We Can Pray…
It seems overwhelming.
I don’t know about you, but everything having to do with the Coronavirus at times seems overwhelming. If you turn on the news or listen to the radio, you can’t help but watch the number of people who have the virus keep growing. At the same time, the death toll continues to go up at an alarming rate. I’m both fascinated and disgusted with the little stats tracker most TV news stations keep up on the right-hand side of the screen that shows both numbers day after day. But I also can’t help myself from looking and feeling pretty helpless before this invisible enemy. I know a lot of you are anxious. I know a lot of you are worried about getting ill or maybe worse worried someone you love will get ill. And even though they’ve stressed over and over that most of us, even if we get the Coronavirus, will recover just fine, it’s hard not to fixate on the negatives. People over 65 are at higher risk. People with underlying health conditions are at higher risk. And this one they popped out just a couple of days ago, men are at higher risk. And even if you aren’t in any of these groups, you can be a risk to the people around you. It’s put most of us at least a little on edge and some of us a lot.
What do we do?
When we are faced with a situation like this where so much seems out of our control, what CAN we do? We can listen to the experts. We can protect ourselves and our loved ones by being physically distant while still reaching out to one another. For those who are able, we can offer a helping hand whether that’s shopping for a neighbor, buying dinner through Door Dash to support a local business, calling a friend who might be lonely, writing a letter to someone who would love a little sunshine in the pile of ads and bills. And we can pray. As a people of faith, in times of strife, in times of darkness, in times of joy, we can pray. It’s what we do.
But does it work?
Most definitely, yes. Let’s get that out of the way as soon as possible. I want to assure you that prayer works! God listens to each and every one of us. God hears us and knows our pain, knows our happiness, and knows our struggle. But I find that even among those who believe we struggle with what prayer is and what it does. Some feel foolish praying. Some feel pessimistic praying. Some just feel like there is no evidence that it works at all. But I guess it depends on your definition of “works.” The biggest problem is how to measure the effectiveness of prayer. Dr. Candy Brown from Indiana University in Bloomington wrote that most researchers study prayer as they would any other phenomenon. They set up studies, they do double-blind trials, they set up a control group and an experimental group, and then they compare results.[1] But maybe that’s part of the problem right there. Maybe you can’t measure the effects of prayer simply by doing blind trials. As Brown noted, “…when people actually pray for healing, they usually get up close to someone they know, touch the person and empathize with their sufferings… Double-blinded, controlled trials are not the only — or even the best — way to gauge the effects of this kind of prayer practice.”[2] Prayer is such a personal experience and the results may not become evident for a long time or they might unfold in a way we never expected.
That’s the biggest problem with trying to measure the “success” of prayer.
Sometimes it doesn’t happen the way we expect. We often say “Wishing Well” prayers. By that I mean, we tell God what we want and we measure our prayer’s success on if we get what we ask for. Like a Wishing Well. And then we judge God by whether or not God lives up to our expectations. Except God doesn’t work that way. If you’ve ever heard the song “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks, you know what I’m talking about. Garth sings about how when he was young, he prayed hard for God to help him out with a girl he liked. That if God would make this one girl his wife, he would never ask for anything again. But God didn’t answer that prayer. At least not in the way he wanted at the time. Instead he ended up meeting the woman who would one day become his wife and he sums it all up in the chorus by saying, “Just because he doesn’t answer, doesn’t mean he don’t care. Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” We’re going to hear about one of those unanswered prayers in our reading today.
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” – Matthew 26:36-46
God didn’t answer this prayer.
At least not the way Jesus was asking him to. Jesus knows what’s about to happen. He knows the agony he is about to endure. And he begs God to let him off the hook. But God doesn’t do it. God doesn’t save Jesus from a death most would consider cruel and evil. Instead, God lets it happen. God lets the most blameless, sinless, holiest person ever to walk the Earth, die on the cross. And it’s not like God couldn’t have saved him if he wanted. After all, if you read the story of Elijah, one of the great prophets of Israel, God just whisks Elijah up to Heaven. It was within God’s power to do so. But instead God let him hang on the cross. Jesus was even mocked for God’s inaction. They ridiculed him. Dared him to save himself. Put a crown of thorns on his head and a sign above him saying “King of the Jews.” If there was ever any evidence that prayer didn’t work, this was it! Except that God had something else in mind.
We know the end of this story.
We know that Christ died for us. Because we are at the other end of history. But at that time it must have been hard to believe. Look at Peter. He denied even knowing Jesus. Hardly any of the apostles came to support Christ in his greatest hour of need. Jesus was left alone by almost everyone but a handful of people. But we know how the story ends. We know that Christ rose from the dead. We know that because of his willingness to trust in God, we have been forgiven for our sins. And we know that God had something greater in mind than what we could possibly imagine. We have such a limited idea of who God is that we judge him based on our criteria. And if God fails to live up to our expectations, we tend to think that he must not care, or he must not have heard, or he must not exist. But God operates on a whole different level than we do. The concepts of time and space are not the same for him as they are for us. And a being who lives in a reality so different from ours cannot and should not be judged by our standards. And this is where trust comes in. We need to trust that God hears our prayers. Our prayers are not falling on deaf ears, but on the ears of someone who loves us intensely. And just because we don’t get the response we’re looking for doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care.
I do believe God answers prayers.
Why some people get what they pray for and others don’t, I think is really about our own expectations rather than if God is listening and answering. It could be that God answers every prayer in his own time, in his own way. Some prayers seem to get an immediate response and some just seem to languish. Sometimes it takes years to see a prayer get answered, even decades. I am still struck by the story of a man I was able to baptize much later in his life. I believe he was in his 60s or late 50s. Either way, God caught up to him and struck him in a powerful way. He told me pretty much his entire adult life his mother had been praying for him to come to know God, to be baptized and accept Jesus in his heart. And for decades that prayer went unanswered. Finally, he came around. Through a series of incidents, he decided to be baptized and only about a week or two after he was baptized, his mother passed away. He hadn’t been baptized just to please his mom’s dying wish because her death was unexpected. She was older to be sure, but had no indication she was close to passing on. It was hard for me to hear this story and not think she was holding on just long enough to make sure her son was alright before letting go.
Our definition of whether or not prayer “works” is too narrow.
Science definitely proves there are benefits to prayer. Prayer has been shown to improve self-control, to make you nicer, to help you be more forgiving, to increase your trust, and offset the negative effects of stress.[3] Pretty awesome benefits. I would think that anything that give you more self-control, makes you nicer, more forgiving, trusting, and less stressed out definitely “works!” But praying to God isn’t like tossing a coin in a wishing well. Prayer isn’t meant to be simply telling God what we want and then getting everything we desire. Prayer is about this ongoing relationship with God that helps us to trust in him and know that he is there. Prayer is meant to be a regular, constant building of a relationship with God that brings us comfort in times that are dark and joyous in times that are bright. During these times of doubt and anxiety where every day seems to bring up new problems and new dilemmas, I want you to give prayer a chance. Keep your social distancing, stay in self-isolation, do what you can to help your neighbor and loved ones, but don’t forget to turn to God in prayer. If you don’t already pray regularly, try doing so. Pray every day even if it’s just for a little bit. And don’t worry about saying the “right” prayer. God is simply waiting to hear from you. Just pray. Open yourself up to what God is speaking into your life. Truly listen to where God is leading you through prayer. And know that God is there. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/candy-gunther-brown-phd/testing-prayer-science-of-healing_b_1299915.html
[2] Ibid
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/more-mortal/201406/5-scientifically-supported-benefits-prayer
When The Walls Fall Down
7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” – Joshua 1:7-9
Hope will not stop the coronavirus from spreading.
Hope will not protect you or your family from getting it. Hope will not find a cure. When people talk about “hope,” there is often a misunderstanding of what it is and what it can do. As Rick Page once said to me, quoting from his book, “Hope is not a strategy.” Hope by itself won’t solve the current crisis, but we need it, perhaps more than we need any other thing to get us through. Because while hope isn’t a strategy and while hope isn’t a solution, hope is the fuel that will power us to the end. Hope will be what carries us to the next thing and the next thing and the next things when we run out of things to believe in. When we run into a brick wall and can’t seem to find a solution, hope is what will enable us to keep searching until we find the hidden door that leads us to the next level. Hope is the fuel for our soul. It’s a good thing for us God has it in abundance!
I can only imagine what the Israelites were thinking as they walked around the walls of Jericho.
If you don’t know the story, God tells his prophet, Joshua, that God is about to deliver into the hands of the Israelites the Promised Land! The land of Canaan is to be given to the Israeli people which meant that God will be with them as they conquer the land. Today, the land of Canaan encompasses Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.[1] But this wasn’t going to be an easy task. Cities like Jericho were fortified and for the people of Israel to launch an assault on a fortified city would have been a blood bath. So God instructs Joshua how to tear down the walls to give the Israelites the chance to break through. Did God tell them of a secret underground tunnel they could use to sneak into the city? No. Did God tell them of a weakness in the defensive strategy of the people of Jericho? No. Instead God told them to walk around the walls of the city once a day for six days and then on the seventh day to walk around it seven times and blow a horn and the walls will fall. Imagine being a solider in the Israeli army and being told you were going to conquer a city by simply walking around a wall and shouting at it. You might have thought Joshua had finally gone off the deep end. But God had done so much for the Israeli people already that they had faith in him as a prophet of God and that gave them hope that this too would work. And that hope gave them the fuel to do the impossible. And the walls came tumbling down.
We are in the midst of our own time in the desert.
A time of anxiety. A time of insecurity. A time of testing. To be clear, God did not create the coronavirus to test us. There are people out there who will say outlandish things like that, but that comes from a deep misunderstanding about who God is and how God works in the world. Rather, whenever the people of God are going through tough and difficult times, it is a test of our faith. And right now, we are in the middle of that desert. Nothing around us as far as the eye can see. No idea about where our destination will ultimately be or what it will look like or how long it will take to get there. I feel myself glued to the TV screen or to NPR, waiting for the next press conference to tell me how something else has changed in my life. I keep getting messages from every company I’ve ever given my email address telling me the twenty ways they are doing their part to protect me and I keep thinking, you mean you didn’t wash your hands when you served my food before? My heart sinks to think of all the people living alone out there who are in isolation and just need someone to talk to or hold their hand or give them comfort during this time of increasing loneliness. And like a desert, it seems to be without end.
But we are a people of hope.
God shares with us so many stories of inspiration through the eyes of his people. We read in Genesis about God promising Abraham he will be the father of many nations and indeed though his sons, he has. We read in 1 Samuel about David being chosen by God to defend the nation of Israel and when there seemed to be no hope left at all, David defeated the champion of the Philistines in a single blow. And in John’s Gospel, Jesus shared with us all that even in death we have hope because he goes before us and prepares the way for our return home to God. But if all we had were stories from 2000 years ago, it would not be enough. If our only evidence of hope came from people who were long gone, it would not be enough. But thankfully, God’s work in the world didn’t stop with Paul and the apostles. Even the Bible doesn’t cover every story of God’s amazing work in and through his people. John wrote, “30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
The story of God lives on in each one of us.
Gone are the days of the burning bush as cool as that would be. It’s not likely that we’ll get to cross the River Jordan because the waters part before us. Instead, God is made real in the love we share for one another. We become God incarnate in the world today, Christ embodied in human form. In every kind word, in every prayer, in every act of kindness, God is made manifest. And one day our time in the desert will end. One day, we will come together once again and this time of testing will be over. But until that time, we do what we can, wherever we can, to be God incarnate to a world that needs us more than ever. Paul wrote a passage in his letter to the believers in Rome about how they should behave to reflect their love of Christ. He wrote:
10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. – Romans 12:10-13
That sounds like a pretty good prescription for what we should be doing in these trying times. The doors to our building might be closed, but the church is open! Let us take these words of Paul to heart and continue to be devoted to one another and to honor one another. Let us continue to be enthusiastic for the work of God in the world and to join in however we can. Let us be patient in this time of affliction, let us be faithful in prayer, and let us be joyful in the hope that we have. And above all, let us practice hospitality to the Lord’s people who are in need.
We have devoted our time and energy this Spring to fighting hunger.
And even though being “sheltered in place” is hampering those efforts, we are going to continue to do our part. Especially now, when people are out of work, unable to pay their bills, and having to choose between medicine, food, and rent, helping to fight hunger is more important than ever before. So if you’re out and about running essential errands and want to drop off food for the Alameda County Food Bank, feel free to drop it off outside the church doors and I’ll put it in the two huge drums we have in the entryway. Or you can donate directly to the church and I will go and buy canned goods and food on a grocery run to fill up the barrels. Just let us know that the money is to be used for the Alameda County Food Bank and 100% will go directly to help our efforts. We’re also sponsoring a team in the Berkeley Virtual CROP Walk! This is a wonderful organization under the Church World Services banner dedicated to fighting hunger and poverty worldwide, and you can help out in two ways. First, you can donate money to our team by going online to Berkeley CROP Walk and looking for Team BMUC or by following the link in our events page or on our website. Second, you can take a selfie of yourself walking and post it on Facebook on the CROP Walk page and let them see your virtual support.
We’re also looking for ways to keep connected, especially with our elderly folks in the church.
Join our K.I.T. Team (Keep In Touch) by volunteering to call or write to those who would enjoy a friendly voice or a handwritten note. Lee Marrs came up with this idea and we’re sort of running with it in a bunch of different directions. Our Congregational Care Ministers wanted to be sure to keep in touch with those on our care list, and we thought we might need to expand that list. So if you’d like to help us, just let me know and I’ll make sure to put you on our team. Or if you know of someone we should include who would like a phone call or letter, please let us know that, too. And for those of you on social media, we’re going to be starting a Wednesday Night Social Hour on ZOOM as a way for us all to stay connected regularly. Open to anyone who wants to join, I’ll send out a link every week to remind you all, but I hope you’ll come just to chat and check in so we can see how you’re doing. My wife Cassie thought it would be fun to do something like this to help us stay in touch and to let each other know what’s going on.
In this challenging time, it’s going to take more effort to be the people of God.
We’ll have to be more creative. We’ll have to be more intentional. We’ll have to reach out in new and different ways. But it’s important for us to continue to be the hope for the world by being the Body of Christ in the world today. Because hope is the fuel; that will get us through this crisis. Hope is the fuel that will push us through in those days when it gets lonely or frustrating. Hope will help us fight when our bodies are tired or sick. Hope will see us through. Let us be the hope for the our own little corner of the world today.
1 Vs. 99
When it comes to Emma, some might say I’m a little overprotective.
Now I’ve seen helicopter parents and I’m not quite there, but to say I’m…cautious would be fair. It’s also possible I’ve seen the movie Taken just one too many times. I’ve got that Liam Neeson speech at the ready. “I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.” Obviously, I hope I never have to use that speech, but the movie represents my biggest nightmare, especially when Emma was younger. So you can imagine the horror I felt watching her being taken away from me by a rogue school bus!
It was in third grade when Emma was coming home from Immanuel Elementary. We thought it would be fun for Emma to take the school bus once in a while. She was supposed to be dropped off at 3:15pm on the #6 bus. She had only taken the bus home a few times so we were still nervous about it. She was the only one getting off at her stop so we wanted to be sure to always be there for her. This one afternoon in particular Cassie and I both went to pick her up. 3:15 came and went. 3:16. 3:17. When 3:18 came around we started to wonder if we had the right stop. If maybe they got there early. But then to our relief, the #6 bus came…and WENT! It didn’t stop!!! All over again we wondered what to do. Did we get the wrong bus number? That bus wouldn’t stop until it hit the next town over which was more than 30 minutes away and we had no idea where it would drop the kids off. We decided to chase the bus. Driving like a mad man, speeding at 80mph in a 55mph zone, we honked and waved and tried everything we could to catch the bus driver’s attention. It was like a suburban version of Mission: Impossible. Cassie in the meantime is trying to call the school or anyone who might have answers, but to no avail. The bus driver finally noticed us about and pulled over. I jumped out of the car and raced to the door, and as it opened, there was Emma’s smiling face as she hopped out safe and sound. I gave her a big hug and I was smiling from ear to ear. The driver told us he just completely forgot about Emma’s stop and while I would normally be freaking out, I was just so happy to have Emma I didn’t even care. That was the last day Emma took the bus.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it was like to find Emma safe and sound.
The relief, the joy, the happiness all at once. When you’ve found something precious you thought was lost, it’s indescribable how amazing it feels. And it doesn’t have to be someone who is physically lost. It could be someone close to you who lost their way. Maybe they’re in a bad relationship or engaged in addictive behavior or seem to be meandering through life and then suddenly things change for the better. Some revelation helps them to turn their life around and this wave of relief and joy washes over you. It could be a precious object you found. A ring that belonged to your mother, a watch your wife gave you on your anniversary, a favorite toy that got left behind. But that feeling you get when something lost gets found is simply amazing. And that’s the joy Jesus shares with the disciples in our passage this morning.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
1Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. 2But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3Then Jesus told them this parable: 4″Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
To Jesus, one lost sheep was more important than the ninety-nine who were found.
It’s not because Jesus didn’t care about the 99, but instead he knew they were safe. A shepherd could leave the flock because together they would look out for each other, but the lost sheep was all on its own. It had no protection, it didn’t have any direction, and it was in constant danger from predators. A good shepherd felt safe leaving the flock behind and instead could focus on those who had wandered off. Now imagine applying the same thought process to God’s church and Jesus’ message is a call for us to do the same, to focus not on the found but on the lost. To help those who don’t know a life with Christ to embrace that life. When people refer to the “lost” it’s not a judgment on them, but an indictment on us. WE could have done more. WE should have done better. WE haven’t done OUR part. We want to avoid becoming like the Pharisees during Jesus’ time who wouldn’t dream of associating with sinners lest their reputations become tarnished or were afraid they might fall victim to that “sinful” crowd. In their mind, sinners chose their lifestyle and that’s their fault. They should have known better. So to associate with people like them would make you unclean. They left it up to the sinners to come and make peace with God. But Jesus never saw it that way. Instead, Jesus saw it as our responsibility to help others to know God and show them what a life with Christ could be like.
The problem with the Pharisees was they saw the church as a holy site to be preserved.
But that isn’t the case. The church is a field office for God. It’s the hub of action for God’s work in the world. Or to put it in more familiar terms, the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. The Pharisees and often many people today look at the church as a place that preserves their traditions and their way of worship. They see it as a relic where time often stands still. And the Pharisees were awesome at this. They obeyed every law. They knew them by heart. They studied them over and over, and in the process they forgot the spirit behind the law and instead stuck to the letter of it. But God meant for the church to be an ever-changing, ever-evolving dynamic community designed to adapt to the world around it to preserve the spirit of God’s intent – to love the world in a way that reflects the love of Christ. We are the center of operations for God, Inc.! And now more than ever it’s important to keep that in mind. Because when we stop doing the WORK of the church and instead worry about the WALLS of the church, we have become like the Pharisees – observers but not believers.
In the past, a church simply needed to open its doors and people would come.
There wasn’t this great NEED to go out in search of the lost, because the church was the social hub of the community. People would come to us, whether they believed in Jesus or not. All the church needed to do was host some dinner or some program and people would come. They would come and experience this community of Christians and hopefully many of them would stick around to find out more. But the paradigm has shifted. We cannot afford to be so isolated. People don’t NEED the church to be the social hub of the community. Instead they have cell phones and soccer games and Starbucks to fill that need. The church used to be the champion of social justice, but you don’t NEED the church to champion social justice because there are as many organizations as there are causes to do that for us. The church used to champion social welfare, but today there are tons of organizations who care for those in need. The church is now only one of many options and usually not the best one. So we don’t often even get the chance to make an impact on people the way we used to because the entire paradigm of church is different. How can we show them the love of God if they don’t even come through the door? The answer is simple. We need to go to them.
People see the church as self-centered.
Too self-involved. Too focused on itself and not on the concerns of the world. The perception of the church as a museum is one held on both sides of the walls. And it’s one of the reasons people have left the church. They just don’t see us as relevant any longer. How can we turn that around? Are we willing to serve people where they are and open the doors to the church in a new way? Can we leave our comfort zone and engage the world on the front lines instead of from the safety of our walls? It’s a tough thing to consider, but one that is important if we are to rethink church for the 21st century. But there is so much work to be done. As much now as there ever has been. And if we could do our part to help others know the love of God in a real and meaningful way, if we can impact the lives of the people around us by connecting people to Christ and to have the peace that comes from a deepening faith, think of how much rejoicing there would be! Think of how much of a difference we could make for God and for our little corner of the world. But it all starts with us.
Have you ever seen Star Trek III: The Search for Spock?
If you haven’t guessed, the whole movie is about the search for Spock. The movie opens with his death and his friends believe they’ve seen the last of him, but when they discover there might be a chance to save his soul, they risk everything to do it. They risk their careers, their lives, and their ship on just the chance they might bring him back. And they pretty much lose everything. But at the end, Spock is made whole. He still has some memory loss, but he’s on the road to recovery and he approaches his friend, Kirk, and asks him why he did it – why did he risk everything just for him? And Kirk says to him, “Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.” The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. There are times in this world where the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. There are times when we all must step out of our comfort zone and do what’s needed. Because the world is filled with busses that need to be chased, with sheep that need to be found, and Vulcans that need their friends.
Spiritual But Not Religious
I am a pastor, but don’t tell anyone.
I don’t always like to tell people what I do. It’s not that I’m embarrassed. I have one of the greatest jobs in the world. I think the only way it could get better is if I was the pastor of Disneyland UMC. It’s just that people act differently around a pastor than they do when they’re around people who aren’t a pastor. And it’s not like it’s a question you can avoid. When two people meet for the first time, the second question out of their mouth is usually, “So what do you do?” I can’t LIE! It’s in the pastor rulebook. But you can almost FEEL the flow of conversation take a sharp right turn when you say, “I’m a pastor.” Suddenly, they stand up straighter and talk more carefully. I hear the word “sorry” a lot. Either for a swear word they just used or as an apology for not coming to church as if I might rat them out. “Gotta keep an eye on Jane over here, Lord. She doesn’t go to church.” The reasons why they’ve missed since their graduation run the gamut of excuses. From “I usually have to work on Sundays” to “It’s the only day off I get all week.” I understand the “work on Sundays” reason. Our society today doesn’t reserve a day of Sabbath like we used to. But I guess people feel that if it’s your only day off you shouldn’t have to spend it with Jesus.
It’s sad though that people look at it as a chore rather than something to look forward to.
Because they’re right – they shouldn’t HAVE to go to church. I would hope they would WANT to go to church. But if the statistics tell us anything, a lot fewer people WANT to come to church. Most people aren’t sitting in a pew somewhere on Sunday morning. Only about 18% of Americans attend church on any given week.[1] But the problem is deeper than that. Not only do they not attend church, they don’t even belong to a church any more. More and more people are considering themselves “religiously unaffiliated,” meaning they don’t identify with any particular religion or denomination. From 2007 to 2014, that number has gone up significantly from about 16% to 23%. The Pew Research Group calls this phenomenon the “rise of the nones.”[2] That’s because when asked what religion this group ascribes to they answer “none.” That 23% represents about 75 million people. 75 million “nones.” Interestingly, though about 72% of them say they believe in God. 72%![3] You might think with that many “nones” we would be looking at the growth of a new atheism or more agnostics, but most of them still believe in God. Instead, they call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” But why?
The reasons they are “spiritual but not religious” come in a wide-range of answers.
Almost all of them have to do with the church letting people down. Whether it’s hypocrisy, exclusion, being judgmental, too political, or whatever other reason, they perceive the church has having let them down. And don’t get me wrong, we probably have. I don’t know of a pastor who doesn’t have horror stories about a dysfunctional church and I don’t know a congregation that hasn’t come across its share of incompetent pastors. But does that mean we shouldn’t have “church” because we haven’t got it right? Now, God did create the church based on Peter. Peter, the exceptionally flawed guy who pulled out a sword when Jesus wanted peace. Peter, the guy who denied Christ three times after swearing he would never deny Christ. It was this Peter that Jesus centered the church. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says to Peter, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” We might just want to ask, “Really, Jesus? With this guy in charge?” But God didn’t make a mistake. For all of Peter’s faults, Peter understood and knew who Jesus was. When Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was, it was only Peter who said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Then later, after Jesus is resurrected and appears to the disciples while they are fishing, it is only Peter who jumps out of the boat and runs to Jesus. And it is to Peter that Jesus asks the famous three questions and we will share that together this morning.
15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep…”
Three times, Jesus asks, “Do you love me?”
And three times Peter answers, “You know that I love you.” At first glance, you might think “Why is Jesus pestering Peter by asking him the same question over and over? Is he rubbing it in because Peter denied him three times?” But this is when it matters that you know a little Greek (or at least read a really good concordance). Jesus uses a different word for love the first two times. When he asks Peter the question, “Do you love me?” he uses the Greek word agape, an unconditional love – a love deeper than any other kind, but Peter responds each time by using the Greek phileo meaning more of a friendship or brotherly love.[4] They both are saying “love” but with completely different meaning. It must be so disheartening for Jesus that Peter can’t even SAY he has agape love for him, so the third time Jesus asks, he stops using the word agape and instead comes down to Peter’s level and uses the word phileo and Peter is hurt by this. Why? I don’t know. What did Peter expect? He asked you two times in a row Peter! If you didn’t know the difference in translation of the word for “love” you might think Peter was hurt because Jesus had to ask him three times, but instead we know it’s because Jesus came down to his level. Peter must be hurt not from Jesus but from his own inability to love the way Christ loved him. Still, Christ builds the church with Peter as its foundation because Peter is fallible but willing.
That’s what it means to be the church.
To be fallible but willing. Willing to stick it out. Willing to work on making things better. Willing to grow in our faith. We might mess up. We probably will make mistakes. But if we keep God at the center of our lives and our community we can help to grow the Kingdom of God. People who say they are “spiritual but not religious” are often saying they don’t need anyone else to know God. But some of the most meaningful experiences we will ever have with God come from being part of a community working together to grow in faith and to reach out to the world. Pastor Lillian Daniel said it very well when she said, “There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.”[5]
Honestly, I used to think I didn’t need the church.
I completely understand the “spiritual but not religious” attitude because it used to be mine. But I’ve learned that despite all of its faults, people do need the church. Not as an afterthought. Not as a “backup plan.” But we need to be engaged in the life of the church on a regular basis. It helps us to grow deeper in our own faith and gives us opportunities that only come from working together. And there is a comfort and a strength from being in community. When push comes to shove, when a person has their faith truly tested, it isn’t the sunset that’s going to comfort them. It isn’t the beach that’s going to cook them a tuna casserole. And it isn’t the forest that will pray for them and hold their hand. It’s going to be real people who love God. We are not perfect. We will make mistakes. And to expect anything different is to expect something unrealistic. But Jesus knew what he was doing when he built the church upon the rock of St. Peter. Jesus knew this fallible human being would give us hope that despite our faults, Jesus believes in us. I also believe that God knows how much we need one another and it is for that reason we need the church. Not this building or those pews or the altar, but the church, the body of Christ. And I also believe that while the “spiritual but not religious” people are missing out on something wonderful, we have to do a better job of convincing them there is something they are missing out on. During this period of Lent we will examine the different ways we can do a better job of brightening the world for those who honestly seek God and can’t find Him in the church. Please consider who you might invite to join us on this journey together. Make it a goal to ask someone who may need some of the love of Christ in their life to church on Easter Sunday. And at the end of it all, we will have a chance to celebrate the most wonderful event in all of Christendom – the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[1] https://churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html
[2] https://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/
[4] http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-Peter-do-you-love-me.html
[5] http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/spiritual-but-not-religious.html
Love Is A Verb
Have you ever heard of the seven stages of the married cold?[1]
In your 1st year of marriage, if your loving spouse gets sick, you would probably say with all sincerity – “Oh, sweetie pie, I’m really worried about those nasty sniffles you have! There’s no telling what that could turn into with all the strep that’s been going around. I’m going to take you right down to the hospital and have you admitted for a couple days of rest. I know the food is lousy there, so I’m going to bring you takeout from your favorite restaurant. I’ve already arranged it with the head nurse.”
In your 2nd year of marriage, if your spouse gets sick, you still show much loving concern – “Listen, honey, I don’t like the sound of that cough. I called the doc and he’s going to stop by here and take a look at you. Why don’t you just go on to bed and get the rest you need?”
In the 3rd year, you say – “Maybe you better go lie down, darling. When you feel lousy you need the rest. I’ll bring you something. Do we have any canned soup around here?”
By the 4th year, you say with love – “No sense wearing yourself out when you’re under the weather. When you finish those dishes and the kids’ baths and get them to bed, you ought to go to bed yourself!”
5th year – “Why don’t you take a couple aspirin?
6th year – “You oughta go gargle or something, instead of sitting around barking like a dog!”
And by the 7th year, you turn to the love of your life and say – “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing. Are you trying to give me pneumonia? You’d better pick up some tissues while you’re at the store.”
If this isn’t you and your spouse, odds are you probably know someone just like this. Most of us consider this to be the natural progression of a love relationship. As we spend more and more time together, we tend to lose not only the fire and passion of our early days, but also that “other-centered” focus that is pretty typical at the beginning. But have you ever wished that it wasn’t that way? Have you ever wondered if you could rekindle that intimacy? More time doesn’t have to equal less passion. More time doesn’t have to equal less passion. How we treat each other is a choice we make everyday. It comes naturally at the beginning to be so “other-centered” because we are so busy trying to convince the other person to stay with us. We are more sensitive, more thoughtful, more willing to compromise, but once we have been together for a while all those things seem to start to fade. And when the relationship starts to get a little dull around the edges, when it isn’t so sparkly new and shining bright, we tend to dump it instead of work on it. In our disposable lifestyles, we tend to have disposable relationships.
Why do you think that is?
Why are we willing to dump something just because it isn’t working the way we expect it too?[2] Obviously, if you decide to get married, you don’t sit there with the intention it’s going to end. Most people think of marriage as a lifelong commitment otherwise why bother? Yet somehow, we chuck it all out the window pretty quickly. Like anything worthwhile, a love that lasts a lifetime takes work and time and effort. It may not be that fiery, passionate love we had at the beginning, but a love that nourishes us and envelopes us with security and hope. Andy Stanley put it pretty succinctly, “Falling in love requires a pulse, but staying in love requires a plan.” Falling in love requires a pulse, but staying in love requires a plan. And guess what? God has a plan. If you’ve got your Bibles or a Bible app on your phones, please open them up to Philippians chapter 2 beginning with verse 1. Philippians 2:1. In this letter to the church at Philippi, Paul is writing to them to give them encouragement to keep on growing in Christ. Apparently, Paul had spent a lot of time in Philippi and now that he’s been thrown in prison, he’s worried that they’ll forget the lessons of Christ as they worry about what will happen to them so he’s writing this to bolster their confidence and to remind them of how Christ would have them behave toward one another. This model of behavior isn’t just for churches, but for our everyday lives and in our marriages as well and this is where we pick up in our reading.
1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
This is God’s recipe for a healthy relationship.
Take equal parts humility and equal parts concern for others and mix it together and you have the perfect recipe for a healthy relationship. Paul reminds us that even Jesus, Jesus who is by his nature God on Earth, even Jesus didn’t take advantage of who he was to make us bend to his will. Instead, Jesus, the creator and most powerful person in the universe, took on the attitude of a servant because he wanted to model for us the kind of life we could live if we just listened to God. God gives us these life lessons to make our lives better. But it does take faith to do it. Faith not only in God that what he says is true, but faith in one another. It also takes conscious effort. It’s not something that comes naturally to us, so we have to actively do these things. We have to actively act in humility, to think of our partner more than ourselves, to react not in haste but in kindness, to take the attitude of a servant. To use another Andy quote, we have to learn to make love a verb. We have to learn to make love a verb. Love is a choice we make every day and if we ignore that choice we will see the seven stages of the married cold become a reality in our relationships. But if we DO actively choose to love one another, to think of them before ourselves, we can have the healthy, loving relationship we so desire.
There is always a gap between our expectations and our reality.
It’s how we fill that gap that makes all the difference in the world. The most successful couples, the ones who report the most happiness, are the ones who fill that gap with the best of expectations.[3] They believe the best about their spouses, even when they are wrong. They CHOOSE to believe the best even though it’s likely not to be true. It’s that positive attitude that ends up inspiring their significant other to become the best partner they can be and in turn give them the relationship they always hoped for. There’s a book I’ve read that has some great ideas how you can put your spouse or significant other above yourself. It’s called The Love Dare. Some of you may have heard of it. It was a big deal about ten years ago, but the lessons and suggestions it has are still relevant today. But you don’t even need a book to do this. All you need is the willingness to put others’ needs before your own. Think of how incredible of a world this would be if everyone thought of other people’s needs more than their own. Challenge yourself this week to do something unexpected for those that you love. Put their needs, their wants, and their desires above your own and see how that can brighten up their day.
[1] Found in different sermon illustrations and on the Internet.
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201702/what-is-the-divorce-rate-really
[3] From Andy Stanley’s Staying In Love sermon series
Wired for Community
I am a self-made man.
Nobody has ever helped me. Why just this morning, I cooked two eggs and bacon for breakfast from chickens that I raised and a pig that I butchered myself. I cooked it in a pan that I made from steel that I forged on my own. I put on shoes that I sewed together from the skin of that same pig I got the bacon from, and then I laced them up from cotton I grew in my backyard that I harvested and spun into thread. I walked to the church on pavement that I put down myself and a sidewalk I formed by laying down concrete that I mixed on my own. I did this because I taught myself everything I know without anyone ever helping me. Yes, sir, I am a self-made man.
We all know that isn’t true.
Nobody could do all those things without help from not just somebody but a whole bunch of somebodies. How would I have been able to cook my own meals as a baby, let alone as a full-grown man without somebody somewhere helping me? How often when we give thanks for our meal de we stop to think about the farmer who grew the vegetables on our plate or the rancher who raised the animals that provided the meat. How often do we think of the people who package our food and the truck drivers who take it to market so we can buy it? How often do we give thanks for the army of people who make it possible for our lives to keep moving forward every single day? Probably not often. Whenever we complain about life, we talk about “those people” who are ruining things for us. Whether “those people” are Democrats or Republicans, Christians or Muslims, Dodgers fans and Giants fans – there always seems to be a “those people.” But the truth is, there isn’t “those people.” There’s just us.
We live in community because we are wired for community. Literally.
Amy Banks, a doctor and an instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School said, “Neuroscience is confirming that our nervous systems want us to connect with other human beings.”[1] was a study done on metastatic breast cancer patients back in 1989 where one group was placed in a supportive group environment and the other was given the standard care all patients received and what they found was that those placed in a supportive environment lived twice as long! Twice! There are tangible benefits of being part of a community. There was a study done with monkeys where they placed two “substitute mothers” in with them. One was a wire mother and one was a cloth mother. The wire mother had a bottle to feed the monkeys and the cloth mother did not. Yet the monkeys preferred spending time with the cloth mother despite the fact that the wire mother had food. Sadly, these monkeys – with no real mother to care for them – developed autistic tendencies just like the Romanian children did. There is more to life than just things like food, water, and air. As important as those are, living in community is just as important as these studies keep showing us.
That’s because God wired us for community.
If you have your Bibles or a Bible app on your phone, would you please go to 1 Corinthians 12:12-20. 1 Corinthians 12:12-20. Without community we cannot be the people God created us to be. But more than that, we need community because none of us are completely self-sufficient. We need others to help us. Not just with our physical needs, but our emotional and intellectual needs, too. We provide pieces of the puzzle to life that no one of us has by ourselves. And that’s how Paul described it in his letter to the church at Corinth. He talked about us being the body of Christ together and despite our protests otherwise, we cannot ignore that fact.
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The Body of Christ is like Voltron.
Together we are complete. Apart, we’re not living up to our potential. When I was growing up, there was a show on TV about the pilots of five giant robot lions. These five lions had the ability to join together to form the giant robot named Voltron. In virtually every episode, there was a bad guy who threatened humanity, and at first they would try to beat him with just the lions. But ultimately, the only way to win was to form Voltron. So they banded together and defeated the bad guy. I always wondered why they didn’t just form Voltron right at the beginning of every battle except it would make for a very short show. But that’s the image that comes to mind for me when I read this passage. That we are like Voltron. Together we can do just about anything. Apart, we are only as good as a hand or an eye or a foot. Important, but only part of a whole. Sometimes I wonder if we are the cause of many of our own problems because we choose not to work together, to find the value in each person’s gifts.
It makes sense God created us for community.
After all we worship a God who is a community all by himself. God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Spirit. Together but distinct. We refer to the Holy Trinity as the 3-in-1. And if we believe that we are formed in God’s image like it says in Genesis, it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe we are made to live in community like God. God seems to reward being in community. In our passage from Ecclesiastes, Solomon extols the virtues of supporting one another. Jesus told us that anytime two or three are gathered in his name he is there. And the writer of Hebrews encourages us to come together regularly to build one another up and support each other in our faith. But even if you didn’t believe a word of the Bible, the scientific evidence points the same way. Community is our natural state.
John Donne once penned a famous piece of writing called Meditation XVII.
He wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”[2] Because we are all connected, when something happens to one of us, in a sense it happens to all of us. When any of us are diminished, whether it be by death or loss or persecution, it takes away from all we could be.[3] No man is an island. We are all part of the main. Or as we might say in the language of faith, we are all part of the body of Christ. God made us that way. All with different gifts, but united in the Spirit. Watching the news, listening to the radio, reading articles on the Internet or in print, it has become obvious we are less and less willing to live in community. In some bizarre way we are not willing to compromise. We are not willing to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. Instead, we dig a trench. We jump in. And we refuse to budge. But that is not how we were created. We were not meant to be divided. We are meant to find a way to live together in community so that we can make each other better people. We are meant to find a way to live in community so we can learn and grow from each other. We were not meant to be as divisive and divided as we have become. And just as we would not be able to easily just cut off our hand or leg or any body part, we should also treat our brothers and sisters in Christ with honor and love and grace. Instead of continuing to fracture ourselves based on our own personal likes and dislikes, interpretations and understandings, we should find ways to keep coming back to the table that represents what Christ gave for us all.
God wired humanity a specific way.
All of those impulses, all of those deep desires, all of those longings of the heart – for relationships, for love, for meaning, even for God – are because that’s how God made you. One of the most profound questions in life we all ask is “Who am I?” And the answer is the person God made you to be. Like it says in Psalm 139, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” But you are also shaped by your beliefs, your environment, and the people around you and that can change us both positively and negatively. Sometimes those things turn us away from seeing God or distracting us from a meaningful chance to know God. And when that happens we are less than what God intended for us to be. The world can be a harsh place. Not because of God but because of us. But these cravings of the human spirit were always meant to bring us back to him. That’s why we linger on them so much. That’s why we wonder about the meaning of life and if there is a purpose and if there is a God. Because God created us in such a way that no matter how far away you are from him in your spiritual life, there will always be a door open for you to come back, if you decide to pursue it. If you already have a deep faith in Christ, then I hope you think more about the incredible way God put us together and give thanks to Him for loving us so much that he would think about these things long before we ever did. And if you have doubts about God and where he is in your life, I hope you will decide to pursue it. I hope you will take the time to find out if it was God who really made you this way. I think you’ll be astonished by what you find.
[1] All of the examples in this section come from the article: http://www.theunlost.com/relationships/science-confirms-love-is-all-you-need-except-for-food-stuff/
[2] http://www.online-literature.com/donne/409/
[3] http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/for-whom-the-bell-tolls.html
Wired for Love
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
I was sure I finally found “the one.”
At the tender age of six years old, I thought I found her. Her name was Carrie Covey. She had long blond hair that she wore in ponytails on either side of her head and I thought she was great. When I was pencil monitor, I would save the newest, sharpest pencil for her. When I was paper monitor, I would give her a piece of paper first and then go back and hand it out to everyone else. It was pretty obvious how much I liked her. The best thing was, I think she liked me too. I invited her and a bunch of my classmates to my birthday party when I turned six and at some point during the party, she started to chase me all around the house. I ended up trapped in my sister’s room and in front of all of my friends, Carrie kissed me full on the lips. That was a great day! But alas it was not meant to be. That summer, Carrie moved away. I didn’t even know until the beginning of the next school year when I couldn’t find her. One of her neighbors said her parents moved to Utah. I hope it wasn’t because of me. But it was okay, because I fell in love many, many more times after that. And each time I fell in love, I was sure she was the one.
When I was younger, I was worried about that. Worried about finding “the one.”
I remember making the comment to my friend Lance, “What if my one lives in China and we never meet? Or what if by the time we meet she’s already married because she couldn’t wait any longer?” The idea that there is only one person out there who is your soul mate is everywhere in our culture. It’s on TV, in movies, in books, in pretty much every storytelling medium there is. Even in video games! After all Mario had his Princess Peach, Pac Man had Ms. Pac Man. And Space Ace had his Daphne. This idea of “the one” is everywhere. With just three words I think Tom Cruise ruined a generation of youth looking for love when he said to Renee Zellweger, “You complete me.” Now, I’m as much a romantic as anybody and I loved the movie Jerry Maguire, but this idea that there is only one human being out there we are searching for who can make us whole just isn’t true. The odds of anybody finding their “one” would be astronomical. That idea of love is too restrictive and doesn’t give credit to all the different ways God created for us to experience and give love – the love of friends, the love of family, parental love, and even love of humanity.
We are wired for love.
It is an essential part of who we are. We literally NEED love in our lives. That’s why we search so hard for it. Love is essential for life. Study after study has proven that. John Bowlby’s work on attachment theory[1], Rene Spitz’ work on maternal deprivation[2], and the awful condition of the children in Romanian orphanages gave ample evidence that love is an essential component of our lives.[3] It is one of the saddest stories of our time. Over 100,000 children were living in Romanian government institutions, the victims of a series of failed policies by the Romanian government who kept them in horrible conditions with poorly trained attendants. Even after the atrocious conditions were uncovered Romanian orphans still received only 5 to 6 minutes of attention per day.[4] Could you imagine a baby laying in his crib and only having human contact for 5 to 6 minutes a day? The New York Times reported, “Attendants still loll in the corridors, smoking and drinking coffee, leaving the children to rock in their cots.”[5] They estimated that 10% of all of these children will develop so poorly mentally and emotionally they will end their lives in a psychiatric institution.[6] They found that it wasn’t a lack of food or healthcare that was stunting their development, it was a lack of attention. A lack of love. Medically speaking the lack of contact, the lack of interaction, the lack of comfort and security made these children mentally deficient. Their brains were literally smaller than other children their age. We are wired for love.
Interestingly, we are not only wired to be loved, but we are also wired TO love.
An article by Psychology Today stated our need TO love is as strong as our desire to BE loved.[7] Dr. Raj Raghunathan wrote that being generous in our care and love for others does three things for us.[8] One, it encourages others to be generous to us. When we do nice things for people they often feel the desire and even the need to do something nice back. Two, something called homophily happens. Homophily is the propensity to attract like-minded people. So if you are a generous person, you tend to attract generous people in your life which is far better than being surrounded by selfish, self-centered people. And three, when we are generous, we are subconsciously saying to ourselves we are fulfilled. In fact, we have extra and our generosity stems from the overflow of our well-being. When we are stingy, we tell ourselves we don’t have enough and we need more – whether or not that’s true. We approach life from a “need” perspective and it not only colors our behavior but how we see ourselves. All of these reasons point to the idea that we are wired to love and be loved.
Wired
To fully love others, we need to know God’s love in our own lives.
It’s like those safety videos on an airplane where they tell you in case of an emergency to first put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your child. As a parent, your first instinct is to protect your child, but the truth is the best way to help your child is to help yourself first. That way, you are clear-minded and in the best possible situation to make sure your child is okay. In the same way, we can’t fully love others until we realize we are fully loved ourselves. When we feel loved, when our love tank is full, it’s so much easier for us to love others in a way that fills them up too. So if know in our hearts that there is a God who loves us, who has given so much for us, who loves us unconditionally and is constantly reaching out to us; when we internalize THAT and make that part of who we are, it frees us to be loving to others. Like it says in verse 10-11, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us… since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” God first loved us. Not that we loved God first, but he first loved us and because he loved us he taught us how to love one another. The key to a successful loving relationship is to first know and understand that you are loved and to know that God loves you abundantly. When you realize that, when you know that you are loved by the God of all love, you can enter into a loving relationship with confidence ready to give love out of the excess of what God has given you. But if you don’t feel that security of God’s love, if you enter into a relationship without the sureness of the love of God, you’re not able to fully give of yourself and you rob yourself of having the kind of love relationship God wants for you to have. Not just with your significant other, but with all of those around you.
That doesn’t mean that people who don’t believe in God don’t experience love.
Of course they do. Everyone has the capacity to experience love. It’s not only the way God made us, but the primary way he reaches out to us. God hopes that through love you will come to know him and believe in him. But you can experience love and never know where it comes from. It’s just that in that case, it’s going be like seeing a 3D movie and forgetting the glasses. You can still see the movie, but it’s a little out of focus most of the time. Not knowing or not believing that love comes from God robs you of the assurance that comes from his love. There is a strength in knowing that no matter what happens, you are loved by someone tremendously and unconditionally. Knowing that frees us from the pitfalls of the Jerry Maguire Syndrome – always searching for someone to complete us. Let’s face it, we can’t rely on other people to make us whole. We need to have that kind of self-assurance BEFORE we go out into the world so that we’re equipped to love someone else. So we can love from our overflow.
Don’t look to me as an expert.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes. And I haven’t always come from a place of self-assurance. Just ask Cassie. I’m far from perfect in this category. I struggle with doubts and when I’m hurting it’s not easy for me to remember I’m loved by God. But I do know that God’s love has made me a stronger person. God’s love has helped to see me through some pretty difficult times. And knowing God loves me gives me the strength to love Cassie and Emma the way I hope they deserve to be loved. I still make mistakes. I still sometimes succumb to my own internal doubts and fears. But having God in my life has helped me to overcome those doubts and fears and to be a stronger person. I hope God will do that for you, too. What I hope is that in your own doubts and fears, in those times when you feel distant from God or you resort to your own inner weaknesses, that you’ll remember these words and gain strength from them. I hope that you’ll realize that you don’t need someone to “complete” you because God loves you completely already. And that in your times of doubt, you’ll think about how you are made to love and be loved and that gift comes from God.
[1] http://www.simplypsychology.org/bowlby.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Spitz
[3] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/20/280237833/orphans-lonely-beginnings-reveal-how-parents-shape-a-childs-brain
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/25/world/romanian-orphans-prisoners-of-their-cribs.html?_r=0
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sapient-nature/201401/the-need-love
[8] Each of these are found in the above article
Wired to Find Meaning In Life
What is the meaning of life?
It’s a question most of us have asked ourselves at one time or another. In fact, 75% of Americans believe that there is a higher purpose and meaning for their lives and nearly 70% believe that finding that deeper purpose is a high priority.[1] This isn’t 75% of Christian-Americans or religious Americans, this is 75% of all Americans. An even higher number believe “there is more to life than the physical world and society.”[2] 88%! Even a surprising number of atheists ponder the meaning of life. In a Pew Gallop poll, 35% said that they often think about the higher purpose of their life.[3] Over a third of atheists OFTEN think about this! That’s amazing! They don’t believe in God or an afterlife, but they do believe there is a higher purpose for their life. Why would they think that? Why would people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife or divine providence hold on to this fiction that there is any meaning to life at all? Unless it’s not. Fiction that is.
As a kid, I thought I had it all figured out.
When I was five years old, I had to have a tonsillectomy. I don’t know what it was about my tonsils, but they would get infected seemingly every other week. Dr. Thom and Dr. Crehan knew me very well. One look down my throat and about 10 minutes later I was getting a shot in the rear. The only good part was that afterward, my mom would take us to Tommy’s Hamburgers, the original one in downtown LA and I’d get a burger and a soda and eat it while sitting on the floor of our car. I had a lot of Tommy’s Hamburgers. But going to the doctor inspired me, even at five years old to want to do something to help other people and I decided I wanted to be a doctor. I went through all of elementary school, junior high, and high school with the same goal in mind, but when I got to college that all changed. I realized that being a doctor wasn’t going to be the path for me. But I still felt this pull on my life and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. When I finally heard God’s call on my life to enter into ministry, I realized that earlier when I thought for sure I was going to be a doctor, it was really a call to find a way to help people. My calling, my meaning in life was to help others in whatever way I could.
Apparently, I’m not alone.
Teens who are notorious for drifting away from church and for feeling disheartened by traditional means of faith have a deep sense they were created for something more. Eighty-seven percent report they believe there is an overall purpose to life. 87%! When asked what they thought that purpose was, the two most common answers were to help people and to be a good Christian.[4] Number three was to be a good person. Nearly 50% of teens thought that one of these answers was the meaning to life. Helping others. Being good. A 17-year old in Kentucky said, “I think that my purpose in life is to help people. I’ve gone through hard times myself, and I can’t even imagine the situations some kids are in — much worse even than the life that I’ve had growing up. I think that as long as I have the ability, and want to help people, that’s what I should do.” A 17-year old from Utah said, “Everyone is here to fill in the holes in other people’s lives, whether little or big holes. Not everybody is the same, and we all need to share our talents and strengths to uplift other people.” And a 15-year old girl from CA said, “I am here to mourn with those that mourn, help those in need, comfort those who stand in need of comfort, and to stand as a witness to God at all times and in all things and in all places. I am here to stand for faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, and integrity.”[5] But what is it that inspires us to believe these things? What is it we hold in common between believers and non-believers, in church-goers and non-church-goers, in young and old that tells us we are made for a purpose? It’s God. God created us to search for meaning. We are wired to find the meaning of life.
Whether or not you believe in God, you are wired to search for the meaning of life.
There is something within us that compels us to search for life’s meaning. There’s something within us that craves to know why we are here, what purpose we are meant to serve. And God gives us that deeper purpose. With God we understand what Jesus tells the Pharisee when he’s asked about the Greatest Commandment. Jesus tells him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” It’s this idea of loving God and loving others that helps us to better understand why we are here and it’s fulfilling this commandment that gives us meaning. There are so many ways to show your love of others. It could be with your cooking or your singing or your writing or your gardening or your teaching. It could be how your talents make life easier or better or more meaningful for others. There isn’t just one way to love your neighbor. There are as many ways to help others as there are talents in the world. More actually. And it’s in the process of loving others and helping them that we have meaning in our lives.
But you don’t have to take my word for it, or even God’s.
From a purely scientific point of view, helping others gives us a sense of purpose. Researchers have studied this and have found that helping others gives us a sense of free will, it helps us to feel like we are good people, and it strengthens our relationships to others both in a specific and a general sense.[6] But it also gives us a general sense of purpose. Helping others makes us feel that life has meaning.[7] And if you’re a Christian that all makes sense. Most of what the prophets and the disciples record for us tells us to help others and to build one another up. Whether it’s in the New Testament or Old Testament. It doesn’t matter. The prophet Micah tells us we are “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).” Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Galatia, “…do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:13-14).’” And God himself tells us in Leviticus, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” Helping is a part of who we are and who were created to be. And here’s why.
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
We are meant to be a city on a hill.
We are meant to point the way to God. As Christians we understand God has already done so much for us that we are compelled to do good things for others. We know Christ sacrificed everything so that we might have eternal life and so we dedicate ourselves to helping others receive God into their lives too. We join together in God’s quest to bring as many as possible to him. So for us, doing good, helping others is not only what we feel compelled to do to love our neighbor, but is our way of honoring what God has done for us. Anybody can do good, but knowing why we do good and where this drive comes from gives us a sense of peace and wholeness that comes from nowhere else.
But there’s more to it than that.
Knowing God is at the heart of all things and believing he is are two different ideas altogether. Finding that peace in your life doesn’t come from the head but from the heart. And most people don’t spend enough time thinking about God for it to really sink in to their heart even if they do a bunch of good stuff. When asked how often they think about the deeper meaning of their lives, 38% of people barely think about it if at all. When asked if they thought about going to heaven the results were worse. Only 11% thought about it yearly and a whopping 46% never thought about it at all. And it gets worse still. When asked if they “think often about what I must do to experience peace in the afterlife,” 50% of people said they didn’t.[8] As a society, we pay lip service to knowing God and finding the meaning of life, but too often we don’t think about it much at all. Part of that is the hectic nature of life. But part of it is that we just don’t make it a priority.
If there is an afterlife and God is a part of that, this really is the single biggest question of our lives.
We owe it to God and we owe it to ourselves to work on this and to make it a part of who we are. So if you are a Christian and you do believe in God, I want to ask you to do two things. One, think about this way more than once a year. And two, make it a priority to know God better. I promise that if you do, you’ll be even more at peace than you already are and you’ll feel more fulfilled than you already do. Help others with the mindset that we do so to honor God and to light the way for him. And if you don’t believe in God or you have doubts, please at least consider that this desire you have to find the meaning of life might just perhaps really come from God. That this deep longing you have to figure out they “whys” and “wherefores” of life have to do with something beyond this world. And then open your heart to the possibility of more.
[1] http://www.lifeway.com/Article/Research-Ultimate-purpose-and-meaning
[2] Ibid
[3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/01/10-facts-about-atheists/
[4] Data about teens comes from http://www.gallup.com/poll/11215/how-many-teens-see-purpose-life.aspx
[5] http://www.gallup.com/poll/11215/how-many-teens-see-purpose-life.aspx
[6] http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_helping_others_help_you_find_meaning_in_life
[7] Ibid.
[8] All data in this section comes from http://www.lifeway.com/Article/Research-Ultimate-purpose-and-meaning
Wired to Search For God
Why are people sending us “good thoughts?”
I know it’s meant with the best of intentions, but what does that mean? I see this a lot on Facebook, mostly from non-religious friends but occasionally from religious ones, too. Usually it’s in response to a friend going through a hard time. Whether it’s a health situation or the loss of someone close to them or getting fired from a job, if you scroll down the comments you’ll usually find someone who will say, “Sending you good thoughts” or “My thoughts are with you.” At first, I thought this was nice, a way for people to invoke solidarity with someone they care about, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like an empty platitude. “Sending you good thoughts.” What does that mean? Are they facing the general direction of the person when they are sending these good thoughts? What is the person on the other end supposed to be doing with these good thoughts? It would be better to send money. After all thoughts are only worth a penny.
When people make these comments, I know it’s only meant in the best way.
But without God what does it really mean. When people are offering their prayers, they are offering something tangible. You might be thinking that prayers are about as tangible as good thoughts, but when we offer a prayer for people, we are offering our commitment. We’re offering our time, we’re offering our reputation by appealing to God on behalf of someone else, we’re offering our humility by bowing before God and asking him if not downright begging him for some kind of intervention. We are putting ourselves in front of the Creator of the Universe and saying, “Pay attention! This person is worthy of your help.” And people understand that idea. Whether they are religious or not, people appreciate your prayers. Because even if they don’t believe, there’s a part of them that understands the commitment you are making on their behalf. But here’s the thing. I think, deep down, most people believe in God. I don’t think there are as many atheists as we commonly believe. They might not believe in God the way we understand God, but most people have this inclination to something higher than themselves. And that’s why they say things like “sending good thoughts.” They may not believe in God, they may not believe in the power of prayer, but they believe there is something out there they can appeal to even if they don’t know what that something is.
That’s because we are wired to search for God.
When God created humanity, he put within us this longing to search for him. We want to know God. We might refer to God in different ways, we might understand God in different ways, but we are all pointed in our lives toward God. Does that mean every religion is true? No. Does that mean we all believe in the same God? No. But it does mean that people encounter the Holy Spirit whether or not they believe in it or call it by that name. It means that God is constantly revealing himself to us in and through the world around us. But our hearts have become hardened. Like the callous at the bottom of your big toe or on your writing hand. Remember that? When people used to write for a living and they would develop a callous on whatever hand they used for writing? We don’t have that anymore because of computers. Now, I’m sure we’ll get something else. But like that callous that naturally forms over time by being constantly rubbed the wrong way, our hearts get hardened too and it makes it more difficult for us to see God. That’s why Jesus told the disciples that Isaiah’s prophecy has come true. We have eyes to see and ears to hear, but can’t seem to do either. But despite this callousness of life, despite our own hard-heartedness, despite all of that, we can’t help but seek God.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” – Acts 17:24-31
God created us and gave us life and in doing so hoped we would one day seek him and find him.
It’s simply part of who we are. It’s built into our DNA. If there was ever a way to dissect the spiritual part of our lives, we would find that God put us together in a certain way and that this desire to know him and to seek him is built into every strand within us. God isn’t something you leave behind at church. Instead God is always with us. That’s why Luke wrote in this book that God does not live in temples built by human hands. Because God lives within us! We are just very good at ignoring him. Instead we turn to other things to fill that part of our lives. We turn to other gods and other goals and other desires to fulfill this basic need to search for the divine. It’s so much a part of us that we don’t even realize how it bleeds into how we act and behave. That’s where phrases like “sending good thoughts” or “my thoughts are with you” enter into our vocabulary. There’s a part of us that wants to pray, to communicate with God, but we just don’t know it or understand it. Maybe we’re just flat out opposed to it. Maybe all your life you were told that if you prayed and believed, God would answer and he just flat out didn’t. And so you gave up on prayer. But there’s a part of you that yearns to communicate again. There’s a part of you that wants to appeal to something greater than ourselves either individually or collectively to do something. But we just can’t bring ourselves to do it.
I have found that most people are not truly atheists.
They may not believe in God the way we talk about God in church, but they are not truly atheists. To be sure there are some out there, but most people object to God not because the thought of God is stupid or childish or immature. But because they have found fault with him. God wasn’t there for them in their moment of crisis. God didn’t keep his promises. God allows evil to exist in the world. The God in the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament don’t add up to the same God. And if our understanding of God crashes head long into our experiences in life, God often is the victim. If God can’t uphold his end of the bargain, then he must not be real. But those objections are more about religion than the existence of God. Most people’s objections to faith are more about religion than God. They are more about our understanding of God rather than if he exists. I’ve heard horror stories about people who have a deep misunderstanding of God who are self-professed Christians and sometimes even pastors and church leaders, and if they were my experience with the God of Christianity, I wouldn’t believe in him either. My friend Jon from when we lived in Atlanta was so turned off by the church because of the hypocrisy and outright racism he found there. His friend and her fiancé went to her pastor to be married…and the pastor refused. She was white and was in love with an African-American man and the minister refused to do the ceremony because he said it was unbiblical. I don’t know where he got that from, but I know for a fact it doesn’t say that anywhere in the Bible, but he used the Bible as a defense to justify his own racism. If that was your experience with religion, maybe you wouldn’t believe either. I had a friend who used to be a pastor. He was consoling a grieving mother whose son had committed suicide. They were talking after the memorial service when one of his parishioners came up and told this bereaved woman that her son was going to hell for what he did. By the way, also not in the Bible. These are simply outdated untruths that a few ignorant people never bothered to question. And if that were typical of your experience with God, you probably wouldn’t believe in him either.
Instead people turn elsewhere to connect with God.
They turn to other religions or to other philosophies like Buddhism. They turn to material things like money. They put their faith instead in science. Because people are yearning to connect with SOMETHING even if they can’t put their finger on it. People everywhere are searching for answers. They are searching for meaning in life. They are hoping to find the answer to the eternal question, “Why am I here?” And if they really didn’t believe in something more, if they really didn’t believe in God, they would stop searching because without God there is no meaning. Without God, life simply is. There is no good and evil. Those are just constructs of the human mind. There is no love. That is just a chemical reaction within the body responding to external and internal stimuli. There is no soul or inner self. It’s all just an illusion. And most people just can’t go that far. They believe in love. They believe in the soul or something like a soul that defines who they are. They believe in good and evil. So their objection isn’t to the possibility of God but in how we’ve come to understand him. But this search. This search for answers. This search for meaning. These are things that God put within the DNA of our soul to make us curious so that even the most jaded people amongst us might be tempted to seek him out.
I was watching The Big Bang Theory the other day.
And there was this episode where the guys are trying to buy tickets to the new Star Wars movie. Leonard finds out that tickets went on sale but when they try to buy them, they are all locked out. They try refreshing their screens, they try different websites, but nothing is working so Sheldon – a self-proclaimed atheist – announces that “desperate times call for desperate measures” and he drops to his knees to pray. “Lord, this is Sheldon Cooper. You’re good friends with my mom. I know I’ve spent my whole life denying that you exist.” Suddenly Wolowitz shouts out, “Got it!” And Sheldon concludes, “And I will continue to do so!” There is something in us that believes in something more, even if we are only willing to believe for the moment. There is something in us that hopes for something more. If you’ve never fully explored what that something is; if you’ve felt that pull in your life but haven’t really done much about it, I want to consider that maybe, just maybe God did wire you this way. That he has been tugging at your thoughts because he wants you to be connected to him. And I ask that you simply open up your heart to the possibility of God in your life. I’m going to ask you to take some time to really think about God and to actively search for him in everything you do. I’m hoping you will develop that desire to have eyes that see and ears that hear because I know God wants you to be a part of what he has in store for you. If you’ve already made that choice to open up to God, I challenge you to open your life to him even more. To allow him access to those areas you have always been resistant to, and only you and he know what those areas are. God made you to be naturally curious about life because he wants you to find him. But I won’t be sending any good thoughts your way. Instead, I’ll be saying a prayer.
The Year of Jubilee
Extraordinary kindness.
Love. Generosity. There are people in your life who go above and beyond what’s expected. People who impact you in an extraordinary way. I feel blessed to have more than my fair share of people like that in my life. My friend Lyn is one of those people. We worked at Disneyland together and would hang out often. She was one of the sweetest and nicest people I’ve met and her good nature really stood out one day while I was up at UCLA during my undergraduate days. There was a girl I had a serious crush on at school and things weren’t going so well. I called Lyn up and just poured out my heart to her and as she listened to my frustration and sadness, she told me everything was going to be okay and then said, “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right there.” I waited in my room when there was a knock at the door about an hour or two later. I opened it up to see Lyn there, holding this Pooh Bear she bought just for me. She gave me a hug, said “I thought you could use a friend,” and just sat with me for a while before heading back home. That one act of kindness has stuck with me ever since. That was about 30 years ago now and it still feels fresh in my mind. Who does that? Not only did she make the long drive up from Anaheim to UCLA (no small feat in itself), but she made time to stop at Disneyland, get me a big Pooh Bear, brave the traffic, and find parking on a campus notorious for little to no parking. Not to mention we were both college students on a budget. Still she did all of that just for me.
In times of need, it’s good to know you have friends you can count on.
Back when I was in seminary, I had the extraordinary opportunity to attend a seminar in France about Methodism in Europe. We were going to stay for a week at a Christian retreat center in the small city of Sete on the French coast and would meet up with fellow pastors from all over Europe. To go would cost quite a bit of money and Cassie and I were not as well off then as we are now. It was a struggle just to send me to seminary. Even now, it would still have been a stretch to pay for it, but Cassie agreed this was too good of an opportunity to pass up so we committed to figuring out the finances along the way. As part of the curriculum, the school had us send out ten letters to friends and family to ask for their help in deferring the cost. I did it to fulfill my obligation to the class, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be a burden to family and friends or make them think I was abusing our relationship to get something out of it, so I also sent a separate note to everyone to explain all of that and let them know we weren’t expecting anything. But one of my friends did. My buddy Lance gave me $500. I was flabbergasted. Up to that point, I don’t think Cassie and I had given $500 in one lump sum to anyone or anything so to receive that gift was extraordinary. And it’s not like Lance was rich. He didn’t own a mansion. He was just making a living like everyone else so $500 was a very significant amount of money. But he said he wanted to help and knew this was important. It was. To this day, the things we saw and talked about during that week have impacted my life and my ministry. It was the first time ever I had the chance to travel abroad. It was the first time I had the chance to experience God in a different country through different eyes. It really was life changing and I have been so grateful for that opportunity.
When people show extraordinary love, it changes your life.
And you don’t have to travel across the world for it to have that kind of effect on you. If you have your Bibles or a Bible app on your phones, I want you to find the book of Leviticus 25:8-10. Leviticus 25:8-10. Think back to a time when someone in your life did something like that for you. Think of a time when someone was there for you just when you needed them. Maybe they were there to comfort you when you were feeling like the world was coming to an end. Maybe they took care of you at the hospital and came to visit when you were scared or lonely. Maybe you were in need and someone reached out with a helping hand. That is humanity at its best, when we behave like the people God is hoping we will be. And when we do that, we can change the world. Lance helped me out about 15 years ago and Lyn came to my side almost 30 years ago and I still remember both like they happened yesterday. When people show extraordinary love, you can’t help but have it affect you. It influences you. It changes you. And that’s exactly the way God planned it. God WANTS us to be extraordinary givers of compassion and kindness. God WANTS us to overwhelm people with our love and generosity. Because that’s how we are going to change the world.
8 “‘Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years.9 Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. 10 Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. – Leviticus 25:8-10
Every fiftieth year was proclaimed by God to be a Year of Jubilee!
It is a time of extraordinary forgiveness, compassion and kindness. God tells the Israelites, “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” But these aren’t just words. God tells the Israelites to set his people free. If someone was in debt, their debt was to be forgiven. If someone had to sell their land, their land was given back. If someone was a servant, they were released from service. It was complete freedom and forgiveness. God wanted his people to be free to serve only God. He knows when we are bound to someone else and could not take care of our basic needs, we could not truly devote ourselves to him. So just as we observe the Sabbath once a week to free ourselves for worship and rest, God wants us as a society to be restored and renewed. Restoration is important to God and thus it should be important to us. At the end of the chapter, God proclaims, “‘Even if someone is not redeemed in any of these ways, they and their children are to be released in the Year of Jubilee, 55 for the Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” We are his people and we cannot be free to serve God when we are obliged to serve others. The key to free us to be God’s people is this form of radical forgiveness, compassion, and kindness.
We’ve been talking about basic needs for the past month.
And how vital it is to have those needs met. We’ve talked primarily about physiological needs so far – food, water, shelter, clothing – but we’ve moved beyond those into what Maslow would refer to as higher needs. The need for security, the need for love, the need for kindness and acceptance. These are important needs also, every bit as important as the physical ones. Because like our physiological needs, when they aren’t filled we are inhibited from being the people God created us to be. And that’s why God demanded we celebrate this “Year of Jubilee,” to free us from whatever might be holding us back in this life. This idea of the Year of Jubilee is found embodied in the life of Christ. Christ came to liberate us from our sins, to free us from the shackles of rulers and teachers who stressed form and function over love and acceptance. Christ came not to tear down the law, but to free us from the yoke it had become and to help us realize the law was there to help us become our best selves. It wasn’t meant to be a tool of oppression as it had become. The Pharisees would use the law as a bludgeoning tool instead of a guide to right living. And we see that same attitude in our world today. People use the law to get what they want, to hurt those who aren’t like themselves, and justify their actions with “the law.” But they are not using the law as it was intended. Instead they are abusing the law for their own desires. Look at the immigration detention centers across the country. Horrific stories of abusive conditions have been reported and the governments only response is “they shouldn’t break the law.” Does that give us the right to treat them with cruelty and abusive behavior? Does that make it okay to separate siblings and only allow them to see one another once a week?[1] Does that mean it’s alright to give them rotting food and broken bathrooms? The kind of behavior we would not find acceptable among our own citizens we somehow find acceptable for those who are not? Many of our leaders like to proclaim we are a Christian nation. Then how can we blatantly ignore God’s call on us to care for the alien in our midst? How can we ignore God’s call on us to take care of the poor and those in need and still say we are God’s children?
The next Year of Jubilee is in 2025.
The Catholic Church celebrates it every 25 years instead of 50. In fact, when needed, the Pope calls for special Jubilee years like in 2015 when Pope Francis declared the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. But why wait? Why wait for the Catholic Church or for the Jewish calendar to align with the values behind the year of Jubilee? Why not instead take steps to live our lives in such extraordinary ways that we make an impact on the world around us constantly? Especially during the Christmas season as we are reminded of the great gift God bestowed upon the world through his son, Jesus, let us remind the world that Christianity is founded on the ideas of forgiveness, mercy, and redemption and act accordingly. Do one extraordinary act this year. Just one. Ponder upon the ways you can do something to impact the life of another. It doesn’t have to be with money. Look at how my friend Lyn was there for me with her presence and her thoughtfulness and what a long-lasting impact that had on my life. You can do the same. You can offer to let someone stay in your home. You can forgive a debt someone owes you. You can forgive someone for something they did to you when you have every right to be upset. There are lots of ways to be an extraordinary person. Sometimes it’s in doing the little things without complaint and with a smile day after day. The idea that God loves a cheerful giver does not just mean with money, but with everything we do. Let’s make this year and every year a chance to show the extraordinary love of God.
[1] https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/06/20/immigrant-detention-centers-us-mexico-border
Craig's Corner 