Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Not Fair

Anna was eighteen and just starting college when she found out that she was pregnant. The father was a fling, totally unreliable and had no interest in the child. Anna's life was turned upside down. How could she be so careless? How could she let this happen?


After praying, crying and talking to her parents and friends, she decided to give the baby up for adoption. The child deserved a good life and she was unfit to be its mother. And, to be honest, she didn't want to sacrifice her life. She wanted to go to college.


A couple from Connecticut adopted her baby, a little girl. They had two boys and really wanted a girl but didn't want to chance a pregnancy in which they might get yet another boy. They took her baby as their own and Anna gave up all parental rights. She was no longer a mother, or so she thought.


But every day of her life, even if it was just for a moment, Anna would wonder about that little girl. How was she growing up? What did she look like? Was she happy? She wondered if her daughter would ever contact her, but she never did. And Anna assumed that she had no right to know what her daughter was up to. She went on with her life but a part of her always wondered.


When Anna's daughter, Jennifer, turned 30, she prepared to be married in Connecticut. One day, she came home from work and her fiancé gave her shocking news. "Jennifer," he said. "I don't think that you are ready to marry me."


"What!? Why?" she asked, about to burst into tears.


"You need to find your biological mother. You have always wondered about her. Find her. Find out who she is. Then we can be married..."


Jennifer began to search for Anna. Anna had always left her contact information with the adoption agency in the hope that her daughter might some day want to know her. So she was not hard to find.


You could have knocked Anna over with a feather when she first heard her daughter's voice on the phone. It sounded so much like her own! They began to speak, they met for a long weekend at the beach. And Jennifer decided that she wanted Anna at her wedding. And not only that,  Anna was to sit in the front row  with the parents who had raised her daughter.


Jennifer's adoptive parents were remarkably generous in welcoming Anna into all of their lives. Together, they shared grandparent duties when Jennifer had her first baby. But all the time,  Anna could not help feeling that it was so unfair. So unfair and yet so beautiful. She hadn't done any of the hard work. She hadn't changed diapers and put up with pimply adolescence. And she got all the benefits, as if she had been there from the start. She got to sit in the front row at her daughter's wedding.


Today Jesus tells us a parable about a landowner who is not fair. He hires workers all throughout the day, from morning to night. But when the day is done, he pays them all the same wage...those who worked for five minutes get the same amount as those who worked all day. It is clearly and unabashedly unfair.


God is not fair. God is good and infinitely generous but no where in the Bible does it say that God is fair.


I knew a man who lived the most wild life: partying and drugs and women and gambling- he did it all. At the age of 65, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was all alone. His third wife had left him after he had yet another affair. 


This man found my church in the yellow pages (yes, it was years ago).  He came to my office and confessed his sins. One week later, he called asking me to come to his home because he was too sick to come to me. He sat in an armchair and told me that he had had a vision of Jesus walking towards him with his arms open. He cried. And the next day, he died.


His funeral was a mess. He had made no plans. His wives and mistresses were warring with one another, but I believe that God welcomed him home, at the eleventh hour.


And how is this fair? Here we are, worshipping faithfully, giving our money and time, serving the poor the sick and the needy, and all he did was party! It's not fair!


The notion of fair comes from the mind of a two or three-year old. It is a good notion but it is a human notion, too simplistic for God. God is too wise to be fair. God knows things we do not. God is too vast to give us all the same thing. We are so unique and so individual and only God can fathom what we need.


When John Claypool's daughter died at the age of nine from cancer, he sat at the breakfast table one morning so depressed he could hardly breathe. How could God be so unfair? Why did other parents get to keep their kids? Why did he have to suffer? Why did his daughter have to suffer?


Then, in  a moment, John looked up and he saw his son, sitting across the breakfast table eating Cheerios, healthy and alive. And in that moment, John realized that it was his choice. He could be angry about how unfair life was or he could be grateful for the child he had. That was the defining moment of his life. He decided that God was not fair but God was good. John realized that his daughters life was a gift. He had her for seven years.


Think about your life. Where do you feel like you've been cheated? How do you compare yourself to others? What do they have that you don't have? A better job? A nice house? Healthy kids? Life is difficult. But it is a gift and you won the lottery just to get here. Jesus never promised us that life would be fair. You have a choice as to how you see your life. Do you want to be grateful or do you want to be angry because life is unfair?


You may say to yourself, "Why should I be grateful? I have arthritis so bad I can hardly walk. My husband left me. I am alone in this world. I lost my job..."  And you are right. Some of you, in fact, most of us, have had to suffer in this life. But look around you. How is it that you were born? How incredible that, out of all the infinite possibilities of genome, that you came to be? How incredible that you breathe? Dr Ryan Uitti spoke at Episcopal this past week and he said that it is hard NOT to believe in God. It would be like believing that a tornado passed through a junkyard and left behind a F16 fighter jet. There is too much beauty and genius to the creation, there is too much intentionality.


Life is not fair. You are right. God never promised us fair. God promised us love and a front seat at the wedding of life itself, at the dance of creation, the great feast of God.




Monday, September 08, 2014

The Reality of Relationships

Richard grew up in a nearly perfect family. His dad was a renowned surgeon. His mom stayed at home. He had a younger  brothers and their life was full of safety, learning and fun. Their dad was stoic, calm and loving. They adored him and waited with excitement every night for him to come home. They loved to get him to wrestle with them on the living room floor after dinner. He was big and strong and seemingly invincible, their protector and their provider.

Richard grew up, got a law degree and began to practice law. At the age of 30, with no warning at all, his is dad...his dad, who he had looked up to his whole life, decided to start another family.

Richard's dad fell in love with a patient, a woman 20 years his junior, and he decided that he did not want to be a father to his adult children any longer. He told them that he had never told them how much he resented them. He sent Richard a letter. "I have raised you and provided for you. I have experienced too much sadness and resentment trying to raise you and care for your mother. I give up. I am no longer your father." Richard was so devastated that he could hardly breathe. His father had simply never come to him when he felt discouraged or angered by him. He did not communicate conflict and then he just left. Richard was devastated and alone. He felt that his whole childhood had somehow been a sham.

Richard was never able to reconcile with his dad, despite many letters and phone calls. When his dad died, he did not even know about it. One of his friends happened upon his dad's obituary and that's how Richard found out that his dad was gone forever.

There is a powerful myth that exists in the church. It is a myth that defies denomination, it exists in all churches from the evangelical to the progressive. The myth is about relationships. The myth tells us that if we are faithful we will not have broken relationships, that if we are faithful,we will not fight with one another. The good Christian gets along with everyone, right?

Conflict, disagreement, argument...these things are not bad. They are the way that we have of communicating difference, hurt, confusion. Conflict can be very painful but it can also be incredibly helpful. If you do not have conflict, be careful. Someone may not be telling the truth about how they are feeling. Richards father refused to communicate when there was conflict. He let his resentment build and then he ran away from his entire family. Conflict is an inevitable part of human relationships.

St Paul once wrote that we see through a glass dimly. Sometimes, when people are in a disagreement, it is almost as if there is a glass wall that stands between them. This glass wall is transparent but it is a bit warped. On one side, a person sees through it and everything looks one way but the person on the other side sees things differently. Many of the conflicts that arise between us arise simply because we have experienced an event differently. Our perspectives, what we see and experience, are different and we respond to what we are seeing and this leads to conflict.

Conflict in the world and especially in the church is inevitable. Let me say that again, conflict is inevitable. If there is conflict in your life, it is not because you did anything wrong. It has to do with our fallen world and our lack of perspective. We see through a glass dimly. Dimly. The glass is sometimes warped by our hurts and the repetitive patterns of our lives. Sometimes we can't even see each other at all.

Jesus talks about relationships today and he openly talks about conflict. He talks about conflict in a way that assumes each of us will experience it. "If your brother sins against you, this is what you do..." He gives us a clear and concise list of instructions. The instructions are simple and yet they are terribly hard to do.

First and perhaps most importantly, when someone wrongs you, GO AND TALK TO THEM. Out of all Jesus' instructions, this is the one we most avoid. We want to pretend that it didn't bother us. We don't think it is worth our time. We don't think the other person will respond well or we are just too darned tired. If we really followed this commandment, we would be talking to someone at least once a week right? Daily? Be honest. How many times does someone hurt your feelings or wrong you in some way? But so many times, if we just follow Jesus' instructions and go to the person alone, without gossip or self-pity or wallowing...so many times the dispute ends right there and in many cases, the relationship is strengthened. It is so hard to be honest about this. It takes time. It takes effort. And sometimes, we just want to do what is easiest, to pretend nothing is wrong, or to tell anyone or everyone else about our hurt and not the person who hurt us.

There are times when you do go directly to the one who hurt you and try to talk to them, and it doesn't work. There are times when people don't admit to wrongdoing or their perspective on life is so different from yours and in their eyes, they are the victim not the perpetrator. And in those cases, Jesus tells us to go back to the person but this time with witnesses or, literally, listeners, people who are objective and have integrity, who will not take sides. Take with you people who see clearly and have the capacity to listen. Let them see and hear the truth. If they cannot explain or help you reconcile, then bring the conflict to the church. Technically, the word ecclesia that Jesus used meant community. Clearly, Jesus wanted the conflict aired and discussed, not kept in the dark.

Finally, if none of this works, we are to end the relationship. Stop trying. Let the person be a non-relationship for you, like how a Jew was instructed in Jesus' day not to speak to a Gentile and a tax collector. Just let it be. And maybe this is the hardest part of all. It is hard to stop trying.

Jesus is telling us that it is OK to have people that you cannot or do not relate to. That is the final breakdown of the myth. Jesus is saying that, even in church, there are times when you have to end a relationship. Conflict should not last forever. After a number of tries, it becomes obsessive and sinful. Try, get help, and if you can't fix the relationship, end it. Don't let it live broken forever. Let it go.

The pain of saying goodbye to folks who will not change is devastating. Richard wanted a relationship with his father but his father would not have it. And this pain is something that he still carries with him today. He never really got to say goodbye.

No human relationships are perfect and sometimes the least inadequate solution is goodbye. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, Paul says. Sometimes, the only thing that we can do is not to harm each other.

"Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven," Jesus said. Heaven will be a place of relationships. The people who you love and live in relationship with will somehow be there. I am not sure that we will ever fully understand these words until we get there, but it is enough to know that relationships are part of your spiritual life. Relationships are part of how you live out your life of faith. You can bind people to you in love but you also have the capacity to loose them, to let them go. Why must we work so hard on our relationships? Because your relationship with God is impacted by your relationships with others. Your relationships affect your soul. And when we get along and truly connect, when two or three of us are really together and for even a brief moment, our barriers come down and we see each other clearly, God is there.

So communicate. Tell each other about the little conflicts before they get huge. Don't slack off or hold it in. Talk to one another. And, if after much effort, you cannot resolve a relationship, let it go. That's what forgiveness means, letting go. Do not stew or obsess or gossip. Just hand the relationship back to God.