PleaseGrace

Today is one of those days when people are saying, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”  We’ve heard it said before.  To hear it said once is already to have heard it said too many times, I suppose.  Because people only ask for mercy when bad stuff is going down.  If we were wise and a bit more caring towards ourselves and others than maybe we’d ask for mercy before the water’s already passed over the dam.  But that’s a big MAYBE.  If we were good students of history and honest enough to know our own tendencies than we’d never assume that what’s been done before can’t be done again and we’d ask for mercy in the morning, before our feet ever hit the floor.  “Lord, in your mercy, keep me from being stupid and mean towards anyone and everything today.”  Most of the time, however, the prayer comes after we’re already down on our hands and knees with a sponge and a bucket of soapy water, trying to scrub away the proof of whatever has just been done.  Today is one of those days.

This morning, after hearing again the news of the shooting in Brussels, Belgium—dozens dead and hundreds injured; ISIL has claimed responsibility—I clicked off the television.  My head was spinning, my heart raging, and I needed a reality check, a dose of sanity.  Naturally I signed on to my Facebook page.

Perhaps I ought to have been comforted by what I read there.  Where you can post an answer to the question, What’s on your mind? a goodly number of my friends had plastered the simple prayer, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”  For 600 years, if not more, these words have been the trusting, crying response of many a nation, many a church, many a spirit-filled community.  In the face of indescribable, illogical human suffering at the hands of madmen; from the gas chambers of Treblinka to the bean fields of Rwanda; at the front of the line in Birmingham to the back of the line in Yuma; “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer,” has been our greatest last ditch effort to see the will of God done on earth as in heaven.

Like I said, perhaps I of all people should have been comforted by these words.  After all, I am a Minister, a man of the cloth, a seer of things not yet seen.  Why then did these words feel only and suddenly like an exercise in futility to me?

On the drive to work I called my friend, Bob.  “What’s the point?  What good does it do any of us to ask for mercy after the dirty deed has been done, after the innocents have been blown to pieces?  It seems to me that mercy has a shelf life.”  Bob told me to walk gently and to put my stick down.  “As for the rest, I’ll have to get back to you,” which is what he usually tells me.

I went about my day determined to follow Bob’s advice.  I visited with patients who were dying of cancer, or old age, or both.  I played my guitar for them.  One 99 year old lady who had an oxygen tube sticking up each of her nostrils sang a verse of Amazing Grace with me.  I sat beside a Catholic man who asked me to pray in his language.  We said, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”  But silently I confessed that it felt too late.

On my way home from work I turned the radio up loud and then shut it off completely.  I wondered about my friends on Facebook.  What do they know anyway?  Are they just like crazy old Abraham, with a faith in God so preposterous that he would serve up his own flesh and blood on a plate of sacrifice just because God says to?

When Søren Kierkegaard sat down to reflect on the call of God to Abraham—“Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountaintop in Moriah”—it’s said that Kierkegaard got up again.  I mean, we all know what’s at the trail’s end!  Hell, Abraham knows what’s at the trail’s end!  He will stack the wood that Isaac has carried and that Isaac will now be hogtied to.  He will pull a knife from his pouch and raising it to the sun he will thrust it decisively into Isaac’s veins.  And despite Isaac’s question, “Father, where is the lamb for a burnt offering,” and despite Abraham’s inspiring answer, “God himself will provide a lamb,” Abraham gives us no sign that he isn’t fully prepared to end his own son, that he doesn’t believe Isaac is God’s lamb.  In his heart and mind, as in my own, the deed is already done.  There is, therefore, no prayer begging, “Lord, in your mercy…,” for what could mercy do now that mercy hasn’t not done already?

In his treatise, unavoidably entitled, Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard concludes about Abraham that if, on the verge of action, he had judged himself according to the outcome, he never would have even set out from his house that day.  “Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and it is not the result that makes him a hero.  It is the virtue of the fact that he began.”

So, pulling into my driveway, I tried not to think about the results of the day thus far, which, given the day’s production, was a very difficult thing to do.  (Really, I felt it would be enough to not be paralyzed by certain thoughts.  To not think about those whose lives had been wiped off the map in Brussels, to not wrap my heart strings around the families that have been so violently deflated of love now, to not risk compassion for the killers and hope peace for their children, to ignore the fear and paranoia that lately looms heavy in all our neighborhoods, felt unnecessarily pitiless on my part, humanly disdainful.)  I would try to be virtuous and begin again.

My son, Rowan, was waiting for me on the front porch steps.  As soon as he heard the car click into park he came running over to open my door for me.

“Will you play basketball, baseball, street hockey, and soccer with me?”

A freak spring snowstorm three days ago had grounded him inside for two days and he was determined to make up for lost time.  Today was sunny, a balmy 62 degrees outside.  We were going to do it all.

Street hockey came first.  I tried just standing in place and smacking the ball back and forth between us, but he insisted we both run around the driveway like we were two teams caught in an epic showdown for world domination.

“What team are you?” he wanted to know.  I picked The Mighty Ducks.  Mind you, I don’t think they’re an actual hockey team, but for a 4 year old, they were the absolute right pick.

“Who are you?” I asked him.  “The Mighty Squirrels,” he declared.

After digging the ball out from underneath the car and chasing it down the street a few dozen times, I suggested maybe he could take a turn playing ball boy.  He didn’t much care for my suggestion and we promptly moved on to soccer.

Again, standing still was not an option.  Fortunately, however, falling down was.  Who knew that in soccer, running after the ball and scoring goals isn’t always necessary, or at all?  Sometimes, most of the time, running in circles and throwing yourself into the net is the way to win.

After realizing we had more grass stains than we have Spray ‘N Wash for I strongly suggested we try out basketball.  “Want to go for a walk instead?”  Rowan asked me.  He grabbed his scooter and I hopped on my bike.

Going down our street, whenever we went by a driveway with any speck of incline to it, Rowan would turn in and start pushing uphill.  The first time he did it I scolded him, “Rowan, that’s not our driveway.  You can’t just ride up other people’s driveways.”  “But I have to,” he retorted.  “It’s a hill.”  As if to declare, what good is a hill if you’re not going to go up and down it?  “Besides,” he went on, “when I go for walks with Grampy in his neighborhood he lets me ride down every driveway, and Grampy has no arms!”  It was the first time in more than 2 years that he’d used Bernard’s handicap to his advantage.  I got his point though.  Who’s going to argue with an armless man?

There is only one road through our neighborhood.  To get back home Rowan and I would have to go back the same way we came.  There’s no loops or shortcuts back to the beginning, which also means that the small hill at the end of our street—the one that makes the prospect of heading out on your scooter so exhilarating—that same hill is going to be there on your return trip.  Now for you or me it’s a hill not worth mentioning, but if you’re 4 and on your scooter, it goes on forever and ever.  And because Rowan knows the hill is going to be there (we’ve been down this road before), he doesn’t even bother to take it on.  He just stops his scooter at the bottom and keels over in a pathetic display of yammering.

“Rowan, don’t do this.  It’s a hill, not a mountain,” I plead.  I remind him of the 12 other hills he’s already gone up and down today and then say something like, “You know, if you’re going to go down a hill, you’re also going to have to go back up it at some point.”  From his perch on the curb he shoots me a look that makes it clear he thinks I am ridiculous.

Under my breath I mutter a version of a prayer I thought I had all but given up on.  “Good Lord, have mercy.”

Does mercy have a shelf life?  It turns out, after all, that mercy does not.  There is never a bad time to ask for mercy.  And more than this—the best time to ask for mercy is after the dirty deed has been done.  When all our disappointment and anger over what mercy could’ve done and should’ve done has played out, and we see just how ugly we’ve become, we turn to find mercy is still with us, and we pray.

“Lord, for the mercy of sunshine and soft breezes and safe neighborhoods and scooters and resting curbs, we thank you.  Please hear our prayer.

Lord, for the mercy of hope, of a light just waiting to be flicked on in the darkness, of a shattered world that can be built anew, and the part we can play in making it so, we thank you.  Please hear our prayer.”

I hoisted Rowan onto my shoulders and told him he’d have to hold himself there.  With one hand I picked up his scooter, with the other hand I pushed my bike, as up the hill we went, headed for home.

Recently my friend Becky wrote me to say she’s heard that Christians and Muslims both belong to the family tree of Abraham.  She’s also heard that Allah, the God of Muslims, is not the same God Christians worship.  “Which is it?” she asked.  “Same family, different gods?  Same God, estranged family?  Or something else all together?  I read a bit, I go to church, I’ve been watching some of the presidential news coverage lately.  Can you shed some light for me?”  With no disrespect to the light, here is my response…

Dear Becky,

Off the cuff, I would have to ask a follow-up question to anyone who is asking your question.  My question is: “What do you personally stand to gain or lose if the God of Muslims and the God of Christians is the same God?”  Notice my question isn’t, “…the God of Islam and the God of Christianity…”  Islam and Christianity are the names of religions, neither of which have gods.  Religions have their traditions and customs and buildings, and to whatever degree we treat these like they are our gods, we give religion a god and even make religion our God.  But religion has no god.  And we know this is true because God has no religion.  God has people.  In the Old Testament of the Jews, in the Koran of the Muslims, and in the New Testament of Christians, God calls and claims a people, not a religion.  In all our effort to get a hold of this God who has already taken hold of us, we form and fashion things that are more conceivable and manageable to us, things that will help us actually wrap our heads and hearts around God, things like buildings and hymnals and prayer rituals and holy meals, and we call these things…religion.  These are not inherently wrong or unhelpful things.  Quite to the contrary, they are some of my favorite things.  The distinction between Christians and Christianity and between Muslims and Islam is an important distinction, however.  It exists along a razor thin edge, because obviously the world would not have Islam without Muslims or Christianity without Christians.  For me, the distinction is important for several reasons, not least of which is that to reject a religion is to reject an idea, or at best, an ideal.  It is to get up from the table without taking a bite and to walk away still hungry.  It may also be to reject those buildings and hymnals and prayer rituals.  But to reject Christians or Muslims or Jews is to reject people.  I’m not sure we ever think of ourselves as rejecting each other.  Most of the time we simply think of ourselves as being one thing—Christian or Jewish or Muslim—and not something else—Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.  We simply don’t know anyone who is both Christian and Muslim (at least I don’t), and so our choosing of one over another is a harmless distinction.  But then comes your question asking if the God of Muslims is the same as the God of Christians and the line separating the two indeed becomes razor thin.

I don’t know much, and certainly not enough, about Islam.  I don’t know in any definitive ways what the differences are between the God of Muslims who is called Allah and the God of Christians.  Is Allah the only name Muslims use for God?  As you and I refer to a Trinity and speak of one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or speak of God as a human being named Jesus who was also called Teacher, Master, Lord, and Heretic, do Muslims call their God only Allah?  I do know that the word “Elohim,” translated, Lord God, in the Old Testament is translated, “Allah,” in Arabic and that Arab Christians refer to God as Allah.  And Wikipedia, which I don’t usually trust fully but in this instance am going to, says the top name Muslims give to their God is, The Compassionate.  This little bit to say that name-calling never seems to be sufficient help for distinguishing between two things.

Biblically speaking, it’s hard to refute that in the beginning, as in the end, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all belong to the same God.  Now this too is an important use of words—Christians, Jews, and Muslims all belong to the same God.  This is not the same thing as saying that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all claim to believe in the same God or that we all treat each other like we were spawned by the same merciful and loving God or that we all think of ourselves as worshiping the same God.  But, returning to my earlier point, God claims a people, because what God desires is love and what that requires is a people, particularly a people who love kindness, do justly, and walk humbly.  It may be, and this is my greatest hope, that regardless of our acceptance of each other, in the end we will be surprised to discover that if God cares about how, where, and what we believe, our beliefs will be measured not by how well we defended them but by how gracious we were towards those who questioned and disagreed with them.

Abraham was a Hebrew.  His firstborn son Ishmael, born through slave-woman Hagar, would later be claimed by Muslims.  Isaac, though born second, took precedence over Ishmael.  As Christians we trace the lineage of Jesus back to Abraham, passing not through Ishmael but through Isaac.  That this is the way the Genealogy of Matthew 1 reads is what it is.  What we as Christians in particular need to be aware of, however, is the possible implications involved with any genealogy—that they create in our minds pecking orders and competition.  Do Christians think of themselves as being better than Muslims?  Do Christians treat Muslims like they are better than them?  I’m not necessarily speaking of all Christians in all times here.  But the fact is, the Crusades were engineered by a deadly mixture between Christians and the law leading to the decimation of thousands of Jews and Muslims.  History has argued, and will continue to do so, that Jews and Muslims provoked Christians to the Crusades.  Whatever the cause and effect however, we ought to insist that the punishment far outweighed the crime.  My point is this, regardless of what the history books say about the Crusades and who did what; regardless of what the media and politicians say today about the refugee crisis in Syria and whether the U.S. is less sympathetic towards those refugees because they are Muslim and we are a so-called “Christian” nation; regardless of any of this, nothing can light the path to peaceable and just relations between Christians and Muslims more than our own individual response to each other.

How different might Christian-Muslims relations look today—how different would our world look today?—if we let go of the premise that only one of us worships the one, true God?  What if our starting block was that Christians and Muslims all belong to the same, one, true God, who in the end will claim us all in love and grace?  How would we listen to each other and seek to understand each other even more now if we believed that in the end, God is going to sit us all down at the same family table anyway?  This has never been easy for us to do.  I know that I tend to put agreement and shared belief ahead of unity, and these are good and beautiful ideals, but I just can’t come to a point of saying that I believe God requires them for salvation.  The Christian Gospel proclaims that we do not choose our own salvation, let alone the salvation of others.  No unity that we can either formulate or enforce—be it the unity of a shared confession or a common church or religion—can be our salvation.  Our salvation is in God who renews all creation and makes all things one.  Our holy task is to participate in this renewal.

At the heart of the Jewish and Christian scriptures is the declaration: “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one,” from Deuteronomy 6.  Second to this may be this declaration: “And Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness,” from Genesis 15.  I always pause when I read this.  I want to ask, how did Abraham believe?  Was it easy for him to believe or nearly impossible?  Did he have a lot of faith or a pitiful amount of it?  Because we’re told that it was his believing that made him righteous.  Apparently he didn’t have to answer any questions or recite any creeds or agree to abide by the polity and discipline of any synagogue or church.  He believed God and God reckoned that made him righteous.  I firmly believe that inherent to the Christian faith is the belief that all things come from one God and all things return to one God.  On that day of great returning will God judge us?  Yes, the Bible is pretty clear on this point.  Biblical judgment, however, means most simply that God will set things straight again.  Perhaps it also means then that on that day we will all show up at the Pearly Gates and looking around at who is there with us we’ll have to confess first and only all that we didn’t believe, all that we denied was ever possible, and God, who is a merciful judge, will set us straight not by turning us away but by asking us, “Do you believe me now?”  And it won’t be too late for us to believe God and to be made righteous.

It has always been easier for us as Christians to accept that we and the Jews belong to and worship the same God.  We have of course believed this despite our detestable treatment of the Jews during World War II.  But I think we’ve found it easier to accept the premise that we belong to the same God as the Jews because we love our Bible so much and our Bible says clearer than clearly that God has not given up on his covenant with the Jews, that they were and are God’s first love.  I don’t know if we think of it this way, but if we reject the Jews than we reject our Bible, and I think we are less prone sometimes to rejecting our Bible, and especially the New Testament part of it, than we are to rejecting our own Jewish brothers and sisters.  What I can’t figure though is why—if we accept this particular truth regarding the Jews—why don’t we as Christians also accept it for the sake of Muslims?  For again, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all fall like fruit from the same tree of Abraham.  Put another way, what makes it so difficult, and even reprehensible to some Christians, to think that we belong to and worship the same God as Muslims?  This is a theological grace we’re willing to extend to Jews.  Why not stretch out the hand a little farther?  For what we really must remember is that we were not the first twinkle in God’s eye, that truly the hand that reached out to pull us into the family of God was not a Christian one, but a Jewish one.

I can’t answer these questions for anyone but myself.  Answering for myself, I need to remember that as a religion, Christianity wasn’t established as such until 313, some 300 years after Jesus had been born, lived, died, risen again, and been ascended.  Christianity was established as an official religion by the Emperor Constantine, who took this action in order to protect Christians from what was at that time, an intense onslaught of persecution, slaughter, and death at the hands of the Romans.  In doing this Constantine ostensibly legalized being a Christian, putting the full force of the law behind the church.  My guess is, at that time Christians took a deep sigh of relief.  In years to come, however, Constantine’s actions would prove to have an unintended consequence.  As followers of Jesus Christians were never promised safety.  Jesus himself was crucified at the hands of the law.  He certainly wasn’t protected by it.  There is an essential element of personal risk involved in following Jesus.  In 313 Constantine gave this risk a massive safety net.  Granted, in some parts of the world this risk still goes so far as to cost Christians their very lives.  For you and I, though, the risk is probably going to require more of a deep rending of relationship both to ourselves and to others.  (I’ve always felt a certain affinity for the disciples sitting around the table with Jesus on the night he was betrayed.  After Jesus announces that he is going to be betrayed by one of them, they all start asking, “Is it me?  Surely it’s not me?  Jesus, is it me?”  I mean, here is a person they have come to feel a deep allegiance to and yet they are not even self-aware enough to know what their own next move is going to be!)  This is the type of risk I find myself having to take—admitting my own insecurities and fears because I have it in me to betray Jesus without knowing it.  Did Isaac and Ishmael know each other as brothers?  That a part of each of their story was wound up in the other person?  Scripture tells us that allowing Isaac to play with Ishmael was a risk Sarah couldn’t afford to take.  She couldn’t risk losing her stature as Abraham’s preferred wife.  So she betrayed Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness and thereby secured a safe keeping for herself and Isaac.  She established social protocols, and drew lines in the sand that would make it forever clear who is who and who belongs where.  But of course, God crossed the line and found Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness.  God betrayed neither Sarah nor Hagar, neither Isaac nor Ishmael.  It’s a story that begs me to ask, are there people I have written out of my own story?  Are there people whose stories I have written myself out of because long ago, when I accepted the teaching of my elders, I didn’t know how deep and wide and long and high the love of God actually is?

I have written a lot here, and I’m not really sure I’ve answered your question.  I know Muslims who say they do not worship the same God as me and I know Muslims who say that they do.  To those who say they share the same God as me, I suppose I could ask, why then don’t we also share the same mosque or church, and why don’t we both confess Jesus?  Except I know Christians who don’t all share the same church and whose following of Jesus seems to take them worlds away from mine.  And to those who say they don’t share the same God as me, I suppose I could judge them on account it or accept it as judgment upon me, but what good will that do?  St. Francis of Assisi once prayed, “Let me not so much seek to be understood as to understand…for in this is eternal life.”  I must leave it at that for now.   I  welcome your thoughts and always your prayers.

Fondly –

David

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care for where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

It was five years ago this month that I was in Hebron, standing in a house that is no longer there.  It was by far the oldest house I’ve ever seen or stepped foot into.  Hebron is like that—old, ancient, with people who can say their family members have held a zip code there for 4,000 years.  This is, as you may imagine, both beautiful and troublesome, because old places tend to have this hold on us, on all of us.  Walk the Freedom Trail in Boston, visit Omaha Beach in Normandy, walk a bridge in Selma, stand on the Trail of Tears in Nashville, or on top of the rubbled wall in Berlin, and something within us wells up.  Maybe it’s pride or shame or something all together different.  Depending upon what it is, for a moment we feel like we were there, like we made the call or pulled the trigger (or took the bullet) or swung the hammer (or didn’t).  For a moment the past becomes us and we see how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.  And this can be beautiful, and it can be troublesome, because history has a way of taking hold of our sensibilities and leaving us feeling entitled, like we deserve something for all our trouble and pain when in fact, it was never our trouble or pain.  That someone else did go off to war, that once upon a time someone else did speak up in the square and get shot down for it, is part of our history and reason for gratitude and waving flags at parades.  Entitlement, however, can make us think that we are better than those who suffered the defeat of battle or prejudice, that they fought in vain, which is something we would never do.  Or equally snobbish, that we are the same as those who marched and won, when in fact, unlike them, we didn’t lift a finger for ally or enemy.  That’s entitlement.  Not having received what we believe is our fair share of credit and inheritance we do everything in our power to make others feel as if they don’t deserve it either, or worse, at all. Covering up the real and actual beauty of a people or place with labels of unwontedness, those who are entitled leave us feeling old in all the bad and unnecessary ways.

I never really saw it until I saw Hebron.  Hebron as you may know was the first home to Abram.  A man of biblical proportions, Abram (who would later come to be called Abraham) became the father to three families, all of whom would grow up to want to live under Abram’s roof, just not together.  As far as families and sibling rivalries go, perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us.  After all, Abram’s own family tree was speckled from the start with the unforgiving fruit of sibling rivalry.

If you believe what Genesis has to say, at the beginning of creation when Adam and Eve are sent forth from the Garden of Eden for being disobedient to God, the whole world is filled with a sense of homelessness, of not knowing where or to whom they belonged or what exactly they were supposed to do.  Case in point: Cain and Abel: Adam and Eve’s own children, whose eulogy is written down just a measly four chapters into Genesis.

Born of Eve, raised by Adam, perhaps these two brothers shouldn’t have been all that different from each other, except Cain hates Abel with the hatred of a killer, for Abel is a hunter, and God it would seem favors hunters over farmers.  God doesn’t say that he loves Cain any less, but when the two brothers come with offerings for God and God takes Cain’s offering ahead of Abel’s, Cain just can’t stand it.  He lures Abel out into a field, away from home and even God he thinks, and there Cain kills him.  It’s the start of a tragic history that no family member to come seems able to undo.

Cain kills Abel, their great-grandson Noah spawns a stream of sons who commit all kinds of unspeakable acts, and before anyone can say, “Lord have mercy,” God is already saying, “I’m going to wipe the whole slate clean.”  So God sends an unspeakable amount of rain to flood the earth where the only people spared are Noah and his family, because this is how God works—there is justice but there is also grace to mediate the justice.  But Noah and company will still have to get on a boat and drift to wherever the wind of God takes them.  When the wind and waves finally die down and they step out onto dry ground again, they are homeless. God props up a rainbow in the sky as a reminder that never again will God wreck the earth with a flood. (Curious to me, Genesis reports that God uses the rainbow not so much as a reminder to Noah but as a reminder to God, as if God knows that having hacked off the world once, God might be permanently prone to doing it again. Apparently even the Divine is vulnerable to entitlement and the devastation of acting like the world belongs to me and is mine to do what I want with. The rainbow serves then both as God’s self-imposed restraint against being God in any way that doesn’t protect creation and human dignity and God’s promise to go on with us no knowing full well that before time is up we’re likely to give God a thousand more reasons to kill us than to love us.)

Naturally, upon disembarking the ark Noah’s family takes a head count, clamors together, and comes up with a plan that will ensure their posterity.   Their new home will be a great city with a tower reaching to the heavens; safe, proud in appearance, and full of people who look, live, and sound all the same way. It’s not an insidious plan carved out of some blatant prejudice on anyone’s part but when God sees things taking shape God decides to shake things up again.  This time there is no flood but God topples their tower and scatters the people across the earth to once again be homeless.  Out of all this moving about, all this not knowing where or to whom they belong or what exactly they are supposed to do, God finally calls a man named Abram.

“Go,” God tells him.  “Go from your family and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Just look toward heaven and count the stars, if you can. So shall your descendants be.”

Now there is something we need to understand, because without this everything that happens from this point forward in the story of Abram will seem hopeless.  We need to understand that the only way to truly live greatly is by learning to love specific people.  In his book, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, Rabbi Jonathan Saks observes that we don’t come to love by deciding to love people generally.  We love and are loved by the decision to love particular people at particular times in particular places—the mean kid on the playground at lunch, our spouse after a hard argument on our way out the door to work, the friend who disappointed us by not showing up when we needed them to.  “There is no road to human solidarity that does not begin this way” (p. 58).  “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you,” God told Abram.  In other words, this is love: we give and receive blessing from each other and it’s like receiving from the very hand of God.  Of course sometimes we get it wrong and we curse each other instead, and God is in that too.

It’s not unlike an experiment, and for God, if there is any chance of getting the experiment right—of the world learning to love again—Abram is going to have to move to a new land, to a place he’s never been to or heard of before.  Because as life post-flood had already proved, if left to our own devices we’ll build a house and fill it only with the people we know we’ll like and who will like us back, people who speak our language and listen to our music.  But that won’t fill the house with love.  It won’t make for a home.  To find a suitable place for a home Abram must go then to a land that only God can show him.  That land is Hebron.  “So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron” (Genesis 13).

If oak trees were to be Abram’s sign that he’d arrived in a land of new possibilities, I couldn’t find any in Hebron.  Like ancient cities of its kind, Hebron does have a city wall that runs all the way around it.  I like to imagine that back in the days of Abram the gates to those city walls stayed open all the time so travelers and strangers passing by Hebron who might have needed a resting place could just come in and receive some of that blessing from the hand of God.  Today the city gates are locked and manned with soldiers holding semi-automatic Uzis.  The soldiers are Israeli-Jews.  They don’t actually live in Hebron, but they want to.  To them Hebron is home, for they are Israelites, direct descendants of Abram.  Those who live in Hebron are Muslim and Christian Palestinians, who much like the Israeli soldiers, know themselves to be children of Abram too.  Hebron is home to them as well. Their family has had a Hebron zip code for 4,000 years.

Now some have said this is the way it’s always been.  It’s Cain and Abel still fighting in the field on the edge of town, unwilling just to go back home and make up.  Some have said it’s the way it needs to be, that Israeli soldiers need Uzis to protect themselves against Palestinians who might fire a rocket at them.  That it’s not reasonable to expect the city gates to stay open all day; that the land belongs to Israel.  It’s biblical, it’s divinely ordained, it’s politically correct, and free-roaming Palestinians are not allowed.  This is the way it is and this is the way it’s going to be.  At the same time, the Palestinians say they were there first and have been there all along.  If God is humane, what right does the State of Israel have to move in, to lock their city gates, to say when and where Palestinians can go in their own home?  Is that the way of God?  What is so biblical about dispossession and slavery?

Not many people travel to the Middle East today and go to the city of Hebron.  This is especially true for visitors from the United States.  I find this unfortunate and unsettling, because according to the U.S. State Department, approximately $3.1 billion will be given to Israel in 2016 for the purpose of security and defense (state.gov).  Of the top 25 countries who will receive a piece of the $37.9 billion being given in foreign aid this year by the U.S., Israel ranks second.  Palestine does not make the list (foreignassistance.gov).  I am not a diplomat or a politician or a soldier, but I’m sure they would all tell me that necessary to our own national security, the U.S. must continue to support the building up of Israel’s borders and statehood.  As a U.S. citizen I am willing to concede that for reasons beyond my own scope of understanding, perhaps it is.  And yet!  Walls and weapons cannot make us safe.  It’s true they might make us feel safe, but only for a brief shining moment.  Ultimately, walls and weapons lead only to more walls and weapons, which, contrary to reports and appearances, are not signs that we are indeed safer, but rather that we are more afraid.

So it is that in Hebron the buildings are built very close together, making the streets very narrow.  As you stroll the streets, over your head, everywhere you go, are nets stretched between the buildings and the nets are filled with trash, so much trash that in many places the nets sag to touch your head as you walk along.  The nets have been put up by the Palestinians who live in the city, to protect themselves from the Israelis who stand on top of the buildings filling the nets.  Now this is not the way of every Israeli or Jew living around Hebron; this much we must understand. What is more, among those who do this, they do so for reasons that are real and personal.

They’ve heard said it’s biblical, it’s divinely ordained, it’s politically correct. “There are people out there with rockets who don’t want to share their home with me anymore than I want to share my home with them.  I fear them and I need to drive them out before they drive me out,” one Israeli woman told me over a shelf of oranges in the marketplace.  “Throwing trash upon them, forcing them through checkpoints ought to do it.”

I don’t know but that this is not God’s vision for Hebron, for Israel, for Palestine, or for any of us.  I don’t know but that it’s not biblical, it’s not divine, and it’s not politically correct. I don’t know but that many generations after Abram, the prophet Haggai (whose name aptly translates, “my holiday; my feast day”) spoke to Abram’s children and laid out a different vision, one of a different looking home.  For many years the children of Abram had been living in captivity under the Babylonians.  Having disobeyed the law of God by denying care to the poor and worshipping so many false idols so many times, God finally left them to their own downfall.  But now, having served their time, they’ve returned home, except home isn’t what it used to be.  Like a page out of the family album, their beloved Jerusalem has been destroyed and it’s temple put to ruin. Some want to rebuild it, to put it all back together the way it once was, and some do not want to do this.

“We can’t go back,” they say, “and even if we could, why would we want to?”

Onto the scene steps Haggai to announce a two-part vision for them.  Part One: rebuild something.  Create a space where people can come together before God in prayer, work, and praise.  Because there is this idea out there that says we can somehow worship God without ever having to be with other people, that we can just sit in a field, out under the sun, and call it worship.  This idea is a lie.  A life lived with God is a life lived with others.  For just as God is open to hearing our concerns and to carrying our sins, so must we be open and vulnerable to one another, and this means coming in from our separate places.  “Rebuild something then,” says Haggai.

And Part Two: remember that the world’s silver and gold belongs to God.  Remember that once upon a time God shook out the heavens and earth to bring forth all the riches of light and darkness, of oceans and mountains, and God shook out the nations too.  Scattering us about like seasoning for the earth, God gives us to each other.

“So if in your rebuilding,” declares Haggai, “you must put walls around the city, don’t make them too high.  And if you must have gates, keep them always open.”

For this is love: we give and receive blessing from each other, and not in any general way but in a particular way—by loving in particular those who would curse us and shut us out.

T.S. Eliot writes of a Love that both draws us in and calls us out.  When this happens,

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time” (Four Quartets, V).

Eliot knows that we can’t undo what’s been done.  We can’t go back to our beginning pretending as if we’ve never been there before or that we don’t know how we got there.  The walls we had to climb over, the rubbled towers we had to climb out from underneath, the labels we had to rip off and the entitlements we had to cash back in so we could arrive back where we started.  Going back always cuts to our core.  In that place Abram is being called by God again to leave behind all his worldly possessions (everything he has worked so hard to get back!) and go off in search of yet one more world that only God can show him.  In that place Cain’s hands are stained red and his mind haunted by the dead face of Abel and an age-old question: Am I my brother’s keeper?  In that place Isaac and Ishmael are rollicking over an old toy they used to share when they were children, back before their mothers happened upon them. Front and center in that place, Sarah and Hagar are tripping over each other, neither of them sure of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, but neither of them willing to admit their ignorance or guilt.  In that place all our demons come knocking, all our history is laid bare and treachery looms as decisions must be made about our future. Will we head right back to where we’ve already been to do what’s already been done, or will this time be different? Like raking up autumn leaves in April, we gather together what winter couldn’t kill after all.  Her colors are mostly black now, her surface bored through with so many holes that even a Fairyfly could find a grave to lie down in. But Ho-ho! What’s this? A spot of orange and even green!

___________________________________________

“Is this the place?” I imagine Abram asking God at least a couple times on his trek to Hebron.

How does one handle it when they don’t know where they’re going and therefore has no way of knowing if they’ve arrived? If the Cheshire Cat was correct in saying that if you don’t care much for where you’re going than it doesn’t matter which way you go, than I have to imagine the only thing that matters more than where we’re going is how we get there, for how we travel will have much to do with what kind of shape we’re in when we arrive, and may even determine for us whether the trip was worth the making. I’m talking about best practices. There are best practices in teaching, in business, in friendship, in dog training, in money management and even in marriage management. Now, at the risk of dismissing the benefits of good planning, best practices are usually based on a particular plan or goal we’ve laid out for ourselves. It’s helpful to know where you want to go on vacation before packing your suitcase and setting your GPS.  At the same time, if our goals and plans are not reasonable to our abilities and resources, if we don’t have a car or any money with which to buy a bus or plane ticket, then no amount of best practices are going to help us get out of town.

Considering Abram, he asks no questions regarding the adequacy of the plan. We’re told that Abram is a righteous man.  Could this mean that he trusts God to deliver him to wherever “there” is and to provide a little sunshine and rain along the way?  That’s simple enough.  But what happens if he gets screwed?  Should Abram reach his end and decide he wants more and God says there is no more and this is enough.   This is what Abram will do well to spend his journey preparing for—how to handle the blessed curse of a God who might disappoint him but never abandon him.

Ironically, a hundred generations later and this is what we who are Abram’s children have not come to terms with. Having made our own journeys to distant lands in search of worlds only God could show us, we feel screwed by divine misfortune. Where did we go wrong? Did we miss a turn?

For my part, I simply believe we need better practices. I will tell you that I support the existence of the State of Israel. I will also tell you that I am a confessing Christian who lives in the United States. I put it to you this way so you may understand that I don’t support the State of Israel because I am a Christian or because I am a U.S. citizen. Maybe this is normal talk for you, but eavesdrop on certain church pulpits, tune in to certain political campaign rallies and news stations right now and the difference between being a Christian, a U.S. citizen, and a supporter of the State of Israel is not readily apparent. But I am all three of these and I will tell you that not only are they not the same, but as soon as we treat them as if they are all the same, we’ve betrayed them all.  For it is neither patriotic nor Christian to spend our money in support of an Israeli state at the expense of a Palestinian one.  To say yes to the right of Israel to have borders while continuing to fund the purchase of bulldozers that take those borders right through Palestinian homes is not in keeping with the agreements made in 1948 when Israel was established as a state.  At that time 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and their ancestral land, many of them forced to live as refugees. It happened again in the 1967 war when another 350,000 Palestinians were sent packing (unrwa.org).  I’m not contesting the right of Israel to exist as a state.  I am contesting her practices in existing.  I am contesting that Israel, proclaimed by her own Prime Minister to be a Jewish State, is not living up to the vision hoped for long ago by her own prophets—

“To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free, and to break every bond.

To share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

To cover the naked, and not to hide yourself from your own kin.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly” (Isaiah 58:6-7)

So what can we do to better our practices? Have weapons and walls made Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine safer and more peaceable? Has our unilateral support of the Israeli State and her Defense Forces—support that has provided Israel with the means to force Palestinians through checkpoints that isolate them from clean water, economic opportunity, healthcare and family, all resulting in undue harassment and degradation—has this type of complicity on our part made the United States safer and more peaceable?  No.  We’ve become criminal.  We have perverted our hearts and made ill work of being Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, and we have put our common humanity at risk of ever being found again.

So what can we do? We can begin by recanting our lopsided theologies that have made for, and continue to make for, lopsided allegiances.  (Now somewhere someone is reading this and perhaps wondering if I’m calling for a one-sided support of Palestine.  The answer of course is no.  We must reject the use of violence by Hamas as well as any group anywhere to denigrate and destroy Israel .  To argue, however, that protesting the actions of the Israeli government and her Defense Force is to support Hamas is just careless and dangerous.  For one thing, the U.S. gives no financial or military backing to Hamas.  In addition, neither the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority nor the State of Palestine nor the Palestinian Liberation Organization, all of which have been given credence by the U.S., give party to Hamas.  In their truest forms, Israel and Palestine want for each other too much to have any mistresses.)  We can confess our duplicity in making ourselves look monstrous to the world at times, and we must confess how easily we scare at the site of difference. We can take our money and spend it instead on plane tickets to foreign lands where we’ll have to depend upon the kindness of strangers to show us a good time and feed us a good meal.  We can buy a bus ticket to the other side of our own town. We can, at the very least, take a stroll down our own street and dropping all pretenses, introduce ourselves merely as “neighbor.”  Because past history and present circumstances aside, I imagine that when Abram arrived in Hebron it wasn’t all roses and caviar. We can assume that it looked a lot like the place he’d just come from (minus the tents and hitching posts for the camels which now had to be pounded into the ground all over again) and Abram likely asked God, “Why couldn’t I just stay where I was again?” To which I like to imagine God gazing out over the landscape, and declaring with a wry smile and an approving nod, “No particular reason.  I just wanted you to see how beautiful the oak tree are here.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Christmastide.  I just got word from a friend of mine that he’s splitting ways with his spouse.  “It will be okay,” I told him.  “How do you know?” he asked me.  “You don’t know that.  You can’t say that.  How do you know?”  “Because,” I assured him, “it’s been okay before.”

Difficult as it may be to believe, and as impossible as it may be to do, this is what we all can celebrate today, that it will be okay.  Because it’s been okay before.  There’s been peace in Syria before.  We have put our guns down before and wound up on the right side of justice before.  We have reached across tables and aisles and walked across streets to be good samaritans to perfect strangers before.  We have reached even deeper into our hearts to pray for our enemies before.  The have-nots have been made rich at the hands of the have-it-alls before and the have-it-alls have received as much in return from the have-nots.  We have mustered up within ourselves the power to speak well of those we agree with without also having to speak ill of those we don’t.  We have done this before.

In the Christian tradition Christmas arrives in the mystery of an Almighty God who doesn’t ask us if we have the means to protect and defend him.  This God doesn’t ask if we share his beliefs or even have any beliefs at all. Where we go to church, mosque or temple is secondary to whether we do go and if so, why do you go and how is it making you more gracious?  This God neither asks nor cares about our leanings—right, left, gender, political, theological or otherwise.  Do you think I’m a man or woman?  This God says I was born a baby, so were you, can’t we leave it at that?  This God doesn’t ask if we have enough money with which to buy him some food and clothing.  This God asks only if we’re willing to share what little bit we do have.  This God doesn’t ask if we can first get it together in our marriages and prioritize our commitments accordingly before he’ll come through the door and make a home with us.

At Christmas God puts his own faith in our humanity on the line.  Entering the world like we all do as a baby, God puts the eternal at the mercy of the calendar.  At the end of nine months, give or take a day or two, God will have to come.  To parents who aren’t ready, delivered by a virgin of all things!  And if a virgin birth seems half-baked and laughable; if it defies all logic and reason; if we know it to actually be implausible, I think this is the way God would have it be.  If nothing else a virgin birth is God’s version of storming the castle.  It happens on God’s terms, without warning and with a force that topples the powerful, dumbfounds the scholar, and lifts up the lowly.  And yet, in the virgin birth God chooses to go it our way, leaving himself no exit plan, no way to back out should things not go well.

And we know things won’t go well, for things often don’t.  The fact is, precious little in our world is likely to make it, including our marriages.  But this isn’t the hardest part.  The hardest part perhaps is that that which does make it is going to change almost entirely.  When all is said and done, the things that remain will be nearly unrecognizable to us; ghosts of a past once loved.  We will look at these things through squinted eyes and wonder how and why they betrayed us, and how and why we could still love them.  So it goes with spouses, children, and even newborn babies.

But this is what Christmas means to me: everything will be okay because it’s been okay before.

As I sit here typing, Christmas Day has actually come and gone.  I suppose this means ho-ho is over and ho-hum has returned.  Except my children are lying on the living room floor building the Legos Santa brought them.  Soon they’ll skip out the back door to take a swing ride on this unusually warm December day.  Watching them play I can’t help but think, So this is what becomes of hope.

We dig our gift out from under the tree, unsure at first of what it is and disappointed at what it is not.  Give it time, tinker with it though, and in our disappointment we may also discover a certain wonder and curiosity rising up within us—the hopefulness of what it could yet be.  Of course, in our discovery we may also find that the gift is indeed what it is—a gift, yes, that ought to be handled with gratitude and gentleness, but alas, something that neither can nor ever will be changed.  A gift that despite our best calculations will never save our failed expectations.  We will need to return the gift to the place from which it came, give it away to someone who needs it more, or appreciate it for what it is.

In the case of my friend, I don’t know which it is.  A spouse is hardly something you dig out from under a tree and unwrap (at least not in my part of the world).  So some will say then that he and his wife should have seen it coming.  They should have thought more carefully about their vows, dated longer, had a few more get-to-know you conversations before saying, I do.  And now that they have, it’s too late to back out.  Live with it the way it is.

I don’t know.  Marriage can be a deadly mixture of fits and starts, of speechless joy and groaning anger.  We wake up next to the one person we swore we’d always be honest with only to find that our honesty is going to wreck us.  And while loyalty may have its place and persistence can pay off, while that which doesn’t kill us usually does make us stronger, those who preach loyalty and persistence at all costs are just playing the fools.  What is required is hope.  Hope is what the ancients called the sum total of suffering, perseverance, and character.  In other words, hope does not say, “Forget about what happened yesterday and today.  Tomorrow will be better.”  Hope does not bury its head in the sand or wish upon a star.  Hope does not plow ahead.  Rather, hope demands that we look back over yesterday and today and take stock of our wounds.  Hope considers the wreckage of our lives and asks, how did this happen?  Who’s responsible?    And yet, hope plays neither the victim nor the jury, for hope knows it will do us no good to lick our wounds or place blame.  Like Almighty God, hope is concerned for who we’ve become.

If hope is born of suffering, suffering, we know, changes us both inside and out.  It fundamentally alters our self-confidence as well as our relationship to neighbors, friends, and community.  That suffering results in perseverance may be a grotesque assumption.  Perseverance, however, is not at all what we think or say it is: our ability to take a few licks.  Perseverance is not a measurement of our ability to beat all odds and go it alone.  Above all, perseverance is a matter of our continued trust in others.  Despite the number of times we’ve been kicked, punched, and thrown to the ground, can we continue to trust others?  In short, if suffering does lend itself to perseverance and perseverance to hope, than the continued existence of hope in the world depends upon you and me and our daringness to trust each other as signs of goodness and mercy still.  Give up this trust and we become critics and enemies to one another.  Hold fast to it and suddenly a whole new world order becomes possible.

For the sake of my friend this is where I’d like to add that the same ones who told us that suffering, perseverance, and character add up to equal hope, they have also told us that the end of hope is the total loss of disappointment.  Hope does not disappoint us.  Regret may remain; sadness and scars, too.  In a strange twist of understanding, love itself may force us to go our separate ways.  These are the awful side effects of having hoped at all.  Still, hope does not disappoint us.  So go forth.  Suffer, trust, be trusted, rest up, then move along and do it all over again.  Until you find yourself somewhere down the road where the nights don’t feel so long and dark anymore, where hope becomes you, and where at last you can remember a time when everything was okay, and when everything was yet to be.

I’d like to give you two things.  The first is a word, just a single word.  It’s not a typical word for you.  It’s not hope, faith, or love. Those are good words; heartwarming words.  But I don’t think they’re enough for you today.  I want to give you a word with a little more backbone.  The word is: plucky.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines it as having or showing a lot of courage or determination:  plucky.  Notice, you don’t have to have a lot of courage or determination.  It says you can be plucky by just looking the part.  I don’t know if Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster were psychologists or sociologists, but they knew enough to know that the line between who we are and who we want to be, between having courage and not having courage, is very fine, a matter of mere appearances at times.

These days I’m watching my four year old learn to ride his bike without training wheels.  For sure, he’s had his fair share of falls and skinned knees.  But the other day he seemed to get it and I yelled out, “You’re so brave!”  To which he responded, “I’m so scared!”  But there he went, down the road without his training wheels.  Was he being brave or scared?

I’ve heard this line before, mostly in movies, when some old guy says to some young kid, “You got real pluck.”  Like, you’re a class act, the real deal, and I’d think, I want to have pluck.  Because people with pluck are people who, seeing what they want or seeing what needs to be done, rush in and get the job done.  The firefighter plucks a child from the fire.  The child plucks a feather from a bird.  Of course, if we want to say that the firefighter and the child have pluck, we must also admit that the bird has pluck.  This is what I really want you to know: a person with pluck is someone who has endured a great loss.  To have lost an essential part of yourself—a feather, a loved one—to have been ripped apart, and to come out clean on the other side, is nothing short of courageous.

Granted, this is more easily said than done, for being plucked requires being scarred, and scars are eternal memories.  Sit with them, walk towards them, run from them, do none of this or all of it at once, “the weak,” said Gandhi, “can only remember.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”  Indeed, remembering can be hard.  It takes work and honesty.  Sometimes our memory plays tricks on us.  We think back on our loved ones and sometimes we see them as having been better or worse than they really were, and this causes us to see ourselves as having been better or worse than we really were, and are.  I’m not saying this is a good thing or bad thing.  It just is what it is.  To have lost an essential part of ourselves makes some of us feel…lost, while others of us finally feel free.  Treat that part honestly, though, and you treat it honorably, mercifully, and you come out clean on the other side of remembering.

One of the oldest stories in all of literature is that of Noah and his ark.  In a world is so full of grief, disruption, and a hopelessness that not even God can bear anymore, God decides one day to wipe it all out and start all over.  (Sometimes that is necessary, I guess.)  But at the last second God has a twitch in the heart and God thinks it over again.  “No, no, there must be something worth keeping here.  Nothing is a total loss.”  So God finds an old man, a relic named Noah, and God tells Noah the plan.

“Build yourself a big boat, Noah, and collect 7 pairs of every animal and creature there is and get them on board.  It’s going to rain.”

Dear Ms. Davis,

I hear you’ve been released from jail.  I’m glad to hear it.  When I first heard that you, an official clerk, had been put in jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses in Kentucky, I thought, that’s a shame, because I thought you could have done more, and by “more” I really mean, better.  This being the case, I want you to know, I didn’t judge you then and I don’t judge you now for holding up your religious freedom flag.  Really.  I don’t.  I do back the judge who locked you up for breaking the law.  Not that you care about what I think, but the judge got it right when he put you behind bars.  I’ve actually stayed up at night wondering what the judge might have thought about it all.  For all I know you and the judge were both born and raised in the same town.  You had access to the same local news stations and were exposed to the same preachers and teachers.  And we all know, no one can deny it, that you, the judge, and I, we all read the same Bible.  So maybe the judge agreed with you.  It’s not improbable.  Maybe, had he had to issue the marriage license instead of you…  Well, I guess we’ll never know.  He had a job to do and like it or not, he did it.

I know, how well one does their job can be a matter of opinion.  How well did the judge judge?  How well have you done your job?  How well am I doing mine?  All opinions being equal, when the judge ordered you to jail, did you feel like the law had failed you?  Should the law be given the power to force us to do something that puts us against our religion and faith, something that splits our heart down the middle?  I mean, forgive me my questions, I know nothing essential about you, and if for no other reason than this, I shouldn’t assume to understand your reasons for doing what you have done.  But if you and your history are anything like me and mine, than you love your Bible.  It’s God’s very word to you.  The first and last authority on everything that matters.  Your grandmother gave it to you perhaps, inscribed with Acts 16:31 on the inside cover: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”  Like I said, I know diddly-squat about you.  Like, when, where, why do you believe?  Is it ever hard for you to believe in Jesus?  Nothing says that your family has to believe like you do, or even at all, to be saved; it’s just you that has to believe.  Is that how it’s gone for you and your loved ones?

Sorry.  Here I go again wanting details when details may seem unnecessary to you.  There was a time not too long ago when they did to me.  It’s not that I was ignorant of the details, like I didn’t know what might be in them—the possibilities, the alternatives, the joyful surprises.  I knew not to ignore the meaning between the lines, and I’ve always maintained a teachable spirit.  But still, had I held your position, I too would have said no to same-sex marriage for the Bible tells me so, and crowds of people with their paper crosses would have cheered my name, while Eye of the Tiger played on a loop.

Then one random day, I was taken down Apostle Paul style.  Dropped to the ground and blinded by the light of Jesus, I met someone who could put a cup of cold water in the hands of a thirsty person with the best of them.  And isn’t this what the Bible according to Jesus comes down to?  “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”  They believed, they acted kindly, they testified to a holy calling, they told me they got it all from reading the Bible, and they were gay.

So here’s what I’ve come to decide: should I ever feel I am being forced by the law to do something that cuts me to the heart, it’s not an attack on my religious freedom (for examples of attacks on religious freedom see black churches burning; see Jews being carted off by the thousands, also to burn; see ISIS; think of being told that your job is to issue same-sex marriage licenses and if you don’t like it, tough luck, under penalty of death you can’t quit your job; think genocide, extermination, whole-scale degradation.)  Rather, what you felt an attack on would, I think, be more appropriately called, your religion, for which there is no protection under the law.

Now I realize this may come as a disappointment to you, that the law which gives a same-sex couple the right to receive a marriage license doesn’t give you any right on the basis of religion to deny them that right.  But at no point in our nation’s history has the law ever protected religion.  If I may be so bold, at no point in our history do we ever want it to.  For as soon as the law takes to respecting religion and faith on individual bases, we have weaponized religion and faith.  Mike Huckabee claims that “we shouldn’t criminalize the Christian faith,” but I think he is missing the greater danger, that the Christian faith can be criminal.  Criminal when its people know how to be right only by making others look wrong.

Ms. Davis, I am not at all disappointed by your loss of religious freedom.  From what I can see, you haven’t actually lost a thing.  What disappoints me is our pitiful take on religious freedom today.  Truly, what does it say about you and the excellence of your religious freedom when the best you can do with it is to keep two people from getting married?  Do you even know the two people?  Beyond the fact that they’re gay and want to get married, do you know anything else about them?  You probably don’t.  But I wonder, if you did, would it change your mind, or at least make you care a bit more about them and their marriage license?  Might I suggest you sit down over a cup of coffee with them?  My guess is, they’ll be glad to buy.  And then, consider more carefully the thousands upon thousands of people who are fleeing their countries today for safer refuge elsewhere and ask yourself if, for the sake of these and all who are like them, you couldn’t find a better use for your religious freedom?  Because your decision not to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples doesn’t make you a champion for the word of God.  All it’s done is to prove that you are not a very good employee for the state of Kentucky.

I am glad to hear you are out of jail.  I really do believe we can do more, and do better, because remember, we read the same Bible, and while I haven’t read anywhere that we get to decide who should and should not get a marriage license, I have read that we ought to seek understanding, practice compassion, bless our enemies, and let God take care of the rest.

Sincerely,

A Household Member

One night a couple months ago my wife and I attended a kindergarten pre-registration session for my daughter, Lillian.  You read that right.  We didn’t actually sign Lillian up for kindergarten.  We just heard about how to sign her up.  It was the sign-ups to the sign-up.  It was like the calm before the storm.  (Why do we even speak of a such a thing—calm before the storm?  Do we really think we can convince ourselves, as we’re running around boarding up windows, pillaging the shelves at the grocery store, that we are calm?  I know we are really pointing to the fact that for at least a few more minutes we can sit on the back deck sipping lemonade, because soon, with hardly a warning bell, the heavens are going to rain down hell on us.  Soak it up then.  Stay calm and sip gently.)

But for those of us who tend to chug our lemonade unnecessarily, there is pre-registration.

Sitting in the auditorium of what will soon be Lillian’s newest adventure, I am giddy.  There’s nothing eye-catching about the surroundings.  The walls are darker than one would expect for a place that teaches children about ultra-violet rays and the colors of the rainbow.  There is a carpet, which is the first sign that the room needs a make-over, or that someone hates the custodian.  There are chairs set up on either side of the room, about 30 rows in all, and in between them a wobbly cart with a projector that is pointing at a dimly lit screen on a dimly lit stage.  It’s all plain and simple.

A woman steps out in front of us and introduces herself as Mrs. So-and-So, the Principal.  You can tell that she can’t wait to tell you whatever it is that she’s about to tell you.  All she tells us about are bus routes, school lunches, and the PTA.  Then she hands off the microphone to the school nurse to say a word about hepatitis shots and the need to pack an extra pair of clothes in your child’s backpack.  (“Just in case,” she reminds us.)  “We love spending the day with your children, getting to see the world with them, to teach them and to learn from them,” says the principal.  I lean over to my wife and announce in a rather self-congratulatory way, as if I discovered her for the good of all humanity, “She’s great.”

After she is done speaking we’re invited to check out one of the four kindergarten classrooms.  Right off I notice there are very few walls in the whole school.  The library opens into the hallway, which twists and turns up a wide ramp to dump you out in the cafeteria, from which you can look out and see down into the gym.  The individual kindergarten rooms are divided from each other only by partitions—corkboard walls on wheels.  The walls of course are covered in ABC’s, lowercase and uppercase.  There is a “weather wheel” that can be turned to indicate sun, clouds, rain, or snow.  There doesn’t seem to be an inch of wall that isn’t covered by student artwork or the latest science experiment results.  The teachers are there to ask questions, which they do in a manner so sure and sweet that if one of them had sat down on the floor right then and there, I probably would have plunked myself right into their lap for story time.

For a moment I close my eyes to see Lillian bopping around the room like it’s her own bedroom, complete with corners for napping, reading, and coloring.  Meanwhile the sound of other children eating lunch and playing kickball wafts over the walls, filling her senses with the anticipation of things to come.  She is free and safe from all alarm.

And yet, and yet, in that same moment one thought enters my mind like an uninvited guest at a party.  Drunk, inappropriate to the occasion, I want them gone, but they are unavoidably passed out in the middle of the action, and no one seems able to move them or to ignore them.  My eyes snap open.  The thought is this: what if the school needs to go into lockdown?  What if a crazy person with a gun finds their way in and all the children need to huddle behind closed doors?  What then?  There’s no doors!  There’s no doors anywhere!

I’m not a pessimist.  I go hard on myself for letting Bad Mind take over.

I realize that for every alternative available to me and my wife—homeschool Lillian, petition the town to send her to a school with doors, pay for private school, lock her away in a tower (I saw Disney’s movie, Tangled.  Rapunzel did pretty well for herself in the end)—we’re not likely to do any of these things.  For one thing, Lillian doesn’t have the hair to be Rapunzel.  For another thing, if we haven’t figured it out by now, try as we may, no one gets total pass protection through life.

As Barbara Brown Taylor once noted in her short essay, Truth to Tell, “Sons and daughters of God are killed in every generation.  They have been killed in holy wars and inquisitions, concentration camps and prison cells.  They have been killed in Cape Town, Memphis, El Salvador, and Alabama.”  We can sadly add to this list now Newtown, Kenya, The West Nickel Mines School, the mountains of Virginia, the streets of Boston, and the church pews of South Carolina.

It would seem there are at least three ways we can respond to this truth.  We can open our eyes without actually seeing what’s before us.  We can pretend none of it is happening at all.  Stick a lollipop in our mouth, skip on down the street, and see only the silver linings on every dark cloud.  Some might call it optimism, others, hope.  Either way we have failed to recognize that hope alone won’t put a cup of water in the hands of a thirsty person.  That neither right thinking nor right belief leads to right actions.

So we might instead admit defeat and just close our eyes in despair of it all, which, like wishfulness, is as equally shortsighted as it is unhelpful.

Thankfully, there is a third option.  I couldn’t come up with it while touring Lillian’s school, but it came to me rather innocently a few days later while sitting in church.  It was Palm Sunday and I was sitting in the pews, which might not sound all that unusual, except for me it was.  For almost a decade now I’ve been used to sitting up front in church.  Actually, not just up front but front and center, and alone.  As the preacher or liturgist or both, I’ve always maintained a well protected perch from atop the pulpit or behind the communion table.   Donning a black clerical robe, the idea was never to stand out as being more important than the masses.  Rather, the purpose of the robe is to ensure that the masses can easily pick out the one person among them who no matter what will sit on the floor with their children or sit with them in the hospital waiting room, the one person who will lead the march to justice and the prayer for mercy.

These days, however, I’m working as a hospice chaplain and sitting in the pews.  It’s not as roomy as sitting on a 36 inch wide, double cushioned chair up front all by myself.  Nor is it as quiet.  But sitting in the pew listening to the story of Palm Sunday, I realize that where we sit and who we sit with has everything to do with how we hear the story, and what we’ll decide to do next once the story is over.

If you’re a child, the story of Palm Sunday is just a parade, and the finest one around.  For one thing, the street vendors don’t charge for their trinkets.  Not only are they handing stuff out for free, but you have to take it, which is a dream come true for every boy and girl whose parents have only ever said no to spending $10 for a bag of cotton candy or a whirly light-up thingy.  This time there is no saying “no.”  Everyone gets a palm tree branch to wave in the air.  Not only this, but the rule of the parade is you have to yell and cheer as loud as you can for those marching in the parade.  No one is allowed to hush another person today.

“Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of The Lord.”  When you see the guy riding on the donkey, scream it at the top of your lungs, the parade-directing-preacher directs us.

This is something only children will understand.  The politician wearing a suit and the veterans decked out in medals and flags are all respectable, but they’ve also become predictable.  That we cheer for them both, sometimes with the same levels of enthusiasm, is a misappropriation of history and of hope, but the guy riding on the donkey, what’s he up to?  He’s clearly not running for office or heading off to fight yet another war.  What’s he done lately to merit applause?

According to sources he’s been accepting a number of invitations to dine at some of the most respectable establishments in town.  Cocktails with elite academics who recently published groundbreaking interpretations on vexing moral questions, now local best-sellers; hors d’oeuvres with party leaders; dessert with religious power-brokers.  Except on every occasion it would seem the dinner gets interrupted by someone who has decided to kick the door in because they’ve had enough of not making the guest list.  It’s usually a woman of the shunned variety.  Divorced, maybe it was her doing, maybe it wasn’t.  Times being what they were, it didn’t matter, no one was likely to ask for her side of the story anyway.  She’s got a letter cut across her chest now and no man is going to give her his love again, let along an arm to escort her into a party.  She’s poor in pocket and in spirit.

Or she was never married.  After years of not being able to make it happen, her father did what he could, though not what he should, and sold her off to another family.  On that day she became a disgrace, doomed to wander forever from door to door in search of herself.  But when she hears there’s a party going on and that Jesus is at it, she figures there must not have been a guest list and that she can just show up for this one.  After all, if a guy who would ride around on a donkey can get in, how can she not?

But sitting down at the table next to Jesus, everyone just stares at her.  To most she is just an object to be examined, labeled, and put in a corner for safe keeping.  It’s not that she’s not safe in this crowd (though she’s not, not at all).  It’s that no one feels safe around her.  She’s a threat to their ideals, a discomfort to their every comfort.  So they stare at her as if to say, “We see you there.  Now don’t you dare try to move.”

To them Jesus has but one simple instruction.  “Look at her.  Soak her up.  Take her in, into your arms.”

For to see someone is to acknowledge their presence, but to look at them is to see with the eyes of the heart…

To see not just what we can handle, but to allow ourselves to be handled, to be gripped, moved, by what we see…

To allow ourselves to be seen in return…

To see not just as we feel, but also as others must feel…

To see feelingly.

Sitting in church I realize this is the third option I’m going to need to get Lillian through kindergarten: GOOD, HARD LOOKING.

As far as the parade goes, it’s over and the man who rode upon the donkey has been taken down by a terrible alliance between heartless religion and feckless government.  The accusations are several, but top of the list is that he cared too much about the woman and everyone who ever has been, and everyone who still might be, robbed by indifference.  The cheering crowds now yell for his scalp.  But listening to the children in the pews, they’re still cheering hallelujah.  In fact, they’ve slipped onto the floor and are rolling around, tickling each other on the back of the neck with their palm branches.

“Shush,” I hear one mother say.  “Don’t you hear what’s happening in the story?  This is a serious moment.  Jesus is about to be killed.  This isn’t a happy moment.”

My own child looks up and passes me an animal cracker.  “Here, want one?”  For a moment I wonder why the children don’t seem to see what I see.  Then I wonder if the truer matter is that I don’t see what they see.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that,

“One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.

Children from India will ask:

What is hunger?

Children from Alabama will ask:

What is racial segregation?

Children from Hiroshima will ask:

What is the atomic bomb?

Children at school will ask:

What is war?

You will answer them.

You will tell them:

Those words are not used anymore

like stage coaches, galleys or slavery

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries.”

I don’t know what words Lillian will and will not learn in kindergarten.  I don’t know what to do about open schools with no doors or locks—such crosses we bear.  The children of God have been killed in every generation.  I do know that in such places there is no telling who you’re going to end up sitting next to.  They might be friendly.  They might threaten your life, and these are the ones you really want to take a good hard look at, and to try with all your might to love.

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” 

So said the Apostle Paul a long, long time ago to a small band of Christians in Rome.  Granted, Paul didn’t think of himself as speaking to Christians any more than did those to whom Paul was speaking think of themselves as being Christians.  Paul and his audience were both Jewish.  (Paul called them “saints, God’s beloved”.)  They thought like Jews, they practiced their religion like Jews, they ate like Jews.  Like their ancestors of old who looked for the Almighty and found the Almighty in some of the most eye-splitting places, they were Jews through and through.  That this last quality of being Jewish would cause some many centuries later to call them not Jews, but Christians, would perhaps have sparked within them as much surprise as distress.  But so it went that this small band of Jews in Rome who had heard of God once appearing to their great-great uncle Moses in a burning bush and to their long-lost cousin Elijah in a whisper of silence, one day saw something else they’d never truly seen before: a man.

What made this man so different was not his miracles–feeding 4,000 people on a couple fish and a few loaves of bread; calming stormy seas; or his views on power–that money can be corrupting and poverty crippling beyond self-repair.  Moses had split the Nile River and Amos ranted against social injustice.  Rather, what made this man so different was his mercy…

He forgave women that others would have stoned.

He leveled evil by inviting its perpetrators to see both the consequence of their ways AND the possibility for change, in him!

He prayed first, which is to say, he insisted on letting others talk first.  He listened to understand, and then he spoke, and this was his compassion.

Yes, on occasion he was known to flip tables mercilessly, but he did it only to those who should have known better than to sit down and lick their plate in the presence of a starved beggar.

And what the small band of Jews saw in this man was something of God, the divine spark igniting a bush again.

True, it would not have been unusual to hear a Jew say that God had met them in a way never seen before.  To say that God Almighty had descended to earth in flesh and bone even was not entirely new.  The Greeks and Romans had been setting their caesars up in palaces, trotting them around in chariots, giving them dominion over the sky and sea, and calling them God for years.  What made the elevation of the mercy-man Jesus to divine status so different, however, was that it depended entirely upon the testimony of rather shaky witnesses to say over and over again, it’s true, we believe this about him.

Where the Greeks and Romans upheld their gods and caesars with proclamations and doctrines, giving them the necessary and unchanging justification to do most anything and to never be questioned (at least not to their face) about it—so if Poseidon chose to churn up the seas and cause a massive typhoon to wipe out an entire village, as terrible as this may be, Poseidon must have his reasons for doing so and those reasons must be good—Jesus never laid claim to being anything close to a god, or even to good.  As far as we know he didn’t write anything down that couldn’t be erased and the few proclamations he did make tended to make those who once called him God to rethink their position.

Consider the rich man who once called Jesus, Good Teacher, and asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus threw off the title, saying, “God alone is good,” and as for eternal life, start with the commandments: Don’t murder, don’t steal, honor your mother and father.  At the heart of Judaism is a concern for law, for a system that works to nurture justice and to protect the innocent.  That the rich man responds to Jesus by telling him, “I’ve done all of that,” makes clear that he is well on his way to eternal life.  But then this: “You lack one thing: go, sell whatever you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come follow me.”  It’s our reminder from Jesus that social responsibility without compassion will get us no where except further away from eternal life.  We can live our lives following all the rules.  We can never join a march, never disrupt the public square, never steal from our neighbor or even want what they have.  We can sit in a pew every week, drop some money in the poor box, keep to ourselves and never pass a judgment.  We can do all of this and still be miles away from the goodness of God, because while all things do work together for good for those who love God, the operative word is not “good.”  It’s “love,” which is nothing short of a revolution.

It seems to me that we who call ourselves Christians have come to hear these words differently today.  We hear that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, and we forget that if we are to love God, we must first work together.  That the purpose of God is to love and to work together.  But instead we stake our claim on working only with those who share our purpose, who love like we do, and most notably, who love us like we want them to.  So “liberals” tell “conservatives” who in turn tell gays and lesbians who in turn tell gun owners who in turn tell pacifists that all things will not work together for good for you because you are not living according to the purpose of God.  We hone in only on the parts that make us feel good about being us, forgetting that there is no goodness, or even any hope of goodness for us, if we don’t give up some of our goodness to love.  Perhaps we need reminding that these words—“all things work together for good”—these words were not spoken so much to Christians, or for the sake of Christians, as to those who, on account of their generous orthodoxy and unassuming ways, would come to be called Christians.   

Not too long ago I was sharing with a group of children the story of how Jesus once fed those 4,000 people with just a couple fish and a few loaves of bread and how after everyone was done eating there were 12 baskets of leftovers.  One little girl asked if the story was really true.  (I thought this was a very brave thing for her to do.)

     Another child, equally brave, said, “I don’t think so.”

     I asked them then, “Do you not think Jesus could feed that many people?”

     “Yes, I think he can,” the two said together.

     “But I don’t think he did it on his own.”

     Overcome with curiosity, I had to know.  “How do you think he did it then?”

     “I think the people just kept passing the food around, taking really small bites to make sure everyone got something.”

     “In the story, though, it says that everyone was filled and that there were leftovers.  How could everyone be stuffed if they only had a little bit?”

     “I don’t know how the leftovers got there,” said yet another child, “but I think everyone was filled because it feels really good to share.”

If Paul had been asking a question when he said, “all things work together for good for those who love God?” the answer must have been “yes.”  In fact we know it was, and is.  That somehow, in a world like ours, someone had the guts to say, “all things work together for good, now go out and make it so,” is indeed a call to love and revolution.

But would our vision fit the call.  In the wake of this past week’s shootings at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston I have heard a lot of questions.

Is this a time for politics or healing?

Is this the appropriate time and occasion to raise the platform again to talk about gun control?

Was this a hate crime or a crime against Christians (I understand the difference, but seriously, wouldn’t we do better just to tell ourselves that all crime is hatred?)

None of this surprises me.  We’ve heard these same haunting questions before.  The same people ranting so singularly about their position.  For my part, I just don’t think they are the right questions for today.  Maybe we can ask them tomorrow, but as long as we insist upon asking them today, we wait for the next gun to go off.  These questions will not lead us to the more urgent answers—the right answers—we need today.  Some ask, is this a time for poltiics or healing?  But what about,  can our politics be a force for healing?  And what about our religions and our families?  Can they be of that same force?  Can we start a revolution with just a few loaves of bread and a couple fish?   We already know the answer: all things work together for good for those who love God.  Are we humble enough and gutsy enough to prove it?

I don’t think it is inappropriate, given the nature both of this crowd and of the one who has gathered us all here, namely Margery, to tell a story about…sheep.  This seems to be the theme we are running with this evening anyway.

“The Lord is my Shepherd,” we have just heard played and sung.  And in a moment,

“My Shepherd will supply my need, 

Jehovah is his name.  

In pastures fresh, he makes me feed, 

beside the living streams.”

We’re talking of course about sheep, about us, about the places we wander to—sometimes knowingly, sometimes against our wills—and about the things that happen to us in those places where we feel lost and yet free.  And most especially we are talking about the people, the shepherds, who lovingly track us down in those places and gently nudge us onward.

This all part of the story I want to share with you, and I promise I’ll get on with it in just a moment, but first, an observation about sheep that may be helpful to the story.  (Keep in mind, this observation is coming from a guy who’s never really observed a sheep.  Even at the petting zoo, I don’t pet the sheep.)

From what I can tell, when looking at a flock of sheep, their ability to travel together and stick together does not depend upon the individual sheep.  In other words, in order for there to be unity, oneness, among the sheep, they don’t have to know each other.  It is, however, necessary that they at least recognize each other as sheep.  Stick a moose or a pig in the flock and the sheep will baa in unified protest or just shudder in fear of the one who is different.  But their togetherness, their togetherness rests solely upon the shepherd, and not upon the loyalty of the sheep towards the shepherd, but upon the loyalty of the shepherd towards the sheep.

Now I can’t speak for you, but this comes as good news to me, because as I look around, I see only one or two people that I know and who know me.  Not many of us have been introduced.  But here we are.  Thanks to the generous, spirited welcome of those who call this hallowed sanctuary home, and of Margery, here we are.  And I submit to you that in this time and place it is not necessary to our unity that we know each other.  For us to share grief and hope, as we are here to do, it is only necessary that we recognize each other as human beings.  Or, if you will, as sheep.  Which brings me, finally, to my story.  It comes from scripture, from the gospel of Luke.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  So Jesus told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?  When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

I picked this story to share mainly because it’s one that Margery and I read together a short while ago on the day we first met.  Margery had just received the news that what had been ailing her for months was cancer.  Life as she knew it had changed and before long it was about to change again.  “I’m not afraid to die,” she told me.  “It’s not the moving on that bothers me.  It’s the leaving behind.”

Leaning back in my chair, I pulled a page out of my Counseling 101 textbook, drummed my fingers and said, “Yes, tell me more about…leaving behind.”  And that’s when she started in about the 100 sheep and the 1 who got away.  “I worry about people who aren’t saved,” she confessed.

Now it was clear from listening to her tell it that Margery did not think of herself, nor was she likely to ever think of herself, as the sheep who got away and needed saving.  At best she was the shepherd who went off in search of the lost.  At worst she was a member of the herd of 99 who followed the rules and kept to the straight and narrow.

What we ought to remember, though, is that right or wrong, all judgments aside for a moment, we’re never told how or why the 1 sheep got away.  I mean, what kind of shepherd are we dealing with here who loses track of sheep and then abandons 99 to the wiles of the wilderness to go off in search of just 1?  Why are we so quick to wag a finger at the sheep?  Perhaps we ought to indict the shepherd for negligence?

Moreover, how do we know the 1 sheep didn’t want to get lost?  Maybe they’d had enough of living under the watchful, arrogant eye of the flock.  Time to find greener pastures.  How does the saying go?  “Not all who wander are aimless.”  Amen to that.  Sheep are not as dumb as they look.  If anything they are stubborn, persistent, far more certain of themselves than we give them credit for.

Truly, to know Margery was to know that she was the 1 sheep.

At a young age, following the separation of her parents, she and her sister had to live many years in an orphanage.  When her parents did patch things back up years later, it was Margery who kept the family afloat, who bounced from job to job, working her way up whatever ladders she could to provide for the family.

It strikes me that in recalling Margery, her youngest nieces and nephews remember her as their source for comic books and bedtime stories.  “The bedtime stories were clearly made up on the spot.  Every night she would invariably paint herself into a corner and not be able to get out of it.  That’s when she would declare, time to go to bed!  But the next night the story would pick back up and go on.”

As an adult she loved to read fantasy books about dragons and vampires, so long as the vampires were good, and she took on the Harry Potter series with all the enthusiasm of a 13 year old.

And though she was banned from the kitchen on account of being an absolutely terrible cook, she had an uncanny ability to keep cats and dogs alive forever just by giving them a lap to lie on.

I don’t know but that you don’t get through life and also help others get through their life by being just another one of the sheep in the fold.  I’m sure Margery loved dragons because they are fierce fighters, and cats because they are winsome and gritty.  She took to bedtime stories and fantasies as a way of creating more beautiful, holier worlds for us to live in, even if just for a moment.  Yes, she was in her own right more the shepherd who rescued us than she was anything else, and we owe her our gratitude for that.

But she was also the 1 sheep who wandered off.  She was the stand-out in need of saving.  And while she may not have liked to think of herself as such, I will tell you how the rest of my visit went with her that first day we met.

After reading up on the 99 sheep and the 1 who got away, and her telling me that she didn’t much care for my particular take on the story, but she did like me, she agreed that it wouldn’t be so terrible to discover after all that we may not have gotten it all right.  That while we have surely gotten some things right, we may still have a thing or two left to discover about God, ourselves, and who, or what, saves us.  Because it wasn’t the sheep who stayed put that got saved by Love.  It was the sheep who got away.

 I don’t know what you believe about who, if anyone, meets us when we are put out to pasture.  I know that Margery believed that in death God would meet her in the love of Jesus, the shepherd who traveled far and wide to seek and save the lost.  And if only for the sake of Margery, I do believe that’s just what Jesus did. 

But still, I don’t know what you believe about who, if anyone, meets us when we are put out to pasture.  Rumi once quipped that “Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.  When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense any more.”

Jesus, Rumi, a great big field, a heavenly gate, I don’t know what you believe about who or what meets us when we are put out to pasture.  Perhaps we can all agree though that if we want to be found we must first step away from the flock, jump the fence, and get ourselves lost?

If only that we might also rejoice over each other when we are found again.

Writing about tonight, the gospel writer John says that when they were gathered together for supper, Jesus took off his outer robe, put on a towel and began to wash the disciples feet.

John doesn’t say that Jesus asked anyone if they wanted their feet washed.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Andrew, I’d be glad to wash your feet for you if you’ll just kick off your Nikes.”

Jesus doesn’t ask them if they want their feet washed.  He just knows that their feet need to be washed.  He knows this because for one thing, he can see that their feet are dirty.  There were no closed-toe boots or sneakers or Uggs back in those days.  At best you had a pair of sandals and the dirt on your feet told the story of where you’d been that day.

There’s an ancient saying that goes, “If you want to know where you are, look at your feet.”  So we can imagine what Jesus saw, and what he could have said, in washing the disciples feet tonight.

“Wow, Peter.  I can see that you’ve got a lot of dirt here from your bedroom floor.  You’ve been in your bedroom a lot today, have you?  Behind closed doors, doing some praying, some thinking, trying to figure out your next move.  Peter, let me wash those feet of yours.”

Then there’s James and John.  The dirt on their feet is the same.  Two brothers, they’ve been out on the soccer field all day kicking the ball at each other’s head, trying to prove who can kick the ball harder.  In a few minutes an argument is going to break out around the table about who is the greatest disciple.  Make no mistake about it, James’ and John’s voices will be the loudest.  “Here guys,” says Jesus, “let me wash your feet for you.”

There’s also John the Beloved Disciple.  He’s at the table, too.  He’s caked with dirt from his feet all the way up his shins.  It’s the dirt from the field at the edge of town, the one covered with flowers.  John’s been out there all day shuffling back and forth.  We’ve heard that John is the disciple who just needs some extra reassuring.  He needs to be told that he’s loved the most.  So he’s been out in the field all day pulling the petals from the dandelions.  He loves me, he loves me not.  He loves me, he loves me not.  “John,” says Jesus, “give me your feet.”

And of course there’s Judas.  His feet are covered with the dirt of the temple and the dirt from the local sheriff’s office.  He’s been hanging out there a lot lately, scheming and plotting with the authorities on how best to capture Jesus.

They’re all at the table with Jesus tonight, but soon none of them will be at the table with Jesus. They’re all going to run, to say they never knew him.  And they know this about themselves, and Jesus knows this about them.  That it’s not just their feet that are dirty.  It’s their hearts and souls as well.  So Peter says, “Lord, wash not just my feet, but my hands, my head, and every inch of me.”  And Jesus does, because to Jesus those gathered around the table are his friends.  That’s what he calls those who are so dirty, so insecure.  He calls them friends, and he reaches out to touch the dirtiest parts of them.

I don’t know where you’ve been lately.  If we looked at our feet, what would they tell us about who we’ve stood beside, and who we’ve walked away from, what good we’ve said and what good we’ve not said?  I don’t know but Jesus invites us still to come to his table with our dirty, messy lives, to eat bread—his presence with us, his body broken for us; to drink a cup—his blood poured out for us, his life given to us.  For in these gifts and in this moment Jesus himself draws near enough to touch us, to wash and heal us, for us to hear him call us friend, that we might call each other the same.