What ugly is

It’s pretty shocking, really, the ugly stories coming out of Penn State this week.

Well, not, actually.

How many times must we bear witness to the incredibly horrific things that people do to each other til we come to understand that it is not so much that these stories are new and unusual as it is that they are far too old and normal.  It’s not that we’re animals – we should be so lucky.  It’s that we humans.  Sinful humans.  Originally and naturally sinful humans.  Prisoners to sin humans. 

Of course, we don’t want to hear that.  If offends our carefully constructed fantasies about free will and natural virtue.  We are merely good people to whom bad things happen.  We occasionally stumble, misstep, show bad judgment, err.  But we hold on, however ineffectually, to this constant myth, that we are in our very core good, just lacking the rare métier to forestall the temptations of our lesser nature. 

For who would want to face the truth of the abyss that is the darkness of his soul?

Perhaps that is how the secondary tragedy of the Penn State story came to be.  That any human being could perpetrate such acts upon a helpless child is unimaginable, that others could witness it and turn their back is another thing entirely.  The denial intrinsic to the crimes of the other coaches and administrators is more than self-serving at an institutional, academic or programmatic level.  They were protecting more than the Penn State athletic program.  They were protecting themselves from facing the truth about all of us and what we are capable of doing. 

And this perfidy with our falsely superior self-understanding is costly.

If we dared an honest assessment of our brokenness then we might accomplish the construction of a safer world, a more diligent community, a heightened awareness of the dangers we pose to each other and a greater effort at protecting those most vulnerable around us.  If we stopped pretending to be surprised at what people might do we could possibly take some steps to stop them from doing it.  Who wouldn’t trade in a little of our fabricated freedom for one fewer molested child?

But maybe that would be too shocking to do.

Which brings me to Herman Cain, who is also shocked, shocked I tell you, that anyone would dare to accuse a fine, upstanding person such as himself of any kind of inappropriate behavior.  He is, after all, a good person, a successful church-going man of good intent and purpose, and by definition above such ugliness.  Which is the more comical, but still equivalent, experience of our misguided concept of human freedom.  Even if we accept that it can happen, we are most assuredly certain that it cannot happen to me. 

Until it does.

Which brings me to the true cost of our falsely superior self-understanding.  Not that I deny the sinfulness of others, but that I deny my own complete and total corruption and in turn, deny the price paid for that sin by my Lord and Savior.  To suggest that he died on the cross for anything less that the total depravity of human nature is the height of faithlessness.   The price of my free will fantasy is the constant crucifixion of Christ.  If I proclaim my freedom, he dies for nothing. 

But when I confess my bondage, when I admit my loss, then the full power of his gracious love overwhelms, then his ransom pays my debt in full, then I become His prisoner and His alone.  As a free agent, I am alone.  As a confessed sinner, I am His, and in grace, never alone. 

 And that’s not shocking, just amazing. 

The God of flat taxes

Given how much they talk about Jesus, you think politicians would know more about what the Bible really says!

Because there are no flat taxes in the Bible. As far as God is concerned, when it’s time to pay, the wealthy pay more and the poor pay less.

For example, in the book of Leviticus the required offering for sin is laid out in extraordinary detail. The proper sacrifice for a guilt offering is a goat, a male goat, without blemish. A costly price indeed, which a “ruler” is required to give for their sin. An “ordinary” person, however, may give a female goat. Or a sheep. Or if they cannot afford that, two turtledoves. Or two pigeons. Or even one-tenth of an ephaph of flour. Whatever.

Because God’s law knows that not all people are created equal, at least not economically speaking. And in a just society, one modeled after God’s law, it is a given that those who are poor cannot afford the same as those who are rich.

But be not mistaken – this is about much, much more than protecting the poor. Though that is an extremely high priority in God’s reign, there is this other important concern – holding those who have been blessed with worldly riches to the highest responsibility for their position.

Jesus put it this way: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48) Fair share, it turns out, means something entirely different in God’s eyes.

This saying of Jesus is a punch line to a story about an unfaithful servant who, having been left in charge while the Master was away, chose not to pay the other servants but beat them and used the Master’s money to eat and drink and be merry. It is a powerful and confrontational word to a world where the numbers of both truly poor people and truly wealthy people are both increasing, where the very few enjoy the luxuries of life while more and more and more go hungry every
day. We live in a world hurtling toward a devastating judgment, a world on the brink of self-destruction, a world that does not need an economic philosophy which asks merely the same of the rich as it does of the poor.

It is not enough that consumption taxes burden the poor more heavily than the rich, or that decreasing taxes on rich people and corporations will destroy services that the poorest people depend on. It is a question of whether or not we are willing to live up to what is expected of us - not according to our political philosophies or narrow self-interests, but the God from whom our wealth comes.

A world that reflects biblical justice must tilt toward greater responsibility on the part of those who have greater wealth. It is not that God hates wealth or wealthy people (though the Bible seems to not have much good to say about them) – it is
that God despises a world that worships the accumulation of wealth. “For
the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. (1 Timothy 6:10) Flat tax plans exist for only one reason – to protect the interests of wealthy people against the needs of the poor.

When it’s time to pay God, when it’s time to bear the burdens of supporting the needs of the whoe community, the wealthy must pay more. It’s God’s way, after all.

It's not the Economy, stupid!

Ben Bernanke. Benedict
Arnold. Yeah, I get those two confused
all the time.

When I was younger (I know you hate it when I start a
sentence with those words), treason was a serious accusation, rarely made,
reserved for very particular acts that aided and abetted enemies of our
nation. Selling state secrets. Sharing sensitive information about troops,
battle plans, defense systems.

It was not a word casually tossed about as a political
label, a quick cheap shot at any convenient target.

Evidently that’s changed.

Now, people who don’t subscribe to our philosophy are
traitors, policies that we differ over are treasonous, people who don’t follow
our brand of politics are terrorists, politicians, even Presidents, who don’t
do what we think they should do are unpatriotic, don’t really love
America.

It’s not my way vs. your way. It’s my way, end of sentence. You do not have different ideas, challenging
ideas, debatable ideas. You are just bad
and I hate you.

Is there no wonder that we can’t get anything done?

How amazing our egotism, how great our pride! Have we become incapable now of allowing any
diversity so that we must destroy anyone and anything which is not just like
us? Have we become so insecure that we
must cast off civility and forgo peace to protect ourselves? Is there no room in the world anymore for
anyone who is not me?

This same violence now infects the church. Anyone who believes or practices the faith
differently must be the anti-Christ, the devil, must be cast into hell. Will it be much longer before we start
burning heretics again? There is no freedom
in our theology any longer, we have imprisoned ourselves so narrowly in our
thinking that we have no option but to destroy the community in order to
protect ourselves.

Yet Jesus broke break with Pharisee and Tax Collector
alike, he spoke with divorced women, he exemplified Samaritans in his parables,
he died for all. For all! Not with words of judgment, with condemnation
even for his killers, but with grace and hope for the whole community, and with
the sacred charge to his followers that they were to bring good news to every
end of the earth.

He could do that, you see, because he knew then what we
refuse to believe, a benevolent God, a compassionate God, a God of such
extravagant love that he could not refuse anyone, could turn against no one, a
God who’s defining trait was his amazing and overwhelming forbearance and grace.

A God who could love even creatures full of hate and deceit
like us.

And all he would ever call us is his.

You Heard It Here First

Having children really cleaned up my language.

Not that I was a big user of swear words, but it’s
amazing how quickly I learned to edit what I said on the fly. And not that I’m a prude about swearing either, but I’d rather be a good example to them, of what is appropriate to say and when it is appropriate to say it. Because with all I do not know about raising children, this one thing I do know: what they hear, they repeat, they learn, they believe, they live.

Yeah, you really have to watch what you say around children.

Which brings me to wondering what they are learning from us adults these days. How to live be nice and share and play well together, how to care about things that truly matter, how to control our worse impulses, how to hope, how to love, how to live in grace?

I think not. I think what they are seeing mostly from the adults around them these days are swear words, selfishness, corruption, greed, hatred, bigotry.

How to hate? How to hate and hate and hate until you want to kill?

Last Friday we heard on the news of a horror that most of us could never imagine, of the mass murder of innocent men, women and children in the name of religion, philosophy, politics. Not surprisingly nor humorously, some commentators immediately assumed that it was yet another Muslim terrorist attack. After all, aren’t all bad things that happen Muslim terrorist attacks? It’s not ironic how wrong they were, it’s illuminating. We need a new word in our vocabulary to describe our enemy’s worst traits when they show up in our mirror.

But of the many, many tragic elements of this story, there is no doubt in my mind what the worst is: the shooter thought he was doing a good thing. A right thing. A purposeful thing. A righteous thing.

And how did he come to that conclusion?

How does a human being come to the conclusion that the wanton murder of other human beings could ever serve any larger purpose? A more wise doctor of human behavior than I will have to describe the path of that pathology, but I do know its starting point: he heard it first from some other mouth.

Hatred is not original to human beings. Anger, prejudice, violence, these are our
original sins. But it takes another voice to direct those sinful impulses against another human being. It takes help. It takes a word that must be heard first from
without.

It takes a father to teach his children to swear.

Peter Beinart asks courageously the very important question for us all:

So let’s ask that question about the real Breivik attack: Could an anti-Muslim bigot commit a large-scale terrorist attack in the U.S.? The answer is, Absolutely, because the same anti-Muslim bigotry that influenced Breivik in Europe is widespread here …

Lots of “experts” will poo-poo his question, dismiss it, out of hand, because they are afraid of it, because they know too well its true implication. We can’t acknowledge that it could happen in America because then we will have to confess our own
responsibility, our own culpability, our own disease, our own sin. Like fathers swearing in front of their small children, we are teaching each other to hate, passing on our own smallness, validating our neighbor’s narrowness, fueling the violence that boils not far beneath the surface of our society.

The attack in Norway on Friday is not merely one man’s psychosis, it is our national (international?) personal failure. And if we do not have the ability to filter what we say, then perhaps it is time we started listening to what the person next to us is saying. Or the guy on the radio. Or the woman on the TV. Or the person on the campaign trail.

And to do something about it.

mea culpa

for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. (Matthew 10:26)

Is there a right to privacy anymore?

Analysts of the most recent (of the long line of) sex scandals involving prominent elected officials find fertile ground to raise this most difficult question: is everything we do really everyone else’s business? What a Congressman does on his or her own time, however disgusting, is his or her own business, as long as it’s legal, after all.

Why should we care? Why should we even know?

It’s kind of an interesting question. Public officials are accountable for acts that affect their public office, for corruptions and crimes that degrade their official status, but does that apply to everything they do? Is the state of their marriage, their relationships, their personal peccadilloes the business of anyone but themselves?

In this age of tabloid journalism, we are besought on all sides by titillating stories of our favorite celebrities and least favorite politicians, and we are hooked. We are addicted. We are fully obsessed. The only thing more fun than reality TV is the daily soap opera that is real life itself. Now in the digital society, we can know everything about everyone, and the more lurid the detail, the greater our lust for it.

But our great enthusiasm for this distraction masks the real spiritual dilemma. While we celebrate the demolition of the privacy of others, we live in great fear for the exposure of our own. We join in the laughter at others, lest the bright light turn to our own lives.

Because here’s the dirty little secret: we all have one.

And what would we do if it became known? What would we do if the world around us, the people we care about, the ones we depend on and whose affection we seek, found out the truth about us? What would we do if the closet door sprung open and the skeletons came tumbling out, the smallness and pettiness and dirtiness of our deepest minds and hearts were shown?

And worse, what would we do if God knew how we really thought and felt and acted?

Oh …

For that is both the conviction and the freedom of our secret lives – that God really does know everything about us, every hidden sin, every expressed and unexpressed desire, every shameful weak moment. Though we would lock them deep into the abyss of our secret selves, he knows them, considers them, judges them.

And loves us still.

To be exposed to public ridicule and contempt is the greatest punishment that this world has to offer. As it should. There is a difference between right and wrong, between good and bad, even in this world. Married men should not be sending lewd and naked pictures of themselves to strange women. None of us, public nor private, should be involved in, connected to, approving of such behavior. None of us should be doing in private what we do not wish to have know in public. There does not need to be any excusing.

But there is a greater judgment than facing the TV cameras. It is the confession of the truth about us to the highest and holiest power, it is the admission of our shortcoming to our maker, that is most fearful. But it is exactly that one, who knows it all before we can speak it, before we can admit it, before we can even know it ourselves, who opens his hands in grace and loves us, not just in spite of our secrets, but because of them, who offers us a new reputation and new identity and new life for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Sin boldly, said Luther, but be even more confident in the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let go of the secret guilt and step out into the light of the new day.

There is no privacy before God, after all. There does not need to be.

Of church burglars and false prophets and other kinds of thieves

"Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”" (Matthew 9:20-21)

Our church was burglarized this weekend. Twice, actually. When the thieves failed to open the safe on Friday, they returned the next night better equipped, and were more successful. I simply don’t know what to say about that.

It got me thinking about robbery. It got me thinking about how so often we take what is not ours, about the unsatisfaction that marks our lives every day, about the envy and the greed and the hunger for power that makes us grasping, violent.

Harold Camping predicted that Jesus was returning at 6:00 p.m. this Saturday past, and the world, easily distracted by shiny and meaningless objects, paid much attention. People spent their life savings promoting his convoluted (and absolutely wrong) biblical analysis, they cancelled plans, they hoped falsely. And were disappointed, while the rest of us laughed at their expense.

And the children asked, didn’t Jesus say you couldn’t know the hour or the time? So why did Harold Camping think he did?

Yes, children, that is exactly the point.

Not “you can’t know” because the mystery is too opaque, because your intellect too dull, your math too imprecise. Not “you can’t know” because the key to the vast scriptural symbology is reserved for a select, chosen few and you are not pure enough or right enough.

NO! “You can’t know” because God does not want you to know, because this is wisdom God reserves for his own self. It is the sole prerogative of the creator to count the days of the creation, the divine freedom to reserve the end of history to his own time and not ours. It is not just the gullible and vulnerable followers who have been robbed. To claim this holy privilege is the greatest act of thievery itself, to try to steal away from God what he chooses not to give.

He desires we live by his grace alone, by his gifts, that we live his life and not our own. He desires that we live by what he gives, and not by what we take.

But we do it all the time.

We claim authorship of our faith for ourselves, we attribute salvation to our “decision” for Christ, we take pride in our good works, we smirk at the rest of the world through the lens of our own piety. We are the keepers of our own salvation, by virtue of our superior chastity and holiness and dogma.

As the great reformer once said, we have robbed the Cross of all meaning.

And that attack is our great crime against God. Not a couple of fools with a sledge hammer smashing apart a safe to steal a few hundred dollars from an emergency assistance fund, but the great mass of daily thefts of grace, the sinful unwillingness to accept that what we have, what we need, for this life and the next, comes completely and only from the hands of Christ, through no desire or deserving of our own. The greatest sin is the pretense that faith is ours for the taking, while it is only Christ’s for the giving.

Which is particularly foolish on our part, since he gives it away for free.

Life

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me. …Awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. Psalm 59:1, 5

Outcomes are complicated things. A decade of pain and anger ended in the middle of the night by a secretive military act in some far-off strange place. An enemy is defeated in the most final way, an important and (I think) worthy symbolic victory to be sure, but is it justice? Does it bring closure, or is this just the next chapter in the old and tragic story of the world we have made?

I sense relief on the part of many, but are we proud of this? Perhaps there is even satisfaction, but is there hope?

Well, what exactly were we searching for, anyway?

In this world of conflict and violence, this place and time of hate and enmity, perhaps we thought that we could secure ourselves from those who would harm us without being getting caught up in bloodshed too. But it all just bombastic oratory, so much wishful thinking, that we are playing the part of innocent victims even as we took up the sword and sought our revenge. We were fooling ourselves to think that we could play their game without, in the end, becoming just like them.

In cartoons, the bad guys are blown up, shot, smashed by falling pianos, yet never maimed or killed, until they meekly wave their white flag and admit defeat. In the real world, they must be killed.

And who will stop the killing?

If we would dare to look, in the blood on our hands we would see the reflection of our true enemy, our greatest foe, our own selves. The death of one man, if necessary and tragic, is neither a victory nor a conclusion. It is finally just another death, just another day, just another step along a path that has come to dominate our lives in this world. Our enemy is not the other, it is the daily choices we make the tear down justice and thwart peace, the casual insults and selfish slights and callous acts of greed that birth division and misunderstanding and quarrel.

And eventually war. And surely death.

And there is only one way off of this path.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26

Does it mean something that the killing of Osama bin Laden comes in the season of Easter, in the renewal of spring, in the bursting forth from the tomb? This is the promise of the resurrection, that we need not spend one more day imprisoned by death, that we carry within us the divine spirit of promise, that even in our most sinful day we can find the grace to make the next one different.

We do not need an end to the war on terror. We need an end to war. Period. We need an end to the thinking that war in any metaphor leads to anything but more war.

I do not really know how I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden. Except that I hope for nothing more than it would be the last. And I pray that God should deliver us to that new day. And soon.

The Full Easter Monty

Halfway. Half-baked. Half-hearted.

(My father had a different word for it but I can’t say that here)

It’s meant to be a curse, a slam, a put-down. Halfway. Not good enough, bad effort, partial, mediocre, lazy. Halfway means trying, somewhat, but never getting there. And there are no rewards for doing half a job, for writing half a book, for running halfway down the field or up the baseline. There are no points for getting close to the basket, for almost making a goal.

No one wants less than the complete, full meal deal. No one want to pay for a job half done, you don’t sit on half a chair or paint half a house or plant half a lawn, you don’t buy half the groceries you need every week, you don’t want your car fixed halfway.

Halfway is really not good enough for us.

So why is it that we are so often halfway people when it comes to our faith? We bring our Lord a halfway passion, a halfway commitment, part of our time, some of our tithe. We serve halfway; you know, when we can, when there’s nothing better to do or nothing better on the TV. We want our church to grow, we want the gospel spread, but when it comes to inviting someone to church our efforts are halfway at best.

And the real loss is deep in our hearts, where our trust hangs halfway in the balance between hope and despair. We have a medium grip on our faith; it’s there, but not too much so, and one good challenge, one wrong temptation, one great hurt or one overwhelming loss casts us into the abyss or breaks us forever.

How can we survive only halfway saved?

Maybe the problem is that we experienced a halfway salvation. We suffered through Holy Week, we heard the Easter story, we sang the hymns and chased after the hidden eggs. We were told that HE WAS RAISED and we were thinking how great that would be. No more sin. No more evil. No more death. But then Monday came and the world seemed just the same as it had been before. Still full of sadness and sorrow and brokenness. Heaven, it turns out, is still far off, distant in some unknown future for us, and we remain, for the time being, only halfway there.

But there is nothing halfway about Resurrection. Nothing halfway about the promise. The tomb is all empty, he is completely alive, fully raised, wholly new. This is a brand new day, and the only “halfway” now is us, our foot-dragging, stubborn, moping, slothful selves clinging to the tombs of our lives like teenagers to their beds on a slow, Saturday morning.

He is fully alive! Why would we want to stay halfway dead? Isn’t it time to stop dipping our toes and dive fully into life, to give up the tasting and commence with the feasting, to quit pretending that we believe and trust and hope and start living like we do?

Easter, if only a day once a year, is never Easter. Resurrection is not life until it is lived, hope is not hope until it is tested, faith is not faith until it believes with every breath and touch and word. Let us stretch out our whole selves into this new being and be, really be, completely be, fully be, brand new.

This is our day, that the Lord has made just for us. And he made it all.

He is Risen – He is Risen Indeed!

math day

a calculation
cold hard math
a profit? What else!
Silver. Ah.
The sum of it all
so much for now
for security, stability, certitude
the price small
one kiss.

a calculation
running the world is hard
Profit? Of course!
Prosperity. Ah.
so much (for some at least)
for poverty, disease, despair
the price small
one choice.

a calculation
salvation is hard.
But what profits a man?
A life kept? Ah …
so much compassion, so much hope
for brokenness, hurt, sorrow
the price small
one life.

Just a different perspective

Mark Vernon noted yesterday the different view of nature inherent in Shintoism, the widely practiced religion in Japan.

In Christianity, we view ourselves as the center of the creation. By our greed, we interpret the Genesis call to “dominion” over the creation as license to use it to our own ends, rather than a command to serve it as fellow creatures. And so, when the powerful forces inherent in nature show forth, we are angered, offended, cheated.

In Shintoism nature is known to be more powerful than humanity and is honored as such. Earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes and storms, are reminders that we are put here as part of a thing and not the whole of the thing itself.

A very different attitude. One that would change much.

It would not prevent such tragedies. It would do little to decrease the suffering they cause. But it would change us to be reminded in this moment of history, as in all those past and those yet to come, that we are not the Masters of this Universe but merely its servants, as we are servants of the One who created it all.

Power, the waves seem to say, is much more than your mortal brains may comprehend. Your place here calls for humility and grace, in the ways you treat the Lord’s creation and each other.

May we work together with and pray for those who suffer in this time in full awareness that it is only by the grace of God that our places are not reversed. Let us look with meekness toward the waves that are yet to rise.

Day of Ashes

Recently, Brigham Young University dismissed the best player from their basketball team over an Honor Code Violation and almost assuredly doomed their hopes for tournament glory. While many (many!) commentators could not grasp the harshness of that culture’s rules, they begrudgingly handed over their admiration of the school’s and players’ integrity in handling the situation.

They knew the rules and they kept the rules. Who knew it could be done?

Even more recently, it is brought to light that a football coach at a major college program actually knew in advance that a number of his players, including his star quarterback, had violated NCAA rules and were almost assuredly ineligible to play. His first instinct was to keep it quiet lest it endanger his team’s chances for glory.

He knew the rules and avoided the consequence. Now, that we can understand.

And so we come again to our annual celebration of Ash Wednesday, the world-wide Christian day of penance, where we smudge our countenance with a sign of grief and sorrow, a public admittance that we are sorry about who we are and what we have done, that we regret a world not as it should be. It is a day about guilt and penalty, about rules and codes and our relationship therein, our integrity, or more more likely, our lack of it.

Which is far from enough.

This inscription on our forehead, this shadow cast over the sign of our baptism, is a mark of truth. It is not enough to feel bad about being bad, it is not enough to fear consequence, it is not enough to merely know the rules, as if that was our invitation to sculpt them, twist them, bypass them. Guilt is not the theme of the day – honesty is. Not a little honesty, not an after-the-fact-well-I-guess-you-caught-me-now responsibility, but blunt, frank, open confession. You know, humility.

We are not good. We are not right. That is our confession on Ash Wednesday. We pray for a better world, a world of righteousness and justice and peace. And we know that it can only come one way. Not from us.

Ash Wednesday is our prayer that God would finally be the Lord of us and of this world because we have done such a poor job of it by ourselves.

Ashes are a symbol of grief, of sorrow, of loss. Ash Wednesday is a day of death, of the death of our will and our power and our seeking after glory so that God may finally become our God. It is only when we forego the future of our own creation that God’s future will become ours.

And so we trace again the cross upon our forehead and condemn ourselves and the world of our making and ask this one prayer, that God would take up the ashes of our lives and our world and renew them one more time. That he would fill the emptiness with new Grace and new Spirit and new Hope.

That he would bring us from this winter to the Easter waiting up ahead.

Look – I see a faint ray of dawn, a green shoot of resurrection!

Against the Law

Sometimes you should be careful about putting amateurs in charge of important things.

I imagine that this is how God feels about human beings trying to make law. The great Divine Law-giver, the shaper of righteousness and the definer of right and wrong, must shed considerable heavenly tears observing worldly legislative bodies writing what we call laws, trying to do what we consider good, all the while blaspheming the very nature and purpose of the Holy Law itself and denying the grace that gives it life.

What happens when men write laws? (And I use the sexist term deliberately – maybe there would be less trouble if there were more female heads and hearts in the process!) We strive to ban people’s right to band together for their common good, we embrace injustice and drive out those who are different from us, we encourage murder in the name of preserving life.

I’ve been told that it’s ok to heave hundreds of thousands of people into unemployment for the sake of the ideal of reducing deficits. Whatever it takes lest we overtax our wealth! And what kind of legislation is this?

This is not what God intends as law.

But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:7-8

It is a sign of our brokenness that we lift ideals above people, that we are cold-hearted and indifferent to the needs of the poor, that our principles, philosophies and political positions are worshipped at the price of violence and the suffering of many.

This is not how God teaches us righteousness. The Law of God is not abstract, not an arbitrary pronouncement, not an altar on which goodness and kindness are sacrificed over some other-worldly code. No, the law of God is the path of healing and wholeness, the definition of community and love of neighbor, the promotion of what is best and the vision of good will for all. God’s law does not condemn the other, it cares for aliens and orphans and widows. God’s law does not justify violence but turns other cheeks. God’s law does not protect wealth or power over people, but protects the oppressed and judges those who oppress them.

God gives law that we might know life. How abominable that we use the law to take life away.

How faithless we are to the God who gives law.

You see, the divine law-giver is also the God of the Christ, the one who defines what is right and wrong and showers mercy on both. He does not merely write laws, he creates and renews persons; he does not save himself, he saves us. In all things, his Word reflects his Grace, and by that Grace he moves his Kingdom forward with hope and purpose.

And he invites us to do the same, that we might know, even in a small way, the same.

We just have to learn now how really to make law.

Recovery or Redemption?

Yesterday, if only for a moment, the Dow Jones Index crossed the 12,000 mark for the first time since June of 2008, since immediately prior to the crash which brought us this most recent version of the Great Recession.

My IRA is not unhappy, which is nice for me. Nor, should I imagine, are any number of stock brokers and commodity traders, who are surely enjoying a seeming return to the profitable days of yore.

Of course, this does not say much for the more than 9 percent of us who are still looking for jobs.

Corporate profits, I read, are good this year, maybe great, large and getting larger. Whether that is being fed by the markets or vice versa, I do not know. Nor, on an even more significant level, do I understand where all those profits are going. I guessing not so much for hiring or wage increases. Not into the hands of the people who need them so that they can put bread on their table or roofs over their children’s heads.

No, what seems to be recovering is the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in our society.

I am not an economist. I hear politicians arguing about what is best to fix the economy, but I hear few arguing about what is right to do to fix the real problem in the world. For I am quite sure that the real problem in the world today is not so much our fiscal deficits as it is our moral bankruptcy. The problem is not how we are managing our wealth but, as our Lord would surely remind us, how much we love it.

We have created a world engineered for the high purpose of accumulating wealth, holding wealth, worshipping wealth. We cannot afford to provide needed health care for everyone, but we are un-American if we dare to burden the passing of moneyed estates to moneyed children. We thrill at the sight of enormous mansions but look the other way when we see the homeless. We have completely lost track of what really matters. In a world where bankers and commodity brokers are the highest paid among us and the teachers of our children are the least, it should be obvious that our sense of what is actually valuable is far and long gone.

And we should know better.

The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. Isaiah 3:14-15

The price of our guilt stands ever before us, the wage of our accumulated wealth is the slow death of our soul, our life, our hope. We have convinced ourselves and each other that it is our inherent right to have and hold as much as we dare – we have ignored the truth that such pursuit is, in fact, the judgment against us. Our unwillingness to confront our own greed and selfishness has become the prison that will ever confine us to this continual destruction.

But there is a path.

It leads away from the name-calling and false security and self-serving politics of wealth. It leads us away from our love of financial institutions and our faith in market performances to the love of our neighbor and our faith in the greater good for all. It changes our perspective from winner-take-all to I-am-my–brother’s-keeper. It measures us by radically different means.

It is not going to be a hard path to find. It will be an ever harder path to keep. But we are called by our Lord and Savior to this path because it is the only way to peace and true joy. It is our only recovery. It is our only salvation.

Justice, it turns out, is even better than good economic news.

It’s a small (handgun) world …

This is the week of the 9mm Glock, evidently the handgun of choice for shooting members of Congress and Vice-Principals. Thank goodness for our second amendment rights and those who fight so diligently to protect them.

That small detail is, of course, the least (though not unimportant) connection between these two headline tragedies in my world. The more significant and valuable one is our national addiction to anger. That it is a more subtle and complex relationship makes it all the more deniable, of course.

But no less real.

Is it a failure of memory, or was there once a time when anger was a bad thing? I seem to recall a day when decorum and protocol required good and gentle manners, when polite behavior was taught in schools, when bullies were avoided and not given their own talk shows on television. When did we stop teaching our children to mind their behavior and their temper? When did we stop lifting up examples of adults with impeccable conduct, gentle rhetoric and visible dignity?

I suppose you’re going to blame that on the 60’s too.

Well, are we witnessing now the far-right in its own state of acid-like hysteria?

Now the works of the flesh are obvious… enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions … and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21

Our national love of edgy commentary and impassioned demonstration at the expense of civil conduct has loosened the lid on Pandora’s box, and it’s time we quit closing our eyes to what we’re letting out. If our national political, social and religious language is not the hand holding the gun, then it is the devil’s whisper in the ear of the shooter, the flow of adrenaline in the veins, the ringing in the ears. It is the silence-gives-consent permission for the otherwise unspeakable act.

Maybe it’s time to stop before we speak any more.

For this is undeniable true - we cannot speak violence without expecting to beget violence. We cannot use violent imagery in our discourse without taking responsibility for violent acts. Angry words birth more anger. And in the end, that anger can only go to one place.

But even on this dark day I have hope, for the better way is immediately available to us. We belong to a Savior who did not respond in anger but turned another cheek, who did not raise his voice but rather stretched out his hands on a cross, who did not grasp at power but willingly acceded to the greater and better power from above. We have seen his example, we have his words, we need only bring them into our hearts and heed them.

Before it’s too late.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-25

And then it happens to you ...

Is this not what happens when we don’t take sin seriously?

I did learn this at the seminary. The importance of taking sin seriously. I do remember the words from my childhood liturgy. We are BY NATURE sinful and unclean. We are IN BONDAGE to sin and cannot free ourselves. I know that human brokenness is real and tragedy is its consequence.

Taking sin seriously is the true work of faith.

Yesterday in our community we saw what can happen when we do. And when we do not.

There is a particularly gut wrenching kind of fright that comes to a parent when you hear that first report of a crisis at your child’s school, an experience that cannot be fully imagined until it happens to you. It is your primary vocation, after all, to keep them safe, a Godly charge to protect them and help them, and it hurts to find out that you cannot. The only, really only, help is to know that there are other responsible, professional, well-prepared people who willingly and competently share that charge and do their jobs well. Somewhere along the way, a group of teachers and administrators at our school overcame the “it would never happen here” mentality (the first symptom of sin denial) and planned and practiced and prepared for something horrible to happen.

Because they took sin seriously, they kept my children safe. Today I am thankful to God for them and their faithful work.

Sadly, though, we did not take sin seriously enough to stop this before it happened.

We will tell ourselves, of course, that we could not have known, that we could not have foreseen, that it is the nature of tragedy to be inexplicable and inexorable.

But that’s just an excuse.

I think it’s time to admit that we can do better. It’s time to admit that we have the tools and the ability and the wherewithal to identify our neighbors and children who are particularly in danger and at risk, who have become disconnected in whatever fashion from community and reality and hope and are just waiting to be picked off by the devil and used against us. It’s time for us to admit that we do know what’s wrong with our world and do something about it.

It’s time for us to admit that we are slaves to sin and be responsible in whatever way we can. To have the will to admit that we are in trouble and that we need to do something about it.

Can we now begin to own what we are doing to our children and to each other and to ourselves, how we are neglecting and abusing one another, how we have disowned and discarded too many of God’s children, how we have become miserly in love and kindness and gentleness and patience where we need it the most? Can we now own the profligacy of our anger and our addiction to violence and our worship of guns?

Can we finally take seriously the brokenness of our own creation, that our sin is killing us and can we try to do something about it?

Can we grieve?

For that is, I think, the bottom line, that we merely pass through these events now and do not grieve them. Rather than face down our denial we have become inured to our pain. This is, after all, just another school shooting. It’s news for today, until the next. And then it passes.

Except that it’s not. Except that another exceptional person has been lost to us, and the grief is becoming unbearable. Paul says that the wages of sin is death. Are we not dying enough yet?

Let us grieve fully this loss, let us capture its pain and sorrow, that we would fully experience the price of our smallness and our brokenness and our failure. Our sin. That we might change, something, someone, if just some little bit.

If not for what has been, then for what will be, let us take this moment this sin, seriously. And let it be enough.