God Works…

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls (and on bumper stickers) and whispered in the sound of silence….” so sang Simon and Garfunkle.

“You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows…” says Bob Dillon.

Leaving our hotel a few months ago, a sticker caught my eye on a new SUV in the parking lot. A bumper sticker that a few might have missed, if it were placed down low on the bumper, this one was not. It was placed at eye level, on the rear window, broadcasting these words in black and white like a personal vendetta:

"God works in mysterious, inefficient and breathtakingly cruel ways!" 

I took a picture. These things interest me. I ponder them. They haunt my thoughts. I pray. I ponder the owners motivation, no their angst. Yes, I want to help…

I didn't believe the words... I do however, feel the bitterness or anger and in your face feeling, of them. I understand something went very wrong. We all live the reality of its inference. In short, why is there so much suffering, cruelty and injustice that appears to go unaddressed in our daily existence? Why? Huh? It is said, very sincerely, "If there is an all loving God why does he let the crappy stuff happen, unless he is the designer of it and perhaps inflicts it." If you haven’t heard this, or something like it, you need to get out more… Subtly this thought sits like a small sharp stone in an irremovable shoe of human perception; poking, burning and reminding of a pain that questions who God is, and why is there such malady doled out to mankind, wholesale and unexplained.

If I were to stand up in a gathering of Christ believing people, spread my arms and shout loudly, "God is good?” At least some would say, with enthusiastic, practiced sincerity, "All the time!" It is a mantra of the forgiven and thankful. They pretty much experience and understand life and death as encounters with a loving Christ, who bled and died, once for all. They have a theology of suffering that works for them; hopefully.

Were I to make the same proclamation in a group of people who have never tasted of the forgiveness of God, the response would be quite different at least from a few. They would not say, “all the time” or even know the language! Some will have endured bitter cruelty and much pain in life. My friend Al Judovitz is a Holocaust survivor and my tennis partner at 80 some years old. 2500 people went into the concentration camp where he was imprisoned in Romania. 250 came out alive. He was a lucky one. I asked him, "How did you survive?” He said, “We prayed” very dryly; and then he smiled and chuckled a little. And looked me in the eyes deeply like a man who had seen enough, enough.

I knew a rape victim that suffered at the hands of the rapist and then at the hands of the police that were supposed to help her. They mocked her and said, “You were asking for it weren’t you?” She wasn’t.  She is still asking, "Why is God so hard on me, Christians say He loves me, where is that love?" I once sat on the curb, ambulance lights whirling, with a young sobbing mother whose baby had died from SIDS. She had laid him in his crib in the evening with a tender kiss goodnight and found him still and silent hours later. She asked between shallow breaths, "Where is God pastor, and why did He take my baby?"

There are millions of questions embedded deep in the hearts of dear questioning people. They wait for someone to speak to this paradox of opposing claims. God is good all the time vs. why is he is so cruel and indifferent. 

 How come? What if? 

How come so much of what is taught in churches and circulated as food for the soul leans to the “…good all the time…” and so little offers insight into “…so cruel and indifferent?”

One young author, Soong-Chan Rah says, “America has no lamentation in its common language, only joy and rejoicing.” That is weird isn’t it? One sided? The ancients didn’t live life like this exclusively, rather they sang, “…by the rivers of Babylon where we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion…” something went wrong for them and they really felt it, for 70 years.

I wonder how Hagar felt after banishment with her son Ishmael…watching him die slowly?  Did the family of St. Stephen grieve with hot tears because their loved one was stoned for doing right? Who spoke to the victims of the Tower of Siloam that came down violently, on the unsuspecting crowd? Even Jesus said they did nothing wrong, and died, unexpectedly, cruelly.

Recently there was a tragic shooting on a military base. I called (and prayed with) the military chaplain who was preparing with his team to care for the victim’s families. He said, “We start now, helping people to pick up the pieces of their lives…to understand that God is…with them in the suffering they are experiencing.” To speak to the suffering is heroic isn’t it? The shooting was amazingly cruel and it happened with God watching.

What if the title of my (or your) next sermon series was called:

“Why does God work in such mysterious, ineffective and breathtakingly cruel ways” Or better yet, what if I turned this bumper sticker into a billboard that could be seen by thousands with an invitation to be a guest at our church or Christian gathering? It might be epic.A church would be standing room only wouldn't it?  This is our stuff! This is my God. I’m supposed to get this and be able to give an answer for the hope I have in God’s love for people.

In spite of the inconsistencies that trouble people’s souls there can be answers or at least sincere willingness to wrestle with the question, why?

Isn’t this window sticker a plea for help from an honestly hungry, perplexed or angry heart? What is their story and what compelled them to paste a caustic indictment against God on an expensive car, for all to see? Isn’t it a challenge in a way? Isn’t it a ‘tell me why…please?’ Is there courage to speak to this and even to say, “I don’t know but I want to discover, weep, pray, pound my fist on the table and scream to heaven with you until there is more of an answer?” And find reason for hope in the loving presence of another who will feel together what is unknown and presently unexplained.

Here is a thing interesting: the owner of the car with the window sticker has faith. God works…

They have my attention…and God’s for sure.

Embrace

There is a book called “Exclusion and Embrace” by Miroslav Volf. It opens thought buckets that are deep, refreshing and unusually challenging. Volf’s treatment of the story of the prodigal son is a defining work and worthy study as a stand alone topic.

Volf teaches about what an embrace is, when seen as a series of  movements that are meaningful motions. More than a hugs; an embrace is the  act of  joining another human in love, compassion, unity, comfort, acceptance on an occasion of emotional, celebratory or meaningful attraction. I may have made a statement with my words to another, but an embrace is a statement with my body; my movable, malleable soul.

An embrace is a pure and true action of human affection isn’t it? We, for a moment or a minute or an hour, surrender ourselves into the arms of another; vulnerably.  Volf offers four stages; (he calls them a drama) of embrace that are elements of the action and create a poetic, beautiful expression of love. They are simple steps, yet profound and can be deeply spiritual. Lets for a moment slow down and move through the stages of an embrace. If you are a sports fan, think of it as a slo-mo replay of a score! If you are a very manly man, add a hearty back slap.

First, there is opening of the arms. Christ on the cross postures identically, bidding all men to “come to” him? I open my arms in sacrificial invitation. Try this, if you like, where you are.  Yes, open your arms and hold them open, in invitation. What is it like? What adjectives describe your senses? Do you feel the feeling of open humble summons? The next part of embrace is waiting for you.

Now we must wait for the one we have opened our arms to. They have a choice; they can leave us waiting or join in the embrace as a partner. It is a choice of their will. If I embrace another against their acceptance, it is an act of violence against them and a sin. A forced embrace becomes a body prison. Joining in the embrace together, willingly, says, yes, I am human and intertwined in life’s unfolding drama of adventure with you.

Next it takes four arms to embrace and hold another. The two become one sharing an emotional and bodily presence that heals and confirms that we  trust each other. Two are answering Jesus prayer that they may be “…one even as we are one” creating divine mini-community on earth. How powerful an expression is an embrace, to man to woman; to God? Has seeing an embrace ever brought tears to your eyes or joy to your heart? Do you remember the time? Was it your embrace?

Last is the release of the one we have embraced. Isn’t the release so often accompanied by a smile; or by kind words? Isn’t there a feeling of enrichment and peace after an embrace? The completion of the act signals that something is different about us. Aren’t we better, more alive, more free and closer to God and the form of life or living we were designed for?  The miracle of embrace bonds friendship as I become part of another through the act of meaningful embrace! 

Volf's teaching lets me slow down this movement of embrace and appreciate every part of it and see that it is far richer a movement than I ever understood before. 

Persona

  Y'all know just how much I love our local Starbucks! When were there at 5AM to be the first customers! We met  new baristas and shared stories of coffee and life, symbiosis indeed!

 One of the baristas is named Shelly. She has a smile that lights the room. She greets customers, that soon become friends, as they come in the door, long distance, and then up close at the register! She makes it a joy to go for a coffee because whatever kind of day it is, we know we will see her and be cheered. It is her persona, a simple joie de vivre that exudes from her soul. When she isn't working it isn't the same in our store, no slight to the others, she is just missed!

 This got me to thinking, pondering. What is my gift to the world via my persona? What is yours? Do I light the room with a smile and love or look like a grey raincloud begging to burst? I'm afraid sometimes its the latter!?! It's said, "a cheerful  heart does good like a medicine"and makes people, places and life just a little sweeter for the cheering? I want that, more of that! Don't you? For me and for others. Hey, what a gift to just give people a joyful face to look at wherever you go! I'm trying this.

It is said, the first 30 years of life make your face what it will be for the rest of it! Wow! Good reason to smile more, eh?

 I hope you have a Shelly in your life! I hope and pray you ARE one. We all need you…mucho! And I hope to see you in the coffee shop and share a smile and a wave and a cup,  Shelly style!

Parents Without Faces

Ok, I am as guilty as the next ab-user of technology, addicted. I'm on it too much. I can feel its pull, innocent seductive luminous opiate screen.

Today in a flash, I saw the effects of the drug in the micro world of a Panera booth. Exiting from a morning of email on the free wireless, I passed human bookends, matching parents; both sitting together, with their  smart phones, in the same hand (right) fingering their respective screens with the one appendage that gives us digital alacrity, freedom, the opposable thumb, useful. What was tragic for this mom and dad was one vacuous reality. Across from them, was a most delightful young man, about 7 years old, wanting, yearningly to engage his parents faces, but to no avail. They were tripping on their techno. Soaked in either a text or and inspirational message or the next pair of shoes that must be had…I don't know. This little champion looked up at me as I walked by, with hollow, lonely eyes, as if to say, "Who cares about me?" "Do I matter?" "Where are my parents faces?"

Practical living tells me that in a half hour, the "bookends" will drop "champion"  off at class.  They will go to work, and  he will be walking in the isle to his desk at school, immersed in various classmates gazes and greetings, from every walk of life, some you just might not want to know more about…really. His morning was faceless. In that golden hour of connection perhaps the technology could just have been  put away, in exchange for a little conversation, a little warm love in the form of familiar smiles and affirming words from mom and daddy-o. Are they  parenting and intermittently  temporary orphan, who is sporadically abandoned for one more fix of vital information, the temperature and 24 hour forecast and those shoes?

I wanted to stop at their table that morning and say, "Do you love that little guy across the table, and do you see the hourglass over his head, and your head, and over every soul of man in this place?"  (Damoclese sword might just as well been an hourglass, eh?) "Are you alive to the moments of a child's curious life like this boy, that are as precious as the very next breath you will breath? Is there anything more important, right now, that placing thunderous, extravagant, simple love beneath his Spirit and preparing him for a day of engagement with humanity that will pull, push and press him into a spectrum of emotions, words and snotty punches or worse or better?  I didn't stop; so I am a sinner, guilty, for a crime of omission,  not speaking love when I could have. Or perhaps it was the fear of  being misunderstood as a sentimental old fart who sees a kid who just wants to hear his parents talk some love to him at breakfast.

 I'm to a Ludite. I'm just  thinking there are great times to shut the stinkin' tech  off and give your lovely  face away to a friend or a kid or your wife or boyfriend or?

Coffee Cakes and Pearled Gates

He would have paid twice the price for a coffee cake half the size. The bid was $40.00. You see the baker has a reputation for investment. She had lavished butter, flower, sugar, cinnamon vanilla and mysterious love in a mixing bowl early that morning with one motivation, love. She transferred the sweet mix to a radiating oven filled with waiting waves of catalytic heat, ready to do its work of releasing the dulcet aroma and finishing the crispy creation to perfection.

Our annual church bake sale usually turned into both a laughter extravaganza, smack talking party and a bidding war for the best offerings brought to raise funds for global missions; sacred sweets! People who couldn't go to a foreign land could bake for the poor or bid on the goods; on behalf of  the forgotten and the yet to be freed by the Gospel's power. To give once more in a special way, for the faces they will see in heaven because they cared and baked and bought! Serious business…

Heavens gate are mysterious things. The first hand view of these portals of the majesty, is described by John on his visionary journey into the unseen realm of future things. Each gate is a pearl with lustrous, translucent glow so inviting to behold, and to step through forever. The gates are open and calling for the least, the last and the lost to come and rest. Imagine for a moment, with me, a small child who has never tasted more than a cup of rice a day and spent her few short years on violent streets, can enter Christ's glory because she heard a message, from a missionary, who was sent to a country, by money spent on a coffee cake. Isn't that a sweet thought? Pun intended! Sold to the man with the smile on his face for $40.00!

Reach and Touch

The drive from central Ohio to Philadelphia is a parade through the halls of ancient forests. These royal assemblies have been a home to native americans before any european settlement appeared. The goodness of their stature, shelter and sheer might is  sacred today as it was in Eden. The writers Lewis and Tolkien took a stroll on an english campus, graced with gigantic Oaks that had seen the likes of Hadrian and whose expansive branches overshadowed a half acre of ground beneath each of them. Lewis stopped in admiring wonder of the trees, looked at Tolkien and said, "And they call it a tree."

There is a change in the trees today, spring dawns and sweetens the air with scent and color. (I noticed even the snow liberated soil has a new scent in spring). The subtle colors of purple, pink and red at the tops of  trees are bundles of infant leaves springing out to meet the sky, God, light and freedom.

Impossible and invisible, on the tip of a branch, has become possible and visible. What was not, is, and radiates beauty and truth; a cycle of life; new birth and hope. Blossoming trees, reach and touch heaven en mass and as one. It's natures upward dance of worship spoken in ancient writings of Isaiah as "trees of the fields clapping their hands!" How like my arms and the tips of my fingers are these extended boughs  reaching once again, heavenward with all their might? They reach and touch; I can reach and touch heaven, with them, in God's sacred rhythm of new life and divine beginnings. Lord, thank you for the ancient halls of trees, mentors on earth and someday, Heaven!

Comfort and Suffering

Remarkable are the extremes of faith and visible are the beloved who have experienced them. John the beloved disciple is seen in Da Vinci's last supper with his head leaning lovingly upon the chest of Jesus. What a tender display of love communicated and affection given by Christ to this one who drew close and confided in the deepest secrets of  Jesus. This is comfort. This is Christ. All is well, for a moment.

Fast forward to a desert island, a prison island of rock and sun, wind and rain, rough elements fit for the wild and the blistered and banished. Enter John the beloved and blistered. This time he is resting his whitened hair on a roll of straw after prayer. And he is taked in the Spirit! The scrolls and scenes unfold before him and he reels with the thrill of a man who is crossed in to eternal mind of God, to the future passed and yet to come. He has known comfort and with it peace. Now he knows suffering and with it revelation, deep and powerful as an deep ocean current sweeping time and nations and planets and the souls of the living and the dead  in a rhythm of culmination ending in recreation of all that is known.

I am always ready for comfort, like John. I seek it. But I never seek suffering, it finds me, elusively, like living on Patmos found  John; prepared and unprepared, angry and embarrassed, reconciled and repentant, searching for meaning in pain. Not  knowing yet  that the revelation to come will be sweet and holy, terrifying and enlightening and both His and mine. Comfort and suffering are both a gift to one who will embrace them as divine love. Welcome.