Holy Righteousness

Tags

forgiveness, Jesus, love, Paul Tillich, Pharisee, Prodigal Son, sin, Sinning Woman

Today’s gospel is the story of the Prodigal Son. Yes, I know, the picture at left, is not that, but bear with me.

Paul Tillich paired the story of the Prodigal Son with the story of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. I think it is a good match.

But, as did Tillich, I focus on the elder son in the Prodigal story, and the Pharisee in the sinning woman story. (And you should assume that the kernel of what I relate is pure Tillich.)

In both cases, we deal with righteous individuals. The elder son is so familiar to us, and frankly I’ve always had a soft spot for him. He’s the obedient one, the one who doesn’t get in trouble. If he were a girl, he’d be called a goodie-two-shoes.

What is often missed is that the Pharisee by all accounts is an obedient one as well. Although we are wont to think of Pharisees as those who spout what they don’t preach, actually they did. They defined things in their own way, and then lived them to the letter. Much of Jesus’ condemnation of them had to do, not with their lack of piety, but that they often missed the point of piety. It was form over substance that was their problem.

Here, there is no complaint that this Pharisee was not righteous. He was, by all accounts. Jesus thinks well of Simon it seems and Simon has honored the Lord with an invitation to dinner, a clear sign of hospitality.

In both cases, the rule-follower gets no respect. The sinner is upheld and pampered with praise. And you have to ask why.

Jesus suggests the answer. In both cases, the sinner has sinned hugely, gigantically in fact. One is a whore and the other a frequenter of whores. And God, in his immense graciousness, has forgiven them. Yet this is not the real point either.

Both ASK for and receive forgiveness, and their gratitude is immense. Jesus in fact says this:

It is someone who is forgiven little who shows little love.

What does this mean?

Tillich suggests and I certainly concur, that Jesus tells us that both the elder son and Pharisee are technically righteous, and what’s more they know it. And they expect to be acknowledged as such. They are quick to point out the flaws of others.

Yet, they are not comfortable in their righteousness, and that is why they struggle so hard to be righteous or more properly perfectly obedient to the letter of the law in the Pharisee’s case, and obedient to a father’s home rules in the other.

Tillich sees this psychologically as suggesting that for such a person, there is no feeling of being forgiven, they feel constantly unappreciated, unloved, and unrewarded. This expresses as a lack of ability to love on their part.

They cannot love greatly, and they thus are always judging others as coming up short. The acknowledged sinner, however, is overwhelmed by the graciousness of God’s forgiveness and loves God, and themselves finally precisely because God loves them. They realize they are worthy. Such people invariably can turn that self-love and God-love outward to a greater world. They love greatly.

The woman who wept over Jesus’ feet did not in fact love first, she accepted that she was loved by God, and thus accepted the forgiveness offered. She is to be commended.

The Pharisee and elder brother? They are still locked in their anger and feeling that somehow they still don’t measure up, simply because they are not accorded the blessings they feel they would receive if God truly found them acceptable.

The lesson for each of us I think is to explore the Pharisee/elder brother in ourselves. Are we doing all the “stuff” of righteous behavior? Are  we always attending to our prayers and our rosaries, and our church attendance, our acts of charity, and then wondering why God isn’t blessing us more? Are we concluding that we have not been deliberate enough, focused enough, pious enough, faithful enough?

Are we feeling less than worthy of God’s love, and thus are we more prone to point to others as appearing to do less than us. At least we are not them! we think.

Does this explain the mind of the fundogelical? The bible pounding, “amen” “Praise God” types who can explain in detail why this person, this group, this whatever are not what God wants them to be? Does this explain why certain people want there to be a hell where all those they think are not as good as they, will find themselves?

I rather think it explains them. But they are but the extreme side of the equation. We all, as I said, have to fight down that urge. We all need to accept, really accept God’s gracious love, and not connect our forgiveness with some “sign” of blessing, leaving our lives free of stress and trouble.

We, perhaps, shockingly, would all be better off to have been the whore than the goodie-two-shoes. We might have the capacity to love more, forgive more, and be joyous.

Amen.

What’s Up? 07/19/10

Tags

American Foreign policy, Clinton, forgiveness, Israel, Mariah Carey, Middle East, Netanyahu, Palestine, Periodic table, racism, reconciliation, Rwanda, science, teabaggers

Welcome to Monday! Not so hot for those poor souls who have to work for a living, but hey for me, it’s pretty much the same as any other.

It’s threatening to rain, and has been all day so far. Guess we get to live with that possibility nearly all week. The lane is crap, I nearly didn’t get in from church.

We talk about what “line” to take through the mud holes. Who would have thought I would be ruled by such nonsense at age 60?

What happened to back out of the DRIVEWAY and go?

Our choices seem, sweltering or rain. Okay, you have your own troubles, so on with news:

I have to admit that I’ve struggled with forgiveness. I guess most of us do. I’ve never been faced with it with someone I couldn’t avoid generally most of the time. I don’t know how I would do with forgiving someone who seriously harmed me or mine. That’s the test. South Africa worked on forgiveness on a massive scale with “reconciliation” courts. Here’s a take on that subject regarding the genocide of Rwanda. Pretty deep thoughts, pretty important stuff. And it is deeply painful and haunting. Tread quietly here.

I’ve increasingly been disturbed by our Israeli policy as I’ve delved more deeply into the history of the Middle East. Contrary to the religious right who oft time support Israel as part of their belief that they are being “biblical” in doing so, I cannot find this a viable excuse. (Sen. Inhofe, I recently read suggested that politics should never play a part in our determination regarding Israel. Instead he claims, we are to ask, “Do we follow God or not?” He shall be forthwith called Crazy Inhofe on this blog). This disturbing  (word of the day) report suggests that Obama would do well to be severely questioning of the motives of Mr. Netanyahu, who seems to think that manipulating the US government by lies is the preferred plan. No doubt he is heartened by the End Timers, even though they are only trying to bring forth the final battle of Armageddon upon Israel.

If you thought that there could be nothing interesting to read about the Periodic Table, think again. But then you gotta trust me. So trust me. Follow the link.

Nobody says it better than Elizabeth Kaeton in “Refutiate” Racism. All I can say is bravo!

Most of my blogging friends are way more talented than I. Witness this fine entry by OKJimm, who has come back with a vengeance with I Gotza Song….. It is so worth your while to go visit. If there are enough like Jim, then perhaps we will not leap into the abyss.

I’m thinking maybe we ought to have an ASS of the week award. But oh God, the entrants could collapse my inbox. But this one by Mariah Carey just might make the #1 spot any week:

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.

With thanks to Jaliya at Pushing fifty. . .gently. . .

With that, I’m off to go read some Camus. Seriously that man makes my head hurt. I have to stop every three sentences to try to digest what he is saying. Gawd, what a mind.

Lessons Learned and Those Before Me

Tags

church, empathy, faith, forgiveness, God, inspiration, sin, solace, tragedy

I fully intended to write about the Kagan nomination today, but the first blog I hit turned that all around. It just struck me as something that people of faith should read, for we all at one time or another, and perhaps periodically, deal with such issues. More a bit later.

I also was bowled over and flabbergasted by the latest idiocy spew from Glenn Beck. I happened to run across it in a hugely funny Lewis Black piece on The Daily Show Wednesday. Go find it and watch it, it was hysterical. Our intrepid nut case actually said, that empathy was dangerous, and in his usual insane style, attached it to Nazi Germany and claimed that “too much empathy leads to bad decisions.”

So, when I saw Eileen’s piece, I felt empathy for the things she said, and well, I thought everyone needs to think about this. What is church, what is faith. How do we weave our spiritual lives within that framework? How do we respond to change? How do encourage our churches to help us live our callings and to help us move along the path?

I have shared with only a couple folks here a horrific tragedy that has befallen my church family. One of our deacons has suffered an accident so breathtakingly heartbreaking, that it is hard to imagine.

His daughter, traveling in Iowa with her three small children was broadsided a bit more than a week ago. Two of the children died, and the mother faces multiple surgeries and a long rehab no doubt. It seems hard to comprehend how a family can face such utter devastation. In but a few seconds, a dozen or more people are directly and horribly affected. Lives are suddenly upended and we turn to God and seek solace and understanding.

I have struggled all week with these events, trying to find a way to do some honor to those whom I never met, but feel somehow connected to. For Mark and his family are part of our church family, and we have been wounded. And in saying so, I am again struck by the fact that if I feel this pain, what on earth must they be enduring?

I recall but a few weeks ago that I was feeling disconnected from church in some ways, mostly from my own failings in ministry. This week, my disconnect is different. I feel useless in this tragedy, unable to see anything that I can do. I pray, I pray for the family, I pray for all those affected. I pray for the organ donees, six of them who received life giving help. How that must feel to them. It doesn’t seem enough though, somehow.

I guess it is normal, feeling this helplessness. But as much as it hurts, I am glad for it. Glad for knowing that I am capable of empathizing with others. Glad that I can bring that pain to myself, and feel that I am part of them, and they of me. Their hurt is mine, and that is what I believe God intends.

I look at myself, and I see a woman who enjoys the rough and tumble of debate and ranting about the inadequacies of my government and of my neighbors in this land. I yell at injustice and I satirize people I don’t agree with, sometimes humorously and sometimes rather harshly. Yet, I am also aware that these people, this larger family encompassing state, country, and world, are my family as well. And I want to ever be able to empathize with all the wrong-thinkers out there, everywhere, even those that do things that make me want to strike out, and often cause me to do that, verbally at least.

Perhaps in the end what I have learned from all this is to set my prayer facing a new direction. And that direction would be to be more peaceful in my mind. More tolerant in my thoughts. Perhaps not rhetoric so much, for I think the fine sharp barb is what sometimes awakens minds. The soft talk only reaches open ears. For the closed mind, something more jarring is required.

Yet, I have been guilty of holding anger in my heart a good deal longer than I should. I have not been as forgiving in my soul. I have perched aloft with my self-righteousness a little too smugly.

And now , O Lord, I bend the knee of my heart

 and make my appeal, sure of your gracious goodness.

I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned,

 and I know my wickedness only too well.

Therefore, I make this prayer to you:

 Forgive me, Lord, forgive me.  (Prayer of Manasseh)

Out of tragedy comes grace, and out of grace new insight and joy. I see the glimmerings before me. I walk toward the light.

Lord, you see your people struggle with the  desire to be all you would have us be, over and against the callings of the world. Help us to ever place our trust in you, confident that if we do, we will find the solace and strength to put others before ourselves, and to remember that each and every one of us is your beloved. Let us speak against injustice and call for equality everywhere, to all peoples, and to respect in our hearts even those whose beliefs and ideas we find repugnant. Most of all, let us be kind, knowing that we are all one family.  Amen

 

Just Ordinary Words

Tags

abortion, faith, forgiveness, George Tiller, God, hate speech, Jesus, language, religion

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas for the past twenty-four hours, trying to conflate them into one post. It isn’t working, unless I write a couple of thousand words, and that violates most known rules of blogging. So, I’ll spare you a tome and split the two.

A few days ago, I posted about the death of Dr. George Tiller. I offered the hypothesis that the inflammatory words offered by some, make them at least morally responsible for the actions of their listeners. Most “liberals” seemed to agree, most “conservatives” seemed to feel otherwise.

Worse, this issue was raised by others on a forum. For the first five or so comments, the same sense of sadness and outrage was expressed. Then came the “call me what you will, he got what he deserved” post, and the gates burst open. What followed was a barrage of ugly “we reap what we sow,” “murderous, bloodthirsty, killer,” “residing in hell for eternity, meeting all the dead babies he killed so mercilessly” and on and on.

Throughout was strewn the usual “I don’t condone,” “it was wrong,” “I hope he had time to repent,” rhetoric all followed with “but. . . ” and then one of the self-righteous remarks from the paragraph above. Of course they don’t really mean any of this stuff about “I hope he had time to repent.” They don’t of course hope that at all. They hope, want, and are mostly sure that he is in hell and that’s where they think he belongs.

These are Christians, or so they claim. One woman said, “I shall not shed a tear.” I remarked, “If a Christian cannot find it in themselves to shed a tear over the killing of another human being, then what are we to say to the non-believer whom some say can have no moral compass in the first place?”  Of course I got no reply.

My argument there, the same as expressed here, was met with mostly derision. I was aligned, by a number of the religious right, with Hitler and the death camps, masters who mercilessly beat slaves, Muslim fathers who murdered daughters who were unchaste, and any other horror that came to mind. We “pro-abortionists” were as inhuman as the above.

No way they were morally accountable. They but “spoke the truth” as God most clearly told them to. Legalities cannot stand in the way, nor can stupid juries who can’t see the truth. The man was an inhuman waste, and fuzzy liberal feel-good sympathy was just the sort of thing that hampered the “cause.”

I often think that types such as this don’t often read the Bible. They of course say they do, but it seems they only know the parts that give them, through their selective interpretation, the permission they desire to think what they think, hate whom they hate, and do what they do. The rest, well, it’s that liberal fuzzy feel-good stuff. First we got to shape up the ship, separate the chaff from the wheat, wreak all that vengeance upon an evil world.

In this they always claim to speak for God. Given what I know of the bible, I find little solid ground upon which to base any conclusion that would give me the comfort to “speak” for God. And I’m not sure it’s not a bit presumptuous to do so in the first place. The only theme I get, and really get again and again, is that Jesus said that God was love, and the most important thing we can and should remember is to love God and to love neighbor. Somehow that “love the neighbor” thing seems to be a major impediment.

It doesn’t say “love the neighbor you think is worth loving.” It pretty much is absolute, LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR. And I don’t think it means, say the words in your mind, all the while telling your neighbor he’s a good for nothing sinful piece of crap.

I think, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, that I am to love my neighbor as myself. Because, dang, much as I try, I’m a sinful person still. My neighbor undoubtedly is too. And no where do I find a test or method by which I can separate some sinful neighbors from others as worthy of my love. We all share sinfulness, and we honestly have no clue how God views it all. ”

I have my view. To me, God upholds our goodness, sees only that in us, and encourages that. He weeps at our failings, and comforts us. That is what forgiveness is all about isn’t it? Isn’t that they most wonderful way to encourage us to do better? Well I may be wrong. Certainly my extreme right wing Christians tell me that all the time.

But it seems to me, that if you want to change a situation, you don’t engage in divisive language. You don’t harden hearts. You don’t inflame mentally deranged individuals to destroy lives. This cannot be what God wants. It is not fuzzy liberalism to mourn the death of a human, no matter how sinful we may privately feel he or she might be. It is our small and meagre attempt to mimic our Lord, if we are religious. If we are not, it is our human attempt to recognize the human condition is not perfect and that we all share in our successes and failures and are responsible for each other as a species.

So I’m sad. Sad that those I would look to to uphold this as the tragedy it was, are sadly absent from the scene. I trust, however that they are but a minority of those of faith. I trust that most people of faith see this event as the ugly horror that it was. Words matter, and if we are ever to heal our many wounds, we must learn the language of love, forgiveness, empathy, and compassion.

Take 2 Aspirin and Get Me an Enemy

Tags

enemies, forgiveness, God, healing, Jesus, religion, theology

from http://www.brynmawr.edu/.../watercolorfile/betheseda

Jan, my dear blogging friend at Yearning for God, had a lovely post today about brokenness. How we are broken on the outside but whole on the inside and how the brokenness allows the light to shine in upon us.  It intrigued me the more I thought of it.

We tend to think of ourselves as being broken on the inside, not out, and yet I think Jan is right. Our spirit, being of God, cannot be broken ever. It remains perfectly whole and perfectly healthy. Yet it is overcome much of the time by the broken and unfixable  ego we so consistently project to the world.

Such is the graciousness of our God, who although being more powerful than us, more wise certainly, and so on, backs softly away, allowing us the freedom to be as we wish even when that will break us even more. He stands ready to heal in every moment, though we seldom seek his help sadly.

Walter Wink’s book, “The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium,” has been having a big impact on me. We’re using it in our adult formation class, and learning about non-violent resistance to domination systems. I’ve just finished it actually, yesterday.

In it he suggests that before we go out to learn how to be non-violent resistors ourselves, we need to do the internal work. Otherwise we will not do it at all right. Mostly we need desperately to be able to see the enemy (whatever wrong we are facing) as a child or creation of God, beloved by God. And to do that we have to learn to heal ourselves, finding all the enemies within and  making peace with them, calling them what they are, and realizing that God loves us in our totality as well, good and bad.

If we don’t do this, we will misuse our non-violence to create new domination systems compelling our enemies to conform to us, or we will simply use our work as “works” designed to put us in good standing for judgment day.

Wink suggests that one way we can do this is to realize that our enemies often are mirroring back to us exactly those traits we are uncomfortable about within ourselves. They are offering us a gift as it were, one we would no doubt rather do without.

I recall  something about this that happened years ago, when I was working as a defense attorney in Detroit. My “boss” (you see that still sticks in my craw, since he was a poor excuse for a boss in my eyes), had been a co-worker before seeking the  overseer job to the rank and file attorneys at our shop.

Most probably because I knew a few too many skeletons in his emotional closet (we had been close friends at one point), he rather enjoyed ordering me around and being the “boss” and I resented the hell out of it. I  was often to be found grumping to others of how unfair he was, or worse.

More than once, a woman, who was head of clerical things, (now ironically his wife) would say to me, “Oh goodness Sherry, you two are so alike. I can’t figure out why you don’t see  that?” I was not amused to say the least. Being compared to my nemesis was NOT amusing. I recall always looking at her like she was crazy. She was not of course. He mirrored back to me most perfectly my own lack of confidence in my capabilities and  self worth, in many ways that I can see now.

Such a thought, that those we most detest or find most maddening in our lives, are actually most like us, is sobering, and well, not pleasant to contemplate. I am forced to examine the people I have the most difficulty with at forum discussions, the politicians I just “can’t stand,” and wonder.

Wink is quick to point out, that these “enemies” are not all good mirrors. Some folks we dislike, we do for good reason and not because they remind us subconsciously of our own failings and deep shadow parts. The trick I guess is to figure out which are which. He doesn’t explain that part, and perhaps there is no key to defining it easily.

Perhaps it just takes time. Perhaps it just takes time. Perhaps it gets easier the more you do it. Easier. I suspect it doesn’t stop getting painful. So it probably doesn’t really get easier either. But maybe we have, after a time a better clue on what to look for. Maybe some visceral reaction on our part becomes a flag to us. A kind of unmitigated rage,  perhaps means you’ve touched the core of you again.

And I’m now convinced that painful as this work is, it’s essential. You see we don’t really buy that God causes the rain to fall on the good and the bad equally. We do really believe in final judgment and retribution for the real baddies in our world. We want to believe in justice as we define it, yet our Spirits tell us that this fact, that God does not, is exactly How he loves us more than we can ever understand.

God doesn’t judge, doesn’t punish, doesn’t exact retribution, because God is God. We do those things in our brokenness, and wrongly think we will feel better if John or Betty get their just deserts. And until we accept that  it is WE  who  are flawed, and that God loves us anyway, totally and fully, completely and irrevocably, no matter what we do or don’t do, we will remained trapped IN the world and not  OF  it.

We will remain trapped in retribution, pay back,  punishment, and we will secretly believe that we are going to get ours as well, because we know of that black place within that we so pretend doesn’t exist. We will continue to do “works” to build up the account in heaven, though we say we understand better. We will continue in this until we open the festering sores and cut them out, or heal them with salve and bandage.

When we do, we will love our enemies, for we will see ourselves in them, and know that they too can be transformed. They too can dance in the light. And then, God’s plan, our plan, of the Kingdom, will be fulfilled at last. God will wait as long as it takes. But I suggest we humans get busy.