One size does not fit all

I was out last evening looking for recently and suddenly required field hockey goggles for my daughter.  Since the school requirement was both recent and sudden, they are as scare as hen’s teeth in shops locally.  And where you can find a hen’s tooth, you will discover that it is costly to acquire.  And most of the models we found claimed that one size fits all.  I realize the claim comes because these can be adjusted easily but I am always wary of the one size feature.  In the case of t-shirts it just means the garment can double as a tent.

I think we also adapt this one size thinking to our proclamation of the Gospel.  The same message for all people in all circumstances.  But I am not sure that is effective.  I approach this from the perspective of pastoral care.  There are some occasions when a clear call to repentance is the right thing.  But not always.  There are some contexts in which a person is so crippled by self-recrimination and shame that a further call to repentance simply heaps additional burdens upon an already staggering pile. Sometimes the message of God’s love in Jesus Christ needs to be prior.  For some the news that repentance is needed is not a stunning revelation.  But that Jesus loves me is.

It makes me think about the consistent nature and character of God and how he reveals himself to us in different ways.  It is not always the same way.  I have had many circumstances in my life where God’s word to me was a stern one, leading me to contrition and repentance.  But not always.  God knows that one size does not fit all.  Indeed one size does not always even fit a given individual.  He comes among us at times sternly, but also at times deeply tenderly – in authority and in tenderness, in holiness and in compassion.

Does this mean that God is changeable?  No.  But he is Person and not a thing.  And we are changeable.  That which we need to hear from the mouth of God differs depending on the circumstances.  Jesus is the one who says, “you brood of vipers!” and “come to me all who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  He even says to the same person at different times, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah” and “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  Indeed, one size does not fit all.

These thoughts were moved, in part, by a very tender movement of God in our midst in church on Sunday morning.  There was a peace very palpably present which was, I think, from Jesus.  I am often looking for his exhortation to move me and us forward.  But again, one size does not fit all.   The tender love of God fit very nicely this week.

Unguarded

Some years ago when I was working for an IT company in the field of medical informatics, I was doing a system installation at a hospital in San Antonio.  Our company had contracted a third party for some of the work and there was a representative of that third party on site with me.  This rep was a man of little discretion.  Within an hour or so of meeting him and working together on servers in a datacenter, I had heard what seems to have been his full medical history and within 24 hours he shared with me the clown tattoo he has on his left pec.  I neither required nor desired any of this information.  He was ridiculously unguarded in what he shared with near strangers, to the point of being socially and professionally awkward.

We usually learn to be more guarded in our conversations, sharing some things freely, but retaining others for our more intimate circle.  This is natural and, I think, normal.  Our problems begin when we live in the extremes, either stretching the neck of our undershirt low enough to reveal our tattoo (it really happened) or being guarded in all circumstances.

It is this second error, being guarded in all circumstances, that intrigues me, perhaps because it is that to which I am more prone.  Guardedness is an isolating habit. And there are times and places where it is simply not needed.  Last week I was talking to a couple of very good friends at my kitchen table, telling them a little about my sister-in-law’s funeral a week or so ago.  In the midst of the conversation I felt the tightening in my throat and the sting of heat in my eyes – which I quickly mastered, because I am guarded.  But where, I ask, is it safer, or more appropriate, to show one’s heart than in the presence of good friends.

The problem with being guarded all the time is that you start being incapable of being unguarded when you should.

Trust in him at all times, O people;

Pour out your heart before him;

God is a refuge for us.   - Psalm 62:8

The psalmist urges us to pour out our heart before God, to trust in him, because he is our refuge.  But how can we pour out our heart if, due to the habit of guardedness, we no longer know our own heart.  In our heart we hold our griefs and sorrows, but also our dreams, hopes and aspirations.  Being too reticent in communicating these things to others, can leave us impaired in our ability to yield them even to God.

And the picture or phrase is vivid – a pour out, an emptying of the contents of our heart before God.  It is a bold thing to do -  extravagant, even.  When is the last time you emptied your heart before God?  Or were frank with him about your disappointments or even about your real hopes and dreams?

We must know our heart, before we can pour it out before God.  C.S. Lewis says something like this in his novel, Till We Have Faces: “How can they (the gods) see us face to face till we have faces?”

The problem of being unguarded in all circumstances is obvious to most; the infirmity of being guarded in all, less so.  Dare to dream, to hope, to laugh, to cry before God.  Pour out your heart to him – he is a refuge for us.

Are you OK?

We had a death in the family this past week.  My wife’s sister, Heather, finally succumbed to a long and inspirational fight with cancer a week ago Sunday.  She lived and died well and was an example of joy and faith in all circumstances.

We have experienced a lot of deaths in the family in the past 5 or 6 years, to the point that one might characterize us as professional mourners.  Well, if not professional, at least seasoned amateurs.

While I would prefer not to be in this position, it has afforded us as a family to reflect on the experience of grief.  I was talking to one of my daughters last week in the days between Heather’s death and the funeral and she said, “Why do people keep asking me if I’m OK?  What a stupid question!”  Caring and well-meant, but stupid.   Just for the record, in the short term, the answer is “no.” 

But I too, have been in the position of encountering someone who is in the midst of grief (as a pastor the situation has occurred once or twice).  I know the desire to say something helpful or show concern to a mourning family.  I also know the awkwardness of not knowing what to say and living in uncomfortable silence.  But being the grieving party itself on more than one occasion I have some insight from the other side.

I am pretty convinced that everyone needs to tell the story of what happened around the death.  I remember when I was about 14, the father of a friend of mine died suddenly of a heart attack.  At 14 I hadn’t the vaguest clue what to say or to do but I remembered that he wanted to tell me the story – what had happened to his dad.  I had already heard the essence since we grew up in a small village.  But he still wanted to tell the story.

It is a risk to ask, “Can you tell me how it happened?” because some people will not be ready yet to do that.  It is also an intimate and private story and hard to tell, especially in the case of traumatic death.  But with trusted friends and family, I think it a question worth asking.

The value of giving people opportunity to tell the story is that our story about the death bleeds over into stories or at least remembrances about the life.  And both of those things are good for us who grieve.

Back to the question: and also for the record, in the long term, the answer is actually “yes.”

Half-hearted

Last week three of my four children and I took a nostalgic trip to central Vermont. We visited a swimming hole that we had, as a whole family, visited 10 years ago when we first moved to Vermont. On our way back home, we decided to stop for a bite to eat. I suggested Buffalo Wild Wings (the spicier the better in my estimation). My son, who is a vegetarian was less enthusiastic about the idea., since he has noted that big American chain restaurants are meat-obsessed. Even salads, it would seem, require meat in America. We went anyway, but Aidan was half-hearted about it.

Half-heartedness is common to us. There is much that we approach with half a heart. We will sometimes do things but remark that our “heart is not in it.” True for many things in our lives – including God. I read in Psalm 119 today the following verse:

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart. (v.2)

This is not the only exhortation to a whole-hearted devotion to God. Jesus tells us to seek God’s kingdom first, which is another way of saying the same thing.

But what keeps us from being whole-hearted in seeking him? I can think of a couple of things. The first is that we are seeking something else whole-heartedly. This might be a consistent seeking or a fleeting one. I am quickly becoming a passionate road biker. Yesterday, when I was trying, half-heartedly, to focus on my prayers, my mind continually drifted to being out on the road with my bike. This was one of those fleeting examples, but the consistent ones are a-plenty. The Old Testament calls them idols. They range from work and career to body appearance to any number of addictions to even moral perfection. All these things we seek with our whole heart rather than God. My daughter made a brilliant observation about this kind of pursuit in reflecting on someone she knows who is on an avant garde diet – “Doesn’t she know that different food won’t solve her emotional problems?”

Seeking other things with our whole heart will make us half-hearted toward God. But so will seeking nothing at all. We are often half-hearted about everything. Nothing captures our whole heart. There are many reasons why this may be. We may be tired of the effort of seeking God with no evident change in our life our circumstances and have simply given up. We may have succumbed to the sophisticated and detached ennui - common in our overly entertained lives. We are simply bored. “Whatever,” is the mantra of these half-hearted souls.

As I have been reflecting on this today, I am asking that God would remind me again of his glory and splendor, that I would seek nothing before him. And also that he would strip from me any cynical boredom and restore to me a child-like wonder. That I would recover my whole heart.

Aidan was successful in finding a herbivore’s option at Buffalo Wild Wings. But beyond the wings we discovered that Wednesday is trivia night there. The four of us played (badly) but laughed a lot. On our way out Aidan said, “We should come here every week,” wholeheartedly.

Nevertheless

I am fond of words. Especially so of interesting words. We encountered such a word the other day during a family discussion on what qualifies as a yacht. Going to the dictionary (a real bound paper one) to determine the precise meaning we noticed another entry on interest – yclept, meaning called or named. Used in a sentence it might look like this: “On our bike route there was a sharp descent, yclept Shipman’s Hill.” Now I understand that none but the intellectually pretentious would ever ACTUALLY use yclept in a sentence, but it is, regardless, an interesting word. And for the intellectually pretentious out there, yclept is the past participle of the equally unused verb “clepe,” as in “We cannot decide what to clepe our newborn son.” This latter phrase is not recommended to even the intellectually pretentious as it might me misconstrued as some sort of child abuse.

The interesting words are the ones that get our attention, or at least mine. But I think that the words with real power are the common and therefore little noticed ones. Conjunctions, in particular, deserve some attention. Those connecting words that help string thoughts together. The humble “and” can daisy chain a hundred things together if you would like it to. “Therefore” both connects what follows with what precedes but also indicates that what follows is a logical result or conclusion of its precedent. Look out for the “therefores” in St. Paul’s epistles.

In reading Psalm 106 I was struck by the power of “nevertheless.” In this psalm that excellent conjunction shifts your attention from what seems to be the point to the real heart of the psalm. The psalm begins with praise to God, which is a clear indication of the psalmist’s intent. Throughout the psalm we do hear of the mighty acts of God, but usually in the context of how Israel ignored them. Starting in verse 6, there begins a long litany of the faults of Israel. How they did not consider his wondrous words (v. 7), or wait for his counsel (v.13). How they were taken by jealousy (v.16) and created the golden calf (v.19). It goes on until verse 43 and by that time you are convinced that the point of the psalm is to underline our wickedness, and I say “our” because as the psalmist says in verse 6, “Both we and our fathers have sinned.”

By verse 43 the psalm really seems to about God’s people and their wickedness. But then comes the “Nevertheless” in verse 44:

Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,

When he heard their cry.

For their sake he remembered his covenant,

And relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

He caused them to be pitied

By all those who held them captive.

And we realize this psalm is first about God. What appears to be a list of offenses for litigation turns on this one word and the psalm is seen for what it is intended to be – a psalm of praise motivated by the grace and mercy of God, in spite of our faithlessness. “Nevertheless” brings into sharp contrast the distinction between us and God. It doesn’t mean that the wickedness isn’t wicked. Just that his mercy and steadfast love overcomes it.

The psalm ends,

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

from everlasting to everlasting!

And let the people say, “Amen!”

Praise the Lord!

Do you have to?

Objections. For some reason I have been reflecting on objections recently – objections to Christianity and its practice. I am distressed by these objections both inside and outside the Church, often because they seem to be based on misunderstandings. This might lead me to an excoriation of the irresponsibly uninformed except that, alas, we have no one but ourselves to blame for it. Confusion outside the Church comes most often from confusion within.

The objection that I have been mulling over most recently is the one that Christian faith is all about following the rules. I can remember that I was reticent to become a Christian at one point in my life because I thought that it meant I would never have any fun again – too busy following the rules and, sadly, tsk-tsking over my glasses at those who were not. This latter part, the tsk-tsking, is what gives us the reputation and promotes the misunderstanding. My fundamental objection in the form of a question was, “do you have to…?” We in the Church, and particularly in the more conservative part, have made a career of trying to enforce moral control over Christians and even non-Christians. The answer is “yes, you have to.”

And now I hear the objection from inside the Church, “Here is another libertine - a liberal who doesn’t think what we do matters.” Not so. Christianity, and Judaism for that matter, proclaim moral order, not moral control. Moral control is an overstepping of authority. If you read the Old and New Testaments carefully, you will find they say nothing about the control of others, but an awful lot about self-control.

I once had a parishioner who had come recently from a moral control kind of church environment. I was a little surprised when he asked my permission to get a tattoo – an appropriately Christian one, to be sure. When I stated my surprise at this, he just said that he would have to have had permission from his pastor at his previous Church. This is moral control - and weird to boot. (For those wondering if you should tell me about any permanent dermal inking, I really don’t need to know.)

Yet there is a moral order to the universe and Christians have always upheld this conviction. Moral order differs from moral control in that it is descriptive rather than prescriptive. In short, “no you don’t have to, but…” Christians understand, hopefully, that we live in a world of moral order – that we are free to do as we choose, but that our choices and actions have consequences. Moses in addressing the people said, “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.” Deuteronomy 30:19.

Here there is an invitation to choose, to act. There is not coercion or control. There is indeed encouragement toward that which is good. But exhortation is not compulsion. The Bible is filled with people who did not do what they were supposed to do, the murderer Moses being but one

It seems to me that we would do better to talk about this moral order than to be trying to exert moral control over people. We as a culture need to hear that we are free but that our choices have consequences. We need look no further than the current national debt crisis to see that we are a people who seem to think we can continue to spend more than we take in and expect that there will be no consequences, such as someone thinking we might not be such a good credit risk anymore. Choices and actions have consequences, both good and bad. That is a summary of the moral order God has made in his universe.

And he sets before us the good and the bad, life and death, blessings and curses. That is moral order. Therefore, choose life.

Rote and Repetition

The criticism often leveled at liturgical tradition and worship is that it is all rote, repetitive ritual that becomes meaningless words to people. Now this is undoubtedly true for many. One can say these things over and over again and eventually stop listening to them. I find myself guilty of this. As I say Morning Prayer daily (well, almost), I have found that I can say the familiar canticles aloud while daydreaming about something else, literally at the same time. I know the Venite* so well that I can plan my day in my head even while I am saying, “Today, O that ye would hear his voice.” The irony is not lost on me.

And therein lies the problem – not in the practice itself but, as is often the case, in the heart of the practicer. That particular exhortation to hear his voice, from Psalm 95, is to attentiveness to God and his Word – a reminder to listen. And the truth is that this blight is not on only the liturgists but on all of us. Who among us has not found himself reading the scriptures and realizing he has no idea what he has just read. Our eyes may have been perusing the parables of Jesus or the wisdom of Solomon, but our head just isn’t in the game. Our head is focused on the stress of the day or the shiny new whatever we saw while shopping online. Indeed our head may be even focused on some particular good and joyful thing, but not on what is in front of us.

I would really like it if the whole of the Christian life was just spontaneous love toward and engagement with God. That’s better isn’t it? Spontaneous, extemporaneous and free. Sadly the reality of my own fallen nature interferes with this beautiful picture. I need to make a choice toward attentiveness to God, to hear his voice today. And I find that the regular rhythm and the familiar words help in that. I am arrested by the Venite’s exhortation to hear his voice today. It catches me amid my daydream and brings me back to the issue at hand – the moral effort of attending to God.

And it is not only this exhortation but other things of which I am regularly reminded. Even this morning, saying the Apostle’s Creed I came to the line “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” I considered all the times when I am tempted not to believe this: when shame cripples me and I don’t “feel” forgiven (as if my feelings are any effective measure of that) or when someone has so angered me that forgiveness of sins is far from my heart and mind. Then I came back to the solid and simple assertion - that I do believe in the forgiveness of sins (and the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting for that matter).

Yep, it is all rote and repetitive. And rich.

Today, O that ye would hear his voice.

*Psalm 95 – it opens with the invitation, “O come, let us sing unto the Lord.” Venite is Latin for “O come”