Reason Breeds Insanity

Isaiah 58: 1-10
I have to admit that when I first started reading this passage of Scripture, I thought of those wonderfully compassionate and ever so loving people who parade around the streets carrying placards that say, “Turn or Burn” or “One Way, God’s Way, My Way.” I also thought of Fred Phelps and his incestuous tribe who caravan around the country proudly clutching signs that say, “God Hates Fags.” I also thought of people like Pat Robertson who blame everything on the sins of the world. Did you know that one of the reasons that Hurricane Katrina happened is because Ellen is from Louisiana and she has her own show?! Interesting.

By the time I made it to verses 3 and 4, though, I wanted to stand up testifying, shouting, “Amen, Isaiah! You preach it!” While I am not much for giving someone a bullhorn and asking them to shout out the sins of the people, I am interested in why it seems like sometimes our prayers don’t quite accomplish what we want them to. For me, and thanks to my friends who have pointed this out, I know that I frequently make a plan and then pray for God to love my plan as much as I love it. Frequently, I find myself saying to God, “I have fasted and you haven’t honored it, I have humbled myself and you haven’t even turned your head!” Me, me, me…

When I got to the second half of verse three, I had an amazing humbling experience: “Yet on the day of fasting, you do as you please.” I had to stop right there. I do as I please. I do as I please. Yes, I do as I please and call it God’s will. A lot. As long as no one gets hurt, it is God’s will, right?! While I have no workers to exploit, and I don’t strike people with angry fists, I do as I please. Isaiah’s words challenge me even further: “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.” What does it mean to fast, then? I have tried emptying myself of the world. I have tried filling myself up with things holy. I have tried depriving myself of food, of excess, of all those things that I perceive to be hindrances to my relationship with God. So what else is there?

Isaiah says that fasting is “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke” and “to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter” and “when you see the naked, to clothe him.” What does that look like for me? What does it look like in Muncie or Hartford City? What does it look like in 2007? Sometimes I want to say, but I am one woman, what can I really do? I wrestle with this question daily. Where do I fit in to the solution of these problems? Again, it seems to be a circle. I get love, I give love, I get love….Sometimes the love only comes from giving it?

Verse 5: “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself?….Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” Obviously, fasting is a lifestyle. Do I live a fasting lifestyle? Not so much, it is becoming painfully clear.

In verses 8-10, I see hope. Once we (it is a collective mandate) begin to fast like this, to pour ourselves into others, our “light will break forth like the dawn” and our “healing will quickly appear” and “the glory of the Lord will be [our] rear guard.” Pouring out is filling up? Our rear guard. That just struck me. So I have to go out and do this type of fast, this Jesus love and grace thing, and then the Lord will come behind and bless it? I have to have faith? Going out ahead? How do I know if what I am doing is the right thing if the Lord doesn’t come along until after I’ve done it? As the rear guard? What does it mean to be our rear guard? Hmmm… I’m scared, but Isaiah promises that if we spend ourselves on the hungry and satisfy the oppressed, then our light will rise in the darkness. I’m still scared, Isaiah was just a human like I am. He could be wrong, right? Okay, I know he isn’t but it sometimes feels better to think that it’s possible.

Matthew 9: 14-15
Maybe that is why Jesus and his followers don’t have to fast, as the disciples of John understand fasting, while he is with them. They are already fasting in the way of the Lord. They are living the lifestyle not just giving a day of fasting. They are giving to the hungry, freeing the oppressed, and taking care of the needy. Jesus says, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.” Perhaps Jesus is saying that when he is gone, the disciples will have to be more disciplined in order to accomplish the same type of Kingdom lives. To display Jesus’ love will be more difficult once he is gone. They should revel in their lifestyle of fasting while he is there to empower them. Why don’t I feel empowered? I just feel confused.

I think I might being feeling a bit Lent-y now. Thanks, Pastor.

Yes, you read that correctly. My dad went to work yesterday! What a nutcase?! I suppose he is doing okay. The doctors told him he could go back when he felt like it. Apparently, he felt like it. He only went for half a day, and I haven’t talked to him to see how it went.

Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
Interestingly, this pericope is set in the middle of a longer one about cursing and blessing. They are two sides of the same coin. How could we know what blessing is without cursing, and how could we understand the pain of a curse without first experiencing the joy of a blessing? In verse 15, the Lord says: “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.” Again, two sides of the same coin. In verse 19, again, the Lord says: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.” I think the interesting thing about these dual entities is that each one contains a piece of the other. A slippery slope exists between life and death, prosperity and destruction. Everyday that we live, we are one step closer to death, and if we believe what the Bible says, it is in death that we truly experience life. This passage is an interesting look at freewill, too: “now choose life.” Choose to live in blessing, prosperity, and life, because it is only when our hearts turn away from God and we worship other gods that we will be destroyed. We have to make a conscious choice to put money, fame, power, food, possessions above God, and that, when our focus is removed from our creator, is when we experience the opposite force of curse, death, destruction. As I look back, I wonder how many times I’ve chosen to worship something other than the Lord. I wonder how frequently I see only the curse side of the coin and forget to turn it over and look for the blessing. Am I making an effort to live in the land of my fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Am I choosing life?

Luke 9: 22-25
Isn’t this the same question the writer asks in Deuteronomy? What good is it for me to throw away my life in vain search of other things, when I am given my fathers’ land? Luke writes: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” This quote is part of the response that Jesus gives to Peter after asking, “Who do the crowds think I am? Who do you think I am?” Peter (if I were a disciple I would be Peter, boisterous, racous, mostly annoying to the other discisples) has it figured out: “[You are] the christ of God.” Because Peter recognizes that Jesus is the Christ, his whole world changes. Immediately, he is admonished and told exactly what it means to understand that Jesus is the Christ. To understand that Jesus is the Christ is to pick up a whole new set of values, to pick up a cross, to pick up a new life. To understand that Jesus is the Christ is to live out our understanding in such a way that other people begin to understand it as well. Jesus says: “Whoever loses his life for me, will save it.” How am I losing my life? Have I even considered what that means? What does it look like to lose your life? By losing my life am I living in the Kingdom? Is this how God makes [Their] appeal through us?

Note: Whenever it is necessary to refer to God with a pronoun I prefer to use [Their]- simply because I do not believe that God is a man, and I like to remember that God exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Hence [Their}.

My church gave out these little books of Lent Readings, so I thought I would pass them along. I also thought that since it is easier for me to process with a keyboard in front of me, oh the years of conditioning, that maybe if I wrote my thoughts, I’d feel Lent-y.

Joel 2:12-18 “Rend Your Heart”
What does it mean to rend your heart? Anyway you look at the word “rend” it is not pretty. It literally means to pull apart violently; to destroy by tearing in two. So much for the neat variety of Christianity. “Rend your heart and not your garments…” says Joel. What good does it do to tear apart perfectly good clothes, when it is our hearts that betray us. Is Joel saying that the traditional methods of mourning no longer apply because they are superficial and really the problem is much deeper, much more internal? Our hearts are the object of our reflection–they are to be rent on account of their great tresspass? The lines right before this passage say, “The day of the Lord is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?” After Joel encourages the people to repent and gather in consecrated assembly and to rend their hearts, he writes “Then the Lord will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people.” It kind of reminds me of Psalm 51 in which David writes: ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 “Christ’s Ambassadors”
I have never liked the language of Paul. I wish he just would have said what he wanted to say. I want him to make it plain. He never does. Perhaps, the reason I can never understand him is that he is always setting forth this complicated systematic theology. However, this passage seems plain to me. Because Jesus loves us, we are to love others. God, Paul says, makes his appeal through us. It is through this simple act that people see God. We are Christ’s ambassadors. “Now is the day of salvation” for us and for those we love. I happen to think that much of our salvation is wrapped up in how well we share ourselves with others. I think the point of the Kingdom on earth is simple; God’s love saves us only when our love saves others: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t pray forgive us our debts whether or not we forgive our debtors, but as we forgive (see Matthew 6:14-15, you’ll already be there in a minute anyway). I think the same goes with love. Get love, give love, get love. We are the reconcilers using love and grace to share salvation.

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 “Giving and Fasting”
Hide. Sort of makes fundraising weird, huh?

Kind of odd to listen to Smackwater Jack sung by Carole King while reading the bible?!

Lent starts tomorrow. I wonder if Jesus would understand if I told him that I’m just not feeling it this year. What a lame thing to tell a guy who was slaughtered on a cross, but I’m not feeling it. I’m not feeling the giving up of anything. I am not feeling the new evangelical pacifier of adding something “holy” to my already mundane spiritual life–well, it’s not mundane but it is stuffed with “holy” things. Interestingly, part of being holy is being set apart. Once you pack your life so full of holy things are any of them really holy anymore? They certainly aren’t set apart in the way things that are holy should be set apart.

I am not feeling going to church for the next six weeks thinking about one of the most heinous acts of violence ever perpetrated. You know, I can’t even call it one of the worst acts of violence, because from where I sit right now there are many more serious acts of violence than one man dying on a cross. Millions of people are trafficked in slavery every year, children die everyday because of AIDS or hunger, people huddle together under bridges for warmth, and I worry about not feeling the giving up of chocolate, alcohol, or extraneous pleasures. What would I do if I were one of the many, many people who never had any of those luxuries to begin with? How would I honor Jesus during Lent if I had nothing to start with? Perhaps that is my area of contemplation during Lent, how would I show Jesus I get it, if I had nothing to begin with? Do I even know what it means to be without, to fast, to renounce myself? Is that what it is about? Is that how we are supposed to identify with Jesus’ final days?

I feel so fortunate but also burdened by the “stuff” around me. Is it bad to want nice things when I could travel to the south side of HC and find people living in trailers with no floors? Is it enough to think about this discrepency or is the point of Lent realizing that I need to do something about it? I have spent most seasons of Lent thinking about my relationship with God, which I think is valuable, but have I ever really thought about where my relationship with God is moving me? Where did Jesus’ love of God move him? I think that is the point–it moved him to death. Am I willing to be moved to death?

Spirituality is something I have struggled with all of my life, but I feel like struggle is healthy. Questioning is healthy. Raising my fist and shouting is healthy. I think today I feel like raising a fist. So there, God…I’m not feeling like Lent!

“Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.”