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The Penalty For Neglect

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Thoughts Along the Way…

For the past 2 years our congregation has been enjoying a Sunday morning Adult Ed class called Occupy the Gospels. It has been an enlightening and stimulating study and discussion that has taken all of us who participated into a deeper level of understanding of why each gospel is so different from the others and just what each of the gospels is all about. We’ve done a close reading of each gospel examining such questions as who was it originally written for, what kinds of stresses and pressures were they dealing with in that community, why does Jesus say things one way in this gospel but differently in another gospel, and so on.

If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, a follower of Jesus, an apprentice of Jesus, it’s important to be deeply familiar with what Jesus said and did. In his tract How Christians Should Regard Moses, Martin Luther suggested that we are not really properly equipped to understand the rest of the Bible unless we first come to a clear understanding of the gospels.

One advantage of doing a close reading together in a group is that very often others will spot things you haven’t seen before or ask questions that hadn’t occurred to you. I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been through the gospels, but in our class together I was frequently seeing new things or seeing them from a different perspective than I had before. And sometimes that new little thing I saw would sit with me for weeks and make me rethink a lot of other things about my faith and my understanding of my faith.

Here’s a case in point. The 25th chapter of Matthew has always been important to me. I’ve even sometimes called myself a “Matthew 25” Christian. This chapter is the only place in the gospels where Jesus, himself, describes the final judgment, where the “sheep” are separated from the “goats,” and the criteria are not at all what a lot of people expect. He doesn’t say a word about what you believe or don’t believe. There is no mention of whether or not you accepted him as your personal Lord and Savior or invited him into your heart or any of those other popular ideas that some people think are the doorway to being “saved.” Nope. Nothing like that at all. No statement of creed. No tally of church attendance. Not a bit of it. Instead, the final exam is all about one thing and one thing only: how well did you take care of people who were in need?

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

A few years ago I realized that the “sheep” in this text, the people who did these good things and are being rewarded and inheriting the kingdom, are quite surprised to find that they are, in fact, the Grand Prize Winners! They didn’t know that by taking care of those in need they were also taking care of Jesus, himself. They just did it because it was the right thing to do.

Rereading this text in our class a few weeks ago, though, I was suddenly hit between the eyes by yet another little epiphany. Words I had read maybe hundreds of times before suddenly hit me in a way I just had not thought of before. And this time it was the flip side of the coin. This time it was the “goats,” who got my attention– you know, the ones who did not feed the hungry or visit the sick or give a drink to the thirsty, the ones who ignored those in need, or worse, went out of their way to do nothing for them.

41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…

These are the words that hit me like a ton of bricks: “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” I confess, I’m not real big on the idea of Hell and eternal punishment. I like to think that God’s grace trumps everything in the end. On the other hand, the punishment motif crops up several times in the Gospel of Matthew, so in this gospel, at least, it is kind of unavoidable. But seeing that the “goats” get punished wasn’t the thing that arrested me. It was that they were being consigned to a punishment prepared for the devil and his angels. In other words, the failure to take care of those in need is not merely a “failure” or sin of oversight. It is something far worse. It is evil. If the punishment is the measure of its severity as a sin, then the failure to care for those in need is demonic.

I think the ramifications of this are huge. Jesus, as I read it here, is saying that any actions on our part that deprive those in need of food, water, clothing, shelter or medical care, actions that deprive the imprisoned of hope and comfort, actions that alienate the stranger– such actions are evil, even demonic; the punishment is the measure of the crime.

At our little congregation, the little church with a big heart, we have much to be proud of in the ways we have fulfilled the positive side of this equation. We have been wonderfully generous in feeding, clothing and providing for those in need. Our benevolence is extraordinary, and I am so proud, as their pastor, of this congregation’s generosity in spirit and in practice. I know and trust that we will keep up the good work that leads us into God’s presence.

But think about those “goats.” As you read the headlines or watch the news, as you watch what our elected officials are voting for or against, what they are funding or not funding, remembering that they do all this in our name as our representatives, think about those “goats.” Think about the final exam as Jesus describes it. Think about how Jesus sees it. Are we on the road to inherit the Kingdom? Or are we stumbling toward that place prepared for the devil and his angels?

Pro Gloria Dei

Pastor Steve

A Quiet Place

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Thoughts Along the Way…

I stood there on a beautiful green hillside, standing just at the edge of the shade made by a canopy erected for the occasion, my guitar slung over my shoulder, my fingers on the strings poised to play. But no music came to my fingers. I had led the procession up the hill from the hearse, carrying my service book, walking ahead of the pall bearers who carried that beautiful walnut casket, a work of art with its satin finish, carrying within it the mortal remains of an even more beautiful and complex work of art, God’s own handiwork, God’s baptized child, our friend and companion on the journey, John.

The casket was settled gently on the stand above the grave. The pall bearers removed their white gloves and took their places amid the others gathered for the words and rites that would commend our John’s life into God’s hands and commit his body to the earth. As Sandy, John’s widow, had requested, I was going to play something on the guitar, some music to speak to our souls before the words to speak to our hearts. So there I stood with my guitar, ready to play, people looking at me, some expectantly, some with peace, some with encouragement, some with a plea or yearning for something I could only guess at, and all I could think about for a moment in that moment was the noise.

Huge earth movers were shaping new hillsides for new graves a few hillsides away, their giant diesel engines growling across the landscape. Just beyond them a crew in a helicopter was doing something undoubtedly important to the power lines held aloft on their giant towers that always look to me like the Martian monsters from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. C.S. Lewis once described the Kingdom of Hell as The Kingdom of Noise. I think that’s a pretty apt description. This was supposed to be a quiet, peaceful moment in a quiet, peaceful place where we could all let a bit of gentle music and words of promise carry us to the edges of our own deep wells of thought and feeling. But how could I begin to cut through all that noise? What is an acoustic guitar against the growl of earth movers and the whopping of a helicopter?

I must have looked as if I was waiting for a signal, and maybe I was. Sandy looked at me, smiled and nodded, and I realized in that moment that if this was not going to be the quiet place in the world that I was hoping for, that I thought it should be, that I had expected, then I was going to have to find a quiet place in me. The music would have to come from a quiet place in me and I would have to trust that somehow the quiet would be powerful enough to cut through the noise.

I closed my eyes and listened. Blest Be the Tie That Binds was flowing from my fingers, and when I looked up, I could tell that others could hear it, too. The melody then rewove itself into Just As I Am and as I played, unconscious of my playing, I let those notes full of grace speak to my own heart. Without a pause my fingers moved into Simple Gifts, the old Shaker tune that promises us that “When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed, to turn, to turn ‘twill be our delight, till by turning, turning, we come round right.”

Somehow, the quiet cut through the noise. Somehow the melodies of unity, grace and simplicity pierced the wall of mechanized cacophony that had seemed so overwhelming. Somehow people heard it all the way to the edges of the crowd. “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord. And in all truth, the Spirit was my amplifier in that moment.

I won’t pretend to tell you that the music wafting from my guitar carried everyone to a place where they were prepared to truly hear the power and truth of all those words of hope and promise we speak as we lay our loved ones to rest. But it carried me to a quiet place where I could speak those words with faith, confidence, and something akin to joy.

So very, very often the world seems to be doing its very best to bury our better, deeper thoughts and feelings in a coffin of noise. So very, very often the thing we need most, long for most is simply a quiet place to think and feel and, depending on the situation, speak aloud to ourselves where it is quiet enough to hear our own voices. Sometimes we desperately need to get away to a quiet place. But since the world won’t often let us do that, we need to find that quiet place inside us. There is strength there. There is beauty there. There is power and grace and love there. And music.

Pro Gloria Dei,

Pastor Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the Anniversary of a Dream

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It was on this date in 1963 that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of thousands and in a singular moment of grace planted the seeds of a profound change in our nation and our culture. The seeds he planted in that speech have grown over the years; we see the fruit of that change everywhere in our country.

While he had in other places and other contexts described the evils of segregation and violence against persons of color, on this occasion he did not use the moment simply to catalogue these injustices. Instead, he shared a vision of what this nation could and should be. He did not say, “I stand here before you to denounce an evil.” Instead, he submitted his voice to the spirit of prophecy and announced, “I have a dream.”

That day, within living memory for many of us, we heard what I believe was truly a word from God proclaimed by a prophetic voice, and in that prophetic moment we were given a vision toward which we could move. The work is by no means done. The vision is by no means completely realized, but we are a better nation, a better people, less divided by the accidents of race and color than we once were. We still have a long way to go, but thanks to the vision, to the dream announced to us that day, we often see the children of former slaves and the children of former slave owners together at the table of good will, and for a new generation it is no longer even a thing of wonder, but a commonplace occurrence not worthy of comment. Thank God.

I was thinking about all this in the context of this political season which has been particularly rancorous. The tools of critical thinking and analysis have languished as candidates are presented in caricature and complex issues are condensed into soundbites. Anger and animosity have been openly encouraged by those who seek or broker power. Negativity and blaming have fanned the flames of discontent. Insinuation, innuendo and outright falsehood have been deployed freely and truth has suffered even more than usual as lines have been drawn which have too often bruised or severed the bonds of friendship and even family. Adamantine opinion has short-circuited courtesy. All have sinned and fallen short of what could be a glorious national conversation.

On this anniversary of Dr. King’s speech as we recall this pivotal moment in our history, it is good for us to remember the tremendous power of lifting up a positive vision. It is always, in the long run, far more powerful than simply denouncing the evil we think we see.

I want to believe that we can still work our way through our differences by holding up our common vision and reminding each other of our better intentions. We have the language of those better moments alive in our heritage. We do not need to reinvent it, only to reclaim it.

I like to think that even in our disagreement about how, exactly, things should work, we do really still believe that all are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights which include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I like to think that somewhere beneath all the rhetoric we do all still believe that we, the people, established and ordained this nation’s governmental structure and codified it in our constitution in order to, among other things, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. I like to think that we give more than lip service to the idea of liberty and justice for all. I want to believe that, when all is said and done, we do still understand that ours is a government of the people by the people and for the people— that within and underneath all the talk about “the government” we are describing not only “the people” as an anonymous collective but real individual persons, fellow citizens who are doing their best to serve as they have been elected, called or employed and who are subject to the same laws and expectations. I want to believe that we understand that the institutions that we established through the processes of our government were not created to be our nemesis but are, rather, tools of our own making to accomplish our mutual goals. I want to believe that we all understand that the individual rights we have guaranteed to each other can only be fully enjoyed in the context of mutual responsibility and support.

We are, under God, still one nation. We are still fulfilling the dreams and hopes of visionaries who came before us. We are not, each of us, in it for ourselves or by ourselves; we are in it together for each other. We did not stand up every morning in school and assert our individual rights, though we understood them to be guaranteed by our mutual code of law. We did not stand up every day in school and announce that this already is a nation of liberty and justice for all; we stood up and pledged that we would strive to be such a nation together. We pledged allegiance to a hope and a vision. We pledged allegiance to a dream, a future reality that will always be still in the making.

God Knows

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God Knows.

Samuel (God Hears) in the night hears the Voice, but the prophet child is given a choice: to volunteer and fulfill God’s vision or go back to sleep and let the elision of dreams bypass this turning point that leads to a future where he will anoint a giant-slaying shepherd king. Could he imagine such a thing is waiting in that whispered Call that wakes him in that holy hall where he lies on a cushion in the dark in front of God’s own holy ark?

Nathanael (God’s Gift) sitting under his tree, when Phillip calls him to come and see the Messiah, the one they’ve all been awaiting, could continue with his contemplating. In fact, we see that he’s debating: could any good thing come from such a place? Would Messiah have a Nazarene face? But when Christ tells Nathanael he’s seen him before, they have to peel him off the floor. He came on a lark, on a whim, on a bet, now he’s told, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Stick around, there’s more to see. You’ll see it all…just follow me.”

Strange that a God so all-pervasive is rarely coercive, more often persuasive; we see that God is omnipresent, but, by and large, it’s not unpleasant. And that’s odd, because ubiquity means God knows my iniquity. God is there when I flare through the roof. God is there when I’m cold and aloof. When I’m being greedy or being stupid or under the influence of Cupid or killing my pain or my appetite—God sees it all, all the wrong and the right. God sees the better moments, too, the nicer things we say and do, the little generosities that we hope outweigh our atrocities.

God, the All-Present, the Ground of All Being, is also, then, the Ever-Seeing. God, not bound by time or dimension, looks past my posture and pretension to see what I cannot see in advance, to call my name and give me a chance to become what only God can see: the person I was made to be.

Get Used To The Water

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Get Used To The Water

Jesus’ birth is described in only 2 books of the New Testament: Matthew and Luke. His baptism, on the other hand is talked about in six books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and Romans. The Scriptures place more emphasis on his baptism than on his birth. Brian Stoffregen suggests, “Perhaps that should be a clue for us. Perhaps we should not only give greater emphasis to Jesus’ baptism but also our own baptisms. Should we not publicize baptismal anniversaries of our members as we do birthdays and wedding anniversaries?”

James R. Edwards (The Gospel according to Mark) makes this important point: “As the inaugural event of Jesus’ public ministry, the baptism tells us not what Jesus does but what God does to him” [p. 34].

Baptism is not about what we do. It’s about what God does. It’s not about my decision for God, it’s about God’s decision for me. God tears open the barrier between heaven and earth, God alights on me, possesses me and fills me with the Holy Spirit, it’s God’s voice that declares, “This is my child.” The only decision I can make is to get out of God’s way, to stop resisting God and to receive the gift that God has been trying to give me all along, the gift of my true self as God has always intended me to be. And even that decision is not entirely an act of my will; I come to that point of decision because God has enticed or nudged or shoved or dragged or persuaded or gently led me to that point. 

 There is an important difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism which is often–too often–overlooked. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance and a washing away of sin. Christian baptism is about receiving the power of the Holy Spirit and a initiating a special relationship with God. 

 Baptism, from the Greek word baptidzo, means to dip under, to dye, to immerse, to sink, to drown, to bathe, to wash. When we are baptized we dip under the surface of religion and into the depths of faith. We are dyed the color of Christ. We are immersed in the life and love of God. We sink down into the depths of God’s compassion. We are drowned in the death of Christ so that we might be raised into his eternal life. As St. Paul says in Romans 6.5: For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” We are bathed in God’s cleansing grace. We are washed in the the flowing waters of new creation.

 Writing about baptism in Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes: “Christianity is about water: ‘Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.’ It’s about baptism, for God’s sake. It’s about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that’s a little sloppy because at the same time it’s also holy, and absurd. It’s about surrender, giving in to all those things we can’t control; it’s a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched…. In the Christian experience of baptism, the hope is that when you go under and you come out, maybe a little disoriented, you haven’t dragged the old day along behind you. The hope, the belief, is that a new day is upon you now. A day when you are emboldened to take God at God’s word about cleanness and protection: ‘When thou passeth through the water, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.’”

 Baptism is not a one-time event. It is a way of life. Baptism is not fire insurance. We don’t baptize babies so that if, God forbid, something awful should happen they won’t go to hell. We baptize them so that they can be immersed from the very beginning in a life where they are always seeing and experiencing the presence of God, ideally within the family of faith–within the community of all those sisters and brothers who have also been given what St. Paul calls “a spirit of adoption.” We baptize adults because it is never too late to begin that new life as God’s child, never too late to become a new creation, never too late to receive that “spirit of adoption,” never too late to be embraced by and enfolded into the family of faith.

 There is always that hope, that desire, to be new, to start over, to be whole. Crosby and Nash in their song, Lay Me Down say it this way:

Somewhere between Heaven and Hell
A soul knows where it’s been
I want to feel my spirit lifted up
And catch my breath again 
Lay me down in the river
And wash this place away
Break me down like sand from a stone
Maybe I’ll be whole again one day

Baptism is all about God’s amazing grace, but it is not a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. In fact, if you’re living out your baptism, it just my put you in jail.  Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, Daniel Berrigan, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Perpetua, the 285 Muslim converts–including children–who were arrested in Iran last year, the 42 Ethiopian Christians arrested in Saudi Arabia on December 17… Baptism put them in jail. 

Romans 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”  16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Baptism may call us to suffer with those who suffer for the sake of Christ. Baptism may call us to suffer with our brothers and sisters who suffer. We are God’s children. The heirs of God’s dominion. Baptism brings us not only privilege and blessings, it brings responsibilities. We have joined the family business–God’s family business. We have a job to help realize God’s vision for the world, to transform the whole world so that God’s justice, God’s shalom, God’s idea of equity and equality, God’s generosity and God’s compassion are the standard and norm “on earth as it is in heaven.” Sometimes that means we have to stand up to the powers and forces in this world that are in opposition to God’s vision. But baptism can give us the strength to do that, too.

Some of you no doubt remember how during the civil rights marches the authorities  in Birmingham tried to stop the marchers with fire hoses. Martin Luther King, marching at the front, felt the full force of those hoses. When he spoke about that later, he said that he and the other marchers had a common strength that gave them the courage and the power to keep going.  He put it this way, as “we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were a Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.”

Brett Blair wrote, “You and I know the water. All of God’s children know the water. We share by our faith this common symbol, this initiation, this rite, this power of God over the deep and often raging chaos of life. We know water!”  All over the world baptism unites us. We are children of God… and it’s a very large family. That means that no matter what we’re facing, we never face it alone. We have Christ. We have our Abba. We have the Holy Spirit. And we have a whole world of brothers and sisters.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Rosh Hashanah Reflections

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Reflections on the New Year
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new year in the Jewish calendar. Traditionally, this marks the beginning of ten days of reflection during which one thinks back on one’s life of the past year. Appropriately, this time of reflection culminates on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I think this is a wonderful way to approach new beginnings of every kind, so I am unabashedly borrowing this tradition from my Jewish brothers and sisters. I need a fresh start right now and God has seen fit to provide me with a great one.

This has been a year of significant experiences, many of them “blows” of one sort or another.

  • This time last year I was “downsized;” my position at Trinity Lutheran in Ventura was eliminated due to budget difficulties. This led to a prolonged, unintentional sabbatical.
  • Two days before Christmas my wife, Meri, broke her ankle and had to have surgery to repair it. Christmas was improvised accordingly.
  • Not long after that, I had a nasty bout (there are no good bouts) of Meniere’s Disease which resulted in significant hearing loss. I now have hearing aids. My Meniere’s, it turns out, was triggered by allergies; I was found to be allergic to dairy, yeast and eggs, which meant I had to make some serious changes in my diet. I lost 40 pounds I shouldn’t have been carrying around anyway.
  • My father-in-law, a man I admired greatly and loved deeply, died suddenly and unexpectedly a week after Easter.
  • Two weeks later my own father, who had seemed to be pretty healthy except for a nagging pain in his side, was diagnosed with advanced Pancreatic Cancer. He died only a few weeks after that.
  • In August, our daughter gave birth to twins and Meri was hired as a full-time lecturer on the faculty of Cal State, Fullerton!
  • As I write this, we are preparing to move so I can begin my new call as pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, a warm-hearted congregation in the town where I grew up.

One doesn’t have a year like that without experiencing some profound internal changes. Oddly, the overall effect has been, for me, tranquilizing. One might think that it’s merely reflexive numbness, but that’s not it at all. I still feel the sharp edges of things gone wrong. I still feel the “high” of the joyful moments, too. But the feelings are somewhat tempered now, balanced by a new kind of perspective. The rational “analyst/observer” part of my mind is stronger and my emotions don’t carry all the momentum of the moment. I find myself smiling a lot and and saying, “Well, that’s just life.” Meri calls it “the Valium of experience.”

I am more grateful for what is. I still see things that I want to change, things that need to change, but I realize that lasting, positive progress in human nature and human institutions can take years, even generations to accomplish. I still have my part to play in making the world a better place, but I realize I’m just one clarinet in the never-ending symphony.

I am relieved to be traveling more lightly. I am more patient with those who are reading the world by a different light. I am more curious about what they are seeing and why.

I feel much freer. At the same time I find that I cherish my family ties, bonds and relationships in a deeper, quieter, stronger way.

I am much more aware of my own mortality. That doesn’t depress me, it enlivens me. It opens my eyes to what a precious gift life is. I find myself tearing up sometimes at the sheer beauty of moments with my family, even when we are all exhausted from the relentless demands of feeding-changing-burping-rocking the twins and tending the toddler. I am awestruck by the wit, wisdom and resilience of my sleep-deprived daughter and her steadfast, rock-solid husband. I am humbled by my son’s creativity, work ethic humor and intelligence, by the way he still makes time for family. I continue to be moved, grateful, surprised, amused and challenged in a good way by my brilliant, loving wife, and I realize more powerfully than ever before that those promises we made to stick with each other through everything life throws at us are a gift I will keep unwrapping until death parts us.

I have learned that it’s not about me. It’s about us. I knew that before, but it’s a lesson that requires homework. This year I got a lot of homework.

Jesus said, “I came that you might have life to the fullest.” He didn’t say that we would like all of it. We can, however, find meaning in all of it. We can learn from it. We can let it inspire us. Life, this part of it anyway, is brief. Savor every drop of it. Even the bitterest bites. We’re supposed to mix the agave syrup with the cocoa. We’re supposed to share the ingredients. It’s the only way we get the full-course meal.

In the last rites of Bokononism, the fictional religion created by Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, one of the things the dying person says is, “Lucky me. Lucky mud. Think of all the mud that didn’t get to sit up and look around.” I say that to myself a lot these days.