A Messy Way Forward

Our country is in a mess. We are in great need of healing, of reconciliation.

A messy, humbling, slow way forward seems to be what the Holy Spirit is whispering in my ear – softly, but persistently. It is the way of confession, it is the way of repentance; it is the way of seeking forgiveness; it is the way of considering others over myself.

Some in the church will say, “I am not racist. I am not a bigot. None of my ancestors ever owned a slave. Why should I seek forgiveness?”

For my answer, I turn to the example of three Old Testament men of faith: Jeremiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah. In Jeremiah 14:20 the prophet prays, “We acknowledge our wickedness, LORD, and the guilt of our ancestors; we have indeed sinned against you.” Ezra prays in Ezra 9:6, “…and I said, “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens. ⁷ Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt.”

I am most moved by the example and words of Nehemiah.

“When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.  I said, “I beseech You, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. (Nehemiah 1:4-7 – emphasis mine)

I am moved, because Nehemiah was not actively disobeying. He was doing good things. But he identified with the sin of his people. He took ownership of not just his own errors, but the errors of his ancestors, the sin of his nation.

The greatest example of this identification with sinners is our Lord Himself. He took on flesh and carried my sin to the cross. He paid the price for my sin. He brought about reconciliation.

Until there is reconciliation in the church, there will never be reconciliation in our country. 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (emphasis mine) I need to humble myself. I need to seek God’s face. I need to turn from my wicked ways.

And so here is my way forward.

1) I will choose to identify with the sins of my ancestors. I will not try to justify the wrongs. I will seek God’s forgiveness for this sin.

2) I will not ignore or be quick to justify the offensive words and actions of my family, friends, and acquaintances, but I will gently point out the things that are hurtful toward others.

3) I will stop myself when I start to think, “Just get over it. You shouldn’t feel that way.”

And finally,

4) I will give my friends of other ethnicities permission to point out to me the things I say or do that are offensive. And when they do, I will not justify myself, but I will ask forgiveness.

I am challenging all of my friends to do the same. This straight crooked path is messy, but God promises that He will hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and heal our land.

Get Off My Foot! or Travon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and the Sins of a Nation

This is part one of a two-part blog. This is probably the most difficult topic I have ever attempted to tackle. This is probably going to offend many of my friends.

This was my post on Facebook yesterday.

Wanting to stay out of controversy, but the Holy Spirit is not letting me rest. Blog coming this evening, but in the meantime, just let me say...I am sorry. We taught our kids that when you step on someone's foot, whether you meant to or not, you say, "I am sorry." And if you didn't know you did it, you still say, "I am sorry." The offended person knows that they have been offended. They don't need statistics saying that more boys step on other boys' feet than boys step on girls' feet..." or "Well studies show that I don't step on your feet as much as I did before." They just need you to listen, feel remorse and say, "I am truly sorry." And so...I hear you, I am truly sorry, please forgive me."

I am a day late in getting to this blog, but here we go.

I am a WASP. I married a WASP. I am a homeschooling, stay-at-home grandmother. I align myself most closely with the Libertarian party, so you know I did not vote for President Obama.

But most importantly, I am a Christian. The United States is my temporary home. My citizenship is in heaven, and I am choosing, as best I can, to live according to the norms of my real home, and right now that means stepping out of my comfort zone and taking a stand for what is right.

When President Obama first took office, he went on what conservatives called, “The Apology Tour.” While I disagree with many of the president’s policies, I think he was right in asking forgiveness for our country’s past wrongs.

Romans 12:3 says, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” As white, conservative Christians, we are guilty, I am guilty, of remembering all of America’s goodness and of denying or ignoring or at best minimalizing all of our wrongs. As painful as it is to look at, I think we need to. And I know I am painting with a broad brush. Not everyone fits this narrative, but I am talking about national sins.

So here we go…

My ancestors came here and took this land from Native Americans. Why? Because they could. And not only did they take the land, they murdered, emasculated, and confined an entire people group. I do not like to teach that part of our history, and when I do I tend to say things like, they just didn’t understand, or it was the culture of the time. The bottom line is these were people who thought they were better than others. People who believed their way of life – my way of life – was superior to someone else’s.

My ancestors enslaved an entire race of people. They bought and sold other humans as though they were cattle. They separated families. They beat and murdered with the full force of the law behind them. When given an opportunity to make things right at the founding of our new nation, our founders abandoned African-Americans who fought side by side with them for independence – for freedom! At every turn we chose expediency, compromise and greed instead of righteousness, equality, and justice.

You may say, but we fought a costly civil war to pay for that injustice and we made things right. But I ask you, what did Lincoln say? In a letter to Horace Greeley he said that his personal wish was “that all men everywhere could be free.” But the gist of his letter is summed up by this, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” The emancipation proclamation was a political move, a bone thrown to abolitionists. Lincoln achieved what he wanted personally, but only because it matched what he wanted politically.

And what happened after the Civil War was disastrous - the birth of the Christian Knights of the KKK. And lest you say that is past history, I invite you to check out the following website and let these “Christian” people speak for themselves. https://sites.google.com/site/cnkrealmofky/what-we-believe

And how about the fact that while Hitler was exterminating Jews, our government refused to give asylum to Jews seeking aid? But, you counter, we did come to the aid of the Jews. When? After Pearl Harbor was bombed, when it was in our best interest to do so. And how about those interment camps for Japanese Americans? How about dropping not one, but two nuclear bombs on civilians in Japan?

None of us wants to be associated with a group of people known for its atrocities. We want to be the good guys. But we Americans are not always the good guys – especially WASPS. We WASPs want to say that racism no longer exists. We want to say that there is equality. We think the world is as fair a place for others as it is for us.

Will you walk this crooked path again with me tomorrow and ponder a way forward?

Oh, Taste and See

Mark 2:18 “John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and they came and said to Him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’ ¹⁹ And Jesus said to them, ‘While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. ²⁰ But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.’

²¹ ‘No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. ²² No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’”

I had never seen a connection between verses 18-20 and 21-22 before. Mostly this had to do with my interpretation of verses 21-22. I had been taught that this parable was about the Holy Spirit and that you couldn’t pour grace into the law – that the New Testament superseded the Old. While it is true that grace and law cannot coexist, I am no longer convinced that this typical protestant interpretation of the parable is correct. If the new wine is Jesus or the Holy Spirit or grace, then the end of verse 22 makes no sense, “the wine is lost and the skins as well.”

How do these verses look in context, and how would the disciples and Pharisees have understood them? Here I have to give credit to Chuck Colson.  http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/changepoint/17244-old-wine-in-new-wineskins-2

The Pharisees were complaining that Jesus’ disciples did not observe the extra fast days that they observed. Jesus responds with three parables, the bridegroom, the unshrunk cloth and the wineskins. The bridegroom parable makes the most sense to me. I get how it would be inappropriate to fast during your friend’s wedding. And on the surface, I get the unshrunk cloth and wineskin parables.

Luke’s account of this event sheds some additional light. Luke adds, ““… And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” (Luke 5:39) The word for good here can be translated gentle, pleasant, kind.

What if what Jesus was saying was, “God declared one time a year, the Day of Atonement, to fast. You Pharisees are burdening the people with more rules, more law, so that you feel good enough for God. The old wine is the truth of who God is. When you add your ‘new wine’ you are ruining the image of who God is. The god you are presenting to the people is not El Olam, the Unchanging Eternal God. My disciples have tasted the ‘old wine’, the aged, perfected wine. They have seen El Olam, because they have seen me. They have experienced the gentle, pleasant, kindness of El Roi, the God who sees me. Why would they ever want the false god you are offering? “

I tend to try to earn God’s favor rather than resting in His kindness and grace. I add burdens to myself. I can never be good enough, but He is good for me. I don’t need new wine. I need the Ancient of Days.

The cure for religiosity is found in Psalm 34:8. “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” Drinking deeply of the old wine this morning as I wander the straight crooked path.

It's Your Kindness, Leslie Phillips and Matthew Ward
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeZe1NzjNoQ

Radical Love

¹⁴ As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him.

¹⁵ And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. ¹⁶ When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹⁷ And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:14-17)

 

What would it have been like to have walked with Jesus? Jesus had invited Peter, Andrew, James and John to be with him. They were ordinary people who had normal, respectable jobs. They were your average sinner – nothing major. After being invited to hang out with Jesus, they must have felt pretty good about themselves. Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law, eaten at their homes…

They got to be in on something big. Crowds were following Jesus, and they were His friends. They were in the spotlight because He was in the spotlight.

Then Jesus did something totally radical – more radical than touching a leper.

It must have shocked the disciples when Jesus invited Levi to join the group. Levi was a tax collector, a traitor and a thief. No one respectable wanted to be around people like Levi. And then, after Levi started following Jesus, all his scumbag friends started following, too. The word for sinners used here is the word for blatant sinners, obvious sinners; not people who just miss the bulls-eye of righteousness, but people who don’t even come close to hitting the target.

Jesus started to hang out with disreputable people. These social lepers wanted to be near Him. He ate with them. He drank with them. He went into their homes. I bet the food was not kosher. I bet they didn’t go through the motions of ceremonial washing.

The religious people followed Jesus, too. But they did not like Jesus. They kept themselves separate from “sinners.” They were good at hitting the target, and they couldn’t understand why Jesus would want to dirty Himself with such scum. It was incomprehensible to them. God is holy; we need to be holy. He is separate; we need to be separate.

Jesus used the indignation of the Pharisees to teach, not only the Pharisees, but the disciples who were with Him. “I did not come to call (summon or invite) the righteous, but sinners (scumbags) to repentance (a change of heart and mind.)”

The religious leaders got it half right. God is holy, He is totally other. But He is not angry at those who are not holy. He loves unconditionally. He knows that I can never be good enough. I can never keep all of the rules. I can never reach God through my own efforts. And so He reaches down to me. He makes me good enough. He was perfect in my place.

This is the gospel. The kingdom of God has come. We can not reach up to the kingdom. God has reached down to us.

And this is the job we are called to do-to preach the kingdom of God. We are not called to hang out with the respectable people. We are not called to sit in judgment with the religious people. We are not called to be the righteous who have no need of a physician.

We are called to have eye surgery. We are called to see others as Jesus sees them. We are called to love.

Wandering the straight crooked path, looking for opportunities to be radical.

 

 

The Cancer of Sin

I received good news last week. I do not carry the gene mutation that predisposed my sister to the cancer that took her life. My mother, my other sister and her daughter all carry that gene mutation. Pretty scary knowing that a time bomb is ticking away that may or may not go off.

I didn’t inherit that cancer-causing gene, but I inherited a worse gene mutation, and there is a 100% chance that my children and grandchildren have also inherited that mutation. It is the gene that predisposes me to sin. And this mutation is more deadly than any other.

Jesus healed the sick, but that was not why He came. He came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God. He came to call people to repent – of things that most of us consider sin - and to repent of religion.

After Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, crowds of people came to Him to be healed. And He healed them. But the next morning He went off to pray, and the Father said it was time to move on. He told the disciples, “Let us go somewhere else…so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (Mark 1:38) But wherever He went, there were people clamoring to be healed. He always asked those He healed to keep it to themselves, but they couldn’t, and so the crowds followed Jesus everywhere.

And so in Mark 2, Jesus is again surrounded by people as he is teaching in a home. Here, four men bring their paralytic friend to Jesus. They cannot get through the crowd, and so they dig through the roof and lower their friend right in front of Jesus, interrupting His sermon. What is it that Jesus does when He sees their faith? Does He heal the man straight away? No, instead He speaks to the man about his sin issue. I imagine that Jesus was teaching about the good news of the kingdom and about sin. The four men have presented Jesus with a great sermon illustration. Jesus calls the man, son, and declares that his sins are forgiven.

It is not until the teachers of the law begin to mutter, that Jesus addresses the man’s physical condition. And He does so to demonstrate that He has the power and authority to forgive on the basis of faith alone.

Sin is like cancer – it lies dormant, unseen, deadly. Some sins are quick killers – the obvious ones –abuse, murder, drunkenness, robbery. Some are slow killers – the acceptable ones – gluttony, anger, lust. And some are silent, unknown to others – greed, envy, pride, self-righteousness. But all of them are deadly. All of them eat away at the person that God intends me to be.

We all carry the gene mutation for sin. We all need a doctor. The murderer, the glutton and the self-righteous person are all the same. I received good news from the genetic center last week, but there is better news still. And the very good news is, rescue has come, simply believe.

A Leper, My Sister, and Brittany Maynard

 

 

Brittany Maynard has decided that she wants the option to “die with dignity” on November 1^st.  After witnessing my sister, Vanessa’s, year long battle with pancreatic cancer, I can totally understand her decision.

 But, Vanessa did not want that option. She wanted to fight and win. She wanted to seek a miracle. She wanted to live for her husband and her children and her grandchildren.

Vanessa was so much braver than me. She had the option of medication that would keep her from feeling anything, but she chose to use less pain medication so that she could be alert enough to spend time with us. We would cry and she would apologize for making us feel bad. Even to the end she was always thinking of others.

I was amazed at the hospice nurses and aides who chose every day to place themselves in suffering’s path. I asked my sister’s nurse why she chose this aspect of nursing, and her answer astounded me. She said that there was nothing more precious than spending time with people as they passed from this life to the next. That she sensed God’s presence in the middle of it all and that she had the privilege of helping people make that transition.

I know that Jesus walked with us through this past year – particularly the month of June. We could not understand the last week of Vanessa’s life. How could her heart and lungs go on when the cancer had taken so much? How could she endure?  How could we endure watching her leave us a little more every day?

Jesus totally gets it. He knows her pain. He carried her pain. He knows our pain. He carried our pain. He still carries our pain.

The leper in Mark 1 came to Jesus and said, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus was willing. He could have just spoken the words and the leper would have been made clean. But He did much more than s.peak He entered into the man’s suffering by touching him. He identified with the man’s pain, and by touching him, he showed the man how valuable he was to God even in his miserable condition.

I don’t know why God said “no” to our prayers for my sister to have more time on this earth. I don’t know why she had to suffer as she did. And truth be told, I am still angry that she suffered as she did. It isn’t right; it isn’t fair. But I do know that she is now cancer-free, enjoying life that is true life, and wanting us to live our lives on this earth truly loving others.

To Brittany Maynard I would say, let Jesus carry your pain and suffering. Let Him touch you as He did the leper, as He did my sister. Isaiah 53:4 “Surely he took up or pain and bore our suffering,”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bms0ZiM_KG0 Chris Tomlin, I Will Rise

 

 

A Grateful Leper at Your Feet

Isaiah53:4 Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted. 

Mark 1:⁴⁰ And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” ⁴¹ Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” ⁴² Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

“You died for sinners just like me, a grateful leper at Your feet.” Casting Crowns, Jesus Friend of Sinners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOiD0cREjjU

So, after many meanderings, I am back to looking at the Gospel through the eyes of the disciples. I went off on the Lord’s Prayer rabbit trail after the verse, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went to a solitary place where He prayed.”

Apparently, Jesus heard from the Father that it was time to move on. And so He did. To an outside observer, Jesus’ path probably did not look straight. It certainly did not look smart from the perspective of someone interested in bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth. To the disciples, a straight path would have been one that drew attention to Jesus, one that led to an earthly kingdom.

Instead of seeking crowds and acclaim for His miracles, instead of seeking out those who could catapult Him onto a throne, Jesus sought out individuals, those who were shunned by society, and He asked them to keep it on the down low. His path led Him to the ultimate outcast, the leper. Jesus is El Roi, the God who sees me. He is Ishmael, the God who hears me.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine the leper approaching Jesus and everyone scattering the way we would if someone with ebola entered our space.  http://www.thisis50.com/profiles/blogs/ebola-virus-ravaging-west-africa-539-deaths-reported-counting?xg_source=activity  Jesus did not run away; He did not tell the man he was stricken by God, unworthy of grace. He saw past the disfiguration; He heard the man’s plea; He understood the man’s loneliness.

Jesus was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief. He knew what it was to be disfigured, an outcast, lonely. Jesus was moved with compassion. He didn’t just feel sorry for this man, He did something about it. He touched the untouchable.

Oh, God, help me to see past my own sorrow, my own needs. Help me to reach out with compassion to one person at a time. Help me to see past the ugliness to the hurting person. Help me to hear the cries for help and be willing to do something about it. Keep me from trying to protect myself from pain. Bring me alongside the hurting as You lead me on this straight crooked path.

“I'm falling at Your feet, Ruined by Your majesty, My life, my everything, Are crumbled on the ground before You” Among Thorns, Falling at Your Feet   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD36dsYQ4ZQ