Faith Improvised

My friend Linda Mortensen is posting daily meditations through the season of Lent on her blog, Home Alone With Books.

This one introduces the series, and here’s her post for today.

*A homily given on Ash Wednesday at Midtown Christian Community, Feb. 17, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17
Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103

Our passages for today have a fairly recognizable pattern to them.  We are called upon to repent, to turn from destructive practices and habits, and to genuinely begin to do what is right.  But upon closer inspection, there are some edges to these texts that prevent us from skipping too quickly through them.  They trip us up a bit.  They hurt.  Their identification of our sinful ways is more searching than we might have expected.  These texts make us uncomfortable.  But what is wonderful is that God’s goodness, mercy, condescending love, his overpowering forgiveness, and his sweet redemption, are also greater than they first appear.

First, our texts call out against hypocrisy and complacency.  These are constant problems for the people of God, sins into which we are always falling.  Just like biblical Israel, it is easy for us to assume that we’re on the inside track with God.  We’re doing his work!  He’s so proud of us!  Look at us!  We’re not at Comfy-Cozy Baptist Church down the street.  We’re Midtown, we’re doing cutting edge ministry, on the frontiers of God’s work in the world!

We can easily get to the place where we congratulate ourselves for what we’re doing, and we feel that God is congratulating us, too.  And this privileged status has some benefits, one of which is that we can now begin to judge others.  It’s kind of fun!  We never run out of material!  Others are always falling short of the standard, always failing to measure up. 

It’s so easy to get to the place where all we can see is the sin in others’ lives.  We become blind to our own failings, shortcomings, small rebellions, seemingly insignificant dishonesties.  It’s easy to do this, as the story of Israel demonstrates repeatedly.  It’s easy to become self-satisfied and self-congratulatory, to assume that we’re God’s favorite.  What happens when we have this mind-set is that we give ourselves something of a “free-pass” when it comes to sin.  God hates the sin of pagans, and we’re part of God’s solution, so since we’re so amazing, we get to enjoy a few freebies here and there—a little bit of sin on the side.

This is hypocrisy, born of complacency.  Assuming that we’re on the inside track with God, so God sort of turns a “blind-eye” to our sin.

But this is a deception and an illusion.  Our anger at others; our destructive speech; our lack of generosity; our lustful fantasies; our greed and consumeristic idolatries; our small-heartedness; our bitterness and lack of forgiveness; our lack of concern for others; our deep-seated and soul-destroying jealousies.  These are just as destructive to us as to anyone; and these are just as grievous to God when they are found among us as when they are found among anyone else.

God wants to reclaim and redeem creation; God calls sinners everywhere to repent and receive life.  We need to see ourselves primarily as the audience for that message, not necessarily the ones who announce it. 

That is, the gospel call to sinners comes first to us.  We are corrupt.  We are broken.  Destructive practices creep in so easily and we are totally susceptible.  So we need this season of Lent—self-examination; quiet and searching reflection; because we are the ones who need to repent.  And hypocrisy and complacency are chief among the practices, habits, and attitudes from which we need to turn.

This much is pretty clear from a first reading of these texts.  But the Scriptures for tonight anticipate our first move and cut it off.  We are warned against false or inadequate repentance.  The prophets Joel and Isaiah talk about Israel fasting, weeping, wailing, and tearing their garments—it isn’t enough.  Why?  God tells them, “I’ve seen all this, I’ve seen your tear-filled services where you’ve all come forward and made loud commitments to never sin again, but that’s not what I want!”  Why would he say that?  It’s because Israel, like us, had become good at public pronouncements of contrition and public performances of confession and remorse . . . , but then went home and kept on living exactly as before.

Many of us have been trained to consider the end of a service the end of our responsibility.  And we’ve been taught to think that “awareness” is an actual accomplishment of something.  That is, if we become aware of our sin and our sinful practices and habits, and we kind of express remorse for it, we’re done.  It’s sufficient to pray something like this: “Oh God, I’m horrible for doing this and that, I’m so bad, please forgive me, I seriously will never ever do it again, I’m so serious, I’ll live for you and be amazing and be so committed, how can I not when you’re such an amazing God who died for me and I stand in awe of you and I stand amazed in your presence and you’re so amazing because you love the whole world and I just want to live for you and I love you, God, and you’re so amazing . . . forever and ever and ever . . . Amen.” 

We think that when we’ve rattled off a long-winded prayer like this and called forth an impressive series of machine-gun style passionate prayer-groanings, that we’ve actually done something.

But according to the prophets, this isn’t anything.  Our awareness of our sinfulness and our destructive patterns of behavior and of thought are all worthless unless such awareness has its end in changed patterns of behavior in the days, weeks, and months that follow. 

Here’s what Isaiah says:

Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.Is not this the fast that I choose:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Think carefully about commitments that you make to God.  Think very carefully about doing any sort of public act of contrition, or even of praying to God anything at all, if you don’t intend to leave our gathering here this evening and make any changes.  It’s easy for us to express love for God out loud, or even in prayer, but to make no plans to go out and repair a damaged relationship.  Some of you know that you need to take steps to make something right between you and God, or between you and another person.  Some of you know that there are destructive habits that you are cultivating that will destroy your soul.  But you have carved out a nice haven somewhere in a back-room of your mind and heart, and you have no intention of dealing with that, of cleaning it out.  That’s not good.  A treasured bitterness against someone.  A refusal to forgive.  A fantasy about revenge against another person.  Deal with these.  Drag them out into the open before God and ask him to cleanse you and give you wisdom to walk in pathways of goodness and truth.  Ask him to help make you whole.  And ask a trusted friend to help you walk through that process so that you can walk in God’s own life.  That’s where true joy and true freedom are located.

Beware of false repentance.  Public wailing, or even quiet passionate prayer now, with no intention to leave here and make small but concrete changes—it’s a waste of time.

These texts are bit more challenging than we first imagined.  And they don’t relent.  A second thing these texts highlight for us is the tendency to avoid positively and purposefully pursuing reconciliation, redemption, and the flourishing of others.  Again, if we examine ourselves, our patterns of behavior and our habits of thought and speech, we might not find much hypocrisy.  Fine!  That’s wonderful.  But God is not content to leave us in a place where we’re not currently making a mess of things.  God wants us to be purposeful and positive agents of his life to this community and to the world, which means that we all must be positively and actively engaged.  To say, “well, I’m not currently doing any harm to anyone” isn’t sufficient.

In the 2 Corinthians text, Paul talks about the lengths to which he went in order to bring about others’ reconciliation to God.  He put up with all sorts of hardships, suffered loss, humiliation, and personal injury, all so that God’s grace could reach into the lives of others and effect redemption.

We need to take this to heart.  Where are we being complacent?  Where are we stuck in small patterns of selfishness and self-orientation?  Perhaps there are very small steps we can take to actually contribute positively to this community or to the lives of others.  As part of Lent, you might consider giving up a small portion of time each day or each week so that you can carry out small acts of service to others in the name of Jesus.  Give up your own use of that time and give it as a gift to someone else.  You might consider a technology fast—those pockets of your day where you are consumed with staring at a tiny screen, engaged in text-speak with others about fascinating issues like what movie your friend saw last week, and, OMG, the guys want pizza tonight, but the rest of us want subs!

There are many other ways in which we fail to pursue redemption and reconciliation.  Perhaps we have relationships that are broken, and we think that “giving them to God” ends our responsibility.  You ought to reconsider.  Perhaps you need to give someone a call and ask for a long conversation that might bring about forgiveness and reconciliation.  The point here is that God’s grace floods our lives when we purposefully and positively walk in the truth, actively taking steps of obedience, no matter how threatening the situation or fearful we may be.

Well, to this point we’ve only considered our responsibility—God’s call to us to repent and the opportunity for self-examination that Lent affords to us.  But there’s something fundamental to all of this, something that is essential.  Something that, if we don’t have it, there’s no point to any of this.  God’s gracious character.

If we consider Lent, and our passages for tonight, with our self-generated conception of what God must be like, we might come away with something like this: Lent is a season for all of us to repent, to change our ways.  So, let’s do this, knowing that when we do, God will appreciate us doing our part.  Or, let’s do this, and God will approve of us as we meet his expectations of us.  Or, God will make his expectations clear when we repent and try to please him.

But we don’t find any of these things in our passages, because this isn’t who God is.  That’s who God would be if we were God.  Just as these texts have edges to them that trip up our hypocrisies and our follies, so God has surprising edges that demonstrate he’s a far more lavish lover than we’d expect.  He’s an overpowering forgiver, a magnanimous lover, and his grace to us is overwhelming.

In addition to the sweet promises in the Isaiah passages, the phrases of Ps 103 are pure grace:

Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless his holy Name.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.

He forgives all your sins
and heals all your infirmities;

He redeems your life from the grave
and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness; 

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our sins from us.

As a father cares for his children,
so does the LORD care for those who fear him.

For he himself knows whereof we are made;
he remembers that we are but dust.

God’s grace undergirds the entire project of confession, self-examination, and repentance.  If that weren’t the case, we’d be crazy to open ourselves up.  If God were like us, we would never open up the dark corners of our hearts for examination, would we?  I wouldn’t!!  But if we are guaranteed in advance that there is nothing but forgiveness and restoration, nothing but pure grace from God, then we are set free to be open and honest, to be truly vulnerable before the searchlight of God’s Spirit.  If I know that when I confess, I’ll find only grace and overpowering forgiveness, this sets me free to admit all my failings and ask for help.

As the psalmist says, God already knows us.  He knows our failings and our follies.  He knows our inner torments and our hidden sins.  He knows what we’re made of—and he loves us.  He longs to set us right and put us on the path of life.

So, take advantage of this Lent season as a time of self-examination, self-discipline, and simplicity.  Embark on a journey of letting God examine you, to search you and find any hurtful way in you, and to lead you in the everlasting way.

Chris Seay invites individuals, small groups, and churches to spend 40 days of solidarity with the poor.  This is a very simple and practical way to draw upon God’s grace and become agents of God’s goodness to others.

Our daily dinner together is a big deal for our family.  We eat well, we eat lots, and we have good laughs!  We’re very blessed and because we have plenty in our fridge and our cupboards we’re very rich in relation to most of the rest of the world.

We’re going to spend the Lenten season eating purposefully simple dinners for the benefit of a dear friend who has lived her life in service to others in the name of Jesus and barely has enough to provide for basic needs.

Check out Chris Seay’s web-site and get hold of his book, A Place at the Table, for practical ways to pray for and serve the poor during this season.

I’m enjoying James Thompson’s commentary in Hebrews.  His summary of the author’s use of scripture in ch. 2 captures nicely the relationship of the historical-critical method to theological interpretation of the Bible.

The historical-critical reading of scripture has been an invaluable instrument for the reading of the Bible, for its insistence on discovering the meaning of a passage in its original context often prevents arbitrary readings and provides a common method for interpreters from a variety of religious traditions to examine the same texts.  While few today question the validity of historical-critical exegesis, many interpreters now challenge the view that a text has only one meaning, insisting that the meaning of a text depends on the questions we ask.  Interpreters increasingly recognize that the meaning of a text is not exhausted by our attempts to hear the word in its original context.  Early Christians maintained that what had occurred in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was of such importance that it transformed their entire biblical story, becoming a lens for reading all of scripture.  The author of Hebrews read scripture through his knowledge of the plot of the entire narrative.  Thus the meaning of the text was not frozen with the original readers but took on additional meaning when interpreters read it in light of the entire plot.  With the faith that Jesus was the Messiah, the ultimate king, the author gave a messianic interpretation to the royal psalms.  Because of his faith that the exalted Christ was equal to God, he read passages praising God as references to the one at God’s right hand.  The author neither claimed to interpret the passages in their original context nor spoke of them as predictions fulfilled in Christ.  As a preacher, he read scripture on behalf of the community in order to find a word for his own time.  He anticipated the later church as it interpreted scripture on the basis of the church’s faith in Jesus Christ.  Thus the author’s method of interpreting scripture through the eyes of faith is not a practice to be jettisoned but a model for interpretation within a community that asks not only what scripture once meant but also what it means for those who week its guidance in the present (p. 59, emphasis mine).

I like how Thompson acknowledges the value of both methods.  This is important because methodological plurality allows the church constantly to hear God’s word afresh and ever-more clearly.

The Season of Lent begins this Wednesday.  Here’s a brief explanation of how this season shapes Christian identity.

The Christian calendar helps to train us in being fully and truly Christian.  Many of us are used to having our brains trained to be Christian brains.  We just haven’t given much thought to our bodies and our loves and our longings.  Most of us were raised to think Christian thoughts—that’s the sum and substance of being Christian. 

But the Christian calendar helps to train our whole being in being Christian–our bodies, our hearts, our desires, and our longings.

 The Advent season in December, leading up to Christmas, helps us to look forward, to anticipate the arrival of the Son of God into the world.  Because our daily lives are so busy and filled with instant messages, text messages, emails, news items, friend requests, status updates, and other tyrannical trivialities, we forget to long for a Savior from heaven and to pray that God would come to save and restore.  We are too busy to wait actively and expectantly for King Jesus to return to defeat evil forever and redeem his broken creation.  The rhythm and posture of Advent helps us to be Christian—to feel and long as Christian people.

 The Lenten season has much the same purpose–it is a gift to us that helps to train us in being Christian.  “Lent” comes from an old Germanic word for “spring-time,” and we can think of it as sort of a spiritual “Spring cleaning,” a time for self-evaluation, growth, penitence, and simplicity.  This is a season for taking a good look at our lives and relationships.  It’s a time for us to consider our corporate and personal relationships to God and God’s people.  Are we being an obstacle to God’s people flourishing?  If so, how?  And how can I change?  What sins do I need to repent of?  What destructive practices do I need to identify and get rid of?  What attitudes do I need to put to death, and how can I cultivate right ways of thinking and feeling?

Lent often involves giving something up, or fasting–some sort of discipline of the body.  This has several purposes.  It reminds us that we are creatures, that we are dependent upon God.  When you give up a pleasure, or something that is normally a regular part of your life, you miss it.  Your body longs for it.  It’s what you think about all the time – you become obsessed!  When we get this feeling, or this sense, or this obsession, we can let that remind us of our creatureliness—we are dependent on God.  He is our life and our breath.  We need him absolutely.  These feelings can become like training wheels for our prayer habits.  Whenever you get that feeling, you can pray this: “Lord, I need you.  I am not independent.  Lord, your creation needs you.  Lord Jesus, come and save; come and restore.” 

Lent, then, becomes a teacher, training us to long for the coming of the Lord to restore creation, to restore our bodies.

In addition to self-discipline and simplicity, this longing has a very important purpose as Lent leads up to Easter.  If you’ve given up chocolate, or coffee, or some other pleasure, you start longing for it, looking forward to Easter when you can take it up again and fully enjoy it once more.  Again, this longing becomes our teacher, training our bodies and our whole selves to long for Easter, to look forward with eagerness to the celebration of the victory of God over sin and death.

Gary Carter died yesterday at the age of 57. 

Carter played catcher for the Montreal Expos, who were actually really good when they had players like Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, and Carter in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  They made it to the National League Championship Series in 1981, but never returned and eventually moved to Washington, D.C. as the Nationals.

Carter was later traded to the New York Mets and anchored their eventual World Series winning team in 1986.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003.

I was raised as a devoted Cubs fan, so I didn’t like Gary Carter.  He was one of a number of players who pummeled Cubs pitching.  But Carter displayed one of a handful of acts of genuine sportsmanship I’ve ever seen.

It must have been 1982 or 1983 and the Expos were in town playing the Cubs.  Ferguson Jenkins, who was nearing the end of a very long career, was pitching.

There had been several ugly incidents around baseball at that time, with fights breaking out and teams retaliating by having pitchers throw at certain hitters.

Carter came to bat and Jenkins hit him with a pitch.  I have no idea whether or not it was intentional, but I’ll never forget how Carter immediately took two or three steps toward Jenkins.  It looked for a split-second like Carter was going to charge the mound, but he reached down, grabbed the ball, tossed it gently back to Jenkins, and raced to first base.

It was a classy thing to do, and everyone reacted with appreciation, including Jenkins and the Wrigley Field crowd.

Carter was a committed Christian, an excellent catcher, and a clutch hitter.  Tom Verducci has a nice piece in Sports Illustrated on Carter, and there are a few recollections in the New York Times (here and here).

I love the narrative of John 9.  It represents, to some extent, the dynamic I wrote about yesterday.  A consensus opinion, a conventional way of seeing things, is upended and overturned by a new angle of approach.

The conventional thinking among the characters in the story marginalizes the broken and needy, reinforcing corrupted patterns of shame and the consolidation of power among the religious elite.

Similar corrupted assumptions abound in many of our Christian communities.  If something bad has happened to you, it’s probably because there’s hidden sin somewhere in your life.

The disciples bluntly voice this conviction as the narrative opens:

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Some translations of Jesus’ response leave the impression that he corrects them by connecting the man’s blindness to divine causality.  It’s not that this man sinned, or his parents, but God made him blind so that Jesus could heal him, glorifying God.

Such translations are misleading.  Jesus isn’t contrasting human causality with divine causality here. 

He’s trying to revolutionize his disciples’ perspective, transforming their imagination entirely.

He wants them to look out on the world in a renewed way.  When they encounter brokenness, he doesn’t want them to assign blame at all, neither to God or man.  He’s training them to creatively find ways of bringing healing and relief. 

God is gloried when his people bring healing to brokenness, relief to suffering, and the renewal of creation’s flourishing.

The Message nails this passage:

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?” Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light” (vv. 1-5).

I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of convention and consensus.  Sometimes the best way of doing things is the conventional way.  And it’s often the case that the consensus opinion is the right one.

But not always.

Jeremy Lin didn’t fit the conventional mold of a point guard, or even of a basketball player who could start in the NBA.  So he was passed over by scouts, teams, and coaches.

Francis Ford Coppola had to fight studio bosses who saw his films—eventual masterpieces—as too risky and unconventional.  He was let go because of the opening of Patton.  That’s no way to begin a film!  But that opening scene left its mark as one of the most memorable in film history.

There are certain ways that racquetball should be played, and Kane Waselenchuk defies those conventions.  He’s won 137 consecutive matches and has held the top rank in the sport since March 2009.

There are times when the consensus is the consensus because no one has the courage to question it.  Perhaps everyone is afraid of risking disapproval by standing alone and proposing an alternative.

And there are instances when the conventional way of doing things needs to change, but no one’s been bold enough to break the agreed-upon paradigm and try something new.

What are some other examples of this?  What are the catalysts of change?

Jeremy Lin is the latest sports sensation, coming out of nowhere to spark the Knicks to five straight victories.  It’s been a blast to watch, especially because he’s a great kid who’s having loads of fun.  The Knicks were terrible this year, and with their two stars out, it was going to get worse.

The situation was set up perfectly for Lin, who has more than filled the role.

Among many other good articles on Lin, here’s a piece from Sports Illustrated, and one from ESPN.

This piece in the NY Times was especially interesting, written by an Asian American Christian.  What I found interesting is how the author distinguishes Lin from the Tebow phenomenon.  Tebow’s aggressively public Christian identity resonated with culture warrior Christians, those who feel vindicated when “one of ours” achieves some sort of success.  That guy’s a Christian and he’s winning!  God must be at work in some wonderful way!

Lin has little interest in all of that, it seems.  I think that’s great and I hope it continues.

What’s fun about Lin is that he’s playing the game the way it should be played.  No whining about contracts or pouting when he doesn’t get his touches.  He’s just having fun. 

I hope all the “Lin-sanity” doesn’t go the route of the Tebow phenomenon, where every game was tied to the vindication of Christian faith.  All of that isn’t fair to Lin and it perverts the nature of sport, which is all about seriously having fun.  If there’s any higher or greater meaning, it’s that it’s great to see a team come together, play well and selflessly as a unit, enjoy one another, and have fun competing hard.