What is missing in the current national dialog

I have been thinking a lot recently about the things going on our in our nation.  What is happening in Washington DC.  What is happening in Wisconsin.  What is happening in my own state (Oregon) and my own community.  I am in the middle of the debate in a real way, for as the director of a program that relies on federal and state funding my clinic is profoundly impacted by all the arguments over entitlements, budgets, and deficits.

I am also thinking a lot because of Shane Claiborne's book "Irresistible Revolution".  What has struck me profoundly is that something is missing in the dialog that is going on.  People!

The people are missing.  Mr. Walker talks about being "broke" and budgets, and power.  But I am not hearing him say anything about he people caught up in the mess that is going on, except to see people as enemies, and barriers to his getting his agenda met.  It would be easy to pick on Boehner, but I don't see any legislators (there are probably rare exceptions, but I guess they don't make the news), talking about the people as they talk about their agenda.

Yes, the people.  What about the children who are taught by the teachers.  What about the families of those workers who are already stretched to make ends meet, who will now find health insurance even harder to get?  What about those parents who fear that they will not be able to afford to get their children health care?  What about the person who is in danger of losing his or her house?  Or the young person who sees a further education becoming an impossibility?  What about the man who is hungry?  The woman who lives on top of a grate, seeking whatever heat she can find?  What about the person with mental illness who might lose the care he or she relies on to stay stable and living independently?  What about the person caught up in the illness of addiction?

We don't hear about them!  We hear about businesses.  We hear about budgets.  Bottom lines.  We hear about the need to stimulate the economy.  Who are we considering in all of this?  Corporations.  Businesses.  Political Parties.  

We aren't even really considering the ultra-wealthy, who, God knows, are often empty and can never find joy and satisfaction, no matter how much they accumulate.  The ultra-wealthy and wealthy who have lost a sense of community, and interdependence, who have lost the awareness of the joy of sharing and also lost in the dialog.

In Acts the early Christian community was described this way:  " All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.

That passage disturbs me.  It disturbs me because I don't live that way.  It disturbs me because my church, as wonderful as it is, doesn't really function that way.  And it disturbs me because this kind of thinking is no where to be found in the current dialog.  This is a model that says "people first".  It is all about the people, all people, all of whom are loved by God.  Any conversations we have should be about the people.

What is better for the people?  That a major corporation makes more of a profit than it already does?  That it keeps to keep more of its money than it already does?  Or is more important that people are fed?  Clothed?  Housed?  What is more important?  That our current health care structure, which costs too much and produces poor outcomes is protected, or that children get health care?

This is disturbing stuff to think about, but my guess is that the Jesus who gave us the beatitudes thinks that there is less moral imperative in a balanced budget, especially a balanced budget that allows the ultra-rich to stay ultra-rich at the expense of the poor, than in taking care of the the poor, the hungry, the sick.

Look at the beatitudes.  Our budgets should be all about the people we see there.  And that means my own personal budget, as well as the budget of my organization, my church, my state, and yes, my country.
 

Wisconsin and God's Economy

I have been following with interest, and yes, with sadness, the events unfolding in Wisconsin.  There is much about the struggle is painful, including the hypocrisy of a Governor who will give away tax breaks to the rich, and take benefits from teachers.  Yes, I know it is not that simple, but there seems to be a trend right now that makes we weep for America.  It is the use of power to protect and entitle those who have the most at the  expense of those who have the least.  We see it on Capital Hill in Washington, DC as well as in Madison, Wisconsin.

At the same time that all of this is going on, I have been reading the book "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne.  Shane is acutely aware of the disparities our current economic system have created, particularly the disparity between the rich and the poor.  He points out that according to a UN report 20% of the worlds population receives 83% of the world's income.  He also pointed out (yes the books is a bit older) that in 1965 the average CEO made 44 times as much as the average worker.  1998 the average CEO made 212 times as much as the average worker ($1,566.68 an hour).  And it is getting worse!

He notes that "people are poor not just because of their sins, they are poor because of OUR sins (and people are rich because of our sins).  We created poverty by our need to protect ourselves.  Our need to hug resources to ourselves.  And our inexorable emptiness that no amount of treasure can satisfy.  As Gandhi put it, "there is enough for everyone's need, but there is not enough for everyone's greed."

Claiborne points out that from the earliest times on there has been a theology of redistribution.  In the Old Testament there was the year of Jubilee, where the people of Israel were asked, in an ongoing way to spread the wealth, and periodically, to totally level the playing field by redistributing the wealth among all the people.

John the Baptist preached repentance, and combined that with an imperative to give away one's extra shirt.  Jesus?  Over and over again (See Mark 10) Jesus suggested an economy of grace, and Paul too envisioned another economy, where all shared with one another and met one another's needs.  It is clear from a plethora of teachings that rebirth, restoration, and redistribution are connected.

Now we have a political party, perhaps two, that are railing against entitlement.  Who are legislating against redistribution.  They are seeking to keep the wealth in the hands of the wealthy, who are none to eager to let go of any of it.  Not in the form of charity, or new jobs and business development (No, trickle down does not work.  Never will).

The early Christians said that if a child starves while a Christian has extra food than the Christian is guilty of murder.  Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century wrote, "When someone strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief.  And one who might clothe the naked and does not, should not he be given the same name?"

If, as we see in the scriptures, rebirth and redistribution are bound up in one another, we cannot say we love God and pass by the person in need, the vulnerable one.  If that is true, then how do we view legislation that gives to the rich, and cuts programs for the poor?  How do we view a leader who gives breaks to those who are well off, so they can be more well off, and cuts benefits to people who have less?

It is certainly something to think about.

The First Thing

In Chapter One of Romans Paul makes it abundantly clear that God loves us and uses his power in our lives, not to destroy, but to love, and reclaim and rescue.  “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

There is the good news!  But then Paul continues and in the paragraphs that follow outlines in horrific detail, the failings of humanity.  Its pretty ugly!  Those paragraphs (1:18-32) are for mature audiences only.  There is no mistaking his basic message.  We all mess up…. Really mess up.  Let’s listen to Paul’s words again. 

“Furthermore, since we do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave us over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. We have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. We are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. WE are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; We invent ways of doing evil!  We disobey our parents; We are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

OK, most of us aren’t that bad.  But still, we have our issues.  What is the problem?  Paul framed the issues this way.  “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for……”

Now let stop there for a second.  We don’t normally get into what we usually think of as idols…. Little statues of animals, or mythic God’s or things like that…But we do exchange the glory of God for other things.  In psychology we talk about internal and external solutions.  Internal solutions are “what’s in here”  Internal solutions involve going inward, and finding the what you need to be in balance, at peace, to be a person of love and joy. 

This is so much where Paul was at.  Paul wrote 13 letters.  In those letters he uses the expressions “in Christ,” “in the Lord,” and “in him” 164 times.  This concept is indispensable to an understanding of the Gospel.  To be “in Christ” does not mean to be inside Christ, as tools are in a box or our clothes in a closet, but to be organically united to Christ, as a limb is to the body or a branch is in the tree. It is this personal relationship with Christ that is the distinctive mark of his people.  Or to put it another way, Christ is “in us”.  He is in us as part of us.  And if we turn inside, we find Christ, and all his power and love and resources there.

But if we don’t, if we go the other direction.  If we go outside and see solutions outside ourselves, then we have created the glory of the immortal God for what is not God… what we might call idols.  What are the idols?  Anything that has power over us.  More, anything that we give power over us.  Anything we think will bring us peace, hope, love, security, joy.  Anything we rely on for the things that only God can truly give.

These powers can be a lot of things.  People.  Those we know.  Those whose words we read.  Those who pontificate from the screen of our TV’s.  Those we want to please.  Those we fear.  Who are the people in your life who have too much power?  Who in your life has the kind of influence only God should have.  Then there are “things” – mostly things we desire.  Money, popularity, personal appearance, a BMW, our job.  What things demand our attention, our allegiance?  Where is our attention, our time focused? 

What do we rely on?  What do we focus on?  Where do we put out time energy and focus, thinking that the object of our affection (so to speak) will give us what we need?  That is our idol.

But as I think about this it occurs to me that it is not so much a matter of making the wrong choices, as it is about not making the key choice.  The problem is not that we make the choices we make about the things around us, as it is that we haven’t made the choice, FIRST, to turn inside and become connected to the sacred, the power of God, the Christ in us.

Those things we connect to out there?  They aren’t all that dangerous.  In some cases not all that bad, IF, and this is a big IF… IF we FIRST have turned inside and connected with the Christ in us… or to say it the other way, if we are “in Christ”.  When we aren’t connected?  We are vulnerable. Why are we vulnerable?  Because we haven’t allowed the Christ in us to live and breathe.  We haven’t given God room to move and work.  And thus we are essentially empty, and dissatisfied – at least spiritually.

Wayne Muller, in his book Sabbath suggests that the strategies of the advertising agencies expose our emptiness in a powerful way.  In one of the chapters he starts by describing a scene presented in an ad.  In the scene we find a group of young sophisticated women and men lounging about in natural cotton clothing, loose and soft on their sculpted bodies. It seems to be late afternoon and they are gathered in this incredible patio area, in the shadow of a wonderful Victorian House.  Over in one corner a golden retriever sleeps.  It is a picture of perfect happiness.  You can taste the drink in their hand, smell the flowers on the breeze.  The job is miles away, they seem to be inviting us to join them, to become a part of their lives.  They seem to say – This is how you were meant to be…

What they offer is the happiness of being young, rich, at ease, perfect.  Order this blouse, this cologne, this table setting, this coffee maker and YOU will enter this picture.  Troubles will dissolve, and life will be sweet.  In the end they are saying this and always this:  Buy what we have and you will be happy.  But beneath that text is the real message.  Until and unless you buy what we are selling, you will never be happy.  “See these people?  We know you are not that happy!”  A thousand times a time the ads send this message to us.  You are not enough.  You do not have enough.  You are not happy.  You need more, you need to do more, you need to be more….”

But when we do that…. When we fail to turn to Christ first…. well then everything falls apart….These external things don’t really work.  We can buy them and enjoy them all we want, and it doesn’t work. The descriptions of Paul are pretty graphic.  But we don’t need the descriptions of Paul to understand the emptiness, the twisted nature of such solutions.  We know about this, we feel this!

Paul is clearly trying to establish the basic reason for the crisis that we as humanity are facing.

The reason for polarized politics.  For people with guns walking up to others and shooting them (did you notice there were at least two multiple victim shootings last Sunday afternoon –indeed all week we have had shooting after shooting).  Paul is trying to establish the basic reason for fear, hatred, for greed.. for all the wounds, all the hurts of humankind….The reason that all our primary relationships are fractured. .

Paul essentially talks about three fractured relationships in this chapter.  There is our fractured relationship with God, when we choose “no God’s” or aikons, or idols.  There is our fractured relationship with our self.  When we do not turn to God we lose our sense of who we really are.  And there are our fractured relationships with others.  As we treat them and interact with them in ways that are not healthy or good, and allow them to treat us in ways that are not healthy and good.  In short, we use them, and they use us!

But Paul does not point this out to drive us down.  He point this out to point us to the answer.  To help us understand, unmistakably, that when we have the sacred at the center…. It is so different.  That when we turn to God first, we are not empty, and this we are not functioning from need but from fullness…And therefore we have a unique capacity to deal with what life sends us

Without having to rush to external solutions. . . 

When we are full of Christ it changes our relationship with our possessions, our relationship with other people, our relationship to those powerful and weird “life commandments” that run our lives.  So if we start with Christ, if we take the journey inward first, and ground ourselves in “the center”.  Then we can move back out  --  Into our world,  into our jobs, Into our relationships in a new, transformed way…a way that does not involve us being enslave, given over, to thoughts, desire, priorities, behaviors, that destroy.

Lets look at that list Paul gives us of what happens when we fail to be connect and commit to the Christ in us… in short fail to accept God’s acceptance. Fail to accept what we already have  --  “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;  they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless”

Compare that description with the description he offers in Galatians 5 of people who are “in Christ” and have let the Spirit, the power of God, loose.  “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Wow! What a difference!  When we turn first to the Center, everything is changed.  I like the words of Camus who once said…”The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very act of existence becomes an act of rebellion.”

Our lives can be, if God is at the Center, an act of rebellion against of world of hate, and fear, and polarization.  We can be people who experience true life, and more share true life, with a hurting world.  God, help us put you, at the Center of our lives….

Defined by Grace

I think it is safe to say that there are a lot of people in this world who don’t know why they have been born.  Who don’t have a clear idea of who they are, why they are here.  I see such people every day in my office.  I run into them at meetings in Salem.  I suspect there are even some people sitting here, who looking back on their lives, or looking forward into their futures, have a very blurry sense of what has brought them to this place, and where they are meant to go.  I’ve been there.  At times it has been the story of my life!

When we are in that kind of place, our natural instinct is to try and come up with some answers.  We want to define ourselves.  In part for ourselves, but also for those who are around us.  Those we live with, work with, even those we meet.  This is not a bad thing.  We need to have an understanding  of who we are.  And if we are to be in relationship with other people, especially if we are to be in relationship with other people, they need to have some sense of who we are, what makes us tick.

Paul, the great Apostle, understood this.  And so Paul starts off his letter to the Romans with a run on sentence that would make any English teacher cringe. For seven verses he goes on and on and in a gush of words he defines himself.  In what is called by the commentaries a “salutation” he tries to help the Romans he is writing to understand who he is.

We understand this tactic because we use it all the time.  Think about what we usually do when we first meet someone new!  We define ourselves.  We give that person information about ourselves, in essence we seek to shape their perception of us.

How do we define ourselves?  What is it that we place out there, in our greeting, our salutation to people we are greeting for the first time?  A lot of us define ourselves by their roles, their jobs.  I am a farmer, a teacher. . . So often it is all about what we do….We define ourselves by what we do,  our accomplishments, making ourselves effectually “human doings”?  Is that the way it should be?  Is what we do who we are?  When Paul was writing to the Romans he had to make sure they knew who he was. How did he define himself?  What did he put out there?

Paul started by defining himself in terms of a relationship.  And in terms of what that relationship meant to his life.  The relationship?  The one he had with God.  Paul was not afraid to call himself out as a follower of this God who sent his Son into the world to redeem this world from sin. The first line of his letter says, “I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God's words and acts.” How many of us introduce ourselves to strangers by saying, “Hi, I’m a slave of Jesus Christ on assignment ...” How many of us really believe that? How many of us here today are so focused on God, so connected to God, so defined by our relationship with God, that it spills out of every pore in our body?

Why was this important?  That this was the “center” Paul put forth in his greeting?  Why is it critical that he defines himself as a “slave of Jesus”?   Because, Paul understood that Christ is the great turning point - the great intersection of God into history.  For him the reality of Christ was big, really BIG.  More than big, it was everything!  It was the “center.”

For Paul Christ is the Center of God’s word, God’ teaching, God’s kerygma to all people.  He is the heir of David, the fulfillment of the expectations set forth in the Law, and the realization of the promises give by the Prophets.  Barth in his commentary on the book of Romans’ puts it this way….”He [that is Christ] intersects vertically from above.  Within history Jesus as the Christ can be understood only as Problem of Myth (in other books Paul talks about the scandal of Christ – let’s face it, the concept of Christ is problematic).  But as the Christ, he brings the world of the Father into history… In short he brings the sacred into the common, the earthly…”  So everything points TO Christ, and, everything moves forward FROM Christ.

And as if there were any doubt in the minds of his listeners, Paul points to the resurrection.  Chirst as the Center was made manifest, obvious, real, through the resurrection.  The resurrection is THE POINT – the moment when everything shifted, when history was transformed.  At the resurrection the spiritual fabric of the world was ripped apart, and something new, something powerful was revealed…something special, wonderful, something called,  . Grace

So Paul believed that one’s relationship to Christ has to stand at the center of our self-definition, has to be THE DEFINING FACTOR.  If Christ is the defining factor, then, he believed, we are defined by what Christ reveals, what Christ brings.  And what Christ reveals, what he brings forth “in power” is grace.  So Paul reveals in his opening statement, that he sees himself as defined by grace.  If you understand grace, you understand Paul.

But what is grace?  In the New Testament, the word translated as grace is the Greek word Charis (Greek Χάρις),  The word Charis is defined this way. "Grace, the state of kindness and favor towards someone, often with a focus on a benefit given to the object." A Greek word that is related to Charis is Charisma (gracious gift). Both these words originated from another Greek word Chairo (to rejoice, be glad, delighted).  Grace means being put right with the sacred, receiving God’s charity, and being empowere in a way that makes us feel joyful.  AND  This all comes as a gift!

So for Paul his identity was ultimately all about God and God’s gift.  When he looked at himself, what he saw was the Christ in him.  Later he would write, “the secret is this, Christ in us.” 

I Paul, who had so many things he could have pointed to, his education, his accomplishments, defined himself by grace, then it seems as if that is what we should do as well. 

So, after reading this opening I had to ask… how do I define myself?  By my current roles?  As an executive director?  Counselor?  Minister?  Do I define myself by my past roles?  As a professor in a medical school?  A disaster relief worker?  Do I define myself by my degrees or accomplishments?  By the house I live in, or the car I drive?  Do I, in my darker moments define myself by my mistakes?  My failures?  But my weaknesses?  My character flaws?

Or do I define myself by grace.  Do I see myself as one loved by God, called by God, forgiven by God, filled and empowered by God?  What difference would it make, it I defined myself as a person overwhelmed and enslaved by grace?  If I lived from this “center” that is Christ.

First, what difference would it make in how I looked at myself.  And talked to myself about myself.  Could I look at myself and see only my failures, my weaknesses.  Could I look at myself and say, “I am not enough?”  “I am a mistake?”  “I am bad?”  I don’t think so.  If I see myself as one called by God, into grace, I can’t go to those places.  I have to see my value, my potential, my worth.  I am worth enough that Christ died for me.

And what difference would that make in how I interact with others.  In how I present myself to them.  In what I say to them?  What would my interactions with others look like, as a person defined by grace?

If I were defined by grace would I have room for fear?

If I were defined by grace would I have room to hold grudges, anger, hatred?

If I were defined by grace would there be room for arrogance?  Selfishness?

It would change things, wouldn’t it…. There is a contemporary Christian band, 33 miles, which has a song called “What Grace Looks Like!”  The final verse goes like this:

 It’s a little bit of hope and sweet redemption

Maybe taking time to stop and listen, Just being there

Show someone that you care

It’s living a life with your hands wide open

Giving all you got to a heart that is broken

Who am I?  Who are you?  We, we are all, people of grace.  This is the big thing.  This is the great shift.  This is the defining factor.  Let’s believe it!  Let’s live it!

New Years

Isa 55:1-3

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;

and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.

It’s a long standing human tradition.  We are unsettled.  Unhappy!  Discontent.  Why?  Isaiah suggests that part of it is that we take things into our own hands.  We say to ourselves.  I am going to shape my future!  I am going to do a better job at … enter your own personal resolution here …  I am going to make it work….”

So what is wrong with this strategy?  It seems ok, right?  Wanting to be better?   But think about that.  Here we are, all wrapped up in what we will do.  So committed to shaping our future.  So intent on getting ourselves to some sort of financial, spiritual, emotional promised land.  One author, in talking about how we often function, noted that although most Christians no longer think a lot about the traditional “eschaton” the “end time” when all things become new, they have replaced it with a new kind of eschatology.  He calls this new eschatology “progress”. 

So we are committed to a future of our making, we have become addicted to the idea of progress.  And we have decided we must get to this magical place where we will all have peak efficiency, incredible productivity, an improved standard of living, more health, better relationships.

This sounds kind of good, at first glance.  But there are some interesting dynamics present in this mindset.  FIRST, it is mostly about us.  About what we will do.  How we will change.  Second there is an inherent discontent with what is.  With this current moment.  This mindset assumes that what WE are building for the future is infinitely better, more important, than whatever we have right now.  Who we might be, is much better, more important than who we are now.  Isn’t that the whole ‘message’ behind New Year’s resolutions?  That we are not where we need to be… we need to be different?  Sometimes really different?

But this leaves us with two big questions.  Where is God in all of this?  And what does this mean about this moment?  To use Biblical imagery, we are not in the promised land, we are in the wilderness, and we are in that wilderness alone.  We are on our own.   

I would submit that this is a terrible place to be.  In the wilderness, alone… striving to find our way out on our own.  Miserable because we hate the place where we are …

Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath suggests that there is something flawed about this kind of thinking.  Because it causes us to do something very devastating -   Judge this moment, judge ourselves as “not enough”.  As flawed.  We end up denying who we are now, what joys we have now, what gifts we have now, what God has done, and is doing, NOW!

Muller writes, “What if our life, rough-hewn from the stuff of creation orbits around a God who never ceases to create new beginnings?  What if our life is simply a time when we are blessed with both sadness and joy, health and disease, courage and fear, and all the while we work, pray and love, knowing that the PROMISED LAND WE SEEK IS ALREADY PRESENT.  We must, Muller suggests, remind ourselves that we are already and always on sacred ground . 

The gifts of grace and delight are present in abundance.  NOW is the time to live and love and give thanks and rest and delight.  This is the moment, this is the day.  When we listen.  When we focus on the sacred, turn to the sacred, what happens?  Listen again to Isaiah 55:

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.  Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.  AND   You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,  and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

What is Isaiah picturing?   CELEBRATION!  Joy

I believe that we must understand that we are standing on sacred ground.  We must believe that God is present, and at work now!  That the key to joy is not to be found in the eschatology of progress, not found in a bigger bank account, nicer car, better job.  Not even to be found in a more attractive body, or even a healthier body

Joy is to be found in knowing that each moment of each day we are standing on sacred ground  - because God is with us and God is gifting us. 

Our problem is that we miss this because we are so busy looking ahead, so busy making it about us, and so busy   COUNTING THE WRONG THINGS. 

During WW II Britain was trying to figure out how to look at how things were going economically.  They wanted to know what resources they would have to fight the war.    They came up with a method where they combined the values of all goods and services bought and sold in that year, and used that figure to calculate the overall wealth of the nation.  This method, this measurement is what we now know as the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP.  We often, in our way of looking at ourselves, at our lives, use a measurement that is much the same.  Kind of a personal  GDP.  Have I increased my wealth?  Have I spent my money wisely?  Have I improved my looks so as to be more successful?  Have I become more proper by cutting back on how much I drink, or dropping the habit of smoking?

But really people.  Are those really the things by which to measure life?  Are those the targets we should aim for in our “resolutions?”  Is focusing on such things the way to find happiness?  Become satisfied people?

Muller puts it this way.  “Consider” he says, “ a woman in Somolia who rises early to walk two miles to the nearest well to get water for her family, returns to feed her children and ready them for school, spends the morning working the soil of the family garden, the afternoon tending to the sick and infirm of her village, then in the evening cooks and sings songs to her children and nurtures them to bed.  As measured by the theology of progress this woman has no value.  And yet  -  can we say there is no value in that life?

So often we fail to understand what truly brings value.  And we look in the wrong places.  And we try to find satisfaction in the wrong way.  So this new year I have a radical idea for a new year’s resolution

That we stop counting.  Think about it!  You can count lbs, drinks drunk, cigarettes smoked, money saved, net worth, toys accumulated.  But how do we count friendship or laughter?  How do we count the value of honesty or bread from the oven?  How can we count the sunrise?  The trusting grasp of a child’s hand, a song, a tear, a lover’s touch? 

We should stop counting, and make room in our lives for what can only be called Sabbath moments.

What is a Sabbath moment?  An old Jewish Rabbi once, when talking about the Sabbath talked about Moses at the burning bush.  “Why” he asked “was it important for Moses to remove his shoes?”  Not, he said, as a sign of subservience.”  No, the Rabbi insisted it was simply because it was Holy Ground, and Moses needed to feel the ground directly through the skin of his feet.  He needed direct contact with the divine.  He needed to be grounded. 

We need to take time to place our feet on the ground.  We need to recognize that in this moment, in every moment we are standing on holy ground.  And we need to stop our rushing and our working, our striving – stop, and listen, and look, and turn to God, and experience that grounding

How often do we do that?  What do we so often hear when we greet another these days, and ask him or her how things are going?  We might hear “FINE”, and we all know what that means.  But so often we hear “I am busy”  We say this almost with pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy.  Not good.  Brother David Steindl-Rast reminds us that the Chinese pictograph for “busy is composed of two characters,  “heart” and “killing.”

Our busy –ness is heart killing.  And so this year, I am challenging myself, and you to take Sabbath moments.  Sabbath moments don’t happen just on Sunday.  Nor just in the morning.  Sabbath time , may be an afternoon, a morning, an hour, a matter of moments.  Sabbath may be a ritual, a time of silence, meditation, a walk.

Sabbath is not just the absence of work - It is not just following some set of spiritual, religious rules.  It is any moment when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is within - to listen to the sacred - to pay attention to the forces of grace, or spirit, or love that sustain and heal us.  As Rab Zalman says it, Sabbath is a matter of “pampering the soul”.

In the Buddhist community of Plum Village, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk periodically rings a Mindfulness Bell.  Upon hearing the bell, everyone stops, and takes three silent mindful breaths.  Then they are free to continue their work, awakened every so lightly by the Sabbath pause of mindfulness.  Wayne Muller suggests we can do the same thing.  We can pick anything as a cue -  one common act each day to serve as a Sabbath pause.  Every time our hand touches a doorknob… or the phone rings. . . When this event happens all one has to do is stop, take there silent breaths, and then move on…He admits it may sound crazy, but insists it would change us if we took these tiny Sabbath moments each day..

For these are the moments when we remember that the Kingdom of God is already here.  It is within us, and among us.   This is true!  Why do you think Jesus said, do not worry about tomorrow?  Do not wait to be joyful, Jesus is saying, grab hold of the extravagant gifts of God now… take your rest and savor the fruits of the kingdom.”  Now!  This day!

So here is my challenge, for you (and of course for me), take time this year for Sabbath moments.  Take a walk an notice the warmth of the sun, sit quietly and watch children play, close your eyes, and focus on your breath

And think about not what you should be doing, or how you should change.  Think about what you have, the gifts God has placed in your life.  The gift of sunshine, breath, children, coffee, touch…

We are on sacred ground each moment

We don’t have to seek for something else

We don’t have to count

Or worry about the future

A woman was once at a retreat and told the leader that she had devoted her whole life to seeking.  She had done everything - gone to workshops and retreats, she had read books, listened to speakers.  There had become some fruitful times she said, but admitted that for the most part she just felt tired and weary.

The workshop leader said simply,  “You have been a seeker for so long.  Why not become a finder.”

She thought for a moment, and then suddenly started laughing.  She had always been so focused on the search she had never taken time to rejoice in the blessing.

This year let us take the time to see what is already before us,  what is in our hands… the gift that is there for the receiving.  Let us take time for finding.

Let us seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.  Let us STOP seeking and start receiving.  And then?  We will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

A Love Story

One of the greatest theologians that ever lived, Karl Barth, was asked to be a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Divinity School.  At the end of a captivating closing lecture, the president of the seminary announced that Dr. Barth was not well and was quite tired, and though he thought that Dr. Barth would like to be open for questions, he shouldn't be expected to handle the strain. Then he said, "Therefore, I will ask just one question on behalf of all of us."

He turned to the renowned theologian and asked, "Of all the theological insights you have ever had, which do you consider to be the greatest of them all?

It was the perfect question for a man who had written literally tens of thousands of pages of some of the most sophisticated theology ever put into print.  The students held pencils right up against their writing pads, ready to take down verbatim the premier insight of the greatest theologian of their time.

Karl Barth closed his tired eyes, and he thought for a minute, and then he half smiled, opened his eyes, and said to those young seminarians, "The greatest theological insight that I have ever had is this: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

My dear friends in Christ, I submit to you that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest love story ever written!

I wish with all my heart that everybody could read it that way, but I'mafraid to say that I meet people every day for whom it reads more like a Used Car contract.  Somehow in the midst of all those beautiful love verses, they hear only clauses and conditions and the spelling out of all the consequences should any or those clauses and conditions ever be violated.

So I thank God that Christmas comes around once a year to remind us that God isn't in the business of keeping books and tallying ledgers, nor is God concerned about our status or position in life.  If God were concerned about any of those things,  then I submit to you that the Christ of God would never have been born into such disagreeable circumstances as we find

in the Christmas story.

No.  Christmas is the beginning of a classic love story with all the right ingredients:  infatuation, pursuit,  risk and relationship... But in all relationships of love, there does have to be that first meeting doesn't there?

When I was a child, I remember asking "what if my parents had never met? Could I have been born to another set of parents?  If I was, how would I be different?  And time and time again, I have wondered, what if had had made difference choices along the way.  Chosen a different college, a different career.  Think of all the people whose paths would not have crossed mine.  Of all those “first meetings” that wouldn’t have happened.

What if I had met an entirely different set of people?  What would my life be like?  Maybe I would not be here.  Maybe I would not know you.  Maybe I would not have my children.  Or have the relationships I have now. 

But no matter how my journey has unfolded, I know that certain people have come into my life who have changed my life.  Created a shift.  There have been certain “intersections” that have been critical.

Christmas is such an intersection.  It is one of those “crossing of the paths that changes things, significantly – for Christmas is where we find God intersecting with humanity!  Christmas is our first best meeting with the God who has desired us from the very beginning.

I submit to you that if it weren't for Christmas we might never have known the intensity of the love that God has for us.

In this story, with Mary and Joseph, far from home because of imperial rule, a peasant mother giving birth in unsanitary substandard housing.  In this story of shepherds, in this story of Kings weren’t open to the arrival of this baby, and heathen magicians who were -  in this story we meet the God who loves us.  Who loves us with an amazing love… a love that when we cross paths with it - changes everything.   

This story is God’s love letter.  Not just the story of the baby, but also the story of the man.

As Jesus grew and went out into the world, so our understanding of just how much God loves us also grew.  We find in Jesus that God's love doesn't demand perfection, that forgiveness isn't given away sparingly but recklessly and indiscriminately, that unconditional really means unconditional, and that God's love is completely and thoroughly inclusive.

We find that even the likes of us gathered here this morning fall within the embrace of that love, and that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I said that when we cross paths with this baby, with the man, with this Jesus, there is a shift.  A change.  And so there is.

If you were to ask people what they would want, most of all.  For themselves, for their children, for the world, how do you think they would answer?  It is the classic answer of the beauty pageant participants.  “What I want most of all is world peace.”  We are people who live in troubled times.  Our world is trouble.  Our country is troubles, our lives are troubled, our hearts are troubles.  We want… oh do we want,  peace

Christ brings us peace.  A peace begins with the knowledge that God loves and accepts us just that much.   A peace that begins with Christmas!  That is a key shift that comes with the advent of the child.

There are other shifts as well.  Wayne Muller, in a book about the impact of a painful childhood, suggests that Christ can create all kinds of shifts….He allows us to shift from pain to forgiveness, fear to faith, emptiness to fulfillment, and judgment to mercy.   Most of all, Muller suggests, this Christ enables us to move from isolation, from loneliness to intimacy.  This love we receive enables us to tear down the walls of fear and distrust, and become open to one another.

Now having said all this, I know that Christmas is a time of great emotion for many of us.  The things we say Christmas is all about, joy, peace, hope love, can actually, when life is hard, cause a measure of sorrow to come into focus.  The Christmas season can give rise to some painful memories for a good number of people...   People often think about the failures they have suffered and about loved ones they have lost...

It is at Christmas time that I sense most keenly the loss of my parents.  I remember my father, and his quest for the perfect tree, and my mother with her amazing boxes of candy and cookies.  I remember Christmas Eve in my little home church.  Caroling in the snow.  Times and relationships that are no more.

But I also know this...without Christmas my life would be positively unbearable!

I would like close by telling you a story about a nativity pageant that like life itself, didn't go quite as planned...The youth group at a certain church was performing a manger scene.  Joseph and Mary and all the other characters were in place and ready.  They did their parts with seriousness and commitment, looking as pious as they possibly could.

And then it came time for the shepherds to enter. --- Dressed in flannel bathrobes and toweled head gear, the shepherds proceeded to the altar steps where Mary and Joseph looked earnestly at the straw which contained a single naked light bulb that was playing the part of the glowing newborn Jesus.  With his back to the congregation, one of the shepherds said to the person playing Joseph, in a very loud whisper for all the cast to hear, "Well, Joe, when you gonna pass out cigars?"

The solemn spell of that occasion was not simply broken by his remark, it was exploded. Mary and Joseph's cover was completely destroyed as it became impossible to hold back the bursts of laughter. The chief angel, standing on a chair behind them was the worst of all.

She shook so hard in laughter that she fell off her chair and took the curtained back drop and all the rest of the props down with her.  The whole set was in shambles.

But do you know what?  The only thing that didn't go to pieces was that light bulb in the manger. ... it never stopped shining.

My dear friends in Christ, that baby in the manger is the light of my world, even when my world is in shambles...For in that baby the Divine and  the human cross paths.

The infant Jesus is our living, breathing sign of the immeasurable love that God has had for all of us from the very beginning.  Christmas is the living promise that we are never ever alone.  No matter where we are in life, no matter in what condition we find ourselves, no matter how far we might stray away, or how unfaithful we are, God, the supreme lover, will pursue us in love for eternity!

It's a love that never stops shining.

May God bless each of you and those you love this Christmas Season