Living the Sermon

I am currently reading "Gandhi the man: the story of his transformation" by Eknath Easwaran. In the appendix, Gandhi is quoted as saying "There is no royal road, except through living the creed in your life, which must be a living sermon." To live one's life as a "living sermon" is a high standard to be held to. While Gandhi wasn't by any means perfect, he did in many ways live the sermon he preached. He not only talked the talk, he walked the talk, he practiced what he preached, and I think that is a major reason why people are still talking about him and looking up to him to this day.

Jesus also lived the sermon he preached. He talked of loving and serving one's fellow man, of being a neighbor to all, and he lived it. He healed and fed many people, he washed the feet of his disciples. He preached nonviolence, and when one of his disciples drew his sword and cut off the ear of a man who had come to arrest him, Jesus not only told Peter to put the sword away, but healed the man's ear. As with Gandhi, I think his living the sermon he preached is a major reason people are still talking about and looking up to Jesus, two thousand years later.

I have been known to "preach a sermon" now and then, here on this blog, and elsewhere. I have been known to tell people what they are doing wrong, what they should be doing instead, how they should live their lives.

I am no Gandhi, and I am certainly no Jesus. My life is not a "living sermon." I talk the talk, but I don't always walk the talk; I don't always practice what I preach. I don't expect I will ever live the sermon I preach in the way that Gandhi and Jesus did. And I certainly don't expect that people will still be talking about me or looking up to me two thousand years, or even a hundred years, after my death. But still, I hope and believe that I have something worthwhile to say, and I hope that people will listen to what I say, and will be able to overlook the fact that I don't always live my own sermons, at least enough to consider that there might be some truths in the sermons I preach.

The same applies to all of us, I believe. You also have something to say, we all have something to say. We all see ways that the world could be a better place, we see in those around us behaviors we feel are inappropriate and would like to see changed, sometimes missing the fact that we are guilty of the same behaviors. While I think that we should all strive to live the sermons we preach, I don't think that we should let our own imperfections keep us from preaching those sermons. We will probably have our hypocrisy pointed out to us now and then, people will point out our own failures. But as long as we can preach our sermons, not with condemnation, but with love, we should preach them anyway. We should listen to other people's sermons, looking for the truths they contain. And we should listen to our own sermons, for surely we need to hear them as much as anyone does.

God's will for me (and you)

I've had a very frightening experience lately. I've found myself praying that God would show me what his will for me is, and that he'll give me the courage to do his will.

That's a scary thing. There are a lot of things that God could ask me to do that I really don't want to do; that I just don't think I have the strength to do.

Father Roy Bourgeois has spent years of his life trying to close the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the U.S. trains in torture and terror tactics. His work has landed him in prison more than once. Could I do that? I don't know.

Gary Smith spent 25 years living among and ministering to the poor, the homeless, the drunks and drug addicts, the mentally ill. I've read his book, “Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor” and while I greatly admire Gary Smith for his work, I just don't know if I could do what he did.

I could give a lot more examples of people who live their lives ministering to the poor, working for peace, curing the sick - names you know and people you've never heard of. I suspect many of them also wondered if they were able to do what God called them to do. Mother Teresa spent years in Calcutta working with the sick, the dying, and the poorest of the poor, yet we are told there were times she had doubts about her ability to do her work.

My pastor wrote a song that includes these lyrics:

“Please don't send me to Africa,
I don't want to go. ...
Please don't make me do what I fear.”

Even Jesus, facing death on the cross, prayed: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me.” We're in good company when we fear what doing God's will may mean for us.

Soren Kierkegaard writes:

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined.”

Kierkegaard is right; if we do as the New Testament instructs us to do, as God instructs us to do, our lives will be “ruined.” How can I have my house in the suburbs with a two car garage and a white picket fence if God calls me to spend my life working with homeless people? How can I watch my favorite shows on a big screen TV if God calls me to work with people with HIV/AIDS in Africa? What will it mean to my career if I spend my life working for nuclear disarmament?

I don't know what God's will for me is; I don't know what God is calling me to do. It's easy for me to say “Please don't send me to Africa” or “let this cup pass away from me.” But I'm trying to listen for God's voice, to hear what God wants me to do, and I know there's more to it than “being a good person and going to church on Sunday.” For me, and for all of us.

Dear Lord, it is easy for us to see the “big picture” of what you want us to do on this Earth: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” But it's not always so easy to see the smaller details, to see where we as indivuals fit into the big picture. Let each one of us see clearly what we are called to do, and give each of us the strength to do your will. Amen.

If You Eat Each Day

I am a member of the local Catholic church's JustFaith program. JustFaith is a program intended to “empower people of faith to develop a passion and thirst for justice.” I'm not a Catholic, but I am willing, even eager, to get Christian teaching, and perhaps especially Christian social teaching, anyplace I can get it. And the Catholic Church is a good place to go for that!

As part of the JustFaith program, we read books, have discussions on what we read, have guest speakers, visit homeless shelters, and so on. Occasionally we listen to a song. A few weeks ago we listened to Bryan Sirchio's song, "If You Eat Each Day."

It seems Bryan was working in a clinic in Haiti, and was assigned to cut the hair of clinic patients. Well, you know how barbers are, they get to talking with their clients while they're cutting their hair, and just about any subject can come up. Bryan asked the man whose hair he was cutting, “Do you think I'm rich?” And the man responded, “How many days a week do you eat?” Seeing that Bryan was speechless, he asked, “You mean you eat every day? If you eat every day, you are rich.”

Does that affect you the way it affects me? Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. We eat at least three times each day, and many of us are eating much more than we need to. Myself, I am carrying around with me about 35 extra pounds. And here's a man who doesn't eat everyday, because he is too poor to eat every day. Ouch. That doesn't make me feel too good. But, I am inspired to do something about it.

Jesus said, “He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath food, let him do likewise.” Clearly, we have more food than we need – most of us are overweight. Now, there's no way that I can give the excess food that I don't need to be eating anyway to this man in Haiti, but surely I can do more to see that he is fed every day. I can give to relief agencies who feed the poor. I can work with agencies who work to eliminate the root causes of poverty. And I can encourage you to do the same.

You may think, “What can I do? There's so much to be done, and I am just one person.” Well, you don't have to take on the whole job yourself. Find some small thing that you can do, and do that. As Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” And if you can't feed even one person, then provide one person with one meal when you can.

Here are the lyrics to Bryan Sirchio'ssong, ”If You Eat Each Day”:

Bryan Sirchio
Songs For Justice Walkers
"If You Eat Each Day"

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere
I go there now and then to get my vision clear
Sometimes it gets so hazy in this land of
I consume therefore I am

I was working in this clinic for the dying & diseased
Living skeletons with AIDS and TB
Organized and run by Mother Teresa and her sisters of Charity
I asked the nun in charge, Sister, what should I do?
She smiled and said I've got a job for you
Then she gave me a pair of scissors, and said,
See that man right there
He'd like for you to cut his hair
I said, oh, Sister are you sure?...

I mean its not like I have given
many haircuts in my day
But I was there to help, so I just smiled and said, OK
So there I was, this natural born Vidal Sassoon
just snipping that hair away

We struck up conversation as best we could
His English was broken, my Creole's not too good
But we managed to communicate enough for him to say
Something I never will forget

You see I asked him, do you think I'm rich?
And this was his response to me
He said, well how many times a week do you eat?
Well his question took my voice away
And then he said, you mean you eat every day?
And I said, yeah, and he just said this
Well if you eat each day, you're rich

Somehow that moment felt to me like Holy Ground
I finished his haircut and when I turned around
There was a whole line of customers
who kinda like the way I cut that one man's hair!

So I gave them haircuts but they gave me so much more
They gave me the perspective of the poorest of the poor
And I know I'll spend the rest of my life
trying to somehow respond

'Cause if its true as we often say that wealth is relative
It just might take the dying poor in a place like Port au Prince
To help us see this relativity from God's point of view
To cut through our first world denial with gospel Truth
And as for me, I know I need to receive this paradigm shift
That in a hungry world, if we eat each day...
We're rich

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere
I go there now and then to get my vision clear
Sometimes it gets so hazy in this land of
I consume therefore I am.

Praying

I don't ordinarily pray much. I know we are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing, but I just never got in the habit of it. But this week I have prayed much more than usual.

At the church I attend, we wear stick-on paper name tags. Last week after the service, I noticed Lois was wearing her own name tag, and another that said “Lydia.” I asked her why she was wearing Lydia's name tag, and she said it was an idea Paul had come up with: take another person's name tag with you, and use it as a reminder to pray for that person during the week. And so I took Lois's name tag. When I was telling Mike about it, he asked that I pray for him, too. So, I wrote Mike's name on the tag, and stuck it to the dashboard of my car. Whenever I get in the car, and now and then while I am driving, I see that tag with Lois's and Mike's names on it, and I pray for them. I have been in the habit of sticking my own name tag to the dashboard when I get in the car after church, and now when I see it there, it's a reminder to pray for myself, also. And once I get started, I usually pray for other people I know, or for situations in the world that need praying for.

I now find myself praying at other times, too, and I like it. For whatever reason, it makes me feel good. It is perhaps as Soren Kierkegaard said, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” It's been less than a week, but I do find that my praying has been changing me. I pray for people I love, and I find I feel my love for them grow stronger. I plan to keep putting up reminders to pray until the habit becomes ingrained in me and I no longer need reminders.

If you don't currently pray much, try it. Stick a reminder to pray on the dashboard of your car, or on your refrigerator, or wherever you'll see it often during the week, and pray each time you see it. If my experience is any indication, it will soon become a habit, and you'll be glad you did it.

Peace be with you - or not.

I am a member of the JustFaith group at the local Catholic church. We have been meeting for 5 weeks now. At the end of each session, we have a “sharing of peace”, which consists of shaking hands with or hugging each member of the group, and wishing them peace, typically, “peace be with you.”

I'm having a bit of a problem with that.

We have read of families living in poverty in Jonathan Kozol's book, “Amazing Grace.” We've had the director of a local homeless shelter come speak to us. We've seen a film on the poor and hungry of the world, including an entire village of people who live, literally, in a garbage dump, and who live on what they can salvage from the garbage.

What we have learned does not bring me peace. It disturbs me greatly. It makes me want to do something. And I want the rest of the group to be as disturbed by what we've learned as I have been. I don't want them to leave after each group meeting with a feeling of peace. I want them to burn with the determination to do something.

Now, I really don't know how the rest of the group is feeling at this point. Maybe they're all feeling pretty much as I do. We haven't discussed it – yet – so I just don't know. But I'm sure going to bring it up at our next meeting. Until then, I will pray that they – and you, dear reader – will feel the peace that comes from knowing that you are doing for others all that you can do. And I will pray that I, too, will someday know that peace.

When it was just God

One Saturday a few months ago, I attended the funeral of Tony DeRooy. I've known the DeRooy family since I was in high school, and I'm pleased to count several members of the family as good friends. Tony was eighty five years old. Besides being an accomplished singer and musician, Tony was a master gardener, and was well known for several of his large landscaping projects and his expertise with dahlias.

At the funeral, Tony's brother, Henry, mentioned Tony's first job after serving in the military during World War II. The National Parks were closed for the duration of the war, and after 4 years of no maintenance, Glacier Park Lodge was overrun with weeds. It was Tony's job to get the landscaping ready for the reopening of the park.

When the park reopened, a visitor remarked to Tony what a fine job he and God had done with the park. Tony responded, “You should have seen it last year when it was just God!”

God had continued to provide the rain and the sunshine, and to make the plants grow, but without someone there to pull the weeds and prune the shrubs, the Lodge landscaping was a mess. God had done his job, but man had fallen down on his part of the job during the war. The landscaping mess Tony had to deal with is what you get when it's “just God.”

A lot of things work like that. People sometimes ask, why does God allow all the poverty and hunger in the world? Well, God has done his part to feed us all. He's provided the earth with abundant resources, and he's provided the plants and animals we eat and the sun and rain to make them grow. It's not God's fault if we fail to distribute the food to the people who need it. That's our fault. People go hungry when it's “just God.”

And poverty? Same thing there: God provided us with the resources to make just about anything we might want. It's not God's fault that some people decided it was more important for them to have a new car, or a bigger TV, or a new iPod – or the world's most powerful military - than for others in the world to have basic necessities of life. As Gandhi said, “The earth provides for every man's needs but not for every man's greed.” It's not that there isn't enough “stuff” to go around. God has created the Earth to provide enough to meet the needs of all human beings; it is up to mankind to spread the wealth around as God intended. When those of us who have everything we need demand still more, we take it from those who are doing without the basic necessities of life. When I demand a two hundred dollar pair of running shoes, or a new cell phone with a better camera, or any of the other luxuries we take for granted, I'm taking from the impoverished people of the world, from the half of the world's population who lives on two dollars or less per day. Poverty? That's what you get when it's “just God.”

War? There's another example of what happens when it's “just God.” God's been clear on what he wants: “Thou shalt not kill.” “Blessed are the peacemakers.” He's even given us some pretty good advice on how to be peacemakers: “Love your neighbor.” “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” But instead, we go about the business of killing each other, and at any given moment, there are several wars going on in the world. That's what it looks like when we don't do our part, when it's “just God.”

Look around you. What other situations do you see where it's “just God”; where man is failing to do his part? What action can you take to work with God? How can you encourage others to work with God?

When Jesus came back

It was never like this before Jesus came back. It used to be you could bash gays, or complain about welfare mothers, or walk past homeless people without so much as looking down at them. But since Jesus came back, no more of that, no sir.

It wouldn't have been so bad if He'd just come back to judge us all. I mean, isn't that the way it was supposed to happen? He'd come back, and He'd look to see whether you'd gone to church, and done a good job of raising your kids and stuff like that, then He'd send us off to our eternal reward or punishment, and that would be that. But no, He couldn't do that. He had to come back and make us do the things we were supposed to do. You know, like if you were supposed to be your brother's keeper, or if you were supposed to be merciful or something, He'd actually make you do it.

And remember how we used to make fun of all them punk hippie kids with their long hair and all? You could call 'em faggots, or ask 'em if they were girls or anything like that. Well, you can't do that anymore, not since Jesus came back. You'd think He'd wear a suit and tie or something, and get a haircut, like a decent human being, but no, there He is, just like in the pictures, with that long hair, and that beard, and half the time He's wearing them stupid sandals. Now how are we supposed to raise up our kids decent with that kind of example around?

And you just can't get away from him. Seems like everywhere you go, there's Jesus, telling you how you gotta live and what you're supposed to be doing. I suppose next thing you know he'll pop up and tell me not to spit on the sidewalk no more or something. He's even on TV. No kidding, there's Jesus himself, right there on the TV for Chri- well, you know what I mean. Sure, we've always had religion on TV, but at least you could get some entertainment out of them TV preachers, all asking for money and pretending to heal somebody. But this is different – Jesus gets on the TV, telling everybody what they gotta do and how they gotta live. I even seen him break in on the news show, talking about what the world leaders were doing wrong, and telling 'em what they gotta do different.

I'm telling you, things just ain't the same since Jesus came back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

The above is just a piece of idle speculation I engaged in one day: What if Jesus decided to do things differently than we're expecting? What if He came back to live with us again? What if He was there to give us guidance and correction, perhaps sometimes in a gentle, shepherd-leading-his-flock manner, and perhaps sometimes in a more overturning-tables, throwing-the-money-changers-out-of-the-temple manner? What if Jesus could pop up in front of you at any minute, to comment on what you're doing? Think about it.