Lead us Not Into Temptation

 

Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17; 3:1-8,

Matthew 4:1-11

               A pastor was late for a memorial service which he was leading at a church other than his own in the city.  After driving around and around searching for a parking place, he finally parked his car in a tow-away zone and left a note on his windshield that said, “I am a pastor who was late for a memorial service.  Forgive us our trespasses.”  When he was done with the service he found on his car a ticket along with a note which said, “If I don’t ticket you, I lose my job.  Lead us not into temptation.”

              Our lives are filled with temptations.  And as we read today, it is a common theme in scripture as well.  The responses to those temptations obviously vary.  Adam and Eve’s response was perhaps more like our own in the face of serious temptations.  They were told the forbidden fruit was good food.  Then they were told that it would give them knowledge of good and evil.  Finally, they were offered the hope of divinity, told that they would become like God, full of power, after they ate of it.  For Adam and Eve, these temptations were too great and they ate.  Jesus was offered very similar temptations.  First he was tempted to make bread out of the rocks – food.  Second he was asked to test God to gain directly the knowledge of the depth of God’s love for him.  And finally Satan offered Jesus power and the strength to rule over all the kingdoms of earth.  But unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus did not succumb to those temptations. 

               I think it is important to note that for all three: Adam, Eve and Jesus, the first temptation was about simple fulfillment of a need: about food, about eating.  Is this normally something we would consider bad or think of as a temptation?  To simply fulfill a need that we have?  To EAT?  Of course not.  So what, then, is the message in this for us? 

               Temptation has more to do with how something specific affects our relationships with God, with others, and even with ourselves, than it has to do with a particular substance or particular action.  Good things can still become temptations if used to keep God or others at a distance, or if they are used to injure ourselves in unhealthy ways.  For Adam, Eve and Jesus, this was not so much about eating as about disobeying or distancing themselves from what was right.  Similarly, for us, many temptations are not evils in themselves, but within a context or relationship with God and one another.  We know, for example, that chocolate has some good and healthy aspects to it and is not a bad thing in itself.  But I have to admit that as I was writing this sermon I was sitting on my couch eating an entire bag of chocolate kisses.  By the time I was halfway through, I was sicker than a dog, too sick to finish the sermon that day.  Too sick to pay attention to my kids or to do the other work I needed to get done that day.  It’s a good thing I write my sermons a couple weeks ahead, or it could have caused problems for more than just myself and my family.  This was a giving in to temptation – doing something that was not good for myself and by extension, for my family.  We all know that alcohol and other much more serious addictions can injure our relationships with others and even with God.  These things are not necessarily bad in themselves, but anything, when overused, can become a serious problem.  This can be the case with almost anything.  Work is generally a good thing, for example.  Obviously it supports us: brings in income, and it can give our lives a sense of purpose and meaning.  But, if we become workaholics, if our job is taking too much time, attention and care away from our families, away from our time with God, away from being loving, giving people, then it can become a temptation, it can turn into a sin that we need to face, understand and change. Or if in our job we are asked to do something that is against the will of God, that, too, can become a temptation to do wrong.  In the same way, television, books, FaceBook, other forms of media are not bad in themselves.  We can learn a great deal from media sources, social media can help us connect with one another, time spent in these ways can help us relax and unwind, all of these things can be a way to help us, heal us and can be a way to build relationships with others, to stay connected, especially during a time such as this one with the pandemic.  But it can also become dangerous.  Through social media, especially perhaps, we can become entrenched in one-sided deeply divisive political positions that prevent us from hearing our brothers and sisters who have differing view points, that prevent us from relating or even speaking to people who disagree with us, that encourage division rather than bridge building and entrenching in thought rather than being open to learning.  These can also be extremely time/ energy/ interest consuming activities.  I remember visiting someone once who had a TV on in every single room.  This constant noise and distraction prevented the members of the family who lived there from having any kind of quality conversations or relationships with each other.  It also took time away from God, from prayer, from listening and being with God.  This addiction to the TV, often now replaced with addictions to our phones, to social media, can become a strong temptation, something we should work to limit.  Jesus determined that for him, during this time of fasting and prayer, even the simple creation of food would have been a temptation.  If even basic food can become such a temptation, the call is clear for us to examine what in our lives keeps us from deepening our relationships with God and with each other.

              15 years ago a group of women from the church I was serving at the time went to see Eve Ensler’s production “The Good Body.”  In this performance she talked about female obsession and dis-ease with our bodies that is so prevalent in our culture, as well as in many cultures around the world.  In particular she focused on her own hatred of her stomach which she saw as fat, round, not flat, not perfect, not “good.”  After an hour and a half of sharing different stories about women’s struggles with body image and in particular her won, she ended “The Good Body” by telling a story about a trip she made to Afghanistan.  There, she said, all people, but especially the women, experienced great oppression under the Taliban.  But out of all the stories of oppression, of torture, or abuse that Eve heard and saw, Eve found herself especially upset by a story in which several women were imprisoned and severely beaten by the Taliban for eating ice-cream, which was forbidden.  She could not let go of her own distress about this, and eventually her hosts in Afghanistan told her that something needed to be done.  They told her it was time for her to do the forbidden task of eating ice cream in Afghanistan.  Together Eve and her hosts went to a place in the middle of the open market downtown that was secret, was screened off, was silent.  All of them knew that if they were caught with the ice cream, they would be beaten, imprisoned, perhaps even executed, depending on the mood of the Taliban officers of the day.  But there they were sitting together, listening to the Taliban circling around outside, still about to share this forbidden ice cream together.  As she raised the ice cream to her lips, as she ate of the fruit the Taliban called forbidden, Even realized that the statement she was making along with the others, that grabbing of freedom, that rebellion and solidarity in the illegal act of enjoying this food was more important, much more important than the fat of her stomach, than the calories, than the struggle with body image.  Here was something more important than all of that.  Here was life, here was solidarity, here was a statement about standing up to oppression at whatever risk for the sake of saying, “ I will not idly stand by while my sisters are being tortured for living their lives.  I will not be distracted by my own self-concerns in the face of their dying even as they struggle to live.”  Her obsession with her body had been a sin – she was tempted as people all over the world are, to get caught up in something that was not so important, something that was not about life, nor about love, nor really about taking are of herself; caught up in an obsession, a temptation that by taking her time, energy and focus was robbing her and those around her of deeper connections with each other, and with God.

               While the specifics of the temptations that Jesus faced in today’s scripture were probably different than the specifics of those things that tempt us, this gospel story has much to say to us about the ways in which we are tempted.  Jesus said “if someone asks for your coat, give him your shirt too.”  We are not to ask when someone asks us for something, when our resources are being called upon, whether or not those asking are somehow “deserving”.  That is never a question Jesus says we are to ask.  We are to give to all in need, regardless of their situation.  But we, like Jesus, often find ourselves tempted, I would say, by our rationalizing minds.  For Jesus the rationalized response to the tempter might have been “well, it would be easy to turn these stones into bread.  And I would prove to myself and to everyone around that I really was God’s son.  Why, then, shouldn’t I do this?”  For us the rationalizing goes, “Well, they might misuse my resources.  I might be supporting their addiction.  If I give them what they ask for, they may just keep begging and not get off their feed and help themselves.”  Well, these sound like good arguments.  Yes, they might misuse what we give them.  Yes, they might not get up on their own two feet and they might stay where they are.  And yet, we are commanded to give anyway.  The temptation to listen to our own rationalizing, rather doing what we are called to do, this is a temptation that most people find hard to resist.

               In Jesus’ second temptation he was tempted to test God’s love for him.  The basis of the temptation was scripture – from Psalm 91 which says, “God will command the angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”  Many of us have been tempted, I think, to test God’s love and care for us in various ways.  We also may find ourselves at times compelled to rationalize or even use scripture to justify behaviors that are unloving and therefore against God’s will.  Paul talks about separating ourselves from those who are a “bad influence” – those who might lead you astray.  Many churches, especially fundamentalist churches, use this scripture as an excuse to separate themselves from the rest of the world, even from family members who do not share the same belief systems.  But this is in direct conflict with Jesus’ example to us of eating with sinners, of claiming to come to the unrighteous rather than the righteous.  It is in great contrast to his command to us to love our enemies, to feed the poor, to visit those in prison.  It is also against his call to go and make disciples of the nations: if we cannot talk to non-Christians, surely we will have a hard time sharing with them the love of God.  Many of us may have also been tempted to support the “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” scripture, again ignoring that Jesus directly spoke against this text telling us to turn the other cheek and to do better.  This, too, is  a hard temptation to resist.

               Finally, Jesus’ last temptation took the form of bribery.  He was told that if he bowed down to the tempter, he would be given power over all kingdoms and nations.  For us the bribe may not be the rule and reign of all kingdoms.  But we still negotiate with temptation in the form of pay-offs for ourselves.  “If I don’t give to this person, I’ll have more for myself and my family.  If I were to help so and so, I might have less time for my family, even less time for God,” we might tell ourselves.  “If I ignore that racist comment, maybe that person will like and accept me.”  “If I choose not to stand up against injustice, maybe I’ll be more secure in my job.”  “If I am just quiet and don’t speak the truth, maybe I’ll still have this friendship, that friendship, this relationship, that relationship.”  All of these temptations are very compelling, aren’t they?  It is no wonder that Jesus taught us to ask in the Lord’s prayer that we might be kept away from temptation.  Evil is subtle.  It distracts us.  It calls to us.  It is a slippery slope, “It’ll be okay if I do just this one little thing” leads to, “well, I did that, so perhaps it’s not such a big deal if I also do this.” Which leads to, “well, I guess it doesn’t really matter what I do, so I may as well do what I want.”

               But we are called to resist temptation, like Jesus did.  We see what happens when we don’t: the story of Adam and Eve is a story about all hell being broken loose, as it was.  And Jesus’ story is about the ushering in of heaven.  What will we do with the temptations that are before us?  Will we even recognize them when they come?  We are called to face the temptations of life and to say “no”.  It is obviously not easy to do this.  But we are called to it for the sake of our relationships with God, with one another, and even with ourselves.  What is in the way of your relationships with God and one another? 

               “Lead us not into temptation” we pray every week.  But even as we pray, we know that we will and do face temptations daily.  So I add this prayer for you all today: “God, help us to see clearly the temptations that do fall our way.  And God, when we do see them, give us the strength to say “no”, to strive to do better, to find another way.”  That is my prayer for you, that is my prayer for me, that is my prayer for us all.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon: Temptation and Protection

Matthew 4: 1-11

John 17:6-19

What do you think are the most common temptations for humans today?  The three that were mentioned to tempt Jesus were food (appeasing the senses?), the temptation to test Jesus’ relationship with God, and power.  While power is still a temptation for many of us, I think we are currently very tempted by possessions or wealth, by popularity or fame, by things that feel like they make us happy temporarily, things that make us feel good, things that we can tend to become addicted to – drugs, alcohol, fast paced life, etc.

How many of you have seen the movie, The Devil Wears Prada?  The movie’s main character, Andi, starts as a person with goals and integrity.  She wants to be a journalist, and she has written about injustices such as poor work conditions.  She is in a committed relationship and values her time with her friends.  She enjoys her life, and has a cause or meaning, a purpose in her future.  Her values do not include shallow things like appearance, being thin, high fashion, owning expensive purses, clothing, things.  She puts work in its proper place as one aspect of who she is.  She is down-to-earth, centered, and knows where she is heading and what she wants.  When she first applies for the job as Assistant to the Director of Runway Magazine, she is appalled by the value system that surrounds her – the emphasis on accessories that make no real difference to one’s well-being, the insistence on being thin, on looking “right,” on dressing “right.”  She scoffs when 2 belts that most of us would think are identical are held up to a dress with the comment, “Oh, I just don’t know which is best.  They are so different!”  But when she takes the job, she finds her values and her identity being slowly challenged, slowly and subtly being undermined.  She finds herself giving up more and more of her time with her friends and significant other in order to work.  She finds herself being pulled into the drama and the appeal of a fast paced career with models and glamour and eventually into valuing the entire system of clothing and accessories and being thin and owning purses that cost thousands of dollars – all things she didn’t used to care about.  The choices she is faced with – to choose depth, meaning and relationships, or to choose appearance, glamour, fame and achievement are subtle choices, but she finds herself choosing for the latter again and again, and she finds herself saying to those who would challenge those choices, “well, I didn’t have a choice!” She chooses to do what her boss asks her to do, even when it means that she ends up deeply hurting a colleague who was becoming a friend. And the entire time she is slipping she repeats that phrase, “I didn’t have a choice.”

What made her descent, her decline into a life that the movie, and I imagine many of us, would consider sinful so easy for her was that she didn’t realize she was being tempted, tested or making bad choices in the face of those temptations.  She didn’t realize that she was choosing “evil”, even when she did something that devastated another human, that took away another human’s hopes and dreams.  She told herself that she made that choice because she had to keep her job. But that lie that she told herself, that the job was the most important thing, that lie led her more and more into “hell”…she lost her friends, she lost her significant other, she lost her sense of self and her values.  As her boyfriend breaks up with her, she receives a phone call from Miranda, her “devil” boss, and she says, “I’m sorry.  I have to answer this,” still not realizing she is making a choice.  As her boyfriend walks away he says to her, “You know, in case you were wondering?  The person whose calls you always take – that’s the relationship you’re in.”  Even after all of those losses she still didn’t realize the choices that she was making or that she had a choice to make, until the “devil” character, her boss, Miranda, in the film pointed it out to her by comparing Andi’s choices with her own.  Andi could see that Miranda’s choices were hurtful, were harmful, were devastating.  But until Miranda pointed out that Andi had made the same choices, Andi couldn’t see. Until the one who asked her to do these terrible things points out to her that she chose to do them in order to get ahead, she did not see them, could not see the choices she made as choices.

Jesus, in his temptations, knew he was being tempted.  Andi didn’t.  How much easier is it for us to slip down that slippery path when we are unaware of the path we are walking? I think about this for the alcoholic (or for anyone struggling with an addiction).  At one point the alcoholic person was just a person having his or her first social drink.  Most people in this culture do drink socially, and there is nothing wrong with that. But the alcoholic, at some point, went over the edge into the addiction, into the action which was damaging to him or herself and others. Which drink was it that was one too many? How was he/she supposed to know which drink that was? Was the line clearly marked in the sand that said, “you can go this far, but no farther?”  No.  Of course it was not.  I think the same is true with everything else that tempts us to take what we want at the cost to others (and to ourselves).  I don't think we always know that we are choosing something destructive, damaging, evil until it is too late.  Sometimes we don't even see it then.  Are we aware of how our buying choices affect people around the world?  Are we aware of what we do that damages the environment?  Do we know when we have taken more than our share and failed to care for others?

I think about the disciples.  In Matthew 16: 21-24, Jesus is talking about his coming crucifixion.  And Peter says to him out of love, compassion and probably fear, “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” to which Jesus replies, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”  Did Peter know he was making a mistake?  That he was offering something dangerous and ungodly to Jesus?  If we had been in Jesus’ shoes, would we have recognized the temptation that Peter was offering him as a thing of evil?

Frederick Buechner says in his book Wishful Thinking: a Theological ABC, under the term “Devil”:  “To take the Devil seriously is to take seriously the fact that the total evil in the world is greater than the sum of all its parts.  Likewise the total evil in yourself.  The murderer who says, ‘I couldn’t help it’ isn’t necessarily just kidding….”

            Whether or not you believe in a personified devil isn’t the issue here that I’m taking on today.  (If you are interested in discussing that, come to our bible study on Thursdays) But I am going to use that language today to talk about evil because I think it is helpful in acknowledging that evil is something bigger than ourselves.  Satan, or evil is known for cunning, for disguise, for being shady in the deals Satan makes with us.  Evil seems to offer us an ease from pain, a distraction from the struggles of life, it offers us comfort, enjoyment, fame, power, fortune. And it seems to sort of work for awhile, which is why people are willing to sell their souls for the distractions or “pleasures” or gifts that Satan gives.  If you drink, you don’t feel.  If you get into a numbing drug, or get high off of your latest purchase, or your latest achievement, these things distract from the emptiness, from the grief, from whatever it is we are trying to escape. If you get distracted by glamour or your job or your aim for a higher achievement, these too can work well as distractions from loneliness, from emptiness, from feeling unsure about who we are, what we are about, what we are doing.

These things, even the achievements that are escapes from what God calls us to, are bad or evil because they do take us away from God’s purpose for our lives, and because they hurt people, those who fall into the temptation most of all.  These distractions and these things we want that hurt us or others, these things that were supposed to take us out of pain end up causing us their own pain…addictions become slave drivers of their own that own us, eating up our money, our resources, our time and our attention, destroying our health, and sometimes again, destroying a lot more than that – relationships, work, etc. Destructive behavior destroys not only the other, but eventually our own beings as we care less for others, as we distance ourselves from love. Also, these pleasures can only distract for so long and then the pain comes back, usually more strongly since it has been “building up” in our systems un-dealt with.  We do have to deal with the pain and an addiction or distraction can only postpone those feelings, it can’t actually take them away or erase them.  At the point at which the distraction no longer works, we have to make another choice.  Do we find something else to distract us from the pain?  Do we find something worse or do we dig deeper into our addictions, into our avoidances, so we don’t have to feel?  Or do we come out and face the music?  Do we choose the hard road - the one that leads us through the pain but back to life?  I'm reminded of the studies that show us that everyone who has their basic needs met believes they would be "fine" if they only had twice the income they currently have.  Everyone.  Regardless of their net worth and current income thinks they would be okay if only they had twice what they have.  More doesn't make us happier.  It never has and it never will.  But we think it will.  And so we take more than is our need, more than is our share; and we hurt others by not giving what they need at a basic level.

“An old Cherokee told his grandson, “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all.  One is Evil.  It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego.  The other is Good.  It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth.”  The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”  The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed.”

The second scripture passage from today gives us an intimate glance into Jesus praying to God.  And he is asking for what we all might ask for in light of the tenacity, subtlety and cunning of evil.  Jesus prays to God for protection for us from temptation, from evil.  He prays our prayer. He prays for us. And yet we remain in the world. And we remain faced with temptations at times. The Good News in this is that when we do choose to abide in God, God will help us to see Evil and will help us to avoid or overcome temptations. When we choose to spend our time feeding the “good wolf” – spending time in prayer, with relationships that our healthy, with choices that are healthy, when we choose to spend our time productively and not ‘escaping” then we feed the good wolf within us and God helps us to win in the battle for our souls. 

In the end of the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, Andi does finally see the choices she is making and she chooses something different.  She chooses to walk away.  We always have this choice.  We always get the option to choose better next time.  On this last Sunday of Easter-tide we are blessed with the Good News of new life, a new choice, a new chance every time we choose for destruction and death.

Still, my prayer for all of us is that God would help us to discern the temptations. My prayer for all of us is that we, with God’s help, might have the strength to say “no” in the face of those temptations. My prayer for all of us is that we have the courage to feed the good wolf, no matter how painful to at times, and to rely on God’s protection even in the times of struggle when Satan is most near, most tempting, most cunning.

Sunday's Sermon - Continuing Matthew 25: visiting the sick

John 9:1-7

Luke 9:1-6

Matthew 25:31-46

Today we continue our study of Matthew 25, focusing on caring for or visiting the sick.  We, as a community, are very good at this. Through our Deacons and through others do a wonderful job of visiting the sick.  Others in our congregation are constant care-givers for family, for friends.  Others volunteer and work in care-giving professions.  We visit people at home, we visit people in the hospital, we visit people going through rehab.  And we do more than visit.  We pray with people, we care for people, we spend time with them, we give them rides, we listen.  We genuinely care about our people who are struggling, and we offer our presence and anything else we know how to offer.  As much as if not more than any of the other things on Matthew’s list, we do this caring for the sick and we do it well.  That is something you should feel really proud of.  Even if you can’t or don’t do this as an individual, as a community we are amazing in our care for others. 

But we know that others don’t always do this well: I’ve shared this story before, but think it is especially relevant for today: At one of the churches where I served, the congregants were intimately involved with a program that served the homeless.  Through our work and through our time with the homeless people in our community, we developed a very close relationship with one homeless man in particular.  This man was very loving, very giving, very caring.  He began attending our church and when he did so, he offered to run our sound system, he helped with the gardening, and he was always on hand to help us in any way.  He was not unintelligent, but he was a severe alcoholic who could not seem to get through the disease to a place where he could give up drinking.  He would give it up for a week or two and then something would happen and he would be drinking again.  We saw him fight for his life against this disease and we saw him losing the battle.  At one point in our relationship with George, his drinking led him to fall and to hit his head very seriously on the street.  The police found him hours later and took him to the local hospital.  His injuries, especially to his brain, were very serious and he was admitted for long term hospitalization and rehabilitation.  However, when the nurses and doctors at the hospital came to understand that he was a homeless, income-less, resource-less man, they gave up caring for him.  He remained at the hospital for quite a while, because he was unable to walk a straight line, he could not speak clearly and had very little control over his movements.  But in large part he was at the hospital for so long because they would not provide the care to get him to a place where they could discharge him.  The only time that George really received any attention – the only time he would be brought his meals even – was when one of us was there to insist on it.  This was a “Christian” hospital, and the doctors and nurses who were hired to work there were, we were told, people of faith.  But they did not see the contradiction in their faith when they served their charges according to their resources, rather than according to their needs. 

This is NOT how Jesus acted.  And it is not what Jesus calls us to do.  Despite the reaction of those around him, including his disciples, Jesus found time to be present with “the least of these” every time.  He gave of his healing, of his energy, of his attention, even to those who didn’t somehow “rank” or “deserve” it. 

We brought George food.  We sat with him.  We fought for him with the medical personnel.  We cared for him.   Five years ago I learned that he had died.  He was in his 50s, and while he remained a homeless man struggling with alcohol addiction until the end, his funeral was well attended by those of that congregation who had loved him, visited him, provided care for him.  And again, while he did not heal from his struggle with alcoholism, we were helped in our service towards him.

I think the hardest sick people to visit with, using this understanding of “sickness” as simply people who are hurting, broken, injured in body, spirit, mind or soul, are those who are struggling with mental illness or with any other kind of emotional pain.  When people are in emotional pain, we often try to fix it and if we can’t, we struggle to be around it. We don’t know what to say to people in emotional pain.  We want it to go away.  I hope this is improving, but I remember all too well going to the memorial service for a friend whose husband had just died and having another friend say to me, “Well, we need to just tell her to get over it.  Maybe we should ignore it and try to set her up with someone else right away.”  This not only showed a total lack of understanding about grief, I think more importantly, it showed the speaker’s discomfort with another person’s pain when he couldn’t fix it. 

I’m reminded of a Joan of Arcadia episode in which a young man who had been paralyzed through a car accident was being protected by his parents from having to discuss what he had been through.  They kept shielding him from ever needing to talk about it.  At one point he came in on them in a heated discussion about the accident.  They immediately grew quiet and said, ““Kevin, you shouldn’t have to go through this again.”

His response though was wise, brilliant and insightful for all of us.  He said, “But I have to.  Don’t take this away from me.” 

Going through healing is necessary for all of us, whether we are struggling with physical problems, with emotional issues, with a crisis, with whatever it is that we face.  Standing with others going through those experiences, visiting those who are sick or struggling or in pain, just being with others in their hard times… these do not only bring healing for the ones we stand with, these actions bring us healing as well.

This morning I found myself reflecting on a conversation I had had with a member of my previous congregation.  It was over the question of whether or not God ever gives us more than we can handle.  I don’t think God hands us the tragedies and traumas of life.  And I do think that LIFE does sometimes give us more than we can handle.  We know this by the rate of suicides in this country.  But also, we’ve all meant shell people – people who are so bitter, so worn down by life that there is no compassion left within them.  These are the people we are most called to care for, to try to be God’s hands and feet, moving them through and beyond their pain.  But in this particular conversation, I said, “wounds always heal with scars.” To which my parishioner responded, “yes, but scar sites are much stronger than the flesh around them”.  Okay, if healing is done well this is true.  Bones heal much stronger, scars on our skin are made of tougher material.  But when they don’t heal correctly, when scabs are picked at and allowed to fester, healing does not happen.  Again, we have a call to help one another through those times of bad injuries to our body, to our soul.  But we are also called to remember that it is we who are healed through the process of caring for one another.

But today I want to take this a little bit deeper:

Frederick Buechner says this about healing:

The Gospels depict Jesus as having spent a surprising amount of time healing people.  Although, like the author of Job before him, he specifically rejected the theory that sickness was God’s way of getting even with sinners, he nonetheless seems to have suggested a connection between sickness and sin, almost to have seen sin as a kind of sickness.  Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” he said.  “I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” … It is significant also that the Greek verb sozo was used in Jesus’ day to mean both to save and to heal, and soter could signify either savior or physician.”

So I want to take a slightly different look at it and instead spend some time focusing on the truth that the sick we care for, when we care for the sick, are, once again, ourselves.  We are the ones in need of healing, we are the ones in need of growth and healing, all of us, and the prescription that we are given for those challenges, for our scars and scabs that won’t heal on their own, for our human illness is to follow Jesus. 

               We see this clearly in today’s passage, but perhaps we see it even more clearly in other passages.  The passage we read from John that talks about Jesus healing the blind man ends with the following chastisement of the Pharisees:  Jesus said, “I have come into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind.”  Some Pharisees who were with him heard what he said and asked, “Surely we aren’t blind, are we?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t have any sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

               A similar thing happens with the man Jesus heals who is deaf and mute.  In the book of Mark, Jesus cures this man and those around him prove themselves instead to be the ones who fail to really hear and fail to speak truth or wisdom.  We all know of people who won’t or can’t see.  Of course, they probably accuse us of the same thing.  And the reality is that because there are always layers and layers of truth, and because we always understand, interpret and see truth from our own perspectives, not one of us has the whole picture.  Not one.  All of us have areas of blindness, areas of deafness.  We all do.  Together we have a much better picture of the truth, but even then, people lie, people hide things.  There will always be areas of blindness.  But the problem is, those areas of blindness create illness within us, as a people, as well as as individuals.  We lose understanding and compassion for the other when we cannot see their perspective.  We lose unity and our ability to grow and work together when we cannot see from their point of view. It creates in our culture, in our world, illness, dis-ease.  But I would say that is true within us as individuals too.  When we are angry, it is we ourselves we are harming (remember – anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other to die).  We are injured and made ill by our refusal or inability to see or hear.

Who are the sick?  Who are the blind?  Who are the deaf?  It is shown again and again through scripture that the blind are often those who will not see.  The deaf are those who refuse to hear.  Our scriptures show us in these passages and others that the sick are often those who physically appear the healthiest, but who live lives that are not godly.  The passage from Matthew, as we read it today, gives us the cure, invites us into the health that Jesus offers.  We find that health by doing what Jesus asks – by caring for one another, by understanding at the deepest level that we are all connected, all one, all so intimately united by God’s love that we literally are healing ourselves and feeding ourselves and caring for ourselves when we care for others.  When we come to understand another person’s point of view, our blindness is listened.  When we can hear other people’s fears, hopes, thoughts and feelings, our deafness is lessened.  As a country we need to hear each other better and see each other more fully.  But this starts with individuals.  Can we hear and see one another?  Can we work on our own healing, by visiting others who are just as blind but who need to be heard, who need to be loved, through that blindness? 

Our challenge, then, is this: to remember we all have areas of blindness, we all are in need of healing.  Not one of us sees or hears with completeness.  Not one of us therefore are completely well.  And so when we care for each other, even those who may not appear to need our care, but need it just as much, we are also doing it for Jesus. 

My prayer for all of you is that as you care and love others, you feel God’s healing hand caring for you as well.  That you experience God’s touch on your heart as you touch the hands and minds of those who are sick.  That you know Jesus love for you, as a person struggling with the human illness, even as you offer love to those who struggle with human diseases around you.  In the name of the one who loves you into being and into wholeness and into healing we pray.  Amen.

"Getting" What We've Done or Lessons from Jane Austen Part I

My favorite book and movie of all time is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.  It is a good soothing movie for me, a break from the realities of the real world, and funny to boot.  So after a really long, full week, if I really need a break from everything, the A&E 5 hour version of Pride and Prejudice gets put into the DVD player for an afternoon of pure laziness and recuperation. A wonderful way to relax. Still, there is one part of it that always irritates me.  Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 when puritan values still presided. Lydia, the youngest of the Bennett sisters in the story, ran off with the horrible, though handsome and charming Mr. Wickam.  She believed he wanted to marry her, which he didn't.  And so, in order to avoid throwing her entire family into disgrace (which is why giving you the period of time in which this was written is important), this horrible man with whom she had been living is "bought". In other words, he was paid substantial money to marry her because what she had done, living with a man to whom she is not married, would have left her a disgraced woman, banished from all good society as well as casting disrepute on her entire family, making marriage for her sisters all but impossible, leaving the entire family in a state of ridicule and shame. I'm not interested in arguing the various pros and cons of the morals of that time; in the story world, this makes sense for the time in which it was written.

But what drives me crazy is that Lydia NEVER GETS IT.  She has no comprehension for the scandal she put her family through.  She comes home married to this terrible man, and rather than expressing gratitude, apology or humility in the face of her actions, she is simply proud, boastful and even self-righteously snobby towards her now "lesser" unmarried sisters. She has no idea, none at all, of the stress and humiliation, of the shame and fear which she put her family through. She does not know how close she came to ending up a street woman, with no husband, ever, for the rest of her life (and again, in those days, that would have been doom for her).  She can't comprehend how close she came to ruining the dreams and hopes of all her family. She is not grateful for their sacrifices and has no comprehension of what they are. It bugs me no end that she does not begin to understand how she has hurt others, that she never apologizes because she has no sense of what she has done, that instead of a healthy dose of self-reflection and humility, she is proud and feels superior to her sisters. They allow her this ridiculous attitude, never bothering to point out to her her faults, never challenging the horrible behavior because they know she would never get it anyway.  There are never any consequence for the damage she did. And I have to admit, for all my talk about forgiveness, letting go, not needing revenge or seeking vengeance, this bothers me.   Her story book sisters forgive her, but I struggle to do the same.  Everyone goes on to live wonderful happy lives, but I remain irritated that she never gets it. I want justice, in the sense that I at least want her to feel some remorse, some humility around what she has done. And the fact that she is incapable of those feelings threatens my sense of what is just.

One of the gifts of Jane Austen is that she captures human behaviors, attitudes, and feelings well. There are people just like Lydia who never can "get" it.  I don't ever want to be one of those people, though I'm certain I, too, have blind spots at times. We all do.  It is easier for most of us to recognize those faults in others. I encounter, as we all do, those who tend to be the most privileged folk, those whose lives are comfortable and who cannot see or appreciate the sacrifices others have made so that they might have the comfortable lives they claim. There appears to be very little justice where they are concerned. They get where they are by stepping on the backs of others without realizing the hurt, harm and damage they cause. They won't, or can't, look at how they've injured others. That's just part of the life we live here. Life isn't fair.

But eventually we have to let go of our need for other people to be brought to justice or we will be consumed by our own anger, frustration, need for vengeance and living in the past. We have to choose instead to strive for peace and good and justice in all we do, this day and every day, regardless of the past. We have to let go of our judgments and condemnations of others, and begin to be more self-reflective on what we have done that we might not want to look at, how we can change so that we hurt others less, and what we can do differently that will make life better for everyone we encounter. And, like Lydia's family, we can keep working towards the highest good for the other, even when they refuse to get it, even when their actions cause us to suffer, even when they are unaware of it. We can choose to act with love, peace and integrity since we are called to do nothing less.  And, as hard as it is, we can strive to leave the justice of it up to God.  After all, as Romans 12:19 says it, "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge."  I don't tend to see or believe that God is wrathful.  Rather, I think God really understands us at our deepest level and has compassion, even for the dumb mistakes we make.  But at the point where the injustices of life simply feel too much, perhaps we can let go of them for a time, remembering it isn't ours to "fix" anyway.  Not easy.  But necessary for our own peace of mind, for our own growth.  When we are focused on others, there is no room to look at ourselves.  The opposite is also true.  When we focus on growing ourselves, we usually have a whole lot less time or space inside to judge others.  We are called through our faith, not to judge or try to "fix" others while helping ourselves, but instead to work to fix ourselves while helping others. It's a whole lot harder.  But it will also lead us more fully into wholeness, a wholeness that I believe to be contagious for those with open hearts and open eyes.