On High Alert

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58.6)

It’s Ash Wednesday. Once more we find our way to an altar, where we bow in humility and rise from our knees bearing a visible sign of repentance. As always, there will be a lot of thought and conversation today about what we’re “giving up” for Lent. We will leave the Ash Wednesday rite with the best of intentions and spend the next few weeks struggling to honor them.

To be sure, there is merit in self-denial. It teaches us discipline and retrains us so that we can master unhealthy reflexes and habits. Yet what’s supposed to come out of fasting? In Isaiah, we discover that it’s less about what we elect not to do, and more about relearning what we must do. In Isaiah 58, God says our piety and ritual—our subscription to religious obligation—mean nothing if they don't alert us to sacred obligations to those around us.

Sacrificing meat or candy bars or TV is, at best, a start. We do these things to keep us mindful that fasting is, above all, an act of faithfulness to a God Who desires meaningful change in our attitudes and behaviors. Yet if Lent starts and stops with what we’re “giving up,” we’ve not gone far enough. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God warns. “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?” (v4-5)

There’s a break in the text, making room for us ask, “If there’s more to this fasting thing than getting off our high horses and wallowing in our guilt, what can it be?” The answer is remarkably simple and direct: God expects our fast to focus on doing better in the here and now—not feeling sorry that we haven’t done so in the past or pledging improvement in the future. Listen very closely to God’s definition of an acceptable fast (quoted at length, because its emphasis cannot be overstated):

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindication shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

If we enter Lent’s desert intent only on adopting an ascetic mindset—grappling with self-denial and its attendant temptations, distancing ourselves from others to relish the benefits of solitude—we fall short of God’s demands. The Hebrew word for “fast” literally means, “to cover one’s mouth.” Thus, it stands to reason if we refuse to placate our hungers, we have more to give. What are we to do with our excess—this food we don’t eat, this extra time we have on our hands, these comforts we sacrifice? God tells us: we surrender them to others in need.

We enter Lent on high alert, extremely conscious that our wilderness adventure will open opportunities to share. Indeed, if we’re doing the real work of fasting, we seek out the less fortunate, the hungry, the afflicted, and the oppressed. We create the means of practicing Lent’s discipline. We look for distressed families we can feed. We extend ourselves to overworked parents and provide them respite by offering to sit with their children while they recharge their batteries. We seek out solitary coworkers or churchgoers and sit beside them. We find the senior who needs help cleaning up the house or running errands. We make time for the sick and grieving among us, assuring them they’re not alone. We embrace the ridiculed and misunderstood. We speak kindly to ears bruised by insults and cruelty. We touch the untouchable and love the unlovable.

We are surrounded by fasting opportunities.

We leave our comfort zones, because fasting should make us uncomfortable. It thrusts us into a desert of strangeness and uncertainty. It tests our wills and purifies our motives, leading us beyond the desire to be holy so that we become holy. Fasting has very little to do with what or how much we “give up.” It’s all about what or how much we give. And if we center our Lenten experience intent on caring for others, our wilderness will explode with new and abundant life.

Your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58.10-11)

Staying on Message

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow Me.” (Mark 10.21)

Understanding and Internalizing

As a marketing consultant, I constantly remind clients effective communication is all about staying on message. Not only must the message remain consistent across time. It must also stay the same on a vertical plane, until everyone at every level of the company is marching to the same beat. In time, the message morphs from strategic imperative into personal commitment that alters how employees think and work. I’ve been at this a very long time and can tell you that staying on message works. I’ll also admit it’s not easy to do. By nature, we’re more attracted to novelty than consistency. Repetition reduces our curiosity with each retelling. After we get a sense of what’s supposed to change and why it’s needed, we’re eager to move on. Yet there’s a huge gap between hearing and internalizing a message, knowing and understanding. Hearing and knowing may inform behavior, but they rarely alter it. To change behavior, a message must lodge so pervasively in the hearers’ minds that it becomes first nature to them.

Check out any business school and you’ll find entire curricula and volumes of theory and case studies expounding this principle. Still, no expert I’ve found matches Jesus’s brilliance for consistently communicating change, and no book I’ve read outclasses Mark’s gospel as a case study in effective communications strategy. Mark documents the pivotal moment in Jewish and, by extension, human history. It is the culmination of Israel’s longing for change and the start of something far greater than anyone expected: the revelation of God’s kingdom in the person and teachings of Christ. Jesus arrives, declaring change: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1.15) From there, He takes every opportunity to reinforce His message—consistently emphasizing a New Order that disrupts tradition and overturns conventional wisdom: the last are first, the poor preferred, children lead adults, outcasts are welcomed, and so on.

After following the readings from Mark, hearing the same thing—often the same words—week after week, we open Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 10.17-31) to discover yet another iteration of Jesus’s message, It’s all we can do not groan, “Enough already! We get it!” And that’s probably true. We know full well what Jesus is saying. But do we understand it? Have we internalized Jesus’s good news to the point that we are changed? That’s why Jesus stays on message.

Life to the Fullest

There is something new in this weekend’s lesson, though. Previously, we’ve heard Jesus deliver His message to groups of people—often changing the subject to do so. In this case, He models vertical communication, delivering the same message to a “higher-up.” We watch a wealthy man kneel before Him and ask, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (v17) We’re not sure what’s on the man’s mind. We know what he means by “eternal life,” however. In Jesus’s time, the concept of eternal life transcends life after death; to live eternally is to experience life to the fullest now and always. The man asks about inheriting eternal life, recognizing it’s a gift (not a reward) God wills to us. He senses there’s more to life than all he possesses. Until he identifies what’s missing, he’ll be incomplete. To use a financial term often found in the gospels, this rich man wants to be made whole.

Jesus answers with a somewhat pat response: keep the commandments. “I’ve done that since my youth,” the man says, once again addressing Jesus as “Teacher.” With that a superb teaching moment arises. Jesus sees the man’s sincerity and loves him. “You lack one thing,” He says, instructing the man to “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow Me.” (v21) Once the man is relieved of his burdensome riches, he’ll access the enormity of God’s wealth and discover fullness of life. He’ll be free to follow Jesus. Mark tells us Jesus’s answer shocks the man. He leaves sorrowfully. He gives up finding the missing piece of his life because he can’t (or won’t) give up what he already has to make room for it.

This is one of the gospels’ saddest moments—one of very few episodes that end unhappily. And the disciples’ reaction gives us a taste of how rare it is. They’re stunned. But Jesus stays on message, saying, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” This only confuses His followers more. They’re culturally predisposed to believe those with the greatest means have the best chances of winning divine favor. After all, they cut the most prominent profiles in the Temple; they’re the movers and shakers—elite philanthropists and entrepreneurs and job creators. How can entering God’s kingdom be so difficult for them that Jesus says it’s easier to shove a camel through a tiny door by comparison? But Jesus is adamant. Entering God’s kingdom isn’t based on what we own. It’s decided by how easily we can surrender everything we rely on: possessions, people, and even prospects. This passage ends with Jesus telling us again: “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (v31)

Divesting Every Encumbrance

In an election season fraught with cries of economic injustice and a fetishistic obsession with percentiles, how simple it would be for us to filter this text through a political lens! How smug we’d feel if all of this actually boiled down to accusing the infamous 1% of flouting Christ’s instructions! Yet Jesus stays on message to teach us—rich or poor, high or low—the life-changing power of His good news. The kingdom of God has come near. The door to eternal life is flung open. And none of us, regardless of status, can enter without first divesting every encumbrance that prevents us from following Jesus. Wealth is the rich man’s burden. But there are many burdens that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. We carry pride and intellect and relationships and popularity and sophistication and religion and advantages of every kind—including moral superiority we assume as casualties of injustice—with such ferocity that we can’t perceive life without them. We rely on them to put us ahead. But they don’t provide fullness of life. Something’s lacking. And if we’re to be made whole, we must first be willing to sacrifice everything we cherish to find it.

Let’s be real: Jesus’s message quickly loses its novelty. It’s the same thing, over and over: let go everything you think you know and understand what’s truly essential. Stop hearing and start internalizing. Once we learn to do that, we will be changed.

Jesus stays on message so that we can progress from hearing His words to internalizing them, from knowing what He says to understanding what He means.

Open

Today we sit with Psalm 139.23:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.

After reviling wickedness that engulfs him, the psalmist does something very few of us have the courage to do at the end of our rants and pity parties. He opens himself to God. It’s as if he catches himself and confesses, “My heart is no purer, my thoughts no nobler, than those who vex me.” And we must come to grips with this reality. At our best, we’re no better than those we decry. We open our hearts and minds to God, inviting our Creator to look into us, to know us, to test us. Asking God to come in and take a look at us—the real us—insists we take responsibility for unhealthiness we hide. Should we expect God to abide our nonsense? When we open ourselves to our Maker, we bring ourselves to two realizations: we have it in us to be as sinful as any hater and it’s time we did something about that. Search us, O God. Know our hearts. Test us. Know our thoughts.

There All the Time

Today our thoughts turn to Psalm 139.15:

My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Not only does God see us as we are. God’s been there all the time, watching as the intricate threads that comprise our beings weave themselves into all that we are. The spirit that God breathes into us takes on a life of its own and God witnesses every change we undergo in the process of becoming our true selves. Thus, our creation is a state of constant making, shaping and reshaping, surrendering our fears and doubts to the loving touch of our Maker’s all-knowing hand. Here there are no secrets, nothing to hide. Here all is safe and honest and pure, because our faithful Creator is ever with us, watching as we grow into what God desires us to be.

God Needs No Advice

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. (Matthew 6.7-8)

As Crazy as Crazy Gets

In “People’s Parties,” her classic song about L.A. social life, Joni Mitchell describes the gallery of show-biz types at these affairs: “Some are friendly, some are cutting, some are watching it from the wings. Some are standing in the center, giving to get something.” We need never have been to a Beverly Hills get-together to picture what she describes. That’s the way every party goes—from weekend barbecues to wedding receptions. Indeed, that’s pretty much the way of community life in general. Whatever brings us together, each of us enters the occasion from a perspective that shapes our behavior once we’re there. Some of us come for friendship; we drop our guards to welcome people into our lives. Some of us hope to leave feeling better about who we are; so we spend our time comparing ourselves favorably to others. Some of us don’t want much of anything; we’re just there for the show. Still others of us take our position, “standing in the center, giving to get something.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately, and it occurs to me that Mitchell may as well be describing various ways we approach our encounters with God. And it seems that, over the course of time, we assume all the roles in the song. Sometimes we use prayer to deepen our friendship with our Maker. Sometimes we turn visits with God into opportunities to criticize others, vent our cynicism, and complain about feeling underappreciated and unloved. Sometimes we don’t have much to say about anything; we’re just there to be there, “watching it from the wings.” Then there are times when we assume we’re the center of God’s universe. We plant ourselves in the middle of everything, believing it all revolves around us. That’s when the bargaining with God begins. “If You do this for me,” we pray, “I promise to do that for You.” What are we thinking? Seen objectively, our giving-to-get-something strategy is about as crazy as crazy gets. Yet we do it. We do it all the time.

Limiting God

Of course, the folly of bargaining with God is revealed in our presumption to know better than God what’s best for us. Our hubris to imagine we can advise God how to work on our behalf would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Any time we try to make a deal with God, we paint a broad stripe of desperation down the backs of our prayers. We confess we’ve placed all of our hope on a specific outcome, rather than in a God whose power and wisdom exceed comprehension. We essentially push God out of the picture, limiting God to what we believe must be done, rather than availing ourselves to what God wants to do—what God can do. Ephesians 3.20 says that when we put our expectations on hold and permit God’s power to work within us, God “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” So why would we ever confine ourselves to reasoning and imagination when we pray? Why would we ever present our requests in terms of what we want, when God knows what we need? How could we possibly conceive God needs our advice? What causes us to think offering to do what God wants will persuade God to do what we want? How silly is that?

Just before giving us the perfect-prayer model—which pivots on the phrase, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”—Jesus says, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6.7-8) Those “empty phrases” and “many words” He mentions are indicative of a prayer style common to all ancient peoples—a labored quid pro quo approach that views prayer as a contractual negotiation with divine powers. When the ancients prayed to their gods, they laid out elaborate pledges of loyalty, worship, and sacrifice in exchange for favor. Make it rain, and we’ll build you a beautiful temple. Help us conquer our enemies and we’ll force them to worship you. Give us lots of children and we’ll place a shrine to you in our homes. Inherent in all of their prayers was an underlying attitude toward the gods that said, “Do us a favor and we’ll do one for you.” Jesus tells us we can spare all of this bother by accepting one basic truth: God knows what we need before we ask.

Unnecessary

What’s more, we know what God doesn’t need before we pray. God needs no advice from us. God needs no promises. God needs no contractual quid pro quo. All God asks of us is total trust. There’s no giving-to-get-something on either side. The faithful prayer seeks agreement with God’s will and purpose. It says, “God, whatever You’re doing in me, I’m right here beside You, waiting to see Your plan happen.” This is why we fold our hands, lift our arms, bow our heads, close our eyes, kneel, and take various other postures in prayer—to signify our surrender to God. Faithful, trusting prayer rests in complete confidence that God’s power is already at work in us, accomplishing more than we can ask or imagine. And realizing that, we’re free to trust God all the more.

Bargaining with God isn’t just silly. It’s unnecessary—a waste of time. It’s unnecessary to tell God, “If You heal those who reject and misuse me, I’ll honor Your purpose in my life.” Or, “If You provide for me, I’ll worship You by giving back to You.” Or, “If You lead Me to happiness and peace, I’ll work for justice and harmony in Your world.” God knows what we need and knows how to meet our needs in ways that bring about greater things—unimaginably wondrous things—in us. So we should forsake the party approach to prayer, vacating that center spot of giving to get something, and move toward the reality of what prayer is: faithful participation with God that brings God’s kingdom about in the world and activates God’s will in our lives. Our daily bread, God's forgiveness, the ability to forgive others, rescue from trials and temptations, and everything else we need come to us when we forgo telling God what to do so God can do as God wills.

Prayer is not a quid pro quo negotiation between God and us. It’s faithful participation with God, based on total trust in God’s will and purpose in our lives.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/04/12/god-needs-no-advice/.

Practice Stillness

Commit your way to the LORD; trust in God, and God will act. God will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday. Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently. (Psalm 37.5-7)

Questions

Every Lent, our church reads and discusses a book together. By design, the titles aren’t directly tied to the Lenten process. Instead, they hand us great big theological concepts to contemplate during our time of consecration. This year we’re reading Rob Bell’s Love Wins—a controversial book that invites us to question nearly every traditional view Christians hold about overarching concepts like grace, inclusion, Heaven, Hell, eternity, judgment, and so on. In other words, many of the hot buttons that have sparked firestorms within the Church for centuries will come under scrutiny as we study together.

Since we’re comfortable wrestling with questions at our church, last evening’s first study group focused on questions that challenge faith. Several perennial stumpers made the list, including why an all-powerful, loving God allows human suffering. It’s a question we’ll never answer as long as we remain addicted to self-inflicted sorrow. We’ve never asked God’s permission to make war, incite violence, ignore poverty, or squander life-sustaining resources on weaponry and wealth production. We've done this on our own. Therefore, before asking why God permits suffering, we should ask why we create it.

Still, the question gains traction in times like these, when economic inequities, social unrest, and overall uncertainty feel like too much to handle. We’ve done such a fine job of endangering ourselves we don’t know how to undo what we’ve done, let alone how to make any progress toward improving our condition. Naturally, we want God to do something. Psalm 37 is written to people like us, with questions like ours, living in times very much like our own. Yet the poem, attributed to David, emphasizes what we should do—not on a grandiose scale, but on an intimate level that opens our understanding. David doesn’t put the “where’s God in all this” question to rest; he suggests we figure out ways to discover God in the midst of our messed-up, stagnating, and doggedly unrepentant world.

The Whole Burden of Life

The psalm portrays a society at war with itself. Listen to verses 12-14: “The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them; but the LORD laughs at the wicked, for God sees that their day is coming. The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to kill those who walk uprightly.” Throughout, David stocks the poem with reassurances that God will deal with perpetrators of injustice. But he also counsels those who suffer at their hands to be patient. God’s retribution will be certain, though not necessarily swift. Their day is coming. And that begs a question: until that day comes, what are we to do?

“Commit your way to the LORD,” verse 5 urges. I so love how the 19^th-century Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, paraphrases David’s advice. “Roll the whole burden of life upon the Lord,” he wrote. “Leave with [God] not thy present fretfulness merely, but all thy cares.” The commitment David calls for is one of total surrender. It’s the conscious decision to rest when chaos reigns, to trust despite trepidation—to depend on God in the absence of concrete direction. “God will act,” David insists, speaking from experience and by faith.

“God will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday,” verse 6 promises. Vindication is a big word that often gets confused with vengeance—and they are not the same thing. To vindicate someone is to validate his/her choices and actions. It confirms the moral fiber and character of the person whose inner light won’t bow to darkness. Yet David surprises us in the next verse by describing how we should respond in circumstances that press us to abandon our knowledge of what is right. Rather than push our agenda or defend our stance, verse 7 says, “Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for God; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices.” Confidence in our choices invites us to step out of moral chaos and into the stillness, to forsake rushing to judgment and wait for justice, to quit worrying about powers that be and start trusting God’s supremacy. “Don’t get swept up in the mess,” David says. “Roll the whole burden of life upon the Lord. Be still.”

Hiding Place

Lent provides a ready-made reason to practice stillness. We enter its desert to escape chaos. We find quiet and distance we seek from the constant assault of unprincipled, wicked behaviors. It's very easy to enter Lent’s stillness and solitude hoping for some type of epiphany. And we must never overrule the possibility God will transform our pursuit of quietness into a revelatory, transfixing experience. Yet if that’s all we seek in the stillness, we may be disappointed. The timing may not be right—we may not be ready for it. And a mystical moment may not equip us to deal with the world once we reenter its madness. On the other hand, having learned (or relearned) how to practice stillness will prove extremely useful wherever life takes us.

Proverbs 18.10 tells us, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.” In contrast, verse 11 says, “The wealth of the rich is their strong city; in their imagination it is like a high wall.” Faith in a just, all-powerful God ushers us into the stillness. When chaos erupts and confusion descends, we run for safety that can only be found in stillness. And notice how Proverbs’ writer flips the equation. Assurance and peace of mind we discover in the stillness are real; insanity that drives us into God’s strong tower is illusory. Wealth, the power it brings, and the will to oppress fashion a false, fleeting sense of security. It offers no hiding place from a God Who will act justly to vindicate those who follow God’s ways. During Lent we practice stillness so that we can take shelter when moral confusion threatens to overpower us. Practicing stillness is how we keep it real.

We not only find safety when practicing stillness. We enter the true reality of God’s justice and power.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/01/practice-stillness/.

Postscript: Question 7

How do you practice stillness?