Faith and Hope in an Uncertain Time

            There doesn’t seem to be much going on in the world these days that is good.  All that the news seems to report is shootings, rapes, wrecks and fires.  In the international community, we are focused on wreckage all around us; the horrible execution of a journalist in Iraq and Syria by the so called Islamic State that yearns to recapture the lands that were restyled before the First World War with the borders that they now have.  Our intervention in Iraq has obviously contributed to much of this, and our troops leaving not only Iraq, but also Afghanistan is leaving a political void that is being filled by those with a yearning for power to impose their religion on all of humankind. 

            When I look at all of this, I can only wonder what it is that I can do about any of it.  It certainly looks very dark and hopeless.  We are used to seeing this country as the protector of freedom throughout the world, but that doesn’t seem to work very well any more, and we are looking more and more impotent as the days go on.  What are we to do with all of our military might in the face of a world that isn’t impressed with hardware?  One of the things that we seem to be doing is giving the weapons to local police departments who are using them in ways that are also being increasingly criticized.  Why are unarmed black men being shot by police in questionable circumstances?  What are we going to do about any of this? 

           

            I am attracted to St. Paul’s letter to the Romans where he says pointedly:

                                If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live

                         peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves,

                         but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written,

                         "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

                         No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are

                         thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you

                         will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome

                         by evil, but overcome evil with good.

            All of this is said in light of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus by a man who did some very evil things in his own life; holding the coats, for example of those who stoned the martyr Stephen to death.  This, it seems to me is advice that we also need in our own time, faced with the turmoil in the world. 

            When Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, he took his disciples aside and told them that when he got there, that he would be persecuted and finally killed, but that he would rise again.  This was too much for Peter to hear.  He took Jesus aside and said to him: God forbid it Lord, this must never happen to you! But Jesus answered Peter sternly: Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.

            So how do we set our mind on divine things?  I suspect that it has less to do with armament and military strategy than with care and compassion.  We aren’t very much attracted to compassion and care when we have aggression in front of us and great concern about what the mission of the enemy is all about.  We think about the events of 9/11 and worry that something like that may happen again.  It is a delicate balance that we seek; to protect our country and still be concerned about those who suffer.  I have no easy answer to all of this except to suggest that our prayers ought to be directed at both sides in these difficult moments; to hope that somehow the divine plan will make itself known to all of us and that we may find ourselves in a better place than we can now imagine.  May God bless us all in our ignorance and sustain those who suffer and bring us together somehow in the Kingdom.

The Keys to the Kingdom

         What are the “Keys to the Kingdom” that Jesus tells Peter about in the Gospel of Matthew?  How many times have we seen a cartoon with an authoritative Peter standing behind a podium before the pearly gates with someone standing before him waiting to enter those gates.   Peter, in these cartoons is the admission officer to heaven; the one who says yes or no to whoever comes to stand before him.  What an awesome responsibility.  What does he do when somebody who refused to forgive his neighbor is before him?  Does Peter say, “You know what?  I did that too!” And let the poor person in.  What if these keys of the kingdom are all about forgiveness?  What if forgiveness is the essence of what Jesus came to teach us?  Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things that any of us wrestle with in the life. 

            Why is it that you come to church?  For me, it is the fundamental sense of community that it provides.  It isn’t doctrinal, it doesn’t even have much to do with the things that the church has taught through the years; it is primarily because I like to see all of these people who sit in the pews with me.  That is for me what church is all about.  There is also something else that happens in church that I find enervating:  Every week we kneel or stand in this place and confess our sins, those things that we have done or left undone.  We humbly ask God to forgive us and let us get on with our lives.  After we have done this, the priest pronounces absolution of our sins.  This is not a small thing.  It is God, through the priest, saying to each of us:  you are clean, you are forgiven, you can go on. 

            What is significant to me is that this is done right before we offer the peace of God to each other.  Here are a group of cleansed people coming to each other and saying “The Peace of the Lord be always with you! We then reply, “and also with you!”  If this isn’t a profound statement of community, I have never heard one.  It transcends all of the petty differences that we have with each other, lets us get back to the only thing that keeps us together, our relationship with each other.  It is then that we go on and break the bread, fill the cup and celebrate the real presence of the Lord in our lives.  That is what we take with us when we leave this place.

            What if we took this notion of forgiveness one more step:  To look at all of our relationships and see where we need to forgive.  That can be life giving, not only for the person whom we forgive, but mostly for us.  The burden of carrying hurts with us through our lives can wreck our souls.  Being resentful is something that continually causes pain; and when we can let it go, it breathes life back into us.

            For many years, I had a ministry at Western Penitentiary.  I had a group of men, all who had killed somebody and were in the place for life.  We talked about a lot of things, often about what had led them to be in the prison in the first place.  One week, one of the men in the group told us that he had gotten a letter from the family of the victim of his crime.  They wanted to come and see him.  He had been a teacher, who had an inappropriate relationship with one of his students.  In the course of events, she was killed and he was sentenced to prison.  He went to see the parents.  The father said to him, “we have come to forgive you.  It is time for us to bury our daughter and to get on with our lives.  It is time to stop the hatred and to look forward.”  My inmate was stunned.  The father went on to tell him that this wasn’t done lightly.  “When you were being transferred to the court house from the prison, I was on a roof down the street with a rifle.  I wanted to kill you, but I couldn’t do it.  I thank God that I didn’t take that step.” 

            What happened in that encounter was a miracle.  My inmate was amazed and somewhat put off by it; but the parents were freed.  They were able to let go of all of the anger and resentment that they had with that man and get on with their lives.  That is certainly not a small thing.

            I think that is the essence of what Jesus came to help us to understand.  From the cross, he said, “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”  That, for me is the message of the church to the world.  What if we were able to forgive without reserve?  Wouldn’t we all live better lives?  Wouldn’t the world be a better place?  Wouldn’t our freedom be multiplied? We take the Keys of the Kingdom with us when we go through our lives.  We are the ones behind the podium.  Forgiveness is the key.

How We Deal With Conflict

             Ferguson, Missouri has been a place in the news this week because of the protests following the killing of an unarmed African American teenager in that town this week by a policeman.  At first, the police refused to release the name of the officer who did the killing and finally when they did release the name, they also produced a video of the young man allegedly stealing cigars from a convenience store and assaulting a clerk.  The people, who had calmed down were angry again and spent another night rioting.  The police confronted these crowds with militarized equipment, stun grenades, tear gas and large vehicles, most frequently seen in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.  There has been a lot of comment subsequently about the militarization of the police in this country and how that is contributing to a difficult climate. 

            The world is currently in an angry mess.  Politicians in this country seem to be unable to do much of anything to solve problems, and increasing turbulence abroad is demanding our attention and the attention of the world.  How are we going to solve the problem that Hamas and Israel pose to us?  What can we do about the Islamic State’s attempt to recreate the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq?  These awful arguments are causing many deaths, some of them horrible; and every attempt to bring the opposing sides to a bargaining table has resulted in failure.  War seems to be the only solution that is desired by those involved in the problem and the rest of the world is without any means to curb this desire.  Not even the United Nations can make any difference at all.  We are politically paralyzed.  There are even fears that this turmoil will eventually spread to the United States and that we will suffer along with the people who are now being brutalized by war. 

            There is nothing really new here.  We have had these dreadful arguments before when the Christian Crusaders took on the Muslim people in the Holy Land, or when countless other disputes put us on one side or another in a political argument.  But it hasn’t always been a global dispute that has gotten our attention.  The Civil War was fought over the question of slavery.  Slavery ought to have been decided when the Constitution was written, but it was deferred because of a North/South division in this country.  Even the Civil War didn’t solve the problem.  Innate racism continues to plague us.  That is one of the causes of the problems in Ferguson, Missouri. 

            I love the story that we find in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus teaches his disciples a lesson about religious law:  It isn’t what goes into a person’s mouth that defiles them, but what comes out of it, the Lord says.  He goes on to explain himself by saying that what goes into the mouth goes into the stomach and eventually into the sewer; but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and includes evil intentions including murder, theft, adultery, fornication and slander.  He concluded by saying:  these are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile. Jesus then goes into the land of Canaan where he is met by a woman who asks him to heal her daughter who she claims is being tormented by a demon.  At first, he refuses, saying that he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.  But the woman doesn’t relent.  She pleads with him.  He tells her that it isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs, which seems to be a rather harsh dismissal; but she answers him eloquently: Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table!  Jesus is convinced:  Great is your faith, he says, let it be done for you as you wish, and her daughter was healed instantly.

      This seems to me to be a great statement of God’s love for all of us despite our divisions.  Jesus came for everyone and we are the ones who continue to make distinctions.  We may hold in our heart reservations about what kind of love God holds for those who are not Christian; but those are our problems.  God has no issue with that whatsoever.  Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever faith that is held or not held but the people in this world, all of them are loved infinitely by the God of Wonder who has been known in many different ways and moments in this world, and who knows how many others.  We are foolish when we confine our faith to only ourselves, when God loves so lavishly and completely and invites us to join in that Love by loving one another.

Love Conquers Fear

            It seems to me that a lot of religion is based on fear.  This is often fear of not being saved; fear of hellfire; fear that somehow we have not met God’s expectations.  In terms of God’s expectations, our fear is absolutely justified.  God created this world to be a place of peace as we can see in the story of the Garden of Eden.  It didn’t take us very long to mess it all up and turn to selfishness and power seeking as our driving force.  That is what God is dealing with from the moment that Adam and Eve leave the garden. 

            The wonderful thing, though is the way that God set about redeeming this fallen creation by using fallen people to do what needed to be done.  Certainly we can have no admiration for Jacob, who was an exquisite con man who duped his brother and his father out of everything that they had; and certainly Moses, who killed the Egyptian guard is no model of righteousness, and the Hebrew people building the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses was receiving the Law from God are not to be held up as paragons of virtue. 

            But God never left it there.  On and on goes creation, striving to be re-created in the image of God.  Finally, when the Law and the Prophets don’t work very well, God gives us his only Son, Jesus as the model of virtue that he has in mind for all of humanity.  Jesus calls twelve disciples, none of them really good people, and sets forth to show the world how compassion, mercy and above all Love can make a difference in this world. 

            It certainly doesn’t work out well for Jesus.  He was rejected and killed by the society that he lived in and by those whom he was trying to help; and the disciples didn’t fare any better.  All of them except John died at the hands of others.  But the beauty of Christianity is that it continued to give help to those in the world who were in desperate need and it continues to do that today.  It doesn’t do it easily.  Still there are many who reject what it teaches and certainly God is still striving to recreate humanity is the image that was his plan from the beginning.  But on we go. 

            Twice in the 14^th chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples: Set your troubled hearts at rest.  Trust in God, trust also in me. He says this in the middle of enormous stress.  The crucifixion is not far off, and he knows it.  But Jesus also wants us to know that the problems of this life are not the end.  There is a Kingdom of God waiting for all of us, and it is that Kingdom that those disciples were trying to create on earth. 

            It still isn’t created.  Most of the conflicts that are ongoing have some kind of a tribal or religious element connected with them.  The Shia/Sunni conflict in Iraq and Syria, and the constant war between Israel and the Palestinians are all based on differences in religious understanding that translates into a quest for ultimate power.  It seems unlikely to me that this is ever going to change.  The differences are simply too ingrained for us to do much about them.

            But Christianity is about more than that.  It is about the way that we treat each other and this is where compassion, mercy and Love can make a significant difference.  God loves us. That is the message that our religion needs to tell the world.  It is essential that we set our troubled hearts at rest and know the peace that passes understanding that stems from God’s unqualified love for each of us.  As God loved those fault-filled people whom he used to spread his message in the world, so God loves each of us.  That love cannot be eclipsed by anything that we do or don’t do.  The refining fire of that Love will purify all of us when we stand before our Maker.  That is the only certainty that we need.