The Covenant on Our Hearts

 Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-31, Mark 4:26-34

               Today we continue our study of the book of Jeremiah.  To give the background of this passage, Jehoiakim was one of Josiah’s sons.  And while Josiah and Jeremiah were on the same page in terms of what God wanted and therefore how to lead the people, Jehoiakim, the King, did not agree with the prophet Jeremiah about how the country of Israel should be run.  Jeremiah was really clear about what God wanted: God wanted the lying the stop, God wanted justice for the poorest of the poor, God wanted kindness to the “least of these”.  But Jehoiakim was not listening and he resented everything that Jeremiah had to say about it.  He tried to arrest Jeremiah, unsuccessfully.  And then when Jeremiah continued to proclaim the message that the behavior of this king HAD to change, that he HAD to repent, that he had to stop the lying, the denying of the word of God as spoken through Jeremiah, Jeremiah said that if he did not change his behavior, his injustices, his acts of cruelty, that there would be consequences.  God was angry, and destruction would come if the behavior continued.  Jehoiakim’s reaction then was to destroy the words that Jeremiah had had Baruch write down.  His reaction was denial, was the ostrich putting its head in the sand, “If I just make these words go away, then the prophecy will end.”  His response was censorship.  But instead of succeeding in destroying the words, the words Jeremiah spoke on behalf of God moved from being conditional, “If you don’t stop this injustice and lying, you will be destroyed” to absolute, “You have gone past the point of no return and the consequences are coming.  You cannot turn back now.”  In addition, the words were expanded, including all that was said before and much, much more.  Unfortunately, the consequences for Jehoiakim’s actions extended beyond himself, too.  As a leader, his mis-steps were not only destroying himself, but would come down on all the people as well.  Jehoiakim’s reaction was not repentance, and it was not an offer to change.  He felt that if he just destroyed the words of God’s prophet, they would no longer have an affect.  But this is false.  We can deny the past all we want, but it still affects every single thing about the present.  Denying it, squashing it, trying to destroy the realities of what happened before, of our history, as ugly as it is, does not undo what has been done.  It does not change that past.  Instead, our denial of it cements the consequences that result from our past actions.  Rather than opening us up to change, to repentance, and therefore to healing and new life, both as individuals, but more importantly as communities, as countries, as nations, our denial of what has gone before simply ensures our doom, ensures we will not grow, ensures we will not change, ensures that we will continue to act with injustice and ensures that the consequences for those behaviors will take place.

               These are very hard words for us to hear.  VERY hard words for us to hear.  How many times have I heard people say, “I don’t like the God of the Old Testament because that God seems to very violent!”  But I want to be clear here.  This is not about punishment.  This is about consequences.  Our actions have consequences.  There isn’t any way to get around that.  There are consequences for our actions.  And, while it is especially hard to hear the words from Jeremiah today in which Jeremiah moves from the place of saying “you must repent” to, “there is no going back,”  there is truth that we must understand in which there comes a point when change is too late, when we cannot undo what we have done.  While I deeply believe that God is a God of second and third, fourth, fifth chances, at some point, there is no escaping the reality that the world has been built in such a way that there are consequences of our behaviors. 

            Many scientist are now saying, for example, that we have reached that point of no return in terms of the environment.  That we have crossed a line in terms of the rape and damage we have done to our world, to our environment.  The climate change that is a consequence of the destruction of our ozone, the build up of carbon in our atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect from which we cannot return.  As an article written in November on EcoWatch said it, “The only way to have prevented runaway climate change would have been to have stopped burning fossil fuels between 1960 and 1970, the model found, as USA TODAY reported. In order to stop temperatures and sea levels from rising now, we would have to remove at least 33 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year starting this one.” 

         The eight year drought that our damage has caused in the northern triangle: Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala is the single most cause of the influx of immigrants into this country.  The drought means the people can’t farm their own lands and they can’t feed their families.  This is driving folk here.  We are reaping the consequences of being the largest historic emitter of carbon. 

         UN did a study a few years back that said that there would be 100 million ecological refugees by 2100 in large part as a consequence of droughts in African pushing people towards Europe.  But more recently they have renewed the study taking into account the domino affects of conflict, war, and water scarcity.  The new estimate as a result is that  there will now be  two billion ecological refugees by year 2100.  Population closer to 10 billion by then.  That means 1/5 will be internally and externally displaced people.    Again, these are the consequences of choices we have made as nations.

      But we, too, like to deny truth, like to squish it in the hopes that it will just go away.  I think about the fact that Oklahoma has declared it will not include in its history the Tulsa riots, that others are proclaiming they will not change the history books to include the horrible things that we have done to African Americans, to Native peoples, to the Japanese and the Chinese in this country.  They will not include these historical facts.  Why?  It is just like Jehoiakim: if they don’t write it down they believe it can’t hurt them.  But burning the scrolls of life, the truths of our history does not change the central, scary and challenging message to “love your enemies”.  Instead, it cements our fate in horrible ways.  Perhaps if we had been honest about our history from the beginning we would not be experiencing the great racial strife that we face now.  But people fear the truth, they fear the stories and in doing so, they seal the fate of our country, of our people, of the world. 

               Howard Thurman in his book The Mood of Christmas wrote an essay called “The Great Incarnate Words” (P 111-118),

But the word would not be stilled:

               Let your motive be simple;

               Your words, yea, yea; naysay.

               Hypocrisy for self-defense—

               Is that the sinless sin?

               Does it degrade the soul at last

               And sweep the raft against the rocks?

               Deceive, and live for yet another day!

               Declare, and run the risk of sure destruction!

But why?

The Word knew:

               There is a point beyond which (humans) cannot go,

               Without yielding (their) right to try again.

               To play God false to save one’s skin,

               May jeopardize all there is that makes (humans, Human).

                              “What would a person give in exchange for (their) soul?”

               This is the great Decision!

               Even death becomes a little thing.

               To survive with inner cleanness;

To compromise where ground forsook can be retrieved;

               To stand unyielding when the moment comes;

This is the meaning of the Word!

 

Love. The word—LOVE.

Hate is the last great fortress of the weak.

The moving current of resentment flows through the channels

               of the heart,

When overarching wrong inflicts its bitter lash,

But this may pass.

                So then we come to the New Testament reading, the story of the mustard seed.  We know this story.  We here in CA also know mustard.  We know that we do nothing, not a thing, and every spring the mustard plants spring up all over the Bay Area with carpets of yellow.  They can’t be stopped, they can’t be controlled.  They are wild and they live on their own.  They grow tall and big and expansive and there is little to nothing that can be done to prevent it.  But this is a word of hope from God: mustard does not have to be planted, and mustard is not controlled.  So, too, is the word of God.  And so too, are the stories of truth. 

              Despite the attempts to block history, to confine history, to rewrite history, cell phones catching things like the murder of George Floyd can no longer be stopped.  People writing the history that is out there, in the underground sometimes, can no longer be stopped.  We think that we can control things in this way, but we can’t.  God’s work for truth, for justice, is unstoppable. 

               I think about the movie, “Two Weeks Notice”.  In the Movie, Sandra Bullock plays a character who has actively followed on “the way” as she understands it.  She has stood up for the oppressed, been a voice for the voiceless, fought against injustice at every level.  But there comes a moment at which she hits a place of despair.  She is done.  Her father is upset by her decision to no longer live a life of action.  And he confronts her saying, “we didn’t teach you to sit on the sidelines.”  She argues that what she does makes no difference.  To which he responds, “Then you change your tactics.  As long as people can change, the world can change.”  She says, “But what if people can’t change?” 

               The father in the movie I just quoted paused for a moment in consideration, “Let me put it this way.  I am eating a piece of cheesecake made entirely of soy.  I hate it.  But because of my health issues, I am doing it.”

               He didn’t like it.  But he did it, and that started with truth.  His change in behavior started with being unable to deny the truth about his health conditions, the truth about what he needed to do to stay well.  It did not stem from hiding from the realities of his situation.  It did not come about from burying his head, like an ostrich, in the sand.  He didn’t like it, but truth is powerful, it is unstoppable. 

               The word of God is like that.  It spreads despite what people try to do, despite what people try to hide, despite the lies.  It is like mustard that sprouts up regardless. 

               As the commentator David Jacobsen wrote, ““As I wrote these words, the court testimony of the sidewalk bystanders in the George Floyd killing seemed empty of hope. In their cell phone videos, you too can see them: the EMT, the youth, the martial arts expert, and the convenience store cashier lined up pleading with the white policeman kneeling on a Black man’s neck to stop and render assistance to George Floyd. As you watched their own videos, it seemed even to the bystanders themselves that all they could do from the sidewalk was to cry out and plead, but effect nothing.  One teenager on the sidewalk even testified in court how she apologizes over and over again to George Floyd at night. She asks herself whether she could have done more.  And why did her pleading or their yelling not suffice? Her haunting words make Jesus’ mysterious parable hard to hear. What about Mark’s seedy hope of an automatic Kingdom of God can survive her tearful testimony?  And then came the verdict on April 20. As many said, while justice did not come that day, accountability did. How did the lead prosecutor put it?: the bystanders were a “bouquet of humanity.” The very people who cried out from the sidewalk and made videos with smartphones were a surprise flowering of what it means to be human. The bystanders did not save George Floyd’s life, but they were a mysterious, living, testifying, bouquet of humanity. And in a moment, something of our view of Mark’s seed parable changes. What it offers now is a glimpse of change, a germination that flowers right there on a cracked sidewalk at 38th and Chicago.  Now that is mysterious and even a little revealing. Even so, there is one thing I now lay hold of. There may well be an arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice, but that modern view is for us both a promise and a goal. The famous quote from Parker and King and Obama uses the intransitive verb, “bend.” But there is no one who says that we can’t lay hold of that arc and in the name of the promise bend it a little bit ourselves with a little transitive joy. For we, thanks to Mark, are people who even now glimpse germinating seeds yielding bouquets of humanity: a surprising, sudden, fragile yield of the Kingdom’s mysterious grace and justice.” – Working Preacher, David Jacobsen.

               “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  The kingdom of God is a seed that grounds our hope that eventually things can change.  To remember that Mark’s gospel was written close to the time of the destruction of the temple in 70CE, that the context of that time was public chaos, control, confusion, oppression and pain.  And that it was in the midst of that that we hear the words of hope from today’s Gospel reading.  These are powerful stories of possibility.  And that possibility is in our midst as well.

               The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed: it is not planted, it is not sown.  And yet it takes off, it grows big and expansive and wild.  While we may hinder it for a while, we cannot stop it.  The word of Love, the word of hope, the word of healing and possibility: these are the words of God’s kingdom.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The Good News is Coming

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

John 1:6-8

Today is the third Sunday in Advent and so we continue the process of waiting, of looking, of searching to see God coming anew into the world.  But today I want to focus on how we witness this for others, how we share the Good News of Advent with a world that has a hard time seeing the Good News, and certainly doesn’t want to spend the time waiting and looking, but instead jumps into Christmas – this year even before Halloween.

Today’s New Testament passage talks about John as a witness to the light.  As I just read, “John came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.”   

That is our call, too.  And again, especially during this time of Advent, of preparing, of looking for God’s coming anew, we are called to witness, to prepare a world for God’s entrance, to help people to walk with eyes open to seeing God’s coming.  That’s not to say that bad things don’t happen, too.  But as Christians, as Advent people, we are to look for and usher in the Good News.  Our focus needs to not be on what is going wrong in the world, except in our commitment to changing and confronting it.  But instead, our focus is ushering in the Good News, announcing the Good News that has come and that is coming anew.  Our job is to make the joy of Christ among us real for the world around us.

But how do we do that?  I don’t think it is enough to just talk about our faith with others.  I do not believe that we witness to Christ’s coming simply by saying that we are Christians.  I also don’t believe that we witness to the Good News by trying to scare people into faith with the threat of hell.  That’s not really Good News, first of all. How could the idea of an angry, wrathful God who punishes with hell be Good News for anybody? But second of all, and more importantly, fear based faith is not permanent – it is only as strong as the fear.  When another voice offers a bigger fear, a bigger threat, and offers a different faith as a solution, a fear based faith will alter course to what feels “safest.”  Third, and most importantly, perhaps, every time in scripture that an angel of God appears, the first words out of the angels mouths are “fear not”.  Our relationships with God is not supposed to be about fear.  I posted on FB a wonderful article that talked about how the Peanuts Christmas special has a profound moment in it in which Linus is reading from the beginning of Luke.  He is reading the Christmas story.  Linus, as always has his blanket, his security, his source of comfort with him.  But at the moment in which he reads, “And the angel said, ‘fear not’”, he drops the blanket.  He lets go of his physical security and instead rests, without fear or the need for those material securities, in the love of God.  Fear has been misused a great deal lately to try to push through decisions that are hateful, that are unjust, that are damaging to “the least of these”.  But our faith is clear about this: there is no room in Christian faith for that fear. So preaching a gospel of fear to people is not what we are called to do.

No, to really bring people to the light, we have to show them what that light is.  And that has to start, not from a place of fear, but from a deep place of gratitude that comes from faith.  We are called to show the world that that light makes a genuine difference in our lives, frees us to live lives where we can risk radical LOVE, and calls us therefore to act and live in the world with actions of care for others. Isaiah shows us what that looks like.  According to Isaiah, the coming of God looks like the oppressed being lifted out of that oppression, the brokenhearted being supported and healed, captives and prisoners being released and freed, those in mourning experiencing comfort.  That is what the Good News looks like – that is what we are to witness to, and to bring about through our lives and through our actions.  Isaiah continues, “they shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines.”  In other words, God’s entrance is radical.  It is not calm, it is not quiet, it is not unimportant and it is not ineffective.  It makes a difference – a big difference – in the lives of strangers as well as friends, in the lives of enemies as well as those we consider our own.  We are called to be part of that, by being God’s hands and feet in the world, by sharing it, by reflecting the Good News of God with us. 

The children have a wonderful book that I shared at our Christmas Day service and that I want to tell you about this morning as well.  It is called the Fourth King, and it tells the story of another Magi who didn’t end up making it to the stable.  He set out, like the other Wise Men, following the star with presents for the newborn king.  But as he traveled on his journey he heard a little girl crying out in a sand storm for help.  So he stopped and carried her through the sand blizzard until he found her parents.  He started out again, but came across a merchant caravan, lost without a map.  He led them across the desert and to safety, but then found himself even further behind in following the star to Bethlehem.  Next he came across a wall that was being built by a tyrant using child slave labor.  And he stopped to try to free the children, ending up becoming one of the slaves himself until the wall was completed and he was able to help the children escape.  Finally, he ran into some shepherds who told him about Herod’s plan to kill all the children.  And when he met  a family trying to escape from Herod’s devastation, he could not help but stop and help the family to safety.  At every crisis that he met, he realized he had a choice.  At every juncture he said “What was I to do?  What was I to do?” Should he go see the baby, the thing that his heart most desired?  Or should he help the people in front of him – God’s people, in need.  At every step he chose to follow in the way – not the way that he wanted – not the way that led him to actually meet the baby Jesus in the stable – but the way of God, the way Isaiah talks about.  In the end, he did finally make it to the stable and he found it empty.  The book continues, “We were too late!  Our journey had been in vain.  I fell to my knees and wept.  And then, in the depths of my despair, the most wonderful thing happened.  I heard a voice speak softly, ‘King Mazzel, you have not come too late!  You were always with me.  When I was lost, you showed me the way.  When I was thirsty, you gave me water.  When I was captive, you freed me.  When I was in danger, you saved me.  You were always there when I needed you, and I will be with you forever.’ ”

Lyle shared with me a story that Michael Piazza wrote about.  He wrote about Bishop Leontine Kelly’s father, who also was a Methodist preacher, and who was assigned to an inner-city church in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Apparently, the church was an amazing, Gothic structure building with stained glass windows and a huge crystal chandelier. The parsonage was also amazing and included an old, huge boarded up cellar. As the children were exploring this cellar one day, they found a hidden passage that led to a tunnel which they shared with their father. The tunnel, it turned out, ran under the church and then led off toward the Ohio River, which flowed just five blocks away. Apparently, these tunnels had been part of the Underground Railroad and had been used to help move escaping slaves to freedom.  Bishop Kelly’s father said, "Children, I want you to remember, as long as you live, that the greatness of this church is not this huge Gothic building, but those tunnels. We are on sacred ground because these people risked their lives to do something great for God and good for our people."

We don’t have to do big things or feel that if we can’t do big things that it is all, somehow in vain.  One day a terrible fire broke out in a forest - a huge woodland was suddenly engulfed by a raging wild fire. Frightened, all the animals fled their homes and ran out of the forest. As they came to the edge of a stream they stopped to watch the fire and they were feeling very discouraged and powerless. They were all bemoaning the destruction of their homes. Every one of them thought there was nothing they could do about the fire, except for one little hummingbird.

This particular hummingbird decided it would do something. It swooped into the stream and picked up some drops of water and went into the forest and put it on the fire. Then it went back to the stream and did it again, and it kept going back, again and again and again.

All the other animals watched in disbelief; some tried to discourage the hummingbird with comments like, "Don't bother, it is too much, you are too little, your wings will burn, your beak is tiny, it’s only a drop, you can't put out this fire."

And as the animals stood around disparaging the little bird’s efforts, the bird noticed how hopeless and forlorn they looked. Then one of the animals shouted out and challenged the hummingbird in a mocking voice, "What do you think you are doing?" And the hummingbird, without wasting time or losing a beat, looked back and said, "I am doing what I can."

John 14:6 says, “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Notice that this does not say we come to God through belief.  Jesus says he is the way, the truth, the life.  And we are called to come to God by following in that way, by living in the way.  It is through our following in the way – through our ushering in of the way of Christ, a way of setting at liberty the oppressed, raising the valleys and making the mountains low, by feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, this is how we know God, this is how we live the Good News, and this is how we witness to the light for all those around us. 

We will be saying this poem as a prayer of confession in a couple weeks,written by Ann Weems, but I want to read it to you now because I think it very much applies:     

“What concerns me, what lies on my heart, is this: that we in the church papered and programmed, articulate and agenda-ed are telling the faith story all wrong, are telling it as though it happened two thousand years ago or is going to happen as soon as the church budget is raised.  We seem to forget that Christ’s name is Emmanuel, God with Us, not just when he sat among us but NOW, when we cannot feel the nail prints in his hands.”

We are called to witness to that truth of Emmanuel, God with Us, now, as we look to the coming of Christ through this Advent Season.

Matthew 25: visiting those in Prison

Isaiah 61:1-11

Luke 4:14-21

Matthew 25:31-46

Today we finish the Matthew 25 series by looking at visiting those in prison.  I think this is the hardest of Jesus’ injunctions and words to us.  Not that any of the other things we are called to do are easy.  It isn’t easy to feed the hungry or give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, or welcome the stranger.  It isn’t easy to visit those who are sick.  But generally we do all of this well in most of our church communities, despite the challenges to us, despite how hard these things are.  Some of these things we do more easily than others, but we do them all, as a community, and as individuals. 

But visiting those in prison?  That’s a different matter altogether.  And for very good reasons.  First of all, we mostly have compassion for the homeless, the hungry, those in desperate or difficult situations.  But even when we run into people asking for our help whom we don’t like, even when we run into scammers or people who are so different from us they offend us, no matter how dirty or lazy or different or corrupt we may perceive to be the hungry or strangers or the homeless, it is a different matter altogether to face someone whom we are almost certain has not just done something to harm themselves, but has done something to harm other people.  Prisoners are generally perceived to be the scum of the earth.  These are not just people who have failed to take care of themselves, not just people who are attempting, perhaps, to scam us.  These are people who have actively done wrong, actively injured people, actively hurt, in sometimes devastating ways, people and sometimes whole communities.  Some of them are really horrible people and we know this.  Why would any of us want to visit people with whom we are angry, whom we find disgusting, who have messed up so badly and are paying for that, in part, by the isolation and alienation that prison affords?  Why would any of us want to subject ourselves to the possible abuse, verbal or otherwise of going to and being in a prison setting? 

We know that these, the prisoners, really are “the least of these” and Jesus says when we fail to visit those in prison, we are failing to visit him, Jesus himself.  But these are the people, still, in whom it is hardest, by far, to see God’s face.  I get that.  Jesus takes it even further in the other passages we read for today.  Isaiah and then Jesus in today’s Luke passage declare himself to be the one who will release the prisoners.  But I think most of us don’t actually want the prisoners released.  Many of those in prison, those Jesus claims he will release, are simply not nice people.  They are not nice in their actions, but they are also not nice in their words.  They can be mean.  They can do scary and frightening things.  They are hard to be around.  We don’t want them out of prison.  And we don’t want to visit them.  

And the truth is, after having visited the prison so many times myself, there is frankly nothing I could say to you that would reassure you in any way that it is less than the horrible experience we might fear it to be.  It is horrible.  Prisons are not humane places, even in the United States. Guards and prisoners alike have no boundaries and say things that are shocking, upsetting, humiliating.  The prison system itself is set up in such a way that visitors are routinely shamed, invaded in the searches done, kept out for random and unpredictable reasons, and propositioned in such a way that loved ones are threatened by our attempts to set appropriate boundaries. 

Let me give you a couple of examples:  I drove three hours down to a prison to see an inmate there, only to be told that my shirt was cut too low and that I would therefore have to turn right around and drive the three hours back home. This was not the case.  I never wear clothing that is immodest, as you probably know.  A young woman had gone in a head of me whose pants were so low that… well, you can imagine.  Another had gone in who truly had a low cut shirt.  My shirt was a nice blouse, long sleeved, not cut low at all.  But I was kept out as a power play, by a guard who didn’t like the look of me and wanted to show me the power he could exercise.

 Another story: there was a guard at the prison who, as I was leaving, pushed his phone number into my hand with the threat that if I did not call him, the person I had been visiting would be harmed.  Of course I didn’t call, and in fact the prisoner was harmed: ending up in intensive care for three weeks, and then in solitary confinement as punishment for having been beaten to a pulp, for another three weeks.  Every time you enter the prison, whether adult, child, pastor or other: if you come as a visitor, you must go through several different “security” systems both on the way in and on the way out of the prison doors.  Once inside, even children are required to stay in their seats for the duration of the visit, which often is about three hours.  It is a hard thing to do, to visit those in prison.  It is unpleasant, it is shaming, it is degrading, it is tough.  When you know the person in the prison it is especially humiliating.  And when you don’t, I think it is especially fear-producing.  It is not a nice thing, a fun thing, an easy thing to do, and it is hard to see what good comes out of it, what the benefit is to put ourselves through all of that.  For myself, I’ve visited those in prison now often enough that I know I don’t want to go back.  I don’t want to face guards who bark at me or harass me in other ways.  I don’t want to face the humiliation of being treated like we are just prisoners ourselves, yet to be caught and incarcerated.  It is hard to make the long journey and harder still to be in that environment.

And still, we are told to visit those in prison.

The commentary author of Feasting on the Word put it this way:

I read with a heavy heart, "I was in prison and you visited me." Not just the community jail where last night's vagrants and drunks are drying out, not just infamous concentration camps run by evil tyrants, but "prison."”  I wonder how we learn to see God’s face in these people.  I wonder how God could ask us to visit those who have done evil, or to constantly face guards who are not kind or good themselves.  I wonder if God somehow just meant this metaphorically, but I know Jesus did not when he said this.  (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 4: Season After Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ)).
Don Gowan said it this way:
Love is the reason for (responding to all of God’s callings to us).  Jesus says God is good to both friends and enemies and that is love.  On the human level that kind of love begins to see other people as God sees them.  Every one of them is priceless.  No matter what they look like, or what they have done or are about to do, each one of them is irreplaceable, infinitely precious.  And we are just as valuable as they, but no more so.  The willingness to turn the other cheek is not based on anything like masochism or self-hatred, any more than it is the result of cowardice.  Indeed only a very firmly grounded self-love can make it possible to be so strong.  … Jesus claims that those who love others the way God loves people will not assume they have any right to harm another person in order to protect themselves!  No matter who that person is, that person is exactly as valuable in my sight as I am and it would really be a violation against my own character to inflict harm on anyone. (Shalom, A study of the Biblical Concept of Peace (Kerygma publishing))

             But I sometimes wonder, doesn’t it inflict harm on ourselves to visit a place that is almost hell on earth?  Doesn’t it inflict harm on children, even when they are visiting parents in prison, to take them with us?  These are some of the questions that go through my head.  I get why people don’t visit those in prison.  I hate doing it, and don’t somehow feel more “holy” that I have.

               And still, we are left with Jesus’ words, “Whenever you didn’t visit me in prison, you didn’t visit me.” 

To complicate things, choosing to visit someone in prison is not as straightforward now as it used to be.  If you do feel called to follow this mandate, it is not easy for practical reasons as well as for the emotional reasons.  For one thing, you can’t just show up at a prison and ask to visit someone.  You have to have your name on a specific prisoner’s “acceptable visitors” list (which means the prison has to approve your visit) and you have to fill out a bunch of forms that give a great deal of personal information about you before you can.  In many places, you also have to make a reservation to see a prisoner and these can sometimes be hard to come by.  There are ways to “visit” – anyone can send a letter and programs such as the “friend to friend” program allow access in a different but safe way to those in prison.  But these limitations, this need to either become involved with a program or to figure out how or to whom to write a letter or to get ourselves on a visitation list – these hurdles that are placed in front of us to do something we probably don’t really want to do in the first place, these, too, test our inclination to follow God’s word for us in this way. 

               And still Jesus tells us, “Whenever you visited someone in prison, you did it to me.  And whenever you didn’t visit me in prison, you didn’t visit me.” 

               Hard words.  Words that test our faith commitments deeply.

               The reality, the human reality, is that we all fall short. I believe we all struggle to do our best to follow Jesus and to follow God’s will for us.  We are all on a journey, and we just aren’t always going to be able to be the perfect Christians that we may choose to be.  As we finish up and sum up our study of Matthew 25 today, therefore, I want to leave you with this: 

I don’t believe God sits up in heaven with a tally sheet marking off which of these we’ve done and which of these we have failed to do.  I don’t believe that at the end of the day God measures or counts how many times we really did feed “the least of these” and in doing so fed Jesus and how many times we walked by.  How many times we clothed the naked and how many times we just walked by.  How many times we welcomed the stranger and how many times we simply didn’t see them.  Or how many times we visited those who were sick or in prison and how many times we passed up the opportunities or calls to do so.  However, the deeper we connect with God, the more likely we are to respond to these calls to care for God’s people.  How are we doing in our faith journeys?  How are we responding to the blessings with which God fills our lives?  Are we so filled with the grace and gratitude of God’s love for us that we cannot help but do the things God calls us to do?  To feed, to care for, to reach out to, any and all of the least of these?  Are we so connected with God that we can’t help but feel God’s call to action and to do it with every breath we take?  That is more what these instructions in Matthew get at.  They give us a concrete way we can respond out of love for God.  They help us to see how to connect more deeply with God, how we get to know God - by responding to God’s call and by getting to know God in the "least of these". The bottom line, always, is that God wants deeper connection with us and wants that wholeness for us.  Wholeness for us looks like doing what God calls us to do.  But we are on a journey.  It takes time, it takes prayer, it takes study, it takes listening to God.  Know that God walks that with us, with grace, with love, with compassion for those things that are hard to do, and with hope that we can be the best versions of ourselves, the versions God sees and the versions God calls us to be with all of our beings.   We do what we can.  We listen for God’s voice.  We strive towards wholeness with God’s help.  And we watch as the fruits of our prayers, our time with God and our commitments to God’s people blossom in us to make us more fully the people God hopes for us to be.  Amen.

The Privilege of Caring

It is a privilege to be able to be concerned about the problems of the larger community and world.  I used to think it was only a responsibility.  And while I still do feel that for Christians, praying for the larger community and world as well as working for justice, peace and reconciliation for the larger community and world are still centrally important, I now realize at some level that it is from a place of privilege that we can do that.  It is from a place of privilege, both in terms of time, energy and commitment that a person can dedicate themself to the eradication of the problems in the world, to the care for and of God's people, to living lives that serve others.  I have functioned from a different place over the last 2 1/2 years, one in which there were times when it was all I could do to get my three children off to school wearing appropriate clothes and having eaten breakfast, and gotten myself off to work.  There have been days when "simple" things like getting the children's hair and teeth brushed before school are tasks that are simply too big, when getting to the grocery store to just buy a gallon of milk required a major scheduling overhaul, when getting more than 6 hours of sleep a night or being able to go for a 15 minute walk to get some exercise were understood to be the luxuries that, in fact, they are, even while they may be "necessary" for one's health.  The church's Tai Chi instructor made the comment to me last week that surely I could squeeze in 10 minutes a day for practice.  And for most of us middle class folk, I think carving 10 minutes out of television watching or 10 minutes out of our primping activities or 10 minutes out of talking on the phone or playing on facebook, or sleeping eight hours a night would be an appropriate consideration.  But this is not the life that everyone leads, and I have a much better understanding of that now.  There was a good long period of time during which I never watched TV or movies (because there was no time to do this), was unable to find time to read a book, was not on facebook, and was still only getting minimal sleep.  Every minute of every day was simply taken up with the necessities of living, providing for my kids, working, surviving.
      I am not complaining.  I am deeply grateful that I had work that could support my family, that we never faced the financial challenges that many families with tragedies have to deal with, that I did not have to move or try to find extra work or ship my children off to live with others.  I am beyond grateful for those realities.  And I am actually grateful for the experience, for a time, of not being able to do much beyond survival as well.   As I move into a more balanced, centered place where I do make time again for walks, I do have time to watch episodes of "Downton Abby", talk or write to friends, reconnect on facebook, and do find time to learn what is happening in the world, in the news, and to speak about it, to write letters to congress people, to work for justice and peace, I am grateful for the time that these things were not possibilities for several reasons.  First, I can no longer judge others who do not have the time or energy to be more involved in caring for the world.  I get it now.  While I used to not understand why people would not tackle issues that impact their own lives and the lives of their kids in such profound ways, I do understand now that there are times and situations in which all a person can do is survive. I think about single parents (mostly mothers) who work several jobs to support their kids and I understand why that is all they can manage at this point in their lives.  I get it, I have compassion for it, and I have great respect for those who do the work of caring for their families at the cost of giving up pretty much everything else.  While I have not chosen this, I also have more compassion for people who partner quickly and easily in attempts to get help and to raise themselves out of that place where all they can do is work and care for kids.  Additionally, I have a much, much deeper daily appreciation for the little breaks I do get in a day.  I am deeply grateful for the privilege of being able to care for more than just my family and my work.  I recognize that the ability to keep a blog is a luxury, that talking with friends, HAVING friends is not a given, but a gift, that the ability to hear what others are experiencing, to delight in their joys or to grieve with their sorrows - that again, these are gifts - deep, deep gifts that cannot be taken for granted - ever.  And finally, I found that the time away from the problems of the world has shown me what Jesus meant when he said, "the poor will always be with you."  I return to the world and see that the challenges are the same - they remain and beg for our help whenever we can attend to them, whenever we do feel that urging and deep call to respond and act towards the creation of a more loving and whole world.  For all of this I am grateful.  I see much more clearly that our responsibilities are our privileges, and that not all are given the same gifts and challenges.  I am thankful for my gifts and challenges and pray for the strength to accept them both with grace.