(transl by Ron Roth)
Our Father, who is everywhere in the universe,
your name is sacred.
Your kingdom is come among us;
your will is throughout the earth as it is
throughout the universe.
You give us our needful bread from day to day,
and you forgive us our offenses even as we
forgive our offender.
You do not let us enter into materialism,
but you separate us from error.
For yours is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the song,
from ages to ages,
sealed in faithfulness.
We all have faith in something - even people who believe there is no God have faith in something or someone. For example, I think it takes faith in the goodness of others or in others' need for self-preservation simply to drive a car. If I didn't have faith that you would stay in your lane... The question Jesus is asking, I think, is "What is your faith in?" Is your faith in your self or is your faith in someone or something else? If you answered that your faith is in God, then I think Jesus next asks us "Is you faith persistent, or does it change with the wind?" Are you willing to let go and trust in God? Are you willing to live your life demonstrating that God is in control?
One way to do this is to make prayer and discernment of God's will a priority. What is God calling you to do? Are you doing it? What gifts and graces has God given you? Are you using them to the benefit of others or saving them for yourself? Am I willing to make myself vulnerable in front of others (like the woman in the story) in order to trust in God? ...sadly, I can't always answer that last one "yes"... how about you?
Looking further at this story - I have to ask myself how consistent I am in my prayer life. If I understand, as I stated in an earlier post, that my praying is in response to God's call, then do I pray during good times and bad? Or do I pray only when things aren't as I'd like them to be? How persistent am I in developing my relationship with God?
For Jesus, faith was not a thing, but a way of living, a way of being. Persistent faith will look different for each of us because we are each different. Some of us are quiet, some of us are timid, some of us are brash... and perhaps we are a little of each and more...
In what are you placing your faith?
How is that faith lived out?
Did your mother tell you as a child “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”? I remember my mother saying that to me – especially when my brothers and I would argue and name call. But for me her words carried a larger message than just those situations…and it wasn’t just my mother. School, the church, and society all teach us that we must “be polite”, “say nice things”, “don’t start an argument”… and I find myself as an adult still trying to live by those rules.
“Turn the other cheek,” Jesus said. But when I look at his life recorded in the gospel texts I find that Jesus didn’t always turn the other cheek. He didn’t respond or lash out as I am sometimes tempted to do, but he didn’t simply ignore wrong behavior, inappropriate comments, or injustice. I think too often we take “turn the other cheek” to mean ignoring what is wrong for the sake of being “polite”. But if I am living the questions, then I am seeking, like Jesus, to transform lives (beginning with my own). And this can’t be done if we don’t find a way to speak the truth in love with one another.
After worship Sunday, a member of our congregation said to me: “When the insult, injustice, abuse is directed at me, then I can choose to ‘turn the other cheek’; I have that choice. But I hadn’t thought about when it’s directed at someone else – someone who can’t defend themselves.”
So what do I do then? What is my responsibility? And when is it my responsibility? (I can hear Jesus now – first a story followed by a question… “who was a neighbor”) What I find difficult is walking the path between never saying a word that disrupts or confronts, and always being challenging and confrontational. It’s difficult to know when to confront and when to turn the other cheek. And it is especially difficult to know how to confront in ways that encourage the other person to continue listening, ways that aren’t disrespectful – and in ways that encourage me to continue listening to them, too. But if the path I am on calls me to share my truth, then I must be open to God’s leading, sharing the words I have been given when I am called to do so.
What about you? Have you learned how to speak truth in loving ways, or do you too readily turn the other cheek? Do you find it easier to speak out for someone else, or to speak out for yourself?
In today’s passage, Jesus tells us, as he told his disciples, that he came to turn the world rightside up and show us how God intended the world to be. I really like this phrasing – Jesus came to turn the world “rightside up”. I think sometimes our view is that Jesus came to turn the world upside down – but this would mean that the world as we know it is “right” – and we know it really isn’t. God intended humanity to be one people, one tribe, one nation. But Jesus’ response to our upside down world is different than what ours tends to be. As humans, we see a problem, a system that seems upside down for example, and we seek answers so that we can “fix” it. Jesus, on the other hand, is not looking to fix things but to transform lives.
When we live seeking answers, our lives and our vision are focused on the external – focused on others’ lives or on the world – rather than upon our own lives. Seeking answers allow us to focus on finding solutions so that we can change things. When we seek first to see and to accept or understand, then we begin to learn to see the world “rightside up”, to see as God sees. We become slowly transformed – and by our transformation we become empowered to “set the world afire”. When we walk through the questions, we become aligned with Christ and filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Living this way, our lives – our very actions, thoughts, words, and deeds – serve to confront and to disrupt. …We disrupt by not being willing to listen to gossip. …We confront by refusing to purchase the newest car when the one we have works just fine. …We confront when we refuse to return rudeness or harsh words, responding instead with love… When we choose to live this way, we choose Christ and the way of God over the way of family, or tribe, or society – and sometimes, as Jesus said, we find we are a house divided.
The way of God, experienced in Jesus Christ, asks us to choose, and often sets humans one against the other. Do you think Jesus came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Yes, sometimes we do, at least I know I do – I want Jesus’ message to be one that is nice to hear. Anything for anyone. But the problem is that if we see Jesus as a peacemaker, then we believe that Jesus would promote peace at any cost – and so we don’t speak out against the structures and systems; our leaders and friends, and even our family. In the name of peace, we lose the Christian message of love and equality, justice and mercy, and unity.
From the Scriptures, we know that if we follow Jesus’ teachings we will be confronted. We will be confronted internally – our conscience will challenge us – and we will be confronted with one another, both with fellow Christians and with non-Christians. However, if we are to truly be followers of Jesus Christ, then we must take responsibility for our Christian walk – we must take ownership of our faith.
I used to live for peace at any cost. For a long time I confused the peace of Christ with an image of Jesus as peacemaker. I have learned through the years that peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is having within you a central core of stillness despite the chaos that is swirling around you. And for me, that central core, that centeredness, comes from my connectedness to God through Jesus Christ. Jesus promised us peace if we would trust in him – he did not ask us to become peacemakers seeking peace at all costs. I have learned the call of Christ is to live the truth we understand. So, although I don’t regularly seek out conflict, I work harder at speaking my words of truth even when I know they might confront or disturb or create conflict; I work harder at not sitting quietly just to keep things nice…
Where, in your life, are you staying comfortable when Jesus calls you to confront? …Where is God calling you to live the questions of Christ more deeply?
Ask…Seek…Knock… It sounds so easy, but I don’t always find it to be so. What do we ask for? Do we ask for the little things, or is that pestering God too much? Do we ask for the big things, or does that seem too presumptuous?
I think perhaps these are the wrong questions. Instead, I want to ask “why?” Why do we ask? Eugene Peterson (Working with Angles) reminds us that when we pray we are not the initiators. Prayer begins for us with the call of Christ – the call of Jesus on our hearts and in our lives. When I remember this, I understand that prayer is not a tool but a channel for entering into the sacred Mystery.
I don’t (or at least I’m not supposed to) pray in order to “get” something from God. I pray out of response to God’s love showered upon me and my yearning to commune with the God of Love. My faith is not in prayer; my faith is in God. That may seem obvious, but do we live as if our faith is in prayer or in God?
I believe that we are interconnected with others – all others. When I pray for someone else, I open a channel for the Divine Spirit to touch human spirits. When we pray, something happens at this deepest interconnected level – where our lives are like wicks dipped into the same bowl of oil. Through this unseen channel, love and grace flow from one to another. When I pray, I allow myself to become sensitized to God’s caring heart. That means that the more I pray for myself, a person or a situation, the more I begin to understand about me/them/situations…
In short, we don’t initiate prayer; God calls us. And God calls us into prayer to come to know God, to come to know ourselves, to grow in Spirit, and to move with love into the world. …Ask…Seek…Knock… God is already calling you to come, won’t God give you the Holy Spirit when you ask?
Jesus said, "If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal." But I know that if I truly understand the sin I commit, then I must understand that the forgiveness God offers is not "minimal." I stand unholy before a holy God - a God of love and grace who forgives all my sin. How could I ever regard this as "minimal"?
So if it isn't minimal, then why don't I respond with extravagance or exuberant gratefulness? If Jesus were to come to Jacksonville tomorrow, would I respond like the woman in this story? Could I? Could you?
So, instead of presenting the passages that I found meaningful, I present to you my trouble spots.
Luke 7:47: If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.
From Mere Spirituality, by Mike Yaconelli: "Messy spirituality is a good term for the place where desperation meets Jesus.... 'Church people' often label 'desperate people' as strange and unbalanced.... People who are desperate for spirituality very seldom worry about the mess they make on their way to be with Jesus."
From Between Noon and Three, by Robert Farrar Capon: "Whenever someone attempts to introduce a radically different insight to people whose minds have been formed by an old and well-worked-out way of thinking, he or she is up against an obstacle. As Jesus said, their taste for the old wine is so well established that they invariably prefer it to the new.... 'precluding the conversion of species in an argument' will do for a name for this teaching technique that Jesus uses in healing on the Sabbath, and that I have used in presenting you with grace in the context of an adultery.... they (the Pharisees) would have envisioned Jesus as the kind of Messiah they were ready for (a victorious and immortal one) and not as the kind he knew himself to be (a suffering and dying one)."
From The Wild Man's Journey, by Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos: "There are two ways of being a prophet. One is to tell the enslaved they can be free. It is the difficult path of Moses. The second is to tell those who think they are free that they are in fact enslaved. This is the even more difficult path of Jesus."
