Month: June 2016

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Act 3 Scene 2 Marc Antony rises to speak at Caesar’s funeral and says, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”  Thomas Jefferson was brilliant.  He was encyclopedic in his knowledge of science, philosophy and government.  He along with a handful of brilliant men gave us America. Winston Churchill stirred the hearts of his countrymen and fortified them to resist in the darkest of times.  Yet, so often I hear that both men were spendthrifts with little control over their wallets.  Why do we do this?  Why do we say things like this?  Is it to reassure ourselves that even great men are not perfect?  Why when speaking of Judas do we always talk of the betrayal and rarely speak of his genuine love for Jesus?  Why when speaking of Noah do we refer to him as a drunk and rarely, if ever, speak of him as the savior of humanity?
 
Even as I write I realize I am doing it.  In a backhanded way I am reminding you of these great men’s faults lest you forget they were not perfect.  Jonah must have been a powerful preacher but rarely do we hear about his oratory.
 
In Romans 12 Paul wrote, “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”  If we did surely we would not be sure to speak of another’s failures.  I know a man who calls me friend and yet every time he sees me he speaks of one of my failures.  I really don’t need him to do that.  I know and remember them well.  I confess I am happy to rarely see him.

I was in Walmart this week and was suddenly enveloped in a cloud so potent I almost gasped for a breath of fresh air.  He looked like he was 15 and apparently he had just taken a shower and finished off with some manly body wash.  He was a walking advertisement for Old Spice or some other manly fragrance.  I wondered how that was working out for him.  I looked around for a female 15 year-old thinking he might be on a date treating his sweetie to a trip to Walmart.  Pretty classy place for a date.  But he seemed unattached.  Maybe he was on the prowl.
 
Being that I had just read II Corinthians 2, I subsequently thought of the following, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved.”
 
What a great idea.  Paul wants us to be a pleasing presence because Jesus is in our hearts.  So, why is it then that I am often put off by the scent of some so-called Christians.  I am uncomfortable with their holy vocabulary and better than I attitude.  I should be careful here, because some people like Old Spice and others like Polo.  Perhaps the aroma of Christ comes with different fragrances to appeal to different kinds of people.  Just as one size does not fit all so one fragrance does not appeal to all.  That’s why Jesus needs all of us.  There is someone out there who needs you or me and no one else will do.

I am so thankful for the option in my email program that allows me to preassign certain senders to the junk graveyard.   I along with you probably receive over a hundred emails a day, of which 80% are unwanted.  It would be awful if we had to decide on each one each day whether or not to read it.  I love getting email from my friends and I love being able to only pay attention to the emails that matter.
 
In II Corinthians 3 Paul refers to us as letters.  He wrote, “ You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
 
I love the concept that we can be a letter from Christ to our friends and family.  How utterly awful to be junk mail.  We all know people who, when showing up, make us groan inside because we know some unpleasantness is about to descend upon us.  That’s junk mail.  But it is so grand to think that we can bring genuine joy and peace to people merely by showing up.  When that is the case we are letters from Christ.
 
Some of you might be thinking, “Did he just say some people are junk?”  No.  That’s not what I intended.  But, I did intend to say that the message some people bring is junk.  With Jesus in our hearts we can light up a room and chase the gloom of ridicule away.  Jesus makes us positive and it just spills out.  We can’t help it.

When we need to fly somewhere my wife always buys our tickets early enough so she can select our seats.  She prefers the aisle seat while I like the window seat.  She doesn’t feel so confined and I can sleep with my head against the side of the plane.  It works pretty good but there is a problem. More times than not we alienate the person sitting between us.  It’s not because we are talking over them.  We try not to be so rude.  It happens when they first arrive.  You should see their faces light up when they realize we are together.  How could they be so fortunate?  This is an opportunity for them to be noble and offer to change seats so we can sit together.  We won’t mention that they will not have to sit for hours in the middle seat.  When we decline their generosity they go hostile on us.  There is an instant disappearance of their smile and a humph.  They plop down into the seat of discomfort and rarely will they ever again say a word to us.  It is like it was our fault they bought their ticket too late to get a decent seat.
 
Now being the nice guy that I am I sometimes try to warm them up with a smile or a greeting but it rarely works.  I know what Jesus would do but I am not yet that sanctified.  Jesus said, “Do unto others what you would have them do to you.”  The Golden Rule indicates I should give up my seat.  But I revert to the Silver Rule of don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.  I never awaken them so I can crawl over them to get to the restroom.  I can wait.  After all I am a nice guy!

Happy Birthday to my dog who keeps me safe from rabbits, skunks and foremost the mailman.  She is 49 years old today making her menopausal, but we fixed that a few years ago, so her temperament is as predictable as sunrise.  Her super hearing and her sense of smell give me a sense of comfort when I awaken during the night as I hear her softly moving through the house.  Should the marauding raccoons cruise through our nighttime yard she warns them and alerts me with a very low ever so deep rumbling sound.  She makes me feel welcome when I come home from school, sometimes even when I am only returning from the mailbox.
 
I have a friend who quotes Revelation 22:15 to remind me that I better get my fill of dogs now because there will be no dogs in heaven.  My friend thinks God is a “cat person.”  Obviously this verse is a solid argument against Biblical literalism. 
 
I cannot remember never having a dog.  Jazz, my current canine, is my number twelve.  While I do not believe Jesus died on the cross for animals, I do believe Jesus wants to personalize heaven for us by making my home better than yours and yours better than mine.  Therefore, because of God’s great love for us He will do all He can to make heaven the best place ever for us.  Thus, I await opening the front door of my heavenly home and being besieged by a dozen dogs so happy to see me because I returned from going outside to get the mail.  (There will be no junk mail in heaven.)
 
So Happy Birthday Jazz.  We are off to Burger King to get you a Whopper.

Have you ever wondered what it means when the emcee of a contest tells the finalists, “Good luck to all of you”?  Only one of them is going to win. Saying “Good luck to all of you” is meaningless.  If the emcee said good luck to just one of them, that would have meaning.  However, he/she would be violating any appearance of being impartial and make it appear the contest is rigged. 
 
At first I wanted to say God says to us, “Good luck to all of you.”  That would have meaning because we can all win.  However, that doesn’t work because the word luck denotes chance as in rolling dice.  We are not saved or lost because of chance.  We are saved as a gift and lost only if we do not accept the gift.  There is no luck involved. We do not win salvation at the expense of others being losers.  However, I get the feeling that many people think luck is involved.  If asked if they are saved, many people say, “I hope so.”  Somehow, that seems to include a hesitancy that includes a bit of chance. 
 
I love what John wrote in I John 5.  He said, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”  Please do not fail to notice the word “know.”  Assurance of salvation is the difference between an abundant life and a so-so life.  This weekend we flew back and forth from Mass to California.  Without assurance of salvation I would have been listening for any strange noise coming from the aircraft.  With assurance I settled in knowing whatever happened wouldn’t change eternity for me.  That’s a done deal.

Yesterday we talked about our being imitators of God as Paul counseled us in Ephesians 5:1.  One of my really good and smart friends wrote back with the following, “Saw the subject line.  And between my old age and dyslexic eye sight. . . I thought it said ‘Limitators’!   I thought—WOW—what a fantastic new word to describe certain personalities. I could just imagine where you were headed. . . Then I saw what the word should have been. . . But, I still like ‘limitators’. . . We limit God’s love. We limit His work.”
 
His misreading was an amazing idea.  We are limiters of God.  We call ourselves Christians, meaning Christ-like, and so often are not Christ-like.  Others see us and think, “So that’s what Christ is like.”  It is appalling.  Gandhi once said he would have been a Christian except for all the Christians he met. 

My friend went on in his response by quoting a verse from the old hymn, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.
 
“But we make His love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.”   By Fredrick W. Faber in 1854
 
I am envious that I did not write this.  It is so on-target.  We are so quick to condemn the lost and to make excuses for ourselves.  We condemn other’s music because we don’t like it and on and on we go.  What an incredible challenge it is for us to rightfully show others what Jesus is really like.  If we do that we will have shown them what God is like because Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.”  John 14:9

The New King James Version translates Ephesians 5:1 as “Therefore be imitators of God.”  And I respond, “Really? Can Paul be serious?”  Just what is he saying?  There is no way I can imitate God and speak worlds into existence.  There is no way I can be a source of life by saying, “Lazarus, (or whoever) come forth.”  God is morally perfect.  I cannot be so other than by allowing Jesus to stand in my stead.   Part of the problem here is I haven’t considered the milieu of Ephesians 5.  It’s dangerous to lift any text or sentence out of its context.  If we look carefully at Ephesians 5 Paul is telling us to walk in love for others.  Even that is difficult.  To love one’s friends is one thing but to love one’s enemies is another.
 
Often we hear people say, “I only attack people who attack me.”  And that is the reason the world is in and has been in a mess for all of recorded history.  The eye for an eye Old Testament philosophy leads us into a nowhere future of just more of the same.  Paul goes on in Ephesians 5, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Therefore do not be partakers with them.”  
 
The wrath of God Paul is speaking of is not a vengeful God pouncing upon us when we do evil or just plain stupid things.  God’s wrath is passive.  He merely allows us the tragedy of reaping the fruit of what we sowed.  If when attacked we return the gesture with a turned cheek and a “I’m sorry I agitated you” we will then begin being imitators of God just as Paul counseled us.