In difficult places
08/03/15 05:13
Sorry folks, I guess yesterday’s blog was a bit of a downer. I didn’t mean it that way and I think that the ideas behind the blog are potentially uplifting, but it is Lent, and for me, it is a time worthy of tackling big ideas and mulling them. As a pastor, I know that resurrection is a difficult concept. Easter doesn’t come easily to our way of thinking and part of getting our minds wrapped around such a big concept is examining everything we know about life and death. And, as a pastor, I am continually speaking with people who wrestle with ideas and concepts without knowing how their struggles relate to the larger story of our people. Often when people are suffering and struggling with concepts, they fail to recognize that they are not alone. Our people have wrestled with big ideas for generations.
The past couple of weeks have been tough for some of my friends in public service. There have been several deaths that strike a bit closer to home, a fireman and the son of a fireman. There have been ambulance crews that have had to respond to a death of a homeless person and a couple of deaths of victims of what appear to be accidental shootings. These things happen, and our public servants are no strangers to death and tragedy. But there is a bit of a cumulative effect and there are moments in their work when they need to talk about what they have seen. They are, for the most part, particularly tough people who are very good at putting on a tough face and going on to the next situation, but we are all human and there are times when you’ve seen a bit too much and you need to let off a bit of steam.
Along the way, I’ve had the usual number of phone calls and conversations with people that come the way of a pastor. Someone facing surgery looks at their mortality in a new way and needs to go through their life and confront their guilt and fear. Most people I know have a few regrets and their lives have a few situations where they made moral choices that they have later questioned. Grief and loss also bring out the need to talk through some of the big questions of life.
As I work with people I frequently run into old strains of sacrificial theology. It isn’t uncommon for people to have an image of God as a harsh judge with a tendency to hand out eternal damnation on a fairly regular basis. It shouldn’t surprise us that people think that way. The institutional church has done much to promote those ideas. There has been a lot of preaching, over the centuries, that was at least a bit misguided, and more often that we’d like to admit included intentional emotional manipulation to get people to support the institution.
As much as I have tried to devote my life to preaching about God’s love and acceptance and desire for relationship with people, there persists, in the minds of many people, an image of a harsh and judgmental God who is quick to anger and who responds to every human error and foible with eternal punishment.
There is a strain of theology that contains a strain of forgiveness that leaves people with a mistaken notion of God. Sacrificial theology often misleads people in exactly this direction. The basic notion is that people are inherently bad and that this evil in humans has angered God and people deserve eternal punishment. You can see how some people have gotten this idea. Just look at all of the truly evil things that happen in this world. Most of those evil things come from bad choices that humans make. Given the state of the world, in this type of thinking, God stands ready to condemn everyone to eternal punishment in the horrors of hell which are beyond our capacity to imagine, but that doesn’t keep us from imagining torture and distress.
Ah, but there is a savior. At the last hour, Jesus came to this world and though he was innocent, he took all of the sins of the world upon himself and therefore had to suffer the most terrible of torturous deaths in order to save all of the other people from their sins. Therefore God took all of the anger that was meant for the sins of regular people and focused it on Jesus. Jesus dies a terrible death and we’re off the hook, so to speak.
God demands sacrifice, Jesus gives himself, we don’t have to be sacrificed.
While there are elements of truth in this belief, the image of God that is portrayed is inaccurate.
God isn’t itching to punish people. God isn’t filled with vengeful hatred. God did not cause his own son to be tortured on the cross.
God is all about loving and forgiving people. God lives for relationship with us. Forgiveness is not difficult, it is freely offered. Peace and reconciliation are the modes of God’s relationship with the people of God.
Jesus didn’t die to settle a score.
Jesus lived and died a completely human life to demonstrate that there is nowhere in life or death where we are removed from God’s presence. Even when all seems lost. Even when Jesus recites words from the Psalms from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God is not absent.
I know. I haven't seen the gates of hell. I don’t have special insight into what happens after we die. But I have seen hell on earth. I have sat with parents as they wrestle with tough end-of-life decisions as they sit by the unconscious body of their child who cannot recover from self-inflicted wounds. I have delivered the news of the death of a husband to a widow who has loved faithfully for more than half a century. I have cried with a mother who is at the end of her energy and resources who has to bury one child while keeping watch with another who lies precariously close to death. I have seen hell on earth.
And God isn’t absent. Even there God seeks in tender mercy to bring love and hope and peace. God doesn’t give up on us when our world turns awful. God doesn’t abandon those who suffer pain beyond description.
And that is why I stay in this business. That is why I pray with those who are weeping. That is why I explore some of the darkest corners of life in my Lenten reflections. Because even in the darkness, God is present. Lent is not a season to be avoided. It is a journey that we never walk alone.
The past couple of weeks have been tough for some of my friends in public service. There have been several deaths that strike a bit closer to home, a fireman and the son of a fireman. There have been ambulance crews that have had to respond to a death of a homeless person and a couple of deaths of victims of what appear to be accidental shootings. These things happen, and our public servants are no strangers to death and tragedy. But there is a bit of a cumulative effect and there are moments in their work when they need to talk about what they have seen. They are, for the most part, particularly tough people who are very good at putting on a tough face and going on to the next situation, but we are all human and there are times when you’ve seen a bit too much and you need to let off a bit of steam.
Along the way, I’ve had the usual number of phone calls and conversations with people that come the way of a pastor. Someone facing surgery looks at their mortality in a new way and needs to go through their life and confront their guilt and fear. Most people I know have a few regrets and their lives have a few situations where they made moral choices that they have later questioned. Grief and loss also bring out the need to talk through some of the big questions of life.
As I work with people I frequently run into old strains of sacrificial theology. It isn’t uncommon for people to have an image of God as a harsh judge with a tendency to hand out eternal damnation on a fairly regular basis. It shouldn’t surprise us that people think that way. The institutional church has done much to promote those ideas. There has been a lot of preaching, over the centuries, that was at least a bit misguided, and more often that we’d like to admit included intentional emotional manipulation to get people to support the institution.
As much as I have tried to devote my life to preaching about God’s love and acceptance and desire for relationship with people, there persists, in the minds of many people, an image of a harsh and judgmental God who is quick to anger and who responds to every human error and foible with eternal punishment.
There is a strain of theology that contains a strain of forgiveness that leaves people with a mistaken notion of God. Sacrificial theology often misleads people in exactly this direction. The basic notion is that people are inherently bad and that this evil in humans has angered God and people deserve eternal punishment. You can see how some people have gotten this idea. Just look at all of the truly evil things that happen in this world. Most of those evil things come from bad choices that humans make. Given the state of the world, in this type of thinking, God stands ready to condemn everyone to eternal punishment in the horrors of hell which are beyond our capacity to imagine, but that doesn’t keep us from imagining torture and distress.
Ah, but there is a savior. At the last hour, Jesus came to this world and though he was innocent, he took all of the sins of the world upon himself and therefore had to suffer the most terrible of torturous deaths in order to save all of the other people from their sins. Therefore God took all of the anger that was meant for the sins of regular people and focused it on Jesus. Jesus dies a terrible death and we’re off the hook, so to speak.
God demands sacrifice, Jesus gives himself, we don’t have to be sacrificed.
While there are elements of truth in this belief, the image of God that is portrayed is inaccurate.
God isn’t itching to punish people. God isn’t filled with vengeful hatred. God did not cause his own son to be tortured on the cross.
God is all about loving and forgiving people. God lives for relationship with us. Forgiveness is not difficult, it is freely offered. Peace and reconciliation are the modes of God’s relationship with the people of God.
Jesus didn’t die to settle a score.
Jesus lived and died a completely human life to demonstrate that there is nowhere in life or death where we are removed from God’s presence. Even when all seems lost. Even when Jesus recites words from the Psalms from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God is not absent.
I know. I haven't seen the gates of hell. I don’t have special insight into what happens after we die. But I have seen hell on earth. I have sat with parents as they wrestle with tough end-of-life decisions as they sit by the unconscious body of their child who cannot recover from self-inflicted wounds. I have delivered the news of the death of a husband to a widow who has loved faithfully for more than half a century. I have cried with a mother who is at the end of her energy and resources who has to bury one child while keeping watch with another who lies precariously close to death. I have seen hell on earth.
And God isn’t absent. Even there God seeks in tender mercy to bring love and hope and peace. God doesn’t give up on us when our world turns awful. God doesn’t abandon those who suffer pain beyond description.
And that is why I stay in this business. That is why I pray with those who are weeping. That is why I explore some of the darkest corners of life in my Lenten reflections. Because even in the darkness, God is present. Lent is not a season to be avoided. It is a journey that we never walk alone.