Being Bigger than Bigotry

As children, my siblings and I were taught that no one’s life exists outside of God’s love and grace.  Similarly, we were taught that even if a person went to a different church, or held beliefs different to our own, we should recognize that God’s grace is big enough to accommodate human difference.  The underlying principle is that Life belongs to God and not to us.  We occupy this world for a brief spell, and in that brief spell, we are permitted to touch this world by the manner we choose to live this gifted life.

With the advent of the Civil Rights Movement in the Untied States in the late 1960s, there have been times when I thought we, modern people that we are, had outgrown discrimination and bigotry.  I am bigger than that after all! Aren’t I?

I was caught off guard recently however.  In my business, being a minister and all, I encounter lots of atheists and agnostics and followers of other philosophies and beliefs.  Well, it has happened from time to time that a person of another following will make a derogatory comment about a God-centred life.  If God does not exist to them, how ridiculous must it seem to them, that whole populations base their lives around the idea that Life belongs to God.

The fact remains, that such derogatory comments aimed at theists are an expression of bigotry, but it does it stop there.  If I, a theist, turn my ire back on those who have spoken such offensive words, and unleash my own venomous words of anger against them in the name of my beliefs, haven’t I too slipped?  When I free myself to speak sarcastically or hatefully about the lives of those with whom I disagree, am I not fuelling the fires of bigotry?

If I am going to out-grow bigotry, then I am going to chose to be a person who gives Life back to God for God’s glory.  This will invite me to look for God’s hand beyond my own life experiences, and to refrain from reducing the Life that belongs to God to a collection of personal opportunities where I may use my words to shame, manipulate and coerce others into adopting my superior way of thinking.  I will not agree with all the people I encounter regarding the source and end of Life, but I will honour God when I take a stand to be bigger than bigotry.

Living in the in-between Places

 A Jewish custom, which for many is no longer practiced, involved carving the shema, on their doorpost or placing it there in a small box (called a mezuzot).  The shema, from Deuteronomy 4:6-9,  is  that reminder that there is one Lord and you are to love Him with all your heart soul and might.  In addition you are to teach this to your children, and you are to recite it whether at home or on a journey.  This reminder was to assist the faithful in remembering that all life flowed from God and to God, no matter where your foot might tread.

You might be asking, why the doorpost?  What is so significant about a door lintel?  Well for the ancients and for us, doorways are not just architectural passages offering protection and leading from one space to another, but they possess a spiritual significant as well.

Doorways are those places where we exit and enter our own world; a world created by us and for us in God’s grace, a resting place away from all that is unknown and might cause us to bristle.  Doorways are also those places where others enter and exit our world; a ceremony which too often happens with an indifference that might be worth reconsidering.  Finally, doorways are those spaces where we enter and exit the lives of others, also rooted in God’s grace; an event we do well to regard with more thoughtfulness.

So marking the doorway with a reminder that our lives are rooted in God’s love, and loving God, is a way of preparing the body and spirit of those daring the passage from one worldly environment to another.  It was a sort of blessing, because as it reminded those passing, it focused their spirits on the sacredness of each encounter.

The second week of Easter we hear that Jesus passes through a closed door.  Its occupants were not at home with God, in fact they were far away, because of the fear that their world was forever lost.  After all, Jesus had been killed, and his graced presence would no longer be there for them.

As you recall, Jesus passes through the door, entering into the midst of the disciples’ focus on fear, loss, and death.  There amongst all of that, he says ‘peace be with you.’

There in their pain and loss, he enters, and shares his own wounds, but more he shares his life which overcame all death.  His shared life gives them new hope, a hope that will lead them beyond the threshold of their own fear, pain and failure.  His sharing of his transformed life, crates within them a courage to go on and live for God’s sake, not their own.

Sharing and nursing wounds is no longer the end of life; sharing wounds is a reminder that while all are wounded as we pass in and out of life’s realities, the life we have in God is forever unending.

Looking beyond the death of Jesus to the never-ending and always present life, living for that life, we must rethink all of life’s thresholds, be them spiritual or physical.  Living in the confidence of Christ’s life, our thresholds may no longer be used as barriers and self made tombs.  Entrusting our lives to Christ we begin at the threshold of the heart, and here in the midst of life’s woes and wounds we meet LIFE as God offers it over and over again.

The Word that Nourishes us

Recently, I heard a rumour that Saint Matthias National School was reducing to one teacher and the enrolment would be 14 as of the autumn of 2012. As the chairperson of the Board of management, I was caught off guard; currently, Saint Matthias National School has an enrolment of 19, to be 20 before the end of the year, and there are parents who have already expressed their intentions of enrolling young students for the next academic year. In addition, the school knows now that they will have been allotted two teachers and a resources teacher for next year. So the rumours of a school that is closing or dying are untrue, reflecting the imaginations of people who have extracted meaning from small pieces of information, and like any recipe for disaster, taken these small pieces and cooked them into a dooms day prediction.

We humans, as a species, are very skilled at creating something out of nothing. By taking pieces of information, kneading them into a whole, and offering the product as the daily bread for the local community, we direct the trajectory of an entire group of people, amazing! Who would have thought that words could be so powerful, but they are.

Our words chosen carelessly can undo, divide and demolish quicker than any wrecking-ball. Our words chosen carefully, can build up, sustain, and nourish a community into the future.

As we consider the death and resurrection of Jesus, the reality that God brings life out of death, let us remember that Christ is our Good Word, that Word which brings life out of death. Let us also consider how we might construct our own words and conversations to restore life where it seems doomed, to build up those around us when they feel weighed down, and create possibilities of life where others are looking at death

Living in Christ gives us the eyes to see.

One thing that God has planted deep within my own spirit, is the awareness that God desires to bring all people into life at all times, no exceptions.  That means you!  So if you are reading this, you might stop and consider all the ways God is calling you into life.  If you are thinking of the tragedies of your life right now, and how your life is cursed, then stop, just stop and begin in a new place.  Try, as hard as it will be to remember that place, that time, when there was real and genuine blessing in your life, the kind of blessing with no deceit, no manipulation or malice; there in that place you will see God's grace alive and well.  If you could dwell in those moments where you were aware of God's blessing, there life never ends.  But God's salvation for us is no mind game, it is real.

I live in my head a lot, and in my head I try and try to figure things out.  I try to figure life out, I try to figure people out, I try to figure me out, I even try to figure God out.  You know what?  Mostly I get it wrong.  I might get it part right, or even mostly right, but figuring life mostly out is like following a recipe and getting most of the ingredients into it; the finished product will not be what you set out to make.

There is an answer, and that one answer is Christ.  In Christ, when you place your life there, you are given the eyesight of the heart to see into the darkest of life's situations, and see life at work; there, living in Christ, you will see God at work.  Now I cannot understand Christ, I cannot figure out how life is offered there, but I have and do experience the life there that I am speaking about.

So when I lost a niece to cot death, and a dear friend to suicide, and another friend to a tragic disease, there in Christ, living in his grace, my life was and continues to be sustained.  Christ carries me through these dark valleys.

If you have never tried it, I invite you for the next month, to get down on your knees everyday for just a minute or two, and ask dedicate every action, and every breath of your life to Christ.  Then, see where it leads you.  It will only be 30 minutes to one hour out of the next month, but it might be that one hour that makes all the others liveable.

God Bless, and the peace of Christ reign in your heart!

Forgiving is a Gift for Giving

Forgiveness is one of those gifts we often are most reluctant to offer to others.  It is the sort of gift that may only be given in response to something being taken.  Most gifts we offer are given because we wish to celebrate a time honoured custom, to underscore personal affections, and because we wish to compliment the support and offerings of others.  Forgiving is the gift offered in response to a deficit, to a sense of loss, and a loss too often, associated with a deep, and lasting hurt.

When a person's behaviour is insensitive, insulting, and intentionally malicious, the innate response is one of defence, and of counter attack; there is a sudden urge to strike back.  When the scripture writer recounted God's commands in chapter 21 of Exodus informing us about an eye for an eye, those words not only reflected the faith of the Israelites, but the custom of the time.  Again, a time honoured tradition (for lack of a better term) is to return life threatening blows with life threatening blows.  So for-giving is a counter cultural practice.

It is with such an awareness that it is worth considering the passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, 5:38-42 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

Underlying this biblical teaching is a deeper truth, when one person wilfully takes from another, or is provoked to harm another, then that person is claiming a control over life that, in reality, belongs to none of us.  From a Biblical point of view, life always rightly and truly belongs to God, and God alone.  The more we allow ourselves to inflict harm on others, even in the name of righteousness, the more we risk plaguing ourselves with the very injustice that we stand against.  Exchanging one misdeed for another misdeed, we unwittingly subject our lives and the lives of others to our own tyrannical whim.

When we chose to reminisce over past injustices, we fortify those weighty emotional and self-serving memories, which sap our ability to be who we are created to be; we voluntarily blind ourselves to the gift of life that God is giving us in this moment.  We, willingly, paralyze the authority God grants us in life to create life among and with others, and seek instead to telescope thoughts toward that which has since past.  In such a case, we pervert our lives by trying to correct them; we become the very iniquity we wish to ban from our lives.

Humanity participates in life to the degree that God, the source of all creation, offers it to us.  Following the teaching of Jesus, we are to give back to our perpetrators what God has entrusted to all of us, viz. life itself, because, we can only properly give what God has given to us.  Jesus’ instruction stands in stark contrast to contemporary customs and legal principles.

In chapter six of Saint Matthew, Jesus tells his followers, to ask God to, “forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.”  Then again in the Gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus says, “if [a person] sins against you seven times in the day, and seven times returns, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”  At first glance, these two passages are difficult to digest and even more difficult to put into practice; they ask us to strip ourselves of justice founded in self-righteousness and replace that with a justice that offers life at every cost.

These passages invite us to a holiness and wholeness, which are liberating.  When we ask God to forgive us, we are recognizing that life is a divine gift, entrusted to us, and not an entitlement.  As such, that gift will, now and always, rightly belong to God in his providence, and not to us.  When we forgive others, we give back to them an opportunity to live life anew and simultaneously we shed from ourselves past resentments that will hinder us in living our lives as a divine gift.

When we choose to forgive, we release ourselves from a spell we have cast over ourselves; it is as if we had taken a secret potion which frees our interior vision to see life beyond the wrongs perpetrated against us.  We allow a balance to return to life, not simply one of human creation, but one of divine imperative; we, through forgiving, give back to God what really belongs to Him, life itself.  By placing our focus on God’s authority and power, we bring into balance the authority and power we feign to possess.

Forgiving the UnforgivableDaily Affirmations for Forgiving and Moving OnThe Art of Forgiving

Weighing In

Perhaps you have heard the story of a little girl who was showing her friends around her house, and when she got to the bathroom, she stopped and looked at the bathroom scale, pointing, she said, I do not know what that thing is, but my mum and dad stand on it everyday, and it always makes them really mad.

If you are like me, there have been times when you have shifted on the scale and tried to get it to tell you something that it did not want to tell you.  It is a bit comical that we want a scale, a thing outside of us, to tell us who we are, so we can feel better about who we are inside.  Then, when the scale does not tell us what we want to be told, we get frustrated, even  harbouring negative feelings toward ourselves.

Life does not weigh up for us the way we would like it to do.  When we are afraid or anxious that things are not going the way we think they ought to go; when we are unable to pacify our own internal anxieties, and worries, as with a bathroom scale, we might nudge the people around us back and forth, pushing one person this way, and another that way, until they can be what we need them to be, and we can feel better about ourselves.

The truth is, when life is not weighing up as we like it to do, there is a temptation to coax other people into telling us what we need to hear, so we will be OK with ourselves and the world.

Lets say, Ian tells me that I am good at my job then I feel good about my job.  If Margaret says that my cakes are the best, then I feel super about my culinary prowess.  Ian and Margaret have become the scales by which by which my life is valued and measured.  All the time, the value of my life is already inside me, just like my bodily weight is inside me.

However, our lives do get more complicated than trying to elicit simple compliments.  Sometimes, at work, at home, or with friends, we feel we are being pressured by others, and asked to change.  Sometimes our life situations become so uncomfortable that there seems to be no solution other than to ask others to change there ways.

By way of example, a student is performing poorly in school; as a consequence, the student’s marks reflect a poor performance.  The parents of the student, unhappy with the thought of having a child with poor marks, try to convince school officials to give their child a higher mark, even thought the student has already been accurately marked.

Of course, when we feel uncomfortable inside, this could be a signal that we are in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing the wrong sorts of things.  All of these sorts of feelings suggest that it is us who need to make adjustments if we wish to be right with the world.  Our internal feelings are, after all, our feelings, and they have to do with how we are valuing ourselves and the world around us.

If our lives become defined by things that are outside of us, what I do not have, or what I need from others, then we have forfeited our lives in the process of gaining them.  Because what brings my life value is possessed by others, over whom I have not control, then my life is not longer mine.  Yet this is precisely what the Scriptures warn us about.

If we wish to be true to the teachings of Jesus, we are invited to discover the diving power within; this is found in relationship with God who is Mystery.  At baptism we are given to God, as God’s children.  At our baptism, we are asking that God’s Divine and Holy Spirit fill our entire lives, and to be our substance and guide on our journey through life.  While the baptism is a moment in time, the reality of the baptism is timeless, it is a lifetime of journey.  Yet, without faith, belief in the providence of the indwelling God, the only alternative is to find my value in the lives and situations around me.  To weigh up my value according to the latest cultural scales.

Peter, who in the New Testament Gospel accounts appears as both a symbol of strength and a man of great weakness; he is a good symbol for all faithful people.  At times we are very strong and persevere in our resolve to live as people filled with God’s Spirit, and other times we loose hope and begin to live as if our lives are possessed by those around us.  We find him, in the midst of his own insecurities, questing Jesus’ motivation and his own ability.  When he doubts, he falls. Here you might refer to Matthew 16:21-ff; also Matthew 14:28-33.

Like Peter, Jesus is also a model for all people.  In the Gospel, Jesus speaks openly.  He is in a relationship with the whole world.  He is speaking about his own journey, and the difficulties he will face along the way (again see Matthew 16:21).  Jesus does not find his life’s value in the way others will treat him, but his value comes directly from his relationship with his Father.

As we reflect about who we are, and how it is that the Holy Spirit dwells within us, let us also reflect upon the following quotes: “If we plan on being less than we are capable of being in life, then we have set ourselves up to be unhappy for the duration.” (Abraham Harold Maslow, RIP 1970)…and…”So, when we approach life, lets not lower the bar because we are human, but rise to the occasion and elevate ourselves to the fullness of our humanity.” (Laura Catherine Schlessinger, born 1947).  May your weight always be measured in holiness, and your journey be guided by the Holy Spirit at the centre of all life.

Looking Eastward

If you’re like me, you’ve had to spend some time in your life figuring our your taxes.  I occasionally catch myself wondering, just where do my taxes go, and how will my contribution be spent?  In the 22^nd chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is asked by some Jewish officials whether it is lawful to pay taxes?  He responds by examining a coin with the emperor’s head on it and then advises them give to the emperor what belongs to him and give to God what belongs to God.  Somehow, I find Jesus’ words to the Jewish officials, written some 2000 years ago, a comfort, as I offer hard-earned income for purposes that remain veiled from me.

Taxes are our offering to the government and ensure its (and our) well-being into perpetuity, and while we don’t know exactly where the money goes, we trust it’s for a good purpose.  Taxes, though, are not the only offering we make in good faith -- there are many similar offerings we make, some of them, like taxes, are obligatory, and others, like looking after ailing family member or friend, are acts of free will.  Offerings, whether obligatory or optional, are rituals that weave through the fabric of our lives.  At the end of the day, like the taxes we pay, our offerings to this world are done in good faith, but without full understanding of the outcome.

Examples of how we might offer ourselves are numerous and varied.  When we sit and listen patiently to a distressed friend, we never know whether we’ve been any help at all.  When we donate money to charity, we can’t be sure how those pounds will be distributed.  When we greet a stranger on the street with a smile, we have no idea just how that might alter the course of that person’s day.  In every instance, we make such offerings in good faith, believing they will lead to goodness and a more abundant life than may have been experienced previously.

One, often weekly, offering that goes virtually unnoticed happens when you enter the church.  As you enter many Churches, you do so from the west entrance.  When you situate yourself in one of the pews, you face east – the direction of the rising sun and the new day ahead of you. To get to your seat, you will have walked from the west to the east, unwittingly perhaps, but symbolically moving away from the day that has ended to approach the new day, with its new possibilities.  As Christians, we are always on a journey toward Christ, who is for us the promise of the new day.  It is with this idea in mind that churches tend to be eastward in orientation; we literally walk toward the new day, as we walk toward the Altar at the eastern end of the Church.

This sort of talk may sound “new age”, but it is, in fact, an age-old element of our Christian teaching.  As Christ rose from the dead on Easter Sunday morning, marking the victory of life over death and light over darkness, we too are invited to do likewise, approaching each day as an opportunity for new life.  This point is highlighted by the representation of the risen Christ placed at the very centre of the church’s eastern facing window.  Christ’s resurrection is our invitation to see each day as one of new and unexpected possibilities.  In the life of Christ we find new life.

In front of the pews and before the east, there stands the altar -- that historical place of offering.  In our Christian worship, we offer bread, wine, and donations of money as signs of gratitude, but we offer something more -- we offer ourselves.  As we face eastward – the direction of the new day – and offer ourselves, we offer ourselves with a new attitude, a new outlook.  We offer ourselves to God with the belief that there is a new day ahead, with new possibilities, both for ourselves and for all people on the journey with us.  We offer ourselves in the midst of all that we are not, knowing that with each new day, we have the possibility of being something more. As with all other offerings, obligatory or optional, we make our offering in good faith, believing it will lead to goodness and a more abundant life than may have been experienced previously.

As you join me in offering your taxes to the government, join me also in considering the ways we can offer our lives to the goodness of God, taking our confidence from God’s creation, where there is always a new day dawning.