This past week, I’ve asked my husband and friends, over and over, “What was Hamas thinking?” Why take extreme and murderous action that provokes an equally extreme reaction from Israel, and causes the deaths not only of innocent Israelis, but innocent Palestinians?

The answer that has made the most sense to me appears in the op-ed by Thomas Friedman that appeared in the New York Times two days ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opinion/israel-hamas-.html. Friedman has been covering this conflict for over fifty years. I won’t quote his article extensively; I recommend that you read it. He reports his impressions of what is going on and why, and then asks, “So how can America best help Israel now, besides standing behind its right to protect itself, as President Biden so forcefully did in his speech today?”

What grabbed my attention was his first answer to that question: “First, I hope the president is asking Israel to ask itself this question as it considers what to do next in Gaza: What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?” Friedman continues: “What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza and get enmeshed in a strategic overreach there that would make America’s entanglement in Falluja look like a children’s birthday party. We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage, deflect world attention from the murderous regime in Tehran and force Israel to stretch its forces to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank. … Hamas and Iran absolutely do not want Israel to refrain from going into Gaza very deep or long.”

In other words, Israel needs not to react, but to respond. Israel needs not to let anxiety and fear drive their response, but a real desire for peace and justice. As the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship put it, “An eye for an eye leaves the entire Middle East blind to any hope for justice. Absent justice, there is no hope for peace.” https://www.presbypeacefellowship.org/presbyterian-peace-fellowships-statement-on-israel-and-gaza/.

This Sunday’s lectionary includes Exodus 32:1-14, the story of the golden calf. What we see in this story are two very different ways of dealing with anxiety. First, we see the Israelites. With Moses missing in action, they forget everything, because anxiety affects memory. When people are anxious, they forget what’s important, even their values. They lose perspective; they have trouble seeing the big picture. The anxious Israelites forget that God delivered them from slavery. They forget the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna and quail, the commandments that Moses had just given them, and how God has been with them all along. Anxious people often turn to their leaders with unreasonable demands to rescue them, and the Israelites turn to Aaron.

Anxiety is more contagious than COVID. Instead of managing his own anxiety, Aaron is swept into the people’s anxiety. He has them collect earrings, melt them down, and make a calf. Aaron doesn’t tell the people the calf is their god, but when they start worshiping it, he doesn’t correct them, either. Straight off the bat, the people break that first and most important commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt … you shall have no other gods before me.” In their anxiety, they’ve forgotten what was most important about their identity: that they are God’s people.

When we’re anxious, we tend to depend on something other than God, a “something other” that seems immediate and tangible, whereas God is invisible and can feel intangible. We try to fix the anxiety or quell the fear with something other than the truth that every one of us is beloved by God; that all of us are God’s people. Much of the craziness in our own culture, from white supremacy to gangs to addictions to runaway greed, is a response to anxiety, to fear that people don’t know how to manage.

In the meantime, Moses is chatting away with God on Mount Sinai when God says, “You better get down there quick because all hell is breaking loose. And by the way, I’ve had it with these ungrateful people.”

That’s when we get to see a very different approach to anxiety. Moses boldly steps between the forgetful, anxious people and God. It’s an amazing scene. One scholar writes, “Radical trust in God evokes an audacious faith; it not only permits but requires questioning.” “Radical trust in God … not only permits but requires questioning.” Moses must be anxious, but he trusts God and so he manages his anxiety; he stands his ground; he remembers what he was called to do and what God promised to do back at the burning bush, when the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people … and I have come to deliver them … I will be with you.” So, remembering all this, Moses questions, implores, enters into a dialogue with God. And that leads to one of the most striking, even one of the most shocking verses in Scripture: “And the LORD changed his mind.”

Well, that’s a surprise! The bad news is that anxiety is one of the most contagious emotions that we can experience. The good news is that calm is equally contagious. It looks to me as though Moses talked God down. The writer of this passage doesn’t criticize Moses; it seems as though Moses did the right thing. Moses was a non-anxious presence, and God changed God’s mind.

Two ways to deal with anxiety: spreading it or managing it. I will not pretend I know what President Biden or Prime Minister Netanyahu should do. I am convinced, as the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship notes, “The present violence cannot change the past and will not redeem the future. War can never establish justice. War will never result in peace.” I will pray that whatever our world leaders do comes from a true desire for peace with justice, and not from fear and anxiety.

This past weekend I led a women’s retreat for a Sonoma County congregation. I brushed off a topic I’d used as a retreat theme in 2008: “Honoring the Body.” Much of my inspiration came from Stephanie Paulsell’s book by the same name, a book drawing on Christian resources to develop a faith-based practice of honoring the body: cherishing our bodies as the amazing gifts they are, and countering the corrosive cultural messages that make us forget we are created in God’s image.

Since I visited this topic 15 years ago, some things have changed for the better. In 2008, there was no body positivity movement to speak of. Now, in stores from Target to Victoria’s Secret, you can find “plus sized” mannequins as well as the usual size 2 mannequins. Fashion magazines and retail catalogs include models that look more like real women, both in dress size and age. We’ve figured out that BMI – body mass index – is medically meaningless. The recent “Barbie” movie populated Barbie’s world with women of all shapes and colors, and the doll itself has evolved. In 2016, Mattel released a line of dolls called the Barbie Fashionistas that came with various skin tones, eye colors, hair textures, and body types (“original, curvy, petite and tall”), as well as a Barbie in a wheelchair.

But some things have stayed the same or grown worse, and by “worse,” I mean people, and women in particular, are not cherishing their bodies but rather, spending time and money, and even risking their health to alter their bodies to meet a supposed cultural standard. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of cosmetic surgical procedures undergone went up 19%. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of annual Botox injections increased by nearly 459%. Eating disorders are on the rise. While the Center for Disease Control recommends that kids ages 6 through 17 be physically active for at least an hour a day, only about a quarter of U.S. kids achieve that. What are they doing instead? They’re on screens. Studies show that kids ages 8-18 now spend, on average, a whopping 7.5 hours in front of a screen for entertainment each day.

And what they see on their screens is terrifyingly toxic beauty advice, advice that normalizes unrealistic and narrowly defined beauty standards, promotes potentially harmful beauty practices, and suggests that the key to building self-esteem is physical “perfection.”

15 years ago, I stumbled onto a short video called “Evolution” made by Dove – yes, the soap company – as part of the Dove Self-Esteem Project, and I showed it at the 2008 retreat. It shows how a model’s appearance changes dramatically with makeup and hair styling, but then photos are edited to achieve so-called “perfection.” In other words, what we see in ads isn’t even real. You can see “Evolution” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCNEIwxkPlc.

Dove has continued to make short videos, and I showed a handful of them at the retreat this past weekend. Some are heartbreaking, while others are hopeful. Some deal with toxic beauty advice. I recommend the following, but there are many more wonderful videos:

• “Reverse Selfie,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHP9YTMHIoU&t=2s
• “Toxic Influence” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF3iRZtkyAQ
• “Injectable Billboard” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXmF6rwj_Bk
• “Beauty Standards of Age Are a Form of Bias” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF3iRZtkyAQ
• “Beauty Standards of Weight Are a Form of Bias” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ05C1o9utg
• “Inner Critic” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPjeelgG9Cg
• “Real Women Redefine Beauty” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD6pv6IbtP4
• “Rain’s Story” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5l-H3fj8Rw
• “Seeing the Beauty in Our Friends and Ourselves” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APgEJoAYh0Y

I encourage you to watch these and other Dove videos, and to let your friends know about them, and if you have sisters, wives, partners, daughters, or granddaughters, let them know about them, too. As a woman at the retreat put it, in her mother’s Cherokee tradition all the women are “aunties” to all the kids, and to each other. Let’s be aunties. Because when 53% of 13-year-old girls report that they are unhappy with their bodies, and by the time they’re 17, it goes up to 78%, something is broken. We are not honoring our bodies. We are not cherishing the glory of God’s diversity. We are not looking in the mirror and seeing a beloved child of God.

Resources:

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2022/cosmetic-procedure-trends-2022.pdf
https://www.elitetampa.com/blog/botox-statistics-you-need-to-know/
https://nutrition.org/eating-disorders-are-on-the-rise/
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/physicalactivity/guidelines.htm#:~:text=Children%20and%20adolescents%20ages%206%20through%2017%20years%20should%20do,to%2Dvigorous%20physical%20activity%20daily.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/physicalactivity/facts.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/multimedia/infographics/getmoving.html.
https://now.org/now-foundation/love-your-body/love-your-body-whats-it-all-about/get-the-facts/#:~:text=One%20study%20reports%20that%20at,the%20time%20girls%20reach%20seventeen.

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in 303 Creative Ltd. v. Elenis. The case involves a web designer in Colorado who wants to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples. Wedding websites are the way engaged couples let their friends and family know their wedding and pre-wedding plans, access their registry, and generally celebrate with them as the day of the wedding approaches.

A colleague wondered, “Where’s the money”? A wedding website designer is unlikely to have the resources to fund a lawsuit that goes all the way to the Supreme Court. After some research, he found that the lawsuit is being funded by an organization called the Alliance Defending Freedom. This organization was listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2016. (https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/04/10/why-alliance-defending-freedom-hate-group) It was founded by leaders of the “Christian Right” about 30 years ago, and is largely responsible for the invention of the term “gay agenda,” which they claim will destroy society generally and Christianity in particular.

I assume these people turn to the Hebrew Scriptures for support in their condemnation of LGBTQ+ folks. The Old Testament is filled with rules that seemed culturally appropriate two or three thousand years ago. I’m guessing the folks at the Alliance Defending Freedom ignore most of them, and rightly so. They won’t find any support for their hatred in the words of Jesus, who, instead, welcomed all those that his culture treated as outcasts, and who actually violated the rules that were more hurtful than helpful to people.

Nevertheless, the argument is that having to create wedding websites for LGBTQ+ couples violates the website designer’s First Amendment rights. In a New York Times op-ed today, David Cole, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, urges us to ask the right questions about this case. “The question is not, as it may seem initially, ‘Can an artist be compelled to create a website with which she disagrees?’” Instead, Cole writes, “The right question is whether someone who chooses to open a business to the public should have a right to turn away gay customers simply because the service provided is ‘expressive’ or ‘artistic.”’ Cole argues that this case is not really about the First Amendment, but instead about public accommodations laws, which ensure that “everyone has equal access to the public marketplace.” He continues, “They don’t trigger serious First Amendment concerns because they apply equally to all businesses, expressive or not, and are focused on the commercial conduct of discriminatorily denying service — not on controlling the content of anyone’s speech.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/opinion/303creative-first-amendment-supreme-court.html)

Before seminary, I practiced law for 15 years, so the details of this argument still fascinate me. But from where I sit now as a spiritual director, retired pastor, and follower of Jesus, what concerns me most is using Christianity and/or Scripture to justify hatred. To claim it violates your freedom if the government stops you from taking actions that discriminate against, hurt, or even destroy LGBTQ+ folks. That is what is destroying Christianity. That is what is driving thinking people, caring people, LGBTQ+ people, and young people away from the Church. It breaks my heart, and I feel pretty comfortable saying in breaks Jesus’ heart, as well.

One of the reasons I love Thanksgiving is because of the classic Thanksgiving hymns that are part of the Presbyterian Hymnal, and I suspect many other Protestant hymnals as well. They are very old hymns, and I’ve been singing them since I was a child. My favorites:
“We Gather Together” (the Netherlands, 1626, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqOXEf-DVkU)
“Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” (English, mid 19th century, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw8wCwv4NPU)
“Let All Things Now Living” (American, 1939, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpMCE1G3N7Q)
and “Now Thank We All Our God” (German, 1636, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g0BSC7eNXQ).

I was revisiting these hymns because I’m serving as a guest preacher this Sunday, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I’ll be preaching about gratitude (naturally) and usually I get to select or at least suggest the hymns when I’m a guest preacher. I started with “We Gather Together,” which I genuinely love, but when I looked over the lyrics, I noticed something. This is the first verse:
“We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessings.
He chastens and hastens his will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own.”

He forgets not his own. Yikes. I asked myself, “Just who is included in ‘God’s own’”?

I don’t think the person who wrote the lyrics of “We Gather Together” way back in 1626 had a clue about the damage done to human life and spirit when we think of ourselves as God’s own, and think of others as somehow not God’s own. When we think in terms of Us and Them. Sadly, this is not ancient history. Political and cultural commentator David Brooks calls the current movement away from a focus on our common humanity a “retreat to tribalism,” and it is tearing our diverse nation apart. Theologian Jürgen Moltmann wrote, “‘God bless America’ is often heard on the lips of American presidents. But whether God blesses America will become apparent when it emerges whether America is a blessing for the peoples of the world, or their burden and curse; for one is blessed only in order to be a blessing oneself.”

When the blessing stops with “us,” it’s called privilege. Look at it this way: A few autumns ago, we suffered some abysmal air quality in the San Francisco Bay Area because of nearby wildfires. There was one day that San Francisco had an Air Quality Index or “AQI” of 274, which was the worst of any major city in the world that day. But that same day, Delhi had an AQI of 268; Lahore, Pakistan had 251; Kolcotta, India had 215; and Dhaka, Bangladesh was at 203. These cities weren’t downwind of major fires. It’s just what they live with, every day. And that’s just the cities with an AQI over 200, the “very unhealthy” purple zone. There are loads more cities perpetually in the red zone, merely “unhealthy.” When we focus on the calamity of our own air quality without paying attention to the fact that this is routine for other human beings on God’s precious planet every single day, that is privilege; that is a blessing that stops with us.

I heard an interview a while back with Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who’s dedicated his life to working with former gang members in Los Angeles. “I’m lucky,” Father Boyle said. “I won all the lotteries – the parent lottery, the sibling lottery, the zip code lottery, the educational lottery.” It was the word “lucky” that stopped me short. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person of faith call himself lucky instead of blessed. I’ve even hesitated to wish someone “good luck,” because I was afraid it sounds superstitious and un-Christian.

But the more I think about it, the more I understand Father Boyle’s word choice. Naming our material circumstances – the home we live in, the food on our table, the vacations we enjoy, our health and the health of our family, the status of our bank account – as evidence of our blessedness implies that, at the same time God has chosen to bless us with these gifts, God has chosen not to bless others in the same way. If I say I’m blessed because I own a lovely home in a safe neighborhood, or blessed because I have a good job with health insurance, or blessed because I have a bountiful feast spread out on my dining room table, what does that say about the single mother living in the one room apartment in an unsafe neighborhood, or the man with the change cup on the corner, or the family huddled in a makeshift camp in Tijuana or fleeing missile fire in Ukraine?

Are they not blessed? Has God decided to bless me, but not them?

Jesus describes blessings entirely differently. Jesus defines the blessed as those who mourn, those who are persecuted, those who are meek and those who are poor in spirit. I wonder whether some verses were omitted from the Beatitudes. Maybe they deleted the verses where the disciples responded by saying, “Waitest thou for one second, Lord. What about ‘blessed art the comfortable,’ or ‘blessed art thou who havest good jobs, a modest house in the suburbs, and a yearly vacation’? And Jesus said unto them, ‘Apologies, my brothers, but those did not maketh the cut.’”

The truth is, I have no idea why I was born where I was or why I have the opportunities I’ve had. It’s beyond comprehension, and I am profoundly grateful. But I don’t believe God chose me above others because of the veracity of my prayers or the depth of my faith, or the tribe or the denomination or even the faith in which I’ve landed. If I take advantage of the opportunities set before me, a comfortable life may come my way. It’s not guaranteed. But if it does happen, I still don’t believe Jesus will call me blessed.

I believe he will ask, “What will you do with it?”

“Will you use it for yourself?”

“Will you use it to help?”

“Will you share it?”

Tough questions with few easy answers.

This Thursday, when we gather around our tables, of course we will give thanks and pray for our loved ones, even for ourselves, because we must; it is honest; it is coming before God with our hopes and fears. But my prayer for all of us this week is that when we do so, we understand our true blessing. It’s not turkey-laden tables, or our houses, our jobs, or our standard of living. It’s not even that we are Americans, or Christians.

Our blessing is this: We know a God who gives hope to the hopeless. We know a God who loves the unlovable. We know a God who comforts the sorrowful. We know a God who always welcomes the outcast and the stranger. And we know a God who has planted this same power within us. Within every one of us.

And for this blessing, may our prayer always be,

“Use me.”

© Joanne Whitt 2022

November 1 is the day the Christian church observes All Saints’ Day. In the Roman Catholic tradition, which colors most of what we think we know about saints, saints are people who lived a good life, performed a miracle of some kind, and died. They’ve been officially named as a saint (“canonized”), and their memory has stood the test of time. Originally each saint had his or her own saint’s day, but there are around forty thousand saints in the Roman Catholic tradition, so eventually most of them were celebrated on one day, All Saints’ Day.

For Presbyterians, forty thousand is just a start. In his letters, the apostle Paul uses the word “saints” to refer to the church, the church on earth. In my tradition, all who are united in Christ, whether dead or living, are saints. To be a “saint” means to be “sanctified,” to be made holy to serve God by the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit. On All Saints’ Day, our focus is not on extraordinary achievements of particular Christians, but on the grace and work of God through ordinary people. People like you and me. Whether or not you are comfortable claiming the title, we are the saints of God.

Even though the communion of saints includes people who are still living, many Protestant churches observe the first Sunday in November (“All Saints’ Sunday”) by remembering our dearly departed. Churches have developed creative and meaningful worship traditions; for example: lighting candles as the names of those who have died are read, bringing photos to place on the communion table, inviting worshipers to lay one fall leaf on the chancel for each person they want remembered, and singing, “For All the Saints,” a rousing hymn that begins with a low, vibrating G on the organ that you can feel almost as much as you can hear, and it gives me chills every time.

One of my Facebook friends, Marcella Auld Glass, the pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, reposted a list of prayer prompts for the month of November called, “Rejoicing in God’s Saints: A Daily Prayer Calendar for November.” This list was originally posted by Laura Stephens-Reed, a clergyperson and coach, in 2018. Each prompt for November 1st through the 30th invites us to express gratitude for the now-departed saints who have influenced our lives. I’ve found it to be a valuable prayer practice, not only for All Saints’ but for the month that includes Thanksgiving. It’s inspiring my gratitude, and as pretty much everybody knows by now, gratitude is good for you. I’m convinced it’s good to the world, as well. Research shows that people who keep daily gratitude journals exercise more regularly, complain of fewer illness symptoms, and feel better about their lives overall. They also feel more loving, forgiving, joyful, enthusiastic, and optimistic about their futures, while their family and friends report that they seem happier and are more pleasant to be around. Research further reveals that gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, deal with adversity, be more patient, and build strong relationships. That makes gratitude sound like a self-help wonder drug, and maybe it is, but I believe gratitude could also be healing for our planet and many of the divisions plaguing our polarized world. Imagine if we were so grateful for this good earth that we took care of it. Imagine if we were so grateful for the legacy of democracy we’ve inherited that we all voted. Imagine if we were so grateful for food, clothing, and shelter that we took steps to make sure everyone’s basic needs are met.

Gratitude for the people who have influenced us also helps us remember, as Peter Gomes wrote, “a saint in the early and reformed churches … was one who … was not so much perfect as persevering.” If we remember that the people who mentored us, parented us, inspired us, challenged us, and taught us were not perfect, but still made our lives better, our world better, might we not have more patience, more compassion, more empathy for the people in our lives now who are not perfect? Which is everyone, right? And for ourselves, too?

You can read Stephens-Reed’s list here: https://www.laurastephensreed.com/blog/resource-re-post-rejoicing-in-gods-saints-prayer-calendar.

Mary W. Anderson writes, “When the low G sounds on the organ, announcing the beginning of R. Vaughan Williams’s tune to the hymn ‘For All the Saints,’ I feel as though the rumbling of that low bass note calls us to worship the communion of saints. It is a call to St. Peter and St. Paul, to Mary Magdalene and Mother Teresa, to Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. As we remember these strong shoulders on which we stand, we are challenged to strengthen our own shoulders. We are ancestors in the making after all, saints for a generation yet unborn. It is an awesome opportunity. Rise up, O saints of God!”

“For All the Saints”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21GTTM2TIYA

Habakkuk 1:1-2:4

   At the beginning of The Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter doesn’t know he’s a wizard or why he has a lightening scar on his forehead. The first question he ever asked his Aunt Petunia Dursley was how he got the scar. The truth is that he got it when he was a baby and the most evil wizard of all time tried to kill him. His aunt, who hated everything to do with magic, said he got it in a car crash. “And don’t ask questions,” she added. The narrator tells us: “Don’t ask questions – that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.”

   If you want a quiet life, don’t ask questions. Church youth worker Mike Yaconelli must not have wanted a quiet life, because he wrote this letter: 

“Dear God: 

   Frankly, I’m bugged.  

   I know you gave us the Bible – you really did a nice job – and it’s helpful. But you have to admit you did leave a lot out. I don’t mean to offend you, but there are so many questions about you, and I can’t find many clues to the answers. … What am I supposed to do? I’ve got all these questions, and I have to ask them because the answers do make a difference in my relationship with you. … Can a Christian have unanswered questions? Even a lot of unanswered questions? When I ask these questions in church … I get these funny looks. And some of the looks aren’t so funny. The people look at me like there’s something wrong with me. Well … is there? … I’ve got to ask you one more question. Is thinking a sin? I honestly don’t want my faith to be weak, but how do I have a strong faith? … I guess what I’m looking for is a faith tough enough to handle doubt. Is that possible?

Anxiously,

Mike Yaconelli”^[1]     

   Yaconelli wrote his letter in 1976 but his concerns are surprisingly fresh. His experience is that people in the church can be like Aunt Petunia. If you want a quiet life, don’t ask questions. But is God like Aunt Petunia? Does God prefer we keep our questions to ourselves?

   We don’t know anything about the prophet Habakkuk except his name, and that he has plenty of questions for God. He probably wrote around the time of the Babylonian domination of Judah, but whatever the historical backdrop, things are going very badly for the prophet and his people. The wicked and the violent appear to triumph, while the innocent are persecuted. He begins with a lament in which he questions God’s justice. Many of us can relate to Habakkuk’s questions: “Where ARE you, God? Are you just going to let this happen?”

   Habakkuk says exactly what’s on his mind. Mike Yaconelli was worried that his questions would be seen as signs of lack of faith, but in Habakkuk we see how challenging God, questioning God, is perhaps the deepest expression of faith there is. You can’t get in someone’s face if you don’t believe there’s a face there.            

   Here’s the thing: We can only ask why God does not run the world better if we’re already convinced that God being who God is should make a difference in how the world works. Abraham Heschel writes that the refusal to accept whatever terror or injustice is going on around us as “God’s will” is an authentic form of prayer. This is an important aspect of the Jewish tradition that we Christians have undervalued. Is it because we’re afraid? Because we want that quiet life? The problem is that running away from our hard questions is the opposite of having a relationship.

   “Three to Tango” (1999) is an unremarkable movie with one remarkable scene. A married businessman asks the character played by Matthew Perry (from “Friends”) to keep tabs on his mistress, played by Neve Campbell, and the Matthew Perry character falls in love with her. At one point, Perry asks Campbell to give him one good reason she stays with the married businessman. She answers that in a year and a half, they haven’t had one fight. And Perry explodes, “He doesn’t care about you enough to fight with you!”

   Fighting equals caring? I’m not talking about the kind of fight in which someone gets bullied or hurt. I’m talking about the kind of fight in which people take each other seriously. By that I mean they stay in relationship; they don’t disengage, pretend the other person doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist. Questions may be the highest form of praise because the questions are willing to take life with God seriously. 

   Texas minister Gerald Mann writes that he can tell that Americans are still a religiously hungry people because they flock to him with their questions. Questions like:

• Where does evil come from?
• Why does God let bad things happen to good people?
• Why don’t my prayers “work”?
• Why should I bother with Scripture?
• Why do some church people behave so poorly?
• Will God love me if I’m an alcoholic or an addict, if I’ve had an abortion or an affair, if I’m black or poor or gay, if I can’t make my marriage work, if I’m out of work, if I’m in prison?
• How can I ever forgive that person who hurt me so very much?
• How do I know what’s the right thing to do?
• Is there any point in trying to do good when the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket?
• How can I overcome the shame, or the despair, or the temptation, or the rage that I feel?^[2]

   Often people are afraid to bring these questions to church, for all the reasons Mike Yaconelli lists. Maybe they think they’re supposed to have the answers. Maybe they think that questioning God, or questioning the church, means they aren’t good Christians, or worse, aren’t good people. Maybe we in the church need to pay attention to the ways we respond to people with questions, and make it clear that they and their questions are welcome. 

   Habakkuk gets an answer from God, but not one that satisfies him. He continues to question and complain. With World Series starting this weekend, it’s the perfect time to quote Leo Durocher: “Baseball is like church. Many attend. Few understand.” Habakkuk reminds us that bringing our questions to God or to God’s community of faith might not get us the answer we want or the clarity we’d hope. What our questions get us is a relationship with God. 

   This weekend is not only the Game 1 of the World Series; it’s Reformation Day. On October 31, 1517, the story goes that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, questioning the practices of the Church. Luther didn’t intend to start a new church, only to address the corruption he saw, but he was excommunicated for heresy and the Protestant Reformation began. Luther also didn’t intend to question God, directly, but his questions for God’s church opened a spirit of inquiry, of questioning, that became characteristic of the Protestant movement; Protestant comes from the word “protest,” after all. Questions rock the boat. And the Reformation tradition encourages every individual to pursue the questions of faith in the community of the faithful. Mike Yaconelli concludes, “Doubt is the cutting edge of faith. Questions are the food upon which our faith depends to gain strength and life. … God certainly isn’t afraid of our questions. We shouldn’t be either.”  

   The community of the faithful doesn’t mean the community of the people who have all the answers. Maybe it just means the community of people who understand that the life of faith isn’t a quiet life. Jesus never, ever said to anyone, “That’s a stupid question.” Jesus knew that sometimes we need proof and sometimes we don’t, but either way, we never run out of questions. I, for one, am grateful.

^[1]  Mike Yaconelli, Tough Faith: The Search for Honest, Durable Christianity (Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1976).

^[2]  Gerald Mann, When One Day at a Time is Too Long (New York: McCracken Press, 1994).

Luke 18:9-14

My mother used to be the Chief of the Grammar Police, taking great pleasure in critiquing the grammar of folks on TV. Then she had a revelation. She realized that you always end up looking good when you judge other people according to your successes. As my mother put it at the time, we all pass our own tests. She never stopped correcting my grammar, mind you, but she became more charitable toward others who mangled the King’s English.

Most of us fall into this trap at one time or another. We want to feel good about ourselves and so we congratulate ourselves for things we’ve done well, like the Pharisee in this parable in Luke’s gospel. This parable would have shocked Jesus’ audience because the Pharisees were the good guys. They tried to be impeccably faithful to all 613 laws in the Torah. They were honest and upright. Tax collectors in first century Judea, on the other hand, were traitors. They collected taxes only for the occupying Roman government. What’s more, the colonial tax system encouraged fraud. You had to collect a minimum, but then it was up to you how much money you could collect on top of that.

The Pharisee arrives at the temple to pray, and he begins by giving thanks. It’s a good start, but his prayer quickly becomes a catalog of his own achievements. It’s as if he’s trying to impress God with his worthiness, but then he goes a step further. Someone else has to be bad in comparison, and the tax collector is an easy target. When he judges himself and the tax collector against his own successes, the Pharisee comes out smelling like a rose. He’s passed his own test with flying colors. You have to wonder what it is he thinks he needs from God.

The tax collector’s need, on the other hand, is easy to see. He’s in dire need of God’s mercy. He makes no comparisons. Jesus says it is this man who went home “justified.” “Justified,” in this context, means “made right with God.” By trusting in God’s mercy and relying on God’s grace, rather than on himself, the tax collector, not the Pharisee, becomes the example of a right relationship with God.

If we imagine that in order to be righteous, in order to impress God, we have to do something, accomplish something, achieve something, the fact is that we can never, ever do enough. If God’s holiness is the standard, then that is a test we can never pass. We might be very good. But when we compare ourselves to God’s goodness, none of us can boast.

Grace is the word we use to describe the fact that we are “justified,” that we are made right with God in any event, not because of what we’ve done, but because of who God is. Think about the firefighters in our now-annual wildfires in California. They didn’t go door-to-door to ask, “Do you deserve to have your house saved? Do you pay your bills on time; are you faithful to your husband; did you ever cheat on your taxes?” No. They try hard to save every home because that is who they are and what they do. So it is with God.

Martin Luther, much like the tax collector, had seen himself as a contemptible sinner, and at first it made him angry with God. But through his study of Paul’s letters, Luther came to understand that he was justified – made right with God – as a gift of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. The phrase he borrowed from Paul is “justification by faith.” To most people today, “faith” means believing – believing that God exists and that Christ is God’s Son. If you think of faith that way, “justification by faith” sounds as though believing the right things is just another way to earn God’s love. But to both the apostle Paul and to Martin Luther, believing in God wasn’t ever questioned. What faith meant was trust – trusting in God, relying on God, saying “yes” to God and to God’s desires for you and for the world. This is what the tax collector does that the Pharisee does not.

Grace is not like a get-out-of-jail-free card in a Monopoly game. Grace is a relationship. It is a relationship with God. It is a relationship that frees us to interact with God and with our fellow human beings with hope. Some people don’t like the idea of grace because they can’t stand the thought that they might actually need it. They hate to think that they might have done or be doing something that God might find objectionable. It’s ironic that it’s in the very earnestness of our quest for holy living that we might actually refuse God’s grace. As we strive to do good, which is what we are supposed to be doing, we can easily become impressed with our own goodness. Once we start thinking of ourselves as having accomplished something, we want credit for it, and there you have our Pharisee.

While the Pharisee may have passed his own test, God has other, more important tests, at least one of which is the loving kindness test. The Pharisee was proud of the fact that he wasn’t lying, cheating, or stealing, but he failed miserably at risking to love the unlovable, in himself and in others. Over and over Jesus commanded people to love – to love God and to love one’s neighbor, and not just the neighbors that are easy to love, but the ones that are really hard to love, too. Love is the only mark by which Christ’s disciples are known, and yet there is not one among us who can say we always love, perfectly, everybody, all the time. And that very truth is why I’d guess that few of us actually have a hard time understanding our need for grace – because everyone has been on the receiving end of less than perfect love.

In the movie, “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” the title character, Bridget, is painfully aware that she is not perfect. She can’t quit smoking, she drinks too much, and she has a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing. In one scene, as she leaves a dinner party where she has once again put her foot in her mouth, she apologizes to a man, assuming he thinks as little of her as she does right at that moment. But the man surprises her. He says, in his dignified, English way, “No, I quite like you, just as you are.” When Bridget tells her usually cynical, urbane friends, they are dumbfounded. “You mean, just as you are…not thinner, or prettier?” they ask in wonder. They all know that Bridget has encountered something rare; something precious; something that speaks to the core of human longing.

God’s grace speaks most ultimately to that human longing. God loves you. You. Just as you are. Both because of and in spite of all that you are. That’s grace.

Lesson: Luke 17:11-19

When I was growing up, handwritten thank you notes were very important. It’s hard to explain to my kids why an email or text just didn’t work for most folks in my parents’ generation. Even though my grandmother would be appalled, I, too, wonder why a truly sincere thank you in any form, even in person – isn’t ample thanks. Is there really just one right way to say thanks?

You might think so from this Sunday’s gospel reading. We start with ten lepers. Ten lepers living on the edge of town, separated from their families, their livelihood, all normal activities and company. Ten lepers who have to shout a warning wherever they go that they’re unclean, because of the community’s fear of their disease. The ten may or may not have had what we know today as Hansen’s disease, but they are lepers in that they are the ultimate outcasts.

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. When the ten lepers hear that Jesus the miracle worker is in the neighborhood, they come as close as they dare and call out. Jesus tells them to go to the priest, because just as it took a priest to confirm that someone had leprosy, it also took a priest to declare that someone was healed. As the lepers head off to do as Jesus tells them, they’re healed of their disease. Imagine the joy; imagine the relief! As soon as the priest gives the okay, they can return to their families, to worship in the temple, to being productive members of their community. They’re no longer outcasts! They were probably jumping and whooping and high-fiving all the way to the priest.

The twist in the story is that at this point in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, he’s on the border between Galilee and Samaria, communities that were divided by generations of hatred and suspicion. Jews considered all Samaritans ritually unclean and would travel miles out of their way to avoid having any contact with them.

The focus now shifts from the ten to the one. Only one of the ex-lepers returns to say thank you. This passage is often interpreted as dealing with the importance of gratitude – I’ve interpreted it that way myself. It’s even one of the lectionary passages for Thanksgiving Day. But notice that the healing didn’t depend on gratitude. The nine who didn’t say “thank you” were healed just the same. I suspect that they felt profoundly grateful even if they didn’t express it. Which means making gratitude the centerpiece of this text is a bit like focusing on whether your thank you note is handwritten or a text. I’m guessing Jesus wasn’t really waiting around to be thanked in the right way at the right time.

The one who turned back to praise God and thank Jesus was a Samaritan. Before Jesus heals the lepers, they’re just ten lepers, no distinctions. But once the ten all have been healed, the Samaritan, alone, remains unclean. The old divisions kick into play again. There’s no cure for being a Samaritan. He may not even be welcomed by the priest. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t follow the others.

It is only to the Samaritan that Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” Four people in the Gospel of Luke hear those powerful words from Jesus: “Your faith has made you well.” Each is, in his or her own way, an outcast: either a sinner or ritually unclean. Each healing is followed by a conversation about the Kingdom of God – what life and the world look like under God’s rule.

Ten were healed. One was “made well.” Maybe Jesus is talking about a different kind of wellness. Maybe he meant that deep-seated human divisions are a much more serious malady than even leprosy – that our souls can be far sicker than our bodies and yet many of us do nothing to heal the breach. Maybe he wasn’t commenting on the lack of gratitude of the nine who didn’t return as much as on the system that would accept them and reject the Samaritan. Maybe he was commenting on all the systems that create a “Them” that we can despise because they are not “Us”: race, class, political party, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, education, or identifying as LGBTQ, just to name a few.

We’ll never know exactly what Jesus meant. But it’s safe to say that, to Jesus, “wellness” does not include going back to a life of “Them” and “Us.” “Where are the nine?” asked Jesus. The nine were right back where they came from, safely on the right side of the border, healed of their exterior problems but locked back into their prejudices. Healed, but not well. One commentator notes that we are healed not to stay the same, but to live differently, breaking down divisions in society that exclude people because of all the categories that create a “Them” and an “Us.”

We might need this kind of healing even more than we need to be reminded to be grateful.

Author, poet, and activist Wendell Berry wrote, “Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. … To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.”

Luke 17:5-10

Once Jesus “[sets] his face to go to Jerusalem” at the end of Chapter 9, he keeps reminding the disciples the road ahead is tough – perhaps deadly – and he’s going to stay on it. He’s just finished telling them that they, too, need to stay the course. That’s when they plead, “Increase our faith.”

If they could just have more fuel, more juice, more faith, maybe they could meet Jesus’ expectations. Now and then you run into someone who says if you only had enough faith, you could do anything: get the job, get the girl, keep your loved one from dying of cancer. The problem is that then when you don’t get the job, or don’t get the girl, or your loved one dies, it’s your fault; you failed the test of faith. This is not only cruel, it’s magical thinking and it isn’t what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is thinking about faith in a very different way.

First, says Jesus, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could order a mulberry tree to transplant itself into the sea. Why this odd image of a mulberry tree in the sea? The point is it’s absurdly impossible. The meaning of the passage turns on the original Greek, which says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed…and you do…. .” So Jesus is saying, “You can do this absurdly impossible thing. You have enough faith.” With the little faith they have they can do things they never, ever would have imagined. In other words, the disciples don’t need more faith; they need to make use of the faith that they already have.

Then Jesus offers a parable: Imagine you’re a master with servants. Do you thank your servants for doing what they’re supposed to do? Of course not, says Jesus. You expect them just to keep on doing it. And then he switches perspectives: Imagine you’re the servant. Do you expect reward for just doing what you’re supposed to do? Of course not.

Now, this sounds a little harsh to twenty-first century Americans who hand out trophies to kids for just showing up. When my daughter and her husband taught school in Bangladesh, they noticed that the Bangladesh economy seemed to be built on paying people to do simple things for you that most of us would do ourselves. This was true not only for the privileged few but pretty much everyone. The bicycle rickshaw drivers paid someone to wash their vehicles. No one was expected to carry his own bag out of a store. My daughter also noticed that her students rarely said thank you. In that culture, when people were just doing their jobs, paying them for it was enough. Maybe first century Judean culture was similar.

So add these two thoughts together: First, if you have only a speck of faith – and you do – you’ll be able to do unimaginable things. And second, stop expecting someone to make a fuss when you do what you’re supposed to be doing. Personally, I’m one hundred percent in favor of thanking people, but our culture is not Jesus’ culture. This is Jesus’ message to his disciples: Stop worrying about whether you have enough faith and get to the business at hand.

Part of what Jesus points to is that “faith” isn’t about believing the right beliefs. Faithfulness is simply doing what we see needs to be done to bring us closer, even a tiny bit closer, to living in the world God wants for everyone. Faith doesn’t have to be heroic. I don’t think faith even has to be particularly religious; it certainly allows room for all kinds of doubts. Maybe faith is just being attentive to the needs around us and committing ourselves to doing what we can with what we have, trusting that God will make use of it.

That sounds pretty ordinary. Like a mustard seed.

A few years ago when we were faced with a government shutdown, Anne Lamott compared it to the alcoholic uncle at family holidays who has been threatening to do something rash every time he gets drunk, and he “finally goes and does it. He finally does some bizarre, bullying, irrational act that he has been threatening to do for awhile.” How does the family even begin to deal with the havoc the alcoholic has caused? Get him to bed, she says. “He’s on his own now. We can love him, later. … In the meantime,” she wrote, “the praying people pray. Someone sweeps. The children and the elderly are fed, and comforted. The kids go off to school. Everyone pitches in to help clean up. … And since we are not going to figure this out today, and since ‘Figure it out’ is not a good slogan, let’s do what we’ve always done. We’ll stick together, and get the thirsty people a glass of water. I’ll remember the sticker I saw once, of Koko, the sign language gorilla, above the words, ‘The law of the American jungle: remain calm, and share your bananas.’ I am going to fill a box of warm clothes and take it to Goodwill: this is going to be a terribly cold winter for the poor, what with sequestration and God-only-knows what the shutdown adds to that. I am going to pick up litter. I’ll send some money to one of America’s hunger projects. I’ll pray and pray and pray, all day, that we’ll all pitch in to help our most vulnerable, and that we’ll help each other keep the faith, and our senses of humor. Remember: laughter is carbonated holiness. I swear to you, it is.”

That is what faith looks like.

Jeremiah 32:1-15

In this week’s Hebrew Scriptures passage, the prophet Jeremiah takes a break from lament to make an investment. It’s about 587 BCE, and Nebuchadrezzer II, king of Babylon, is besieging the city of Jerusalem. For thirty-some chapters, Jeremiah has been predicting doom. The king of Judah finally takes this personally when Jeremiah says the king himself will be dragged off to Babylon as a captive. King Zedekiah jails Jeremiah for treason. As one commentator put it, “Real prophets often find themselves in some sort of confinement; false prophets on the other hand often drive Jaguars.”

So Jeremiah is imprisoned in the palace when the word of God comes to him, with instructions to redeem a piece of family property near his hometown of Anahoth. God says Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel will show up to offer him this opportunity. When Hanamel does indeed appear with the sales proposal, the prophet decides he’s heard an authentic word from the Lord.

Jeremiah goes to great lengths to make sure the sale is legally executed, and then gives strict instructions to his scribe to put two copies of the deed – one sealed and one unsealed – in a clay jar – perhaps the ancient equivalent of a safety deposit box. All this must have mystified Hanamel and the palace guards. No real estate agent of any century would come within a ten-foot pole of this land transaction. The fair market value of a piece of property about to be invaded by Nebuchadrezzer is precisely zero, at least to a Judean. That’s probably why Hanamel is unloading it. He wants his assets to be liquid. He’s probably giggling all the way to the bank, or more likely, all the way out of town, out of harm’s way.

The last verse of this passage, verse 15, explains Jeremiah’s motive: “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” On the other side of doom, says God, there is hope. It’s the ultimate in insider trading: investment advice from God. Except that, unlike normal insider-trading situations, there are no facts on the ground to prove this is a good deal. Jeremiah acts on faith and lives in hope that God’s purposes will be worked out in the course of time, even if there is nothing pointing to that right now.

In January of 1943, three months before he was arrested and later killed by the Nazis, the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words about Christian hope during dark times: “…There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative.”

Although Bonhoeffer speaks of hope, he doesn’t offer anything warm and fuzzy or especially reassuring about the immediate future. And as it turned out, he was talking about trusting a great future that he, personally, did not reach. It reminds me of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Like Bonhoeffer, King knew that he wouldn’t see his dream of equality realized in his lifetime. It’s still not realized. And yet King and Bonhoeffer continued to move toward that dream. They continued to hope. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in prison, he wrote a letter to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer: “When Jeremiah said, in his people’s hour of direst need, that ‘houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land,’ it was a token of confidence in the future. Our marriage must be a ‘yes’ to God’s earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth.”

Bonhoeffer was telling his fiancée they must live as though there’s hope, because our faith, ultimately, is that there is hope. We’re surrounded by bad news that could drive us to despair: climate disruption, government corruption, mass shootings, the immigrant crisis, white supremacy – we might be tempted to stick our heads in the sand and ignore the news because we feel so helpless. Or we might be tempted to live a kind of hurricane party existence. If you’ve never lived on the Gulf Coast, the object of a hurricane party is to consume large quantities of alcohol while a hurricane is coming on shore. It’s the ultimate expression of “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

There are many ways to numb ourselves from reality. But that’s not what God calls us to do. The people who have Jeremiah as their prophet, the people who have Jesus as their Savior, the people who have Bonhoeffer and King as their martyrs, the people who know that God is the source of their lives, these people do not despair. These people live lives of radical hope – not hope that’s a sentimental feeling, but hope that is a commitment to action; a hope that allows us to see the world differently and work to bring that hope-filled vision to life.

Charles Schwab used to say, “Own your tomorrow.” Followers of Jesus are the ones who insist that God owns tomorrow, and it is good. We are the ones called to live into hope by committing to action. To live into hope by acting for our planet. To live into hope by acting for our children, whether they’re struggling with school, or struggling with addiction. To live into hope by acting for relationships worth repairing. To live into hope by acting for our American democracy. To live into hope by acting for Martin Luther King’s dream of equality.

There’s an old Greek proverb that says that a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.