Month: November 2019

Come down there

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Years ago, I saw an outtake for a new Air Force recruiting commercial. The ad featured the F-22, the hot new stealth fighter, soaring through the sky. The voice said something like, “It’s a bad bird; the meanest, baddest bird in the sky.” After a few more seconds of aerobatics, the voice said, “Don’t make us come down there.”

Like I said, it was an outtake; that last line was never used on the air. But the words resonated because they sounded like something our parents said to us when we fought with our siblings. “Stop fighting! Don’t make us come down there!”

Well, Christmas is coming, and we humans are still fighting.

But at the first Christmas long ago, God really did “come down there” to set things right.

We have a persistent dream: peace on earth. The ancient Prophet Isaiah had the dream nearly 3000 years ago. But Isaiah was realistic about the prospects for peace. His tiny nation was surrounded by enemies. The only hope was for God to “come down there.”

We humans fight as much as ever. We’re not very good at setting things right. But there is one who is.

Christmas reminds us that the dream came true and will come true again.

Come down here, Lord. Come quickly.

Special needs

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Jesus and his disciples were walking along when they came across a blind beggar. This prompted the disciples to ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Puzzling.

They didn’t say, “Master, here’s a man who needs you.” No. In the first century, if you saw suffering, you probably thought that person was a sinner. If that sounds superstitious and backward, consider that modern people make a similar mistake. To the extent they consider it at all, modern people think that God blesses those who are “good.”

The disciples saw a blind man and said nothing about helping him. They just asked the kind of question about suffering that theological students ask. It seems they were willing to walk by a hurting person as long as they got their question answered. 

Jesus wasn’t buying it. He said, “You don’t understand. Sin doesn’t work that way.  God doesn’t work that way. This isn’t a question of sin; it’s a question of serving. Don’t you know who we are? Who I am?” 

We belong to God. We were put here to reveal God’s glory, and often that glory is revealed when we serve.

Even a person with a special need, like needing accommodations to overcome blindness, can reveal God’s glory. 

Maybe those with special needs especially reveal God’s glory.

Clear skin

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Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross.

He was going through the border region between Samaria and Galilee when he was met by ten men with leprosy. They called out to Jesus, “Have pity on us!” Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests, and while they were on their way, their leprosy was healed.

One of the men, a Samaritan, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus and threw himself at Jesus’ feet in gratitude.   

“Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?” Jesus asked.

My guess is that when you have a horrible skin disease like leprosy, the differences between people, like the ethnic and religious differences between Samaritans and Jews, seem pretty minor. But take away the disease, and the underlying differences emerge. Hence, only the ethnic minority, the hated Samaritan, was grateful.

One out of ten.

We live in a culture which says, from morning to night, “You deserve it.” It’s the air we breathe. So, when something good happens to us, we think we’re just getting what we’re owed. We don’t even recognize the blessing.

Jesus told the Samaritan, “Rise and go; your faith has made you whole.”

Do you see?

All ten had been cleansed, but only the grateful one was made whole.

The irony is that we, like the nine ungrateful ones, live with a fraction of the blessing that’s available to us. We go through life like practical lepers.

We’re one-tenth as grateful (probably more like one-hundredth) as we ought to be.

Jesus came to make us whole. We settle for clear skin.

Identity

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A friend recently told me about the Fort Henry Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. Originally built as a private home in 1850, the building was turned into a private men’s club in 1890. Walking by as a boy, my friend would marvel at the impressive columns and grand marble steps.

The club had a reputation for elegance and propriety. Famous guests included Charles Lindbergh, Herbert Hoover, and Babe Ruth. Businessmen from across the country kept their memberships there. They didn’t just come for the networking; they came for a sense of stability; an experience of life as it used to be.

But then times changed. The club didn’t. The roof started leaking and the columns started crumbling. In 2011, the club declared bankruptcy and closed. But rather than see the building demolished, the church across the street bought the property, and later sold it to a developer, who began to restore it. Today three businesses lease space there.

Private clubs are just one of the things that help(ed?) us make sense of the world. Our friends, our jobs, our looks, and our families are also sources of our identity.

In his book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, Rod Dreher describes the major changes in the global west over centuries. One of the sources of identity was religion. The root of the word “religion” is the Latin religare, meaning “to bind.” A shared understanding of religion used to bind people together and was a source of shared identity.

But then times changed. Over time, identity became an individual thing, something that you create.

Dreher suggests that the practices of a monastic community prescribed by the 6th century monk Benedict of Nursia can help everyone, not just monks, survive in a changing culture.

Styles change.

Kids grow up.

Friends move away.

Companies downsize.

Our favorite places go bankrupt.

Only Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.