Small Delights

Yesterday I sat at a stop sign, waiting for an opening in traffic so I could pull onto a busy road. As I was checking to the left, I saw movement closer to me. It was a sparrow, flying-hopping up to a seed head of crabgrass, raking the seeds off, then settling on the pavement below to eat what it had harvested. I stopped watching the traffic and instead watched the busy bird until a car pulled up behind me. It was a small delight, a breath of joy breathed into my day.

Later, I was walking across a shopping center parking lot when I saw a dragonfly. I stopped, (safely out of traffic) and simply watched its flight--hovering, then moving, then hovering—until it finally flew out of sight. It was another small delight, and I felt the breath of joy I had felt upon seeing the sparrow earlier.

On a recent walk, I found a petunia growing out of a sidewalk crack. There were no other petunias around, so I suppose this one sprouted from a seed that waited through the winter for its chance to germinate and grow. Its determination and patience brought a smile to my face—yet another small delight.

In a world where we seem to crave the constant stimulation of big, splashy and dramatic events, people and things, I relish these small examples of grace and life. Saint Thèresé of Lisieux had such an appreciation of small things. She said this, speaking of the different flowers—roses and lilies, contrasted with the more common daisies and violets: I saw that if all these lesser blooms wanted to be roses instead, nature would lose the gaiety of her springtide dress—there would be no little flowers to make a pattern over the countryside.

I believe that an appreciation for small things helps us to be more aware of the presence of God in all of life. It also invites us to a more permeating discipleship because we know the significance that the smallest act can have for the world as a whole. When we delight in the small, we are more likely to do the small things that, added together, make a big difference—picking up a piece of trash off the sidewalk, feeding the birds, acknowledging a homeless person by looking them in the eyes and speaking to them.

Thèresé described her mission in life as simply “to make Love loved.” To make Love loved opens us up to an appreciation of the small and simple in life. I would argue that it is more significant than a large, showy mission because it is purged of any pride, any desire for recognition or attention and is thus pure and holy.

Belonging to the Truth

Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence.      

    1 John 3:18-19

Love well demonstrated happens when we belong to the truth. We belong to the truth when we know how much God loves us. When we know how much God loves us, we can love ourselves. When we love ourselves, we can love others. When we love others, we demonstrate love with both action and truth. The coupling of action and truth is important because our actions demonstrate love to the extent that we belong to the truth.

Belonging to the truth is different than saying you don’t tell lies. Belonging to the truth is a way of being, a permeating presence, the awareness that one is deeply rooted in, and drawing life from, the heart of Christ. When we are confident of God’s love for us, we dwell in the truth and our actions flow from that truth. There is integrity between inner and outer—inner truth and outer action.

Belonging to the truth is not moralistic. It is not incidental, that is, based on telling the truth in particular incidents. You can tell those who belong to the truth because their entire way of living emanates love. Moralists, on the other hand, emanate pride, which is fearful, judgmental and arrogant, highly concerned with controlling the perceptions of others. Moralists are focused on what others think of them and are often vocal about how moral they are. Those who belong to the truth are focused on God, acting out of their love for God, unconcerned about how they are perceived by others.

This story from the sayings of the desert fathers that illustrates the difference between belonging to the truth vs. not telling a lie:

It was said about one brother that when he had woven baskets and put handles on them, he heart a monk next door saying: What shall I do? The trader is coming but I don’t have handles on my baskets! Then he took the handles off his own baskets and brought them to his neighbor saying: Look, I have these left over. Why don’t you put them on your baskets? And he made his brother’s work complete, as there was need, leaving his own unfinished.

In this example, the compassionate brother said the handles were left over, when, in fact, they were not left over, but the ones he needed to make his own baskets complete. A moralist would say he told a lie, and yet he demonstrated compassion and showed he belonged to the truth. To have given the handles to the brother, telling him they were his only handles, would have been prideful and made the despairing brother feel worse than he already felt.

Those who belong to the truth know that they belong to the truth by grace alone, not merit, so they are humble and can extend grace to others. Because they aren’t concerned with what others think of them, they are free to act out of love for God and love for others, actions that come from a heart of love that is confident of God’s love for them. There is congruence between their inner being and outward doing—they belong to the truth because love permeates both their inner being and outward doing. They aren’t perfect; they still fall short, but because they know deeply God’s love for them, they can humbly acknowledge their failure and receive God’s grace with gratitude.

Moralists, who are often quick to tell you that they don’t lie, are actually living a lie because there is not congruence between their inner being and outward doing. While their outward doing may appear “correct,” it comes from a heart of fear, pride and self-righteousness. It is a façade that masks their inner fear.

May we know the truth of God’s love for us, and live lives of congruence that demonstrate our belonging to the truth.  Such a life is a life of compassion, freedom and joy!

Leadership

This morning at Vineville UMC in our morning prayer service using Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, a proverb quoted by John Perkins was included in the liturgy. You’ll see it in the photo. 

It’s a good challenge for anyone in a leadership role, and for a leader who claims to follow Christ, such leadership shows love and respect for the people one is leading.

This way of leading recognizes that patience and listening are important, and that offering one’s best work involves much preparation, consideration of existing conditions, and grace. It also involves an absence of ego, especially as to concern about who gets the credit or who leaves the legacy. In building on what already exists, in listening to and learning from others, a leader shows humility, respect for others and gratitude for the gifts and abilities of those who have given years of faithful service to a community.

I have seen leaders who lead with forbearance and humility and I’ve seen leaders who scorch the earth as they aggressively pursue their agendas. There are leaders who lead by demanding respect and leaders who gain the respect of others because they are not above doing whatever is needed, even the most menial task. Love, not accolades, motivates their service.

When I think about humble leadership, I think of how Paul exhorts the Philippians to model their lives after that of Jesus: who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)

Particularly in the Church, we need leaders who lead with love and humility, who listen and learn. And all of us, leaders or not, are challenged to follow the example of Jesus, not claiming special privilege, but serving with love and grace.

Being Seen

A few weeks ago, our pastor preached on Luke 7:11-17, where Jesus raises the widow’s son, restoring him to life. He talked about how Jesus sees the woman, and how there is seeing, and then there is really seeing. We can know that Jesus really sees us, and that is a comfort when we sense that others don’t truly see us for who we are or what is going on in our lives.

A blessing by John O’Donahue includes this line:

May you have friends who can see you.

That simple thought is a significant blessing because many people move through life at such a frantic pace that they are unable to see others, even those who are in close physical proximity to them. Physical closeness does not translate into being seen in the way that Jesus sees and that O’Donahue invokes in his blessing.

Being seen involves understanding, at least the willingness to understand. It means seeing another for who they are. To see another for who they are means not allowing stereotypes to govern one’s seeing. It means not projecting the actions or habits of one person on another. For example, you can’t assume that your spouse will act as your parent did.

To have friends who can see you has been one of my greatest blessings. Being misunderstood and mislabeled is painful, but is more common than it should be, especially because it takes time and attention to see another. The easy way out is to stereotype, project and label another. We think if we can do this, we can “manage” or control another.

But people are not machines or projects. We are, each one of us, uniquely created by God, with our own distinctive desires, gifts and vulnerabilities. To label another is to deny their uniqueness. If we choose to follow Jesus, then following means a willingness and effort to see others. 

Choosing a Master

But I am among you as one who serves.

                                                                                                Luke 22:27

The humility of Jesus should stop us in our tracks. In all he did, he served. His healing, his teaching, his living, even in his admonishing of the Jewish leaders, he acted with love and humility. He was always a servant of God.

Those last two words—of God—remind me of the right orientation of our service. When faced with a decision of which master to serve, there is really only one choice, and to serve God faithfully will not always appease other masters whose ways and values take us away from God’s love and mission. We who live economically and socially comfortable lives can easily be distracted from serving God. We like our power, our possessions, our comfortable morality and our freedom of choice. We are deluded into thinking we are serving God by being “nice.” Yet our very conformity to the culture within which we live tells us that our master is not God.

 Those of us who have power within churches can lose sight of who we serve when we wield our power out of fear or arrogance, when we capitulate to the temptation to be “relevant” rather than relational, when we push certain people to the margins because of lack of attractiveness, community prestige, age, ability, or economic power and elevate those who can make a “big splash.”

Jesus did not hang around the pretty and powerful. He chose those who were at the margins, who were diseased, poor and lacked influence. He identified with the oppressed and powerless, the ones we might cast aside even in our churches today.

To be like Jesus, to be one who serves when serving brings abuse, rejection and false accusation, is not easy. To choose the popular way of our culture, exercising power and might fueled by pride and greed, is much easier, because it keeps us within the status quo and keeps us in control. We have to be careful in our choice of master to serve.

Gratitude and Miracles

A recent discussion of Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals ten lepers and one returns to thank him, has caused me to consider the connection between gratitude, attentiveness and miracles. In this healing story, the lepers are told to go and show themselves to the priest and as they are on their way, they are healed. I wonder if the healing was gradual, happening as they traveled to be declared clean by the priest.

How often do we notice gradual healing as a miracle, a gift from God? When healing happens over a period of time, do we end up acting like the nine lepers who didn’t return? Do we chalk up our healing to good medicine, good fortune or our own self-care?

Attentiveness gives us the ability to see just how miraculous is life itself, as is the world in which we live. God’s activity in all of it is right out in front for us to see, touch and taste. Each breath is a miracle. Each flower is miraculous. It’s a miracle that the rain that falls is the same rain that fell on Noah, and that flows through aquifers, to be drawn up from water wells by my friends in Guatemala and El Salvador. What we may see as mundane is actually miraculous, and this way of seeing cannot help but make us grateful.

Gratitude is the key that opens us up to love God and others, that unclenches our fists to share what we have with others, to die to self, to give ourselves away. If we are ungrateful, we live with a mentality of scarcity. Gratitude grows when we recognize the abundance of every moment. Gratitude takes our action, our service for God and others, and infuses it with love. Action without gratitude does not honor God.

Every moment of life is shot through with miracles. If you have a hard time seeing them, start by paying attention to your heartbeat, which happens without any effort on your part. Learn to appreciate these small but important miracles that flood our lives with love and light!

Small Service

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. . .

                                                                                                                Zechariah 4:10a

Drilling a water well for a village with no source of clean water is a pretty big deal. The residents of Monte Cristo, Guatemala, where our mission team from Mulberry Street UMC recently traveled, had been using their already meager resources to purchase safe drinking water. They knew their wells were not good. Bringing fresh, clean water was no small deal to them.

But the well was not the only work of the mission team. My role on the team was to assist our translator in teaching health and hygiene lessons to the women and children of Monte Cristo, so that once the well was complete, they would use good practices to be sure the clean water stays clean until they drink it. With such work, we do not see the outcome of our labor. What we do is make a small beginning, trusting that the lessons fall into good soil, take root and grow and that the children of Monte Cristo will thrive as they mature.

Some of what we teach goes beyond use of clean water. One point we emphasized was what they could do to enhance the livability of their community. Things we take for granted, like trash pickup, are unavailable in the rural communities of many countries. Our translator had reminded us that we were to be examples of good practices for the community, and one way that could happen was by picking up trash from the ground and putting it into trash bags.

One day, as we were doing crafts with the women of Monte Cristo, I was picking up paper scraps, sticker backs and other assorted “craft debris” that had fallen to the ground. As I stooped over and picked up the small clutter, I recalled Brother Lawrence, who said he “would not take up a straw from the ground against [God’s] order, or from any other motive than purely that of love to Him.” As I picked up trash, I offered the work to God, my small sacrifice of love and thanksgiving. The dirt yard of Ana’s house became God’s dwelling for me in that moment. I was a joy to be able to serve Christ in a seemingly insignificant way!

So now that I am home, the challenge for me is to continue to serve in small ways, not because anyone notices, but because when I pick up even a straw from the ground, it can be an act of love for God.

Invisible Growth

The Academy for Spiritual Formation taught me many things, but fundamental to all of it was the definition of spiritual formation itself: the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. It was emphasized to us that “for the sake of others” could not happen without “the process of being conformed to the image of Christ.” There is an interior process that must be attended to in order for the outward work to be effective.

The focus on interior work was not one that had been obvious to me in my experience as a lifelong church member. I wonder sometimes if our religious communities do an adequate job of emphasizing the importance of interior work. I’m afraid our criteria for measuring one’s faithfulness is overly focused on external acts of service.

I’m not implying that outward acts are not important. We live in a world where people are hungry, homeless and hurting. But outward acts done without inward growth can lead to frustration and burnout. Thomas Merton puts it this way: The mere fact of becoming a well working cog in an efficient religious machine will never make anyone into a saint if he does not seek God interiorly in the sanctuary of his own soul.

I know that in the past I did quite a bit of “church work” that I hesitate to call “service” because I did not perform it with a servant’s spirit. Maybe I thought I did starting out, but over time I wore down and the “work” became drudgery. I believe it is because I focused more on being a “cog” in the “religious machine” rather than on growing in intimacy with God.

Indicators of being a cog might include criticalness of the ones you serve. For example, several months ago I was part of a discussion about the Sermon on the Plain, found in Luke 6. The specific verse that seemed to trigger the harshest discussion was Luke 6:30: Give to everyone who asks and don’t demand your things back from those who take them. A couple of folks were outspoken about who was “worthy” of their generosity and who was not worthy. We would all do well to pay attention to the attitudes that surround our service. It may be that we need to step back from our outward service to focus on inward growth so that our service is done with love and generosity.

In a culture that believes “what you can measure you can manage” a focus on inward growth seems to hold little value. Merton observes: One has very little evidence of progress or perfection in this interior sphere—while in the exterior, progress can be more easily measured and results can be seen. They can also be shown to others for their approval and admiration. The most important, the most real, and lasting work of the Christian is accomplished in the depths of his own soul. It cannot be seen by anyone, even by himself. It is known only to God.”

It is this uncertainty of our “progress” that leads us away from the pride of outward accomplishment to humble trust that our desire for intimacy with God is actually leading us closer to the heart of God. It is an invisible, unheralded journey, yet it is the journey that really matters.

Bearing Emmanuel

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

                                                                                                Matthew 1:23

Bear—It is a word rich with meaning. The dictionary gives these definitions for bear:

o   carry

o   support

o   endure

o   give birth to

o   turn and proceed in a specified direction

Mary carries Jesus, the Son of God, the Divine Godself, in her womb. The Light of the world was in her. Mary, by giving birth to Jesus, bears him throughout her life. Parents know that their lives are always bound up in the lives of their children for as long as both parent and child live. One never outgrows the connection with the other. Mary bears both Jesus’ rejection and his acceptance, his miracles and his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Mary bears it all, enduring the achingly agonizing death of her son, the one whose conception was announced by the angel.  She remains by the cross, supporting her son with her presence, and in the Pietà, we see Mary supporting her dead son’s body.

We too are called to bear Christ, to carry Christ within us, to let Christ be born in us and in the world by the way we let the Light shine in us. Each one of us is called to bear Christ and as we do so Emmanuel happens now—God is with us.

We are the reason Christ comes. It is only as we bear Christ that Christ lives in the world among us. Advent is not only a time of waiting and watching for the Messiah to come. It is a time for us to prepare our wombs, our hearts, to bear Christ and bring forth Christ into the world. It is how Christ comes each Christmas, through the faithful preparation of our hearts to receive him but not for ourselves alone. We give birth to Christ as we are part of his work in the world.

I pray that we all, male and female alike, have wombs prepared for the coming of Emmanuel.

Creating Hospitable Holidays

Earlier this week, I spoke to a group about hospitality. As we enter a season where many of us will either open our homes to others, or be the guests of others, it seems a good time to reflect on hospitality as a spiritual practice.

Christian hospitality is more than good manners. Whether we are the hosts or the guests, we should assume a posture of humility and vulnerability. This is likely more obvious if we are the guest in the home of another, but it should also be the case if we are hosting another in our home. As the host, we assume the posture of a servant. As Parker Palmer suggests, we let the stranger be a stranger. Even if our guests are family members, we allow them the space to simply be themselves.

Yet many times, family gatherings can turn into efforts at manipulation and domination, not expressions of love and humble service. If you have shared a meal with family or friends, and the topic of conversation has turned to what someone either at the table or absent from it has or hasn’t done or should or shouldn’t do, you know it is not an open or welcoming place to be. That is especially true if you are the target of another’s criticism or manipulation, but even if you are not the target, such conversation is uncomfortable and uncaring (although it may be couched as being for one’s own good).

St. Augustine said, “The human race is inquisitive about other people’s lives, but negligent to correct their own.” He says this because some seemed to have a prurient interest in the sexual excesses of his life prior to his conversion. When holiday gatherings become opportunities for interrogation and criticism about the lives of family members either present or absent, hospitality is nonexistent. This is true even if the inquisition is framed as loving care or concern.

Augustine goes on to say, “A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he grieves on my behalf.” True grief on behalf of another does not manifest itself in manipulation and criticism. May we practice such hospitality this season that others feel comfortable and welcome in our presence. Let us rejoice and grieve with those with whom we share space, not criticize, manipulate or interrogate them. Let us make space for grace and love.

Plastic Fruit & Poison Ivy

We’re praying this so that you can live lives that are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way: by producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God

                                            Colossians 1:10

Two years ago we had pole beans in our garden. They grew well and had lush green leaves but we only got a handful of beans. We also had some scrawny tomato vines that produced an initial flurry of tomatoes, leading us to think we would have great production all summer, but because they were such weak vines, they quickly perished in the heat.

Neither plant was an asset to the garden. What we want are plants that both grow and produce fruit. That is what God wants from us as well. I can apply myself to knowledge about God, participating in Bible studies and analyzing scripture. If that is the extent of my effort, I am nothing but an educated fool, a big empty sack of information, all head but no heart. I may know scripture, but I use it as a weapon against others, a sword that divides instead of a balm that heals.  In contrast, if I devote myself only to service, I may produce fruit, but it is fruit that comes out of my own strength and ability, and I will likely burn out. The folks that say “I’ve done my share of church work” are a good illustration of fruit without growth.

Fruit production, if it is to be sustained and Kingdom-bringing, has to be augmented with growth, and vice versa. There has to be inward growth in faith and in intimacy with God (knowing God, not just knowing about God). We don’t force the fruit. We focus on being connected to the Vine. If we do that, the fruit production takes care of itself, by God’s action in and through us.

I believe that a significant reason the institutional church does not appeal to folks is that they don’t see us growing and producing fruit. Often, the growth people see is knowledge that defends and excludes. When the focus of our “knowledge” is on condemning instead of understanding, on certainty instead of mystery, on proving ourselves right instead of recognizing our own blindness, then what we proclaim as growth is poison ivy.

In our efforts to keep Christianity “pure,” we produce vapid fruit—perfect and pretty to look at, but devoid of taste—like a Red Delicious apple. Our fruit just looks like one more activity for people to add to their already overstuffed lives. Without passion that is cultivated through a growing relationship with Christ, church gets dropped from one’s to-do list.

I would rather be part of a church filled with characters—misshapen, odd-looking fruit—than a church that looks like a bowl of plastic fruit. I want to be with those who hunger and thirst for more of Christ, who live hopeful and faith-filled lives instead of lives of pessimism and gloom. I want to be part of a church that is a living, breathing, growing plant, where fruit production is the result of being rooted and grounded in Christ.

Roots and Fruits

The survivors of Judah’s family who have escaped will put down roots and bear fruit above. 

        Isaiah 37:31

Fruit does not come without good roots. The outward signs of discipleship result from putting down good roots in the love of Christ as Paul says in Ephesians 3:17-19:  I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God.

If you have ever had a potted plant, whether a houseplant or a potted flower, vegetable or herb for your garden, you are familiar with root bound plants. When a plant cannot spread its roots because it is confined to a pot too small for it, the roots will grow more and more entangled. If the plant gets too root bound, it dies. Even if a root bound plant is planted where the roots can spread, the damage may already be too great to reverse. I have pulled up dead plants in my garden only to discover that the roots had never recovered from being root bound.  The problem with a root bound plant is that the damage is not visible from looking at the plant.

In the church, we often put more emphasis on the fruit than the roots. We encourage service, generosity and hospitality. We send people on mission trips and recruit greeters and feed and clothe the poor in our communities. We serve on church committees and teach Sunday school and sing in the choir. All these are fruits. But without a good root system, the fruits dry up due to burnout, or lose their sweetness due to resentment or become diseased and poisonous due to lack of faith. With little attention given to the roots, the fruits are no longer beneficial. Like a root bound plant, the damage may not be visible to the casual observer.

How much time do you give to reading the Word, praying the Word and living the Word? Does study of scripture and sacred texts happen for you on a daily basis at a regular time and place? Do you give your best attention each day to growing in intimacy with God, or is your attention haphazard and irregular?

When I hear people talk of being burned out on “church work,” I know that they have failed to attend to the roots. When I hear someone mispronounce a common Biblical name, it saddens me because they are missing out on the joys of familiarity with God through the scripture. When I see church leaders anxious and fearful, I sense that their roots are shallow and weak.

In many churches, much time is spent talking about how to increase numbers of members and contributions. We look at fruit, but we fail to devote attention to the roots. We talk more about evangelism and relevance than we do about spiritual formation, which is how our roots are made strong. We give our attention to doing rather than being, falling headlong into our Western belief that productivity is king.

The church will continue to suffer as long as its members focus only on fruit. Passion for God can be ignited through service, but it cannot survive without becoming rooted, which is the work of spiritual formation. It is the heart, our passion for Christ, which produces healthy, fruitful service. When Christ is everything to us, then fruit cannot be restrained.

Discipleship in Community

Every week, I look forward to Sunday worship. To be able to go and sing and pray with my church family, to hear the scripture read and preached, and to express my love, praise and gratitude to God alongside others who are similarly overwhelmed by God is joy and excitement for me. So when I knew I would miss worship this past Sunday, I was disappointed, but instead decided to be more attentive to worshipping God through the activities of the day, which were centered around moving Nick, our younger son, out of the house he’s lived in for the past year.

Nick is an intern with the University of Georgia Wesley Foundation, about to begin his third year in ministry there. UGA Wesley is a huge ministry, with over 1000 students a week participating in worship, small groups, and discipleship meetings. (You can find out more about UGA Wesley here). Other than the director, Rev. Bob Beckwith, the leadership is comprised exclusively of young adults. Students may serve in leadership roles beginning with their second year of college. Some who have served for several years as leaders may offer themselves in service as interns, where they are treated as full-time missionaries in the mission field of Athens. These interns raise their own support, living by faith on a day to day basis. Associate Directors, who are still young adults, have invested their lives in the UGA Wesley ministry for a longer term. They receive a small stipend but still depend on support.

Yesterday I saw an example of the church lived out in the world. The community that is UGA Wesley is an embodiment of the church at its best. There is love, mutual support, prayer, and sharing of resources among this group of young adults. Although leases commence and end the middle of this week, intern training also begins this week, so Nick and others could only move on the weekend. When we arrived to help Nick move out, Nick shared the plan for the move. He was moving out of the place he’s been in the past year, moving all his stuff into the garage at the home where other Wesley interns live, staying with yet another group of interns for the week, then moving into his new place next weekend. The other guys he will be living with, also interns, have all made similar arrangements through the Wesley intern family.

I know this is just a small example of the hospitality and generosity among this group, and Jim and I have experienced it many times, from the times we’ve attended worship at Wesley on Wednesday nights to the care and support we and Nick received through Nick’s ongoing lung collapses, his surgeries to correct these, and recoveries afterward. As parents, we’ve been confident that Nick was surrounded by a community of care and love when he needed it, and he has participated in caring for and loving others. There is a spirit of mutuality among these disciples that gives without keeping score, and receives with grace and gratitude.

So while I was not able to worship as I typically do on Sunday, I spent a hot summer moving day in the presence of God in the Kingdom of God. I saw the Word alive and active. Praise God!

The Right Agenda

"Yes, the law permits a person to do good on the Sabbath!"
                                                                           Matthew 12:12

It seems rather obvious to me that it is a good thing to do good things on the Sabbath, but Jesus had plenty of run-ins with the Pharisees because he healed on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were consumed with paying attention to the law, but Jesus was more inclined to pay attention to people. I know I am often guilty of being more focused on agendas and structure than observing the needs of people around me. In this way, I am more like the Pharisees than I would like to admit.

Structure and order are good until they become the goal of my life. When I fail to attend to the needs of others because doing so is not part of my day's agenda, I have made my agenda my god. In the parable of the good samaritan, this is likely what the priest did when he passed by without helping the man who was robbed and beaten by bandits. He probably had people expecting him at a certain time and to take the time to help the injured man would cause him to be late. The expectations of others and my own desire to meet those can take precedence over God's plans for me if I am overly focused on my agenda.

I must ask myself--is my concern for meeting the expectations of others driven by my love for them or is it driven by my own desire for approval? Is my motivation to glorfy God or to be praised by people? Catherine of Siena observed that all evil is rooted in self-love, so it's useful for me to examine my motives in meeting the expectations of others.

I need to consider if my service to others is motivated by my love for them or by love for myself. If I seek recognition and approval for what I do, even if my feelings are hurt when I am not thanked, then my service is not a response to my love for God and for others, but is only a way to feed my ego. If this is the case, my service does not honor God. Others may be helped, but the cause of Christ is not furthered when lack of appreciation bothers me. If I am motivated out of the overflowing love I have for God, it won't matter if anyone even knows what service I've rendered. My only desire will be that Christ is glorified and others feel God's love through me. It doesn't even matter that the recipient of my service is ungrateful if I am acting out of love for that person.

I hope I can remember that when my feelings are hurt because my actions have not been appreciated my motives for service are not what they should be. I want to be one who can serve motivated only by my love for Christ and others. That's an agenda worth having!

Those People

Against you, and you alone, have I sinned.”

                This verse from Psalm 51 was part of our Sunday school discussion today. David wrote this Psalm after being confronted about having committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband killed. We considered why David says that his sin is only against God, since others suffered the consequences of his sinful behavior.

                That’s an interesting question, and as I’ve mulled over it, I wonder if it’s easier for me to excuse my sinful behavior when it’s against another person rather than against God. Consider for a moment what David did. He saw Bathsheba taking a bath one afternoon, has her brought to the palace and then slept with her. He could have excused he behavior by saying she should not have been bathing in view of the palace, or that she should have refused to come to the palace or refused to sleep with him once she was there. At the time of Uriah’s death he offered an excuse, claiming it was a consequence of battle. But when David was confronted with his sin, he made no excuses, recognizing that it was sin against God.

                In a similar vein, I can excuse my ability to help others by blaming others for my failure to act. This really hit me during a conversation about some of the ongoing problems in our community and beyond. I can say it’s the government’s fault, it’s the school’s fault, it’s the parents’ fault, or that “those people” should get a job, go to school, stop having babies, etc. You get the idea. As long as I can find someone else to be responsible, I don’t have to be.

                Like Lee Corso on College Gameday, Jesus tells me, “Not so fast, my friend,” saying that whenever I have not helped one of “those people” (he calls them “the least of these”) I have not helped him. He puts a different face on “those people.” He puts HIS face on them. Suddenly, it’s a lot harder for me to dismiss the unwed mother, the homeless man, the teenager with attitude, the deadbeat dad, and all the others I conveniently refer to as “those people,” because each one of those people IS Jesus Christ to me. His face is on them. If I don’t see it, it’s my fault, not theirs.

                I’m running out of places to point fingers, because every time I point, I see the face of Christ, and he shows up in people I’d rather not see him among, because that means I should be among them as well, serving them without judging or making excuses. The problems in my community and in the world are no longer somebody else’s problems. They are mine. I am responsible because I claim to follow Christ and following him means that I am to live with him and serve him, and he is here, looking back at me in every face I see.