Compassion Still Offends Corruption

I.

I grew up in a home where compassion for strugglers was a way of life. Both of my parents had grown up dirt poor and knew what it was not to have two nickels to rub together. My mother’s parents, during much of Mom’s growing up life, were sharecroppers on a farm in Kokomo, Indiana. Later, on the best of terms with the Shinn family for whom they had worked, they came back to my grandmother’s place of birth; Gilmer County, Georgia; in search of a better life for themselves and their children--their daughter who would become my mother and their son who would become my Uncle Bob.

Life was still hard there for them so they moved to my grandfather’s place of birth; Anderson County, Tennessee; and eventually settled in Knox County--specifically, the city of Knoxville. My grandfather became a laborer on the project to build the massive Norris Dam, and my grandmother became a nursing assistant and studied to pass her exam and become a Licensed Practical Nurse. They weren’t wealthy by any means, but they were doing substantially better than they were as sharecroppers.

Mom ended up with an essentially inbred compassion for the poor, and she has shared money that she really didn’t have to share across the years with people whom she believed needed the money more than she did. I mentioned at the Christmas Eve Gathering that, recently, Bill O’Reilly said that giving to help the less fortunate is fine, but God didn’t mean for us to give so much that it becomes self destructive to us. I don’t think Mom ever understood that; she still doesn’t. She figures that if she parts with the money she thought she absolutely had to have, she will just tighten her belt in some other area so that things will all smooth out in the end.

My Dad was one of seven children born in a little cabin on Lone Mountain, Tennessee. He was the baby. One brother died in infancy. Another brother took his own life while he was a young adult, and that left four brothers and one sister. My Dad’s father was an alcoholic who sort of came and went from the family home way up in Claiborne County, Tennessee, and was dead by the time Dad was 11 years old. This left my grandmother to raise four sons and a daughter by herself.

They moved into the city of Knoxville for better job opportunities, and my grandmother, with little formal education and little work experience off a farm, got a job as custodian in Knoxville General Hospital. Some of her children would usually walk to the hospital to walk their mother home, and often that meant late when it was her turn to polish the floors, which she did on her hands and knees.

Each of the four boys joined military service as soon as they could; they didn’t wait to be drafted. Economically, being in military service made great sense for them and their family too.

By the time I was on the scene, I realized that Granny Farmer had gotten to the age where she couldn’t do physical labor any longer, and Dad’s oldest brother, Uncle Jim, who had a large family, was out of a job more than he was with one. I finally realized that one of the reasons Dad dropped by to see Granny and Uncle Jim about every week wasn’t just to visit, but to pass along as much money as he could afford to share that particular week.

Dad’s family had been so poor that it tied him up in knots to see people in need--especially children. He was the only one of his siblings to be able to go to high school, and that was only possible because the older ones worked to buy his clothes and pay his fees. He often had no shoes that fit, or they might fit but have holes in them that would let in moisture. In those cases, when it rained my Aunt Irene would walk with my Dad to school and carry him through the puddles of water so that he wouldn’t be at school all day with damp feet.

My Dad was not an extravagant person in any way, but he did invest in several pairs of shoes. We’re not talking Imelda Marcos here, but I’d say eight attractive, serviceable pairs at any given time. On Saturday afternoon while he watched any sport on television, he fanatically polished his shoes--with special attention to the pair he planned to wear to church the next day. I realized one day that plenty of shoes, attractive shoes at that, in some way compensated for the shoes he didn’t have as a little boy.

When my sister got her first teaching job, it was in a school next to a housing project where a number of very poor kids lived and were assigned to the public school where she taught. Dad would hear from Kim about children not having decent socks to wear under their shoes. I can’t even tell you the number of pairs of socks he secretly gave to the kids in need through my Sis. When he heard from Kim about a student with that kind of need, Dad--who hated shopping with a passion--would go to Kmart and buy one of those big bags of socks, and the next day at school the child whose shoes were wearing blisters or her or his heels would have not just one pair of socks to take home, but rather a whole bag of socks. I guess after a while, he just gave Kim the money, and she took care of the shopping and the quiet, private sock ceremony after school when other children weren’t around to see.

We--my sister, brother, and I--grew up with compassion for the poor a central concern in how our parents lived and how they modeled living for us. It took with each of us.

Though born to missionary parents, compassion for the poor was not a trait my now ex-wife picked up on. Once, I bought a supply of light bulbs from a telemarketer who said that the bulbs made by the blind would not only last longer than your average light bulb, but last at least twice as long as any bulb you could buy at any store. Well, I thought I had gotten us a great deal, but when she found out about it she pitched a fit. First of all she asked, how can you be sure blind people made the bulbs? They are just telling you that to get your sympathy. Second, she demanded to know how a blind person could tell if a light bulb burned for a short time or a long time. Of course, they couldn’t know, but they surely had some people working with them who conducted such tests while the blind people manufactured the bulbs, put them together by hand.

Well, she had a point, but I still thought it was a gesture of kindness; and I refused to return my box of light bulbs made by blind people. There are more potential jobs for blind people today than there were in the early 80’s when we first married. Back then, there were very few jobs for the blind--no technology at all that I know of that helped them function in a professional position. I have no idea why we divorced!

I have learned across the years that compassion for those who exercise it at all often isn’t generalized compassion. For example, a racist might care that white kids need socks or shoes, but if black children need the same items of clothing, too bad. There are those who have compassion for learning disabled children, and others who say, “I will not have my child’s learning processes slowed down as a result of having THAT slow learner in this class.” There are those who have compassion for immigrants and others who say, “If you’re gonna steal my job, the least you can do is learn the official language of my country.” Very often, compassion isn’t universal by any means.

II.

Yes, I was raised in a home where compassion was practiced as a way of life, and it rubbed off on me; yet, my compassion--as was the case with my parents whom I admire greatly--had limits. Limited compassion, obviously, is a long way from full or complete compassion as a way of life. Jesus was an extraordinarily compassionate individual, but early in his ministry he too placed limits on whom he thought should benefit from his efforts to alleviate suffering.

There’s a Buddhist commentary on meditation called “Stages of Meditation in the Middle Way School” from which we get the following pointed teaching:

Generally, everyone feels compassion, but the compassion is flawed. In what way? We measure it out. For instance, some feel compassion for human beings but not for animals and other types of sentient beings. Others feel compassion for animals and some other types of sentient beings but not for humans. Others, who feel compassion for human beings, feel compassion for the human beings of their own country but not for the human beings of other countries. Then, some feel compassion for their friends but not for anyone else. Thus, it seems that we draw a line somewhere. We feel compassion for those on one side of the line but not for those on the other side of the line. We feel compassion for one group but not for another. That is where our compassion is flawed. What did the Buddha say about that? It is not necessary to draw that line. Nor is it suitable. Everyone wants compassion, and we can extend our compassion to everyone.

The Dalai Lama has said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Henry Ward Beecher, the great Congregational preacher who was popular in the mid to late 1800’s said, “Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.” Progressive Christianity certainly lives by that notion. Have you ever noticed that the only people Jesus condemned were holier-than-thou religious people who thought God could be bought by their superficial piety? People caught up in morally compromising situations received from Jesus not criticism, but compassion.

It’s not a bad thing for those think themselves spiritually superior to the rest of us, modern-day Pharisees I mean, to keep a DVD of the film, “Dead Man Walking,” around. They should, we should, watch it from time to time and internalize the compassion Sister Helen Prejean played so compellingly by Susan Sarandon had for the Sean Penn character who is condemned to die.

The Charter for Compassion is celebrating its one-year anniversary. We have talked about this Charter in a few eblasts and in at least one issue of our newsletter, “Inside Silverside.” If the sound of it is new to you or you know you’ve heard about it, but you can’t remember exactly why, let me explain a little bit. An interfaith panel made up of some really smart people like Karen Armstrong said, with great insight, “If we keep trying to find points of theology on which we all agree, we’re going to get no where because there are fundamental differences between the great religions of the world. It is certainly possible to agree to take on some joint tasks together despite our differences, but our differences theologically will continue to exist. Since this continues to hamper what we could do if there were more bases for agreement, is there a non-theological principle around which we could all gather without reservation, without worrying about stepping on someone’s toes?” What they came up with was the Charter for Compassion. Regardless of theological bias, all the great religions of the world promote compassion so the Charter was born.

In summary, “The Charter for Compassion is a document that transcends religious, ideological, and national difference. Supported by leading thinkers from many traditions, the Charter inspires worldwide community-based acts of compassion.” Without a doubt, this is the right way to go. Some of you may have gone to the website and signed on as supporters of the Charter. I did, and I hope there are other Silverside folks on the list. They are celebrating that in a year’s time they have almost 61,000 sign-on-the-dotted-line supporters. When I look at how quickly other movements sprout and grow on line, that seems like a measly number of people in the English-speaking world willing to say, “I’m all for compassion, and I’m going to live out my commitment to compassion.”

I believe that all promotion is by word of mouth except for the original letter that was mailed around to various probable supporters. This means that any funds that come into the hands of the organization keeping this thing going support acts of compassion. I’d like to see a million supporters, and when I say supporters, I mean supporters in principle. I don’t believe they have asked for dues or membership fees.

Why wouldn’t everyone including those who are anti-religion and who do not believe in God sign on for this? We’ve already mentioned the answer to this important question, and it is that many of us who are compassionate people practice selective compassion. “Anybody who really wants a job can get one.” “She was out at night wearing that skimpy clothing; she was asking to be raped.” “AIDS is God’s punishment on homosexuals.” “Why was he driving through that part of town at all, especially at night? He asked for it. He asked to be shot.”

In a book titled, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, by Donald McNeill, Douglas Morrison, Henri Nouwen, we are stunned at first sight by an analysis of people in general in the modern world, people of faith included: “When we take a critical look at ourselves, we have to recognize that competition, not compassion, is our main motivation in life.” We modern US Americans reply to that charge by saying that our society has forced us to be competitive, or else we lose. Compassion is nice if we can work it into our lives somewhere, but competition gets the bills paid. The authors then come back at us with their unrelenting position: “This all-pervasive competition, which reaches into the smallest corners of our relationships, prevents us from entering into full solidarity with each other, and stands in the way of our being compassionate.”

Another reason not everyone shows compassion or wants it shown to others is that corruption is a painful, persistent reality in our world--at many levels--and compassion offends corruption. Many of the corrupt politicians and their handlers resist showing compassion and shy away from those who are compassionate. I think Jimmy Carter might well have won a second term in the White House had he been more able to deal with political corruption and if he had been a much less compassionate person than he was, than he is. I’m not saying someone in political office has to be corrupt to survive, but she or he has to be able to tango with those who are corrupt--many of whom are well entrenched--in order to keep a seat.

III.

It wasn’t unusual for Jesus to visit a synagogue; in fact, he probably went to synagogue worship on a weekly basis. Generally, he would have gone on the sabbath--probably to a Friday evening service even though the Jewish sabbath ran from after sundown on Friday until after sundown on Saturday. On the occasion that we heard about in our reading taken from the Gospel of Mark, there was a man at the synagogue who had a withered hand. He was obviously in need of healing, and he had come to a place where prayers for healing were known to be offered.

We don’t know if this man was a Jew or not. It probably didn’t matter to him from where his healing came as long as he could be rid of his infirmity. Most jobs were manuel labor of some sort so a withered hand, in all likelihood, limited his ability to work and provide for himself and his family. He wasn’t just trying to be well again; he was trying to be fully functional again.

There have been physicians who have read this story and suggested that the man’s malady could have been stroke related paralysis that caused the afflicted hand to wither or shrink over time. Others have suggested that the man suffered from Poland’s Syndrome, a birth defect causing babies to be born without a chest muscle--usually on the right side of the body--and on the same side of the body the close webbing of fingers and thumb. Lack of use over the years causes hand muscles to shrink.

For the purposes of our story, we need to note that whether the problem was stroke-related paralysis or Poland Syndrome, the birth defect, healing wasn’t urgent. His life wasn’t in danger. Keep that in mind.

As usual, some of Jesus’ detractors were in the crowd watching to see what he might do that would be offensive to Jewish religious law so that they could report him to religious authorities and make some contribution toward making Jesus’ life miserable. On that particular sabbath evening, these spies were just dying to see if Jesus, the compassionate faith healer, could keep himself from trying to heal someone on the sabbath of a need that wasn’t a critical need. The reason that mattered was that the law specified except in cases of the threat of death, there was to be no healing performed on a sabbath day.

Evidently, he couldn’t turn away from the man seeking healing even though the man’s life was clearly not in danger. Jesus’ compassion caused him to be aware of all the suffering the man had endured getting to that place in time. Yes, he would live physically until the sabbath was over, but maybe he had died a thousand emotional deaths because of his ailment--especially if he were Jewish because he would have been taught to believe that his deformity was a punishment from God. He wouldn’t have been the only one to have looked at it that way; so would most of his family members, most people in the community where he lived, and most tragically most of the people with whom he worshiped at synagogue.

In our culture, most of us have compassion for most people suffering most illnesses, but the majority of us do not have compassion for all people suffering from any and every illness. Many of us believe that if someone has brought suffering on her- or himself by wrong choices, wrong as determined by the critic and not the person suffering the illness, then our compassion quickly withers into uselessness as the man’s hand had done. Addicts get very little compassion overall even though addictions clearly are illnesses. The general public believes that addiction is a euphemism for weakness. The alcoholic could be rid of her or his problem in a snap if only she or he would drink in moderation. Same thing for the drug addict; the simple solution to drug addiction is to stay off drugs. Well, duh. Addiction means the substance feels more powerful to me than my strength to avoid it. People who are seriously obese get the least sympathy of all even though addiction to food is as much a reality and as much an illness as addiction to any substance. In some of the health care proposals that have floated around, people who are overweight are slated for limited coverages in problem areas brought on by their excessive weight. Weight ranges are already causes for health policy limitation or rejection of coverage altogether unless one is a part of a group where coverage is provided with no questions asked.

In any case, Jesus couldn’t help himself. How very predictable. Jesus being Jesus. Someone in need right there in his face. Could he walk away, ignore the person in need? Not likely. The spies had him.

He asked the man with the withered hand to come and stand with him. Jesus knew who the spies were in the crowd so he turns to them with the suffering man at his side and asks a question as if to the whole crowd, but really to the spies the small number of Jews who hated him kept on their payrolls. “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” Nobody said a thing.

The writer of Mark’s Gospel lets us see a side of Jesus that generally was kept out of public view. The writer tells us that Jesus was seriously angry with these people who not only made trouble for him but were trying to interfere with what he thought he could do to make this man’s life better after all these years. The anger Jesus felt was in competition for the grief that he felt for the same people because he knew that in order for them to be doing what they were doing, they were spiritually dead and needed to be grieved over for that reason.

In the midst of that sea of emotions, Jesus looked back to the man who hoped for healing, and Jesus asked him to do what he hadn’t been able to do for years at least and maybe not for his whole life. “Stretch open your hand.” The man complied and found himself healed.

The ending of the story should have been celebration with heels kicked up in joy. Yet, that is not how the story ended. Instead of celebrating the cessation of the man’s suffering, which any compassionate person would have done, the Pharisaic spies, professional tattle tales, ran to those who paid them with charges against Jesus for healing on the sabbath. The Pharisees, the Pat Robertsons of Jesus’ day, immediately, Mark says, began to conspire with the Herodians, the party that believed the Jews should always be ruled by descendants of Herod the Great as they were during the time of Jesus, about how to destroy Jesus. The reason Jesus was worth taking issue with was that he talked about an empire of God in which there was no place for Herod’s family in any leadership capacity.

These were crazy-serious people, my sisters and brothers--just like the man who walked into church and shot the doctor and killed him on the spot because he, the doctor, had conducted his medical career with compassion toward women who believed they needed to have abortions. Compassion still offends corruption.

Amen.

Jesus and You Too: A Christmas Eve Meditation

There were many remarkable traits possessed by Jesus of Nazareth--as an adult, not so much as a baby or a toddler or a teen. Two of the Gospel writers remembered stories that had been told about Jesus’ birth; there’s a brief story about his bar mitzvah when he was 12 years old. Other than that, everything else remembered and written about Jesus is about Jesus as an adult.

He was an amazing man, completely devoted to God and the radical ways of living that utter devotion to love necessitate. Jesus regarded what he was able to do in living out God’s love in countless practical ways as, ideally, normative and not unique. He believed that what he did could be done by anyone else willing to be sold out to love--knowing that God is love. He once told his skeptical disciples, “Greater deeds than I have done YOU will do.” Since we have so rarely seen selfless behavior and unconditional, no-strings-attached love at work in our world, we just, flat out, can’t believe that is or could be true. We know that we are not always selfless in the way we relate to others; we know few others, if any, who live according to a standard of loving selflessness. We know that it’s very difficult to love someone else without having a string or two attached to our love--not a heavy rope or a chain, mind you, but a little string or two. It’s hard for us to love unconditionally; we typically expect something in return for the love we dispense or live out.

The reason Jesus’ stories were remembered long enough and in enough detail to get them into writing and passed down to us is not because his earliest followers thought him divine; rather, to the contrary, they saw him as a human being completely devoted to God and completely dedicated to serving God by giving his best trying to serve others whom no one else wanted to fool with and by consistently putting the needs of others before his own needs.

I’m not sure why there are increasing numbers of newscasters these days who are suddenly self-appointed theologians. Bill O’Reilly said this week that God expects us to share with others if we have some extra that can be shared, but he said, “God didn’t mean for us to be self-destructive” in our sharing. Very few people in history have ever come close to having to worry about giving so much that it hurts them. This was O’Reilly’s way of saying that we come before others. I’m sure that many Americans who saw that quote in print or who heard him make the statement agreed and applauded. Jesus said, “If your sister or brother ask for your coat, give them your shirt too.” And that’s how he lived, which is why, by the end of his all-too-brief life on earth, he had only one garment remaining in his wardrobe.

We have to tame Jesus in how we talk about him today because few people can handle the radicality of love. Church folk like to divinize Jesus because they know, then, that they can’t be held accountable for failing to live up to his standard. “He was divine,” they say, “and I’m only human.”

Jesus said, “Everything I do, I do as one of you, and greater things than I have done you will do.” That’s kind of scary and off-putting. Besides, we want to see our religion or our spiritual practices (in case we’re not into institutional religion) reward us; Jesus’ preoccupation with servanthood we many of us look over or ignore.

Jesus did not believe that God did all the work to benefit humanity while humans ran around aimlessly accomplishing little or nothing of lasting value. Jesus believed, and lived out, a different model--that God accomplishes God’s will and way specifically by working THROUGH willing humans. At that, Jesus excelled.

The writer of the book of Hebrews, in our collected works of Christian scripture, makes a number of assertions about Jesus. Two that stand out to me you heard read earlier in our Gathering: “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” Inspiring and brilliant.

He is the reflection of God’s glory. He is not God or God’s glory any more than your reflection in a mirror is you; it’s your reflection, and if the mirror is taken away or destroyed, you will still be around. Jesus was so filled with God’s love and so willing to go wherever that love took him that it was as if a cosmic mirror had caught God’s glory, and when anyone looked at the reflection of that glory--not the divine glory itself, but its reflection--what they saw was Jesus. That reflection can be you too, Jesus believed.

Similarly, our writer said that Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s very being. Again, an imprint of something is not the original, but if God’s imprint could be made, the result would be Jesus. In living out divine love, he became an imprint of God’s being, and that imprint can be you too, Jesus believed.

The object of the season of Christmas is not to get caught in the nostalgia of a birth story at a far off time, in a far away place. The object of the season is to celebrate his birth because he grew into the adult he did and to live as he lived. You, too, may be, should be, a reflection of God’s glory. You, too, may be, should be, an exact imprint of divine being.

Amen.

Peace Is Still Possible

I.

So this week we get new national information about a changing of horses in midstream in regard to how Americans should consider the possibility of a nuclear attack on our nation by terrorists. Instead of putting all the pressure on those who are supposed to protect us and keep such horrors from happening to us IF THEY CAN, there’s now a fall back to a way of individual and familial preparedness. Instead of saying, “We will do everything in our power to prevent 9/11-type attacks on the US,” our defense and homeland security people are releasing statements more like this: “We’re not giving up our vigilance one iota, but we have to be honest and say that terrorists are both persistent and hate-filled toward the West for various reasons. There could be--there WILL BE--other attacks. We will be able to prevent most, but we will not be able to prevent all, terrorist attacks; therefore, it’s more honest to tell the American people to understand how to be prepared in the event such a horror befell us.”

The new plan hearkens back years ago to the building of bomb shelters and the purchase of water and food and toileting supplies so a family or a group of friends could survive for an extended period--until the nuclear fallout stopped raining down on our homes. There are also certain religious groups who cling to various conspiracy theories and who, today, have shelters and long-term food and other supplies.

I read about this change of philosophy, just now trickling down to commoners, in William J. Broad’s December 15 article in the online version of the New York Times. This was his opening paragraph:

Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with a nuclear bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.

Broad explains that this “advice”--surprising or shocking to many of us--is based on some newish scientific and militaristic experimentation revealing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable for those who immediately shield themselves from the instantaneous radiation, highly lethal, that comes with the explosion itself. So the deal is to get into some stable building or shelter and stay put until officials get word to you that it’s safe to come out. Broad reports that if the best you can do is a car, go for it since that alone could reduce casualties from the lethal radiation by fifty percent, and if you have a basement you can get to, even better. Therefore, if the explosion doesn’t get you, chances of survival are much better than previously thought.

Talking about it is a political tightrope since if the President or a member of his cabinet begin discussing it, hawkish politicians are going to turn on them, and the rank and file Americans are simply going to be more frightened about the prospects than they already are. Even so, there’s a behind the scenes movement to educate emergency preparedness officials who will then have to find ways to pass along what they have learned to the pockets of people for whom they are responsible.

A gent by the name of W. Craig Fugate is administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and he told the reporter that we Americans simply have to get past the mental block that says the very idea of nuclear attack is so terrible to think about that we just can’t, or we won’t. Fugate says that’s a defeatist attitude that should be replaced by knowledge of how best to protect ourselves if some terrorists accomplish what many of them would love to have the opportunity to do.

Brian Martin is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Going all the way back to 1982, he published a mind-bending article in the Bulletin of Peace Proposals titled “How the Peace Movement Should be Preparing for Nuclear War.” Isn’t a peace movement preparing for war oxymoronic? Well, you decide. This is what Martin had to say nearly 30 years ago:

Unless nuclear weapons are totally eliminated, it is a virtual certainty that nuclear war will occur eventually. The likelihood of war in any given year may be small, but the cumulative effect of small probabilities can approach certainty. The likelihood is definitely not zero. For example, it is known that US policy-makers have seriously considered using nuclear weapons unilaterally on a number of occasions....Second is the spread of the capability to make nuclear weapons to more and more countries, fostered by the expansion of the nuclear power industry. It seems likely that this nuclear proliferation will be aided at some stage by laser enrichment of uranium, a technique, which will dramatically reduce the obstacles to obtaining nuclear weapons. The question in such circumstances is not if nuclear war will occur, but when, what kind, and on what scale.

The risk of nuclear war could be removed if all nuclear weapons were eliminated--total nuclear disarmament. How could this happen? I have argued elsewhere that convincing decision-makers or mobilizing public opinion to influence decision-makers is insufficient, and that what is required is grassroots initiatives mobilizing large numbers of people in activities that challenge or transform warlinked institutions and that create new institutions.

The chance that the people struggling for fundamental institutional change will succeed worldwide in 20, 50 or 100 years is much less than certainty. Indeed, any realistic assessment of the strength of the present peace movement, in terms of its ability to fundamentally affect arms races and their institutional bases, would have to admit its extreme weakness. The peace movement seems highly unlikely to bring about nuclear disarmament within the next few years, and hence it should be prepared for the possibility of nuclear war. Whether a nuclear war is limited or global, available evidence suggests that a large fraction of the world's population may be unaffected physically. A long term strategy for peace must provide the basis for transforming the war system both before and after nuclear war or nuclear wars, and at the same time minimize the chance of nuclear war occurring in the first place.

So, if you want to be uplifted by a Sunday morning sermon, Silverside is definitely the place to come!

Where does this newish twist leave us? Sounds like a surrender to war or at least that a nuclear attack is an absolute given, an absolute fact, of human experience. No way to get rid of it; peace fails. All we can do is prepare for a nuclear incident, brace for it, accept it as a necessary aspect of human life and experience and give up the Pollyanna peacemaking.

Jump much further back than thirty years ago and to an entirely different set of cultures than we are dealing with today. Jesus of Nazareth, one of untold numbers of non-Romans, under the thumb of mighty Rome, had no bargaining chips whatsoever for use in peace negotiations if Rome would even have given him the time of day, which they would not have done. We have to say that Rome was much better than most superpowers who took over control of whole nations of people; once Rome was clearly in control, it wasn’t eager at all to reengage in battle with its conquests. As long as the subservient peoples did what Rome demanded there was peace. Peace would only be shattered if the non-Romans over whom they ruled tried to flex their own muscles in such a way as to give the impression that there might be some kind of an uprising against Rome; then the Roman troops would appear and overkill, if you will, such as when, sick and tired of various doomed-to-fail Jewish uprisings, Rome massacred much of the Jewish population in and around Jerusalem in the year 70. Then, to top things off, Rome destroyed the Jews’ most prized possession, the great Jerusalem Temple.

Forty-plus years before that happened, Jesus is still preaching and is on good enough terms with Rome. Instead of stoking the fires of hatred directed toward Rome, Jesus said sermonically, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”

II.

As far as I know, Jesus never encouraged violence of any kind--acts of war, even on a small scale, included. He was in a position to do so, but he consistently chose against it. The argument can certainly be made that he just had plenty of common sense and knew that any Jewish effort to fight Rome would result in the Jews getting squashed like flies. Rome was simply too large and too powerful and too highly armed for the Jews to have a chance at a win--though there were a few Jewish efforts across the years that made a dent but no more than a dent.

When Jesus contemplated how his ministry might evolve as he wrestled with that issue in the wilderness, temptation said to him, “You can be an exceptionally powerful man. The masses love someone who speaks well and someone who preaches nationalism. Add to that your ability to heal the sick; people see that as proof that you have the inside track with God. If you use your gifts for building up your power base, you will undoubtedly be more than successful, and if you take your leads from me instead of from God, you can end up ruling the world with more than enough troops to defeat Rome.”

Who could turn down a deal like that? Jesus could. He said to temptation, “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and God alone shall you serve.” Jesus’ ministry would not be a power trip; it would not be all about him at all. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God,” he would later preach. If that statement is true, and in Jesus’ mind, in Jesus’ reality, it certainly was true, then would it have to also be true that warmongers will not be called God’s children? Actually, no. The warmongers as well as the peacemakers are all children of God--though, obviously, the peacemakers have a greater understanding of God as Jesus himself understood God.

I have struggled with this two-sided coin--peace and war--all of my adult life, and I was raised in a context of nationalism as the true religion of the United States like most of the rest of you were. I came to the conclusion a couple of years ago, as most of you know, that God has nothing to do with war. God does not send one group to attack another group. God does not take one group’s side over the opposing group. War is strictly a human phenomenon, even though parts of Hebrew scripture, which Christians adopted as a part of their Bible, have God not only advocating war, but also getting involved in the fighting so that the side God is on is sure to kill the most people and thus win the war. I don’t think there’s anything in the teachings of Jesus that would lead us to think that he in any way thought of God as a warrior who ruled over humans who were supposed to fight God-directed wars.

So, Mr. First Isaiah was sort of tossing the present and the future back and forth in his consciousness, and he came up with something quite hopeful for his people when he said:

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Later, some Christians--never all Christians--thought this applied well to Jesus and described his personal attributes along with his mission as if he were, indeed, the messiah. Again, some Christians thought Jesus was the messiah; others didn’t. I don’t know of any point in Christian history when all Christian worldwide believed that Jesus was the messiah, the amazing individual, promised by the prophets, who would come into the world to fix all of Israel’s problems--not, incidentally, all the problems of the world.

The tricky thing is that in order for anyone to be the messiah and succeed at the mission the prophets envisioned for him, that person would had to have been militaristic, a great warrior. Jesus was certainly not that, and one of the problems with making Jesus the messiah is that “messiah” has to be redefined to fit, to suit, Jesus; so to name Jesus the messiah means that we have to say what the prophets anticipated in a messiah was, at least slightly, flawed--maybe, majorly flawed. Therefore, in order to make Jesus messiah, the prophets were in error, and a new definition of messiah had to be established that goes along with what Jesus was obviously about.

This beautiful passage from First Isaiah throws a few curve balls to those who want to make Jesus the subject of this prophecy. First, like all biblical prophecy, the temporal focus is not thousands of years into the future from when the prophets preached; they expected their prophecies to be fulfilled in the short term, generally within their own lifetimes.

Second, this excerpt from what we now call Isaiah chapter 9 reads, “For a child has been born for us; a son given to us. Authority rests on his shoulders.” Now, verb tenses can be tricky in translation, but on the surface, at least, this verse seems to say that the child about whom these majestic titles apply had already been born before Isaiah prophesied, and for some reason, by some standard, authority was already resting on this person’s shoulders. Again, on the surface at least, there is nothing futuristic about this part of what Isaiah prophesies.

What we have on our hands here is not a story about a baby, but poetry recited at the coronation of a king. The “son” given is the son of a nation, and as soon as the coronation begins authority already rests upon his shoulders. Before the crown is placed on his head, he is already responsible for the well-being of a nation. I can’t imagine.

I had one of my preaching classes listen to the sermon Dr. Sharon Watkins delivered to newly inaugurated President Barack Obama and a packed National Cathedral a couple of years ago. She is a gifted preacher, and she presently heads the Disciples of Christ denomination. Early in her sermon, she talked briefly about what our nation needs in a leader, and then she said, “Tag, Mr. President! You’re it!”

In any case, this king to whom Isaiah referred isn’t coming at some time in the future. This king was already there when Isaiah first uttered these words--possibly at the coronation itself. King Ahaz died during Isaiah’s ministry, and Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, the heir to the throne, was elevated to king. In all probability, these poetic accolades were intended to describe what the prophet hoped the young king could become, titles he could rightfully claim during his reign.

British Hebrew scripture scholar, Ronald Clements, has made the fascinating suggestion that the majestic titles that most of us know more because of Handel than from reading the Bible were developed because of a practice the Hebrews borrowed from the Egyptians who created these over the top ways of describing their pharaohs when they were enthroned. In Hezekiah’s case: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Wow.

• “Wonderful Counselor” would describe a sovereign who was a wise and effective guide for the people over whom she or he ruled.
• “Mighty God.” Why in the world would a people committed by now to monotheism call anyone other than God “God”? The very thought would be blasphemous. Translation. Translation. Translation. Professor Clements says a more accurate translation of this title from Hebrew into English would be “Divine Warrior.” The people believed that if they were right with God they would win the battles in which they engaged, and part of winning involved having a leader with the ability to devise and implement effective war strategies.
• “Everlasting Father” is akin to, “Long live the Queen,” or “God save the Queen,” in England today. Clements says we should translate it as “Father For Ever.” It was a hope for longevity to Hezekiah’s reign, and certainly many ancient people saw their king as their nation’s father figure.
• “Prince of Peace.” Stunningly, this title is never applied to Jesus by any writer of Christian scripture. It is perhaps inferred as appropriate by those who took Jesus to have been the messiah, but the title appears no where in the New Testament. At least the warfare expected wasn’t taken to have been an end in itself; if there had to be war, it should lead to peace, and, indeed, the ancient Hebrew vision of where the world would end up when all people finally saw the wisdom and the necessity of God’s ways was at a place of permanent peace.

III.

The biblical “Prince of Peace” was King Hezekiah who barely if at all lived up to this coronation throne-name. Still, we know that Jesus was about peace throughout his life, and as I said earlier he blessed peacemakers in his most remembered sermons. For those of us who are gripped by Jesus’ moral teachings and by his exemplary life, there is an undeniable impetus to be peacemakers. There is also another reason to be a peacemaker whether or not Jesus and his teachings mean anything to you; it’s called “common sense.” After that, we could also list humanitarianism.

Is peace still possible? I say, “Yes, it is,” and I’m not a person whose attitudes are untouched by a measure of skepticism. Even so, I believe that peace is a possibility IF enough people care enough about it to make it happen. Peace isn’t just going to happen because a handful of people of good will desire it.

Alex Lickerman is a medical doctor who happens to be a Buddhist. He took on this topic in, of all places, the magazine, Psychology Today. His article was published in February of this year under the title, “How World Peace Is Possible.” The article was subtitled: “Just Because Something Is Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Impossible.”

Early in his article, Dr. Lickerman made the following point, which is critical to any movement that may be made toward peace:

Countries don't go to war. The leaders of countries go to war. They marshal their reasons, stir up the public, dehumanize the enemy, and send out their forces. The number of people actually responsible for the decision to go to war can usually fit comfortably inside a single large-sized room. Leaders, of course, only occasionally represent the best of what humanity has to offer....

So, how can it happen? Dr. Lickerman, claiming to be no Pollyanna, offers this solution:

To achieve world peace—to create a world in which war ceases to break out—seems impossible because of the sheer number of people who haven't yet mastered themselves, who haven't tamed their ambition to raise themselves up at the expense of others, and who haven't learned to start from today onward, letting past wrongs committed by both sides remain in the past. In short, it seems an impossible dream because we're in desperately short supply of human beings who are experts at living.

Only a few years ago did I stumble upon Mark Twain’s “War Prayer.” It is a sobering short-short story. Written before women served in combat for the United States, a town is about to send many of its young men off to war. Many of them with their families gather for worship on the Sunday before deployment. The pastor prays for these fighters--for their safety and for victory for the nation and the American flag.

Just as the prayer was finished, a stranger, an old man, walked up the aisle toward the pastor and continued right on up to the platform. In his deep voice, he asked the pastor for permission to address the congregation, and the pastor was too startled to say, “No!” The stranger said to the congregation that some prayers, such as the one they had all heard their pastor pray moments before, have two parts--the part that is uttered as well as heard AND the part that is unuttered but voiced in one’s heart. Then he said that he wanted to speak the prayer that hadn’t been spoken by pastor or people, but nonetheless prayed in silence while the public prayer was being prayed aloud. Here is what the stranger said was prayed in the hearts of pastor and people:

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them--in spirit--we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

I believe not only that world peace is possible, but necessary--absolutely necessary. The vision of world peace has been in the hearts of many through the ages, including many people around the world today. Even the ancient Hebrews, many of whom believed their God was a God of war, managed to envision--again through Mr. First Isaiah--a world that finally sees peace as the only way:

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that God may teach us divine ways and that we may walk in God’s paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

The Native American most noted for his profound insights into spirituality was Black Elk. Concerning peace, this is what he had to say:

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

That’s a vitally important insight, maybe not so very far from the simple song that moves many of us, “Let There Be Peace on Earth, and Let It Begin in Me.”

• William Gladstone: “We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”
• Benjamin Franklin: “There never was a good war or bad peace.”
• The Buddha: “Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.”
• Kofi Annan: “There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace.”
• The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955: “Here then is the problem we present to you stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall [hu]mankind renounce war?”
• Eleanor Roosevelt: “It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”
• Albert Camus: “Peace is the only battle worth waging.”
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”
• Kathe Kollwitz: “Each war is answered by another war, until everything is destroyed...That is why I’m so wholeheartedly for a radical end to the madness...Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is work, hard work...those lovely small apples out there...everything could be so beautiful if it were not for the insanity of war...one day, a new idea will arise and there will be an end of all wars...People will have to work hard for that new state of things, but they will achieve it.”

Amen.

Parents Still Dare to Point Their Children to the Reality of Divine Love

I.

When Lindon and I were first married we, and almost all the young couples in our age bracket whom we knew in the seminary, were asking ourselves questions about children, “Should we bring children into this awful world?” For a while we wavered, and I think we would eventually have decided, “Yes,” on our own. A letter from her father, Dr. Franklin Fowler, certainly tipped the scales, though. The hand written letter, in a physician’s script no less, said something to this effect: “Think about all the children being born today to parents who will not raise their children to embrace God’s love and act on it. If your generation gives up on bringing children into the world and showing them God’s love along with the need to act on that love to change the world, what hope for any of us is there?”

Certainly, a world with enough people who embrace God’s love and who act on God’s love to make the world a better place is just about the only real hope there is for the world. Children who grow up in the midst of problems and dangers, never being shown or taught that there’s any other way to live, aren’t going to create an improved or improving world. There are a few natural born humanitarians, but they have always seemed scarce so the world of religion focussing on divine love for the whole of humanity is our greatest hope indeed.

Two thoughts may be occupying your critical minds, competing for attention with all you have left to do to be ready for Christmas. One, is that a selfish reason to bring children into the world? Isn’t the best reason to bring children into the world to let them taste of life and live it to the fullest as they alone decide? Well, if untaught children had a fighting chance to make something good of life for themselves, not even taking others into consideration, that might be worth noting. A point to take note of, too, is that children who as adults make the world a better place are making it better not just for others, but at least to some degree also for themselves although we have to acknowledge that many of those who make the world better for others greatly sacrifice and end up getting to enjoy very little of the change they invest themselves to bring about.

Moses, for example, was a child of promise. Only through an amazing turn of events did he live through infancy, and only through another set of amazing circumstances was he adopted as the son of the Pharaoh’s compassionate daughter, raised in the palace, and taught Egyptian ways while keeping his family’s secret that he was really a Hebrew, not an Egyptian, and managing to learn the ways of his own people as well. This gave him the unique position of being able to lead his people, the Hebrews, out of Egyptian slavery and to their freedom in another land.

He led the children of Israel through the fabled forty year sojourn in the wilderness to get them to their place of freedom. A forty year gig--that requires sacrifice, even if you’re enjoying what you’re doing. And, in Moses’ case, he certainly didn’t enjoy much of what he had to do to accomplish what he was certain God had called and kept calling him to do. Surely, there were many nights when he went to sleep on the desert sand after having led his whiney, complaining, self-absorbed sister- and brother-Hebrews, when he thought to himself, “You know, if I’d just stayed away from that damn burning bush, this never would have happened, but no, no no, you always have to get your nose into anything that looks odd or unusual. As long as I stayed in the palace, I had it made, and if I were there now, I’d be sleeping on a Comfort Plus Bed, hand made for me, with Egyptian cotton sheets woven with a 900 thread count. I’d be surrounded by servants, and I’d be served the finest foods available. I wouldn’t wake up every morning wondering if enough manna had fallen overnight to feed us. I should be grateful that the manna is filled with nutrition, but it tastes like unleavened bread dough.”

Sometimes, Moses got just as angry about their plight as did his charges, and while they complained to and criticized him, he complained to and criticized God. The God of the book of Exodus got fed up with Moses’ disrespect, and when the survivors finally reached their destination after those long, long forty years, everybody who finished the journey got to enter the promised land except, of all people, Moses. God told him he had shown too much disrespect to God Godself to get to enter what he, Moses, had given his life to experience. Yet, faults and all, had it not been for Moses the Hebrews might very well still have been the slaves of the Egyptians. Looks to me like he’d have been given something of a break for that. His consolation prize, if you know that part of the story of the Exodus, was to get to see God’s rear end. The deal was no person could see the face of God and live; Moses begged for the chance to see God since he would not be allowed to live in the land of freedom to which he had led his countrypersons. God said, “You know the rules. If you see my face, you’ll drop dead. But I’m going to let you stand over there in the cleft of the rock, and when I pass by you’ll get to see me--not my face, but my backside. Not great, but better than nothing.” I’m sure Moses’ understanding of God was forever changed after that image, which I’m certain he was never able to get out of his mind.

Dr. King was able to enjoy a taste, but just a taste, of the freedom for which he fought for oppressed persons of color in this country. Without his understanding of divine love for the whole of humanity--regardless of the color of anyone’s skin--who knows when persons of color in this country would have had freedoms equal to the freedoms of caucasians. Without Dr. King there would not have been a Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court. There would not have been a Barbara Jordan in the US House of representatives. There would have been no Hiram Revels in the US Senate. There would have been no black kids and white kids in the same schools and certainly no black teachers teaching white children. Dr. James McCune Smith and Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler wouldn’t have been allowed to graduate medical school and allowed to practice medicine alongside white doctors. Jackie Robinson would never have been signed to a baseball team willing to integrate. Marian Anderson would never have broken the racial barrier on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Condoleeza Rice would never have been named Secretary of State, and Eric Holder would never have been called Mr. Attorney General. And, there certainly wouldn’t have been a Barack Obama in the Oval Office. Only a handful of these firsts for Blacks was Dr. King able to see before an assassin’s bullet took his life as he stood on the balcony of a mediocre Memphis motel.

He changed the world, though, didn’t he? Had his parents not brought him into the world and taught him about a God who loved all people, even Black people, chances are great that he would not have taken up his life’s work with the intent to make the world a better place.

Most of us who have children and who have tried in our various ways to teach them of the love of God see them as adults at work in their corners of the world making the world a better place. They are the business people who work ethically when there are untold numbers of opportunities to sidestep ethics for personal gain. They are the nurses for whom the welfare of each of their patients is of paramount importance; nothing comes before that. They have taken up the call to protect American freedoms and served with bravery and distinction in the military. They are in schools teaching children, never mentioning God, but still demonstrating God’s love through patience, concern, encouragement, and grace.

There are plenty of reasons to question or debate the contention of many--inside and outside organized religion--that God is love, but my parents taught me this truth by word and deed and backed it up with enrolling my sister, my brother, and me in Sunday School--where, thankfully, most of our teachers kept the focus on divine love and spared us threats of hell. Parents are our most influential teachers; if they don’t have the courage to say, “However you find your way to God is your business and your adventure, but I want you to know that God is love; and I hope, as open minded as you want to be, that you will not pay much attention to anyone who’d tell you that there is anything to God other than love.”

II.

The ancient Hebrews were nomads. They might have been taught the Hebrew language by people in given tribes known to have a knack for teaching children the language, and, undoubtedly, the children learned about the history of their people and the way their people looked at the world through prized stories and thoughtful myths--told by gifted and highly regarded tribal storytellers, as was also true for Indigenous American tribes. Otherwise, teaching was left to parents--and that included religious instruction. Rabbis and synagogues hadn’t come along, and if the children were going to learn family values and the things of God, it was up to the parents to teach them. Such teaching was a sacred obligation, a profound honor--to shape a life with God-awareness.

You heard the very direct instruction to parents read in the thought challenge today. “Hear, O Israel, all of Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Other deities are of no concern to us. You shall love the Lord your God with all your feeling and thinking capabilities, with your inner core, and with all your strength. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Don’t you forget them for any reason, and don’t let your children ever forget them either. In fact, you should recite them to your children all the time; talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead, write them on doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

The summary of what a parent was supposed to teach a child centered in Yahweh as the one and only deity of concern to the Hebrews and the proper response to God--namely love. When monotheism finally evolved to a full-blown and widely held perspective, then the commandment took on new meaning; it reminded the people not only that Yahweh loved all people and that Yahweh was, after all, the only God there was for any people. By the time the book of Deuteronomy was written, where we find these admonitions, parents literally surrounded themselves and their children with reminders of those two essential facts. You can still see orthodox Jews today wearing little boxes around their heads, at least on the sabbath and maybe daily, with tiny bits of scripture in them proclaiming Yahweh as the one God and the proper response to God as love with one’s whole self. These little boxes are phylacteries. I think it was the remarkable Jewish painter who also worked his art into stained glass, Marc Chagall, whose painting of Jesus on the cross--one of several, “The Yellow Crucifixion,” perhaps--portrayed Jesus with one of these phylacteries around his head as hung there dying. I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of Jesus on the cross, but Chagall’s painting of his fellow Jew, Jesus, is the only one that took into full account Jesus’ Jewishness, even on the cross.

If Chagall’s hunch were correct, we can imagine that until the pain took over, much of Jesus’ attention on the cross was focused on those two primary affirmations that his ancestors had said were essential for every Jew to know and for every Jewish family to teach. So, in Jesus’ situation, because of the effective instruction his parents had given him, he was thinking, “I have not lived my life in vain; there is one God who is love, and the way I respond to that divine love is by loving God in return with all I am and have.”

Reminders would be carved into gates and doorposts of homes when the Jews cut back on nomadic activity and settled into towns and villages where they could have their own immovable residences; this was done so that even before entering the house, these critical theological affirmations were in the consciousness of all who entered--children and adults alike. We could scoff at the ancient methods as overkill, but if we put ourselves where they were, perhaps it wasn’t overkill at all. At least what they were teaching was consistent and wasn’t silly cliches and slogans by which some Christians today attempt to teach children and others new to the faith what they supposedly need to know about God.

I wonder if many of us theological progressives today, we liberal seeker types, are ashamed to try to remind our children that we believe God is love or if, because we can’t settle in on what God is to us at the moment, we end up saying nothing at all to our children about God and divine love. After all, we have our own struggles, and we know we are on a journey; we’re learning new things all the time, and our minds change along the way. We don’t want to confuse our children so we say nothing about God at all. Maybe we take them to Sunday School because someone there isn’t afraid to say, “God is love,” in ways children can understand and relate to and remember, and that’s an excellent reason to bring children to church. Still, our Sunday School teachers expect to be building on a foundation laid by parents for openness to God. There are certainly no religious symbols in our Protestant homes--no St. Francises and no Virgin Marys--and rather than encouraging open and free discussion about God, not dogmatic-you’d-better-believe-this-or-hell rules we choose silence. We miss out on talking consistently as a family about where God fits into the picture in events that have an impact on a child’s life. If you made an F on your math test, or you flunked English because you don’t know the difference between an appositive and an apostrophe, God did not will for you to fail your exam. God leaves us to use the brains we have to study and to ask for help when we come across something we don’t know.

I was so touched to get an email from Jason Hale a day or so after his stepfather died saying that he and Molly wanted to know how to talk to their girls about this death. What good parenting! Teachable moments are critical, and modern seekers are much more likely to use those than to try to get their kids to swallow a bunch of rules and call that religion. Keep the rules or burn in hell, not God is love. Even as our adult hearts are heavy, such as when we’ve lost a loved one to death, God is not absent, but present and should be discussed.

One of the terribly difficult lessons to teach children is that God does not cause evil, and there is no devil warming it up on a hellish stove. Most people are good, but there are people who do bad things--individually and especially in groups. And, sweet children, we must keep our eyes open for both. In a world where there has always been plenty of bad, we should keep teaching our children that God is love. Love, sadly, does not eradicate evil, but it does win its share of battles against it--even if they are small and infrequent battles.

When Jesus was a mere eight days old, Mary and Joseph made preparations for baby Jesus’ circumcision and for Mary’s post-delivery purification. Jesus, naturally, didn’t know a thing in the world about what was going on; he did know that after a lot of strange people were oooing and ahing over him with happy smiles on their faces, he felt something really painful. Perhaps his parents, Mary and Joseph, would one day teach him the importance of covenant with God and why circumcision became a part of confirming that covenant. Even if he grew up to think there must surely be many less painful ways to confirm covenant, he at least understood that his parents were trying to demonstrate for him, though he wouldn’t know it until he was well into his growing up years, that identifying oneself with God is one way to show love for the God who is love.

We don’t perform circumcisions around here or even infant baptisms. We do family dedications when a new life becomes a part of the Silverside family. The baby has no clue what I say when I present her or him to the church, but the parents do; and hopefully the day will come when while driving on a family vacation or sitting in a park having a family picnic the parents tell the child the story of the day that Pastor David or Pastor Farmer presented her or him to the whole church because the church wanted to join with mommy and daddy or mommy and mommy in making sure that she or he heard about and saw acted out the fact that God is love.

III.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem and taken for circumcision when he was a tiny 8 days old and then a short time later to the great Jerusalem Temple to be consecrated, we don’t hear another word about Jesus in the materials the church adopted as holy scripture until he was 12 years old, going again to the Temple, but this time for his bar mitzvah. “Bar mitzvah” means “son of the covenant”; it ushers a Jewish boy into adulthood in the eyes of his faith community. Nowadays, in Reform or liberal Judaism, girls too go through the rite; it is called bat mitzvah, “daughter of the covenant.”

To be ready for this momentous day, he had to be able to read from Torah, and he had to have adopted as his own key points of centrist Jewish theology. He had continued to learn from his family and probably also from a rabbi or two here and there. It was his day to shine, and shine he did. He so impressed the professional clergy who worked at the Temple with his answers to their questions and his own questions of them that they were captivated with him. When his family got their large group together ready to leave Jerusalem and head back home to Nazareth, everyone assumed someone else had made sure Jesus was with the group and heading home with the rest of them. Well, into the trip, they found out that wasn’t so. Therefore, the lot of them had to turn around and retrace their steps back to Jerusalem where Jesus was still talking to the professional clergy who were so impressed with his knowledge and his insights that they all had lost track of time causing Jesus to miss the group traveling back to his home.

I can identify with Jesus at this point because when I was about his age, after a Sunday evening church service, I was left behind at church. Mom and Dad had invited a few couples over for a Rook game. Everybody thought somebody else had seen about me and got me home. At home, the adults all started their Rook game, and the kids all headed back to my bedroom and my sister’s bedroom to start the play time. I wasn’t missed in my own home. This could have something to do with the personality disorders with which I struggle yet today.

The pastor was in a hurry to leave so he unlocked the office for me and saw that I had access to a telephone, but he left too; and there I was in a big old empty, dark church all by myself. I was more than a little scared, but I called home; and Dad answered the phone. I said, “Dad, why did you all leave me at church? I didn’t even know you were leaving?”

Dad said, “You better get your butt off this phone and stop the foolishness. I don’t know how you made this phone ring, but if you all are back there thinking your going to bug your parents all night, you’ve got another thought coming.” Then he hung up on me. OK, so I’d played one too many practical jokes, and they were coming back to haunt me.

I called again, and the second he answered the phone, I started speaking as quickly as I could before he scolded me again or hung up on me. “Dad, you all left me at church, and I’m the only one here. I’m scared, and I want to come home now. I’m not kidding. I’m really scared here. It’s spooky being the only one in the church.”

He said, “David Farmer, I’m going to come back into your bedroom and tan your hide. I told you to stop your nonsense so we can play cards.” Well, he went back to my bedroom and found other kids there playing with my things, but no me.

I figured I was going to have to sit there in the church office by myself for two or three hours, until all the company went home at which point they would finally discover that I really wasn’t there. In about 15 minutes I heard a car horn honking like wild outside the church. I peeked out the office window and saw Dad’s car. I ran out; the door locked itself behind me, and there was Dad with the oddest grin on his face. “This is really funny, isn’t it?”

“Uh, NO!” I answered.

“Well, don’t pout and be a baby about it. Take my word for it. It is funny, and you’d better laugh with everyone else when you get home. Someday, if you don’t see it now, you’ll laugh your butt off.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t wait for that great day to come.”

When Jesus’ parents were back at the Temple, which--by the way--was a HUGE complex, they finally found him. They were exasperated. He got a good scolding, but in his defense he said to his parents, “I was here seeing to God’s business. Isn’t that what you always told me was the most important thing in life?” So, parents what are you going to say to one of your offspring who offers that excuse to you?

Cleared throats, apologies from Mary and Joseph, “Well, uh, sure, son, but when you travel with a group, you travel with a group; one person can’t lag behind even if that person thinks she or he has important business.”

“No problem,” said the gifted 12 year old. “Let’s go.” And even though Joseph and Mary were frustrated because of the backtracking, they were too proud for words that their son had not only become a son of the covenant, but also had impressed the scholars who worked at the Temple day in and day out.

The thing is, my dear friends, it worked. The instruction they had carried out in their home had prepared Jesus for a ministry, at that point, none of them--including Jesus--anticipated. The point is, though, that when his mission or ministry became clear to him--or, at least clear enough--he was prepared.

If you’re a parent to children still in the growing up phases, teach, teach your children well that God is love. The world is a crazy, dangerous world; yes it is. Even so God is love. Awful things happen to the finest of people; it’s unfair, and it’s unnecessary. God doesn’t cause those things; God is love.

Once any of us has been bathed in the light of God’s glorious love, we can’t help carrying that love into the world wherever we go. Love is the only thing that can change this world for the better, and I, therefore, challenge parents to dare to point their children to the love of God. You can’t offer them a better gift; nor can you offer the world any greater hope than a child who becomes an adult who knows that God is love and lives accordingly.

I have always enjoyed the words to the Christmas hymn, “Love Came Down at Christmas,” by Christina Rossetti. There are two or three tunes to which it is sung, and only one of those do I really enjoy.

Love came down at Christmas,


Love all lovely, love divine;


Love was born at Christmas,


Star and angels gave the sign.

Love shall be our token,


Love shall be yours and love be mine,


Love to God and to all men,


Love for plea and gift and sign.

Giving poetry it’s chance to exercise poetic license, I still think it’s important to recognize that while love may have come down at Christmas, that was not it’s first visit to the abode of humanity, but without a doubt, love must be our token.

Parents, it’s really up to you. There is limited opportunity for your child to learn that God is love unless you tell her or him. Even if you’re not sure of all that means. Even if it’s going to spark some questions you don’t think you’ll be able to answer. It is your responsibility to lay that groundwork in your child’s consciousness and to live out the reality of God’s love in you as you parent in this crazy world. You’ll be planting seeds in your child that you likely will never see full-blown, but you’ll see some of it; and you’ll know you had a hand in pointing people to the one thing that can right the wrongs of human experience.

Amen.