Being Understood

It is true that I do not always understand God, even though I try to.  I think it suffices that he understands me.

Perceptions

They seemed cruel, even though they were calling it assertiveness.

Persistence and Belief

The blind man sat at the side of the road calling out to David's son.  They asked him to stop, but he only screamed louder.  Because he could not be silenced they brought him to Jesus, who told him to see.  And he did.  His persistence was born of desperation, but also of faith.

Maybe he had cried out to others.  Maybe he had tried silence when told not to shout.  But this time was different and someone heard, and could show he understood.  Endurance and belief finally made a difference.  He could finally see all he had only heard about, and more.

Beyond Mere Existence

Existence is not a subject of celebration, because it is only existence.  It is not quite life but a facsimile, a representation, an almost state.  It reflects, or maybe distorts, what ought to be mirrored.  Yet for many it suffices, perhaps because we are unsure of life.  Unsure what it is, or should be, and afraid to find out.  Life, we may fear, is too great a risk, too much of a challenge.

We share existence with rocks, trees and dirt.  Life is something else and it calls for a truer response.  It is what we share with God.  It may be a frightening and uncertain thing, and it may force a leap into reality a little too real.

But safe as it is, existence will not suffice.  It offers only security.  It is too safe and over sure.  It is too incomplete, too much outside.  It calls for no risk, no change, no humanity.  It compels no honesty and offers only survival as its reward.

What Is Faith

Faith is:  saying yes, denying no, acting on uncertainty, living with doubt, taking a chance, and sometimes it is being hurt.

When Glory Begins

We talk of Jesus returning in glory as though it were to be a sudden event, but maybe instead it is a gradual thing and maybe it has already begun.

Who Is Jesus?

Who is Jesus?  Is he the historic reality, the subject of study, of so much historicizing, philosophizing, theologizing and just plain wonder?  Is he there here and now person, the man in the street, the one we fail to see?  Is he God's son, seated in power, the one returning in glory?  He is probably all of these and more, but what does it all mean?

Trying and Failing and Trying to Figure Out Why

It sometimes seems that attempts to be good, to accomplish greatness, to love life and live by love are destined to fail.  The degree of failure seems in direct proportion to the degree of effort.  In this, God is trying to tell us something.  It is not that we should not try, but just what it is I do not know.

A Human Moment on the Cross

They invited him to come down from the Cross.  Maybe he wanted to and knew it might be their salvation, but he didn't because he couldn't.  The time for miracles, signs and wonders was over.  What he had already said and done had brought him to this point and how he had to want it this way, even though it seemed so hopeless.

He had to believe it was right, that the degradation and pain of this naked suffering was more important.  That his hanging could mean more than his coming down.

He knew he was dying and didn't want to.  It was ending so desperately.  He needed to believe it was what God had asked, that having taken the first step into faith it had to end here, but God, he hoped, could make even this worthwhile.  So he stayed and he suffered and bled, wishing it could be different, yet sure it was more than it seemed.

Inconvenient Facts

We found a fact, a small and maybe less significant one, and as we found it we hid it again, making believe it was never there, hoping our discovery would not be uncovered.  Had it stayed around, it might have endangered the elaborate system we had built, the one that permits no inconsistencies, even though they may be true.

The Risks of Honesty

Are they alienated by our honesty, or by our insistence on it?

Rethinking Solemnity

Today we had a funeral and at the cemetery I was struck by the attitude of the grave diggers, how they ignored the solemnity we had brought to the occasion.  Of course, they had no personal investment.  Their feelings were not tied to the event.  Though respectful, they could, it seemed, include death as part of a joke.  Maybe they were right.  Maybe death is not so serious.  Maybe we, with solemn prayer and faces, were the ones who had not understood.

The Virtue of Poverty

There is no virtue in being poor if it is not freely chosen; nor is being poor a sin.

Forgiving Ingratitude

Had we written the story of the ten lepers, we might have added that the nine had their leprosy restored for their ingratitude.  But that is not how it was.  It's not how God is.  He deals with us from love, overlooking ingratitude, our lack of respect, our lack of response.  He is made no more by our reply, and is no less in its absence.  If this is how God acts with us, maybe we could act the same with one another.  If he has no need of condemnation, maybe we can do without it as well.

Tolerance and Silence

It is easy enough to be tolerant when you have nothing to say.

What God Wanted to Say

For the longest time God had tried to say who he was in relation to everyone else.  While what he said was true, it was only part of what he wanted to tell.  He told stories and gave illustrations.  They agreed and believed but wanted to know more.  They knew he was like a shepherd, or like a king.  They understood he was love, but there was more to see and more to believe.  So a time came for stories to give way to revelation in flesh.  He became man and was like them, as much like them as they were like each other and in this way what had been said and shown was more.  His love became a physical expression, like that of any two people in love whose concern was real, but only in words until they could touch.  Incarnation meant the wonder and beauty of his ardor had blossomed into the embrace of his flesh.

Jesus was what God had wanted to say.  He was what he meant to convey, all the passion, emotion, and fire of which God was capable.  And they understood.  At last, they knew what God was like.  They knew his name and could hold his hand.  He was like they were, and because he was all they were became holier, blending as it did into him.

Nostalgic for Thinking

Are we approaching a time when thinking will again be an acceptable past-time, and philosophy a tolerated way of life?

Prophet or King

Because Jesus could do as the prophet had, because he could multiply bread and feed people, they wanted to make him king.  But because he was a prophet, he knew it would mean nothing so he ran away.  It was foolish for them to think this type of prophet could be their type of king.  They did not see that to make him more would only make him less.

Words Without Meaning

Some days we answer questions no one asked.  Then we solve the problems they never had.  We think we are doing great things when we have all the words but none of the meaning.

What Most Organizations Have

In most organizations, there are far more mouths than there are hands and feet.  Everyone is willing to speak, but no one wants to do anything.  We have plenty of planners.

The Spotlight

The minister could not even let him have death to himself.  Even there, the Church had to be star of the show.

The Question of God

The question of God prompts any number of answers.  The response each of us offers will be adequate for no one else, and for us only for now.  In general, God as he is in and to himself cannot be known.  Although he has given some indication of his nature or cahracter, and while attempting to make himself known through Scripture and events of history, they are only indications.  Even in Jesus there is no definition, none that does away with the essential mystery.  God remains mostly unknown.

The questions we ask of God may only suffice for today, just as questions asked yesterday were right only in that time.  There is now a need to know and so ask something else.  This is so because the perspective from which we examine the question has changed, and so has God.  Neither of us is the same, nor should we be.

We can begin defining him by saying God is, even though we can say so only through faith.  The statement can be supported by no scientific evidence, nor need it be.  It is a faith question, and so is subject to neither proof nor denial.  Assuming, then, that God is, what do we say about him?  It follows (or should) that he is a God concerned with the well-being of creation.  This is the testimony of Scripture, and Jesus who says God should be called Father, someone willing to forgive our past and share our future, wishing us completeness and offering us freedom.

In light, however, of evil we might wonder about his goodness.

My own inclination is to say that God is good, that he intends or desires goodness, but the same is not always true of us.  This is not an adequate response, but it seems true that God created goodness, entrusting it to us, to use as we wish even if it will be misused sometimes.  If we use poorly what is available to us, we are free to do so, and where the evil is beyond even us, then is it God's?  Where it seems to derive from nature, from the nature of creation, then maybe it does.  Maybe it is a part of the system of creation that there are aspects beyond anyone's control, where choices are not available and things simply are, and are to no one's fault or credit - neither ours nor God's.

I usually find myself saying that in spite of the evidence we sometimes say God is good, and he is so because we believe him to be.  As we say he is thought he may not be, we say he is good in the face of suggestions to the contrary.

The same thing occurs when we consider any other attribute or quality.  When we say he is forgiving, real, alive, active in the life of individuals and the process of creation; when we say he is concerned about us and seeks closeness to us, there remains a possibility that this is not so.  Each question begins and ends in faith.  We simply say he is and is acting in a particular way, that he is possessed of certain qualities that add to or define who he is.

There is never proof.  There may be contradictory evidence.  Faith is all.  It is all we have to draw upon and invest in, and is made more real by the propect it may be the wrong answer.  Even if not wrong, it may not be adequate.  Were it adequate all of the time it might then not be faith, since faith must grow and does so only as doubts and new questions arise.

After calming the storm, did Jesus go back to sleep?

Losing and Finding Faith

Their son went to college and they are upset.  They say he lost his faith.  Really, he just lost theirs.  His own he was yet to find.

In Receiving, Giving

Elijah was demanding, asking everything the widow had, but receiving it he supplied more, so that she would have more to give.

When We Live

We can remember past events and anticipate future ones, but we have to live in the moment.

The Salvation of the Church

The Church came thinking it was bringing salvation.  In time, it realized it had come to find its own salvation in this place, and among these people.

The Vulnerability of Names

When Moses first met God, he asked his name.  God replied, "Yahweh," an evasive response meaning, "I am who I am," which conveys the notion, "Don't ask."  Maybe God thought by having his name they might want to possess him.  He did not want them to have that access, but his son was different.  He was named and called.  He sought, rather than hid, an identity.  He tried to move beyond the limit into touchability, accumulating names as though they were titles.  He was Jesus, and Jew, and man.  He became vulnerable, by choice.  We might wonder did he thereby become more God than God had thus far been.

A Poor Model of Saintliness

A number of the acknowledged saints seem to have acquired their status through suffering.  They offer a history of tears and distress.  By the lives they endured (and in some cases seem to have enjoyed or even provoked) they are canonized.  It is a poor model of saintliness.  To equate it with pain or endurance is to offer a limited definition.  Saintliness should rather be founded in goodness, happiness and love.  Even if suffering is very real and part of every life, it is not what makes us most like God, and it is about God that we should be.

Directions for Prayer

To pray one need not know the words.  All that is needed is a heart that can speak.

No Longer a We

They had always talked of us or we.  They were one person, but now she is alone.  The us is no more and she never knew or wanted to be just me or I.