Can I make 8 turnovers and still get to heaven?

Really, it’s not just a facetious question!

Usually the content of the question is slightly different, but the intent is still the same. How bad can I be and still earn my eternal reward? Is there some point where even Jesus, in all His grace and mercy, will give up on me?

Let me say from the outset that it is a different question from “Can I make 8 turnovers and still have a job?” That question, purely a matter of law, is much easier to answer. No, you can’t. In a contractual world, you get paid for performance. And if you don’t perform – and one might argue that 8 turnovers indicates lack of performance – you ought not get paid, whether that be a salary of hundreds of thousands of dollars or the prestige of a starting position or whatever. In this life, you get paid to be good, and if you’re not good, you don’t get paid.

It is, after all, what makes this life understandable at all.

But, of course, as a matter of grace, you’re not getting paid to be good by God. That may come as a shock if you think about it a little bit. God does not pay us to be good, he just demands it. Luther says, “Therefore I surely ought to thank and praise, serve and obey him.” Nothing in it for me. As my father used to say, “Because I said so. That’s why!”

This is where faith trips us up every time. We like to see ourselves as the perfect free agents, owners of our own will, choosers of our moments and our destiny. We think that all of this good stuff is coming to us because we deserve it, we earned it. We may even be willing to take some responsibility for our faults. At least within reason. But that’s the brick wall that we never see coming. For that fault is a debt we could never pay off.

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? Malachi 3:2

The problem with Grace is that it can never be a partial proposition. To get a little grace is to get it all, to receive forgiveness once is to stand beholden forever. As much as we’d like Grace to be our fall-back position, it belongs to a God who will not abide anything less that complete devotion, complete lordship, complete pardon.

But that’s what makes it Grace! For it is not a matter of 8 turnovers, no more than it would matter if it was 88 or only one. The question itself misses the point – our place with God never depends on what we do or do not do, but only in what God does. Or did, for he sent his only Son not merely for the drama but to change the very nature of heaven and earth and of us.

So, to paraphrase Dr. Luther, when you put the ball on the ground, really give it a boot. For the one who counts isn’t keeping score. Sometimes I think he might just be getting a good laugh at all of it.

Up, Up and Away

I hate having to confess to doing stupid things. But, as I must, I will. Last Friday, as I did my chores around the house, I kept one enraptured eye on the cable news running on my TV, watching and waiting to see what would happen with the now famous runaway balloon and its six-year-old passenger. I prayed for his safety, as did probably millions of other people.

I fell for the hoax.

In my own defense, how could I have known better? Well, maybe a little actual journalism on the part of anyone who works for the people who put the pictures on my TV might have altered the story before it was too late, but who’s to say? Given that the National Guard got caught up in the hunt, I feel somewhat acquitted. But still angry.

I am amazed at the brazen nerve of this family. Not surprised, but amazed nonetheless. Amazed by what they were willing to do, to put others through, to put even their small children through. Amazed at the depth of the deceit and the hubris all for a chance to be on TV. Again. I guess once was not, in fact, enough. For this is the new addiction of our age. Our lust for publicity is as unbounded as an junkie holding up a convenience store to get cash to score a quick hit. Thousands lining up for an American Idol audition. Not because they can sing, not necessarily because they want to bring their gift to the world, but because they know that the worst, the most embarrassing will get their 15 minutes of fame. And we gotta have our 15 minutes! Or even 15 seconds.

We long to be the next William Hung. Famous. For nothing. And what will save us from this self-destructive humiliation?

But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:6

Faith lives in the constant tension of public and private, of a word that must be proclaimed from rooftops and a piety that must not aggrandize. I do not believe that Jesus means that we should never pray in public or show our faith to others (though I fear that many of my more Lutheran brethren wish he did), but that we should always guard against making grace a servant of our lesser nature, grasping glory for ourselves, shining forth not God’s light but mine.

In creating us as community, God gave birth to a public world. But like all of his good gifts, it is best when it serves his purposes and spoils when we twist it to our own. The world should watch us not to see us, but to see God in us, to behold the little Christ we are called to be. To show that, to jump up and down and scream and shout and seek every moment of attention available to us so that Christ would be known is a good thing indeed. A right thing.

If we do it well.

It is also a gift of God that we are given these small learning moments, and here is one to be sure. We are in danger of raising a generation impoverished of attention, because we are teaching our children all the wrong things about it. The spotlight of self-promotion burns harshly, and the reward of fame floats away like a helium-filled balloon. But to be an instrument of grace, to speak and be Christ in the world is true and never-ending glory.

It might not get you a TV show. But then again, you might not really need one.

Not the way I imagined he would fulfill his promise

He promised in his campaign that he would bring together disparate groups, that he would bridge vast divides and create new coalitions our of old enemies.

Who knew it would be the Republican National Committee and the Taliban?

Today they are one mind in their criticism and condemnation of the President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. As if it was his fault that the Nobel Committee chose to give him the award. As if there is something negative about an American President winning an award, or an American city being honored to host an Olympic games.

Was there someone else who was supposed to win?

This is the world where we live now, a world of institutionalized enmity with 24-hour-a-day cable news coverage. A world where we cheer our opponents losses and scoff at their victories. Not just civility, but basic sportsmanship, even humanity itself, has become an unaffordable luxury, an unprofitable lost art that will come to exist only in museums and old, old memories.

Which I think is exactly what this award is going to be a good thing.

I came late to the news this morning, having been up far too long into the night watching a football game. A hard fought game in ridiculous conditions with a stunning ending. But maybe the best moment for me wasn’t during the game, but right after, when the TV cameras caught the players of the teams crossing the field to shake a hand, pat a helmet, speak a small and gracious word. Which was why they played the game, after all.

I think it’s easy to miss the amazing importance of that. For 60 minutes they fought hard, hit hard, tried with every effort to defeat one another. But when the game was done these young men remembered their shared humanity, that they could be opponents without being enemies, that they could battle without hate.

I doubt that scene will make the ESPN highlights, which is too bad. Too bad for us. Too bad for our children. Where are they going to see that kind of example?

The news tells me of a recent political event, where attendees took turns shooting guns at a variety of targets, including one in the likeness of their political opponent who is, yes, a member of Congress. Yes, they shot guns at an effigy of a member of the United States Congress. Not a bunch of rednecks or hoodlums in some backyard or back alleyway, but elected officials and political figures and the person who believes themselves worthy of being in Congress themselves. I don’t think I’m ok with that. Are we replacing debate and dialog with gunplay? Yes, “pretend” gunplay. At least for now.

We have come to this point, that lacking real interest or efforts for peace or harmony or even adult conversation in our world, we are left only with those who have the vision and courage to at least hope for it. And if the Nobel Peace Prize committee has the wisdom to recognize that very rare hopefulness and the will to reward it, then I say good for them. The first step toward any goal, after all, is to desire it. And if this President has done nothing else than to truly desire a different politic, an open dialog with friend and enemy alike, a more civil society and a more peaceful world, then he has done much. Much worthy of great recognition.

Given that so few seem to desire the same thing, I await a more deserving winner.

Send in the Lutherans

The latest thing in naked power grabs disguised as religious movements is called The Conservative Bible Project, launched by Conservapedia, a web site whose title page proudly proclaims The Truth Shall Set You Free. My uncle used to tell me that when the salesman said, “let me tell you the truth,” you should get a tight hold of your wallet. It seems to be the intent of this project to provide “a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias.” I must have missed the day at seminary where they covered the corrupting liberal bias of the Bible.

I’m keen to see how that will be accomplished. I wonder what method they will use to unearth the lost conservative ideas behind such seemingly liberal sayings as:

• The laborer deserves to be paid.
• Whoever is not against us is for us.
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
• One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
• Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s …
• Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.
• Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
• If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also …
• Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor …

Those are just some of the sayings of Jesus from the Gospels. Lord help them if they try to read Isaiah.

All ludicrousness aside, behind this farce lies an interesting and important question. Since the Protestant Reformation, the supreme authority of what the Bible says has been taken as a article of faith for the church. What has never been answered completely is, what does the Bible say?

There is an assumption, of course, vital to fundamentalists everywhere, that the Bible is perfectly coherent and without guile or subtlety, that it speaks for itself and, as such, is the right and final authority for faith and life. Which must be why fundamentalist preachers spend so much time telling me what the Bible says. And even that works fairly well, until I find out that the Bible in fact tells me something else than what the preacher told me it said, hence requiring some momentous effort like the Conservative Bible Project to come along and save us all from these terrors.

Or we could just listen to the man who saved the Bible from the Dark Ages.

Luther taught us that the authority of the Bible comes not by its words, but from the giver of the Word, from the God of Scripture himself. He reminds us, as if we need to be reminded, that “God and the Scripture of God are two things, no less than the Creator and the creature are two things.” (Bondage of the Will) If he were with us today, I think he would find our obsession with the words of the Bible sinful and idolatrous, though neither new nor original. The Bible has become a modern Golden Calf, over which we cavort and screech every time we find its words in agreement with our own internal spiritual bias.

Luther once said that, left to our own devices, mankind would always seek to remake God in his own image. Or, at least in this case, to remake his Bible. The sense of distrust and despair, the fear that the words of the Bible could or should be written in any particular human viewpoint, is breathtaking. To reduce faith to the margins of human words is to grind it to dust and mix it in water and drink it. Which was what Moses did with the Golden Calf. This is the inspired Word of God, the Holy Spirit resides and reigns over it and speaks truth through it and calls and enlightens us by it. It does not need our help.

It does not deserve our scorn.

Maybe the greatest sin of all is the conceit which imagines to know the true but hidden intent, to see that which has been kept from the whole world until now. It is the greatest power move of all, tried and true, in which hearts have been broken, families and communities rent asunder, and much blood shed. It is the founding principle of radical elements of every great religion – Christian, Jewish, Islamic. Unable to submit to the Word, let us rewrite the texts themselves, and unlock the great secret and reveal that we were right the whole time.

As if there was any secret to what the Bible says.

There is, in fact, only one principal interpretive key, which cannot be cheaply labeled as either conservative or liberal. It is the cross of Jesus Christ, the power and the promise of a God who sacrifices his own best and most beloved for our salvation, who calls us to conform our lives that to this first and best example of self-giving love.

To know Christ, and, as Paul reminds us, to know “nothing … except him crucified,” is to be the master of Scriptures and the possessor of its every secret meaning. Even as God found the very human figure of Christ sufficient for the salvation of the whole creation, let us, by our faith, turn these pages and know that all we need has always been there.