Presence

A week ago today was Ash Wednesday, 26 February 2020. Depending upon where and how you grew up, Ash Wednesday was an unknown reality, something weird Catholics did, or a meaningful spiritual experience that came around once a year.

I grew up in the context of Ash Wednesday as mostly an unknown experience, but my one Catholic classmate in high school did give up chocolate every year on Ash Wednesday. I don’t recall ever seeing her with ashes on her forehead on this particular day, but she was pretty vocal about the sacrifice of no chocolate until Easter.

While neither Ash Wednesday or Lent are, mentioned in Scripture, they are ancient Christian practices that most likely pre-date church buildings and the like, with which we seem to have no problem. The ideas behind the practice of Ash Wednesday and Lent are deeply embedded in Scripture. In a word, they are about repentance. I would argue that if you were forced to summarize Jesus’ teaching in one word, that one word might need to be repentance. I know Jesus said you could summarize the whole thing in two commandments: love God and love neighbor. But I’m not sure I can hear Jesus say that if first, in the presence the one in whom “all the Fullness was glad to dwell” (Col. 1:19, Kingdom New Testament) I am not struck by my need to repent.

After all, the first words Mark has Jesus saying are “’The time is fulfilled!’ he said; ‘God’s kingdom is arriving! Turn back, and believe the good news.’” (Mark 1:15, Kingdom NT). “Turn back” is a more literal translation of “repent” in this translation.

One of my roles at Point University is to oversee spiritual formation activities. A team of students who work with me helped plan an Ash Wednesday service as we do every year. We had a self-directed service in the courtyard of the Lanier Academic Center. Students, faculty, and staff could come anytime between 11:30 and 12:30 that day. Here’s how it looked.

Scriptures were written on large poster board displays. They include words from God from Matthew 6, Psalm 51, and Isaiah 58. These scriptures were arranged in four different sections. They were given an opportunity to write something down on a note and tape it to a cross we have used in a variety of ways on campus – it isn’t a pretty, shiny kind of cross, but made of old rusty iron and dry, faded wood. They could have ashes placed on their foreheads and were offered the body and blood of Christ in holy communion.

Students from my theology class and from my spiritual formation team served in a variety of ways during this hour-long event. I was privileged to participate at the beginning of the service and then just observe and occasionally help a student, faculty member, of staff member know where the next stop on the journey was.

The most important observation I have about that day is that when you combine creation (we were outdoors), Scripture (we read lots), quietness (I was amazed at how ‘quiet’ it all was without a word from anyone), and ashes (from dust we have come and to dust we shall return) the presence of God can’t be missed! Tom Wright may be on to something when he regularly talks about space, time, and matter!

But that idea is not new. Psalm 19 reminds of that in powerful ways. “The heavens are recounting God’s splendour, the sky is telling of what his hands made.” (19:1, The First Testament)  “Yahweh’s instruction has integrity, bringing life back.” (19:7, The First Testament) “Yes your servant take warning through them, and in keeping them there are great results.” (19:11, The First Testament)

That great psalm ends with what should be the hope of every human alive, “May the sayings of my mouth be acceptable to you, and the murmur of my mind before you, Yahweh, my crag and my restorer.” (19:14, The First Testament)

One student asked me if it was okay to write on the little note card to be taped to the cross that he wanted to give up his “foul mouth.” Of course it was okay! It made the day worth any effort extended.

No matter your faith tradition about Ash Wednesday or Lent – it is hard to think that anything we do that moves us toward the sayings of our mouths and the murmurings of our hearts becoming acceptable to God is anything but a good thing.

We’re only a week into the season of Lent. It isn’t too late to start a journey where space, time, and matter work together in the quietness of the presence of God to bring us closer to Him.

Finding a Voice and Using It

On a cold, rainy Saturday in December, 2018, my family and I drove from Tyrone, Georgia to Montgomery, Alabama. It isn't a bad drive - straight down I 85 for a couple of hours. But it was raining. It was cold. It was the near the end of the semester and I had lots of papers to grade! The whole time driving I kept thinking "Wish I were home."

But we went there to visit the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the Lynching Memorial.(museumandmemorial.eji.org)  Both were sobering opportunities to see a side of our history that often gets overlooked. I remember thinking as we drove home, "Boy, am I glad I came."

Today, on an unusually warm Sunday afternoon in January, 2020, my family and I went and saw the movie Just Mercy. I will admit to thinking, "what a great afternoon for yard work!"The movie is based on a true story from the life of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a movement started to defend death-row inmates in Alabama. Stevenson grew up in Delaware and graduated from Eastern University in Philadelphia and then Harvard Law School. He passed the bar in Alabama and moved south to begin this project.


Christianity Today recently included a very informative interview with Stephenson in its weekly email. (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-web-only/just-mercy-film-bryan-stevenson.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=16244355&utm_content=691363128&utm_campaign=email) 

(If you read this article - make sure you click the links with all kinds of important information about the level of incarceration we accept in the United States as "normal.")


I sometimes semi-jokingly say if I were 38 and not 68 I'd quit my job and go to law school and find a way to get a job at EJI. Statistics suggest that for every nine people executed, one person has been exonerated.  But it isn't just the death penalty. Here's a convicting paragraph from the CT article cited above:

"The US not only has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, we also have more people locked up than any other country in the history of the world. We also have more jails and prisons than degree-granting colleges and universities. In some areas of the country, there are more people living behind bars than on college campuses. Native Americans, Africans, Hispanics, and Southeast Asians are all grossly overrepresented within our justice system. EJI found that for every nine people executed on death row, one is found innocent and released."

The staggering cost of this stampede - often led by politicians who have has their re-election strategy a "lock them up and throw the key away mentality" - is staggering. Check this out: "The Vera Institute of Justice released a study in 2012 that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that participated was $39 billion." 

It is hard to know what to do.  Or . . . "how do we find our voice and start using it?" I really can't afford to quit my job and go to law school, but I don't think that means there is nothing to do. While the movie no doubt took some liberty in telling the story, that the county sheriff and prosecuting attorney knew that Walter "Johnny D" McMillan was not the murderer they convicted him of being is not a matter of dispute. But the sheriff kept getting reelected up until very recently, even though the Alabama Supreme Court exposed the injustice that resulted in McMillan's conviction in the early 90s.

I've never been a "one-issue voter." But I'm confident that when the 2020 elections come along, I will carefully look at every person I vote for from state legislators, to U.S. Congressmen, to U.S. Senators, to presidential candidates, as well as all other other local officials. Can you really be "pro-life" and adopt a "lock them up, throw away the key" approach to which laws get passed? Can you really be "pro-life" if you wink at some of the common practices in our judicial systems - such as "threaten an exaggerated sentence and push for a lesser plea deal?" Am I really "pro-life" if I routinely vote for people who really are better described as "pro-birth" but actually not all that concerned about "life beyond the delivery room?"

Obviously I don't think that all law enforcement officials, all court officials, and all elected officials are blatantly unconcerned about justice. And clearly I don't think that no one in prison deserves to be in prison. But if one person is in prison who shouldn't be or one person on death row is executed who actually was wrongly convicted - then I think I have a responsibility to "find a voice and use it."

The Other Side of Childhood

In using the Wizard of Oz story as an analogy, Richard Rohr in his book Falling Upward, suggests that after the experience of his education, he “was surely not in Kansas anymore.”  He goes on to say, “I had passed, like Dorothy, ‘over the rainbow.’”

He also notes, perhaps as a bit of warning to those engaging in becoming educated, “life was much easier on the childhood side of the rainbow.”

David Brooks, a national columnist for the New York Times, in a similar vein of thought, encourages his readers in The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, to think about the great value of a life of significance as compared to a life of mere achievement, even when the achievement is great. For Brooks, the primary distinctive between those “two mountains” upon which we may live is “selfish” versus “selfless.”

This semester we continue our “reboot journey.” Where are those moments when we may need to turn the machine off and restart? And sometimes, where are those moments when we need to do the “factory reset” kind of reboot?

College – especially in the context of a school like Point where we care about faith, we care about learning who we are and how we got here, we care about where we are headed – must be a reboot time in our lives. If you graduate from Point and “are still in Kansas,” then you missed the opportunity God placed right on your front door step. 

This really has little if anything to do with whether you are a better business person, counselor, teacher, criminal justice person, musician, ministry person, or any other skill. Life is about far more than “achievement” in the world of STEM. Life is about who you are and who, through Christ, you can become! Don’t misunderstand that to mean those other areas are unimportant, just that if that’s all that happens in college, you may end up back in Kansas! (No offense to Kansas.)

What if as we begin this new semester together at Point – either in classrooms in West Point or virtually for on-line students or in some combination of both options – we committed ourselves to focus on what we can do this semester that will help us “pass over whatever rainbow” we need to pass over in order to become the person of significance God has called us to be?

After all, Jesus said “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Through our faith in Him and commitment to follow Him, we can “pass over the rainbows” that hold us back and discover a life of “significance, not mere achievement.”

IF we do, we will discover “life on the other side of childhood.”

Choking to Death on Camel Stew

If you’ve read Matthew 23, you may remember that Jesus is described as confronting the Pharisees of His day in ways that no other gospel can match. He isn’t in the best of moods and sounds a bit like a Hebrew prophet bringing a law suit against Israel for their unfaithfulness.  The series of sayings that begin with “woe to you,” or “Woe betide you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” as N.T. Wright translates it in his Kingdom New Testament, is a powerful reminder of the need for a serious course correction.

The woe that I personally keep coming back to – perhaps out of some need to make sure it couldn’t be said of me – is the saying found in verses 23, 24. Here it is from Wright’s translation:

               "Woe betide you, scribes and Pharisees, yhou hypocrites!" Jesus went on. "You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and you omit the serious matters of the law like justice, mercy, and loyalty. You should have done these, without neglecting the others. You're blind guides! You filter out a gnat, but you gulp down a camel.

 

We first meet the idea of tithing when Abram gave Melchizedek a tithe of the spoils of war gained from victory. (Genesis 14) In the Law – Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all insist that a tithe should be given to the Lord. Most would assume that means a tenth of all of one’s income. From the comments Jesus makes to the Pharisees – it sounds as though they took the principle of tithing in an extraordinarily serious manner. They tithed their herb gardens – mint, dill, and cumin included. With scrupulous detail, they made sure “they paid their tithes” as I’ve heard some believers describe the process.

Jesus is not opposed to such a detailed and determined approach to tithing. “You should have done these” is how He responds to it. 

Yet, that isn’t all that Jesus said.

“You omit the serious matters of the law like justice, mercy, and loyalty.” They are “blind guides” because the rigid legalism with which they tithe is not matched with a commitment to issues more important than making sure you gave a teaspoon of mint, dill, and cumin to the Levites. 

The Law had much to say about justice, mercy, and faithfulness (covenant loyalty). The prophet Micah  would have shouted a fervent “Amen!” to this criticism Jesus offers. Do you remember what he said, summarizing much of what the Law pointed toward, in Micah 6:8? “He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (ESV)

For Jesus, focusing on minutia at the expense of the weightier matters is as though we strain out a tiny little gnat (unclean for sure, Lev. 11:41) while gulping down a camel, also unclean (Lev. 11:4) and the largest of the beasts common to Palestine.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in theology to figure out that Jesus wants us to pay attention to all that God has asked of us, even in areas where we might think “no big deal, it’s such a small matter.” So this isn’t an invitation to become a libertine about such matters.

But neither doesn’t it take that advanced degree to realize that when my focus on such relatively minor issues convinces me that justice, kindness, and walking humbly with our God don’t matter, I’m little more than a blind guide who fastidiously strains out a tiny gnat from my soup but ends up choking to death on camel stew.

Pick up a daily newspaper or spend thirty minutes watching your favorite media news source and you will see issues related to justice, mercy, and faithfulness all over the place. Walk or drive around the town or city you live in – and it won’t be hard to find issues related to justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Unfortunately – it isn’t unusual to hear self-proclaimed Christian leaders straining gnats while choking on camel stew when it comes to how we address these important issues. 

The Pharisees seem to be more focused on maintaining a preferred way of life than on taking the good news of the kingdom of God seriously. Perhaps it was some political theory that they adopted over and above the gospel.

May we not follow their steps and one day hear Jesus say, “Woe betide you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!”