A Sacramental World

 Behold the lilies of the field...if that is how God clothes the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! (Luke 12 and Matthew 6).

Can you imagine Jesus walking through the fields, lifting up his eyes toward the mountains, seeing the trees and the birds of the air -- and seeing everything in the world proclaiming the loving care of His Father in heaven?    How much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!

Jesus forever refers to His Father as the God Who Acts in our lives, down to the smallest detail of every day.  He taught us to pray for our "daily" bread -- for the little things upon which we depend for daily life.  Elisabeth Elliot calls this our Declaration of Dependence on God:  "...to Him nothing is trivial or unimportant...He will not have us imagining that material things are in themselves unworthy....He made us human.  He made us to need what he gives. He tells us to ask for it" (God's Guidance: A Slow and Certain Light, p. 24).

Once we begin to see, through the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the graciousness of God toward us in the small things, we can begin to relax and smile -- our lives do not depend on our worry and anxious care.  It feels good not to be the "adult" here -- to rather live as a child:  whoever does not enter the kingdom of God as a child will not enter it at all (Mark 10).  Our adult lives are full of concern and responsibility and worry about tomorrow.  But that is not really how Jesus asks us to live, is it?  Seek first the kingdom of God, and these things will be added unto you.

Two nights ago, I promised a young lady that I would find a copy of God Calling for her.  Someone had been telling her about how much this small book had meant to her and how much it had changed her life when she started reading it every day.   I know the book well; it had ministered to me in the same way about 40 years ago, and I had started buying 5 to 7 copies at a time to give away.  Recently, however, I had stopped doing that.  My promise to her meant that I would have to make a special trip to Gulfport this week to find another copy for her, which of course I was happy to do.  

Yesterday, however, I stopped at the house of a friend to drop off an article I thought she might want to read.  "Oh," she said, "I have been cleaning out my nightstand, and I found an extra copy of God Calling you gave me.  I didn't realize that you had given me two copies over the years."  I started laughing.  Anyone else would call this a coincidence.  I don't!  At this exact moment in time, my friend discovers an extra copy of God Calling and saves me an extra trip to Gulfport?  When I gave her that extra copy all those years ago, God knew I would need that book this week.  And He kept it in storage until the exact moment I needed it.  

How can I worry about tomorrow, about food shortages in our country, about angry mobs attacking our nation, about people on facebook attacking one another, about our "cancel culture"? ---- all frightening in themselves and worthy of the attention of serious citizens, but not worthy of daily fear and anxiety on our part?

Our very world is sacramental, if we know how to see.  It tells us of a God of beauty, of love, and of  provision for the smallest detail.  Jesus saw the Father at work in every moment, and He invites us to walk with Him for a while so that He can point out to us what He sees.  How much fun might that be? It might actually feel like being a kid again!

A Startling Parallel

 I am constantly amazed at the ways the Old Testament --- 2000 years of history, poetry, prophecy, and teaching--- is reflected and fulfilled in the appearance of Jesus Christ on earth and in the words of the New Testament.  I recall hearing a bishop once say, "The Bible is deep enough to satisfy scholars and simple enough to be understood by a child."  We never come to the end of our amazement and discovery of new insights, no matter how much we read and understand.

So a few days ago, I read in the Gospel of Luke about the sinful woman who approached Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee.  Much to Simon's disgust, she anointed Jesus' feet with her tears and poured ointment on them.  Seeing Simon's discomfort with this embarrassing display, Jesus asks who will love him more -- the one who has a small debt forgiven, or the one whose debt was large.  In another place, Jesus comments that the Pharisees will see tax collectors and prostitutes entering the kingdom of heaven before they will.  

Today, I am reading David's remarkable Psalm 18:  

I love you, Lord, my strength;
O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my savior;
my God, my rock where I take refuge;
my shield, my saving strength, my stronghold.
I cry out, "O praised be the Lord!"
and see, I am saved from my foes.

The waves of death rose about me; The torrents of destruction assailed me; the snares of Sheol surrounded me; the traps of death confronted me.

 In my anguish I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. In the heavenly temple my voice was heard; my crying reached God's ears. 

Only someone like David, who had been trapped in the desert, hiding out in caves, pursued by those seeking his death, could have been so exuberant in praise and thanksgiving to the God who saved him, who gave him comfort and security in the midst of terror.   James H. Cone, the author of The Cross and the Lynching Tree, wrote this:  Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by by looking for pie in the sky. 

When Jesus announced "The kingdom of God has come among you," He was wrapping up the entire Old Testament in His Presence.  He went to Nazareth immediately following his baptism and temptation in the desert and announced in the synagogue, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your presence" (Luke 4:21).  And the scripture he read was that of Isaiah the prophet:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

If the presence of God in our lives is just a concept, a social construct, or a philosophy, we will be respectable in our worship, but not embarrassingly so to those around us.  If, however, the kingdom of God has arrived when the "torrents of death" surrounded us, as Psalm 18 says, when we were trapped in anguish and fear, our "religion" will be more like that of the sinful woman who cared nothing about Simon's respectability, but who could not stop thanking and praising Jesus for what He had done for her. 

 

The Dividing Line

 In his letter to the Colossians, Paul says, "Once you were alienated and hostile in mind because of evil deeds."  

Right here, I think, is the dividing line of the universe: those who are hostile in mind toward the things of God and those who are not.  Who of us does not remember being hostile in mind toward the things of God: His Word, His ways, His Presence in our lives?  Who does not recall not wanting to hear anyone speak of God, not being interested in the words of the Bible, not believing that God is present among us, acting in our very history?

The division is obviously not between the evil and the good, for according to the Parable of the weeds and the wheat, it is difficult to tell the weeds from the wheat while we are still alive.  Indeed, even in our own lives, the weeds commingle with the wheat on a daily basis.  We are all "good" in some ways; we are all "evil" in some ways, still needing to be cleansed and healed of our blindness and deafness to the ways of God.  But here is the difference: on hearing the good news that God is in our midst, some turn in hope of healing while others turn away, not wanting to hear anything about that stuff.

And while we are still hostile to God, it makes us angry to hear anything about Him.  We dismiss the testimony of those who believe in God as emotional, irrational, irritating, and annoying.  The Pharisees, for all their observance of the Law and the length of their tassels, were still "hostile in their minds" towards the ways of God as expressed in the words and actions of Jesus Christ.  He came to reveal the love of the Father to those who couldn't live up to the demands of the law, to those considered "less than" by the respectable, to women and children who were not be considered as reliable.  

I myself, despite being a lifelong churchgoer and believer in God, still did not want any overt manifestation of faith in my presence; I considered it embarrassing to talk about God, as if we had lost contact with reason and decorum.  I would not at the time have considered myself "hostile" to God, but I just wanted Him in His place -- that is, in safe sermons from the pulpit, not in my living room.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit and the amazing work of Scripture in my mind and heart changed all of that. Jesus came to make all things "new," removing the hostility toward God that spells death to our spirits, and to breathe the freshness of a new creation into our hearts.  If we are comfortable with God in our living rooms, we know that we have hope, despite the sin that still resides there too.  His presence will drive out the sin -- Paul tells the Colossians that Christ has reconciled us to God that we might be holy, without blemish and irreproachable before Him, firmly grounded, stable, and not shifting from the Gospel.  

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will let me in, I will come and sup with him and he with me (Rev. 3:20).  He didn't say, "If you are good; if you do the right things; if you "try" hard, -- He said only, "if you will open the door."  That is, if you are not "hostile in your mind,"  I will come in.

It's amazing when we think about it: God does not ask much of us at first -- only that we let Him in.  He will do the rest!

....as if God existed.....

 Jordan Peterson's book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is the number one bestseller all over the world. In it, using the archetypal psychology of Jung, Peterson finds universal human truths elucidated in Scripture.

 According to Bishop Robert Barron, despite Peterson's serious engagement with the spiritual life and the history of religion, there is no evidence that the author believes in God in the traditional sense. Barron says, "No Christian should be surprised that the Scriptures can be profitably read through psychological and philosophical lenses, but at the same  time, every Christian has to accept the fact that the God of the Bible is not simply a principle or an abstraction, but rather a living God who acts in history." (Foreword to Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity, 2021)

When asked if he were a Christian, Peterson's answer was, "I try to live as if God existed."  This is not the flip answer it would appear on the surface.  According to Peterson, once the world population reaches the tipping point wherein the majority of people (of whatever belief) do not "live as if God existed," we will have reached the tipping point of existence.

Having experienced two catastrophic hurricanes in the past 16 years, I see before my very eyes exactly what Peterson means.  I am not ordinarily given to seeing pictures in cloud formations, but on the Tuesday morning after Hurricane Katrina, having spent the night in a school hallway with no food, no water, no flushing toilets, and very little breatheable air, I was lying on the grass outside of the building looking up at the sky.  I had heard from my fellow refugees about the looting and shooting going on in New Orleans, and I was concerned about my husband in the French Quarter.  It so happened that the t-shirt I was wearing pictured Michaelangelo's Creation scene, where the Creator is separating light from darkness.  I could hardly believe my eyes -- and I will not deny that my imagination was probably overwrought at that point -- but there it was in the clouds above me:  all by itself in an otherwise empty sky, there He was, with outstretched hand, commanding Light to overcome the darkness and chaos.

I could not help but reflect on what I was seeing and experiencing at the moment: a time of clear light and clear darkness---there were no grey areas after such a disaster.  All around me in the shelter, people were helping one another, cleaning up their common areas, sharing what little food they had brought with them the day before, and hosing one another off in the extreme heat outside the building.  Meanwhile, in New Orleans, in the absence of first responders who were busy rescuing people from rooftops and attics, looters were breaking storefront windows and carrying off television sets, electronic equipment, and whatever they could carry.  A good many of them were carrying guns in case someone tried to stop them.  Even the police were fearful of the utter chaos that ruled in the city.

So here we are again, following Hurricane Ida, sixteen years later.  People are reaching out all over the city and the United States to feed, shelter, water, and care for the sick of those who are helpless, going to great lengths and extreme sacrifice to help one another.  The city of Ocean Springs and the Gulf Hills subdivision have banded together to feed refugees from neighboring New Orleans and are serving hot meals each evening to those who have found their way to that location.  One man from Marrero drove his truck to Mississippi searching for gasoline to run his neighbor's generator because she is on oxygen and needs electricity to generate the oxygen she needs.  

Meanwhile, a few looters in New Orleans are finding what they can and loading up their cars with stolen goods, not necessities.  One man complained on facebook that his neighbor has a loose shutter that is keeping him awake at night.  [Give me a break.....go fix the shutter and shut up!]

In time of disaster, those who live "as if God existed," despite their beliefs, shine as stars in a dark universe, as St. Peter described it.  In Genesis, the Word of God reaches beneath the chaos and draws out light and order.  That word/Word still speaks in today's chaos, overcoming the darkness and restoring light.  

Once we reach the point where those who fail to live as if God existed overcome and outnumber the others, we are doomed.