What If We Could Take It With Us? (Part 1)

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,...” Truth. (Job 1:21)

“and naked I will depart.”  Again, Truth. Rich, poor, middle-class, when the clock strikes midnight we all turn into the same thing.

All to prove what many wits have said, “You Can’t Take It With You.”  What kind of response is that supposed to create?  According to Job it is supposed to result in our praise of the name of the LORD. Really? Is the fact that we enter and leave this life naked supposed to be a comforting thought, a wake-up call or a depressing thought which causes us to ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die?’ 

Couldn’t God have made it so that we enter life with a million bucks in an account paying 8% interest which we can take with us, along with our full collection of Beatles records? If God wants to bless us, wouldn’t that have been a better plan for Adam and Eve, et al.

What if we could, Augustine wonders?  “What if we could  take something, wouldn’t we be devouring people alive?  What is this monstrously avid appetite, when even huge beasts know their limit?” Animals know when they are full, so they stop eating, but we human beings, our appetites for ‘stuff’ is insatiable.  If God had designed the afterlife so that we could take our possessions with us can you imagine how stingy we would be in this life?  Think about it: you get past St. Peter and the Pearly Gates and the first thing you see is a money changing booth, where your savings can be turned into the currency of heaven.  I don’t know what the exchange rate would be, but people would be dying to find out.

Think about what our last will and testament would read like if we could take it with us?  Would charities stand a chance at getting 10% of our net worth? Would our children receive more than a token percentage?  Our mansions in heaven would need garages the size of football fields, but at least our kids wouldn’t have to hold estate sales (or rent dumpsters).  Still, wouldn’t you like to know that the treasure you accumulate in this life is going to pay some dividends in the life to come?

Felicity's Sentence and Grace

Felicity Huffman, famous actress, will spend 14 days in prison.  She is an admitted criminal, having committed fraud, helping her daughter cheat in her college admission tests.  She also will pay a $30,000 fine, spend a year under court-ordered supervision and serve 250 hours of community service.

If you research this story you will find ‘outrage’ voiced from those who believe her sentence is too light when compared to sentences given to other non-white criminals.  (See, for example, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/us/felicity-huffman-sentencing.html) That is a worthwhile discussion to have, whether our criminal justice system is really ‘blind’, meaning that it should render justice without any partiality to a person’s skin or status.  While I could join that chorus, I want to use Ms. Huffman’s sentence to get us thinking about another topic: the nature of grace.

God’s grace.  I wonder if we truly understand how scandalous grace really is. We sing about it as being amazing, but that is because we think about it in the context of God forgiving and accepting ‘me’.  We all, mostly, agree that it is amazing and wonderful that God should forgive ‘me’ for ‘my sins’.  But, what about Felicity?  Should God ‘remember her sins no more?’, which is one description of how completely God forgives us? Should Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross be used to cover the sin of fraud by a rich and famous white woman?

You see, that is how grace works.  Here’s a little of what Ms. Huffman confessed to the Judge, which I am giving her credit for being a heart-felt statement of contrite repentance.  “I was frightened, I was stupid, and I was so wrong. I am deeply ashamed of what I have done….I take full responsibility for my actions." When God hears a confession like this, if it is sincere, God through Christ forgives the sin completely.  Does that make you happy or sad, this amazing grace we profess?

Human justice (imperfectly) serves society’s goals of retribution and rehabilitation.  God’s goal is to bring God’s children home. When I hear stories like Ms. Huffman’s I am thankful that God is a Judge who sees me just as I am and loves me anyway.  That is grace, and I want Ms. Huffman, and all criminal offenders, to know that scandalous and amazing grace.

Driving Jesus Mad

Road rage. Who among us has not engaged in it, either as the perpetrator or the victim, likely both. Lately, people with guns have taken to settling their rage with shots.  What’s up with drivers?

I read an article on the psychology of road rage (credit: ‘Why do some drivers allow road rage to take over behind the wheel?’ Stephanie Blaszczyk, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published Aug. 16, 2019). Studies show the reason otherwise ‘normal’ people act like lunatics behind the wheel is that we are ‘anonymous’ and ‘social conventions’ don’t apply. You know, like, don’t throw toys, share the sandbox, etc. When we are in a vehicle we believe we can act as if (a) we own the road; and (b) everyone else had better respect my right to drive like the freeway is the Indy 500 track.

But, for people of faith, most of us are taught that God is always with us. ALWAYS. (See Psalm 139) There are plenty of circumstances in which we would prefer to not think about that. One time we really don’t believe it is true is when we have just been cut off on the highway.  Fingers are raised. Language is spoken which we would never say in church (or even the grocery store.) What if we really believed that Jesus is riding in the passenger seat as we get stuck in the fast lane behind someone going the speed limit?  Would we then race around and cut in front of the car thinking, ‘that’ll teach them to take my lane!’  Or would we look over at Jesus, smile and say, ‘Boy, that person really obeys the law, what a good model for society, right Jesus?’

I know, I know. Some people are really lousy drivers and they don’t get that the law says slower vehicles should travel in the ‘slow lane’.  But, really, when someone gets you hopping mad would you drive like ‘that’ if you were driving Jesus?

Because, of course, you are.  You are not anonymous. And while social conventions may seem to not apply on the road, God’s commands to love your neighbor, even your enemy, do. Drive like you love that other vehicle’s operator. Drive like you love God.

Don’t drive Jesus mad!

Remembering Tony's 'Going Home'

(The following words concluded my sermon in memory of my friend and brother in Christ, Tony Scherg, who died in August 2018, following a very courageous medical battle. We remember, Tony.)

Tony wanted so desperately to go home.  He knew that he would pass from the home where he would be surrounded by the loves of his life to the home where he would receive the victor’s crown: the ultimate reward for those who keep the faith through suffering.

Jesus promised Tony, “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Rev. 3:21) The promise that became reality for Tony on Sunday morning is not just for him. It is ‘for all who long for the Lord’s appearing.’  It’s what you hope for that defines your death and your life.

Life is not defined by sickness, by cancer, the limits of medical science. Life is defined by the fact that the people who long to see Jesus face to face are promised that their pilgrim journey will finally bring them home.  In Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies, she writes about a story her minister told.  When she was about seven, her best friend got lost one day. “The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark. She was very frightened. Finally, a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, ‘You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.’”

          

Corry, you brought Tony to this church. Through the three baptisms he witnessed, through the life he witnessed in you, this church became his home.  Mitch and the Praise Team brought him under their wing as he learned to praise God with his bass. And, in time, this church became his home.  And so it is proper that we bring Tony back here, to his church. Because Tony wanted to go home. And he knew he could find his way home from here.

You can too.  If you want to find your way home.

Baseball, Mud and Saving Lives

Ray Chapman died in 1920, hit in the head by the pitch of a slick baseball. That was enough to get the powers that run America’s Pastime to take action.  A baseball should not be a weapon that kills people. ‘Let’s find a solution’, everyone who mattered agreed.

No Major League Baseball player had ever died from getting hit by a baseball before. No one has since either.  When baseballs are manufactured they look nice and clean, but they are very slick. Pitchers can easily lose their grip, and that is what can turn a baseball into a weapon. The baseball authorities knew they could do better. They knew that they must find a solution.

They tried rubbing the new slick baseballs with all kinds of materials. Nothing worked the way they wanted it to until they discovered ‘miracle mud’ in the 1930’s. “Miracle mud’ comes from a one mile stretch of one river in the United States, a secret location, so secret that not even baseball’s owners know it.  But, since the 1950’s, it’s been the rule that this mud must be rubbed on every baseball for every MLB game, some 240,000 baseballs a season.

Pretty amazing, don’t you think. Someone dies.  The governing authorities decide they need to do something about it.  Not just lament Ray Chapman’s death; find a way to prevent the next one. Then, with the will to change in place,  the genius of the American mind works, experiments, until a solution is found. Then, that solution is written into the baseball rules. Everyone must follow the rules, because mud on baseballs saves lives.

The American mind, the American spirit. Creatively making life safer.

When there is a will, we find a way.

Hmmm.

(Source and credit: Sports Illustrated, July 29-Aug. 5, Stuck in the Mud, by Emma Baccelieri)

Community Picture

We came for the music. We stayed for the community.

The western sun brilliant in the cloudless sky. Thursday’s twilight approaching.  A sample of a local brew safely perched in the cup-holder in my blue fabric sling chair.  Some Gouda and Wheat Thins for in between sips.  Live jazz like you hear in the big city, right here in downtown small city.  The crowd was an eclectic mix of boomers and millennials, of X-ers and Z-ers, and whatever today’s toddler generation will be named.  No one asked who anyone loved, married, or didn’t. I couldn’t tell the citizens from the guests as a thousand folks mixed and mingled, danced and laughed.

I didn’t love the music. I did love the food. A buffet of food trucks to feed every appetite: Asian, Mexican, Greek, American.  We found old friends and we sat together, laughing about getting old, admiring how diverse our city had become. Where did all of these people come from, we wondered? These were the people our growing economy is bringing to town, giving them gatherings to entice and retain, we surmised. The future and the past all together, sitting in random rows, as dogs and babies entertained.  An unintentional intentional community had formed right around us.

A community drawn by the light; by the bread; by the wine; by the friends of many languages and nations. And by the music.

I asked my wife, only half in jest, ‘I wonder where all of these people go to church?’ The answer is that some 60% of them don’t attend.  And for the other 40%, they divide into churches of many tribes with many rules and admission tests, lest ‘impurity’ stain each other’s tribe.

I can only begin to imagine the joy on Jesus’ face as the community gathers on Thursday nights in the public square…all God’s children.  I can only imagine the quizzical frown on Jesus’ face as the Sunday community continues two centuries of failure to replicate that picture of Thursday’s community.

When did we decide that the people we party with on Thursday could not worship with us on Sunday? Talk about fields ripe for harvest.

Churches and Hospitals: Which is the Neighbor?

The parking lot was filled to overflowing.  A woman dressed in a burka, trailed by three children, passed me on the parking lot.  She looked at me with a look that I can best describe as fear. I smiled at her and said ‘hello’.  I don’t know if it helped ease her fear. 

In the bridgeway from the parking lot to the hospital I was passed by black and brown and white children and their parents.  Some small kids were carried on backs of moms. Some children were pushed along in wheel chairs. Some parents were chatting and walking as if they had just received very good news. Some were quietly moving forward as if  the news was difficult to comprehend.

At the reception desk, while they made the inquiries to verify that I could join a family as their pastor in waiting for the results of an infant’s heart surgery, I picked up business-sized cards offering access to interpreters in Mandarin, Arabic, Burmese, Cantonese, Spanish, Hmong and Somali.  Disease does not discriminate. Neither should the effort to offer a cure.

What does it mean to be a ‘neighborhood hospital’ today? I grew up a block from a ‘neighborhood hospital’ which served the ‘Protestants’, while the other hospital in town served the ‘Catholics’. At least that is the way I perceived it. Today, I think, the definition of ‘neighborhood’ is closer to what Jesus was trying to get at when he talked about being a neighbor in Luke 10:25-37. A hospital’s ‘neighborhood’, especially one serving a specialized population like children, is not defined by geography or religion or social status. A hospital’s neighbors are those in need of its services.  Anyone and everyone is welcomed to these places of care, and they are doing their best to make sure you feel welcomed. They speak your language.

You might say, “Well, of course, that is what we expect a hospital to be. Healthcare should erect no boundaries, should ask no questions other than, ‘Can we offer you what you desperately need?’”

Is the only question a ‘neighborhood church’ asks of its guests, ‘Can we offer you what you desperately need?’  If Jesus re-wrote the story of “The Good Samaritan” using churches and hospitals as the illustrations, which would be the model ‘neighbor’?