Grace & Great Love
March 15, 2015
Pray
When we come to this place –
we come to worship God
But we also come to question ourselves;
Our beliefs / Our purpose/Our Future
I can only hope that what I have to share
Helps in that endeavor . . .
May we be soothed and challenged.
First Reading: An Excerpt from How to See Yourself As You Really Are by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“Developing a kind heart, a feeling of closeness for all beings, does not require following a conventional religious practice. It is not only for those who believe in religion. It is for everyone, regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation. It is for all who consider themselves to be, above all, members of the human family, who can embrace this larger and longer perspective. The basic values of love and compassion are present in us from the time of our birth, whereas racial, ethnic, political, and theological perspectives come later. … Since we all wish to gain happiness and avoid suffering, and since a single person is relatively unimportant in relation to countless others, we can see that it is worthwhile to share our possessions with others. Happiness that is a byproduct of loving and serving others is far superior to what we gain from serving only ourselves.”
Second Reading: John 2:13 – 22 From The Message by Eugene Peterson
When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength. Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.” They were indignant: “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to rebuild it in three days?” But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.
One of the great theologians of the Protestant Reformation was John Calvin. I, having grown up in the Christian Reformed Church, have had my fill of John Calvin over the years. Since we were not allowed to join the Boy Scouts of America (too liberal), the Christian Reformed Church formed a similar organization called, The Calvinist Cadets. I shudder these days even saying that out loud! Later, like all good kids from my church I headed off to Calvin College. Within a couple of years, I had really had enough of that and left. Later, when I entered seminary, one of the first gifts I received from my mother was a copy of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. In paperback, it consists of 700 pages of Calvin’s systematic theology. Systematics being the way that great theologians for several hundred years would make their case; systematically, point by point, for why they were right and how they were different from other theologians.
The Dutch Protestants loved Calvin because they could take his key points and use the acronym TULIP as their key. It represents the five key points of Calvinistic theology.
Total Depravity (also known as Total Inability and Original Sin)
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement (also known as Particular Atonement)
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)
The first point, and one that causes me and many others a great deal of consternation, is the point that I think is contrary to the belief that the Sacred essence is within us all; Total Depravity. Total Depravity is countered here by Paul himself, who says, “He creates each of us to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.” Work, I will add, that calls all of us to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly. Work that is taught by great teachers, going back to pre-Jesus days of the sixth century – from Gautama Buddha and (during the same century, when most of the Hebrew Scriptures were actually written) all the way through to teachers such as Mahatma Gandhi. We are good people, doing great work, in ways that draw people together seeing the positive.
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I want us to remember that this is Lent. A time set aside by the institutional church to be intentional about self-reflection and introspection. I also want us to remember that, through the miracle of birth, we are born into the sacredness of life, the beauty of all creation, and the awareness that, at our core, there is a calling (or a sense) that we are accountable to one another.
One of the problems we face though, is that the allure of self-serving ways can seem so attractive – especially in this day and age, when advertisers have become so incredibly GOOD at what they do. We have come to a point that we not only want things but we deeply believe that we need all manner of ‘things’! Ads today are produced by people who have spent years studying how to appeal to your psyche, how to keep your attention and how to manipulate your senses and keep you from looking away. Advertisers have become so good that if you can detach yourself from the engagement with the ads and observe the mechanics it can actually be quite humorous.
The other day Peggy and I were watching something on television and, of course, we just have an antenna for television reception. We see all the commercials – no speeding through them for us! In this case, what was funny was not so much what was in the ads, but the way two of them ran together. The first ad was a Victoria’s Secret ad with, well, all the images and sales pitches that Victoria’s Secret has to show and sell; and in the next instant the announcer is calling out, “2 for 5 dollars!”
More food for less money and an appeal to, well you know what Victoria’s Secret tries to sell. The point is their efforts focus on encouraging us to do more for ourselves, and they are relentless. They are good at it, and it is difficult to break out of that constant barrage.
But the work of Lent (in fact, the work of all prophetic teachers from Buddha to Gandhi) calls for us to look away from self-serving tasks and look towards work that serves others, the work of the sacred which is in us all. It is a way forward that leads to a richness of life far more fulfilling as it leads us away from the Burger King ad of years ago that invited everyone to “have it your way!”
The tougher question in all of this is not, “What should we do?” But the tough question revolves around the notion of thinking differently and being proactive about choosing what we do, which sometimes means going against popular social norms and the easy answers.
If the way we want to “do church” is different from the way we are currently doing church, what does that mean?
If the way we want to engage society is to encourage a different attitude towards church, about this community of faith, then how do we think differently?
And, if we want to move out of the stagnant life of the church, what might that look like?
I also want to be particularly clear – I am not talking about the way we do things here . . . but rather, it is the way we are when we are outside of this space, engaged in our journey of faith in the community, or encountering people whom we are called to serve, whether in actuality or by example.
We have to think smarter about being emissaries of compassion and justice. We have to be involved in the lives of others in order to offer others the life-giving, thirst-quenching solutions to loneliness. We have to learn to appreciate the richness of life offered to us through what we can offer to others.
We are NOT deprived; we are blessed; blessed with the knowledge that, by sharing our compassion, love and acceptance with others we become co-workers of all the great teachers of spiritual practices. We are created to accompany them on the path to a stronger relationship with and in the sacred, through which we are making the world a better place to be. It is a task we are on, and we are doing well. The task itself will spiritually transform you and bring to you riches we do not yet understand, nor appreciate.
This is the season of Lent. Look within yourselves, know that sacred essence, and live with one another compassionately.
Blessings to you friends!
