Saturday, March 30, 2013

God Is Love

Four Treasures of Adventism
A lecture series for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
NOTE: I am not preaching this morning. The sermon at Green Lake Church will be delivered by Andreas Beccai, our youth pastor. Since I'm posting this a week early, criticism has the real potential of influencing the final form.

Lecture Two: God Is Love
Sabbath School, April 6, 2013

God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 1 John 4:8-11


Apophaticism

Theologians in the Eastern Orthodox tradition have developed an approach to theology called apophaticism. Apophaticism is the conviction that humans cannot make any deeply meaningful, affirmative statement about God because of the inherent limitations of human language. For example, if I say God is love, that would be a false statement because my understanding of love is so meager and so defective that my words distort more than they inform.*

This idea can be very seductive, especially for religious people who are philosophically inclined. We know there are vast oceans or even galaxies of unknowing surrounding us. It is indisputably true that the more we know, the more aware we can be of what we don't know. We can even cite Bible passages that caution us about the limits of our capacity to define God.

"My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9

Apophaticism is a good thing when it reminds us that human language is inadequate to voice the full truth about God. There is a proper humility for those of us who attempt to speak truthfully about God. We cannot escape our own skins, our own personal and cultural histories. The Bible itself contains stories of people who had emphatic opinions about God—opinions that were judged to be false. (See the complicated stories in 1 Kings 13 and Jeremiah 28.)

But apophaticism can be overdone. All of us humans eventually come to the end of our humility. We can say “I don't know!” and “We can't know!” only so long. Eventually, being human, we cannot help ourselves: we do have opinions, not just mild, casual opinions, but deep-set convictions, about the fundamental nature of reality, about what is true, about what ought to be true.

We believe that truth and beauty, kindness and generosity, honesty and integrity are not just different from falsehood, ugliness, meanness, stinginess, dishonesty and duplicity. We believe these virtues are “better.” They are morally superior to the vices. This notion of morality cannot be reduced to a mere synonym of any other category. The virtues are more beautiful than the vices, yes. But beautiful doesn't quite say what we mean when we say the virtues are superior. The virtues are more desirable, they are more life-enhancing, yes, but when we say they are morally better, we mean something other than desirable or life-enhancing. Morality is a category that cannot be reduced to any non-religious or non-philosophical/theological term. All normal humans have moral convictions, even people who argue for a Darwinian origin of our moral sensibility end up arguing for truthfulness and honesty in dealing with data in a way that presumes a meaning for “moral conviction” that is not accounted for in any naturalistic explanation.

The most basic of all moral convictions for Adventists is simply this: God is love.

God Is Love

Years ago, when we lived in Thousand Oaks, CA, our yard bordered a large city park. We answered a knock at the door one day to find a rather cross Parks Department official standing there. “Did we have a brown dog?”

Yes.”

All the garbage cans in the park have been tipped over and garbage is everywhere. Witnesses say it was done by a brown dog that they have seen in your yard. This is not the first time the park has been trashed. We believe your dog is responsible. If you do not keep your dog in, you will be assessed a significant fine. If that doesn't persuade you to keep your dog in, the dog will be confiscated.”

I had one thing going in my favor. One of our neighbors had alerted us that the parks people were after us. And she had told the parks people that we worked hard at keeping our dog in. We did not deliberately let the dog run.

So now, facing the Parks official, I repeated what our neighbor had said. We had been working for months to make the yard escape-proof. We blocked his holes under the fence with logs and cinder blocks. Then he started jumping over the fence on the other side the yard. We knew he was getting out. And after he escaped, he always eventually came home and scratched at the front door. But we had no idea he was trashing the park. We thought he was just chasing gophers in the field next to the park.

The parks official was not amused. We were going to have to do something or face the consequences—a fine and possible confiscation of the dog. I made a counter offer. I would try harder to keep the dog in, though short of chaining him, I couldn't promise he would never get out. But then I offered this: I would check the park daily. If the trash cans were knocked over, I would clean it up. Whether it was Toby or another animal or vandals, it didn't matter. If the cans were knocked over, I would clean it up.

It was a deal.

So for the next few years that we lived there, every time Toby showed up at our front door wanting to be let in, I would put him in his kennel, then go check the park. Frequently, I spent a half hour picking up McDonalds bags with ketchup and food smeared on the outside, cigarette butts, paper plates coated with food on both sides. Napkins. Soda bottles and cans. Wrappers. Watermelon rinds. And worst of all, dirty diapers.

All of you who are dog lovers immediately get this story. If Toby were your dog, you would have done the same thing. Toby's problems were my problems. Part of the meaning of the word “love” is a commitment to the other.

When the Bible describes God as a shepherd and people as his sheep, the Bible is setting us up with certain expectations about God. When Jesus told the story about the lost sheep, his audience was not surprised at the searching of the shepherd. Good shepherds go out in cold, wet, miserable weather to find lost sheep. That's what good shepherds do. And we expect a good shepherd usually to be successful in his search for his sheep.

For a good shepherd, the problems of the sheep are his problems. This has profound theological implications which I will come back to a little later.

The dominant metaphor for God in Scripture is Father.

A couple of paternal pictures from the story of David are deeply revealing. David was apparently not much of a disciplinarian. Maybe this is why he is called the man after God's own heart? David's son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. David was angry but did nothing. So two years later, Tamar's full brother, Absalom, killed Amnon to avenge the rape. Absalom fled the kingdom to escape punishment, and three years later David's pining his absent son Absalom is greater than his outrage over his dead son. Absalom is brought back from Gerar. Things happen and eventually Absalom leads a rebellion aimed at unseating King David and placing Absalom himself on the throne. The rebellion fails. Absalom is killed. And when David hears that Absalom is dead, he collapses into an agony of grief, crying, "O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! O Absalom, my son, my son." 2 Samuel 18:33.

In this story, we see the danger of being overly permissive, the danger of an authority figure ignoring injustice. David's inaction against Tamar's rapist set up this entire sorry tale. But it is the final picture of David lamenting over his son, a son killed in his rebellion against the throne, that Christian preachers have come back to over and over again as a picture of the heart of God.

God's connection with humanity is so close, his love is so intense, that when confronted with the bald choice between self-preservation and the preservation of even a rebellious child, God would choose the preservation of the child.

I argue that if we were to see God make that choice, we would not scorn God for being sentimental. We would honor God for being sacrificial. We would understand his sacrifice as the highest imaginable expression of love.

One more picture from the life of David. Some years after Absalom's rebellion, David has become so infirm he is bedfast. At a point of crisis he abdicates in favor of his son Solomon. The abdication is not surprising given the situation, but what is remarkable is the comment of one of his courtiers when David makes the official pronouncement: “And may the LORD be with Solomon as he has been with you, my lord the king, and may he make Solomon's reign even greater than yours!" 1 Kings 1:37

It's fascinating to read this wish against the cultural backdrop of the passage. The king's favorite wife has come in to see him and she has bowed and paid obvious obeisance. Then Nathan the Prophet, who has more than once challenged the king, comes in. He, too, bows and goes through the formula acknowledging David's absolute preeminence. No one is the king's equal. Not a favorite wife, not a famous prophet, not leading generals, not even the high priest. But then someone speaks of the king's role as a father and suddenly the nicest thing you can wish for is to see the king superceded! “May your son be greater than you.”

It's the dream of every dad for his children: May they do better than I have. One of the greatest fears of the very rich is that their children will be less than their parents.

One more biblical picture of God as Father.

When we go through the gospels and notice Jesus' use of this metaphor, what leaps out is his instinctive, unvarying assumption that fathers are trustworthy and generous. Nowhere in all of the father metaphors Jesus uses is there even a hint of sternness or magisterial aloofness. Note these phrases from Matthew 6:

Your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.

Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.

Look at the birds . . . your Father takes care of them! Aren't you worth much more than birds?

It is God who clothes the wild grass . . . Won't he be all the more sure to clothe you?

Do not worry, saying, "What will I eat?" or "What will I wear?" Your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things . . . and he will provide you with them.
Matthew 6

Jesus portrays God as an idealized human father. He is responsive and affirming, aware, not aloof or absent. He actively provides for us. He takes note of our noble deeds and rewards them. He delights in doing us good. The presumption is that the father will make sure life goes well for his children. The primary responsibility for the well-being of the children resides with the father not with the children. And God happily embraces this responsibility.

Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke 12:32).

Then there is the father of the prodigal son. He eats the shame his younger son has brought on the family and welcomes the wastrel home. Then when the older son expresses scorn and resentment toward his younger brother (and by implication scorn for his father who welcomed the jerk home), the father does not rebuke the older brother, but affirms his place—all that I have is yours—and leaves open the possibility for the older brother to yet join the father in celebrating the resurrection of his lost brother.

Jesus expects his audience to buy the story. The father's generosity is surprising, maybe even astounding, but Jesus expects his audience to hear somewhere in their own hearts an incontrovertible yes to the father's generosity.

So what?

These pictures of the God who loves—the shepherd who regards the lostness of his sheep as “his problem,” the father who values the preservation and exaltation of his sons over his own, the father who is trustworthy, generous, forgiving—have important theological implications.

Let me address two. First: what grief says about God.


According to popular Christian teaching, when someone dies, he or she goes immediately into the presence of God or enters the torments of hell. In this view, before death, God is limited in his interaction with people by the illusions and frailty of our bodily existence. When a believer dies, death heals this separation and leads immediately to the joy of unhindered spiritual fellowship between God and his children. So, for God, death is a great boon. It is the door through which he welcome his children into sweet, eternal communion with him. We who are left bereft on earth may be wracked by grief, but God's heart is gladdened by the homeward flight of his child.
According to Adventist theology, when someone dies, the person stops interacting with God through prayer, worship and obedience. People are not lost to the heart or memory of God. But as an active, thinking, loving, talking human beings, dead people are as unavailable to God as they are to their grieving friends on earth. In the language of the Bible, the person "sleeps" (John 11:11-14). A dead person has no awareness of time or "waiting." The person remains "unconscious" until the resurrection. At the second coming all God's people are united and taken en masse into the presence of God. They all arrive at the heavenly party together (Hebrews 11:39-40).

In this view, God himself is deprived of the living companionship of a person who dies–just as are the grieving family and friends. Instead of death being a boon to God, death robs God of the worship of his people (Psalm 115:17). When people die, the heavenly Father no longer hears the voices of his children in praise and prayer. He has memories to cherish and a future to anticipate, but he is not in fellowship with their vital, interactive "souls."

In this view, human grief is a mirror, an image, of the grief of God. It is a truism that when children hurt, their moms and dads hurt as much as or more than the little ones. And God, our heavenly parent, hurts for his children. When grief batters our hearts and wets our eyes, God hurts because we hurt. But there is more to God's grief than that. God's grief is not only the response of his heart to the pain that wound us. God himself is wounded by the separation caused by death. Death interrupts God's own conversation with his child. God bears the emotional cost of the system he has designed and allows to continue even in its broken condition. When it comes to enduring pain, God asks nothing of us he does not require of himself.
This perspective of God as a grieving parent has large implications for how we view the "delay of the Advent." Why hasn't Jesus returned as he promised? What's taking so long? Explanations include: God is waiting because he wants to save more people. He is waiting for some predetermined time. He waits for evil to reach its full flower or for the gospel to be preached in all the world or for the character of Christ to be perfectly reproduced in his people.
Each of these theories has something to recommend it, and each has problems. The Adventist understanding of the nature of death does not answer the question, why does God wait? It does, however, change the emotional content of the question. In addition to asking why God doesn't hurry up and rescue us from our trouble (a very good and proper question), this picture of God's grief prompts us to ask, why doesn't God spare himself? If the redeemed between death and resurrection day, then every day God delays the second coming is another day he carries the wounds of his own bereavement. Since God loves every human more intensely than a mother loves her only child, the Adventist understanding of death is a picture of a brokenhearted God.
In the traditional view of death, there is diminished motivation for God to bring human history to an end. Every day God is welcoming children home. But in the Adventist view, every day that passes adds to the grief that weighs on God's heart. God does not ask us to bear burdens he himself does not carry. He does not encourage us to be brave in the face of pain that he himself does not feel.

I remember listening to a funeral sermon at a funeral in Akron, Ohio. On the front row were four or five kids, siblings of an eight-year-old boy who was killed when the front wheel of his bicycle hit a rock threw him in front of a car.
The preacher spoke directly to the young people on the front row. "Try not to take your brother's death too hard. I know you miss him, but God needed him up in heaven and that's why he took him. God must have some very important job in mind for your brother up there. Stay close to Jesus and some day you'll join your brother in heaven, and he'll show you around the New Jerusalem and tell you all about what he's been doing while you were down here working for Jesus."
The pastor was doing what a pastor is supposed to do–mining the spiritual and theological resources of his community for all the comfort and solace he could find. I was not critical of the pastor as a person, but I was appalled at the theology that drove his words.
"So are you telling me," I imagined shouting, "that every time God runs low on kitchen help in the heavenly cafeteria he throws rocks in front of little kids' bike tires? Is God really that hard up for help in heaven? What kind of God is that?"
This view, if true, would mean our deepest wounds bring great joy to God. People who are the most lovable and leave the greatest hole here on earth when they die, bring instant joy in the courts of heaven. We on earth bear all the cost of improving heaven's work force.
The popular view of death does offer some comfort. It places those who have died in a good place far from all pain (though logically, the joy of heaven would be tainted by the awareness that "back on earth" are loved ones still exposed to evil and suffering). This traditional view actually does offer an accurate description of the experience of the person who dies. When a believer dies, the very next moment in their experience will be the resurrection and the presence of God. The time in the grave that is felt all too keenly by grieving survivors does not exist in the experience of the one who has died.
The Adventist understanding of death addresses the reality of pain confronted by those who are still alive. For those who survive the death of a loved one, the "immediate" reality is grief and hurt. And in every death, one of the survivors, one of the mourners, is God himself. There is no benefit for God in the death of his children. He is not knocking off children to fill the heavenly kitchens or choirs. He does not forget our grief in the great joy of his communion with his children who have escaped into his presence from their earthly prisons. Instead God enters the very depths of our grief. In fact, our purest, deepest grief is but a faint reflection of God's grief. If we are able to receive it, the pain of our grief is a stern education about the depth and intensity of God's love.




A second theological implication: I do not expect most (or even many) to be lost.

Can we imagine a “good father” would allow his children to romp in a playground where there was a real likelihood that they would fall into a trap from which that all the resources of heaven would be inadequate to rescue them?

The standard Christian view of humanity is that because of the error of Adam and Eve in the garden all of humanity is naturally damned. A few may accept God's offer of gracious deliverance, but the default destiny of all humans is damnation and only a few will avoid it.

If Toby the dog was confiscated from the McLarty house and sent to the pound and then because no one else wanted him he was euthanized, in our home that would be considered a massive failure—not a failure by Toby, but a failure by the McLarty zoo to find an adequate way to deal with his nature.

If the shepherd did not find the lost sheep, in Jesus' story, it is the shepherd who would be called a failure, not the sheep.

In the story of the prodigal, at the end of the story, the father's heart remains wide open to both sons.

When I was young, I spent a huge amount of energy searching a reassuring answer to the question: will I be saved? Have I been perfect enough? Then later, was my faith sufficiently real to qualify me for salvation by faith? I projected onto God, my sense of never-quite-good-enough that I developed in my family of origin.

Now I am old. The pictures of God as Father are turned on their head. I no longer imagine myself primarily as “son.” I am father, the father three kids or four, counting the one who died, or five counting my daughter-in-law or dozens or scores counting the young people who have have sneaked into my heart.

As father, the question is not what do these children have to do to avoid my condemnation. More meaningful questions would be, What could they possibly do that would cause me to damn them? Can I persuade myself they are so broken the universe would be better without them? Can I imagine sustaining the pain of my own existence in their absolute, eternal absence?

God is love. This conviction, illuminated by the metaphors of Scripture and our own deep understanding of parental and shepherd and pet-keeping love, should lead us to reverse our question “who could possibly be saved, given human sinfulness.” Instead we should ask, “Who could possibly be lost given the love and resourcefulness of God?” Then, having dismissed our fearful concern with damnation we are freed to ask really good questions like: what can I do with the life God has given me? What shall I do to make the world a sweeter, more beautiful place? Whom can I touch with help, healing and hope?


Friday, March 22, 2013

Shout Hallelujah

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
Sabbath, March 23, 2013
Based on Matthew 21.
Updated Sabbath morning with at least one important new idea.

A mile or two outside Jerusalem, Jesus pointed to a village a little way off in the distance and said to a couple of his disciples, “Go to that village over there. In the middle of town, you'll see a donkey tied up, with its colt beside it. Untie the donkey and bring the animals to me. If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, 'The Lord needs them,' and he will immediately let you take them.”

Please, note the details here. Jesus sends two of his disciples to “appropriate” someone else's donkey. He does not tell the disciples to go ask permission. He tells them, “Just go untie the donkeys and bring them here. Oh, and by the way, if anyone should happen to challenge you, just tell them 'the Master needs them.' and they'll let you go.”

Let's change this story around a little bit. One of your kids reports that his brother “borrowed” a bike from a porch a mile from your house. He rode the “borrowed” bike to an event at Gas Works Park, then late that evening, returned the bike to the porch from which he had borrowed it.

Would you be happy with your son?

And what if, when you questioned your son about this, he explained, “I knew they were out of town, so they wouldn't miss the bike since I was only going to borrow it for one day.” What would you say to that?

And what if, when you pressed your son about the importance of asking before using something that belonged to someone else, he said, “Well, when Jesus needed a donkey, he didn't ask.”

One of the markers of the authenticity of the gospels is their stubborn inclusion of narrative details that don't quite fit inside a neat orthodox box.

This anecdote also highlights the fact that the Bible is not designed to be an “Idiot's Guide” to anything. People who try to use the Bible as a literal, straightforward rule book usually come to grief. The Bible intends to connect us with God, to make us wise, to help us see.

It was people who were inspired by the Bible who led the fight against legal slavery in the 1700s and campaigned for the humane treatment of those who suffer from mental illness and fought for justice for Black people in the South in the 1950s. These activists understood this story to be a statement about the lordship of Jesus over all of life.

Jesus is not just Lord at church. He is Lord of the world. His perspective on the value and place of human beings should influence what we pay our dish washers, gardeners and carpenters. Christians believe Jesus has authority over our donkeys as well as our hymnals.

Jesus needed a donkey. He sent his disciples to fetch one.

When the disciples returned, a crowd had gathered. (Actually, there was probably a crowd surrounding Jesus when he sent the two disciples off in the first place. There was always a crowd around Jesus.)

The disciples threw several garments over the colt—that is the male offspring of the mama donkey. And Jesus climbed on. This was a pretty audacious move. I don't know if the disciples were worried—what if this colt bucks him off!!!! I suspect that at least some of them were. They knew about animals. But this colt gave a further demonstration of the universal lordship of Jesus. Instead of bucking, it stood tranquilly under Jesus' weight.

Seeing the donkey happily submit to Jesus, the disciples start shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

The crowd took up the chant. They spread their garments in the road to make a royal carpet. They broke branches from trees and fronds from palms and waved them in the air, shouting, ““Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Jesus began riding toward Jerusalem and the procession snowballed. Dozens, scores, hundreds, thousands of people got caught up in the excitement. It was a wild, crazy, ecstatic parade. The people at the center knew exactly what they were doing. They had been followers of Jesus for years. They had seen his power in miracles of healing and exorcism. They had been mesmerized by his teaching. They were confident he really was the Messiah—the magic, royal personage who had lived at the center of Jewish hopes for a millennium.

Jesus' devotees had been impatient with his reticence. They had long been wanting him to make a move, to assert himself.

When they saw him mount that colt, their expectations ignited. This was the Arab spring, the Boston tea party, the destruction of the Berlin wall, the election of Jean Bertrand Aristide. The excitement was contagious. It was very quickly out of control.

The Gospel of Luke reports that at some point as Jesus neared Jerusalem, perhaps even as he was entering the city, the Pharisees chided Jesus. They urged him to rebuke the crowd for their extravagant language, throwing around titles that belonged rightly only to the Messiah.

Jesus laughed and told the religious scholars, “If the people are quiet, the stones will shout.”

There was no quieting this ecstasy. Jesus did not make the slightest effort to cool it. He rode the enthusiasm like a surfer on a monster wave. Ultimately the wave deposited him at the entrance of the temple, then washed him right inside.

There, church business as usual was going on. Money changers were turning the coins of Roman and Egyptian and Spanish monarchs into the coinage of the temple. Vendors were selling doves and sheep and cattle for sacrifices. All making a tidy profit in the process.

Jesus waded into the scene and began heaving tables over and throwing open gates of animal pens. Money changers grabbed for their bags and ran. Bulls bellowed and plowed through the chaos like bulldozers. Sheep baaed and bleated. Cows mooed. It was a wild and crazy bedlam. The crowd that had entered the temple courtyard behind Jesus cheered and hooted. Maybe they joined Jesus in stirring the chaos. Perhaps they lent a hand untying bulls, opening pens and heaving money tables onto their sides. We don't know for sure.

Above all the commotion Jesus bellowed over and over: “It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves!”

The temple court emptied. Then it filled again. The bulls and cows and sheep and goats and pigeons were gone along with the vendors, money changers, priests and dignitaries. Behind them came a slow tide of disabled people—blind people, lame people. Jesus moved back into his customary role of healer, teacher, soother, ameliorator, reconciler.

Children came running in. Bands of them danced, still singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” For them the party was not over.

Eventually, the religious leaders and teachers of the law crept back into the courtyard. They sidled up to Jesus and protested. “Don't you hear what those kids are saying? Stop them!”

Jesus laughed and said, “And haven't you read what the prophet wrote, 'From the mouths of babes and infants you have brought perfect praise?'” Psalm 8:2.

Those of us who are acquainted with the Jesus story know that the ecstasy of this afternoon was fleeting. We know that Gethsemane was coming and the agony of the crucifixion. Sometimes Christianity is overly obsessed with these dark parts of the story. But that is untrue to the story itself. Jesus himself explicitly blessed the ecstasy of Palm Sunday. Christianity—at least the story of Jesus as directed and controlled by Jesus—included ecstasy. It still does. A religion of principle and discipline, sober reflection and self-criticism has much to recommend it. But if it does not also include shouting hallelujah, if it doesn't include dancing for joy and moments of sheer ecstasy, whatever its merits, it's probably not actually Christian or perhaps I should say, it is at best a truncated Christianity. The gospel story, as validated by Jesus in all four gospels, includes euphoria, ecstasy, excitement, glee.

Of course, we know the world is heavy with darkness. We do not deny it. Jesus identified with that darkness. He drank from it until it killed him. This coming Friday evening we are going to immerse ourselves in that heavy reality in our Tenebrae service. The darkness is real. It, too, is part of our life.

But today, we celebrating the light. We are celebrating with Jesus. We are riding wild donkeys. We are dancing with children and shouting hallelujah.

In a few minutes we will gather at the Lord's Table. And today, as we gather, we will take delight in the gathering with us of babes and infants. Today, it is a festal dinner. It is not the last supper, it is our anticipation of the sweet victory feast commemorating the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven.

We reject the temptation to join with the Pharisees and teachers of the law, and look with disdain and imagined intellectual and religious superiority on those who are caught up in the magic and glory of the march of Jesus. Instead, today, we sit with children and together with them celebrate our union with one another and with the Master who will ultimately win.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Blessed the Merciful

Preliminary sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
For Sabbath, March 16, 2013
This is part of a series on the Beatitudes. I'll post a revised version tomorrow morning.

Jesus was on vacation. To get away from the crowds, he left the Jewish region of Palestine and headed north into what is today Lebanon. Up into the neighborhood of the Mediterranean coast city of Sidon. It must have been a wonderful release. Just Jesus and the twelve. Talking, processing, sitting around, for a few days away from the incessant pressure of the crowds. Time to eat. Time to sleep. Time to think.

One afternoon when they leave the place where they were staying, a woman starts following them, calling out, “Sir! Sir! Son of David! Master! Have mercy on me! My daughter is haunted by demons. She's possessed and is horribly tormented. Please have mercy.”

The disciples are peeved. How did she figure out who they were? But Jesus is on vacation. It's like his cell phone rings. He looks at caller ID. He doesn't recognize the number. He lets it go to voice mail. His phone rings again. It's the same number. He sends it to voice mail. The phone rings again.

Of course, they didn't have cell phones in those days, so the woman uses direct voice. “Sir! Sir! Master! Have mercy. Demons are tormenting my daughter. Please help!”

Jesus ignores her. The disciples are gratefully surprised by that. But it doesn't work. She keeps calling. She keeps following. They stop for tea at a restaurant. She waits outside. When Jesus and the Twelve come out, she calls out again. “Sir! Have mercy!” The men walk away, carefully ignoring her. She stubbornly follows, calling, “Sir, have mercy!”

The disciples are annoyed. “Jesus,” they insist, “send her away. She's driving us crazy. Jesus, do something.”

So Jesus finally turns and for the first time acknowledges the woman's existence. “Look lady. God gave me a specific commission to serve his lost sheep—the Jewish people.” The disciples are thrilled. Jesus validates their self-understanding, and completely out of character for him, he is getting rid of someone.

The woman understood what Jesus was saying. The Jewish people were God's remnant people. They were the true people of God, the flock of God as the prophets put it. The Jews were the guardians of God's truth, the heirs of God's pioneers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had the true prophet, Moses. Judaism as a religion was well-known throughout the Middle East at that era. Jewish missionaries went everywhere teaching people the special truths that were their spiritual heritage. When Jesus said, “My mission is the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” the woman knew exactly what he meant: She was not his responsibility.

What did she do?

Since he had noticed her, she came right up to him, fell at his feet and begged, “Sir, help me.”

Jesus was tough. This mother was desperate. Her daughter's life had been ruined, devastated by some kind of on-going, chronic demonic action. This mother had tried every remedy available in her world. She had been to priests at temples. She had visited old women in back alleys who were famous for potions and charms. She had prayed and offered sacrifices. Nothing had worked. Her husband had left her, unable to cope with the chaos their daughter created.

She knew she had no claim on Jesus. Jesus didn't owe her anything. But she wasn't asking for something Jesus owed her. She was asking for what she needed. “Sir. Help me. Have mercy.”

Jesus still gave every appearance of tough-minded commitment to his God-given mission to the Jewish people. “Woman,” Jesus said. “It would be inappropriate to take the children's food and feed it to the dogs.”

Again the woman understood perfectly. The attitudes of patriotic and fundamentalist Jews toward people like her—outsiders, single moms, pagans, losers—were notorious. Conservative Jewish people saw themselves as the royal children of the divine king. People like this woman were dogs. Which, of course, needs some explanation.

Dogs in that society did not star in the Seattle Kennel Club show at Century Link Field Event Center. 7000 people would not have come to watch dogs strut their stuff. The status of dogs in the first century world was only slightly higher than the status of Norway rats in our world. Maybe we could compare them to pigeons.

“Woman,” Jesus was saying, “I can't take the kids' dinner and throw it out for the pigeons. That would be crazy.”

At this point, any reasonable person would have taken the hint. This woman had no claim on Jesus. He was on vacation. Jesus had declared his divine assignment was specifically to the Jewish people and this woman was a foreigner, a pagan.

The woman was annoying. She was obviously a bad person. A good person would not have allowed her daughter to become possessed by demons. Jesus had stated that helping her would be the equivalent of throwing the kids' dinner out for the pigeons to eat.

What does she do?

She looks Jesus right in the eyes and says. “You're right sir. You wouldn't throw the kids dinner out to the pigeons. I get that. I accept that. But even a poor man, even stingy man, would not begrudge the pigeons crumbs that would otherwise go down the garbage disposal.”

Finally Jesus cracked. “Woman,” he said, “you're amazing. Your faith is amazing. May it be to you as you desire.”

Her daughter was healed.

This woman's story began with her plea, “Sir, have mercy.” It climaxes with Jesus' words, “Let it be for you as you have wished.” Her request: “Have mercy.” Jesus' response, “Let it be as you wish.”

“Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy.” What does it mean to receive mercy? It means to receive what you need, to receive what you desperately desire.

For many religious people, one of our most burning desires is to be sure we are accepted by God.

Many of us Adventists of a certain age grew up in a world filled with withering spiritual uncertainty. Preachers and Bible teachers painted vivid images of us standing before God in the judgment. A video of our entire life played on a giant screen on the wall of the court room. If that video showed a single un-confessed sin we were doomed. We worried that we could never be good enough to be saved.

Then in the eighties, many Adventists discovered the good news of salvation by faith. All you had to do was believe. But, it turns out this good news is only marginally better than the old news that you had to be perfect.

At evangelical churches and colleges young people learn that all you have to do to be saved is believe, and once you believe, you are saved for ever. That should produce a wonderful contentment. However, when you talk with these young people, you find them as eaten with uncertainty and anxiety as the Adventist young people in the days of our most intense legalism.

What's going on?

Here's the problem: as long as the major question in your religion is “What must I do to be saved?” you will find it very difficult to find a settled, lasting peace. Because this kind of religion assumes damnation as the default condition of humanity. God's habit is to condemn. No matter what strategy we use to dodge the condemnation we are still up against the question of whether our dodge is adequate. If you imagine that you escape damnation by having faith, you'll wonder if your faith is genuine. If you imagine that you appease God's frowning eye by perfecting your behavior, you'll always suspect your behavior is not quite good enough.

This traditional spiritual perspective imagines that God operates primarily on the basis of justice. The assumption is you deserve hell. God is watching and he is going to make sure you get nothing more than you deserve. So, you're toast.

This beatitude points us in a completely different direction: Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy.

When we practice mercy, we work at discerning the needs and desires of others and doing what we can to meet those needs and fill those desires. We study people to figure out what makes them tick so we can bless them. Sometimes people can be quite articulate about their desire. Like the mother from Sidon. There was no mistaking what she wanted. But other times people are as inarticulate as that woman's daughter was. That girl had no way of even expressing her need or desire. When encounter people like, Jesus invites us to become their agents crying “Lord, have mercy!” on their behalf.

I had a couple of conversations this week that vividly illustrated the wisdom required of mercy. Both conversations were with mothers of disabled men. In both cases, the men are not verbal. So when they are going berserk with an earache, they cannot say, “My ear is killing me.” Are they slapping their head because their ear hurts or they have an abscessed tooth or headache? Or are they exhibiting some kind of psychological problem? These men's lack of speech does not make their pain any less. Their inability to voice their need does not make the need go away.

So their mothers practice mercy. Guided by the instincts of motherhood and the wisdom acquired through decades of care-giving, they attempt to discern the need of their sons and to find remedies. They do their best to make it better. And when they have to go outside their homes for assistance, they become the voices for their sons, begging for mercy from medical professionals, courts, therapists. And ultimately they are the voices of their sons to God. “Lord, have mercy!”

To be merciful means to provide what is needed without regard to what is deserved. When we immerse ourselves in the practice of mercy, the old question, “What must I do to be saved?” loses its force. We know that we will never be more merciful than God. As we move deeper and deeper into a habit of studying people with the intention to understand and bless them instead of analyzing them and apportioning blame, our view of God will be transformed. We will come to confidence that God is, as the Bible says, full of mercy and abounding in goodness and compassion.

As we move deeper and deeper into our habits of mercy toward others, we will no longer understand even our own disabilities as targets of God's condemnation. Instead we will experience our failures, inadequacies, disabilities as perpetual appeals for his mercy.

Mercy is what makes human communities beautiful.

A healthy society must have structures that support justice. When kids work hard, they should receive the grades they earn. When adults work hard and skillfully, they should receive appropriate remuneration. And there must be negative consequences for failure to work, failure to put out. A workable society needs a criminal justice system to respond to murder and theft and assault. People are capable of doing evil, and society must have a systematic way of restraining and containing evil. Still, a society that becomes obsessed with justice becomes ugly.

Mercy is the supreme grace. Justice is necessary, yes. Mercy is beautiful.

Part of the beauty of American society are some of our institutionalized expressions of mercy. If you find a pedestrian lying in the gutter, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run, you would whip out your phone and call 911. An ambulance will come, even if the victim appears to be a bum. At the emergency room, the victim will receive life-saving treatment, before a payment plan is worked out.

That's mercy. Responding to need without regard to what a person deserves. Doing good because of the goodness welling up from within us, not because of the rights or claims of the other.

Several years ago my son spent a year in a country where there are doctors and hospitals, but all hospital care must be prepaid. He talked about the agony of seeing someone frightfully injured but being unable to obtain hospital care for the person because they didn't have enough money. No prepayment, no admission. It is not rare for people to die outside the hospital because the family could not come up with the money to cover the projected costs of treatment. That's justice. If you can't pay, you receive no service.

Death by poverty is not beautiful even if you can make an argument that it is just.

Mercy: providing what is needed without regard to what is deserved. That's beautiful.

Part of the foolishness of philosophies based on the writings of Ayn Rand is their failure to see that the pinnacle of human development is not an obsession with justice, not even a commitment to justice. Human communities are most beautiful, most noble, most godly when they are suffused with mercy.

One of the most startling challenges in the preaching of Jesus comes at the end of Chapter Five in Matthew's Gospel. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Because,

In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Or as Luke reports this saying:

"If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much! And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return. "Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. You must be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Luke 6:32-36.

Be perfect as God is perfect is the same thing as being merciful as God is merciful. The bargain we make with the world is the bargain God makes with us. The wisdom of Jesus is obvious: By practicing mercy we are setting ourselves up to receive the ultimate, deepest joy. We will get what we most desire.

One of the curious patterns in the gospels is the way Jesus responds to people who are possessed by demons. Sometimes when blind people ask for healing, Jesus challenges them: Do you really want this? (Luke 18:41) Do you really believe? (Matthew 9:28). Several times Jesus told people: “You are healed in accord with your faith” (Matthew 9:22, 29). But when it came to people possessed by demons, Jesus never says a word about faith. Jesus appears to completely ignore anything the people say. He goes straight to their most profound need and releases from the demonic torment.

I understand that as the supreme challenge to us in our relationships at home, work, school and church. Most of you know of someone who appears to you to be evil. They are constantly doing things that annoy you, offend you, make your life difficult. They are easy to hate.

I ask you to consider viewing them through the lens of mercy. This does not mean volunteering for further wounding. If you are being bullied, get help. If you are being abused at home, tell someone. If you are a victim of domestic violence, let someone know. Don't allow yourself or your children to be hit another time.

Having said that, there is more to be said. If we are going to see people as Jesus saw them, we will see their outrageous behavior as evidence of an alien evil which has invaded their lives. It is not the “real them.” Whether you see that “alien evil” as demonic or psychological or neurological, our fundamental response to that kind of human brokenness is to plead Lord, have mercy. Not “Blast them, Lord.”

In our opening story, Jesus modeled responding to people on the basis of justice, propriety and rights. That annoying woman had no business interrupting his retreat with his disciples. As a non-Jew she had no claim on the Messiah. As the mother of a girl possessed by demons she had no moral standing.

As we watched Jesus respond to her on the basis of propriety and rightful claims, we wince. We rightfully expected better of Jesus. Then with his final response: “Woman, may it be for you as you wish.” “Honey, I'll do whatever you want.” Jesus flips the story on its head and asks us: This coming week, will you stand on propriety and rights and protect yourself from all inordinate demands on your forbearance, time and energy, or will you have mercy? Will you stand with the disciples of Jesus passing judgment or with the wise and stubborn mother?

Blessed are the merciful, they will obtain mercy.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Pure in Heart

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
Sabbath, March 9, 2013

A couple of weeks ago, I was above Paradise on Mt. Rainier. We were at 6000 feet, climbing in a cold fog. Visibility was so bad I would have turned around because of the risk of getting lost—except I was with a highly experienced climber who had done this route many times. Then even the guy I was hiking with, Dan Lauren, expressed second thoughts about the hike. Not because he felt unsafe—he never compromises on safety—but just because conditions were so miserable. Middle thirties, wet, wind blowing hard.

As we crested the ridge at Panorama Point, a group of guys materialized out of gloom. They had been high on the mountain over night and were headed down. And they had news.

On the drive down to the park that morning looking at the weather, Dan had discussed taking a lower, easier hike. He thought there might be good weather high on the mountain, but that was very iffy. I told him I was willing to risk going high if he thought we might find sun. I had brought enough cold and wet weather gear, I should be able to handle it.

We got out of car at the Paradise parking lot in a dense blowing fog. Hardly ideal conditions for climbing Anvil Rock up near Camp Muir. We finally decided to go ahead and attempt the higher climb hoping that maybe, just maybe, we'd get above the clouds and fog. We strapped on our snowshoes and headed out.

Our uncertain hope of good weather up high became less and less motivating during the first mile or two of hiking. We had the necessary gear. Extra clothes and food, a shovel. We would be safe, but neither of us really wanted to spend the entire day battling wet and cold with nothing to show for our efforts, but the efforts themselves. We were out on the mountain because of our desire for visions of grandeur. And as we climbed out of the trees the fog was getting denser. The wind stronger.

Then we met the guys coming down the mountain, and they told us that at 8000 feet they had been in blazing sunshine. The pay off.

We slogged on up the mountain with new enthusiasm. We did not suddenly start sprinting up the mountain. We were still in the fog and needed to pay careful attention to route finding. We were still traveling on snowshoes which is not quite the same thing as hiking on a trail. And we were still climbing steeply at elevation, which is not the same thing as jogging on flat trail. It was work. But it was now happy work. We had the promise that it would be worth it.

We still had 2000 feet of snowshoeing up a steep ridge before we reached 8000 feet, 2000 feet and a couple of hours of marching in the gloom and blustery cold. But no problem. We were headed for the sun. It would be worth it.

This is a good model of my understanding of the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God.”

Purity costs hard work. Jesus blesses those who do the work and assures them their work will pay off. They will experience the highest, richest, brightest dream of religion and spiritual life: They will see God.

Purity is not a natural state. It is constructed, achieved, accomplished.

Years ago we bought a house that had been foreclosed. The lawn, if you could call it that, was a collection of tough weeds. I put in a sprinkler system. We planted a weed-free grass mix. How long do you think it stayed weed free?

In your garden, how long does your rose bed remain a pure rose bed with no mixture of other plants?

Purity is not a natural state. Weeds alter the composition of our lawns and gardens, bacteria, algae, and who knows what else transform our birdbaths into the biology laboratories.

Or to approach it from other other direction: how do we come by pure copper? We start by digging tons of rock out of the ground, smash it into bits, put it through several processes to remove the dross and slag and end up with a few pounds of the valuable metal.

Rare earth elements are all the buzz now. To get any of them in usable quantities requires complicated refining. They do not occur as pure masses, but are all mixed up. Purity requires effort.

You see the need for active effort even in something as prosaic as gravel. A couple of miles from our home there is a gravel mine. They're digging in an old moraine. I buy drain rock there and pea gravel and pipe bedding. All of these occur in great quantity in this gravel deposit, but to get pea gravel or drain rock or pipe bedding, they have do run it through a huge separator. The pure pea gravel I need for the dog pens is not natural. In the natural world it's all mixed up with clay and boulders and sand and cobbles. Purity takes effort.

Purity of heart also requires effort. Smart effort. Sometimes intense effort. Effort continued over time. This Beatitude or Blessing promises the effort will pay off. We will hike into the sun of God's presence. We will see God. But arriving in the blaze of light above the clouds requires effort.

Cultivating purity of heart requires active pursuit of goodness and often active resistance to evil.

I am reminded of the occasional laments I hear from a piano teacher. Occasionally, a self-taught or poorly taught student comes to her studio. Some of these students have so much to unlearn. Less than optimal fingering patterns, counterproductive hand positions.

The best piano performance—a pure piano performance—is the presence of wonderful music and the absence of awkwardness and wrong notes. In the same way, purity of heart is both the presence of goodness and the absence of evil.

Blessed are the pure in heart. They will see God.

Today we have with us the families of Cypress School. Operating a school is an enormous challenge. It is a long, hard slog up an endless mountain. In Adventist education we have twin objectives: We want to teach, to model, to honor goodness and we want to exclude, to attenuate, to wither evil.

We challenge our kids to develop their minds to the nth degree, to master math and science and language, to cultivate their artistic abilities. We aim to fill their minds with good stuff. The first step toward the exclusion of evil is an abundant supply of goodness.

One of the impressive features of Cypress School is the amount of Bible memorization the kids do. Speaking from personal experience, it was vastly easier to learn memorize Bible verses when I was thirteen than it is now at sixty. Inputting a lot of Bible verses is one method of pursuing purity of heart.

In addition Cypress School deliberately seeks to teach ideas and behaviors that are conducive to moral, spiritual purity. We intentionally, purposefully seek to encourage kids in forming pure hearts.

What does it mean to be pure in heart? It means to be genuinely good, to be full of goodness. Just a few verses after the Beatitudes, the Gospel of Matthew records a number of sayings by Jesus that illuminate this idea of a pure heart:

"But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven! "You have heard that our ancestors were told, 'You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.' But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell. Matthew 5:20-22

It's a good idea to refrain from punching someone or pulling out your gun and shooting them. But this is not proof of a pure heart. Obviously, refraining from murder is a good thing. If you feel like killing someone, the first step toward a pure heart is to not do it! Excluding murder is absolutely essential for maintaining a pure heart. But it is hardly enough.

Jesus points us deeper: you must avoid name calling! Now, we're getting really challenging. Let me ask the kids, did you call anyone a name this past week? Did you write anything on facebook about someone that was unkind?

Parents, could we play a tape recording of all your remarks to your kids this week without embarrassing you? When your kids brought home a less than acceptable grade? What did you say and how did you say it? When you checked their room for the third time? When they spilled their milk or broke something in your shop? Did you call them names? Did you imply he was an idiot or that you were ashamed of her?

A pure heart does not spout scorn for one's kids.

Words, especially words in private, words at home, words on the internet, reveal our hearts. Sharp and cutting words are evidence of a heart tainted with impurity.

Kids how did you speak to your parents this week? How did you speak about them when they weren't around? Are you working on a pure heart?

To all of us, what did your write this week in email or on facebook or on twitter. Did everything you write evince respect, even for those persons you disagree with? A pure heart does not produce impure speech.

God help us!

One of the most challenging applications of Jesus' call to purity of heart comes in the next verses.

"So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God. Matthew 5:23-24.

For a pure heart, reconciliation is a higher priority than going to church! Or to put it another way, a pure heart does not contaminate its devotion to God with a casual acceptance of alienation from people.

Note the hope presented in this text. Jesus does not say, if you've done something to offend someone else, you're damned. He does not say we have lost our membership in the kingdom of God. But he does issue a challenge: Don't go through the motions of worship unless you have attempted the difficult, sometimes painful, sometimes impossible task of reconciliation. Before we can participate fully in the spiritual essence of worship we must seek reconciliation with people. Worship is no substitute for reconciliation.

Worship is much, much easier than reconciliation. At least coming to church and singing songs and kneeling and sitting and listening to a sermon. Those things are a piece of cake compared with reconciliation.

The great danger of coming to worship with impure hearts is that we will use our church experience as a substitute for seeing God. At church we will feel affirmed in our resentment, our disgust, our hatred, our disdain toward others. Our hearing of God, our vision of God is distorted by our own impurity and eventually we make God an accessory of our impurity. We imagine that God agrees with our disgust, our revulsion, our scorn for the people who offend us, annoy us, differ from us.

Beware. We don't want God to see as we see. We want to learn to see as God sees.

Have you ever wondered why people go to churches where the preacher lambasts sin every week? One of the temptations in that setting is to hear all the things that apply to other people. This is one reason preachers in some churches bash homosexuals so often. It's a way to be tough on sin without offending anyone. Because the preacher assumes that no one in his congregation is struggling with sexual identity issues. He's blasting people out there, strangers, people “not like us.” And we are usually far harsher to people we don't see. (That's one reason email is so famously destructive in conflicts. We are looking at words on a screen instead of at the face of a person.)

Of course, this simply means these preachers are blind. They cannot see the hurting people sitting in their own congregation, people who came to church that morning desperate to connect with God, only to be slapped by a message of rejection.

Blessed are the pure in heart. In the context of worship, that means blessed are those who do the difficult, sometimes tiring work of pursuing reconciliation so that when they hear the gospel of peace preached on Sabbath they understand the cost of peace. They prize the glory of peace.

What does it mean to see God?

It is a vision of glory that is ultimately satisfying. I have had enough. I am content. It is an understanding of the universe, the cosmos. You get it.

It's like climbing into the light.

When Dan and I reached 8000 feet, we climbed out of the fog into dazzling brilliant sun. The whole world was lit. Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens. The world was suffused with light. We were filled with light.

When we see God, eventually we are ourselves filled with light. We come to see the world as God sees. We see people with new eyes. Even the most broken person wears the halo of divine affection.

Sometimes church people seem to specialize in noticing the evil in the world. They are full of knowledge about the latest evidence of cultural decay. They are obsessed with evidence of evil. When they look at the world they notice only, or especially, the darkness.

This preoccupation with evil is evidence of impurity in the heart.

When we have pure hearts, we will see God not just on his throne in heaven, we will see him every where we turn our eyes. When our hearts are pure we will not just look in God's direction, we will begin seeing with God's vision.

We will be aware of the existence of the fog, but if we are in the fog we will busy ourselves climbing out of it. Our goal will be a vision of the world full of the glory of God. We will not rest until we are walking in a world of light.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Blessed Are Those Who Are Hungry

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.
Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
Sabbath, March 2, 2013
Comments welcome, especially if they come in before 8 a.m. on March 2.
Fourth in a series

Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
These blessings, The Beatitudes," are recorded in the Gospel of Matthew as the beginning of the “Sermon on the Mount,” the most famous collection of the sayings of Jesus. This “sermon” has been a primary source for Christian visionaries, humanists and radicals for at least 1800 years.

Sometimes hunger is funny.

This fall I got back home from a two day hike. I had miscalculated the food needed for the trip, so when I got home I was seriously starved. The first thing I did, before taking a shower, before unloading the car was to make a sandwich. As I was carrying it to the table I was overcome with dizziness. I managed to sit down and put my head on the table. After a minute, I lifted my head enough to get a bite of food in, then put my head back on the table to chew. I repeated this process until I finished my sandwich.

I was glad Karin wasn't home. She would have given a me scolding. Why didn't I take more food? I thought it was funny. I live in a society where food is readily available. I was sitting in a kitchen full of food, and I was fainting from hunger. There are others here who have had similar experiences: you have run out of gas while running a marathon, you have failed to carry enough food for a long hike. Hunger ambushes you. You get dizzy. You faint. Someone gives you a granola bar or some goo and you revive.

These kinds of hunger stories are entertaining. In fact, among skinny trail runners, this kind of story is part of the swagger. This kind of hunger is funny.

Then there is another kind of hunger. Soul-bending, ugly hunger.

I recently starting reading Les Miserable, the novel by Victor Hugo. The central figure in the is a hardened convict. A man who has spent nineteen years under the lash in the prison galleys of the French navy.

How did he get there? Hunger. Bone-gnawing, heart-crushing hunger. There is nothing funny about this kind of hunger.

Jean Valjean had lived with his widowed sister and her gaggle of kids who are perpetually hungry. Starving kids, for whom a bit of bread is a superlative luxury. His sister was eaten not only by the miserable emptiness in her own belly but by her inability to feed her children. And Jean Valjean? He worked day and night, at any job he could find. Was paid a pittance, Walmart wages in a BMW society. It was never enough. He lived with perpetual economic impotence. Until one day, driven by rage against the hunger—his hunger, the kids' hunger, his sister's hunger—he steals a loaf of bread. And for stealing a loaf of bread he is sentenced to five years in the galleys which stretches out into nineteen.

In Hugo's story hunger is never comical. It is never the transitory difficulty experienced by skinny hikers and runners. It is an ugly, excruciating emptiness. A desperate lack of sustenance that puts life itself in question.

This is the kind of hunger Jesus had in mind when he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

In Jesus' world if a laborer didn't find work today, he didn't eat today. His wife didn't eat today. His children didn't eat today. The 99 percent in Jesus' day were not obese. They weren't even near their “ideal weight.” They were stringy, scrawny people, like the pictures you see of Chinese laborers a hundred years ago. Like rickshaw pullers whose arms and legs were as skinny as the spokes of the rickshaw wheels.

Jesus' audience knew hunger. Real hunger. Soul-bending hunger. They knew what it meant to put kids to bed at night who were whimpering with hunger. Hunger in their world was not funny. It was this ugly, biting hunger Jesus had in mind when he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteous for they will be filled.

When you are hungry for righteousness, you are keenly aware of your lack of your righteousness, your need for more righteousness. Your awareness of your unrighteousness eats at you, gnaws on you. It's pretty easy to translate that sense of deficiency into a sense of condemnation. The distance between the ideal and your performance is a measure of God's disapproval. Your awareness of your deficiency feeds a sense of shame.

Jesus spoke to this natural sense of condemnation and shame when he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst—who feel their lack of—righteousness. Blessed. God is not screaming at you for your failure to achieve. He is not smirking. He's not shaking his head and saying scornfully, “Again?” According to Jesus, God notices our hunger, our ache for doing better, and God's word in response is, “Blessed.” God says, “I'm rooting for you. You can do it. We can do it. It's going to happen. Give it another go.”

Alcohol has dominated Bob's life for decades. He has gone through detox repeatedly. Through rehab. He has joined AA. He has prayed. Then proceeded to betray friends, ruin romances, destroy his employment with drinking. More than once he has stood up in church to ask us pray for him. “I just got out of detox yesterday, pray that I will remain clean and sober.” Or, “I'm going into detox on Monday, please pray.”

Bob was desperately hungry for wholeness. This hunger started early in his life. And the impossibility of filling that hunger was also set early in his life, in the pervasive alcoholism of his parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors. It was probably written into his genes.

Bob was a gentle soul. Loved his dog and cat. Cared about people. He dreamed of serving people, of doing them good. It was an illusive dream. It was a hunger always blocked by his fatal weakness and the tyranny of alcohol.
When I would sit with Bob and his friends in their dilapidated house, I find myself wondering, does God notice? Is God watching?

Jesus insists, yes, God is watching. And his word to people like Bob, to people who are desperately hungry for an elusive righteousness, an unavailable well-being, is Blessing. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, they will be filled.

Blessed. Not screamed at by God. Affirmed by God. Not scorned, not condemned, not rejected. Blessed.

Further, God's promise is, “You will be filled.” Bob's hunger would not forever eat his soul. Bob was not consigned to eternal failure. In this world, for Bob, alcohol will always be a deadly threat. Bob would like to enjoy the freedom to casually, freely, comfortably say no to the urge to drink. Given his personal and genetic history, that's not going to happen. Not in this world. Only in a different world, with a brain transformation not imaginable here, can Bob enjoy that freedom. Jesus promised it would happen. A world where Bob will be different, where he will no longer be tormented by hunger that cannot be satisfied, hunger for an unreachable wholeness, an unattainable righteousness.

Jesus words are a special gift to people who struggle against the tyranny of addiction.

In contrast to Bob, who was fairly open about his struggles, William's hunger was deeply hidden. He first experienced drugs in his teen years—that was in the late sixties. In college he experienced a dramatic conversion. Along with others he led in a revival that swept Adventist college campuses. People were transformed, the course of their lives changed. People became ministers and teachers as a result of the power of God evident in William's ministry. He went to seminary where he demonstrated brilliant theological acumen, graduating magna cum laude. He was a dearly loved pastor before deciding to leave the clergy and take medicine. He became an admired, beloved physician.

Publicly through all those years of seminary, pastoring, medical school and medical practice, drug use merely part of his pre-conversion story. In reality, they had never let go of him. For decades, they secretly pleasured him, tormented him, and eventually ruined him.

To people like William Jesus said, Blessed are those who desperately long for holiness, honesty, self-control. They will be filled. Blessed, not cursed.

Some of us here this morning live with aching hunger for a righteousness that eludes us. Maybe we're battling an addiction. Maybe we coping with a profound sense of never being good enough. We learned in Bible class or from some preacher that the only acceptable standard for “these last days” is perfection. And we are not yet perfect. Our hunger for righteousness torments us. We experience our hunger as a measure of our condemnation or as a measure of our shame.

We imagine God watching our performance and scowling. Our flaws are blocking God's work in the world. We are responsible for the delay of the Second Coming. Our sense of inadequacy and failure is overwhelming. It crushes our spirits. We long to be better, to do better.

Jesus says to you: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, they will be filled.

God is not scolding you. God is not screaming at you in frustration. God is not shaming you. God notices your hunger and pronounces blessing. He offers hope. You will be filled.

Bob and William have found partial satisfaction of their hunger even in this life. The last time I talked with Bob he had been clean and sober for two, going on three, years. William has been clean and sober for three or four years. Both men live on the edge of relapse. The ultimate fulfillment satisfaction of their hunger is beyond this world, in a place where there is no more sin, no more weakness, no more dealers. Still, they are experiencing some measure of satisfaction. That is sweet.


It's easy to pronounce a blessing on those who have attained righteousness. If we had heard Bob or William tell of their victory over alcohol or drugs twenty or thirty years ago, we would have cheered. What a wonderful demonstration of the power of God to change lives!

Would we have been as boisterous and thrilled if we had know that the victory was temporary? Jesus calls us to celebrate the hunger for righteousness even if we do not see it satisfied. The challenge for us as disciples of Jesus is to set aside our natural instinct to condemn those who fail to realize their ideals and join Jesus in pronouncing blessing.

We should bless those who dream of triumphing over addictions. We should bless those who hunger for more control over their tongue. My guess is that there is more than one person here who is secretly ashamed of there inability to make their speech unfailingly courteous. How many times have you regretted your sharp words? You blow it. You speak sharply to your kids or your spouse or your employees. Then your conscience pricks you. You find yourself hungry for a sweeter tongue.

Jesus does not scold you for your failure. He blesses your for waking up and realizing that God's call is higher.

Let's be crystal clear, righteousness is worthy of our hunger. It is foolish and tragic to deal with the distance between our performance and our ideals by lowering our ideals.

When I was sitting at the kitchen table, faint from hunger, unable to hold my head up. The remedy was to shove food in my face whichever way I could. It would also be silly not to learn something from that fainting spell. Next time I will take more food. Our goal is not to deny our hunger but to satisfy it with good things.

Jesus blessed those who were tormented by hunger for righteousness. He assured them they were under the smile of God. He encouraged them in their pursuit of righteousness. And he urged them to keep that hunger alive.

So we come to church to encourage one another in our own pursuits of righteousness. Especially to those of you who think of yourselves as young, I challenge you to be satisfied with nothing less than righteousness.

Earn your degrees. Master your athletic skills. Become an expert in your field. Cultivate social skills. Build your networks. Those are all worthy goals. Above them all is the goal of righteousness. Integrity. Compassion. Self-control. Honesty. Generosity. A commitment to human well-being that goes beyond your family's standard of living.

If you are not now hungry for righteousness, if you find yourself quite satisfied, then maybe it's time for you to trying running a longer race, climbing a higher mountain. Dream of making a bigger difference in the world.

When we are aware of a distance between our performance and the ideal toward which we strive, Jesus' blessing sets us free from shame and condemnation. Jesus' blessing frees us to devote all of our energy to seeking to satisfy our hunger with the very best—righteousness, a life shaped by the teachings and example of Jesus.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They will be filled. God will be pleased.


HERMEUTICAL NOTE:
In the Gospel of Matthew, righteousness means doing right, goodness, nobility, integrity, wholeness, spiritual and social well-being. The Pauline/Augustinian/Reformed notion of righteousness as “divine approval” is derived from the earlier and more fundamental definition of righteousness as doing right. In this view, God grants people his approval—i.e. counts them as righteous—on the basis of their spiritual connection with Jesus who was the supreme right-doer, the ultimate exemplar of goodness, nobility, integrity, wholeness, spiritual and social well-being.

Matthew presents many pictures of God's grace, the most dramatic of which is the first beatitude. He also vividly pictures the righteous life—that is a life lived according to the will of God—as the ideal for those who wished to participate in his kingdom. Jesus aims to move people toward a new, holy way of life. This is illustrated in the story of the call of Matthew the Tax Collector.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth. "Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he said, "Healthy people don't need a doctor—sick people do." Then he added, "Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: 'I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.' For I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners." Matthew 9:9-13

Jesus looked at human brokenness and said that's what I'm here for. I'm a physician. My job is healing. And Jesus fully intends to succeed as a healer. He intends to move people from wherever they are in the realm of sin and darkness into the pattern of life he has mapped out for the children of light. Jesus is a teacher who expects his students to learn.