Why Rules Don’t Rule September 4, 2011 Proper 18 Ordinary Time, Year A Romans 13.8-14

            Not long ago I purchased an IPad2. It came without instructions. It did, however, come with prohibitions. The tiny booklet inside the package insisted that I should “not drop, disassemble, open, crush, bend, deform, puncture, shred, microwave, incinerate, paint, or insert foreign objects into” my new device.

            Well, heck, I had planned on doing ALL those things!

            It’s the lawsuits, of course. With product liability awards averaging just south of two million bucks per case, companies now go to great lengths to insulate themselves against the stupidity of their customers. Forbes Magazine reports actual warning labels that say things like, “Danger: Do not hold the wrong end of a chainsaw,” “Never use a lit match or open flame to check fuel level,” and, on a carton of eggs, “This product may contain eggs.”

“The first thing we do,” Shakespeare wrote, “let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Paul, harking back to Jesus, recognizes that rules can’t cover every contingency. “The finer the net is woven,” says theologian Hans Kung, “the more numerous are the holes.” It isn’t that the provisions of the Old Testament law are harmful or irrelevant; Jesus said the law and the prophets hang on the dual commandment of love, not fall from it. (Mt 22.40) Rather, rules can never be more than means to a previously chosen end.

If I begin with selfishness, no list of “thou shalt not’s” is long enough to keep me from doing harm. If I begin with love, the list at last begins to make sense. If I begin with love, I start searching for practical applications, which the specific commands supply. If I begin with selfishness, I start hunting out loopholes, which the specific commands inevitably contain.

We should note the subtle trick Paul plays with the specific roster of unloving behaviors he tags onto his general observation. He hits the Baptist biggies – beer and internet porn – and then, just when the “amen’s” reach their crescendo, he hauls out a tape recording of last week’s business meeting – “strife and jealousy.” That’s the problem with love as the only law: It drags us into God’s bright daylight and shines the sun on all kinds of sin.

Warning: This Bible Does Not Work When Closed,

Doug

Collect

Loving Father, Your laws are lines that sketch the face of love. Grant that we might look at Christ, so that we might love like Christ, so that we might look like Christ to a world that so desperately needs to see Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.

Benediction

May love be all your debt,

            And every man your creditor.

May love be all your law,

            And every man your judge.

May love be your clock and calendar,

            And every day your deadline.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

           

            

Good Hate August 28, 2011 Proper 17 Ordinary Time, Year A Romans 12.9-21

            In the climactic chapter of the science fiction novel Perelandra, C. S. Lewis’ hero Elwin Ransom squares off against Satan incarnate and experiences, not horror, but joy.

The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. As a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of coloured chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object.

Paul seems to express the same thought in Romans 12.9. In calling for love without masks, the apostle insists that the two emotions of abhorrence and affection find their proper objects. Love does not smile at evil; hypocrisy does. Love liberates by confrontation where hypocrisy tolerates by dissimulation.

Nor does Paul blunt the scalpel-sharp surfaces of his language: Abhor appears only here in the New Testament and describes a desire for utter and absolute separation from the object. Cling literally refers to glue. The Christian faith faces its followers with the non-negotiable either/or that defines true sincerity.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that the passage assumes a clear line between the two alternatives. In a day when the only absolute is that there are no absolutes, when multiculturalism has mashed morality into an indistinct mush, the rugged outlines of revealed truth insist on an unreconstructed “Thou shalt not.”

It is one thing to realize that I may not be righteous. It is quite another to deny that righteousness exists. “What we suffer from today,” complains G. K. Chesterton, “is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.” Doubt about truth mixed with certainty about self leads to hypocritical love that refuses to speak the hard, healing words of righteousness.

We should note, however, that while Paul does not tell us not to hate, he does tell us what to hate. We hate evil, but not evil-doers. We fight wicked actions with love’s counter-punch, landing blows that break no bones, but instead hammer at hardened hearts. Love’s flame kindles a fire of shame that eventually melts its way through the thickest of skulls. Unhypocritical love confronts wrong with a single face, takes the one-two punch of wickedness, and continues to insist through bloodied teeth that God has a better way.

Perhaps the best commentary on this passage comes from its practical application by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Christmas Eve sermon on Peace from 1967:

I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens' councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

Peace Out,

Doug

Collect

Heavenly Father, Your Son’s cross shows us at once Your hatred of evil, and Your love for us who commit it. Grant us grace to remove the mask of accommodation in order to speak right to the face of wrong, that the living love of our crucified Lord may overcome evil with good. This we ask of You, Father, in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ who reigns together with you in the Holy Spirit, One God now and forever, Amen.

Benediction

May you flee so far and fast from everything that’s evil

            That you fly into the arms of everything that’s good.

May you sink so long and low in doing what is good

            That you lift others higher in everything that’s good.

May you stand so straight and strong in the face of evil deeds

            That blessing outlasts cursing and overcomes with good.

In the Name of the perfect love

Of Father, Son, and Spirit,

Amen.

In the Swim August 21, 2011 Proper 16 Ordinary Time, Year A Romans 12.1-8

            Diana Nyad will not become the first woman to swim from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage.

On Tuesday, August 9, about halfway through the projected sixty-hour slog, her handlers yanked her from the water, a victim of asthma, a bum shoulder and battering waves. The sixty-two year old endurance swimmer says she won’t attempt it again.

            What impresses me is not that Nyad failed, but that she tried. In fact, I respect her training more than her performance. She assembled a team of twenty-two specialists to join her in the task. Six weather experts gauged wind patterns in an effort to find calm seas. A navigator bounced satellite signals off his laptop to keep her on course. Two kayakers flanked her to zap incoming sharks with electronic light sabers and four scuba divers waited to battle the beasts if the shock treatment failed. An onboard physician monitored hydration and nutrition.

“That’s the part that really interests me about Diana,” Steve Munatones, himself a champion open-water swimmer, told the New York Times. “It’s not just the swimming part. There are people who can swim this. But they don’t have the organizational, political and passionate oratorical skills she has.”

Bottom line: Solo success requires an ensemble.

As Paul wraps up his letter to the Romans he underscores the importance of teamwork for the long haul. His subject is plural: “brethren;” his predicate is singular: “sacrifice.” In other words, many bodies make up one offering laid on the altar for Christ. The only real reference to individualism comes in a warning that no one person think too highly of her own contribution! Then the apostle starts naming the members of the team: prophets, servants, teachers, exhorters, givers, leaders and grinning mercy-merchants. The list runs the spectrum of “organizational, political and passionate oratorical skills.” It doesn’t matter who, at a given moment, is in the water and who is on board the boat; what counts is that we work together and endure to the end of our race.

Collect

God the Spirit, You distribute gifts of grace, not according to what each of us desires but according to what all of us need. Grant that our many and several gifts may work to the single goal of glorifying Our Lord Jesus Christ together with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, Amen.

Benediction

May God make of your many bodies

            A single sacrifice.

May God make of your many minds

            A single understanding.

May God make of your many gifts

            A single offering.

That we who are many may be one,

And that all may be welcome in the One God who is

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Amen

You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide August 14, 2011 Proper 15, Ordinary Time, Year A Romans 11.1-2, 29-32

            “No take backs!”

            It is the hallmark of playground ethics the world over, the Hammurabi’s Code of kid culture, the Eleventh Commandment of elementary school: Once invoked, it means that the speaker cannot undo an action, change a rule, or default on a promise.

            Paul opens his letter to the Romans with a sickening survey of the sorry history of humanity’s rebellion against God. Gentiles take it on the chin through the middle of chapter two and then Paul starts in on his own kinfolk until he winds up with the coyote howl of worldwide condemnation: “For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Ro 3.22-23)

            Now, as he draws near to the end of this lengthy exposition of the gospel, Paul falls back on some sandlot theology: “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Or, to paraphrase, “No take backs!” God has purposed to redeem us from the fall, and God will accomplish that purpose.

            During the filming of the epic movie “Ben Hur,” star Charleton Heston confessed to Cecil B. DeMille that he doubted he could win the dramatic chariot race. “Charlie,” the great director supposedly replied, “It’s YOUR job to stay on the chariot. It’s MY job to see that you win.” Victory is God's job. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. No take backs.

            Of course, this is only good news in the long run. Short-term, it can be a rugged business having no choice about being God’s chosen.

            In his novel Son of Laughter Frederick Buechner imagines the patriarch Jacob looking back over his daring act in supplanting Esau as the blessed brother. The Heel-Grabber feels like a bare-back bronc buster strapped to a maddened mount:

When the camel you’re riding runs wild, nothing will stop it. You cling to its neck. You wrench at its beard and long lip. You cry into its soft ear for mercy. You threaten vengeance. Either you hurl yourself to death from its pitching back or you ride out its madness to the end.

It was not I who ran off with my father’s blessing. It was my father’s blessing that ran off with me. Often since then I have cried mercy with the sand in my teeth. I have cried ikh-kh-kh to make it fall with a sob to its ungainly knees to let me dismount at last. Its hind parts are crusted with urine as it races forward. Its long-legged, hump-swaying gait is clumsy and scattered like rags in the wind. I bury my face in its musky pelt. The blessing will take me where it will take me. It is beautiful and it is appalling. It races through the barren hills to an end of its own.

            Get me off this camel, God! I don’t want to be chosen anymore. But the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. No take backs.

            We belong to God through an implacable love that insists on saving us even through the times when damnation looks inevitable – and preferable! Maybe that’s why the final word is mercy: Four times in the last three verses of the passage Paul appeals to it, and the last time he invokes it on “all.”

            So mount up! Torque down the cinch strap and get a deep seat in the saddle. Salvation in Christ is not the easy stroll the televangelists promised but a wild camel ride that at last brings us skidding ingloriously into the throne room of the Almighty. Don’t worry about falling off. Don’t dream of getting away. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. No take backs.

Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing!

Doug

Collect

God of mercy, you include all of humankind in your call to salvation. Grant that we who have been shown Your saving mercy might show that same mercy to others, that Your irrevocable mercy might rest on all. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May you rejoice that God’s mercy covers your disobedience,

            For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

May you display God’s mercy to those who are disobedient,

            For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

May you hope in God’s mercy upon all who are disobedient,

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.