What is Saving Your Life?

Peter Gomes died this week at the age of 68. As the chaplain of the Memorial Church at Harvard University, he managed to combine being both a committed Christian and an intelligent modern person - which is what a lot of people do, really, but they don't make the spotlight as often as those who are only one or the other and even they don't get attention as often as those who are neither.  

In the academic world of Cambridge MA, Gomes was in the spotlight or on the podium whenever some big event took place at Harvard. Being the ceremonial Holy Man is one of those ministerial duties that I neither enjoy or do well, and therefore I admire those who can pull it off. Asked to bless a traditional academic gathering, Gomes once said, "I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's seventh husband on his wedding night. I know what to do, but I'm not sure how to make it interesting."  

But those ceremonial duties also got him up close to some of the world's most interesting people, including Nelson Mandela who was honored by Harvard with a rare outdoor convocation. The kind of thing the University did for George Washington, Winston Churchill and very few others in over 300 years. Gomes was impressed with the crowd Mandela drew. Skeptical faculty and students with very short attention spans sat transfixed as the leader of South Africa's peaceful transition from minority white to majority black rule spoke to them.  

Gomes said "Mandela was not an explicitly religious figure; he preached no sermon and made no moral claims, but he didn't have to, for he made the ordinary and the politically extraordinary seem holy, even sacred. We saw transcendence in him, and it was powerful  because it was not a matter of piety, which would have allowed the secular to write it off." 

One student, reflecting on the college's experience that day said: "It wasn't about us, and it wasn't about him; it was about what he believed in that had saved his life, and saved his country." (Gomes, The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need. HarperSanFranciso 2002 p.274).  

In her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about being invited to speak at a large church in the Midwest. When she asked what she would be expected to talk about, her host said, "Just come and tell us about what is saving your life right now".  

What is saving your life right now?  

What is saving the lives of the people around you? A lot of them probably don't look like they need anything to save them.  We are all pretty good at putting up a front that says, "Everything's fine here!"  A friend who is going through a hard time right now described another friend of hers who "has it all together". What I didn't say, but wish I had, is that she herself looks like she has it all together, too. That's appropriate I think. We don't all need to bleed all over each other all the time.  

But there are some things you can't hide.  

Mandela couldn't hide the fact that he spent half his adult life in prison - most of it in Robben Island's notorious Block D and then managed to lead his nation away from the bloodbath that everyone predicted would happen someday.  

The mother who has lost a child but keeps on caring for her other children can't hide that fact. The once-vigorous woman who can't make her feet move more than a few inches at a time can't hide the fact that she is suffering from a degenerative disease.  The guy who has been out of work for months can't hide the fact that he has to get up every day and put in another application for another job that a hundred other people have also applied for. You know some of these people. What is saving their lives?   

In Matthew 17, Jesus and Peter, James and John climb a mountain and, at the top, Jesus is transfigured - meaning his face shines and his disciples see him talking with Moses and Elijah, who were already legendary figures before the Old Testament was written down.  Whether you want to take this encounter literally or not, the important thing about it is that Jesus was connecting with "The Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah)". There are many summaries of all that Moses and Elijah stand for including the one Jesus gave: "Love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself". But it is more than piety and ethical action. It is also about hope - hope in the One who sets prisoners free and bends history toward justice and causes nations that have fought each other for months, years, or even centuries to finally beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  

What saves your life right now? It may not be easy to summarize and it may not sound very religious, but my guess is that you may be fighting a harder battle than it looks to those on the outside. Or you may be looking at what life is throwing at people around you and in your heart you know that it could throw that same stuff at you and you wonder what would save your life if you had to deal with the grief or the pain or the uncertainty that haunts people you know. What saves your life? You may want to ask that question of a prisoner who became a president or of the best oldest person you know, or of a young mom who is juggling a job and kids or of a guy nailed to a cross.

Words we use and don’t use

I”ve just returned from Florida. My wife, Jacquie, is still there dog-sitting for friends who are on a cruise.  The pleasure of being in Key West can be measured mathematically. Take the difference in the temperature between Cleveland and Key West, square it,  and then multiply the result by the number of inches of snow in Cleveland. However, you also have to subtract the number of minutes you spend worrying about your house in Cleveland: frozen pipes? An electrical short causing a fire? Ice building up on the eaves? Leaking roof? Ice and leaks have been problems since we remodeled our attic a few years ago. So, we worried about our house, but the first two weeks in February were so brutal in Cleveland that the pleasure definitely outweighed the worry.

It started to warm up the day after I got home (coincidence? I don’t think so.) And the good news is that we had no damage.

I’ve had a smartphone for a couple of months. It has a talk-to-text feature that I am using more and more. It is remarkably accurate, but it is also pretty revealing when it isn’t. The temperature rose to 50 by Sunday and I sent a text to Jacquie to let her know the roof was OK. I spoke these words into the smartphone: “The ice dam is gone”.  

It came out: “The ice damn is gone”.

I have certainly felt that way about the ice on our roof, but I was intrigued by the fact that the text-to-talk  technology would choose a homonym that will bring an FCC fine for some broadcasters.

It reminded me of an incident a few weeks ago. I was making some notes for upcoming sermons using the smartphone and an app called “Evernote” (which I highly recommend!). I was planning a series based on Micah 6:8: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God?”

The theme for this coming Sunday will be mercy. So, I spoke the words “February 20th mercy” into the phone. “February 20th” - to my amazement - came out perfectly. But “mercy” came out as “Mercedes”.  I tried again. “Mercy”, I said more slowly and clearly. “Mercedes” appeared on the screen.

What does it say about our society (or at least about users of smartphones) that a computer program will confuse “mercy” with the name of a luxury car?  One of the readings for Sunday, Leviticus 19, gives us a picture of the biblical concept of mercy. Landowners were instructed to leave a margin of uncut grain around the edge of their field so that the poor and the landless could glean some for themselves. You could tell how merciful someone was by how wide that margin was.

In a culture that prizes acquisition, we maximize our profits and minimize margins that we consider “waste”.   Ask most Americans where we can cut the national budget and they will say, “Foreign Aid”. Ask them what should not be cut and they will say, “Defense”. The U.S. spends about $1.4 billion to feed hungry people  around the world and to lift them out of poverty. The Pentagon has already spent $3 billion on a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet . The Secretary of Defense and most military analysts agree that the project, plagued by cost overruns, is a complete waste. But political observers give an extension of the program at least a 50-50 chance of passage. I wonder why?

So it doesn’t surprise me that when we say “mercy” it comes out “Mercedes” or that when we talk about a wall that holds back water, it comes out “damn”.

Conviction and Civility

The President appropriately did not blame anyone who uses phrases like "Lock and load" or "take out the opposition" in political debate for the shootings in Tucson. It appears, in fact, that the president managed to turn the whole debate around and some very thoughtful people have taken up the challenge of suggesting exactly what "civility" would look like in public discourse in our society. 

Senator John McCain used the same approach in a  Washington Post article. 

Jim Wallis and Charles Colson are easily identifiable as representatives of the "Religious Left" and the "Religious Right", respectively, but they coauthored an article in Christianity Today in which they wrote:  

" . . . we affirm the politics of conviction. Conviction is not  inconsistent with civility, which is far deeper than political niceness,  indifference, or weakness. We recall the example of Dr. Martin Luther  King Jr., who could never be accused of a lack of passion; yet he  persisted in the non-violent treatment of his adversaries, hoping to win  them over rather than to win over them.   

Perhaps the most helpful article I've read comes from Martin Marty, a noted historian who has watched and commented on current events for decades. He finds guidance in Martin Luther's Shorter Catechism (Dr. Marty is a Lutheran and P-R-O-U-D of it!).  Luther is explaining the commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor" to what we would today call "teenagers".  

Martin Luther says this commandment means:  

"We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light." 

Now here is a spiritual exercise. Just as a litmus test let us suppose that you choose either Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin as your subject, whichever one rubs you the wrong way the most, and try it out. 

Maybe we can handle the first part: "We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations."  

But, what about that second part? Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light." 

Not so easy, is it? Or maybe I'm just speaking for myself.  

It shows how much our souls are affected by what passes for public discourse these days that we may not feel a need to strictly "fact check" the criticisms we make of people we disagree with and even actively dislike. (I've read and passed on so many emails that I later learned were "urban legends" that I now check even the most plausible with Snopes.com .) And it is even sadder that we are almost proud of our suspicion and cynicism about public figures with whom we almost always disagree.  Indeed, many of us, I suspect, would feel that we would be betraying our own integrity if we ever " come to the defense, speak well of, and interpret everything [the public figure we despise] does in the best possible light." 

It is precisely here that we see and experience a spirituality that can counter the spiritual poison that often claims a bizarre caricature of Christianity as its basis and authority.  Christian "conviction" is not an excuse to put the cross-hairs on anyone, even metaphorically, and it precludes a self-righteous presumption (and I mean both those words theologically)  that we are completely right about any issue. 

Christian moral and spiritual conviction, in fact, demands non-violent discourse and action. It demands truth. Truth may not be comfortable for those who don't want to hear it. And the truth places two obligations on those who would speak it.  

One is that the speaker must be open to the possibility that he or she may not have the whole truth or even be mistaken. John Wesley used to preface some of his statements of deepest conviction by saying, "Until I am better instructed, I will believe . . . "  

The second is that the speaker of the truth must seek the ultimate good of the person being addressed. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that the white racists' souls would be saved if they were confronted with the truth about the evils of their racism, even though, in the short run it might deprive them of an economic or social advantage.  

Colson and Wallis give us an alternative that is open, I think, even to those who are not conventionally religious and it is liable to make those of us who are conventionally religious to become unconventionally open-minded and open-hearted:  

The scriptural admonition to pray for those in political authority is  more than a religious duty, it promotes good civic behavior. It is more  difficult to hate someone when you are praying for them. Jesus'  commandment to love our enemies, including those with whom we  politically disagree, is even more challenging and defies the ideologies  of both left and right. 

 

"Identity"

To the other people at the reception, you are name on an adhesive badge. To the TSA guard at the airport you are a face on a driver's license. To your great uncle Arthur, you will always be the kid who spilled an entire pot of spaghetti sauce even though 30 years have passed since then. To your employer and customers you are a commodity or service. To your friends you are the person who can be counted on to  ____________________________ (can you fill in the blank?)  

"Identity"  

Take away the badge, the official documents, the relatives who have known you all your life, the job, the title, the habitual roles you play in your family and friendship circle and who are you?  

St. Francis of Assisi is said to have spent entire nights praying: "O God, who are  You? And who am I?"  

The two questions go together. Find the answer to one and you will find the answer to the other. 

  

There is  little game you can play in your mind:   

 

You have a job, but you are not your job. Who are you if you aren't your job? 

You have a family, and your role in that family is important, but you are not that role. Who are you without that role? 

See and listen to the things you were told about yourself as a child by people who were important to you. Does that define "you" or is it just someone else's construct of you?  

See your clothes, your house, your possessions. You are not your possessions. Who are you? 

See the sum total of your life experiences. Would you still be "you" if you had different experiences? If you are not the sum total of these experiences, who are you? 

See your thoughts whirling around in your head. On any given day at any given time you will have different thoughts swirling in your head than you have right now. If  you are not your thoughts, who are you? 

See your body. Think of the way it has changed over the years. Indeed, except for the enamel on your teeth, the cells in your skin and bones and other organs constantly replace themselves. You have grown from a tiny infant weighing just a few pounds to an adult weighing  . . .  more than a few pounds.  If you are not your body, who are you?  

See your goals, your sense of purpose and your plans for the future. Do these not change over time?

Does your identity change with them? If you are not your plans and goals, who are you?  

As Jesus came up out of the Jordan after his baptism, a voice spoke, "This is my beloved Son."  

Strip away all the things that are not God that claim to give you your identity and you will find that you are a beloved child of God.  

Try it  and see.