of it. And sometimes people aren't even aware of what he did.
That's what I should have done. I should have grabbed a plastic bag and without the condescending look, without the self-righteous attitude, I should have done what seems more like what a Christian should be doing in this world: sometimes it is akin to washing feet; sometimes it is doing the unthinkable to administer grace. Not for our own bolstering, but for the fostering of God's kingdom here on earth. Some might say this enables the sinner to keep on sinning, to not take responsibility for their own sin, but I'd say, the next time they make a lap back to that place where they left the dump, they might notice that someone else had to pick it up and then, this small kernel of guilt might lead them to repentance and changed life.
I'll see if I can follow my own advice next time.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Monday, April 27, 2015
Rule Over It
I just got a new Bible. It's not pretty; in fact, I think it's the polar opposite - it's drab dark blue with five words: Holy Bible - New International Version. On the inside there are two inch, lined margins on every page which allow me the opportunity to reflect on the pages themselves. The last Bible I wore out from constant 4pt scribbling in the margins, but now I can read it.
I never do this, but I'm starting at Genesis: Many I meet give me advice on how to read the Bible; start at three different places, maybe one of Paul's letters in the New Testament, explore the Psalms or Proverbs, but I'm going against my normal biblical instinct to write about Genesis first. In the beginning...
I've read it lots of times, but my eyes stuck fast on the words in 1:28 right after God creates Adam and Eve and then blesses the humans: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Yes! I, as a human, like those words. Subdue, rule over, multiply! We're good at those things because the idea of power (borne in those words) is our favorite breakfast of champions. To feel power is to feel alive. To feel the opposite, to have it acted against us - being subdued, ruled over and divided (the opposite of multiplication) - those things cause us fear and we rear up against them. When God spoke to Adam and Eve (pre-fall) his blessing includes power for good over the earth.
But then I am struck by the immensity of the contradiction which occurs later (post-fall). Cain is distressed by God's seeming dismissal of his offering. He has worked diligently toiling for the sin of his father. (2:17,19 "Cursed is the ground because of you (Adam); through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life...By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.") We have this heightened sense of the futility of farmers who not only can't trust the elements, but the harvest is not always fruitful either.
Here's the sinful contradiction: 3:8 After Cain was upset and jealous because of God's preference for Abel's offering it reads, Now Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let's go out to the field.' While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
The murder is great, but the premeditation, the invitation to destruction, is what gets me. Cain, it seems, knowingly planned to destroy his brother because of jealousy.
Unfortunately, it plays out far too often in this world. I don't know how many funerals that I have attended where the family is at odds because of the will. It's a double meaning - the literal will of the deceased, and the willful jealousy over objects of a lifetime of attrition. Brothers and sisters are destroyed and relationships are metaphorically murdered over an antique vase or stamp collection. It's the willful sin of covetousness, or a perceived slight, that bring us to a place of fratricide.
God's precognition to Cain's jealousy, after Cain's almost disconnected attitude to the reality of the upcoming murder, is poignant and soaked in pain. 4:6 Then the LORD said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must...
Rule Over It!"
We don't talk about sin much anymore; we're more inclined to intentionally speak of grace and more intentioned to act as if God has already flushed our dirty stool of sin before we've dumped it. We know that God will forgive us, so we willfully act against what we know to be right. Sin crouches at our door waiting to spring. It is not a devious little imp with pitchfork in hand, it is an attractive option to the goodness of God - it makes us believe that we are gods and it give us the power of God, to create and destroy. But God calls us to rule over that sin - the same sin of our father Adam. Subdue the lurking beast, rule over it and do not let it multiply.
Is there sin in your own life which is crouching outside your door? Or, have you already invited it across the threshold, welcoming it as if a special guest? Do you have rule over sin in your life?
I never do this, but I'm starting at Genesis: Many I meet give me advice on how to read the Bible; start at three different places, maybe one of Paul's letters in the New Testament, explore the Psalms or Proverbs, but I'm going against my normal biblical instinct to write about Genesis first. In the beginning...
I've read it lots of times, but my eyes stuck fast on the words in 1:28 right after God creates Adam and Eve and then blesses the humans: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Yes! I, as a human, like those words. Subdue, rule over, multiply! We're good at those things because the idea of power (borne in those words) is our favorite breakfast of champions. To feel power is to feel alive. To feel the opposite, to have it acted against us - being subdued, ruled over and divided (the opposite of multiplication) - those things cause us fear and we rear up against them. When God spoke to Adam and Eve (pre-fall) his blessing includes power for good over the earth.
But then I am struck by the immensity of the contradiction which occurs later (post-fall). Cain is distressed by God's seeming dismissal of his offering. He has worked diligently toiling for the sin of his father. (2:17,19 "Cursed is the ground because of you (Adam); through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life...By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.") We have this heightened sense of the futility of farmers who not only can't trust the elements, but the harvest is not always fruitful either.
Here's the sinful contradiction: 3:8 After Cain was upset and jealous because of God's preference for Abel's offering it reads, Now Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let's go out to the field.' While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
The murder is great, but the premeditation, the invitation to destruction, is what gets me. Cain, it seems, knowingly planned to destroy his brother because of jealousy.
Unfortunately, it plays out far too often in this world. I don't know how many funerals that I have attended where the family is at odds because of the will. It's a double meaning - the literal will of the deceased, and the willful jealousy over objects of a lifetime of attrition. Brothers and sisters are destroyed and relationships are metaphorically murdered over an antique vase or stamp collection. It's the willful sin of covetousness, or a perceived slight, that bring us to a place of fratricide.
God's precognition to Cain's jealousy, after Cain's almost disconnected attitude to the reality of the upcoming murder, is poignant and soaked in pain. 4:6 Then the LORD said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must...
Rule Over It!"
We don't talk about sin much anymore; we're more inclined to intentionally speak of grace and more intentioned to act as if God has already flushed our dirty stool of sin before we've dumped it. We know that God will forgive us, so we willfully act against what we know to be right. Sin crouches at our door waiting to spring. It is not a devious little imp with pitchfork in hand, it is an attractive option to the goodness of God - it makes us believe that we are gods and it give us the power of God, to create and destroy. But God calls us to rule over that sin - the same sin of our father Adam. Subdue the lurking beast, rule over it and do not let it multiply.
Is there sin in your own life which is crouching outside your door? Or, have you already invited it across the threshold, welcoming it as if a special guest? Do you have rule over sin in your life?
Thursday, April 2, 2015
God of All Comfort
I was thinking of the Lord's Supper in the book of John today in chapter 13. There's not really much about the supper--just that they were in the middle of it when Jesus changes course and stands up. In the middle of the meal. John meticulously records each action in slow detail savoring each memory. It is burned into his mind. He begins to love them "to the end." (1) He takes off his outer garment and lays it aside. He wraps a towel around his waist. He pours water into a basin and then he stares at the feet that lay before him. These feet are calloused and cracked. They are dusty with skin falling off. Some are bloodied. Some have probably stepped in some animal feces along the way. They smell human. These feet are broken and beat up.
The disciples have walked hundreds of miles with Jesus over the years. Maybe as Jesus stares at their feet, he remembers the scar when Andrew stubbed his toe in Cana. Or the thorn that had to be removed from Philip's heel.
It is silent in the upper room. There is no mood music in the background. They watch this one who had made their bodies and souls now kneel before each of them because it is the most important teaching he will ever do.
Peter's response is quite natural. He's proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, but now the Messiah hovers in front of him wanting to do a slave's work. It's humiliating. Perhaps we think on the eve of the Passover that Jesus would be doing something with great power. But instead we find him caressing the feet in abject servitude.
The God of all comfort makes Peter--makes me, feel uncomfortable. That's what he came to do.
Peter doesn't understand yet, but none of them really do.
They are to love people to the limit. Whatever it takes. However humiliating or embarrassing. Servants of all and masters to none.
The next day Jesus' outer garments would be removed again. He would be bloodied and beaten. His own feet would be washed in his own blood as they were pinned to the tree. He loves to the limit, to the grave, to the divine reach. No matter how humiliating or debasing, Jesus shows what this new command is all about. There is no length to which he won't go for those whom he loves.
And I suppose when we see his work with others at times it embarrasses us. Working with those who seem to most disgust us. The broken ones. Those whose lives are line with scars of stubbed experiences. And yet he sends us out to love them to the limit. To interpret the gospel in such a way that it is visible and credible. No matter how humiliating or debasing. Love to the limit. No matter how uncomfortable. He is the teacher and we are the learners. If we have learned anything, we certainly learn what love is in this.
The disciples have walked hundreds of miles with Jesus over the years. Maybe as Jesus stares at their feet, he remembers the scar when Andrew stubbed his toe in Cana. Or the thorn that had to be removed from Philip's heel.
It is silent in the upper room. There is no mood music in the background. They watch this one who had made their bodies and souls now kneel before each of them because it is the most important teaching he will ever do.
Peter's response is quite natural. He's proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, but now the Messiah hovers in front of him wanting to do a slave's work. It's humiliating. Perhaps we think on the eve of the Passover that Jesus would be doing something with great power. But instead we find him caressing the feet in abject servitude.
The God of all comfort makes Peter--makes me, feel uncomfortable. That's what he came to do.
Peter doesn't understand yet, but none of them really do.
They are to love people to the limit. Whatever it takes. However humiliating or embarrassing. Servants of all and masters to none.
The next day Jesus' outer garments would be removed again. He would be bloodied and beaten. His own feet would be washed in his own blood as they were pinned to the tree. He loves to the limit, to the grave, to the divine reach. No matter how humiliating or debasing, Jesus shows what this new command is all about. There is no length to which he won't go for those whom he loves.
And I suppose when we see his work with others at times it embarrasses us. Working with those who seem to most disgust us. The broken ones. Those whose lives are line with scars of stubbed experiences. And yet he sends us out to love them to the limit. To interpret the gospel in such a way that it is visible and credible. No matter how humiliating or debasing. Love to the limit. No matter how uncomfortable. He is the teacher and we are the learners. If we have learned anything, we certainly learn what love is in this.
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