For while we were still weak

During the summer between my first and second years at the Episcopal Theological School (now the Episcopal Divinity School), I was a student chaplain at a state mental hospital. One day I was passing through a ward on my way to the ward to which I was assigned. I was walking quickly, chiefly because I was late, but also because I was aware that I was intruding on the living space of the ward's patients. Before I could make my way to the exit, a man approached and asked if God could forgive him. Not wanting to spend too much time in conversation, I asked him if he ever murdered anyone. He looked shocked and told me that, of course, he never. I replied that it was certain that God could forgive him, because God had forgiven Paul, who, at the very least, had conspired in the murders of the first Christain martyrs.

Paul understood the nature of sin and that it is in our human weakness that we fall under the power of sin. Paul knew that humans could not, by their own strength, escape from the power of sin. Having discovered for himself how God deals with sin and with sinners, Paul preached the Good News of forgiveness and reconciliation to Jew and Gentile alike.

Roman Catholic priest and theologian James Alison has suggested that the experience of the Resurrection for the disciples on the first Easter was the experience of being forgiven. All of them had, in one way or another, been unfaithful to Jesus - Peter in a very public way, but all of the rest in less public ways. When Jesus appeared to them, he didn't dress them down or chew them out for having failed him - something which most of us would do - but he simply said, "Peace be with you." Peace - the gift of being forgiven, the gift of being reconciled with Jesus, reconciled with God.

Alison has also suggested that God understands sin as that which can be forgiven. Far too many Christians think that God's attitude to sin is best reflected in the bumper sticker, "Jesus is coming back and he's pissed." But that certainly isn't the way that Jesus came either in his ministry or in his Resurrection. Jesus came with forgiveness and the power to transform us , and why should we expect that in his coming again it would be any different?

The Death of the Adverb

I understand that the English language is changing and that it is foolish to think that we can speak and write as our parents and grandparents did. But I still fight against the death of the adverb in spoken English here in the US.

This morning I heard a student from one of the best high schools in the country say that she was "real excited" about volunteer work she was doing. Real excited, not really excited. Up until the past year or so, I thought that that kind of obvious mistake would mark the speaker as uneducated, but no longer.

Some would say, and rightly so, that there are different standards for written and spoken English. The problem is that over time spoken English influences written English, and influences it for the worse. The subjunctive is hardly ever used in spoken English and it is disappearing in written English. The transitive verb "to lay" is quickly displacing the intransitive verb "to lie," and were I to say, "I lie in the road," one might think that I meant that I was not telling the truth to a member of the Highway Patrol.

Compared to much else that is wrong today, these are, I admit , minor concerns. This is not, as my mother used to say, a ditch in which I am willing to die. I am willing, however, to resist this tide of change, to use adverbs gladly, to say "lie" when I mean "lie," and to say "If I were president" and not "If I was...."

By Stages

And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb. (Genesis 12:9)

I recall standing in the driveway of our home when I was 10 waiting, but not at all patiently, for it to be time to go to the town fair. Fifty years on, I still struggle with my impatience. When I want something, I want it now.

But that's not the way important things happen in our lives. Like Abram, who "journeyed on by stages," we move towards life's important goals and events by stages, at times, it seems, by baby steps. A wise friend once told me that healing may come quickly, but growth takes time. God's promises may come to us in an instant, but the securing of those promises usually takes time.

Abram was promised that he would become a great nation, a nation that would in future generations be given a land in which to dwell. It was years before Abram and Sarai would have the son, Isaac, who was the promised heir, and it would be hundreds of years before the children of Israel would possess the land. When we read the story of Abram and Sarai in Genesis, we read of moments when Abram's faith in God wavered, when he seemed not at all sure that God would keep the promise. But in the end, Abram "believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." (Romans 4:3)

This past weekend our son Matthew graduated from law school. He has a diploma and a job that will begin in September, but much of his time during the next two months will be spent preparing for the bar exams, and he expects that he would not be admitted to the bar before next February. Like so many graduates, Matthew will journey by stages towards his goal. Like so many graduates, he will have moments when we wishes that the goal could be achieved in an instant. And like his father before him, he may struggle with impatience. In the end, however, I believe that he will trust that God has called him and has been preparing him for this vocation , and he will travel by stages towards the realization of God's promise.

Pay Attention!

Eugene Peterson paraphrases Matthew 6: 34 - "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now..."

We live in very anxious times. It seems clear that the old phrase - "God is in his heaven and all is right with the world." - no longer rings true, if it ever did. There is so much that is wrong in this world, so much evil, so much death and destruction, so much that can produce in us, if we are paying attention, a lot of anxiety, a lot of worry. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to pay attention, to focus on what God is doing right now.

That isn't easy and it certainly doesn't mean that we should ignore all the anxiety-producing events in the world. A colleague once rewrote the words of an old Gospel hymn. He suggested that when we turn our eyes upon Jesus and look full in his wonderful face, the things of earth will not grow strangely dim, but will be clearly see, in the light of his glory and grace. When our focus is on what God is doing, we see the world in a new way, we see in lots of places, in what Celtic Christians call thin places, signs of God working, and working through people like you and me. We see God at work and we are not anxious.

We can see it Myanmar, not in the intransigence of the generals, but in the persistence of those who want to help. How much easier it would have been for them to have walked away when the generals said, "We don't need your help." And that refusal to walk away, that persistence, is a sign that God is at work.

Jesus could have walked away from us. During what we now call Holy Week, Jesus lamented over Jerusalem - "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing." How easy it would have been for him to have taken all those refusals and betrayals and denials as clear indications that we weren't worth loving and saving. But he didn't.

If we can but pay attention to what God is doing right now - in Myanmar, in China, in our own lives - we can let anxiety go and trust God to be God.

Of Boycotts and Girlcotts

I have been musing on the question of boycotts recently. Some prominent people have said that they will boycott the opening ceremony at the summer Olympics in Beijing. Others are still planning to attend. The Dalai Lama has asked people not to boycott the games. What is a person of conscience to do? And what is an appropriate and effective response to injustice?

In 2005 I wrote a commentary about the "girlcott" of Abercrombie & Fitch for one of Buffalo's public radio stations. I believe in boycotts and girlcotts even when I suspect that they will not bring about significant change. I believe in them because they are a way of saying that I will not participate in or support something which I believe to be unjust. They are a way of responding to what St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome. Here's how J.B. Phillips translated Romans 12:2:

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

My Quaker activist mother would have liked "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould," my activist mother who used to tell me, "You may not be able to change the world, but you better work to keep the world from changing you."

I know that the absence of world leaders or even some athletes at the summer Olympics won't convince the Chinese government to change its policy in Tibet. It will take much more than a boycott to do that. I also know that the International Olympic Committee's hope that China would improve its human rights record in the lead-up to the games has not been fulfilled. Neither the awarding of the games nor a boycott of the games has or will convince the Chinese government to change.

If I can't change the world - or even the Chinese government - I'd better work to keep the world from changing me. I'd better work to make sure that I don't support - even indirectly - something that I believe is unjust. I'd better work to keep the world from squeezing me into its mold. Others may choose to tune in to the games this August, but I won't.