Making the Crooked Paths Straight

 O God of Compassion,

I cannot undo the past, or make it never have happened!
— neither can You. There are some things that are not possible even for You
— but not many!

I ask you, humbly, and from the bottom of my heart;
Please, God, would You write straight with my crooked lines?
Out of the serious mistakes of my life will You make something beautiful for you?

Teach me to live at peace with You, and make peace with others and even with myself.

Give me fresh vision. Let me experience your love so deeply that I am free to
face the future with a steady eye, forgiven, and strong in hope.

I came across this prayer a few weeks ago – unfortunately I didn’t note the source.[1]   It resonated with me because it addressed the experience I have which I call the “ghosts” that sometimes haunt me in the witching hours of the night.  The ghosts are memories which arrive unsought and unasked for.  In religious language they are the things I have done which I ought not to have done and the things I have not done, I ought to have done.  I could go on with there being no health in me but I won’t go that far – at least this morning.   At base they are regrets which I wish I could change but as this prayer states, I cannot undo the past, or make it never have happened!  

Even God can’t or perhaps it might be better to say won’t – I truly don’t know which.  But I do know what is possible is forgiveness.  It is possible through God in Jesus Christ to forgive – forgive myself and others for all those things in life that I regret happened.  Those ghosts are actually given by God to let me know that forgiveness for these things is not complete.  The crooked path has not yet been made straight.  Forgiveness – true forgiveness does not come easily to me and I expect it does not come easily in most cases.    However, it is a gift from God that those ghosts come to let me know that the process of forgiveness is not yet complete.  I had not originally planned to write about those ghosts on All Saints Day after a traditional night in which the ghosts and goblins roamed so freely but perhaps, I can see God’s hand in that.

May you be blessed to have reconcile with your ghosts on your journey. 

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[1] One of my biggest and closest fans informed me that it is a prayer by Ignatius of Loyola 

 

Sermon September 27, 2015: 17th Sunday after Trinity

Some years ago I learned an approach to understanding the Gospel.  There are actually three rules to this approach.  The first of the rules is, ‘the Gospel is always astonishing’. The second rule is ‘The Gospel is not fair’. Finally, ‘in the Gospel, God always acts first’. 

Now I must admit that I don’t always use these rules.  However, I have found that when I do they can be helpful in trying to figure out what the Gospel is saying to me in the current moment.  I thought of this approach when I read today’s Gospel.  Specifically, I was surprized/astonished when I read that Jesus went to the house of the chief Pharisee.  Now, if I had been asked I would have said that this is the last place that I would expect Jesus to be.  It is like Daniel going into the lions’ den voluntarily.  Jesus was never reluctant to criticise the Pharisees and hold them to account for their approach to religion and their seemingly making a god of the law e.g. the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.  

Here we have the Gospel with Jesus breaking bread at the chief Pharisee’s house.  We might have thought that perhaps the fence—or should I say chasm—that separated the Pharisees from Jesus might have been mended and bridged. 

But we are disabused from that possibility almost immediately.  We are told, “that they watched him.”  In effect they had invited Jesus to dinner to do what they always seemed to do; try and catch him in some faux pas of religious law so that they could condemn him and his message.  That, of course, in itself is a breaking of the rules of hospitality.  That is not what a host should do.  The host should welcome a guest and put him or her in the place of honour. 

The drama unfolds and we have what seems to be a set-up by the host.  There is a man among them who has dropsy.  Now I wasn’t actually sure what dropsy is.  I looked it up on the source of all knowledge—I Googled it and found out.  It is the old term for Oedema which is an observable swelling caused by accumulation of fluid in the bodily tissue.  So it seems that this man—who had a condition that Jesus couldn’t miss—was invited there to be bait to trap Jesus in a blasphemy.  They probably thought that Jesus might be moved by his condition and heal him.  And as we are told it is the Sabbath and therefore he would have performed work on the Sabbath and broken the Holiness code.

However, Jesus is no fool (except perhaps for Christ). He beats them to the punch-line so to speak.  He asks the assembled religious leaders and lawyers, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?”  They know that they have been caught in the trap they set for Jesus so they do the only thing they can and say nothing.  He goes ahead and heals the man.  He doesn’t however stop there.  He uses the opportunity to show them what they should know as religious leaders.  He shows them that the law does allow work to be done if it is for compassionate reasons.  They would rescue an animal that was in need of saving.  Would not God expect the same for His people? 

He then gives them the final lesson—the icing on the spiritual cake so to speak.  He gives them a lesson in true hospitality and shows them what the spirit of the law is.  He shows them that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  They are not to hold that they are the important ones.  They are to humble themselves. They are to be poor in spirit as Jesus will later tell us in Beatitudes.  Then they will be blessed. 

  

Where does this leave us?  Do we then have to remember to show true hospitality to other?  That sounds fairly easy doesn’t it?  If we invite someone to dinner we should not do it for nefarious reasons.  All well and good.  However, with Jesus I don’t think we get off that easy.  Jesus is calling us to true humility in all aspects of life.  It is like the Pharisee who is beside the tax collector praying “Thank God I am not like the tax collector”.  We are like that when we hold ourselves to deserve the best seat at the table in all aspect of life we are not humbling ourselves as we are called to do by Jesus. 

When we engage with someone what kind of an internal conversation do we have?  Do we compare ourselves to the other person and see where we are better or not as good as that person?  Do we put that person in a category of worthy of our friendship or even our attention?  We consider if this person is worth our while.  What do we think about those who are struggling? Do we categorize them as the worthy poor who should get our help or even the help of government?  So we think that refugees don’t deserve our help because they are probably terrorist anyway.  Jesus didn’t worry about the worthiness of the man with dropsy—he healed him. 

Admittedly it is hard to overcome what seems to be our natural inclination to judge others. However, Jesus also said judge not lest you be judged.  It is hard not to judge and in some cases we need to judge; is something positive of negative; is someone acting for the benefit of others or out of selfishness?  But when we judge we are called to see the child that God has created in each person we meet.  We are called to see Jesus’ face in the face of the homeless person and the neighbour we don’t get along with.  We are called to love one another as Jesus loves us.  It doesn’t seem easy but we are called to travel that road.  It is a journey we were called to take at our baptism and it is one that continues all our life.  Amen.

True Hospitality; True Compassion

Last night Lorna and I watched Saving Private Ryan—with interruptions to watch the lunar eclipse which was fascinating.  It was one of our VHS tape finds at Value Village in Charlottetown this year.    The movie was just as engaging as the first time we saw it.  This morning Lorna made a very interesting and insightful comment.  It would have been an even more interesting movie if Spielberg had given it a dark twist and it turned out that Private Ryan had lived and completely unredeemable life after being saved by the group of heroic U.S. soldiers who all gave their lives in the effort.  The ending has the Private Ryan character—played by Matt Damon—visiting the military cemetery in France in the present day and tearfully asking this wife to affirm that he had lived a good life i.e. one worthy of the sacrifice that had been made by those soldiers who died ‘Saving’ him.  They were sent to bring Ryan to safety and to be discharged as he was the sole surviving son in a family—his three brothers having been killed in action. 

As I reflected on that insight I thought about it in the context of my sermon yesterday.  The subject of the sermon was the miracle performed by Jesus curing the man with dropsy at the home of the Chief Pharisee (Luke 14: 1-11).  This act of compassion was done by Jesus on the Sabbath and had been a set up by the religious authorities to catch Jesus in the sin of doing work on the Sabbath i.e. healing the man.  Jesus teaches them a lesson in true hospitality which, of course, the religious leaders did not show Jesus inviting him to dinner for nefarious purposes.

The connection between the Gospel lesson and the movie is related, I believe, to true hospitality.  Jesus did not determine if the man with dropsy deserved to be healed.  He acted out of compassion for the man.  The act of compassion by the military to save Private Ryan and spare his mother further tragedy would not have been lessened if Ryan had turned out to live a completely selfish or even evil life.  In the same way we do not know what kind of a life was lived by the man with dropsy.  He may have been moved to give his life to the glory of God like the one healed leper who returned to thank Jesus; however, he may not have.  That doesn’t change the nature of the act. 

There was one element of the movie that dealt with this quandary.  The band of brothers who were rescuing Ryan set a German soldier they had captured free.  He later reappears as a central character fighting against the U.S. soldiers who are defending a bridge.  He ends killing a number of the soldiers who rescue Ryan including the commanding officer played by Tom Hanks.  Lorna’s imagined ending to the movie would have truly made the viewer reflect more deeply on the nature of compassion and hospitality rather than having a Hollywood ending.  But then it was truly a Hollywood movie; a good one none-the-less.

In closing I can pose this question for all of us.  How do we show true hospitality and compassion to others?  I believe we do not do that by sitting back and turning our backs on the refugee crisis.  That is the issue facing us today.  There are, of course, ongoing ones we have to wrestle with every day.  Peace.  

The Prodigal Father (4): the Ways of Compassion

Recently, I have written about the Henri Nouwen’s striving to aspire to be like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son describes his exploration of the parable which was initiated by his encounter with the painting by Rembrandt based on the parable.

Nouwen saw that what it meant for him to aspire to be like God the father was to be compassionate.  Nouwen states that the most radical statement Jesus made was, “Be compassionate as your father is compassionate”.  He acknowledges that this is in no way easy for him.  To do this you must live a life that is based on cooperation rather than competition—which, of course, is truly radical in today’s culture.   However, he identifies three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood.   These ways of compassion are; grief, forgiveness, and generosity.  Last week I explored the first way; grief.  Today I will explore the second way; forgiveness.

As Nouwen notes, “Forgiveness from the heart is very, very difficult.  It is next to impossible.  Jesus said to his disciples: ‘when your brother wrongs you seven times a day and comes back to you and says ‘I am sorry,’ you must forgive him.’”  The words are certainly easier than change in heart which is required to truly forgive.  We are trained as children to say we forgive even when we don’t feel it or believe it.  When the parents say to the child ‘say you are sorry’ the child may say it to placate the parent but he or she probably is only sorry that they were caught in the wrongdoing.

 A few years ago I read about one person’s struggle with forgiveness that illustrates how hard it is to truly forgive.  An Anglican priest in England, resigned her holy orders because she found that as hard as she tried she was unable to forgive, to truly forgive, the drunk driver who had killed her child.  She believed that as a Christian and a priest she was called to forgive that person and was unable to do it.  This shows us that true forgiveness is not cheap or easy.  It is more than just say the words.  To truly mean it is a long hard journey.

As Nouwen notes, “God’s forgiveness is unconditional; it comes from a heart that does not demand anything for itself, a heart that is completely empty of self-seeking.  It is this forgiveness that I have to practice in my daily life.”  Fortunately God’s forgiveness is there for us unconditionally when we fail to do likewise.  Thanks be to God.  

The Prodigal Father (3): the Ways of Compassion

Last week I wrote of the Henri Nouwen’s striving to aspire to be like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son explores his exploration of the parable which was initiated by his encounter with the painting by Rembrandt of the same name based on the parable.

Nouwen saw that what it meant for him to aspire to be like God the father was to be compassionate.  Nouwen states that the most radical statement Jesus made was, “Be compassionate as your father is compassionate”.  He acknowledges that this is in no way easy for him.  To do this you must live a life that is based on cooperation rather than competition—which, of course, is truly radical in today’s culture.   However, he identifies three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood.   These ways of compassion are; grief, forgiveness, and generosity.

I will look at each of these ways this week and subsequent weeks beginning with grief.  Nouwen notes that there is no grief without tears; either tears that flow from our eyes or tears that flow from our hearts.  He notes that there is no shortage of things to grieve over in this world, “When I consider the immense waywardness of God’s children, our lust, our greed, our violence, our anger, our resentment, and when I look at them through the eyes of God’s heart, I cannot but weep and cry out in grief.” 

For there to be tears of grief I believe that there must be an open heart.  As one who has not always had the gift of tears of compassion that came to me often or easily, I am aware that it is because my heart has not been open to much of the waywardness in the world.  I have had a protective wall around my heart that requires breaching.  To enable this to happen, we must be open to being hurt by the world. 

Nouwen proposes that much of grieving is prayer.  A good prayer for the grief that comes from compassion is to prayer that the walls around our hearts will come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.  Blessings.  

The Prodigal Father (2)

In my last installment I reflected on The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henry Nouwen.  Nouwen noted that he saw himself in both the elder son and the younger prodigal son.  Nouwen sees how his have been reflected in the prodigal, “In a spiritual sense, I found myself squandering all I had been given by my father to keep the friendship alive.  I couldn’t pray and longer.  I had lost interest in my work and found it increasingly hard to pay attention to other people’s concern.”

Nouwen also finds the elder son in himself.  As he describes it, “ The obedient and dutiful life of which I am proud or for which I am praised feels, sometimes, like a burden that was laid on my shoulders and continues to oppress me, even when I have accepted it to such a degree that I cannot throw it off”.    

Nouwen discovered that he not only identified with both sons but it also dawned on him that he could aspire to be like the father.  He realized as a beloved son of God the Father he was called to aspire to be like the father.  Now this could be thought of as trying to be God like.  People certainly have been guilty of that and will continue to do that.  However, he saw what it meant for him to aspire to be like God the father was to be compassionate.  Nouwen states that the most radical statement Jesus made was, “Be compassionate as your father is compassionate”.

Nouwen’s vision of living that aspect of God is a vision of love.  This is the core message of the Gospel.  We are called to show our mercy, our compassion for others and for the world as God shows compassion; God’s all-embracing love for God’s creation.  For Nouwen, this means that to live a life of compassion it cannot be one that is based on competition.  Rather it must be one of cooperation.  Nouwen freely admits that this is far from easy.  He confesses, “Against my own best intentions, I find myself continually striving to acquire power.  When I give advice, I want to know whether it will be followed; when I offer help, I want to be thanked; when I give money, I want it to be used my way; when I do something good I want to be remembered”. 

I can in no way claim that I do not want—no deeply desire— all those things that Nouwen confesses to.  That is the problem.  They are natural for people to want these things.  That is why the message of Jesus— to be merciful as your Father is also merciful; to love one another as he loves us—is so radical.  That is why—at least in large part, why Jesus was crucified by the powers of this world—by the civil powers of the Roman Empire and the religious powers that controlled the life centered on the temple.  We know that when we try to live as Jesus commands us we are going to fail.  However, we are called to try.  We need to try to give without expecting to receive.  Try to imagine what it would like to do that—giving joyfully without any expectation of receiving anything. ..  We are called to do good without being motivated to have that act acknowledged in the world.  We know that we are going to fail, to fall into sin—do those things that separate us from God.  However, we also have the assurance that our sins will be forgiven.  We have the assurance that God’s love for us is not conditional on living a perfect life without sin.  Otherwise none of us would be loved and we know that God does love us.  Thanks be to God.