In seminary, one of the women I knew wanted to get married and start a family. It didn’t matter who the man was. She wanted to get married with such a singular clarity of focus that those of us who knew her could feel the energy toward that goal flowing from her no matter what we were doing at the moment.
She would go on dates with anyone who asked her, and she would continue dating them until she pushed the question on whether the men could see this becoming more than simply a dating relationship – most often sooner than the men had time to realize they were even in a long term relationship. Invariably, most men would say “No” because they felt rushed, and didn’t want to feel pushed into making a decision. Until, one day, she found a man who said “Yes.” And then they ended up married. She dropped all of her classes and took up the mantle of being a “good” girlfriend, then wife, then mother.
In some ways, you can say that her singular devotion to finding a husband was commendable, because in the end she got what she wanted and didn’t waver until she accomplished her task. You might even say she was determined, and a strong woman.
For those of us who knew her, we could only watch from the sidelines with difficulty. It was obvious that she was looking for anyone who didn’t want to leave her. I phrase it like this, because it seemed like the decision was based more around future safety than a choice. She didn’t end up with someone who chose her, but instead with someone who feared her leaving him as much as she seemed to fear being alone.
Why am I telling this story? Especially when it seems I should be talking about seeking God?
Because relationships are weird.
And a relationship with God is not supposed to be a friends-with-benefits arrangement, nor is it supposed to be settling for someone out of fear of being left out in the cold alone. Or in this case, the heat.
Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician came up with a thought exercise concerning the existence of God. A quick summary is this: if people believe in God, and they are wrong, then no harm has come their way, and life continues as it is. But if they believe in God, and they are right, then they would go to heaven after death.
The trouble with this viewpoint is that it seeks to benefit from faith without putting any work into it. It looks for safety, it looks for rescue and the salvation from eternal damnation, rather than a relationship with God. It is purely practical. Practical, with the intention of achieving the greatest benefit for ourselves without really putting any effort into the relationship that God desires from us.
When we view life through this idea of what we want to attain, then everything becomes a calculus of appropriate actions and reactions, of right deeds, and wrong deeds. Our motivation is that we want to avoid eternal damnation no matter what. It’s not about God, but about our own desire. Our entire lives can be broken down into the concept that what matters most is what I get out of the relationship, rather than what I put into it. Said differently: what we desire is more important than who we desire.
When it comes to human relationships, it’s often easy to detect that something is off between people, that there’s some underlying feeling that is missing. But when it comes to our relationship with God, we can often confuse activity with relationship. I go to church, therefore I’ve spent time with God. I volunteer at the food bank. I help cook for church potlucks, I belong to various committees and attend meetings regularly, I usher, I serve at the altar, and therefore, I have spent time with God.
But all of that is activity. I can go to church, and refuse to be moved by the sermon or by the liturgy. I can volunteer at the food bank, but look with disdain at all the people I am “helping.” I can spend time on various committees and push my own political agenda instead of spending time in prayer with others to determine what might be the best course of action for the church. I can usher or serve at the altar, and do it just to be seen, rather than doing it to serve God and others. All that activity can be empty, and devoid of any meaning other than helping to make us look and feel good.
If we wish to seek God, then we need to examine whether what we are doing is intended for our own benefit, or because we wish to draw near to God.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
I was born during the Civil Rights era. Too young to live it, old enough to read about it and know I was a piece of it. Living in the southwest in a diverse neighborhood of poor white, Mexican, Chicano, Yaqui Indian, Jewish Pharmacist, Korean, Italian, and Black (still saying “Negro” and not catching on to “African American” yet). Everyone got along in their own space so-to-speak. The children played together fine; it was a few parents who with time would cast the shadow of doubt of who was “OK” or not.
I learned how to speak a bit of Spanish and make tamales and tacos from the neighbor around the corner. I learned how to make the best spaghetti sauce from my neighbor across the street who did not read or write any language but taught me that two glugs of red wine was how much I needed for the sauce. “Two glugs! That is all you need Cathleen! That’s all! Two glugs!” She was right and it always tastes perfect. She had married an American GI in Italy during the Korean War. They had moved to the southwest, but she divorced him after his drunken abuse became too much. In exchange for the cooking lessons, I grew tomatoes, squash, collard greens and would give them to who liked them.
Although, I don’t remember my elementary school years, I read the history I lived through and I was still living in the making. How many of you remember Billy Joel’s hit, “We Didn’t Start the Fire“. So me, having no talent as a songwriter and only seeing my historical timeline, I might frame my version of Billy Joel’s song something like:
Harry Truman, lynching, Cold War, nuclear bomb drills, Freedom Riders, Segregation, JFK, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe’s Happy Birthday, March on Washington, “I Have A Dream”, President Assassination, L.B.J, Purgatory on earth is still burning Won’t stop until the love begins And the hate ends. We didn’t ignite the fire, But we can extinguish it. Civil Rights Riots, 1964 Civil Rights Act, EEOC, Malcom X assassinated, Selma, Bloody Sunday, Martin Luther Jr, another Assassination, Richard Nixon, Watergate, impeachment, Vietnam, napalm, innocents die, Saigon to Ho Chi Minh, Purgatory on earth is still burning Won’t stop until the equal love of neighbor begins And the hate ends. We didn’t ignite the fire, But we can extinguish it. Greed, politics, Bill & Monica, Loved and hated, prosperity and gain, Hillary, It Takes a Village, Village splits, impeachment, Purgatory on earth is still burning Won’t stop until the equal love of neighbor begins And the hate ends. We didn’t ignite the fire, But we can extinguish it. recession, fallen education, failed health care, cartels, cocaine, 911, War on Drugs, Afghanistan, Iraq, Desert Storm, Colin Powell, Humvees, Desert Camouflage, flak jackets inadequate, George Bush, Blackburn, Dick Chaney, CIA, Rumsfield, coverups, the rich get richer, the economic divide now is an abyss. Purgatory on earth is still burning Won’t stop until the equal love of neighbor begins And the hate ends. We didn’t ignite the fire, But we can extinguish it.
I will stop there. Here we see the rub. Obama is elected. We see our true colors. What are the true colors of a zebra or a tiger? What are our true colors? Many felt when Obama was elected, we had matured as a country. Many felt we had moved past the color barrier. I am learning we have not even begun. We have not acknowledged our history in a factual manner. We in the white American society, have not acknowledged our “original sin” of “making this country great” on the backs of slaves. I am still learning the “real facts” about our United States of America history. Many of us who grew up in the southwest, have not or rarely hear of Juneteenth. That in my opinion, should have a recognized holiday decades ago. I should have learned of this important event long ago and so should have my now adult children.
As a child, I remember wondering why the Confederate flag was still recognized in the South and flown proudly as it represented an oppressive regime. Therefore, in this country of purported “freedom” why would we acknowledge a symbol that dictates otherwise? I was never given a satisfactory answer. I suppose it is like the few Nazi’s sympathizers keeping the swastika flag as their sign of oppression and white supremacy. Today I hear answers such as the Confederate flag is only a historic symbol. Historic symbol of what? In America we do have the 1st Amendment of freedom of speech as uncomfortable as that is for the large majority who do not feel the same as those who would display a Nazi or Confederate flag or even demonstrate their bias and discrimination in other ways.
I can’t help but look for the God image in people. I usually find that image looking back at me. I look at the sacrifice that Christ made for our sins. Knowing we are sinners and having God’s continued Grace and we have God’s redemption does not make it right to pass down prejudice from generation to generation. These biases are taught. There are the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our freedoms, let us not use those freedom unwisely.
After speaking to a soldier who was tasked to picking up the remains of his fellow soldiers who had been killed by a suicide bomber, “I want people to know their sacrifice means something. They didn’t die for nothing.” Before Jesus was crucified Pilate announced that he had no basis for a charge against Jesus. Herod was pleased with the mocking of Jesus and of the soldiers ridiculing him. They dressed Jesus in an elegant robe to mock him further. Despite Pilate’s appeals, the crowd’s frenzy because of their leader Herod, they shouted, “Crucify him!”. As Jesus hung on the wooden cross he was forced to carry, Jesus said, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
Forgiving but not forgetting. Historical transparency. Love thy neighbor. Honest discussion with compassionate listening and discussion with “I” statements and “I wonder” statements. It sounds simple and can be simple in small steps as we get to know ourselves and our neighbors again with love.
Since I grew up in northern Alaska, I have never spent much time farming, nor have I seen much in the way of wheat when it’s young. But from what I’ve been told is that when wheat is young, it looks very much like grass. More to the point, when it is young and unripened it looks very much like the weeds that grow in the same fields. It is only when the wheat has ripened that the difference between the two plants can be determined.
In today’s Gospel, the workers in the field were able to distinguish between the two, and went and told the owner of the land that they had seen these weeds growing, and wanted to know if they should pull them up. But the owner of the land tells them that they should just leave the weeds in the field until the wheat has fully matured, because they might accidentally rip up some wheat while pulling up the weeds.
This little bit of dialogue tells us that the workers in the field were more than capable of distinguishing between good and bad. They were able to discern the difference between the wheat and the weeds, but the owner wanted to wait until the harvest to make the final distinction to avoid accidentally destroying the wheat.
Now, once Jesus explains the parable, we become aware that the field is the world, and that the wheat represents the children of God, and the weeds represent the children of the evil one. And since the workers in the field have already showed us that they can discern between good and bad, then we can too, right? Through this parable, it seems like we are being set up to judge the world through the lens of “Good” vs “Bad.”
So if the field is the world, we might be tempted to jump right in and say, you know what? I know of several good countries, and I know of several bad countries, and we can extol the virtues of the good countries while demonizing the others.
If you don’t think this demonization of the other could happen, you may have managed to avoid watching the evening news or reading the newspapers during any military action this country has undertaken in the last century.
When I was still in high school, I participated in a trivia competition to see how much those who have read a book have retained. One of the books that year was called Farewell to Manzanar, which detailed the story of a family of Japanese Americans who had been ripped from their homes and livelihood by the US Government. They were taken just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and were brought into detention camps in the desert of California.
When I read this story, I was amazed. I was angry. This hadn’t been presented as part of the history of World War II that we were taught in our high school curriculum. That curriculum only told of America freeing the Jews from the Nazis or winning the war in the Pacific.
But in this book I learned that the United States was simultaneously engaged in a war on the European continent to free those rounded up and put into detention centers by the Nazis, while simultaneously putting people of a particular ethnic descent into camps of their own. How could we, as a country allow that?
This was supposed to be America. America, the beautiful. America, home of the brave, and land of the free. Well, free, as long as you weren’t of Japanese descent, or looked different than those in power.
Suddenly, I had to ask, this country that I love, is it good, or is it bad?
If we continue our analogy of the field being the world, we may consider the idea of the good religions and bad religions. If you don’t think that’s possible, you might not have been paying attention to the cable news channels as they have demonized those other world religions – and one in particular – as the United States has engaged in wars in the middle east for the last 30 years.
Those of us that are attending this service this morning consider Christianity to be one of the good religions, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. But if we dive into the history of the church we come across some very dark passages of history. In fact, I remember when I first came across those moments like the Spanish & Portuguese Inquisitions, or the various Crusades, and the deaths that occurred at the hands of those who followed the same Christ that we do. In several of these moments of history, people were given the choice to convert to Christianity — or face death. In Germany, during the second world war, some churches and pastors looked to the bible for ways to explain away the jailing, torture, and killing of Jews. Here in our very own country, the country that we love, some churches and pastors also used the Bible to explain how keeping other people as slaves was biblical.
And so the question once again appears: Is my religion good, or is my religion bad?
If we continue to look at this field of the world, we may come to realize that the weeds and the wheat, the children of the evil one, and the children of God in this world includes our local church. The field of the world in today’s parable includes you and it includes me.
I might look at myself and say, “Thank God I don’t believe any of that nonsense about slavery or genocide being biblical, because I would never engage in any of that behavior,” and so, I pat myself on the back and tell myself that I have done well simply by refraining from evil.
But sometimes, simply refraining from doing evil is not enough. Sometimes, I see atrocities or oppression, and I sit back and say that I am glad that I am not one of those people engaged in this behavior. Instead of saying anything to point out the wrongs those others are doing I remain silent. In other words, I am glad that I have not done this evil thing that others are doing, and I am basically pleased with myself for having done nothing. A very brave and marvelous nothing. A courageous nothing that equates silence with righteousness.
Elie Wiesel, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camps, had this to say about remaining quiet when faced with the evils of this world:
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
–The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, the Accident
In a similar vein, and perhaps a bit more well known to some of you is the phrase from Edmund Burke, which states that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
When I have commited wrong it is pretty easy to recognize my failures. In fact, in some cases, I don’t even need to engage in any self-reflection, as others will be more than generous to point out my transgressions deliberately and to my face.
What is more difficult to gauge and what requires more self-reflection, is my inaction.
At the end of this, I come to the same question.
Through my actions, or even my inactions, am I a weed, or am I wheat?
Am I a child of God, or am I a child of the evil one?
Well… I can tell you I am wheat. I’m obviously not a weed. And here are the many reasons why: First…<pretend to start counting on your fingers>
Yeah. Obviously that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to bore you with all the reasons why I consider myself to be a good person.
The point though, is that I could sit down and attempt to list out all the reasons why I did those things I should not have done, and why I did not do the things I should have done.
Because anything I say would amount to no more than self-justification.
Abba John the Little, one of the desert fathers — the monks who lived in the Egyptian desert in the early third century — had this to say:
“We have abandoned a light burden, namely self-criticism, and taken up a heavy burden, namely self-justification.”
I’m going to read that again.
“We have abandoned a light burden, namely self-criticism, and taken up a heavy burden, namely self-justification.”
When left to my own devices I will always seek my own safety above that of others, I will seek the welfare of myself and my own before the welfare of others, I will seek to put my own will before the will of others, and even before the will of God.
Every human institution suffers from the very same malady: it is governed by people just like me. And the moment I attempt to justify my own actions or inactions, I can be found to justify the actions or inactions of my church, and the church can be found to justify the actions or inactions of my denomination, and the denomination can be found to justify the the actions or inactions of my religion, all the way up the chain to the point where my own justification of my actions or inactions could even be found to have allowed or perpetuated such a thing as genocide, as slavery, and the oppression of others.
And that is a heavy burden.
Because now I need to continue my self-justification in order to repeatedly explain away all my actions or inactions in order to prove to everyone around me that I am not a weed, but am, in fact, one of the stalks of wheat in the field of the world. That my actions or inactions have not resulted in the oppression of others. That my actions or inactions have not allowed evil to triumph.
You may remember that earlier I said that it seems like we are being set up to view the world as good and bad, and some of you might have jumped out of your seats right away, shaking your fists, and saying, “That’s a false duality, Mike. You’re setting up a scarecrow argument. It’s not as simple as all that!”
And you’d be right.
But, this is the way of the world. The world wants us to see people in the context of good and bad. The world wants us to divide and sow dissension by putting us into camps of the righteous, and camps of the evil. The world wants us to look at things from the sum total of our good actions weighed against the sum total of our bad actions to decide who is good, and who is bad.
Jesus tells us that the wheat are the Children of God. In the passage from his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that the children of God are those who believe and are led by the Spirit of God. If our spirit can bear witness and call God the father of all, then we are heirs of the kingdom of God, joint heirs of heaven with Christ. We have been freed from the bondage to death and decay, and freed from the bondage to sin, because of Christ’s death on the cross.
It is for this reason that when we pray in the confession that we would be forgiven for that which we have done, and that which we have left undone, we really do believe that we have been forgiven. We believe that we have been sanctified and justified, by Christ’s death on the cross, and not that we are justified by anything that we can do ourselves.
I will continue to do bad things, and I must ask forgiveness from God and from those whom I have wronged.
I will continue to fail to do good things, and I must ask forgiveness from God and from those whom I have left to face oppression on their own.
I will continue to sin, and I will do this because it is in my nature.
The false duality of the world states that I must weigh out the good and the bad actions in my life and determine whether I am one of the good, or one of the evil. Whether my good actions outweigh my bad actions.
But the duality of God states this:
We are totally sinful. And yet we are totally forgiven. We are completely sinful at our core, and yet we are completely righteous. We are full of evil tendencies, and yet we are also full of the grace of God.
There exists within us the presence of sin and the presence of righteousness at the same time, and it is only through God, and the justification of Christ’s death on the cross that we are made whole, that we are declared “Good.”
We can do nothing to achieve this state of righteousness, even though we may try with our own self-justification for the wrong we have done. In fact, it is despite ourselves that we have been made children of God and justified and sanctified before him.
We can, at times, look and act like weeds, but the only thing that separates us is the realization of our own sinful nature, coupled with the enduring love of God that sanctifies us.
When we have come to this realization of this dual and simultaneous nature of good and evil within ourselves, and have grasped the full beauty and completeness of our justification before God by Christ’s death on the cross then we can boldly enter into the world with hearts full of love and forgiveness.
[Mike’s Note: In case you’re wondering, Deepa reads through most of my entries before I publish them. So if you happen to think some of them are any good, it’s because of her doing.]
Mike and I met in seminary. I think a lifetime ago. But let’s fast forward to this morning.
Me: “So you changed the title.”
Mike: “Well, yeah. I figured you might find it funny, but that title would trigger some people.”
Me: “I was thinking it’s about time we all wake up and start talking about stuff.”
Mike: “You feel like writing a blog entry about that thought?”
My head has been exploding with thoughts, emotions, opinions… so much so that I find myself confused and discouraged most of the time. I am sad. I am angry. I am desperate. I am numb. I am shocked. Many people I know find themselves in the same predicament. We’re not alone, we tell each other. So we sob, we Zoom, we find hope in the good we experience around us. We take one step forward, then get pulled back two steps when a video surfaces or a news report is out.
I am mom to two girls, and I find myself quite often asking, “What world are they inheriting from me?” When they’re old enough to leave the nest will they be entering a safer place than what I’m currently in? Will two thirds of the world still be living in poverty? Will pigmentation be the cause of violence and discrimination? What hoops will my girls have to jump through to prove themselves fit and fight gender inequality? What about Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan… where civilizations once thrived, and now ravaged beyond recognition. Global warming… how many more marches and sit-ins? And God, let the #MeToo movement be a cause conquered and learned from, please.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, my childhood years did not include images of children wearing face masks to protect themselves from radiation following the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Neither did I see pictures of families forced to march in to ghettos and concentration camps throughout Poland. I was in my late teens when I learned about the 73-year-old monk in South Vietnam, Thich Quang Duc, who in his will asked the president to be kind to his people, and didn’t move a muscle while his body was engulfed in flames.
But I do remember pictures from the Bhopal Gas tragedy in 1984, the accident that happened at the U.S. owned pesticide plant, Union Carbide. One of the pictures that emerged, “Burial of an unknown child,” sent shock waves around the world. So has hundreds more images. Tank Man at Tiananmen Square protests (1989); The vulture and the little girl (1993, South Sudan); Operation Lion Heart, the story of 9-year-old Iraqi boy, Saleh Khalaf, whose abdomen was ripped open, left eye missing, right hand and most of his fingers on his left hand blown off in an explosion (2003). The picture of him lying on a hospital bed, his shattered body depicted, is agonizing.
Because we live in an Instagram world (and I follow prominent news brands), my girls have seen enough painful pictures for one lifetime, images that have left them visibly shaken. Especially the kind of images which involve children that tear my heart to pieces. Pictures I would’ve considered not fit for 21st century landscape. If I thought The Terror of War, the image of the naked and screaming 9-year-old, Phan Thi, running away from her village after an aerial napalm attack was hard enough, there were more to come! Image of the Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, his body face down on a sandy beach in Turkey (2015); picture of 7-year-old Amal Hussain who became one of millions of Yemeni children dead after years of starvation and horrific realities of a civil war (2018); protests in Hong Kong for democratic reform entering its second year now (March 2019-current); Kashmir on lockdown still, in the guise of curbing terrorism (August 2019-current); and stories of traumatized children separated from families and kept in detention centers, in the land of the free (2018-current).
With the question gnawing at me, “What world am I raising my girls in,” I find myself desperate for assurance. Something, anything, will do. This year did not have a promising start. The U.S. and Iran nearly entered into conflict during the first week of January itself. With bushfires raging in Australia and a volcano eruption in the Philippines, January came and went. By the end of the month China had over 11,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Four months later, the U.S. is still in its first wave of the pandemic, a nation with no leader to work out problems but a man who will quickly play the blame game and always point his finger at others.
If the pandemic wasn’t hard enough, adding insult to injury, the reminder of 400 years of American racism was thrown at our faces. Eric Garner, Michael Brown, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Dion Johnson, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks are only a few names of lives lost in the last few years because of the color of their skin.
As protests, in the middle of a lockdown, raged across the U.S. a week into George Floyd’s murder, my 12-year-old asked me if she was considered white, her voice trembling with shame. I muttered some obscure response for the moment and later sobbed in bed asking God to gobble up this country whole.
The America I am raising my girls in is broken. “If only this is the worst,” a nagging voice says to me. Everything in me wants to challenge it, regardless of the surge in hate crimes three years in a row since the current administration took charge. This is the America that sent the first human to step on the moon. It is also the America that was called the melting pot, where 20 million immigrants arrived in the span of forty years (1880-1920). It is the land where technological advancements and breakthroughs took it to the forefront of inventions.
Today, as I sort through my thoughts, with nearly 30 million unemployed and with no health insurance, the U.S. stands alone as the only high-income country in the world where coronavirus is out of control (The New York Times, Morning Briefing, July 15, 2020). Especially at a time when health care for all is vital, we as a nation are failing its people’s basic needs.
I want us as a nation to wake up. Not to a collapse of aspirations and opportunities that once made America thrive but to a reckoning that we must reunite in order to repair our broken democracy. As I surrender myself, with the heap of struggles before me, and try to release some weight off my back, I want to connect with my neighbors. I want us to start honest conversations. I want us to look at color and not wince but embrace our diversity, because we are all immigrants converged here with parallel dreams. I want us to be remorseful for the centuries of aggression and oppression that led us to Black Lives Matter. I want America to not be known for its failure to treat minorities as equals, in a land that was taken from the Native Americans.
I want to leave behind a country where all children, not only my two daughters, can live life in peace.
Daily Office Readings – Old Testament ( Joshua 2:1-14 )
Today the Old Testament passage was about the two spies that Joshua sent into Jericho and their interaction with the prostitute Rahab. I’ve read this story multiple times, and for whatever reason, today what jumped out at me was not the fact that Rahab was a prostitute, but that Rahab the prostitute had discernment far clearer than the king of Jericho.
Rahab hid the men and lied to the king of Jericho to protect them. And then she tells them that she knows that God has already given the land of Jericho to the Israelites. So she makes a request for the safety of herself and her family. She not only chooses to trust the two spies but also to place her trust in God, that God would deal kindly with her family. We know how the story turns out; Rahab and her entire family are spared when the mighty trumpets of Israel knock down the walls of Jericho.
The king, and all the people of Jericho knew that the Israelites had been conquering the land, and they were full of fear. The king and his men wanted to find the spies to kill them. Rahab, on the other hand, could have handed over the men, but instead understood the plan that God had already set in motion and acted with greater wisdom than the king; the king himself could have made a deal with the spies, just as Rahab did, but instead his entire people were lost because he wanted to defeat the Israelites, rather than making peace with them. He chose to fight against God, essentially. And he lost mightily.
Back to Rahab.
She was a prostitute. A profession not commonly desired, nor respected, by most people.
Most people would simply dismiss her opinion or her entire person because of her chosen profession. And yet she shows wisdom, true wisdom in seeking to save the lives of her entire family because she knows that God has already decided what the future will hold for the Israelites. This woman who would be cast aside by most respectable people, showed incredible discernment and wisdom.
This little revelation struck me because I had to think back to how often I’ve made snap judgments about people based on anything from their profession, to how they dress, all the way down to what music they listen to. Seriously. I’ve judged the entirety of someone based on their musical choices – which in itself is ironic, because I listen to heavy metal and most people would quickly dismiss me based on my own choice of music.
Making these snap judgments is not something I’m proud of, but something I recognize as part of my personality: I am prone to judging others. And even though I have worked diligently to rid myself of this sort of behavior, when I am tired, exhausted, or just plain grumpy, I can easily revert back to this tendency to dismiss people who I deem to have nothing to teach me. It is a bit disheartening to think of how often I might have failed to hear God’s words because I judged the messenger.
Back in seminary, when my friends and I might have felt a bit unworthy, or felt like we lacked the skills necessary to engage in our calling, we would remind ourselves about God’s ability to use anyone or anything to spread his message. It went by way of a joke:
“If God can speak through Balaam’s ass, he can certainly speak through me.”
Some old men came to see Abba Poemen, and said to him: Tell us, when we see brothers dozing during the sacred office, should we pinch them so they will stay awake? The old man said to them: Actually, if I saw a brother sleeping, I would put his head on my knees and let him rest.
Desert Wisdom, Sayings From the Desert Fathers, p 17
This morning I am feeling exhausted. I’ve had conversations with people about the spiritual soul-searching they are experiencing because of the protests and debates of the last few weeks; my own personal grappling with the same; additional stress and obligations at work; and some unexpected spiritual concerns that seem to have arisen out of nowhere. I’m physically tired, and more than just a bit emotionally run down. The idea of laying my head on someone’s knees and resting while someone else is watching out for any interruptions or dangers sounds fantastic. The idea of allowing my mind to rest and be free of distractions for just one hour sounds even better.
In today’s culture of constant motion, it seems that the only way to make time for rest – mental, spiritual, or physical – is to forcibly remove ourselves from our jobs, our ministries, and our families by shutting off all our devices and retreating to the wilderness. It seems like that is the only way to slow things down enough to allow our thoughts to collect.
The thing is, I could get rid of most of these distractions, since for the most part, I have permitted them the space in my life. Other distractions are not so easy to get rid of. Some come from work, some come from ministry, and others are simply unavoidable, such as family obligations or emergencies.
But even then, these obligations may not be a hardship, because we love our family and care for those in our ministries. They may take our time and distract us from things we may wish to do for ourselves, but they are things that we have gladly taken upon ourselves. And, of course, they can be dealt with through proper self care.
But there’s more to this little story of a tired brother. There is so much more wrapped up into the simple idea of pinching the brother so that he stays awake during the sacred office. So many ideas of what it means to be right and holy.
Some people place demands upon others for a level of holiness that can never be attained. And, what’s worse, they believe there should be some punishment for failing to live up to those standards. There is no attempt at understanding what the other has experienced. There is no attempt to see things from another point of view. There is no desire to see things outside of the viewpoint of what is right, and how it should be.
This past Sunday, the Gospel message included the words of Jesus, saying
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
I am gentle. I am humble of heart. My yoke is easy. My burden is light.
Abba Poemen had it right. He took things at face value. We cannot ever know what another is going through unless we have shared their lives and understood their situation. If a brother says that he is tired, or that brother is already asleep, then all we can understand is that our brother needs rest. If a brother is angry, saddened, bitter, or spiritually numb, we can only take things at face value and understand that he is angry, sad, bitter, or spiritually numb.
Our job is to be gentle of heart, to be humble, and to provide a rest for their souls.
[Today’s entry is less of a full-fledged thought and more of a compilation of separate thoughts on different portions of the scripture, more in line with what I had originally expected from the Daily Office Reflections.]
Do As I Say
Once again, in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is calling out the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. He tells the people to do as the Pharisees and teachers of the law teach, but not at all to do as they do.
That’s harsh criticism, and from what we’ve heard from Jesus and others, not unwarranted. The Pharisees and teachers of the law, after all, loved to make sure that others carried out the law to the letter, while they were able to justify their own actions to make their own lives easier.
We all like to justify our own actions (link to last week’s entry), and in this passage Jesus gives us another reason for why we do what we do. The Pharisees in today’s gospel used their religion as a stage performance. They wore the clothes that expressly elevated their virtue, and they sought out the places of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogue. They loved to be regarded as the wise ones, who could educate and guide others.
None of those motivations involved loving God.
Instead, every one of their motivations involved loving themselves, and what their perceived virtue brought them.
I remember hearing a story about Mahatma Gandhi when asked about the Christian faith. He responded that “I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.” When pressed, he extended his thoughts with: “I believe in the teachings of Christ, but you on the other side of the world do not, I read the Bible faithfully and see little in Christendom that those who profess faith pretend to see.”(1) In other words, Gandhi was essentially saying, “I’d be a Christian, if it weren’t for Christians.”
If Ghandi saw the same behaviors in people almost one hundred years ago that Jesus saw in those of his own age, then we can safely assume that the tendency to be seen and perceived as “good” remains firmly planted in our cultural consciousness even today.
So if we are subject to the same tendencies as the Pharisees, then one of the most important aspects of our faith needs to be our self reflection, or a desire to understand our motivations for believing – and more importantly living – according to what we believe. Because if our motivations are to be seen as good, without actually living out our own teachings, then we will be seen as the self-serving, self-absorbed individuals that Jesus called the Pharisees, and Gandhi called the Christians of the West.
Don’t Call Anyone Father
Having been a part of a denomination that ordains both priests and deacons, and gives the title of Father to a priest, I’ve encountered enough conversations with Christians of other denominations who bring up this passage to point out that liturgical churches are flawed, since they use the title Father.
But, this passage also talks about how we are not to call anyone a Rabbi, which is the Jewish word for teacher; and, interestingly enough, what the disciples called Jesus. Nor are we to presume to be an instructor. Regardless of the title, every pastor of any Christian denomination will be assumed to be a teacher, an instructor, or one to whom others look for leadership. And this passage tells us that we are not to assume any of those positions for ourselves. Instead, we are to seek humility, since every last one of us learns from God, the only true teacher of the heart.
In the sense that the word Father (or Mother, as the case may be) is used to address the pastor of a church, it is only that: a title. This passage is referring to the idea of presuming to elevate someone else to the level of God-hood on this earth. It’s combating the idea of giving someone such complete control over our lives as to make them out to be God. If you need an example, look no further than the various cults that have littered our country, and still do(2). In these situations, people have relinquished control of their lives to another human being, in effect making them the god of their life.
