Marlin & Sally in Jerusalem

Friday Prayers

      

¶ The Lord GOD helps me;
        therefore I have not been disgraced;
    therefore I have set my face like flint,
        and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
     he who vindicates me is near.
     Who will contend with me?
        Let us stand up together.
     Who are my adversaries?
        Let them confront me.
     It is the Lord GOD who helps me; (Is. 50-7-9a).

¶ Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11).

... but they kept shouting, "Crucify, crucify him!" (Luke 23:12).

¶ Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress;
        my eye wastes away from grief,
        my soul and body also.
        For my life is spent with sorrow,
        and my years with sighing;
        my strength fails because of my misery,
        and my bones waste away.
 
         ¶ I am the scorn of all my adversaries,
        a horror to my neighbors,
        an object of dread to my acquaintances;
        those who see me in the street flee from me.
        I have passed out of mind like one who is dead;
        I have become like a broken vessel.
        For I hear the whispering of many—
        terror all around!—
        as they scheme together against me,
        as they plot to take my life.
 
         ¶ But I trust in you, O LORD;
        I say, “You are my God.”
        My times are in your hand;
        deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.
        Let your face shine upon your servant;
        save me in your steadfast love” (Psalm 31-9-16).

Let us pray to the Lord.

Terror, Lord GOD, terror is all around us.  Terror in Iraq, as, in the name of religion, brother murders brother, and innocence dies along with the innocent who daily die right before our very eyes.  Terror in Gaza, as children drown in the collapse of a cesspool – their tiny mouths and noses stuffed with human refuse.  Terror, Lord God, terror is all around us.  Who thinks of repairing a cesspool when there is land to be won and power to be gained?  Who indeed? If not us, then who, indeed?  What do you think of us, O Lord GOD?  Remember not our sins for our sins are many and our sins are egregious.  The smell of our sins rises to heaven like the stink of the untreated cesspools of Gaza.

Men who name themselves after the name of Jesus preach violence and death instead of peace and reconciliation, and the rest of us are silent.  O Lord God, we are silent!  Why are our greatest Christian leaders silent?  No politics in the church, dear Lord?  No talk of peace?  No sermons about justice?  Lord GOD of Lord CHRIST, forbid us from hiding our heads in the sand.  Lift up our eyes in this week of all other weeks, and show us your Son on a rugged cross.  Reveal to us the ugly power and the ugly politics that nailed him there.  Give us eyes to see the disciples run away and hide.  Give us ears to hear Jesus plaintive cry, “Why am I alone up here?”  Terror in the church, terror in the Knesset, terror in the Congress, terror in the White House, terror in the Palaces of Arab Kings and Princes, terror in Ramallah -- terror, Lord God, terror is all around us.

“Crucify, crucify him.”

No, Lord GOD, not this time, not this week, and not us.  We do not join the crowd to call for the shedding of innocent blood.  This week, we who follow Jesus, pick up our own little crosses and follow YOU down the lonely path of innocent suffering.  We will live for YOU!  We will die for YOU!  We will not kill in YOUR name, or accept any teaching that says we should.

Protect the innocent today, O LORD, as well as those who put their lives on the line to protect the innocent today.  Grant courage to those in power and with power, so that they will use the power in their hands to care for the widow, the orphan and the alien within our borders.

Lord GOD, let us stand together with you in tirelessly working for the redemption of the whole world.  Lord GOD, may your enemies be our enemies as well, and may we know them by their fruit -- rotting and stinking, like the cesspools of Gaza.

In JESUS’ name we pray.

Amen.

In Whose Name?

Today, Wednesday, March 28, with great fanfare, a group of Christian Zionists will present to the Israeli Knesset the following “letter of repentance.”

To the people of Israel,

On behalf of millions of Christians who love Israel and pray for her, we would like to repent before you for crimes committed against the Jewish people throughout history in the name of “Christianity.” We have sinned against G-d and against you. We have not lived according to the mandate given to us by the scriptures; to love G-d with all of our hearts, and to love our fellow man as we love ourselves. May G-d grant you the ability to forgive us and may we be brothers and sisters again.

For to you we owe much. Through you G-d gave us the Holy Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets and the revelation of the one true G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is because of the truth of the Holy Scriptures that we have a heritage, a destiny, a hope and a compass for living.

Please know that there will always be a strong number of Christians who love Israel and will stand with her and “seek the peace of Jerusalem.”

What a treasure you are in the sight of our G-d! You are His chosen – the “apple of His eye.”

“The L-rd bless you and keep you;
The L-rd make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you.
The L-rd lift up His countenance upon you, and give you PEACE.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

"Any Christian who is an ardent lover of the Bible will be thrilled with this event," said Pastor David Decker, president of the Covenant Alliance, a Christian Zionist organization based in Jerusalem.

Wow!  Really?  Thrilled?  I don’t think so.

I understand why you left the “o” out of God and Lord.  I know that you want to demonstrate to the Jewish representatives in the Knesset your respect for the rabbinic practice of not speaking or writing out the full name of God.  You want to show our Jewish friends that you too revere the name of God.  But please explain to me why you left the name of “Jesus” out of your letter?  It's the "stumbling block" thing, right?  And you've dealt with the "stumbling block" thing by removing Jesus, right?  Okay, that might work for our Jewish friends, but where does that leave us?

Actually, you don’t have to explain it to me.  I know the reason.  It is because you instinctively know that while Jesus would have applauded your desire to repent to the Jewish people, his people, for crimes that the church has committed against the Jewish people, you know that in presenting this to the State of Israel you have stepped over a line that Jesus himself would have respectfully stayed behind.  It is one thing to repent of crimes done to the Jewish people, but it is quite another to equate the State of Israel, made up of Jewish people, Arab Christians, Muslims, and the Druze, with those crimes.  Let's just get this one little thing straight, okay?  The State of Israel is not "the apple of God's eye."   The Jewish people, maybe, along with those engrafted in through the name of Jesus, perhaps -- but a State?  No!  You cross a very important line here and you cross that line without the support of the Bible, or G-d, or Jesus, who was G-d in the flesh.  Every ardent lover of the Bible will stumble over your warped theology, and pray that your bad theology doesn't cause the whole region to eventually fall.

The real purpose of your letter is to pledge your allegiance to the flag of Israel and to swear your unconditional support of the State of Israel.  The Jerusalem Post understands this, and so describes your letter as “a ‘love letter to Israel’ declaring their (your) unequivocal support for the State of Israel.”

So I applaud your passion to repent, and I applaud as well your decision to leave Jesus’ name out of it.

One hundred years from now, the authors of this letter will all be gone, along with me, and everyone else reading this post.  A group of Jewish people will write a letter of repentance to a group representing Palestinians around the world.  This letter will repent of crimes committed against the Palestinian people in the name of the L-rd.  Our great grandchildren, now grown and with children of their own, will wonder where followers of Jesus were in midst of all this.  Someone will dig up this “letter of repentance” presented to the State of Israel on March 28, 2007, and they will ponder over what it means.  The good news is that they will not find the good name of Jesus anywhere in this letter.  What conclusions they draw from this omission will be theirs’ to discern.  But let’s hope this glaring hole gives them pause to consider that maybe Jesus’ name is not in the letter, because the letter has little or nothing to do with Jesus, and that Jesus has little or nothing to do with this letter.

Probably they will simply draw the conclusion that here is another case of “zeal for the L-rd” going too far, too fast, and without too much concern about how it affects the world so loved by God that he sent a "love letter" of his own.  But why bring that up at a time like this?

Here's one more bit of good news about this letter.  When my great grand children see it -- my name won't be on it either.

Mickey's Left Ear

A Palestinian family is homeless today.  Israeli bulldozers, supported by the Israeli army, came early on a Sunday morning and leveled their home.  This family of 12, father, mother and ten children, was given a half hour to gather up what they could and get out of the house – 30 minutes, 1,800 seconds to decide what to hang on to, and what to let loose of – each second counted.  The caterpillar rolled in and over the walls of this 60-year-old house and everything is lost.  The kitchen cabinets that the man and his father had painstakingly constructed lay in splinters on the ground.  The tiles for the floor, each one laid with such pride and precision, are now crushed and scattered across the rocky ground.  Pictures are salvaged out of broken frames.  A 7 year-old girl sits cross-legged on the ground trying to piece together a plate with a picture of Mickey Mouse imprinted on it.  She can’t find Mickey’s left ear.

On the hill above their home is the illegal Israeli settlement named Ma'ale Adumim. This is the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank.  Nearly 35,000 Jewish people live there now.  It is, in area, about the size of Tel Aviv.  Believe it or not, most of the inhabitants of Ma’ale Adumim aren’t even aware that they are living on Palestinian land.  They are “economic settlers.”  They are families looking for affordable housing.  The government of Israel, partially funded by the United States, gives these families a great rate to entice them to live in this lush and beautiful place – swimming pools, parks, strip malls, Starbucks.

You might ask the little girl looking for Mickey’s left ear what she thinks of this “city on a hill.”  A new road was built, a settler road – meaning no Palestinians allowed – and this road is too close to this little girl’s home – 50 meters, 55 yards is too close for Israeli comfort.  The Palestinian home is a security risk to the settler families driving back and forth to Jerusalem in their four-wheel drive Subarus, shiny BMWs and black Hummers.  There are guidelines for these matters.  The settlers must be kept safe.   The house must go.  No compensation.  No legal process.  150 meters is the standard set for separation of the races.   50 meters is close enough for the settlers to see their neighbor’s faces, and so, the walls come tumbling down.

Where in the world is Jesus?

“Ah,” says my scholar son, “Jesus is not where you think.”

“No?” I say. “You mean Jesus isn't watching from the patio of a 300,000-dollar condo on the hill?”

“No, he is not.  'Jesus has ascended into heaven, and is sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.'  Or at least these are some of the words we use to describe Jesus' absence.”

“Sorry to say, son, but if you are suffering like this family, then heaven seems a long way away.”

“Well, the fact is that Jesus had his shot as a human, and if you stop to think about it, it was a long shot wasn't it? -- expecting humankind to embrace God in the flesh and blood of Jesus.  And we didn't embrace him, did we?  Do we?  That's the Holy Week scandal, isn't it?  Now it's our turn, our shot, our time, so to speak.  And I think we are expected to follow after Jesus.  And I think we are expected to speak for Jesus.  We say, ‘This is wrong.’  And therefore, because we say it is wrong, then ‘it is wrong.’”

“That’s a reach, son.”

“No dad, it’s not a reach.  Jesus left us with his teachings – his words and actions in the face of situations just like this family's story.  Jesus sent the Spirit, his Spirit, to be in our midst.  The Jews have Torah.  We have Torah as well, and the witness of Jesus along with it.  We look at this kind of situation and we speak into it.  We the church, the community of Jesus, we speak into this and we declare it to be immoral, and therefore, because we say so, it is immoral.  Someone else, somewhere else, might say that this kind of activity is acceptable behavior.  They might declare that Israel can do whatever she needs to in order to take the land, because the land belongs to the Jewish people.  But we say something different.  We say that an immoral act is immoral no matter what the end game, the hopeful outcome.  And here on earth, we have the authority of the risen Jesus: ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ (John 20:23).  Those are pretty strong words by Jesus.  Demolishing that home is sin and we should not forgive it."

“And if we are silent?”

“Then Jesus is silent as well.”

“So, you’re telling me that Jesus is not helping that little girl look for Mickey’s left ear?”

“Well dad, I don’t know.  I wasn’t there.  Did anybody help her?”

No, actually, everyone just stood and watched.  And that’s the problem, isn’t it?  We’re all just standing and watching.

Friday Prayers

“I am about to do a new thing;
        now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
    I will make a way in the wilderness
        and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19).

“ . . . but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13b-14).

“Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me’” (John 12:7-8).

Psalm 126

    When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
        we were like those who dream.
    Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
        and our tongue with shouts of joy;
    then it was said among the nations,
        “The LORD has done great things for them.”
    The LORD has done great things for us,
        and we rejoiced.
 
     ¶ Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
        like the watercourses in the Negeb.
    May those who sow in tears
        reap with shouts of joy.
    Those who go out weeping,
        bearing the seed for sowing,
    shall come home with shouts of joy,
        carrying their sheaves.

Let us pray.

Mighty God, hear us as we pray. 

God who was, remind us again that once upon a time you were the only life that was, and that you spoke into lifelessness, and then, and only then, there was life.  For this first of all new things, we praise you O Lord!

God who was, you called out a people for yourself, and you gave them your own good name to have as a sign of your intimacy and friendship.  You gave father Abraham and mother Sarah a vision as big and bold as all the stars in the heavens, a vision of a land where justice and righteousness would be the way of life for all who lived in that land, all who visited that land, and a model for all who looked at that land from afar.  You gave them this vision and along with the vision you gave all of your power to make it real for them.  You gave the promise of your presence, and every good gift to come with this best of all gifts.  I will be with you, you said to them.  I will be with you.  And you were.  You walked with Abraham and with all his sons.  You walked them out of slavery.  You gave a law to live by, a law that was designed to be freedom not just for them, but freedom for all.  We thank you for this next new thing.

God who was, in Jesus you did yet one more new thing, and this the most amazing of all new things.  You came as a baby.  You lived with us.  You died by our hand, and for our sake.  You were raised before us.  We stand in awe of you, and of all these new things that you have done.  We praise you, O Lord!

God who is, give us eyes to see what you are doing in our midst.  Give us ears to hear good news when good news is spoken in our hearing.  Give us hearts to yearn for, and work toward, the vision that you set before Abraham and Sarah, Elijah, Moses, and all the prophets, a vision of faithfulness and righteousness kissing in the fondness of reunited lovers.  Do this for us.  Do this to us.  Do this in spite of us.  By the power of your Holy Spirit enliven within us the call made clarion through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

God, who is to come, come now we pray.  Come this very moment.  Come in all your might and glory.  Come with healing in your wings for we are deathly ill and unaware of our own last gasps.  Come and humble the arrogant, those who take pride in the death and destruction of the widow, orphan and alien – who openly brag about their power to give life, and take life away.  Come and clean out the ears of those who will not hear, will not even pretend to listen to any voice outside of those like-minded.  Come and strengthen the meek, those who daily bend to pick up a cross and follow you down the path of innocent suffering that is ultimately the world’s only hope for redemption.

God who was, is and is to come, turn our Lenten tears into shouts of unexpected, joyful resurrection.  Surprise us again with new awareness of the new thing you did in the person of Jesus.

We pray in the name of Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Resist

“What are we to do?”

The room fell silent at this question, because the one asking was one who suffers.  We are a study group made up of Palestinian Christians and people out of the International community.  There are 8 – 10 people there.  I’m presenting today out of a paper written by someone else.  The paper is about the "principalities and powers,” and the hopelessness in the struggle against them.

The woman is in her middle to late sixties, maybe older – even a pinhead like myself knows better than to ask.  She is highly educated, a leader in her world.  She doesn’t smile easily, and behind her dark eyes there is a deep, deep sadness that wells up from her heart and soul -- the eyes of Jesus, I often think.

“What are we to do?”

Silence.  None of us is so bold or arrogant to pretend to tell this woman, and the beleaguered people she represents what they should do in the face of such oppressive odds against their very existence as a people in this place.  And as much as some might like to think I’m exaggerating, I am not.  The Palestinian people as a whole are being pushed off the land of their ancestors, and this is especially true of Palestinian Christians.  Their number declines with each passing day.   Palestinian Christian parents are constantly thinking of a way to get their child out of this place.

It’s doubly tough being a Palestinian Christian in Israel/Palestine.  On the one hand you have much in common with your neighbors.   Like the Muslims here, you are Middle Eastern and Arab.  You share at least a part of your Holy Scriptures with your Jewish cousins.  Abraham is your father too.  You like living here.  You see this as your home.  It's always been your home.  You don’t want to leave.  And like almost everyone here, you are frightened of the others who are here.  See? – a lot in common.

However, you also have much that you do not share in common with your neighbors.  You follow Jesus.  You salute Jesus as Lord, and you neither stand nor bow before any other.  You are very much a minority in this opinion of Jesus, this stubborn loyalty to this stubborn Son of God.  Your theology is markedly different as well.  A Jewish settler from Hebron said, “Turning the other cheek is not Jewish.”  I’m not sure every Jewish person would agree with that, but still, there it is in black and blue and blood red.  The violence in Gaza and other parts of the West Bank is based as much on revenge theology as anything else.  Christians, like this woman, speak up for non-violence, for forgiveness as the way to life, and for the redemptive power in innocent suffering.  In order words, she and her sisters and brothers speak up for Jesus.  And for their efforts they are mocked and marginalized.

“We have little or no power,” she declares.  “What are we to do?  We want to stay.  We want to work with our Muslim and Jewish neighbors to build a good place for all of us.  But we worry about our children and grand children.  What are we to do?”

Finally, because I am the moderator of this little group, and now everyone is looking at me to say something, anything would be better than nothing, is the sentiment.

“Resist the devil and the devil will run from you” (James 4:7), is what I finally say. “Resist, resist, resist,” I repeat, “and never stop resisting.”

The woman drops her chin to her chest and begins to nod in agreement. “Yes,” she says, “that is what we must do, of course.” Then she looks up at me, and with a soft voice, so soft I can barely hear her, she says, “The devil doesn’t run very fast, does he?”

“No,” I say.  “Nor does he run very far.”

Ah yes, but let us be clear on one thing: Jesus doesn’t run.  Jesus stays all the way through suffering and death, and into resurrection.  Or else, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Of course, that’s easy for me to say.  I’m not Palestinian.  I do not suffer.  But I am here with them, and when asked I ought to have something to say.  So mostly, I say what has already been said by those faithful suffering servants who have gone before us.  So today, I’m grateful to James and Paul for giving me a word to speak.

And I am grateful to a devout Christian woman for having the trust and courage to ask the hard questions that only come out of suffering and sacrifice.

Later, when I could talk with her alone, I said, “I’m here to listen to you, to learn from you so that I can teach Christians in the United States about what it means to suffer for Jesus.  Because the truth is, we are clueless about that.”  (And what is worse, we are clueless about being clueless.)

Through quivering lips, she said: “Then you’d better listen now, or you’d better plan to move to Canada or Latin America or somewhere else, because soon there will not be any of us left in this place.”

Go and be Made

We were halfway to the top when I remembered that I had forgotten to lock the trunk of our car.  The car was parked in an isolated area and the trunk held our bags and belongings.  Rather than end the hike for all of us, we decided that I should run down the mountain, retrieve the passport that one of our number had left in the car, lock the trunk and then catch up with the rest on the mountaintop.

It was a gift, I tell you, and as I rushed down the slope of Mount Arbel, I was praising and thanking God for the opportunity.  In fact, if you had seen my face then, you would have seen mostly teeth and gum as I grinned my way down to the car.  The walk back up was entirely at my own pace, one that intended to climb without stopping, and that is exactly what I did.  I marched up that mountain, catching up with the group as they rested on the last leg of the move upward.  It was wonderful.

Made in the image of God we are made to respond best when challenged to be at our best.  We love to be pushed, even as we resist the pressure.

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’” (Matt. 28:18-20).

The them, of course, is us.  And the “Go” is still the challenge.  For those of us who are on the way, the challenge is to keep going, even when we don’t think we’re getting very far.  Set a steady pace and keep on following Jesus up the mountain – and sometimes the mountain seems awfully steep.  For the rest of us, it is the first step that is the hardest.  Whether it is across the room, across the street, or across the world, “going” can be tough.  And staying is not always easy either.  But when we “go” then we find that we are able to make some progress in the “making disciples” part of the command from Jesus.  This is so mostly because the “going” is phase one in the process of “making” us a disciple, which might be why Jesus urged us to go in the first place.

So “go” and be made a disciple.  Then you can begin to teach others to do the same.

See?  It’s really not that hard.  And the rewards are stunning.

A Brother in Jesus

“He is my brother in Jesus.”

“No, that is not proper.  You say, ‘He is my brother in Christianity.’”

“Well, no, that’s not what I say, ‘I say he is my brother in Jesus.’”

“But Jesus is a man.  You can’t say that someone is your brother in Jesus.  You must say that he is your brother in the faith, so he is your brother in Christianity.”

“But,” I defend, “Christians do say that someone is a brother or a sister in the person of Jesus.  That is what we say about each other.  What do you say about someone who is your brother in the faith?

“I say, ‘He is my brother in Islam.’  That is the proper way to introduce someone who is of the same faith as you.”

And the conversation ends there for now.  He is my barber.  He is a devout Muslim.  He has strong opinions about his own faith tradition, and in some ways, like so many here on both sides of Christianity – come before (Judaism) and came after (Islam) – he has even stronger opinions about my faith tradition.  His problem with my introduction of my friend is the same problem that the prophet Muhammad had with Christianity – too many faces for God.  In fact, both Muslims and Jews share a common problem with Christianity and that problem is that Christians worship too many gods – two too many to be exact.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit represent a fatal division of the one God of Abraham.

As Christians, we share many, indeed I’d say most truths in common with both Judaism and Islam.  Or at least I would be safe to say that somewhere along the faith spectrum in all three faith traditions there is a strain in each that would agree with the one in the other two.  Take radical fundamentalism as an example.  Guess what, there are radical fundamentalists in all three faith traditions and each share common theology with the other two.  They are each exclusive, violent, end-time obsessed, and believe that murder and mayhem is acceptable behavior as long as it is in the name of their God and in accord with their interpretation of their version of holy scriptures.  Radical fundamentalists in Judaism, Christianity and Islam even use some of the same texts to justify their behavior.

Liberals, moderates, conservatives – each tradition has some of each and each share with the others some of the same theology and values.

However, God in the flesh-and-blood person of Jesus, well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?

Or is it?  See, I don’t think so.  I don’t think Jesus is a problem.  I think Jesus is the solution to the problem; the problem being that three of the world’s great faith traditions, monotheistic traditions that have so much in common, aren’t working in common for the common good of the common people, something God himself is uncommonly committed to doing. Lest we forget, each of the three religions lifts up God as the champion of the poor, the weak and the powerless. 

We each need to be right!  We each need to win! We each need to be the ONE!   See?  That’s the problem. 

And here’s where Jesus becomes a part of the solution. Jesus didn’t need to be the ONE.  He was the ONE, but he didn’t need to be.  This is important, I think.  Jesus struggled with his identity as the Son of God.  Jesus wrestled with it in the wilderness and Jesus constantly worked to discern exactly what it meant for him to be who he was.  I find this comforting, by the way.  Anyone who speaks casually about being God is someone to run from and not follow after. 

As I read the New Testament, it seems to me that Jesus was content to be a part of the whole, a part of the dialogue, a part of the solution – yes, and most importantly, Jesus was willing to partner with anyone else who wanted to be a part of the solution to the problem.  The problem being that the people God had called out to partner with him in the redemption of the world were mired down in the mud of needing to be set apart, special, unique, distinct, right and on the winning side.  That’s still the problem, and the way of Jesus, the way of humility, sacrifice and suffering, is still the solution.  With ego in check, God-in-flesh-and-blood-Jesus, moved through his world with conviction and grace.  He never forced anyone to follow him, and in fact, didn’t even ask everyone to do so.  Why not?  I am convinced that it is because Jesus didn’t need everyone to follow him.  Jesus needed a few, twelve to be exact, and those twelve to walk behind him with the same kind of determination and grace that came along with him as he walked through this wondrous world – a determination to save and not condemn, and a grace to love even those who hate.

Followers of Jesus could be the ones who seek to transform the world into the world God imagined into being on the very first day of creation.  We don’t need to be right.  We don’t need to win.  We don’t need to be the ONE!  We need to be in the right.  We need to be willing to lose in order to win.  And we need to be one with the one that we call Son of God.  If followers of Jesus could get our egos in check, then perhaps we could be the partner(s) that God desperately seeks to work with him in redeeming the world – bringing the world back to the Garden of Eden, the place where God lost his beloved partners the first time.

Evangelism

He works in India.

He is a physician.  He’s been in India so long that he is as much an Indian as anything else, more even. Missionary Kid.  Missionary Family.  Amazing people.  He is quiet, thoughtful, and funny – dry funny, deep funny, but funny.

He tells this story:  “I’m walking down the road one day and I walk past a farmer working in his little field.  Near him is his family shrine brimming over with dozens of gods.

“I ask the old farmer, ‘Which god do you worship?’  I think of this as engaging the man, a way of reaching out a little.  It might even be evangelism of a sort.”

My mostly Indian storyteller tells of the farmer’s response like this:  “He (the farmer) looks at me like I am an idiot, waves his hand high into the sky as if to say ‘All of God.  I worship all of God.’”

All of God is a lot, I think.  Maybe all of God is too much of God, or maybe all of God is not enough of God.  My friend says: “I didn’t know what to say so I just stood there looking at the god-filled shrine wondering where Jesus fits into all of this.  Does all of God include Jesus?  Is Jesus all of God?  Am I an idiot to even be asking these questions?”

“How did the conversation end?”  I ask.

“Oh,” he said.  “It hasn’t ended.  The old farmer and I will talk again.”  Then, with the tiniest of smiles, he adds, "Who knows, I might even learn something."

Ah yes, evangelism – now you see it; now you don’t.  It’s a little like already/not yet, the chicken or the egg.  It’s a process, a life-style.  There's a lot to learn about it, isn't there?

“Well, are you planting churches there in Palestine?”  A good man, a pastor, asked me this question.

“Well, no,” I say.

“Well, are you preaching the gospel to those folks?”

“Well, no, at least not in the way I think you mean the question to ask.”

“So what are you doing there then?”

“Well, talking with people, making friends, living right, standing alongside Palestinian Christians, encouraging them -- evangelism, I think.  What are you doing here in Holland, Michigan?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“No wait,” he said.  “You surprised me is all.  We’re preaching the gospel, planting churches, doing evangelism – you know? I didn’t mean anything by the question – really.”

Yeah you did, but “Okay,” I say.  “Thanks for the support.” And I mean it, I really do, but …

We’ll talk again.

Friday Prayers

Psalm 68:1-8:

Let God rise up, let his enemies be scattered;
        let those who hate him flee before him.
         As smoke is driven away, so drive them away;
        as wax melts before the fire,
        let the wicked perish before God.
         But let the righteous be joyful;
        let them exult before God;
        let them be jubilant with joy.
 
      ¶ Sing to God, sing praises to his name;
        lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds—
        his name is the LORD—
        be exultant before him.
 
     ¶ Father of orphans and protector of widows
        is God in his holy habitation.
        God gives the desolate a home to live in;
        he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
        but the rebellious live in a parched land.
 
     ¶ O God, when you went out before your people,
        when you marched through the wilderness,    Selah
        the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain
        at the presence of God, the God of Sinai,
        at the presence of God, the God of Israel.

Let us Pray:

Lord God Almighty, we bless and thank you for the gift of another day.  We stand in awe before your might and majesty and humbly thank you that you have included us in the great cause of redeeming the world.  Cloud Rider, Lightning Hurler, Thunder Maker, come and shake our world again, and do not stop until we sing in praise and beg for mercy.  Then, great God of grace, grant us mercy, and put us on the path of peace and reconciliation with friend and foe.  With eyes of fire, melt down our hard hearts, and mold them anew into hearts of flesh and blood, hearts that beat with compassion.

God who sees with endless eyes, give us eyes to see opportunities in this day to be the hands of Jesus to someone who needs a soft touch, and the foot of Jesus for someone who needs a swift kick.  Let us administer each with the reminder that one day we too will need both.

Lord God, Champion of orphans and widows, may we too be on the side of the poor and powerless.  Give us courage to speak and not be silent when we see children who are starving, and without a roof over their heads; when we see youth with angry eyes because they have no future; when we see women abused and oppressed and minorities held in darkness.  Make us feel enough guilt so that we move into action and finally do something, anything more than merely feel guilt.

Be present, Lord Jesus, and with all your healing balm.

Be present, Holy Spirit, and with all your power to turn us around.  Oh dear, sweet Spirit, please, oh please, turn us around.  Before it is too late for us and for this beautiful world that you so love, powerful Wind of God, turn us around.  Bring us first to our knees in repentance, and then to our feet in brave response.

Unite us to care about the poor.  Unite us to care less about ourselves.  Unite us to care about those people that you care about most.  Unite us to focus on those matters that matter most to you.

Be present in our midst, and let us know that it is you!

Amen!

The Body of Christ

(I wrote this at a retreat center in the mountains of Tuscany, Italy -- pictured here.  I had forgotten about it until yesterday when I preached and served Communion –Eucharist – in the English Speaking Congregation Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem Old City.)

It lay there on the tile floor worrying me to distraction.  It is a piece of bread flattened by the black-soled shoe of a pencil-thin, pious pastor carrying the Blood of Christ in his long, bony fingers.  (I use “pious” in the very best sense of the word – serious, devout, and convicted of the miracles that God is doing just now in this little Supper -- doing for us, to us and mostly in us.)

The size of a dime, this morsel of bread crumbled off the Communion loaf as another pastor, as portly as the second is not, walked Christ’s body around the circle of believers gathered in the upper room of a retreat center in Italy.  I saw it fall as I broke off a piece – careless was I with the Body of Christ.  Before I could do anything about it, the trailing pastor, carrying the chalice of wine, stepped on the bread.  Now, both these men had passed by me, and I stood looking at the battered piece of bread plastered there on the black and white tile.

“The body of Christ,” said a still, small voice somewhere near the center of my brain.

“No, just a piece of bread!” roared the voice of reason. 

But I am bothered by it, fretting over it, and can’t stop looking down at it. 

Chiding myself, I say to myself: “You are spending too much time with the Orthodox, the Catholics and the Lutherans.  Get a grip.  It’s just a smashed bit of leavened bread.  It’s nothing.  Let it be.”

“It’s Jesus,” small voice. 

“No! It is just bread,” voice of reason.

Finally, no longer able to tolerate the argument that is taking place inside my own head, I bend down and gently scrap up the bread, rolling it off the floor.  It forms into a pea-sized ball in my left hand.  I switch it over to my right hand, then back to my left – right, left, right again, the warm Body too hot to handle?

Now what? 

“Eat it,” small voice. 

“Toss it behind you,” voice of reason.

“I’ll put it back on the plate.  That’s what I’ll do.  I’ll just walk over there and put this little ball of bread back onto the communion platter.”  This is the Reformed voice speaking common sense into the situation. It’s not real in the sense that it is really flesh and blood, but real in the sense of “real presence.”  Now, be a good Reformed boy and just put it back.

The people are circled around the table.  We are singing.  It doesn’t feel right to just walk over and become noticed.  It’s not about me, after all.  I’ll wait until we are praying.

“Let us pray.”

Okay, opportunity knocks.  I quietly move forward, and then stop.  “This is not a good idea.  We are praying for crying out loud.  Go back to your place.”  Voice of God?  (Either that or my mother!  I often get those two confused.)

I put the little ball of bread in my pocket.  Good.  That’s good -- out of sight, out of mind.

“You put Jesus in your pocket,”  little voice. 

“Stop talking to him!” Voice of reason. 

“I am him – you – us.”  At the moment, an unholy trinity!

“Right.  Just be quiet.” That’d be all of me, I think.

“But we have the body of Jesus in the pocket of our jeans.”

I have a balled up, tiny piece of bread in my pocket.  This is not the body of Jesus.  I am Reformed.  This is about symbol.  The bread and the wine are the real presence of Jesus, that is true, but not like real as in really real.  Jesus is not in my pocket.  Jesus is in my heart, or some place near this source of blood and nourishment -- life.

I can’t stand it.  I reach in my pocket, take out the pea-sized bit of balled up bread, pop it in my mouth, and swallow it.  Done!  Jesus, out of my pocket, into my mouth, into my system, and that’s that.  It is finished!

“You just ate a piece of bread that you scraped up off the floor,” voice of reason.

“Might have been a part of the Body of Christ,” still voice that will not be stilled.

Time to leave, and all of me walk out together, greatly conflicted about what just happened in there, but feeling as if in some way or another, the Body of Christ is walking out with me – us.

Yesterday, Sunday, I served the bread of Communion in a church located in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem.  This church is only a good stone’s throw away from the probable place of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  As I broke off pieces of flat bread, handing each piece to the people who had gathered there to worship and partake, I began smiling broadly.  I’m sure the folks thought I was just happy to be serving them, and I was, of course.  But I was also thinking of the retreat, and the bread on the floor, and my conflicted self up there on the mountain.  I was thinking how orderly and decent and good it was to have a Reformed Church pastor administering Eucharist in a Lutheran Church.  The practical significance of this little drama, just simply made me happy.  I expect it made God happy as well.  Or at least my many selves have that to argue over for the rest of the week.

And by the way, 80% of the population of Gaza are having to depend on charity for food and water.  Most of the children of Gaza are undernourished and in a state of mental depression.  This does not make God happy, and whose going to argue with that?