Saturday, November 23, 2013

Mystery, Prayers, and Grace Biskie


Mystery, Prayers, and Grace Biskie

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            This morning I woke up determined to write nothing today.  Sometimes I write too much.  Sometimes I am not as well-informed as I imagine myself to be.  I don’t intend to write as someone who is an expert.  I write as someone who understands himself (at least sometimes I understand this) as part of a process.  Writing is one form by which we enter the dialogue of the human conversation.  One person speaks and then another; and one conversation leads to thoughts that get expressed in hundreds of other conversations, and become tangents that become whole new conversations.  That is sort of how life works.  I am the sort of rude person who always imagines he has something to say and so I wanted to take a break from being that annoying person who always has something to say.

            But then I read a tweet on Twitter by Grace Biskie describing her understanding of her relationship to others, a sense of her gift of empathy and her ministry of prayer.  She uses a word that maybe you might not wish her to use but I loved this piece here that you might want to read to understand what led me to want to write on the mystery of our prayers in connection to Christ’s prayers as our great High Priest.

            I don’t know Grace Biskie personally, but through following her on Twitter and having occasional interaction with her there, I believe that she is ministering in the way she presents her understanding of her personal ministry in the post I linked to.  I was thinking of mystery in the Christian life earlier today and when I read Grace’s words the two themes just sort of wove themselves together in my mind; prayer and mystery.

            I’ve come to understand prayer, in the Christian understanding of it to always be connected to Christ’s work as the Great High Priest.  The work of Christ as High Priest, described in the Book of Hebrews has helped me understand simply some of the great debates between Christians of differing traditions.  It helped me to understand that the saints in heaven, you know those spirits of just men made perfect described in the Book of Hebrews, do pray for us.  I mean what else would they do all day long in heaven, where their relationship to Christ is central to their experience in heaven while he is continually praying intercessory prayers for us on earth?  What do you and I do when a priest or minister is praying in a church service?  I know sometimes we daydream, but sometimes we listen to what the minister is praying and we pray along, and we pray the “Amen” in agreement.  That is what the saints in heaven are doing when Christ prays.  It would make no sense for them not to join our Lord in his intercessory prayers.  It makes this thing of saints’ prayers pretty simple when you think of them worshipping God as Christ prays; their prayers being one with his.  Like us they are praying with their whole personalities in agreement with the Great High Priest.

            But Grace’s post actually made me see, in a transforming way, this whole phenomenon of our praying in conjunction with Christ’s praying as the Great High Priest.  Grace speaks of praying because she sees a need to be brought before the throne of grace, and a need for some … intervening grace.  I suspect and also hope that some of the readers of this blog are Calvinists and others are Arminian.  I hope this because prayer is a mystery which neither side of the soteriological debate can claim as their full property.  I have often thought of how Christ’s work as High Priest is a pattern for my participation in liturgical worship.  Christ prays, and like the saints in heaven we pray in our liturgical worship with him.  But Grace reminded me how this work of prayer isn’t just a top down thing, but also a bottom up phenomenon where those getting dumped on in the sludge pits of life here on earth have an access line to our Father in heaven.  Her post reminds us that one of the things we do as brothers and sisters in Christ, is to see situations and needs for one another and begin praying for some “get real” intervention.

            This means that prayer is in the mystery of worship and intercession connected to the mystery of the Living Church, of Christ being one with us in the Living body, His church.  The church feeds upon the life of Christ.  We are baptized into him.  We partake of his body and blood.  We dwell in him, and he in us.   This mystery of Christ’s union with the church helps to explain the mystery of prayer.

            St. Paul made a comment to the Colossians that seems strange at first glance and might seem almost heretical.  He says to the Colossians, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is of the church.”  (Colossians 1:24 ESV)  It may strike us as almost heretical for someone to say that he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  But this seems to be part of how our participation in the Gospel works.  When St. Paul speaks of how all things work together for good to those who believe, (Romans 8:28) his further explanation of this truth doesn’t mean everything is going to appear smooth sailing and make us feel honky-dory all the time.  The truth is all things are working together for good even though we sometimes have to remember that we are as sheep to be slaughtered all the day long.  (Romans 8:36)  We participate in the Gospel as members of Christ’s body, in connection to him as our head, by being his body on earth that suffers, cries out, and prays; and this is part of how we actually participate in filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.  Grace speaks of herself as a gatherer that collects the experiences and sorrows of others and lifts them up to Christ.  That is what we do as members of Christ in the church.  We are Christ’s body on earth.  Through us he gathers, and we gather to bring to him, these needs that we feel for because in Christ we have been granted concern, empathy, as we are brought to have a bit of the mind of Christ in us.  So we are taught in him to empathize and to desire good gifts for those who need it, and we lift these prayers up to the throne of grace, and these prayers become our Lord’s prayers of intercession.  That is astonishing isn’t it?  This is the mystery of prayer, the mystery of the church, the mystery of the body of Christ’s oneness with Christ living in us and us living in him.  That is the mystery of us somehow being included in filling out the sufferings of Christ.

            So I had to write this today, because I got the feeling that Grace gets tired and exhausted and feels her limits.  She is not alone.  She is doing a wonderful work and it is part of all this mystery and wonder, and some of us have gotten sidetracked and have lost the sense that down here on earth people are getting dumped on and need some expletive deleted needed intervention.  Grace is an example.  I am sure there are many more examples.  Today her post spoke to me as I was thinking about mystery and somehow the two seemed to match perfectly.  In the mystery of Christ’s becoming one with his body on earth, his prayers are gathered for his daily intervention through his body on earth discovering concerns, needs, desires, and in Him by the Spirit expressing them so that he may take what we lift up and lift up in complete perfection to the Father.  Let this be an encouragement to us all.  We who are participating in the Gospel are filling out the sufferings of Christ and are connected thus to his high priestly prayers being prayed in heaven by Christ and spirits of just men made perfect, and on earth in Christ and the church by the Spirit unto the Father.  Our participation isn’t like travelers riding a bus, but as miners digging out the precious finds from the earthen soil of men.  Thus we pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  We are on earth bodily, but we are also in heaven because we are one with Christ.  He is in heaven bodily, but he is also on earth because he is pleased to dwell in oneness with us through the Spirit and unto the Father.   We are filling out his sufferings and our prayers are ascending into the heavens and Christ is lifting them up sanctified and perfected unto the Father.  Our prayers are ascending into heaven and God’s response will also to a large degree descend down into the earth to be expressed in answer form through the very people who are participants in the Gospel.  Grace Biskie, your post reminded me of these things today, and even pointed me to some fresh appreciation for our part in it all.  Thank you.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

An Embarrassing Encounter


An Encounter that Gave Me an Unwelcome Glimpse of Me

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Rachel Held Evans had the honesty and humility to tweet an embarrassing admission.  Perhaps I should tell my more embarrassing life-encounter that probably helped change my life.  Here is Rachel Held Evans’ admission that she tweeted today:  “Quietly judged a lady at the grocery store based on her appearance and accent.  Then she ran after me to deliver a bag I’d left behind.”  Ouch I hate when that happens, and I’m pretty sure most all of us have been there.  I appreciate her saying that, and it reminded me of a life-changing encounter long ago.

            Let me fill in a bit of background before I get to the encounter.  I began to follow Christ shortly before going to college.  I toyed with the idea of studying for the ministry.  But I had been going to school for sixteen years.  Would three more years prepare me for ministry?  I decided, no not for me anyway.  I hadn’t even been a real member of a church, simply a college kid going to college-aged Christian campus groups.  No, three more years of college wouldn’t make me ready for a Christian ministry.  I decided to get a job, a manual job; because my non-teaching history degree with a philosophy minor wasn’t really an ideal education for a vocation.  I had thrown my eggs into the basket for preparing to study at seminary, and then come to the conclusion I needed the school of hard knocks.

            A few years later, I was still doing manual jobs.  I was a member of a church.  A lot of us thought our church was a fortress for the truth.  As one old minister put it, we were the sort of church that sometimes behaved like “You and I may be the only Christians alive, and I am not sure of you.”  I definitely wasn’t the happy sort of Christian.  It is a difficult place to imagine hardly anyone else has a valid Christian experience.  It is even harder to be happy when you think you “are that” and still you are working at a menial job because somewhere in life you got sidetracked and have sort of accepted this as your unhappy lot in life for the glory of God.  That is where pride takes us.  We are full of ourselves, arrogant in our exaltation of self over others, incapable of being happy or joyous, or to enjoy the people around us.  We become afflicted with a spiritual bi-polar disorder that allows us to think we are the defenders of truth when what we really are is nothing but discouraged.  I wrapped myself in right-wing Christianity and right-wing politics.

            The state to which I had moved after going to college was moving rapidly in those days from being a “yellow dog Democrat” state that voted Democrat in state and local elections and Republican in presidential elections.  But we were in the process of becoming perhaps the reddest state in America.  Whether I really followed the issues of a specific campaign, I was now a “CONSERVATIVE.”  That meant I was against anyone that ran on that party label against us Conservatives.  About this time a Democrat mayor in the biggest city in our half of the state had been in an election and I can remember opposing him vehemently, mostly because he wasn’t a Republican.  I understood the issues because I could say the platitudes.

            During the mayoral election, the Democratic mayor had a primary challenge.  The primary challenger hadn’t voted for years.  He had virtually no experience in trying to decide city policy.  But the mayor had the problem that the old “yellow dog Democrats” were being replaced or even becoming “red state Republicans.”  In his term of being a mayor the conservative movement’s tireless attacks upon non-Republicans had done their best to sell the mayor as incompetent.  On the night of the primary the newcomer, who hadn’t voted in years actually defeated the incumbent mayor for the mayor’s party nomination.  It had to be a bitter and humiliating defeat for a man who had given much of his life to serving the public in city and local government.  Of course, I was gleeful of the results in those days.

            A few months later came my chance encounter.  I was attending a junior college to take some foreign language courses.  I had no plan for life, but the courses interested me.  I went to the junior college cafeteria between work and going to my evening class.  On this day, almost all of the cafeteria’s tables were full of people.  I am pretty much an introvert, but fortune was with me it seemed, for there was one table where no one was sitting.  I got to the table and sat down.   I could generally be polite to those who came to a table where I was the only one, but I hated introducing myself to strangers.  I had been seated for a very short time when someone asked if I minded if he joined me at the table.  I looked up and it was the former mayor.  Once he was seated not many people would join us, because well you don’t interrupt a former mayor that everyone in our area had seen numerous times of television.  No one else would join us the whole time we ate our meal.  I was a bit uncomfortable for I had been a right-wing punk and suddenly that didn’t seem so cool.

            We talked.  He was teaching a class on how government works.  He told me that what he most wanted to do was to encourage young people to realize that the local government was a part of the process through which life in a city could be improved.  He wanted them to know they could work with others, and felt his experience gave him some insights into helping teach this in a practical and realistic way.  This was from a guy who recently been defeated overwhelmingly by someone who had absolutely no qualifications for being mayor.  But he still had a positive view on life, and a plan for continuing to move forward in life and to be a part of a positive process for making a city a better place to live.  The conversation left me feeling my own sense of arrogance and emptiness.  I realized that I had no real plan for my life, that I was bitter, and here was a guy still yearning to do his part in joining others to build a better city.

            It wasn’t long after that that I began to read things like Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Life Together and C.S. Lewis on The Four Loves and I began to realize that becoming Christian was more about becoming human than I had ever really learned to be.  A lot of changes perhaps started with that encounter.

So when I read Rachel Held Evans’ admission today, I remembered all this.  It was an embarrassing encounter, maybe just one of those chance encounters.  But maybe for me that encounter was a gracious act of a loving God using an impromptu encounter to change my life's trajectory.  It is one of the things I can be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Privilege and its Responsibilities


“Privilege and its Responsibilities”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

Epistle Reading:  Galatians 6:1-10

Gospel Text:  Matthew 25:14-20

Prayer:  Bless O Father, these gifts to our use and us to thy service; Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all thy mercies, and make us mindful of the needs of others; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

            The following meditation is purposefully modeled upon the practice within the Anglican Prayer Book tradition to combine prayers with Scripture Readings including the Gospels and Epistles.  It is my opinion that the believer should learn to think of the Apostle’s writings found in the Epistles as being authoritative writings given to explain and illustrate how the Gospel of Christ’s life and ministry ought to lead us to believe and behave in accordance with that Gospel.  The four Gospels describe the life and ministry of Jesus Christ; and the Epistles are the Apostles' teachings on how Christ's life and ministry is meant to be applied in our lives.  So hopefully this meditation will serve as an example of how the Christian can learn to read the Epistles thinking of the Gospels, and how the Christian may read the Gospels and think of how the Apostles teach us to apply the Gospel.  The Gospels and the Epistles are companion volumes meant to be contemplated throughout our lives until their message is written into the very fabric of our beings.

 

            Are you part of the privileged class in our American society?  Are you part of the privileged class in our world’s global community?  In some circles the very talk of a privileged class having greater responsibility than a non-privileged class speaks of a sort of class warfare mentality that can be ignored as non-Biblical.  Some might even declare such talk of “privilege” as a code word indicating some expression of liberation theology.  So often such a word like “privilege” gets used by a progressive in trying to discuss what seems to them an important part of Gospel living and the Conservative seems to act with a knee jerk reaction and will hardly even give a nod towards the liberal’s perspective that some people with privilege need to understand they have a greater responsibility than those without privilege.

            But there is another way these same kinds of questions may be asked that should resonate very deeply with the Conservative wing of the Church.  Let me ask the same questions my last paragraph asked using what I think is a Biblical synonym to the word “privilege.”

            Are you part of the people of God who have received grace?  Are you a part of the international Christian community which has been favored with gifts of God’s grace?  Do you believe that God’s gifts of such grace bestows upon you a responsibility to make you grateful for your blessings and to remake you into a person who is increasingly mindful of the needs of others?

The simple traditional Anglican table prayer can teach us a great deal about our social responsibilities to all humanity, and especially to the household of the faith.  We pray and give God thanks for our blessings, and blessings are privileges given us, not merits earned by us.  We pray that God would give us grateful hearts.  We pray for grateful hearts that we might like the mother of our Lord ponder the treasure given to us by our Lord.  The Anglican prayer of grace before a meal finally asks God to make us mindful of the needs of others.  We have been given blessings that we might be mindful of the needs of others as well as grateful for all the blessings God has given us.  Right in our table prayer that we can teach to children we are taught in seed form the whole theology of privilege and responsibility.  We thank God for his blessings.  We ask God to strengthen in us the virtue of gratitude in regards to what God has given us.  Finally we ask that he might aid us to see (and surely also to act upon) the needs of others.  That is the beginning of a healthy perspective on thanksgiving, gratitude, and being mindful of the needs of others.  We pray in acknowledgment of our privilege and our responsibility as we give thanks as we sit down to eat.

            When we look at St. Matthew’s Gospel beginning at the fourteenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter we receive teaching by Jesus on the gifts bestowed upon us.  God (to some degree by design, and probably to some degree by the fallen condition of mankind), has distributed his gifts of grace in varying amounts.  In the teachings found in this Gospel passage the lord has left his estate for a lengthy time.  To one man he gives five talents.  To another man he gives two talents, and to a last man the lord gives a single talent.

            In this passage, when the lord returns, the first servant returns to the lord his five talents and also five more that he had gained through his wise use of the talents the lord had left with him.  The lord then made this servant the ruler of five cities.  The second servant returns his original two with two additional talents that he has made through his use of the two talents the lord originally gave to him before his journey.  The Lord approvingly makes this second servant a ruler over two cities in his kingdom.

            But you and I probably know that the third servant hid his talent in the ground and returned to the lord only that one talent, and the Lord reprimanded him and said even the one talent he had been given would now be taken from him and given to another.  I don’t think the meaning of the text is that the Lord demands us to be financially profitable.  There is another reason in the text given for the Lord’s harsh treatment of the servant who hid his treasure in the dirt rather than seeking to grow it and hand it to the lord when the lord returned.  The Lord is angry with the servant but not necessarily because he didn’t turn a profit.

The reason for the Lord’s anger with the man was the man’s attitude.  The man said, “Lord, I knew that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you had not planted.  So I hid my one talent in the dirt.”  O what a picture of a greedy little sniveling rat of a human being.   The lord was not a man who repaid good labor with meager pay, but rather gave great blessing in repayment of the return he received when his good servants paid a return on the talents he had given them.  For returning five or two talents the Lord gave his stewards charge over five or two cities.  This Lord was a generous lord, but the sniveling rat never saw it, and just complained how his lord was a hard man.  What a terrible thing it is to regard a kind person without the least sense of gratitude.  This servant’s inability to handle his talent properly was rooted in his lack of gratitude.  Therefore he could not, with a true heart of grace, pray the simple table prayer asking for a grateful heart and also to be made mindful of the needs of others.  This prayer was foreign to how he viewed God, and also how he viewed his neighbor.  He viewed God as harsh and judgmental and thus he was without gratitude.  He was too busy complaining of how hard the lord was to be able to see he had blessings that could go to helping his neighbor in need.  This is the sort of serious stuff that makes it hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, or for anyone lacking gratitude to enter the kingdom of God.  He hid his blessings and privileges because he had no gratitude towards God.  Had he had gratitude to God for his blessings, he might have come to have an awareness that he had blessings that could be shared with those in need.

            The Epistle reading found in Galatians 6:1-10 seems a very good place to learn how to apply the lesson Jesus taught in Matthew 25.  There are two nearly contradictory verses in this passage, which are in the living of life not contradictory verses but the two sides of a single coin, perhaps a talent.  On the one hand St. Paul says that we are to bear one another’s burden and then he also says that each person is to bear his own burden.  Which is it St. Paul?

            I think a lesson from table manners from a German perspective might help us to think of St. Paul more clearly.  German culture has slightly different table manners than American table manners.  In the German culture, the rule is that if you wish for a helping from a dish, and if the dish is within your reach, you do not ask someone nearer the dish to hand you the dish.  It is generally considered rude at the German household table to ask someone to hand you something that is already in your arm’s reach.  A German table has hands reaching out in all directions to reach for dishes.  But if you are polite and having reached for the serving dish and having taken a bread roll, you would likely ask others, “Would anyone else care for bread?”  That is how grateful people ought to behave.  We should with gratitude seek to make use of our talents, whether money, abilities, or our preferred places in the social strata to provide for ourselves but simultaneously to look down the table, around the neighborhood, across the globe and see if there is anyone else that we can be mindful of, who might be in need.

            Isn’t this really basic Christianity?  In a traditional Anglican family prayer in the morning, we are taught to pray; “O merciful God, confirm and strengthen us; that, as we grow in age, we may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.”  This working through our blessings of grace and privilege and our corresponding responsibility to be mindful of the needs of others; should be an area of life in which we are growing in grace as we grow in age.  Privilege should be understood as something God has given everyone.  To some God has given much, and to some little, but whatever privilege God has given us ought to be accepted with gratitude and then lifted up to God as we give thanks for those gifts he has given that we may respond with hearts filled with gratitude and minds thoughtful of the needs of others.  There is one thing for sure, we do not want to be the person who has not learned to have gratitude for the gifts God has given to us nor do we want to be the person whose lack of gratitude has kept them from seeing and being mindful of the needs of others.

            Let our table prayer be a prayer expressing our entire way of life.  “Bless O Father these gifts to our use and us to thy service.  Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all thy mercies, and make us mindful of the needs of others; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Saturday, November 16, 2013

A Wider Horizon


A Wider Horizon Confronts and Comforts Me

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Sometime after making his breakthrough appearance in Star Wars, Harrison Ford starred in the lesser known movie “Mosquito Coast.”  He is a dogmatic scientific man who leads his family following one whim after another; his mind and vision growing more constricted with each life crisis until his narrowness can be seen suffocating him and his entire family.  Finally he lies mortally wounded, cursing how week is his body, while urging his family to move upstream, always fighting the current.  The family is tired and has given up, they allow their raft to float with the stream as Harrison Ford urges them onward against the stream, deluded into imagining they still are acting upon his every word.  He dies and in the next scene the family has floated into the bay of an ocean.  The eldest son speaking as the movie’s narrator describes how the horizon expresses the endless possibilities of life.  Life is not a battle against an evil nature that must be conquered but rather something good to be explored and enjoyed.  Mosquito Coast was one of those dark kinds of movies with an important message that never sells well.  It captured well the sort of modern world in which we live where science and Christianity have often been separated from each other.  Harrison Ford plays the scientist at war with any concept of God, while the eldest son falls in love with the daughter of an Evangelist with all the contemptuous features of a cliché filled glib Evangelicalism that offers very little in real life or community.

            I think this year has been for me, a year of finding myself on a raft of life that was mercifully allowed to float into the bay where I could get a fresh glimpse of the horizon.  The horizon is a world, a life, a whole creation beyond the constrictions of our narrow ideas and thoughts.  We may try to nourish our minds so as to be informed by theology, Scriptures, science, work and family, political activism, or the discussing of racial and gender issues.  Yet the reality is that one fresh look upon the scope of the horizon allows us to know that the world understood by our minds, ideas, and thoughts is one so narrow and constricted.  We can never see enough, never, never; never can we imagine the fullness of life as it is shown to us in the wide horizon that has no ending and no beginning.

            We, who see truth, are frustrated by all the peoples who do not see truth.  We think they should see it as we do.  We are so prone to argue for our own point of view.  We start doing like I have just done in this paragraph.  I argued for my perspective.  I discussed how I saw the world and got frustrated when others don’t see it all like I do.  But I hid my self-centered perspective of the world behind words like we and by seducing the reader into my camp by including him in the description of “us.”  But the wider horizon confronts me.  I begin to see possibilities.  The possibilities reduce my strong unquestioned convictions into transitionally held personal beliefs readied to be reassessed by further discussion and consideration.  The horizon confronts me with a strange sense of comfort to realize I don’t have to have it all scoped out to see that it is meant for my joy and enrichment.

            For me this has been a year where I have been introduced to a wider world than I knew existed.  My raft has floated into a bay and the horizon and its possibilities have suddenly again appeared endless.  I am only two years away from sixty and suddenly my horizon is broad and life’s possibilities seem endless.  Can an old dog learn new tricks?

            I credit it to some people I have come to know for the first time or again through social media.  Eventually I hope to make my trek to see and meet some of these persons, though some I won’t likely meet until we cross the sea that separates this life from the one to which with hope we trudge even if with sometimes tired heavy aching feet.

            I won’t name all.  But I will begin by naming John Armstrong, whose friendship was renewed after many years through Facebook.  John is different than when I knew him years ago.  I know some would think he has lost his edge, but I am sure he has simply discovered the grandeur of the horizon and how it speaks to us of so very many possibilities.  He has opened up my world with perspectives and blogs both by himself and others that have helped me to see a wider horizon.

            There are others.  There is a lady named Kate, who suffered growing up with some of the same sorts of Evangelical subculture excesses that I suffered with not when I grew up, but as an adult growing older but not always wiser.  It was a blog by her that brought me into the world of a progressive form of Christianity that both scared me and nourished me in some ways I had never known.  I think I now better understand old von Staupitz who mentored Luther, loved him, but was frightened by what Luther did to unsettle the world to which Luther had been born.  I love the energy and desire for life that I see in so many millennials.  I am sometimes frightened by how far they take asking questions and yearning to overthrow the old order they want to replace.  But I am sure that just as I might be a Von Staupitz looking on, that the Reformers will be followed after their stands by counter-reformers making their stands.  But that isn’t really Kate.  She is part of it, but she isn’t reduced to being a part of that or merely a part of anything.  She is a person, a person that can be characterized by many things but never reduced to any or even to all of those many things.  She is an aspiring writer, a lover of cats, someone who doesn’t always seem to know exactly what she thinks, wanting discussion but tired of endless debate.  She has a wonderful sense of humor and I am so grateful that through Twitter and blogs she has become part of my life.  She wants to write a novel, a science fiction novel.  I hope to read her finished work someday.  I wonder if she will have a scene somewhere of someone being confronted and comforted by experiencing seeing a broader horizon.

            I will leave others unnamed but sometimes easily enough discerned.  There is an Australian whose background included Christian worship on a Saturday.  She asks such wonderful questions.  She introduced me to a writer named Flanagan, whom I began to read and must get back to reading.  He can write.  He makes you feel what he writes.  She asks wonderful questions and seems to be so very independent and yet I think being independent to her is not something to be grasped or desired, it is just the way she is.  When everyone seems committed to one way or the other she is content to be committed to neither.  I suppose that is the very reason she is engaged in so many helpful conversations with others across the spectrum of thought.

            There is a blogger who I think is wonderful and yet probably at times we have rubbed each other the wrong way.  At least I am pretty sure that I have at times rubbed her the wrong way.  Yet I know few people whose thoughts I need to be reading more than her thoughts.  Sometimes I think she is reckless and not just passionate with her thoughts, but I am the better for being confronted and yes also sometimes comforted by her thoughts.

            There is a new friend on Facebook.  I value her perspective.  Theologically she is more conservative than my Twitter friends, but socially and politically she is more progressive than where I have been.  But of course, if I am honest; there were cave men more progressive than where I have been.

            So if you look out into a harbor and see a guy;  a guy that is a bit dazed and crazed, on a raft looking at the horizon then that just might be me.  I will be considering the possibilities ahead of me, not always knowing which way to turn.  I will probably pass on my responsibility.  I will defer the decision making to younger friends with more energy for the fight of faith than I have.  I am staring at the approaching sunset of life.  But I will try to encourage others when I think their paths are good.  I will try not to obstruct them when I know not if their path is good or bad.  I simply enjoy encouraging someone making their slog through life.  If I am getting offended by someone's seeming narrowness I will only ask: “Have you seen the horizon today?  Today it seems especially broad and endless, don’t you agree?”  I will not describe the horizon.  It is better seen than described.  Maybe if they see it we can share unspoken words regarding the scene before us.  It will be comforting and challenging, and filled with endless possibilities.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Is this one asking for Forgiveness Sincere?


Is this One asking for Forgiveness Sincere?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            A more than likely frustrated tweeter on Twitter asked the question: “Do you think people apologize because they’re actually at all sorry, or to just slightly reduce the appearance of being an enormous jackass?”  I chose to answer the question, from my own perspective with a similar usage of language.  I replied, knowing I would probably need to explain myself later saying, “Or both?  And I think the both, is why we were taught to forgive 70 x 7, because jackasses asking forgiveness need help.”  I want to expand on why I gave that answer for it gets at what I think is at the heart of my understanding of the Christian faith.

            There were a couple of other exchanges in the twitter exchange, and I acknowledged there were exceptions to the recommendation I gave in my tweet.  Truth condensed to tweets cannot declare wisdom’s entire story.  Neither can short blogs.  Generally we learn truth in small bits and pieces accumulated over a lifetime of years of seeking, sufferings, and reflections.

            I want to make clear that sometimes when someone is asking for forgiveness the one being asked to forgive should be wary and cautious.  For example, if an abuser is asking someone they abused for forgiveness, the formerly abused should be cautious.  Such a one may offer their forgiveness from a safe distance.  There are abiding consequences when someone hurts another through wrong and hurtful behavior.  Also if someone is an abuser, the abuser may have a habitual behavior that is similar in some ways to an addiction.  They may truly desire at some level in their life to make it up to the one they have abused.  But the reality for the abuser, is that the more the behavior is like an addiction the more likely he as well as the abused needs to be drawn back from that relationship for the sake of healing.  It is all right in some circumstances for forgiveness to be granted through an intermediary and mediator rather than directly.  If the one seeking forgiveness demands a direct relationship, then perhaps his entire desire to be forgiven can truly be questioned, certainly his wisdom in the way he seeks forgiveness must be questioned.    The goal of the one asking to be forgiven ought to be to overcome the harmful behavior which they are now acknowledging to the person they have harmed by their behavior.  That will be the basis of the forgiveness granted by the one forgiving the one asking forgiveness.  Restoration of friendship is not necessarily even a wise or desirable first step.  Rather it is the acknowledgement of a behavior that has harmed another agreed upon, that can now by prayer and spiritual growth be overcome by the one seeking to repent from their harmful behavior.  The one forgiving may from whatever distance is necessary agree to encourage the one who has harmed them in seeking his restoration to God and the healing of his humanity.  The same sort of wisdom is necessary to be applied to a manipulator asking for forgiveness.  The one who has been harmed by the manipulator does not need to expose themselves to further abuse, by a questionable asking of forgiveness.  A simple thank you for asking for forgiveness coupled with an expression of hope for their overcoming of their proneness to the harmful way of life is the necessary expression of forgiveness to be offered to the offender.  In the Christian life the one asking for forgiveness must make their first goal not the restoration of that friendship they have already severely damaged, but the overcoming of the pattern of sinful behavior which has led to the damaging of one relationship with more to follow unless the behavior is altered.

            Beyond these and other exceptions of wisdom it should be the desire of a Christian forgiven of their sins in Christ, to be an agent of forgiveness to others on behalf of Christ.  I would like to think that my thinking in this matter is true to the teaching of the Scriptures.  I will admit that much of my thinking in these matters was impressed upon me through reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.  Bonhoeffer, in Life Together was ministering to ministers endeavoring to proclaim the truth and spirit of the Gospel to the people of Nazi Germany, suffering under the rule of Adolph Hitler.  These were pastors laying their lives on the line for a people in need of truth in a day of evil.  Thus Bonhoeffer’s little book Life Together was a word of encouragement focused on the simplicity of living in Christ in difficult times.  It is from this book that much of any wisdom I have in this matter can be discovered.  I must say of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, that if I were told I must live several years in seclusion and can have the Bible and one other book, it would be Life Together.

            In Life Together Bonhoeffer describes how Christian community is built.  He describes Christian community in this way:  “Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. . . . We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”  He continues saying, “What does this mean?  It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ.  It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ.”[i]  It is this second point that I think Bonhoeffer so well expresses through this book.  He encourages us to think of the Christian life as a life fully in Christ, so that our perception of both life and others is a perception shaped, enriched, nourished, and developed in, by, and through our unity with Jesus Christ.  St. Paul learned to no longer view others, and not even to judge himself apart from his life in Christ.  It is this feature of the life of the Christian, lived by faith in Jesus Christ that encourages the Christian to forgive others even as he or she has been forgiven in Christ.

            To Bonhoeffer this is what it means for us to participate in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are seeing others in and through Christ, responding to others in and through Jesus Christ, and in so doing we are being shaped as his members of his living body, the church to become his hands and feet walking up to and embracing others on behalf of Christ.  It is in this way, as we find ourselves living and having our being in Christ that we are prepared to meet the brother, the sister, the stranger, or the enemy who comes and asks us to forgive them their sin.  We see this person not firstly in our fears of being further damaged by yet another wound as possible as that is, but because we are in Christ and are being shaped by his being in us we even if tentatively want to say “yes you are forgiven in Christ.”  By this we who live in Christ participate in the Gospel of Christ coming to proclaim the forgiveness of our sins.

            This is then why we are to find it our joy and desire to be ready and able to forgive others.  The truth is, as we have known in ourselves, so very often that we ourselves do not seek forgiveness with perfect hearts and souls.  We know to only a small amount what harm our sins and selfish ways have brought to another.  We ask forgiveness, like the jackasses (and Jennies as well) in the Tweets that began this blog.  We partially ask because we know we have sinned, but we seldom really know the extent of our sin or the wound it has inflicted upon another.  That is why when someone, a brother, a sister, a friend, an enemy asks us to forgive them we want in Christ to say “yes”.  We know from our own experiences that almost always the one asking for forgiveness is but taking the first step on the beginning of a journey of finding forgiveness and being truly cleansed of the sin that we heartily seek to forgive them as they ask.  We know that the one asking forgiveness needs help turning from the sin for which they now seek forgiveness.  We have no illusions that such a one asking will have an easy time of overcoming their burden.  But we are in Christ and He is in us.  Therefore it might be that as we forgive our brother or sister, that we help them carry their burden more easily, so that they may be encouraged more strongly to overcome their present affliction.  We say “yes” to the forgiving of our brother or sister because we understand that Christ rode a donkey into Jerusalem to die for us jackasses.  We are participants in his Gospel, living in him, and he living in us.  We yearn to forgive because we have been forgiven.  We yearn to see others forgiven, because we have learned to want for others what Christ wants for us.  So we knowing it may lead to hurt, even to suffering, say our “yes” to the one asking us to forgive them.



[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together translated by John W. Doberstein; (Harper and Row, San Francisco), 1954.  P.21

Saturday, November 9, 2013

The first of Jesus' sermons in the Gospel of Luke


Is this Perhaps the First Rule of Gospel Preaching?

“This is the year of the Lord’s Favor.”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            St. Luke chose a very brief message Jesus gave to his hometown synagogue as his first example of Jesus’ preaching ministry.  Luke makes clear that it wasn’t the first time Jesus spoke, but this is Luke’s choice for the first message Jesus speaks that he looks at in his presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps he thought what Jesus had to say to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth was of such importance to list it as the first Jesus sermon he brings to our attention.

            Luke sets the context for Jesus’ speaking to his hometown synagogue.  Jesus had been baptized, had gone into the wilderness to fast, pray, and face Satan's temptations, and had returned to Galilee.  Once in Galilee he began preaching at a number of synagogues.  He began attracting notice, and followers.  He comes home to Nazareth a bit of a home-town sensation.  He attends synagogue and is given opportunity to read.

            Jesus stood up to read the scriptures.  There was given to him a scroll of the scriptures from Isaiah.  Jesus opened the scroll and began to read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”  (St. Luke 4:17-19).  Having finished the reading of the scriptures, Jesus “closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and sat down.  And the eyes of all that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.”  (St. Luke 4:20)

            Luke wants us to picture the scene, especially he wants to put our reading on pause between the words of scripture which Jesus read and the explanation of the scripture words he was about to give.  Luke interrupts between the flow of Jesus reading the Scriptures and Jesus explaining the scriptures that we might ready ourselves to do what the people at the synagogue did on that day long ago.  Luke wants us likewise to have our eyes fixed upon Jesus waiting for what he is about to say.  We can almost imagine the setting.  Sometimes someone reads the scriptures and a congregation is tempted to think "this is boring."  But other times someone stands to read and the word read seems to come with an undeniable energy and life and we are carried into a world we never knew existed but now it seems as if it is the only real world to be thought about.  I suspect that is the sort of thing that astonished Jesus' hometown audience in the synagogue at Nazareth.   All eyes were now upon Jesus.  They probably began anticipating what he would say about this passage.  This passage spoke of Israel being called to celebrate the year of Jubilee.  Jubilee was that year when all debts in Israel were to be forgiven.  The slate would be wiped clean.  Every household in Israel would be given the chance to live as if life were new; no transgressions, no debts, an end to years of slavery or indentured servitude.  This would be freedom whether physical, economic, political, or spiritual.  But alas it would not be now, for now the Romans were in the land.  The jubilee couldn't take place until the Romans were gone and Israel had its own nation.  Still, they and we wondered what wonderful spiritual application would their hometown celebrity rabbi express to this congregation assembled within the synagogue?

            Do you sit now with your eyes focused on Jesus yearning to hear what he has to say about these words of Jubilee?  He speaks as if twittering his whole sermon into a single tweet.  He says “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”  These verses about the year of jubilee are fulfilled in his reading of the words.  Did we miss something?  Are the Romans gone?  Have the tax collectors, loan sharks, soldiers, corrupt officials, our blindness, and all our physical woes suddenly become healed?  When did this fulfillment of these words take place?  How did we miss it?

            We didn’t miss anything, but perhaps we understood almost nothing.  The year of the jubilee is not fulfilled in a calendar year any more than the day of salvation is expressed in a day on a calendar.  Our jubilee is a person.  He is the presence of God standing before us reading the word of the scriptures.  He sits in our midst, God having become flesh.  He has come to proclaim the release of the captives, to give sight to the blind, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.  He is the jubilee; yes he is the jubilee.  It is he who will bring about the restoration of creation, the forgiveness of sins, debts, and transgressions.  It is he who will bring healing to the broken-hearted and reverse the world's trajectory from one descending into brokenness, sin, injustice to one of mercy, healing, redemption, righteousness, and justice.

            This is such an important message that a bit of it should be in every Christian sermon, in every Christian’s blog, in every believer’s actions, in every Christian’s argument about some point of understanding that distinguishes the perspective of one brother or sister with another.  This seems to me to be very important no matter what my calling is in the Christian life.  If I were an ordained minister, it would be important for me that even if I were preaching on a doctrine like election or on a grievous sin, that somewhere not tacked on to the end of the sermon, but somewhere right in the middle of this message it would be clear that God means for this doctrine, this description of sin, this Bible story to tell you the hearer one thing, that as Christ has come into our midst he has come to let you know that this is the year of the Lord’s favor.  If that doesn’t seem to flow from your text you are preaching, then perhaps you are not ready to preach that text.  If the one struggling with a sin, or with a doctrine, or finding a Bible story hard to believe isn’t able to get from your message that Christ has come into our midst to let you know this is the year of the Lord’s favor then be cautious about proclaiming that text.  That does not mean you are not to warn people.  Jesus warned the people of Nazareth that they failed to take Jesus’ words seriously because he was a hometown boy, a boy they seemed to think they possessed, rather than the God who had become flesh, with whom we have to do.

            But this also speaks to those of us who represent Christ as we say mere laypersons.  We perhaps write our blogs, or merely talk about the faith with neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family members.  We can sometimes want more to be right than loving.  We can be sarcastic, witty, clever, and destructive in our treatment of those who differ with us.  A tweet this past week got it and reminded me that wisdom speaks not as much in cleverness but in love.  When you or I enter a spiritual discussion and an argument with another person, do you or I seek to encourage and strengthen, to set the captive free, or to merely win an argument.  Do we turn around and speak of an opponent's perspective with contempt?  So often we divide ourselves into our little Christian camps of “I am of Paul” or “I am of Peter” so that we can find those we agree with and belittle those with whom we disagree.  But we shall all one day give an account for every careless word we speak.  Meanwhile our Lord has taken his stand.  He addresses the progressive and the conservative, the member of whatever denomination, whatever theological tradition, whatever view of inspiration, infallibility, church tradition, and any number of doctrinal positions and he comes into our midst and says “This is the year of the Lord’s favor.”

            So let us recognize that either we will live by the provisions of this jubilee recognized and realized in the person of Jesus Christ, or we will stand in the way of others who are yearning to be set free by the declaration of the one who is our jubilee.  Let us join those who are yearning to be set free, to be healed from their blindness, to be given a release from their captivity to sin, to their debts, and to all the things that sin and a fallen world has helped to turn into our oppression and enslavement.  Then once we have been set free and see next to us a downcast neighbor; then we can say “Do you know what year this is?  When they wonder what kind of question we are asking them we may say to them:  It is the year of the Lord’s favor?”  Now maybe these words won’t be in every sermon or every word we speak, but their sentiment should be lurking just beneath every word we speak and every action we do.  I need to think about this, and hope you will find it also worthy of your attention.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Remembering a Cousin


Remembering an Older Cousin and a Bygone Era

Written by Dan McDonald 

            I had four grandparents – I guess that is pretty common.  I was the youngest grandchild born of those four grandparents.  Both of my parents were the youngest children of their parents, and I was their youngest child.  All my grandparents were deceased by the time I was born.  Both of my grandfathers were born in 1872, and my grandmothers were born before 1880.  I guess I was destined to never be able to live a modern life.  My older cousin was more like most people’s uncle to me.  He was nearly thirty when I was born.  I grew up playing with his two sons.  I’ve been thinking of him lately.  He passed away, but lived to see the Chicago White Sox win their only world series during his lifetime.  I started out a White Sox fan in my earliest youth but never forgave them when they traded away Luis Aparicio, their slick-fielding base-stealing shortstop in the 1960’s.  But my cousin was a Sox fan for life from the time when he was a little boy and got to meet Luke Appling, one of the greatest unremembered hitters in all of major league history.  Appling’s playing days were over by the time baseball was being televised into America’s homes, but one home run hit by Appling made the baseball reels when at 75 years of age he hit this homer in an old-timer’s game played in Washington when Washington was without a major league baseball team.  I’ve sort of forgiven the White Sox for trading Aparicio, but when I pulled for the Sox to win it all, it was for my cousin’s sake.  I wanted the Sox to win it once just for him, and he was almost 80 when they did win it for my cousin and in my cousin’s mind for Luke Appling, and maybe for a third baseman named Buck Weaver, and for the diehard fans that pulled for the team from the south side.

            My older cousin is gone now.  I remember, as a kid about one Saturday a month my Dad taking me with him to get a haircut at Ray’s Barber Shop.  After we’d get a haircut, we would drive about a block or two away and go to the tavern that had been started just after Prohibition ended by my cousin’s dad and my aunt, my mom’s sister.  The tavern exists only in memories now.  I can sort of almost see it in my mind as I take a journey with my Dad, in my memories, into my cousin’s tavern.  The town we came from had two things in abundance; churches and taverns.  The churches and tavern owners got together and limited the liquor licenses to somewhere in the low 40’s as I remember – the churches not wanting any more dens of iniquity and the tavern owners not wanting any more competition.  In a town of 16,000 mostly Germans, Polish, Slovaks, Italians and some English, Scots, and Irish thirty or forty taverns was about the right number to insure the tavern owners could feed their families.

            My town was bigoted in many ways and never knew it, but it was also sort of tolerant in its own way.  It survived prohibition.  Most of the ethnicities composing our town had been accustomed to traditions of using alcohol for a thousand years.  It was sort of humorous to them that somebody would try to outlaw the use of alcohol.  Prohibition was an experiment of a little longer than a decade attempt to change a thousand years of tradition.  Most everyone knew it was a Protestant attempt to make Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, and Orthodox see the light.  But my local town took it all in stride with a sense of tolerance.  You understand that in my town no one got upset with those people that obeyed the law of prohibition in the secrecy of their own home.   Prohibition was tolerated and anyone that wanted a drink got one just like they had for a thousand years.

            I can remember the tavern my cousin owned.  There were photographs in it from the decades it existed.  Its heyday was in the Depression, right after Prohibition ended.  It was hard times.  So on either Friday night or Saturday night or both, the tavern would offer a turtle dinner for a very reasonable price.  The idea was that if someone provided a snapping turtle to be cleaned and cooked, then they would be able to eat free when otherwise they might not be able to afford a night on the town.  So in came the snappers and turtle soup was the delicacy of the place.  There would be a dinner and when dinner was done being served, the tables would be cleared, the tables would be moved, and then there was dancing, mostly swing I would think.  I’m not sure if there were live bands, plenty of accordion players existed in my home town in those days.  Maybe it was to the radio that they heard Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and of course Glenn Miller.  I remember going into the room where I had heard how they used to dance to the music in those days.  The whole building was decaying when I would go there on Saturday morning.  The turtle dinners and dancing to the sound of big bands was all a memory, and now the dance floor was a place where boxes were stored.  But I had heard enough stories that I thought I could imagine seeing some of those scenes taking place before me.

            It is all gone now.  In its original beginnings the tavern had been a place of community, where people trying to stretch their nickels and dimes had a turtle dinner and danced to some band even if it was a juke box or radio.  Then over the years as the building decayed except for the grand bar, ah it was a wonderful bar where a pint could slide from one end of the bar to a customer near the other end of the bar.  Then it became sort of a working man’s joint.  A railroad yard, trucking companies, glass factories were all not far from the tavern.  After a hard day’s work a worker would come for a shot, a mug of beer, some talk, and a way of changing gears on the way home to be with the family after a frustrating day.  A tavern owner is a sort of priest.

            Yeah, this tavern had its share of people who had wasted their lives.  Usually they were wasted by the time their lives had descended to where they would enter this tavern.  There was the commercial artist and his wife.  It was the 1960’s.  Here was a commercial artist, who had once been one of the two or three highest paid commercial artists in Chicago.  His wife had a Master’s Degree, when few women had attended college.  But they lived lives of begging drinks, and neighbors took care to watch to it that their children were fed.  My Dad made sure I knew that story.  We were a family that enjoyed a brew, a mixed drink, a holiday toast, but also a family reminded that abuse destroyed lives.  Maybe prohibition hadn’t been so crazy, but maybe in the end you can’t change a thousand year tradition in a decade or two.

            Eventually I became an Evangelical, something of a fundamentalist.  I almost lost my humanity in my religion.  But the first stand I made to retain and maintain a bit of humanity was to remember to drink a beer with my Dad when he offered me one.  I had been to my cousin’s tavern too many times, and had since being a little child in my Dad’s lap sipped from his beer glass.  A thousand years of tradition was too strong for the fundamentalism I was imbibing.  I was torn between those who said Christians don’t drink and my sense that in moderation it was good.  One night after every one had gone to bed, instead of drinking tea as I did with my Bible study, I had a beer.  I too had survived prohibition.  For me that might have been the first time I decided that whatever others said I would struggle to maintain my humanity within my Christianity.  I suppose this makes no sense to some, and lots of sense to others.  I mean nothing against those who never allow a drop of liquor to cross your lips.  You won’t have to think about the possibility of becoming the commercial artist and his educated wife begging for drinks.  But for me, I retained a bit of my humanity when everything human in me was close to being lost in a fundamentalist sort of zeal, that sometimes is sort of like being on a drunk not by drink but by religion.  My next beer will be in memory of my cousin, and maybe next year I will pull once more for the South-sider Sox, but at least my cousin got to watch them win it all.  My parents and cousin, that tavern, some of the railroads and most of the glass factory industry is gone from the town I left so long ago.  I suppose its former way of life will soon be forgotten for the ages, but it will be a part of me to the day I die.  I want everyone to become a Christian, to know God’s love, to share in the life of Christ, and to grow in grace as long as they grow in age.   But I want no one to lose their humanity and it is as easy to lose one’s humanity to religion as to drink.