Why Kneel?

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on March 20, 2011.

Jesus Christ, Garden of Gethsemane, artist unknown

       Haiku:

         
      The taste
                  of rain

        —Why kneel?

         (Jack Kerouac)

For some reason, kneeling and Lent seemed connected in my mind. Thinking back on the very non-liturgical faith tradition of my childhood, I can’t remember kneeling, or any mention of kneeling. We stood to sing, sat to listen. Our most demonstrative act was to shake someone’s hand after the service.

The first time I remember kneeling was when my grandmother had a heart attack, the spring I was 16. In grief, then prayer, I knelt beside her bed. It seemed the only thing to do, and in my kneeling and prayer, I experienced God's presence and love in a way I had never imagined.

 A few years later I witnessed a frightening domestic dispute, with threatened violence and verbal abuse. By the time the abusive party drove off, all I could think of was to kneel with the shaking injured party, and cry, and pray, and wait for God’s comfort and wisdom.

The first time I took communion in an Episcopal church, kneeling at the altar, I found myself feeling deeply at home, spiritually fed in a profound and unexpected way, and thankful for the opportunity to kneel. There are times when kneeling seems the only thing to do, the best posture for meeting God, the safest place to be. After the tragic events of 9-11, our church held a prayer service, and I remember kneeling with so many others, thankful to kneel in God’s presence.

Why kneel? What are we doing when we kneel?

For me, kneeling can be a physical expression of lament. I kneel when life is too much, when the pain is too great, when there seems no place to turn. Nahum, describing the fall of Ninevah, says “Hearts melt, knees give way, bodies tremble, every face grows pale”  (Nahum 2:10). In Hebrew, the word for grief (כרא- kara) sounds exactly like the word for knee, kneel, smite, sink, fall, bring low (כרע - kara’). 

The Prodigal Son, Salvatore Rosa, Italy, 1650

Kneeling is also an expression of repentence. The prophet Ezra, made aware of Israel’s sin, tore his tunic and cloak:

and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God  and prayed:

I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great (Ezra 9:5-7).

Beyond grief and repentence, kneeling is an expression of submission, and supplication. We are small and God is great. In kneeling, we set ourselves in God’s hands. Lepers, seekers, desperate parents knelt as they called out to Jesus for help. Jesus himself knelt in Gethsemene, praying in submission and sorrow before his journey to the cross. 

I sometimes find myself returning, when I kneel, to the words of TS Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” part of his book-length Four Quartets. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but became a British citizen, and an Anglican, in 1927. Fourteen years later, he served as an air raid warden and firewatcher in London during the Blitz, when German bombers targeted London for 76 consecutive nights. Between September, 1940, and May, 1941, forty thousand British civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing. More than a million houses in London were destroyed or damaged.

"Little Gidding" is about many things, but in large part it’s about the pain of living in a ruined city, in a time of great devastation, and the challenge of living in faith when hope seems gone. In a letter to a friend, Eliot noted that the memorable line “Ash on an old man's sleeve” referred to the debris of a bombing raid hanging in the air for hours afterwards. "Then it would slowly descend and cover one's sleeves and coat in a fine white ash."

In the section before that, Eliot writes of kneeling, and of prayer: 

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion….
…You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. 

We come to our knees through different routes, through pain, guilt, grief, helplessness. And once there, we set aside “sense and notion,” all the games our minds play, all the willfulness so hard to escape.

In kneeling, we speak to God in a way that goes beyond “the order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.” Certainly we can pray in any posture, but in kneeling, in a physical way, we declare our need, our dependence, our submission.

Psalm 22 says “all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive.” Contemporary Americans tend to be control freaks, desperate to fortify ourselves against the hazards that surround us. But despite our efforts, we, like all who have lived before us, are “those who cannot keep themselves alive.” Independent though we are, resourceful as we like to think ourselves, a moment of honest reflection will remind us that we are in need of resources and wisdom beyond our own.

The famous poem “Invictus”, poet William Ernest Henley’s one claim to fame, boasts “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

The truth is something different. We are not masters of anything. We are frighteningly dependent. Watch the evening news and be reminded of how fragile this life is.

In kneeling, we find our place again, as people of the Lord’s pasture, small sheep in his care: "Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care." Psalm 95

We kneel now, in penance and petition, but we are also told there will come a time when all will kneel.  Isaiah tells us: "Before me every knee will bow;  by me every tongue will swear." (Isaiah 45) Paul repeats this in Romans 14:  “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’

Adoration of the Lamb ~ Jan Van Eyck

In Philippians 2, Paul expands this vision, to both a present reality (Jesus is already exalted, already give a name above every name), and a time in the future when we will kneel to acknowledge him:

 Therefore God exalted him

to the highest place

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

          Philippians 2

Jack Keroac, in his 'western haiku', questions the value of kneeling. What is your own experience of kneeling? How would you answer his question "Why kneel?"

 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Metanoia

John the Baptist
Old Saint Mary's Cathedral
San Francisco

Advent is a time of preparation. In the liturgical church, John the Baptist is the voice of that challenge to get ready. The gospel texts describe him calling “Prepare the way." "Make straight the path." "Repent and be baptized.”

“Repent” is one of those words badly flattened in translation. The original word is “metanoia” – “meta” and “noia.” “Noia” is easy: “mind.”

  

“Meta” is harder. It’s a prefix we see in “metanarrative” or “metaphysics.” It can be translated “beyond,” or “after.” But the meaning seems larger, more like “encompassing,” or “like this, only bigger.”

So “metanarrative” is the bigger story that contains, and explains, other narratives. “Metaphysics” is the bigger vision that contains, and explains, the physical world.

And “metanoia”? Literal attempts at translation read it as “a change of mind.” But it’s more like moving from a small mind, our own, to the “meta mind,” the larger mind that encompasses ours: God’s own.

So what John calls for is to let our small minds go, and find our place in God’s. Or to let our own agendas go, and find ourselves in God’s. To set aside our own blindered sight, and ask God to help us see his larger vision.

C. S. Lewis, struggling to explain this larger view of repentence, put it this way: 

“In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.  Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of a "hole."  This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. . . .  It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years.  It means undergoing a kind of death." (Mere Christianity) 

We like to think of repentance as something we can check off, a quick confession, a grudging acknowledgement of guilt, then on to other things. But metanoia is much bigger, more lasting. As Lewis says, it’s a kind of death, letting go of our own great ideas, our own fiercely held prejudice, our own self-importance. It’s a willingness to take on a less selfish way of living, a less self-absorbed way of seeing.

The difficulty, of course, is that we can’t do it ourselves. We see what we see. We are who we are. We hold tightly to our smallness. Conditioned by our experience, our upbringing, our temperament, the voices of our culture, our families, our favorite tv shows, we are locked into our own way of knowing, and trapped in our own ways of living.

The first step in “metanoia” is to recognize that, and to ask for help, to ask for the Holy Spirit to move in us, through us, around us, showing us as we really are, showing us what we were made to be.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his Letters and Papers from Prison, written not long before he was executed by the Nazis, puzzled over this: 

 "Christ Ready to Embrace the Penitent Soul" 
Isabel Piczek 1982, St. Norbert Catholic Church
Orange, California

“One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. . .  I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia . . .”

So, on a bright December day, I find myself wondering what it would be like to live “unreservedly” in the perplexities and struggle of a concentration camp. I wonder what Bonhoeffer saw, as he trusted himself into the arms of God. And I consider my own ongoing metanoia, the continuing call to prepare the way.

Where do I need a change of heart, a change of mind, a larger vision?

Hesychius, one of the early church fathers, wrote, "We will travel the road of metanoia correctly if, as we begin to give attention to the spirit, we combine humility with watchfulness . . .”

There’s that word again: watchful.

My thoughts turn to the Ignatian prayer of examen, a discipline of looking back, to see where God has been at work, to see where my own pride, or selfishness, has gotten in the way.

Sitting in God’s presence, I sift back through my day, and ask:

“Was my motivation love, or pride?”
“Was I really listening, or just waiting for my turn to speak?”
“Did I use my time well, or wastefully?”
“Was that opinion of mine a reflection of your heart, God, or of my own preferred way of seeing things?” 

Venerable Matt Talbot
Maria Orr, 2010, Michigan
Chapel of the Penitent

The goal isn’t to correct myself, or to justify my behavior. It’s to see myself honestly, which is only possible when I’m reminded of God’s love: “do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance / metanoia?"(2Corinthians 7:10).

Here’s the examen (in the slightly strange language found in almost any explanation of it):

• The first Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits received. 

• The second, to ask grace to know our sins and cast them out. 

• The third, to ask account of our soul from the hour that we rose up to the present Examen, hour by hour, or period by period: and first as to thoughts, and then as to words, and then as to acts. 

• The fourth, to ask pardon of God our Lord for the faults. 

• The fifth, to purpose amendment with His grace. 

I have friends who see repentance in any form as a very negative thing, who think that acknowledging wrong is bad for the psyche, that confession of any kind is negative and harmful.

I find it deeply comforting. I’m not perfect. My attitude, my thoughts, my words, my actions. None are perfect. Not even close. 

I do things badly. I mess up. I harm others. I let people down. I hold fiercely to my own ideas, and react with frustration when asked to explain them. I harbor resentments. I procrastinate when prompted to reach out in ways that might cost me time, or risk my emotional safety.

And God still loves me. Still surrounds me with his kindness. Still calls me to deeper wisdom, clearer vision, more consistent faithfulness. Forgives my failings, calls me to change, and gives me grace to take the next step forward.

So I ask for grace to move on toward wholeness and holiness, to be more like Christ, to inhabit the callings we are all called to: agents of reconciliation. Light in a dark world. People who love in the way we’ve been loved.

And I wait for metanoia: a change of heart, of mind, of life. I trust myself to the mercy greater than myself. 

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer)

The Holy Spirit and the Arms of God, Maria Orr, 2010,
Chapel of the Penitent, St. Mary Magdelene Church, Kentwood, Michigan

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Hungry

Certain passages of scripture rattle around my head, popping up at odd times, bringing more questions than they answer.

One that’s currently troubling me: the sheep and the goats passage, from Matthew 25. Jesus has been talking about the end times, the need to be ready, the need to keep watch. He tells the parable of the bridesmaids, who let their lamps burn low and weren’t prepared when the bridegroom came. Then the parable about the stewards: the ones who used the money they were given wisely and were rewarded. The one who buried the money and was cast out.

Then, tucked between that familiar stewardship parable and the plot to kill Jesus, comes this story:

 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

    “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

    “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

  “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Questions? Quite a few. But the one that interests me in the moment is a practical one:  Those people who ended up in the goat section – what if they really didn’t see any hungry, thirsty, naked, sick people? What if they lived somewhere like me – in a nice suburban house, in a safe, pleasant neighborhood? Who could fault them for forgetting to feed the hungry, or failing to care for the sick? Or somehow missing the fact that millions of people die each year because they don’t have clean water?

A few days ago, I turned the radio on and heard a woman’s voice: African, struggling with English, but passionate and firm. The speaker was Rose Mapendo, a survivor of the genocide in Rawanda, asked about current struggles and conflicts in other parts of the world. She answered without hesitation: “’I believe it's everybody's responsibility to take the action to save these people's life. There is many thousands of people who are seeking for life, who need my help, who need my voice, who need your voice, who need the world's attention to save their life.’”  

What if we don’t see them?

There’s a big conversation going on among our elected officials about budgets and priorities and ways to cut the national debt. The budget proposed by the House of Representatives would cut non-military foreign assistance by almost 50%. In human terms, 18 million people would lose access to food they depend on, including 2.5 million children who would no longer receive their daily school meal, their one real meal of the day. 4 million people would lose access to malaria medicine, and the successful malaria net program President George W. Bush pushed so hard for would be cut substantially.

Why cut foreign aid? Because we aren’t paying attention.

In January, a national poll found that 75 percent of people thought foreign aid should be cut.

But this may explain that opinion: another poll a few months earlier found that when people were asked what percentage of the federal budget currently goes to foreign aid, the average response was that 27 percent of our budget goes to aid. When asked how much of the budget should go to foreign aid, the response was 10 to 13 percent. (Fiscal Times)

So – when people say foreign aid should be cut, they’re picturing a cut from about 27% to 10% of the national budget. That’s a big cut. But it would make foreign aid a tenth, a tithe, of our national budget.

In fact, current actual spending on non-military foreign aid is about 1 percent. A tenth of what people say it should be. A tiny fraction of what people believe it to be.

With recommended cuts, that number would shrink to about half of one percent.

Should we know that? Should we care?

I’ve been repenting, in this season of repentance, of my own utter ignorance about the federal budget, the ways bills are passed, my role in our democracy.  I’m not big on numbers, budgets, percentages. But as I’ve been trying to read more about this issue, and trying to understand what’s at stake, I’ve come to wonder if complexity, distance, lack of interest excuse my ignorance, my poor stewardship of the rights I’ve been given.

What does it mean to have a voice in caring for the poor? Whose lives are dependent on my action? Who needs my help, my voice, my attention?

Last week, a group of leaders concerned about justice, hunger and poverty committed themselves to a hunger fast on behalf of the poor. Tony Hall, the head of the Alliance to End Hunger; David Beckmann, the president of Bread for the World; Jim Wallis, the president of Sojourners; Ritu Sharma of Women Thrive and Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service were among the initial voices, agreeing to form a “circle of protection” around those who have no voice. They are concerned that a global food crisis, paired with recommended budget cuts, would result in tens of thousands of deaths, and would set back significant progress in control of diseases like malaria.

As I’ve prayed, I’ve concluded that a first step in being a better steward is to join the circle: I’m going to pray for the Hunger Fast, for our political leaders, for those who will be hurt if aid to the poor is cut. I’m also committing to fast a meal each day through the next two weeks, to use some of the time in reading more about the way our national budget works, and to commit to writing letters to those who make decisions.

There are other ideas described on the HungerFast.org site. And lots of information available through organizations mentioned above.    

Not everyone can fast, even one meal. Not everyone has time to delve deeply into the politics of scarcity and hunger.

But we’ve been given voices, and votes, and many without voices or votes are dependent on us using them wisely.

I’ve been spending time with the Ash Wednesday Litany of Repentance. Here’s part:

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us.

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us...

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation.

   That we may show forth your glory in the world.


 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Why Kneel?

        Haiku:

         The taste
        of rain

        —Why kneel?

         (Jack Kerouac)

For some reason, kneeling and Lent seemed connected in my mind. Thinking back on the very non-liturgical faith tradition of my childhood, I can’t remember kneeling, or any mention of kneeling. We stood to sing, sat to listen. Our most demonstrative act was to shake someone’s hand after the service.

The first time I remember kneeling was when my grandmother had a heart attack, the spring I was 16. In grief, then prayer, I knelt beside her bed. It seemed the only thing to do. A few years later I witnessed a frightening domestic dispute, with threatened violence and verbal abuse. By the time the abusive party drove off, all I could think of was to kneel with the shaking injured party, and cry, and pray, and wait for God’s comfort and wisdom.

The first time I took communion in an Episcopal church kneeling at the altar, I found myself feeling deeply at home, spiritually fed in a profound and unexpected way, and thankful for the opportunity to kneel. There are times when kneeling seems the only thing to do, the best posture for meeting God, the safest place to be. After the tragic events of 9-11, our church held a prayer service, and I remember kneeling with so many others, thankful to kneel in God’s presence.

I’ve been thinking about kneeling this week, as the tragic news from Japan continues, as events in the Middle East unfold, as the world seems, more than ever, a precarious, fragile, broken place.

Why kneel? What are we doing when we kneel?

For me, kneeling can be a physical expression of lament. I kneel when life is too much, when the pain is too great, when there seems no place to turn. Nahum, describing the fall of Ninevah, says “Hearts melt, knees give way, bodies tremble, every face grows pale”  (Nahum 2). In Hebrew, the word for grief (כרא- kara) sounds exactly like the word for knee, kneel, smite, sink, fall, bring low (כרע - kara’). 

Kneeling is also an expression of repentence. The prophet Ezra, made aware of Israel’s sin, tore his tunic and cloak, “and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God  and prayed: ‘I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great’” (Ezra 9).

Even more, kneeling is an expression of submission, and supplication. We are small and God is great. In kneeling, we set ourselves in God’s hands. Lepers, seekers, desperate parents knelt as they called out to Jesus for help. Jesus himself knelt in Gethsemene, praying in submission and sorrow before his journey to the cross. 

I sometimes find myself returning, when I kneel, to the words of TS Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” part of his book-length Four Quartets. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but became a British citizen, and an Anglican, in 1927. Fourteen years later, he served as an air raid warden and firewatcher in London during the Blitz, when German bombers targeted London for 76 consecutive nights. Between September, 1940, and May, 1941, forty thousand British civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing. More than a million houses in London were destroyed or damaged.

"Little Gidding" is about many things, but in large part it’s about the pain of living in a ruined city, in a time of great devastation, and the challenge of living in faith when hope seems gone. In a letter to a friend, Eliot noted that the memorable line “Ash on an old man's sleeve” referred to the debris of a bombing raid hanging in the air for hours afterwards. "Then it would slowly descend and cover one's sleeves and coat in a fine white ash." That second section continues with a description of the bombers leaving the city: “In the uncertain hour before the morning/ Near the ending of interminable night / At the recurrent end of the unending / After the dark dove with the flickering tongue /  Had passed below the horizon of his homing . . .”

In the section before that, Eliot writes of kneeling, and of prayer: 

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion….
…You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. 

We come to our knees through different routes, through pain, guilt, grief, helplessness. And once there, we set aside “sense and notion,” all the games our minds play, all the willfulness so hard to escape. In kneeling, we speak to God in a way that goes beyond “the order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.” Certainly we can pray in any posture, but in kneeling, in a physical way, we declare our need, our dependence, our submission.

Psalm 22 says “all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive.” Contemporary Americans tend to be control freaks, desperate to fortify ourselves against the hazards that surround us. But despite our efforts, we, like all who have lived before us, are “those who cannot keep themselves alive.” Independent though we are, resourceful as we like to think ourselves, a moment of honest reflection in the light of earthquakes and nuclear meltdowns will remind us that we are in need of resources and wisdom beyond ourselves.

The famous poem “Invictus”, poet William Ernest Henley’s one claim to fame, boasts “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” The truth is something different. We are not masters of anything. We are frighteningly dependent. Watch the evening news and be reminded of how fragile this life is. In kneeling, we find our place again, as people of the Lord’s pasture, small sheep in his care: "Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care." Psalm 95

We kneel now, in penance and petition, but we are also told there will come a time when all will kneel.  Isaiah tells us: "Before me every knee will bow;  by me every tongue will swear." (Isaiah 45) Paul repeats this in Romans 14:  “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’

Adoration of the Lamb ~ Jan Van Eyck

In Philippians 2, Paul expands this vision, to both a present reality (Jesus is already exalted, already give a name above every name), and a time in the future when we will kneel to acknowledge him:

 Therefore God exalted him

to the highest place

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

          Philippians 2

 In these days when we see the whole creation groaning, we kneel to remind ourselves that the story doesn’t end here, and to demonstrate our allegiance to the coming king and his eternal kingdom, that time when “God’s dwelling place [will be] among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

(In)visible Witness

This Wednesday, March 9, is Ash Wednesday, and by the end of the day many Christians will be wearing a smudge of ashes on the forehead – a visible witness to the call for repentance.

It’s always interested me to see ashes on the foreheads of people who’ve given no other sign of interest in the Christian faith. It’s a good thing, isn’t it? A quiet acknowledgement of the life of the church, a reminder of the beginning of Lent, an expression of sorrow for the ways we’ve fallen short of God’s best.

I know there are non-liturgical Christians who find the ashes offensive. Acts of repentence are to be done in secret, right? In Matthew 6, the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday, Jesus says “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

He goes on to give specifics: “when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

And “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

And “when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

So, ashes are a bad thing?

Is faith meant to be private? Is it strictly an individual thing, between me and God?

In Matthew 5, Jesus says ““You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

If we live our faith in secret, how will our light shine before others? If we don’t let our right hand know what our left hand is doing, how will our good deeds bring God glory?

I think Jesus was talking about motivation. In the Jewish culture of his day, charity, prayer, and fasting were assumed. Everyone knew what was expected, everyone knew how to do it, but, as becomes clear as Jesus talks about the Pharisees in other places, these acts of obedience had become spectator sports, done to impress, rather than please God or encourage others.

The current problem is very different.

In The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior, Steven Garber wrestles with a question that has troubled me for years: how can young Christians grasp a coherent worldview, when they don’t hear one fully articulated? But even more, how can they learn to live that worldview with integrity, when they see few visible examples?

In hours of conversation with Christians who have come through the early years of career and family with faith and focus intact, Garber discovered, among other things, that “what I believe is deeply affected by my social experience: my family, community, city, society, and century.”

On one level that seems obvious, but consider a culture where

We believe that each man must find the truth

That is right for him.

Reality will adapt accordingly.

The universe will readjust. History will alter.

We believe there is no absolute truth

Excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds. (Steve Turner, Creed)

Garber discusses the work of Peter Berger, a sociologist who has spent forty years studying “the relationship between belief and behavior in the light of modernity’s power to shape how we see and live in the world.” According to Berger:

“Meaning systems …must be lived collectively; constant interaction with other people who perceive and interpret reality in the same way as oneself is necessary if one’s “nomos” [socially constructed ordering of experience] is to be automatically effective in embuing one’s everyday experience with meaning. But modern societies have largely dissolved these supportive systems. … So in the end the individual is in a certain sense alone with the task of making sense of the world and his own place in it out of scraps and oddments culled here and there in his differentiated life and contacts.”

How do we understand what’s real, what works, what’s of value, what’s worth pursuing, when called on to construct that reality on our own?

There are plenty of philosophies available, products to buy, anthems to sing. Have it your way. Do what feels right. Be fastest, smartest, prettiest, best. Run over anyone who gets in your way.

Who advocates for the life of faith? If the only time we talk about God, his word, prayer, giving, fasting, discipleship, compassion, is Sunday morning or evening, if the only place that conversation about faith and practice takes place is in church,  no wonder kids think it’s irrelevant.

Deuteronomy 11 says “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates . . . .”

That passage may be familiar. What may be less familiar is the rationale just before it:

“Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm;  the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place . . .. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done.”

Moses was warning his people: what to you is real, clear, even obvious, in a different place and time will seem implausible, even ridiculous, if you don’t continue to share the stories of God’s work in the world. Daily, hourly, at home, on the road. God has demonstrated his power – now it’s up to you to keep that reality visible for those who haven’t seen it.

 We are surrounded by stories, voices, demonstrations of ways to live. More than any other culture, ever, we are inundated with ideas about what does and doesn’t work, what is and isn’t of value. The messages are non-stop, inescapable, wired into our children’s brains, popping up on our screens, pressing in from every side.

Who shares the message of faith? Who demonstrates what the life of faith looks like? Who makes the life Christ modeled visible, plausible, compelling?

If we have seen God at work, we need to tell about it, for those who haven’t seen it, don’t believe it, can’t quite imagine it. If there’s joy in giving, we need to share that, for those who can’t picture it, for those who worry about how they’d make ends meet if they redivided the monthly budget. If there’s power in prayer, we need to celebrate, testify, tell the story, affirm that yes, God is faithful, powerful, real. We need to talk about the realities of the Christian faith at the dinner table, driving to and from school, in quiet conversations before bed, at family gatherings with the extended family listening, with colleagues, friends, neighbors.

We also need to show what it looks like. I know many kids and young adults who have never seen anyone read a Bible except sitting in a church pew, who have never heard adults talk about God’s word in the context of a family decision. It saddens me to think of the times I’ve asked “who do you pray with about this?” and heard the answer, from kids, young adults, parents: nobody.

I am deeply thankful for the people who have been brave enough, consistent enough, to demonstrate the Christian life to me in a way I could see and understand. Family, friends, colleagues, faithful people who have shown me, bit by bit, what obedience looks like. What sacrificial giving looks like. What a life of prayer looks like.  What real repentence looks like. In real lives. In the real world I live in.

John Stott, in commentaries and study guides on the Sermon on the Mount, quotes the Scottish theologian AB Bruce: “we are to 'show when tempted to hide' and 'hide when tempted to show.’”

Too often, we’re tempted to hide, and to keep hidden what we’re called to make visible. We’re happy to express ourselves, but uncomfortable expressing the salt and light we’re called to live. We forget this amazing reality: we’re called to be like Christ. To make Christ known. In the particulars, the details, the dailiness of life.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

                                                     Gerard Manley Hopkins

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