Ethics: “Written on Our Hearts"

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W. C. Fields once quipped that he spent a lot of time studying the Bible — to find the loopholes! Surveys indicate that fully 65-70 % of Americans believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth.

Perhaps the only difference between the loophole seekers of Field’s time and the relativists of today is that today almost nobody reads the Bible, churched and unchurched alike.

Loopholes aren’t necessary when you don’t think there is a source of absolute truth in the first place. When everything is relative; when you are your own judge of what is right and what is wrong; you don’t need loopholes; and you don’t need the Bible.

One of the results of this view has been a general relaxing of ethical standards to the point where many things which were seen as moral issues are seen now as simply being individual choices that are neither moral nor immoral.

Some of this is good, particularly when morality has been used to mask prejudice by those who insist that their morality must be our morality.

But I also believe that this relaxation of ethical standards leads to a general reluctance, even to an unwillingness, to distinguish between right and wrong. And, ultimately, that reluctance becomes the new standard of the American way of life.

Today we know that literally thousands of eye witnesses attest to the brutal ethnic cleansing in Darfur. We hear of women being raped, entire villages being burned, men, women and children slaughtered. Women, children and old people who are not killed are driven to the border by the tens of thousands.

And we ask: Should we become more directly involved? Should we commit ground troops? Aren't problems in Africa really none of our business? Hasn’t it always been a mess? Aren’t we making it worse if we intervene? Do you know what we should do?

I don’t know exactly what we should do in Darfur except that talk, some humanitarian assistance and whatever other small things we are doing is not enough.

Let me tell you what else I know. I know that abuse of power is wrong; I know that murdering people is wrong; I know that raping women is wrong; I know that starving people, including children, is wrong; I know that driving people from their homes, and burning their villages is wrong.

And I think that knowing that I could begin to develop a response to the evil being done there that was appropriate to the severity of the problem, which the United States has chosen not to do.

I also know that it is wrong to sell dope to kids; to cheat on your spouse; to treat other people like trash; to pay sweat shop wages; to embezzle funds; to love money more than you love anything else; to lie on your income tax and to cheat, steal, burn, rape, pillage, or lord your power over another. And my list goes on and on and on. So does yours.

You see, while we may not agree on how to solve what is wrong in the world, and while we may not agree on what caused that wrong, we do know that some things are right and some things are absolutely wrong. And we know that everything is not relative.

How do we know? I am not sure about anybody else, but in my case I know because the Bible tells me so. And if you are not Christian, but have taken another path of faith, then the sacred writings of that faith, its books and teachings, likely also tell you that the kinds of things I recite are wrong.

If you are an ethical humanist likely you know right from wrong because you learned the morality taught by your parents and/or in the public schools, the standards outlined within the community in which you lived, and the standards of conduct supported by our national ethic.

All of those sources of ethical teaching are now often ignored. New meanings of "tolerance" and "live and let live" are the mantras most taught today.

Whether this is "good" or "bad" is left to each individual to decide for herself. Is something crude or demeaning? Who knows? Is something insulting and disgusting? Who knows? Is there a standard against which we can judge civil behavior, respect for others, respect for privacy, self, relationships, ideals, manners, or conduct of behavior? Who knows?

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Interestingly, in this country people used to turn to the Church as the place where values, standards, morals and absolutes drawn from the teachings of Jesus and the teachings in the Bible were taught as correct beliefs that grounded ethical deportment. Unfortunately, the American Church is badly split into different subsets, with wildly differing ideas about ethics.

The Christian right has always been a place where a strict and literal interpretation of the Bible was the distinguishing mark of those churches.

That is still true, but the Christian right has also moved far, far beyond limiting the force of its opinion to the members of its churches. Rather the right has decided that the morality that they profess is to be compelled upon all of society, forced, if necessary, by secular laws.

The irony of this is that the very churches that used to say that the Christian's duty was to live according to Biblical mandates and to shun involvement in the secular world are precisely the same churches that now have decided that everyone else's morality must be their own.

Call them what you will: the Moral Majority, the Christian Right, the Conservative Church, but they have turned the intent of the founders of those denominations on its head and have created an image of "Christian" which is not only narrow, prejudiced and based on lousy scholarship, but which hurts liberal mainline Christians like me because all Christians are then assumed to believe what they believe.

Still, there should be places where Christians like me can feel comfortable, and to a certain extent there are. There are several denominations and many individual churches that still offer a plainly spoken understanding of the message of Christ and of the ethical teachings of the Bible. But they are an ever shrinking minority of Christian churches in America today.

Some of that erosion of mainline Churches can be blamed on trying to counteract the image of the church upheld by the loud and insistent churches on the Christian Right.

But some of the shrinking of the size of mainline churches has to be laid at the feet of the mainline churches themselves. Unfortunately, too many of the mainline churches have decided that to be attractive to people they have to be sloppy in their teachings.

I have attended many of those churches where the fundamental leadership idea is to never, never offend anyone. So, whatever you do, do not preach about values, ethics, or morality and certainly never say that there is such a thing as ethical truth. Better we should feel good about our church experience than actually be good in our lives.

In other words, too many mainline churches would rather provide a feel good experience than focus on the requirements of discipleship. After all, which would you rather attend: a barbeque followed by singing about feeling good about yourself, or a talk about how a Christian should behave?

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There was a Yale law professor, an eminent ethicist by the name of Arthur Leff, who struggled mightily with the issue of the relativizing of ethics in America. His was a secular, agnostic, view and I bring it forward here to make the point that this issue transcends all facets of American life, and supersedes all ideologies.

Leff gave a wonderful lecture way back in 1979 that is all too relevant today, poignantly so. He titled his lecture, which has become a classic in the field of legal ethics, "Unspeakable Ethics - Unnatural Law."

Leff said, "I want to believe, and so do you, in a complete transcendent, set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively direct us how to live righteously. I also want to believe, and so do you, in no such thing; but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individually and as a species, what we ought to do."

In other words, we want it both ways. We want an external set of universally valid ethical rules and we want to be free to do what we want to do, and to be free to create ourselves in our own image using whatever ethical rules we wish to use at any given time.

In his lecture, Leff struggled with the dilemma he posed, largely, I think, because in his universe there was no one "out there" who could lay down the standards, no God to stand behind the authority of what is right or wrong.

With "no God" we invite the "chip on the shoulder" response which Leff calls the "Sez who?" argument. "Who are you who says that I should not beat my wife to a pulp?" If there is no God, who is to judge whether that is right or wrong?

If God is dead, or irrelevant, then we lose the battle to a nihilism which rejects any outside "evaluator" who makes judgments about how we ought, or ought not, live.

Professor Leff, good soul that he was, came to an interesting conclusion, both depressing in that it has no foundation that he would admit guided him, but admirable in that he comes to a personal decision in spite of feeling that he cannot model any reason for anyone to agree with him.

"All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us “good,” and worse than that, there is no reason why any thing should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. Nevertheless:
Napalming babies is bad.
Starving the poor is wicked.
Buying and selling each other is depraved.
Those who stood up and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin, ...have earned salvation....
Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned.
There is in the world such a thing as evil."

Then Leff said to his audience: "All together now: Sez who?"

He ended by saying "God help us."

An amazing final statement by a brilliant agnostic, isn't it? I say "Amen" to his "God help us" because we have not come very far since 1979, and, in fact, I think that we are worse off.

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The Scriptural text (Jeremiah 31: 27 -33; see addendum) that prompted this essay comes from a time in the history of Israel when relativists held sway. Israel had been devastated and many of its leaders were hauled away in chains into exile. Its cities were destroyed and made virtually unfit for habitation.

There was no leadership remaining worthy of the name: government officials, judges, lawyers, priests and prophets could be bought. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer and ultimately got squashed.

The "leaders" argued constantly over how to run the land, who was to get rich and who was to be killed, who was to lead and who was to follow, who to tax and who went to jail or was executed. Does that sound at all familiar?

Into this mess came Jeremiah, promising a day when cities would be rebuilt and reinhabited, farms replanted, cattle reintroduced; a time of prosperity and peace.

But how could that possibly happen? Who would make it happen? Would there be a new David? Perhaps a new messiah, a powerful military leader that would rise out of the dust of defeat and lead Israel to glory days once more?

No. Jeremiah promised nothing like that. Instead Jeremiah said that God was sick of the old ways of the people and of their abuse of the old Covenant. So God said he would make a new Covenant with the people.

Now, this "new" Covenant wasn't really new. The rules would be the same, but this time the responsibility to uphold the Covenant would be placed not on the leaders and prophets, but on each individual, personally, by God.

God said, once again, "I will be your God, and you will be my people." And they asked, "But, how, Lord, can this be when we broke the last Covenant with you?" And he said, freely paraphrasing here: "You broke my heart. You took my Commandments and stepped all over them; you failed to listen to my prophets. I had written down on tablets I gave to Moses what you should do, and you refused to read or to listen."

But this time, Jeremiah says, God will do something remarkable. God will make it impossible for you to ignore his Commandments, because this time, God will "write them on your hearts."

God said that no longer will you have to squabble over what is right or what is wrong; you won't have to parse every phrase, argue every passage. You will know in your own heart what is right and what is wrong, what to do and what not to do.

What God was saying was really rather simple. This new Covenant was to become a part of us, part of our character. When confronted with a moral problem we won't have to say, "Excuse me a minute, I have to look up whether or not it is right to steal."

Under the new Covenant we'll just know it is wrong because it will be "written on our hearts."

The knowledge of the Law of God, the Torah, the instruction of God as to how to live a godly life, will become a matter of our very being, of our character. Torah will simply be part of us.

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When Professor Leff stood before a packed house of lawyers and said that, in spite of every relativist, elusive moral position, he knew that "napalming babies" was wrong, he showed personal courage. But when asked "Why is it wrong?" he could only lead the audience in saying "Sez who?"

His last sentence in that seminal lecture left open a tiny shaft of light to shine on the enigma. "God help us," he said. "God help us" works for me because when I am asked that question my answer is "Says God. That's who!"

And I believe that whenever we go through a litany of things we know are either right or wrong, you, I, and any who know right from wrong are seeing this new Covenant taking hold in our hearts. This Covenant with the Holy One is being "written on our hearts" all these centuries later.

I believe that it is the only means we have, that anyone has, of rising above the slashing, beating, shooting, "solutions" to which modern society has sunk. We who take a stand, even if we do not acknowledge it, have the Torah, the instruction of God, written on our hearts. That's how I see it anyway.

Name it what you will. Credit whatever source you wish to credit, or none at all. But just think about this: What do you call that sense of outrage when you learn about women being beaten, raped and killed?

What do you call it when that small voice inside of you tells you to give back to the cashier the $30 extra change she mistakenly gave you for a $50 when you know you gave her a $20?

What do you call that strength that comes to you when you remain faithful to your beliefs in the face of enormous temptation to let them slide?

From where comes that resolve to not use corporal punishment on your child? That anger when you learn that torture has been covered over by our government? That decision to try to seek reconciliation with someone who has hurt you badly? That hollow pain you feel when you see an animal mistreated, or watch someone abuse a pet?

In things small and large there are some things that are just not right.

And, whatever you call it when you know that is true, I call it a covenant with God that is being written on your heart.

Peace,

Monte

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Addendum

Jeremiah 31: 27-33

27 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. 28 And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. 29 In those days they shall no longer say: "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." 30 But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. 31 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

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Bound by Death

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Death. Death is, of course, part of life on this blue sphere. Yet the existential reality of our own death is something most of us try to avoid thinking about. But sooner or later thinking about it cannot be avoided. Time does not allow that. At 70, believe me, you can't avoid thinking about the time you may have left on this earth. But long before now I thought about it, even as a child. And I imagine that many of you did too.

One thing I have learned over the decades God has given me to live is that throughout history humankind has been trapped in the inexorable march of time. Time becomes the ultimate thief as it carries its victims to meet their ultimate enemy: death. However much we try to ignore it or hide from it, cover it up or delay it, mock it or claim we don't think about it, death awaits.

Death awaits us because time truly waits for no one. We think about time as being the past, the present and the future. But when we think about time more deeply we realize that "the present" eludes us. While we march ever onward through time toward death, we live only in the fleeting present. Yet, "the present" is a most elusive concept to grasp. Even as you read these words they are past the moment you process them. The thought that you are having right now, having thought it, is past.

There is something inevitable, inexorable, and ultimately disconcerting, in that. The truth of the ever fleeting present is that we can't slow it down or speed it up and if we stop to think about it, it is already over. And, when we realize that truth, when we look at where we are "at present" in our individual life journeys, most of us have those times when we shudder and say, "My God, where has my life gone?" Or, "Is this all there is?"

In those dark moments of personal awareness of our own inevitable mortality, we can too often allow our present to be paralyzed by the remembrance of our frivolous use of time past, and of the inevitability of the death that awaits us in the future. In such times we are what I call "bound by death," paralyzed by the human condition itself.

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In his 1933 masterpiece "Man's Fate," (La Condition Humaine), French novelist, Andre Malraux, wrote about the human condition from the point of view of a protagonist who was paralyzed in just that way. At the end of the book, having seen his friends, his loves, and his noble humanistic causes all wiped out, Malraux' hero speaks the bitter lament of a man without hope, hope in humanity, or in God.

"You know the phrase, 'It takes nine months to make a man, and a single day to kill him.' Listen: it does not take nine months, it takes fifty years of sacrifice, of will, of, of...many things! And when this man is complete, when there is nothing left in him of childhood, nor of adolescence, when he is really a man -- he is good for nothing but to die...."

Here is a man who has given his life to a cause he believed in, an important human vision, only to see those he loves blown into what he can only assume to be oblivion. His present is frozen; frozen by a past made meaningless by the reality of the present. The only future he can see is one that leads to death. In him there is no hope, nothing to cling to, nothing to motivate him to create a future for himself. He tried that once, and it destroyed him.

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No one has written more profoundly about the reality of death and the relentless human desire to ignore, postpone, and deny death than the great Canadian cultural anthropologist and sociologist, Ernest Becker. He published his greatest book, "The Denial of Death" in 1973 when he, at age 49, was himself dying of cancer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that work in 1974, two months after he died.

Becker argued that our entire outlook on life is tinted by our constant attempts to deny one inevitable fact of our existence: that we die. He came to believe that the human psyche needs a belief system in order to deal with the very idea of death. Otherwise, he argued, humans could not function in the world. However, he ultimately rejected the value of such belief systems because he said that reliance on a belief system makes it impossible to attain genuine self knowledge and awareness.

Having said that the reliance on belief systems to deal with death precludes true self awareness he strove to find meaning elsewhere. A strong ethical humanist, he felt that humanity must find the answer to the denial of death within the heroism of humans and thus free itself of the burden of the fear, and the denial, of death.

Yet, in the end, he could find nothing that even selfless heroism could do to alter the fear and denial of death other than to offer a final bow to the inevitable. He wrote, "The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something, an object of ourselves, and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force."

Many people then and now find that good enough. Some believe that we can pass the best of each of us, our knowledge, our writings, our ethics, our philosophies, our loves, on to our children, our wider families, and even the world. Some feel that, in doing that they have achieved true self knowledge. In other words, some variation of Becker's idea appeals to a lot of people.

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Becker's ideas reflect the views on death of one influential ethical humanist. However, the vast majority of people on the planet have belief systems that allow them to face death with greater optimism than did Becker.

And those believers do not feel that they have forsaken self knowledge or self awareness by having faith. In fact, they would argue that their belief system is part and parcel of their self knowledge, and that true self discovery requires belief.

The vast majority of faith systems in the world today deal with death not by denying it but by asserting that death is not final, that there is some form of afterlife, offered to us by God, or gods, a life force, a higher power, or an ultimate source of life.

The shape of that afterlife and the nature of that higher power varies widely among religions. But all those who believe in an afterlife believe that death is not the end, but is a portal through which we pass.

As a Christian theologian I am somewhat versed in how death is viewed in other faiths. However I am no expert in that and will not write about it here.

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What I can tell you is how orthodox Christianity views death and how that faith, my faith, deals with it. So what follows is a brief explanation of the Christian way of dealing with death.

If you are a Christian there are fundamental things that you believe about death and how it can be overcome, i.e., essential beliefs about life and death that distinguish a Christian faith perspective.

The Christian hope for eternal life is grounded in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, whom Christians confess as Lord and Savior. This belief is not based only upon the truth of his teachings or on his high ethical standards, as important as those are to other aspects of the faith. Rather it is based on the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, who, in total trust and obedience to the will of the Father, died upon the cross for the sins of all humanity.

And Christians believe that God raised him from the dead, in loving response to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Christians believe that in so doing God broke once and for all the bonds of death for all who believe in Jesus, the Christ.

Before Jesus was raised there was hope for a general resurrection of the dead. Martha reflected that hope after her brother, Lazarus, died. And Jesus told her "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" Martha replied, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God ...."

However, the raising of Lazarus was not a resurrection. It was a resuscitation. Lazarus was raised from his tomb, but he would one day die. Christians believe, therefore, that the raising of Jesus was the first resurrection. St. Paul confirms this by calling Jesus' resurrection the "first fruits" from the dead, and reiterates that those who believe in the Christ shall not die but shall be resurrected as he has been.

This is important to Christians because a lone resurrection would have little to no meaning for us. As Hans Kung has said, "An isolated resurrection in itself would have little point, unless it were a resurrection FOR US. Jesus' resurrection is the ground of hope in the resurrection for ALL who believe in him."

This, then, is what Christians call Resurrection Faith. It is this faith that we too shall be raised which grounds Christian hope.

Ultimately, belief that Jesus was raised is precisely that: Belief. And many good men and women, like Ernest Becker, do not make that "leap of faith" that defines a Christian.

Such a trust in God, cannot be found in books, in science, or in study. It comes from the heart. It is essentially intuitive. Once one has faith, of course, one can seek further understanding through study. As St. Anselm advised, religion is "Faith seeking Understanding."

One cannot study his or her way to faith in the Risen Christ. One can read about the Resurrection and decide whether one believes it to be true, but there will not be any "proof" of it.

The resurrection is not a "provable" event, notwithstanding the number of devout Christians who try, year after year, to "prove" the truth of the resurrection using various kinds of "arguments" which are not proofs at all, but are really only different ways of stating the faith.

Notwithstanding the lack of "scientific evidence," of which there is next to none about any event in ancient history which we nonetheless accept as "true," I, and other Christians, believe that the resurrection is true. I believe it because of the testimony of the Gospel writers, and of the other witnesses, such as St. Paul, who said that they saw the Risen Christ. In other words, I trust that testimony, that kerygma, (proclamation), of the faith.

Christians also believe it because we feel Christ is working in our lives today, and in the lives of those we trust and love. We believe it because the Church itself has been created as the Living Body of the Living Christ. And we continue to testify to the living presence of Christ in the Word and Sacraments of our worship, especially in the sharing of the bread and wine, the symbolic body and blood of our Savior.

We also believe that the resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate divine revelation of God to us. It is through this unique revelation of the power and glory of God that we are freed in the present to have the hope of eternal life, even in the face of the fact that we shall surely die, because we believe that death is not the end of our lives.

This hope is born out of our trust in God's righteousness, in God's goodness, and, most of all, in God's love for us. For believers death is but a narrow gate, a passageway through which we pass into the closer presence of Christ.

For those who trust that God raised Jesus, the fleeting present in which we all live can be a freeing moment. There is still the inevitability of death, but, as St. Paul says, "Death has lost its sting."

And, because of Christian hope, the present can take on new meaning, can become something more than a time for remembering the mistakes of the past, or living in paralyzing fear of the future. Instead it can become a time of worship, thanksgiving, praise and service in the name of the One who has overcome death for us.

When Thomas refused to believe that Christ was risen Jesus appeared before him and invited him to put out his hand and touch his wounded side, saying "Do not doubt, but believe." Thomas did not put his hand in Jesus' side. Instead Thomas believed and answered him saying simply, "My Lord and my God!"

More telling for Christians is what Jesus said next to Thomas, which is often overlooked, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

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There are many ways in which people deal with the inevitability of death. Each person must decide just how they will face the reality of their own death. I have found a way of dealing with death that gives me hope. For me faith is the best of the alternatives. Through my faith I find hope, and the promise of eternal life.

God bless you all,

Monte

The Limits of Worldly Wisdom

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Worldly wisdom and faith do not mix well. I want to use the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as examples of this. Rather than rely on worldly wisdom to plot his course in life, Jesus turns our expectations upside down, and stands worldly wisdom on its head. He does this because worldly wisdom cannot guide us through the pains and losses of our lives into the hope we need to move beyond the pain. However you define worldly wisdom, the Bible is clear that Jesus didn’t have it.

There is no place in the Bible where this is more evident than in the Beatitudes, that series of blessings (which we call the beatitudes) and woes (which we usually ignore!) that are sometimes called the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain. But wherever it took place, and there is no reason to assume that he didn’t preach the same sermon in two different places, nothing in that sermon agrees with worldly wisdom.

Think about it. Jesus says that the poor, and the hungry, and the grieving are blessed; and, on the other side of that coin, woe upon (or cursed be) those who are now rich, or who are full, or who are respected by society.

Before we go on, please note this carefully: If you are going to understand this, you have to understand clearly that Jesus is not saying that this is the way things should be – that is that the poor should be blessed, or that those who mourn should be blessed and comforted, or that those who have no standing in the society should be treated with respect.

He is saying that this is how things are now in the Kingdom of God. The poor are blessed, the hungry are blessed, the reviled are blessed, those who mourn are blessed. Jesus says that God is doing this in the world, right now: blessing those who have received little blessing in their lives, and cursing those who believe that, just because they “have it made” in the material things of the world, they have it made with God. They don’t.

Here is cause for hope for those who have experienced little of the blessings in this life, for those who have known some blessings and have had them torn from their grasp, for those who weep and mourn and are not now consoled in their weary lives.

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Do you think that this is just another exercise in biblical theology that does not apply to you? Sorry. But I know better. I know that a lot of you don’t feel nearly as good as you act when you post and comment here. I know that you are trying your best to look good, to appear “just fine, thank you,” to the rest of us. We all try to keep that stiff upper lip. But, look behind that facade and we may discover that not all of us are in nearly as good a shape as we pretend to be.

Some of you are in pain; hoping that the posts and comments and the sense of fellowship here might just cut through the pain and give you a little peace. Others are here knowing that, with their world in shambles around them, maybe for a few minutes or hours they can concentrate on something, someone, else, and maybe, with a little luck and God’s help they might just be able to forget: if only for a brief while. And some of you are numb with grief, or fear, or depression.

I know all about your tricks and denials and attempts to appear stronger than you are, because I have been there, done that – right here in my own interactions with you. There have been times when I am in so much pain tears form in my eyes as I type, times when I am afraid to even admit to myself how hard it is to accept that I will likely get worse, not better. But, strange as it sounds, I’m glad that I know that little secret about you and me, because I don’t much care for the alternative.

It seems to me that it would be such a terrible grind, such a phony existence, to live in a world where everybody smiles so much you think their lips will crack off: where everybody is always so very, very happy, so totally successful in the ways of the world, and so pleased just to be wonderful "me."

I think that would be a dangerous place in which to write or try to reach out to others. Just one cancer that can’t be cured, one heart attack that can’t be stopped, one stroke that leaves a loved one paralyzed, one case of Alzheimer’s, one firing, one divorce, one act of adultery, one “F” in chemistry, one beating by one's spouse, one death, one – of anything bad – cracks the phony façade and crumbles the clay feet of the health and wealth preachers who are in such amazing abundance in this country.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of thought to realize that this pain we feel, however much we hide it, is real, and that it is interconnected. Those secret, personal, disorders that you brought here with you, the ones you imagine no one else has had, or if they did, that they handled so much better than you are handling them; that pain that you know not how to name, that you are ashamed to name to anyone – all those very real and disturbing concerns -- tip you off that something isn’t quite right with the world, or with the world’s great desire to sweep things like those under the rug.

No, shocked as you may be to hear it, it isn’t just you that feel this way. Something is not right with the world and, chances are, the something that is not right in your life is also not right in thousands, maybe millions, of others. But, who will listen? Who will validate those lonely and empty feelings in your heart, that hunger in your soul for something better, that thirst that the things of this world cannot quench?

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The good book says that Jesus came down and talked to them where they were, on the plain, on a level place, looking them straight in the eyes; feeling what they felt, seeing what they saw. And then he said outrageous things, like: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh”.

And those who weren’t weeping, who had nothing that they figured they needed to weep about, laughed. And Jesus said, "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” And the Bible doesn’t say so, but I imagine that they laughed again. "What utter nonsense,” they thought.

The poet, W. H. Auden once said, “Seeing the joy of a bubble-brained world, I was glad I could be unhappy”. Or, as Jesus put it, “Fortunate are you that weep now.” He didn’t say, “in this bubble-brained world,” but he must have thought it. Blessed are you if you have noticed that people are hurting, dying, in pain, and mourning. Fortunate.

Jesus knew that there was something much more dangerous than tears. And that is the dangerous deception that our world is secure, stable, and is, after all, the best of all possible worlds. That deception says that if we just act happy, we’ll be happy; that if we ignore the pain, it will go away; and that, if we feel the pain, we are weak: so just don’t feel the pain. And, above all, do not put yourself in a position now where you will feel pain later. Avoid love, for the price of love is the pain of later loss.

Jesus didn’t see it that way. He said, “Woe to you that laugh now.” Woe to you if you feel too good, if you are settled too comfortably into the way things are, the way, you think, you have made them; the way, you think, you deserve them to be.

Against this self-congratulatory self-deception Jesus hurls, “Woe to you that laugh now. Fortunate are you who weep.” You are lucky, he says, if you embrace your loss, feel the pain now, touch it, grieve over it, weep. And then he says, “You shall laugh.” You shall see a new world, rising out of the ashes of the old; joy rising out of the ashes of the pain.

But you can’t believe that hopeful word until you have embraced the grief. First you must go through the grief, recognize it, own it, and know it. To hope too soon, to laugh too easily, to fake the happiness, all that is self-deception. Weep now, that you may laugh later.

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Maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense to some of you. But it does to me. I do a lot of counseling. The number one symptom I deal with is depression. The reasons people say they are depressed are about as myriad as the stars, but the symptom is depression. And the number one cause of the depression isn’t what the counselees think it is; it is failure to deal with the pain, to own it, to admit it, and then, hopefully, to place it in God’s hands.

One can try to heal too soon. I have seen it countless times. “But, Monte, she’s been gone over two years; I’m not doing well with this grief. All my friends say I should be over it by now.” Well, he isn’t, because he’s been listening to his friends; and they started telling him that he needed to get on with his life after his wife had been dead three months. And he’s been taking their advice, denying the grief, and faking it ever since.

Jesus has a different answer. Jesus says, “weep now; tomorrow you will laugh.” He says that your faith will give you hope in the midst of your chemotherapy, in the quiet of your hospital room, in the still darkness of your lonely nights. There, when you need it the most and expect it the least, hope will come.

We cynically downplay our losses, and try to bravely cover-up the pain, but we seldom think or talk of the promise. And the promise is joy, and the laughter that goes with it. Jesus says laughter is the fruit of the serious admission of our pain, and then of the embracing of the hope of the promise made to us by God. You will laugh, not because the pain is not real, but because God is rummaging around in the ruins of your life, putting things together, and getting ready to bring to you new life, in this life and in the next.

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Can all this be true? Can we be like the alcoholic who has to “hit bottom,” and cry out in pain, and then, and only then, can he be healed? Is it true that our futures will not be bought by anything that we can bring to the bargaining table, or purchase with the almighty dollar, but only by the grace of God? Is it true that we can’t buy laughter, or peace for our weary souls, or any of the things that will pull us out of the pain? Is it true that faith in the grace of God will sustain us through the deserts of our lives and bring us to a new oasis of life on the other side? Is that true?

You know I believe the truth of those promises. The issue is what do you think about them?

If the Beatitudes tell us nothing else they say that God wills the dismantling of our uncomfortable pretense, of our false bravado; and urges upon us the embracing and owning of the pain, and then letting it go and letting God have it.

When we do we will laugh, laugh like Sarah when she bore a son at a time when worldly wisdom said she could not; laugh like the disciples laughed only three days after they had wept the tears of sorrow over Jesus’ death on the cross even as the world laughed at the possibility of his Resurrection; laugh as we shall laugh when the prophecy of St. John is fulfilled and we inherit this promise:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new...." (Rev. 21.1-5a)

May God bless us in our weeping and in our laughter.

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Addendum:

Luke 6. 17-26

17 He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. 20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 24 "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

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When I Was Young: Pop Hits of the 60s

Aren't you just a bit tired of being wound tight as a drum and frazzled by the all the insane political infighting, screams of "You lie!", two wars, the swine flu, and the apparent total disconnect from reality of a large portion of our population right now? I know that I am.

So.......I spent Sunday evening putting together a bit of a lull in all the craziness. I did this for me as well as for you. And like my Sinatra Playlist, there is no socially responsible agenda here. There is nothing to think about in this post unless you know this music. If you are it might bring back some great memories of a time that will likely seem like both long ago and only yesterday.

I was 22 when I entered the 1960s. This is the music of that formative decade of my life. This music is called Popular Music, or "Pop." It is the music of the people; the music you got over the radio when you were riding in the car; it is Top Ten and Top 100 Billboard Magazine music; it is the music of American Bandstand and music sung on TV prime time variety shows. It is the music you found yourself memorizing and singing in the shower, humming on the way to work, or when you were working in the garden. It is simply the music most listened to by much of middle America in the 1960s. Little of it is "cutting edge," but some of it is; and all of it was influential and set the tone for the next generation of popular music.

I have not put into the Playlist one song by each artist or group so I could have 20 different artists. Rather I have included a representative group of songs by a few of the artists who rose above most others on the popular music airwaves.

We start with the only seminal work of the Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations." From there it is only some of the very best of The Mamas and the Papas, The Association, The Lovin' Spoonful, Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and Bobby Darin. And while all those individuals and groups were "Pop" they each represent a very distinctive style within the genre. No one could confuse one with the other.

Are they the only singers and groups that were important in the 60s? Of course not. There were dozens of others in the Pop music genre alone. Not represented here are very important musical genres of the 60s: Rock, R&B, Soul, Jazz, Rockabilly, Standards and Country to name a few. But this Playlist does represent the Popular music that most of America listened to in the 60s.

So sit back, and allow yourself to be propelled into the magic of the songs of my young adulthood. Just slip on some headphones, or turn on some nice speakers, and listen. Open OS or any other site in another tab and go about reading, writing or whatever else you want to do. The list will keep playing until you want to stop it.

Ordinary People

Start with a helping hand

There are certain major themes in the Bible that are never stated outright. But they are evident when one considers the text as a whole. One of those themes that is repeated over and over in the stories in the Bible is that God uses ordinary people to accomplish God's goals.

Mostly we resist the implications of that truth. We may say, "That may be true, but it does not apply to me. In Christianity some of that reluctance comes from the fact that most of us do not see ourselves as “saints” or "holy" people. We have it in our heads that we have to be one of the “giants” of the faith to qualify. But that isn’t true.

It isn’t even true about the “giants” of the faith. The point we need to understand about the "giants" of faith is that they started out as ordinary people, ordinary people through whom God chose to do extraordinary things.

I am guessing that the last thing you think that you are is that you are a saint or a holy person. But the truth is that you are holy if you have committed yourself to a power greater than yourself through faith. When a Christian commits himself or herself to Christ that person becomes a saint, a holy one, expected to do the work of God. In most other faiths such a commitment also makes you holy, and expected to do the work of God.

You may deny it; it may frighten you; it may even make you a little queasy to think about it; and you may try to run from the very idea of it - but, by faith, you are made holy.

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So the question isn't the easy one: "Am I a holy person?" If you are a person of faith, you are a holy person. The question is "What am I going to do for God now that I am a holy person?" That is the hard question.

The saints Christians tend to remember would, if asked, like you, very likely deny that they were saints. For example, Mother Teresa hardly thought of herself as anything special, confessing her own doubts and wondering if she was really doing the right thing. Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformation leader, felt the same. St. Augustine was worried more about his inadequacies than about his status.

All of the truly great saints saw themselves as ordinary people and were humbled that God would choose to work through them. But they were ordinary people raised to do extraordinary things through the power of God. Those people Christians know of and think of as "saints," people like Matthews, Sarah, Luke, Ruth, and Abraham did not expect to be chosen for their roles in history, nor did they often feel they were doing all that well when they were living those roles.

One thing that the Protestant Reformation made clear is that Christianity is composed of "all the saints," not just a hand full of well-known names, or even of Popes, Bishops and Pastors. It is composed of all Christians, in every time and place, who hear the call and answer it. God works through all of those ordinary people, and we have to get that idea firmly entrenched in our heads if we are to make a difference in the world.

James said, "Faith without works is dead." And our faith is dead if we do not open our lives to be available to do the works that God calls us to do. You are an ordinary person; but you are also a holy child of God; and you are needed as a vital worker in God's vineyard. And, when you embrace that truth, God can do extraordinary things through you.

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To make it clear that God does not tend to start with the "rich, famous and powerful" let's just look at two giants of faith: Abraham and Matthew.

Abraham was, in almost every way, a ordinary fellow. For the most part, he was successful in the business of raising sheep, but he needed a lot of help from his friends, and from God, to be as successful as he was. And, come the famine, he even failed at that for a while. He was an old man before he finally became rich, and he became rich largely by the generosity of his friends, including Pharaoh of all people.

Abraham's family life was a mess. His marriage was a mess. He treated Sarah shabbily, used her for his own devices, ordered her to sleep with two other men, and ended up sleeping with Sarah's maid because Sarah was barren. Then, when Sarah wanted him to send Hagar and his son by her, Ishmael, away, even knowing that it would likely mean death for them in the desert, he allowed it.

The story of Abraham in Genesis is one of vacillating all his life between trusting God to provide for him and scheming to take control back from God, because he so often thought that he knew better than God what was in his best interest.

Abraham was, like us, just an ordinary person. If he weren't the patriarch of the Judeo-Christian-Muslin religions, he wouldn't be seen as much of a role model for any of us. Except when the chips were down, he trusted God.

And God reckoned that trust as righteousness. God did not say that Abraham was righteous; rather God considered him to be righteous because of his trust in God. And, remember, he only trusted God part of the time. But, nevertheless, God blessed him.

The bottom line is that Abraham was not as nice a person, or even as holy a person, as many you and I have known in our lifetimes.

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Or take Matthew, another most unlikely hero of faith. Matthew was about as ordinary as you can get; actually from his countrymen's point of view he was a traitor. Matthew was a tax collector. Tax collectors were collaborators in the Roman occupation. They literally took from their own poor and gave to the Roman rich.

Matthew made his living skimming as much as he could off of the top of the outrageous taxes the Romans imposed on Matthew's own people. For this, he was shunned by his people. Hated. He was not allowed to associate with them, to worship with them, or even to sacrifice to his God.

Yet Jesus chose this ordinary sinner, Matthew, for God's purposes. Jesus said, "Follow me;" and Matthew did an extraordinary thing: He followed. He put down his bag of coins, gave up his livelihood - and no one would ever hire him again, you can be sure of that! - and he followed Jesus. It took courage. It took faith.

When you read the Bible, even if you read it only as an exercise in history or as a literary document, you can't help but be struck at how God chooses the nobodies of this world. Go through the Bible, the list is almost endless.

Here are but a few examples: Abraham, Matthew, Jacob, Isaac, Ruth, Rehab, Samuel, Moses, Sarah, Esther, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of Jesus, Joseph, his earthly father, John the Baptist, all of the disciples, and on and on and on. Nobodies, every one! Ordinary people all!

There is no mistaking it. God's pattern is clear. God chooses ordinary people; utterly ordinary people with marital problems, bad manners, bad tempers, big egos. He chooses runts, outcasts and orphans; he chooses reluctant fools like Jonah, who, when told to go to Nineveh, runs away and gets on a ship going to the farthest known place in the world from Nineveh!

Do you doubt that God's ways are not our ways? The fact is that the one voted "least likely to succeed" is very likely to be the one chosen.

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So here is the bottom line. God has chosen you! God has chosen you just as surely as he has chosen Abraham and Matthew.

I know. You don't always feel like someone worthy to be chosen. I don't either. You may rather not even think about the idea of being chosen. That's true. I know the feeling. I often had such feelings when I was a pastor. I still have them now and then.

I wonder how God can possibly use an old theologian like me who can barely walk from the car into a store. My body is starting to let me down, and sometimes my spirit feels like going along for the ride.

I wonder about it every time I write a post. Am I the right one to get this idea or that thought across? Is this really what God wants me to be doing? Will it make any difference? I hope and pray it does.

I still often do not feel worthy of the task. But I do it anyway because I believe it is a form of God's work that I still can do to contribute to others, to help them strengthen their faith. So I just do the best I can, and leave the rest up to God.

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We are in good company, you and I. Abraham, Matthew, David, Samuel, and Paul, and a host of others, often didn't feel or act like holy persons either. But the truth is that what we feel like; what we think, and what we act like at times, is really not the point.

The point is that God has chosen us. And what God intends to do with us is God's business. Our business is to trust God and to do the things we know are pleasing to God, not necessarily the things that give us the most immediate pleasure or gratification.

You may sometimes wish God would just leave you alone, and give up on you. But God isn't going to give up on you. If God wouldn't give up on Jonah, believe me, you don't stand a chance of escaping God's love!

God knows that you are far from perfect - and God loves you anyway. God loves you with a never ending love because you are you, unique, individual, and precious in God's sight. And God will keep on loving you, mistakes, lapses, fumbles and all. And in response to that love you have the opportunity to do good works in God's name.

There will be many times when you will have the opportunity to do extraordinary things for God. They may seem like small things. But small things add up. And no one may notice or even compliment your works. That does not matter.

There will be a time when you know you need to devote a part of yourself to the things that are important to God. It will come. You need not force it. You only need to be open to the possibility. There will be times when you will be asked to serve; when you should volunteer; when you should reach out to hurting neighbors; when you should lift someone up.

There will be times when you know God is calling you out of your comfort zone. Those are times when each of us should say, “Here I am, God. Use me.”

God bless us, ordinary people all.

God is Still Speaking. Are We Listening?

SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 1:40PM

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In the Bible, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, God often is said to have spoken directly to individuals, either in person or through angels, speaking in words that the individual understands. This direct speaking of the Holy One to individuals is true in many religions.

Today, most practicing Christians and Jews have no trouble accepting that God spoke "in the days of old" directly to individual people. And in the Bible it was not just to prophets and leaders but also to relative nobodies like Mary and Joseph long before they knew that they would do anything that would be considered of any real importance.

Today many Christians and Jews believe that those days of direct communication with God are over. We certainly do not often think that God will speak directly to us so that we actually hear God like we would hear a person speak to us over a cup of coffee. And the few times that a friend may have told us that God spoke directly to her, we likely placated her, all the while thinking she was a few cards short of a full deck.

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Some of you know that I have only once in my 70 years thought that God actually spoke directly to me. I was reading a book at the time, and it nearly scared me to death. Even so I was not sure who was speaking and ran around the house in the dead of night looking for radios that were left on, trying to figure out the source of the voice, checking outside looking for a neighbor standing in a foot of snow by our bedroom window. Nothing. Sue was asleep and the neighborhood was quiet as a church mouse.

So I spent a full year trying to convince myself that God has surely not spoken to me, and, besides, the message was unclear. If it were God couldn't God come up with something a bit less enigmatic than "It's not too late?" I mean, what was "not too late?" And what was the "it" that was still timely?

After a year of pondering what I heard that night I decided that God did speak to me and that God wanted me to devote the rest of my life to serving in ministry. Oddly, none of my friends or my closest advisors found this decision strange, nor did they think that 50 years old was "too old" to give up my life as I knew it and make such a total commitment.

I haven't heard a direct word from God since. Not even a whisper. Not in a dream. Nothing. Nada. Not that I haven't wished God would just sit down and chat with me, in English. It would be so much easier to just know what God wants of me now. I haven't all that many years left. Shouldn't we be having that little heart to heart talk that would make it crystal clear how I should live the years I have left?

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I hate to disappoint any reader who was hoping to find here the holy grail, or the golden compass, or the precious ring, or the code breaker, or some other thing that will make it easier to find our way. But I don't have that kind of answer for you. I know people who do. I know that we can turn on any number of televangelists who will tell us that God just had breakfast with them and told them what we are to do.

Mostly in those conversations God seems to be interested in divesting us of our money and giving it to those blessed to have God's cell phone number. Pardon my skepticism, but I doubt that God works quite that way, although millions upon millions believe that is exactly how God acts, much to the televangelists' delight.

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Let's move on to the good part. And that is simply that God is still speaking. God does try to communicate with us in many wonderful and useful ways. Many of them are listed at the end of this reflection.

But first we have to focus on how to hear what God is saying.

And here is the key: think of communicating with God like listening to a radio or TV signal. Right now there are millions of radio and TV signals being broadcast. How many of them can you hear with the receiver turned off? Not only do you have to have the receiver turned on, but it has to have the right tuner to receive the signals and you have to use that tuner to find the station you want to listen to or watch.

That sounds so obvious when we think of radio and TV signals, but we are totally flummoxed when we are asked to consider that we might have to have our spiritual tuner turned on and we might have to tune in to KGOD if we want to hear what God has to say to us. KGOD is the only frequency that Kingdom of God Broadcasting Company uses.

But, and this is important, once we are turned on and tuned in there are a variety of programs that God uses to communicate with us. And one of those is "Our Ordinary Lives." This program stars all of us, and is sometimes a sitcom, sometimes a drama, sometimes a melodrama.

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God does not micro-manage our ordinary lives, nor does God generally intervene in our lives in miraculous or extraordinary ways. You may be surprised to know that mostly God did not do that in biblical times either. While the Bible gathers stories of when God did that all in one place, it ignores the infinitely larger number of times when God did not intervene or speak.

And while I am convinced that God does act in miraculous ways today, I am also convinced that we often miss the miraculous in our lives because we aren't looking for it, and are far too cynical to believe miracles when they happen. If you don't believe that, try telling your friends about your miracle. They will say that they are happy for you while thinking that if miracles happen where was God when they last needed one?

Yet faith tells us that God is with us in all times and places. Always. God can comfort us, instruct us and help us grow spiritually through successes, failures, joys, sorrows, sickness, health, blessings, and countless other ways. The real question is not whether God is there and will help us, but whether or not we believe that God is there. And that belief matters only if our radio is on, and we have it tuned in.

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A simple question will help define the issue: Just how active are you in sharing your joys and sorrows, your troubles and successes, with God on an everyday basis? Or do you wait until your world falls apart and you pray that bargaining prayer from your foxhole?

The truth is that I, who surely know better, often am so worried about something, and it is driving me to such total distraction, that I forget to invite God into a conversation about my problems. I end up talking to myself endlessly when I should be communicating my deepest joys, fears and anxieties to God.

We need to be very conscious of including God in our daily concerns and activities, not using God only for emergencies and wondering why we can't hear God over the din of our pounding, racing hearts if we only call on God in times of crisis. We need to ask ourselves, "Where is God in what I am experiencing?" And, "What would God like me to learn from this experience?"

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I am not saying that God causes every event in our lives. Far from it. We have free will and so do all others. God has set in motion natural laws, even laws that we have yet to discover. There are natural disasters and accidents. And often our choices, and those of others, to say nothing of natural laws and anomalous, awful events, cause us great grief.

But if God made all the choices for us we would have no responsibility for our actions, nor would we be much more than mere robots going through the motions of existence. Life would be numbingly dull.

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God can use the events of our lives to teach us, if we will only allow that to happen, no matter how tragic those events are at the time they happen. And God will teach us love and wisdom out of which can grow understanding and humility, but only if we allow it.

We do not often stop to think that the ultimate price that we pay for love, for example, will always be sorrow and grief when that love ends. The price of love now is pain later. That is just the way it works. Were there no love there would be no pain, only indifference.

Some try to insulate themselves from love and from others so that they never need feel the pain. But if they succeed in doing that they will never know the joy of love, or feel the tenderness of compassion, nor will they know what we mean when we feel sorrow over grief of others.

In the end they will have deadened themselves to the possibility of ever knowing the very feelings that God teaches us are the essence of the spiritual life, the life that puts things spiritual and eternal ahead of things material and temporal. They will choose to forfeit the most precious gifts of God.

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There are, of course, many ways that God speaks to us today. God speaks to us through the actions of others, through our acts of gathering for worship, praise and instruction, through prayer and meditation, through our holy books, through our learning of spiritual disciplines and the teachings of our savior, prophets and leaders, and through many other formal spiritual disciplines.

I have chosen not to discuss those with you today, in part because it would take another reflection to discuss even one of them, and in part because there are countless books written already to help guide you through those spiritual disciplines.

But there are few books written on the most obvious first step: listening for and hearing God throughout our ordinary lives. And yet that is where even the most fervent believer most neglects the potential conversation with the Holy One. It is the place where we are both the most vulnerable to the vagaries of life, and yet where we are the least likely to turn on and tune in to the One who wants for us only that we live the very best lives we can, and live them abundantly.

The conversation that makes that possible is only available to us if we turn on and tune in. Otherwise, there is nothing but silence.

Blessings and Peace,

Monte

Are You a Failure?

The short passage of Scripture below this essay is from the prophet called "Second Isaiah." The book of Isaiah was written at two, perhaps three, different periods of Israelite history. Second Isaiah wrote during one of the very worst times in the history of Israel.

He wrote from Babylon, while in exile. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The nation had been dragged on its knees into captivity, Isaiah but one of thousands who endured the humiliating march to Babylon in chains.

The text above is the second of four poems, called "Servant Songs," written by this prophet. In the midst of total despair this prophet cries forth a new song; a song not about rebellion or a call for restoration of kingly glory. Rather it is a song of deliverance by the hand of God through the work of a Suffering Servant.

Given the broken nation, the humiliating despair, the depressing knowledge of being captive in a strange land it came as a plea for hope. Almost no one would listen to him, let alone act upon what he had to say. His message was laughable. Yet, in time, what he prophesied came true.

This short message is both strange and beautiful. And it begins in absolute audacity, for he addresses not just his fellow exiles, but the entire world: "Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!"

And then he lays out his credentials, certainly useless in the present circumstances. But lay them out he does. He tells of his call, his vocation. God called him when he was in his mother's womb, before he was born. God even gave him his name; gave him his identity. But for decades God did not tell him what he must do.

God did give him his only weapon: his voice, his tongue - sharp, like a "sword;" made him like a "polished arrow." And God protected him, hid him "in the shadow of his hand...." God did this until the appropriate time, until now. Now, in full adulthood, God told him what he must do. God gave Isaiah his commission.

He must have often wondered to what task he was called. He must have tried many tasks; tried to discern the nature of his call; tried to figure out what exactly he was to do with this life which God had long ago claimed.

God said to this exiled prophet, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Think about that. God tells Isaiah that he is "Israel." He is the servant who will speak to and for all of the people of the nation. Does this not strike us as ridiculous? This single, exiled, prophet, this nothing will be the vehicle through whom God will be glorified. It is crazy on the face of it.

So it should be of no surprise to us that the prophet tells us that he replied to God not in happy gratitude that at last he knew what his commission was to be, but that he, Isaiah, was unequal to the task. God, it seems, had the wrong man after all.

Isaiah tells us why he felt that way. "But I said, 'I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.'"

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Surely we can identify with that. God had called the prophet from before his birth; and yet, until now, had given him no commission. God had given him nothing with which to oppose the tyranny of the Babylonian oppression but words. Yes, he had a silver tongue, but it up to now it had done him no good in his counsel to the leaders of the nation.

Up to now his tongue had, by his own admission, been used to assuage his own vanity, his pride; to improve his position among the powerful, and to gain for himself stature and admiration by those below him in position and in power.

And so Isaiah was ashamed. And he felt deep in his gut that he was unworthy of the commission. He felt that he was worthless. And if he accepted this commission he believed that he would only let God down, even as he felt that he had done up to now.

This I can identify with. This I think that many of us can identify with. In my case it feels like deja vu when I read this passage. I have "been there, done that." I have often felt exactly that way.

There was not a time from the age of 15 that I did not know that God had called me to be his servant. He called me then, and again at age 18, and at 23, and again at 38. Yet I did not heed the call. Rather, I ran. I ran from the call.

I was gifted with words. And I used them well, often to my own advantage, and often to feed my vanity. At the time I told myself I was doing it for others, as a public servant. I was not then even aware that I was vain, proud, and selfish. After all, if I worked 70 hours a week for the public it only made sense that I would be given increasing responsibility and increasing exposure to, with praise from, the bigger players in the public policy field. It only seemed right.

By any worldly standard I was a success. I spent seven years in the Executive Office of the President, rising quickly through the ranks. I headed the Federal energy and minerals program at the age of 29; was Deputy Director of the Ford Foundation's signature Energy Policy Project, and was the Director of two divisions within the General Accounting Office, rising to the highest rank possible in the Civil Service by age 35. I was Vice President of a Fortune 500 company; and CEO of a division of that company before the age of 40.

And I woke up one morning and thought, as Isaiah did, that it had all been for vanity. And that I had failed. I felt that I had failed myself, but most of all, that I had failed God.

---

How about you? This text doesn't just relate to me. This text is not only about prophets and people who at the age of 50 head off to seminary like I did. It is about anyone who reaches out beyond the possibility of doing something just for themselves and doing it as a way to answer a call to service.

It is about all those who have tried to make a difference and yet felt that, in the end, it has all been in vain, who question their motives and their need for approval.

People like these:

--- If you have ever tried to teach a class so well that you were sure that the kids would get the point, and that the parents would be proud of the children's, and your, efforts, and yet the children were indifferent and the parents seemed not to care.

--- If you have ever tried to reach out with help and with your presence at a time of deep crisis in someone's life and they neither seemed to understand nor appreciate what you were doing, and your assistance seemed so futile.

--- If you have ever been enthused about a project or an idea that you just knew would be well received by your bosses, and yet when you presented it you were told that it was considered not worth the effort, or that the company just did not have the time to spend on it, nor the interest in it to make it happen.

--- If you have ever tried to live your working life by the rules, being fair and living up to high moral standards, only to watch others who lie and cheat and dissemble, and who cozy up to the boss, get the promotions and the bonuses.

--- If you have ever tried to raise your children by the virtues of personal integrity and honesty, only to have them ignore your wisdom and turn to their peers for their support and approval, unable to find even the smallest redeeming value in your years of loving care as they grew up.

--- If any of those and countless other seeming failures resonate with you --- then you, with the prophet, have at sometime cried out, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity."

---

No. This text is not just for prophets and pastors. It is for anyone who has tried to do something noble and good only to feel that the effort has been wasted. It is for anyone who ever has felt that something that they tried would have succeeded if only they had not been so vain, so self righteous, so pridefilled, that they must be the source of the problem.

And the odd thing is that it matters not whether our self-incriminating analysis is true. Likely there is some truth that cuts both ways. Yes, we tried to help others, to serve. And, yes, we were often proud of what we were trying to do, and maybe even just a bit too needful of praise, hoping that someone would recognize that we were making a difference and care enough to say so.

The problem is that God will not listen long to our lamentations about our failures, failures of either character or content. God will not judge us by the standards we set for ourselves to be judged by. And God will surely ignore the standards of success that society assures us are the measure of our real worth.

When God does that, takes us as we are and offers us a new chance, a future that we can move into, without condemnation for past actions or words or mistakes, we will find that grace hard to believe. And we will find that grace hard to accept because we believe that such grace cannot possibly apply to us.

We do this because we too are judging ourselves by the same immediate results that society says we must seek. We too want results. And we want them right now. The sooner the better.

---

But usually results don't come instantly.

A teacher may never see the results of her efforts with a group of children. That is unless, if she lives that long, one may drop by to see her after a 20th anniversary reunion and say, "I just wanted to thank you, Miss Jones, for helping open my eyes to a whole new world when I was in your class my senior year."

And your constant care in the last months of your dying friend may never yield visible results, unless, if you are lucky and the friend's child is sensitive, he may write to you, perhaps a year later, "Millie, I just think that you should know that Mom told me how important your constant companionship was to her when you were there for her all those times in the months before she died."

Pastors, teachers, spouses, parents, friends, workers, care givers and managers had better be in love with something far more significant than immediate, visible results.

The call, the vocation, the ministry, of care and outreach to others has such lofty goals, the work of God in the sweep of human history is so mysterious and veiled, and the plans of God for us and for this world are so grand, that all we really know is that the harvest of many of the most important seeds we sow cannot occur until years, perhaps even generations, after we have so carefully sown those seeds.

---

Beyond that we must have faith; faith in God and faith in our efforts to care and to give of ourselves to others.

And so we must hold fast, and say with Isaiah. who said immediately after his lament, "yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God."

And in the marvelous, mysterious wisdom of God we will find that all of our judgments of ourselves, and of others; judgments of performance and results, of winners and losers, are but a human miscalculation of what God values most.

We value and judge by "success." But God judges by "faithfulness."

Isaiah quickly learned this truth, for he immediately says that God has cut through all the hesitation, ignored the supposed "failures" of the past and told Isaiah "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

This commission is mind boggling. It reverses every value that Isaiah had assumed was God's measure of Isaiah's worth. In an instant, in a few very directed words, God shows how little he cares about Isaiah's past failures, real and imagined. For here God treats Isaiah as a man of incomparable worth -- and shows it by giving him an even greater commission.

And so it is with us, my friends. With all our judging of ourselves, with our second guessing, with our listening to the praise and the insults of friends and managers, parents and children, God is prepared to look into a future without so much as a murmur about what we did or did not do in the past.

Only God can decide the success or failure of the things we do when we seek to live a life of love and service to others. It does no good to try to usurp God's authority in this matter. God alone will judge.

God calls us to faithful service, not to culturally defined success. So, if we would live our lives in answer to the call to reach out to others, then we must often be satisfied with knowing that we have made a faithful effort in the vineyards.

In this lifetime we may never know for sure just how "successful" we have been. But the Scriptures tell us, unequivocally, that God's definition of success has little to do with worldly rewards and everything to do with loving kindness.

We each must decide which kind of "success" we seek and whether or not our own self critical eyes will lead us away from or toward the faithful service that God counts as success.

---

Addendum:

Isaiah 49:1 Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me.
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.
3 And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."
4 But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God."
5 And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength--
6 he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

25 By Old Blue Eyes: Sinatra's Great Standards

AUGUST 11, 2009 10:04PM

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There is no socially redeeming agenda here. Nothing to read. Nothing to think about. Nothing to get all worked up over. Just great music. By The Man himself.

Just slip on some headphones, or turn on some nice speakers, and listen. Open OS or any other sites in another tab and go about reading, writing or whatever else you want to do. The list will keep playing until you want to stop it.

This is too good to miss. The Chairman of the Board at his finest. I took a lot of time organizing only the best here, and have arranged them to move smoothly from swing to ballads and back, including some sentimental songs that are identified solely with Old Blue Eyes at the very end.

This is my tribute to Frank as a follow up on the popular "Who's Going to Fill Their Shoes" post, now pushing 2500 "listens." Nobody will ever fill Sinatra's shoes.

Enjoy!

Permission to Die

AUGUST 10, 2009

---

This is a true story. The dialogues are reconstructed from memory of events that happened 18 years ago.

---

"So how many are there?"

"Right now there are six. It changes from week to week."

"What exactly am I supposed to do?"

"Just drop in and see them for a few minutes each day you are here. Talk to them. Say a prayer before you leave. I think one or two of them are in comas, but check with the doctor. With the heavy pain meds sometimes its hard to tell if they are sleeping or in a coma."

"You say that none of them is expected to last a month?"

"That's right. They are in our in house hospice."

"I don't think this was in my job description when you interviewed me."

"Job description is your term. I never use it. This isn't a job. Its a calling. I can't tell you what you will be doing in any detail. If you don't think you are called to do this particular thing, then don't. One thing you learn in your 'in field' training is what you are called to do and what you are not. Hopefully you will find that you are called to do whatever needs to be done."

"I know that. I wasn't saying I won't do it. Of course I will. I was just saying that I didn't expect this."

"When I started chaplaincy 15 years ago I didn't expect most of what I have been called to do. You can't really program it and you surely can't plan it. Its day to day. Eventually a kind of pattern will emerge, more by instinct than anything else. Go home for the rest of the day and think about it. If you don't do it, let me know. There are lots of other things that need to be done, but I think you should try to do this."

The Chaplain of Good Samaritan Home smiled at me and picked up a chart on his desk, a signal that the discussion was over. I thanked him and walked down the long main floor hall to the small office behind the chapel that I was given to use the three afternoons and Sunday mornings per week I was to be there.

I learned soon that the closet sized office was a place to hang my coat and set down my briefcase. My real "office" was to be the entire 6 story, three wing, 400 resident retirement home.

"Good Sam" occupied a full city block and was perched high on the west bank of the Mississippi in South St. Louis. It was affiliated with the United Church of Christ. It has since been torn down for development. I can not bring myself to say for "progress."

I was a 52 year old second year seminarian at another UCC affiliated institution, Eden Theological Seminary, located in the suburb of Webster Groves, 6 miles northwest of Good Sam. "Student Chaplain" was my second "in field" education assignment.

Field education was important at Eden. It was a key part of securing the Master of Divinity degree necessary to become an ordained pastor. Three years of field education, plus at least one summer of full time Clinical Pastoral Education in a local hospital, was required to graduate.

It was a bit of a plum to get an assignment to Good Sam. It was one of the few remaining total living facilities in the area and included everything for the residents from assisted living apartments, individual rooms, rehabilitation, an infirmary with a hospice ward, a secure dementia wing, plus dining room, coffee shop, drug store, lounges, recreation rooms, chapel, library, and several commercial services available on site. It was a self contained urban village for the elderly.

After my Monday conversation with the Chaplain, who was my field supervisor, I returned on Wednesday and made my way to the infirmary on the 4th floor. I introduced myself to the nurse supervisor who would soon become my friend and a mentor.

"Hi, I am Monte Canfield."

"Glad to see you, Monte. I'm Mary. Dave has already filled me in. I am very glad to see you. Last year the student wanted nothing to do with the infirmary, to say nothing of the hospice, and it put quite an extra load on Dave. I don't imagine he told you that, but he spent hours here that meant working extra hours to keep up with everything else.

This is far too big an operation for one Chaplain to handle. Let me walk you through the infirmary, introduce you to the doctor and some of the nurses and then I will show you the hospice."

After the tour and introductions, she took me to the back of the infirmary, down a small hallway and into a small ward that was decorated more like a large home bedroom than as an infirmary.

The lighting was subdued. A chair was available beside each bed; and soft music played in the background. It was a pleasant enough place if you didn't think about what it was for. A nurse sat at a small desk near the center of the room. We talked to the nurse a couple of minutes.

Then Mary walked me to one end of the room. "There is room for ten beds here without crowding things. We want the patients to feel as comfortable as possible. When beds are not occupied we move them out of the room to give it a feeling of greater spaciousness.

People are moved here only when two doctors, the staff doctor and their personal physician, agree that they are not likely to live more than another month. Of course we have a few that surprise us and get better for a while, but it is only a matter of time even with them."

"And most of them are Christian?"

"Well, yes, if you mean that they belong to the church. UCC membership is required for admission to Good Sam, as is the recommendation of their pastor. But their faith varies. Some have not set foot in a church in decades. Some married into a church going family but have little or no faith. And some, mostly men, simply do not share what they think about religion, considering that a very private matter. Most are from a generation that sees religion as a very personal experience."

"Dave told me that some may be in comas already."

"I will take you around in a minute and you can see for yourself. Of the six here now, one is definitely in a coma but seems to be stable for now, and one is kind of in and out of consciousness, partly due to his condition and partly due to the heavy pain meds. But I suggest that you always assume that they know you are there and can hear what you say."

We walked to each bed and I was introduced to all, not just the ones who could talk to me and clearly recognize me, but to the one who was in a coma and another who appeared to be sleeping.

After the tour I went back and spent a few minutes at each bedside, learning about the four who were clearly aware and saying prayers with them after asking them if they would like that and asking if there were any particular things they wished me to pray for.

None wished for their own healing, understanding exactly where they were in their own journey. All of them asked for prayers for family members. All said they were glad I was there and looked forward to seeing me again, asking when I would be able to come back. I told them I would see them on Friday.

I spent some time at the two beds where the patients were not responsive. I read some short passages of scripture to them, and said a prayer with each, out loud. I told them I would be back on Friday, although it appeared clear at the time that they did not know I was there.

Over the next two weeks I spent a few minutes with the hospice patients each time I was at Good Sam. I got to know four of them much better and even managed some cognitive contact with the one who was sleeping the first time I visited. He was very much "in and out" but I was sure that he was aware of me.

At the end of that third week I was told that the doctor thought that none of them would last more than a week longer.

That upset me more than I thought it would and, because I was scheduled for a week off the coming week, I went to Dave and asked him if I should come in to be with them instead. He said, "No. You told me before you came here that you needed the week off, so go."

Before I left for the day that Friday I went up to see each one and explained to all, including the one man who was asleep again and the one in a coma, that I was going to be off for a week, but that I would be back to see them a week from Monday, ten days later. I felt I was a bit disingenuous saying that while knowing their prognosis, but I wanted them to know that I was not abandoning them, because that is what it felt like to me.

I felt very badly about the whole thing and wondered if I was just in way over my head. I talked to Mary about it and she nicely reminded me to remember who was really in charge, pointing upwards and giving me a quick hug.

Ten full days later I returned with real trepidation to the infirmary. Mary called me to the side to bring me up to speed.

"I hope you had a good week, Monte. We held our own here, but missed you a lot."

"Just tell me how many died while I was gone."

'Why don't you just come down to the hospice ward with me? You really can't avoid it, you know."

We walked into the hospice ward, my heart heavy. There were now eight beds occupied. I could not believe how many were dying in such a short time span. In less that a month first six, and now eight more.

Mary went to talk to the duty nurse and I sighed and headed to the first bed in the row. It was a man I had not met before. I introduced myself, and went through the pastoral care routine that I was developing without being conscious that a routine was emerging. The new woman in the second bed was asleep, but I went through the same routine as if she were not.

At the third bed I recognized the man in the coma. I looked quickly at the next bed and the familiar face of a lady I had come to admire smiled at me. Quickly I walked down the aisle looking at each bed. Each bed had the patient in it who was there when I left ten days before.

At the last bed the woman raised her head a bit off of her pillow and lifted up her shaking hand to me. I took it and she smiled and said, "Welcome back, Chaplain. We have been waiting for you."

I talked to her for a couple of minutes and told her I would be back in a bit after I talked to the others.

I walked quickly to door where Mary was waiting with a small smile on her face. We walked down the hall a few paces.

"What happened? Surely Dr. Lewis could not have been that far off. He does this kind of prognosis all the time."

"His prognosis is based on reading the body. He doesn't factor in the determination of the spirit that stems from love."

"Love?"

"Yes, love. These folks love God and they have come to love and rely on you."

"But they hardly know me. And why did they not die? They would then be in a far better place than this. They don't need me around to do that. That is between them and God. And what about the one who is seldom conscious; and the one in the coma?"

"Monte, listen to me. They all know that they will soon pass over. And obviously the ones that you thought were simply out of it were not. On some level they heard you talking to them. Look, Monte, you told them that you would be back in 10 days and they took you at your word."

"But that shouldn't affect whether or not they would die when I was gone."

"Don't you see? They were waiting for you. They were waiting for permission to die."

I was shocked; completely baffled, confused, and repelled by the thought.

"I have nothing to do with giving them permission to die. That's not what I am doing here. I never mentioned dying to them. Never."

"Well, maybe it is time that you did. You are their Chaplain. Their own pastors almost never visit them and none of them have been here since they have been in the hospice ward. Dave was able to visit once toward the end of last week, and, like you, he told them that you would be back today. I fully understand why he told them that."

Mary continued, "Don't you see, Monte? To them you are their vicar of God. Whether you want the role or not, or, for that matter, whether or not they are right to think so, these older people need to know that it is OK for them to die. They want permission to do so.

There is no one else who is as close to them spiritually right now as you are; not even their family members, although most of them can't bear coming anyway, and so they don't. But you can give them that permission. They are ready to go. Let them."

I was still confused. But mostly I was in denial. I wanted no part of any such power, real or imagined. I had never asked for it. I did not seek it. I did not think it was good theology. I did not see it as part of my call. And I certainly did not think I was worthy to offer such permission.

I simply did not know what to do. But, almost instinctively, I trusted Mary. After 30 years dealing with people in situations like these she had learned much and had kindly shared that learning with me. I was learning something that I did not want to know. But I had to learn it.

I walked back into the ward and went to each bed, picked up a listless hand or held the thin hand of one who was awake and smiling at me. With great emotion welling inside of me I told each of them, "I am very glad to see you. I missed you, and want you to know that I recognize how hard it is for you to go on day by day."

I continued, "But I also want you to know that you will soon be going to a wonderful place, a place too beautiful for mere words, a place where there is no more pain or exhaustion; a place where you will be with God and where you will be again with your loved ones who have gone there before you."

And finally, I told them, "It is OK for you to let go of this place now. I can imagine how hard it must be to hold on here. So it is OK to go to on to that life where you will be in the the much closer presence of our Savior, the place we have all dreamed about since we accepted our faith.

I will miss you when you go, but I promise to look you up when I get there. It will be good to see you again when you are strong and happy, without pain and surrounded by love."

I then said a simple prayer. "God, this is your precious child who will soon be coming home to you. Please welcome this loved child with the same open arms with which you welcomed you Son."

Then I kissed each on the forehead, women and men alike, and walked from the room, tears streaming down my face. I knew the glory that awaited them, but I knew the sorrow of the coming loss to me of these who were strangers only a month or so before.

By the end of the week all had passed quietly on to be in the closer presence of the Lord. As each passed on I said for each the prayers for the dying, or for the dead if they died when I was at school and not at Good Sam, and I found comfort in those ancient words.

It was a hard lesson to watch how death was an integral, inevitable part of life that each of us must learn to accept in our own way. My lesson came unbidden, but proved to be the necessary lesson for me.

Through the years of my ministry, and through hundreds of bedside vigils and funerals, I always had misgivings about the authority that most members of the church place in the hands of chaplains and pastors. I still do. But I never again doubted that they do trustingly give us that authority.

And I finally accepted that, if they believed that I was the one whom God had given to them to help them through some of the hardest times of their lives, and even through their deaths, then I would do the best I could to serve them with love, compassion and hope.

From that time forward until now nothing in my ministry would ever be more humbling than this unwanted calling. There has been nothing that I consider myself both more burdened by, and yet more privileged to do, than to be there for them when they need God's love the most.