A man undone: Lent 2020

I must die.  Lent is the season that reminds me that I must die.  Die to myself.   Die to my desires, die to my hopes, die to my dreams.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that that “Christ bids us to come and die.” So I know th
at must die.  

            As we begin Lent, I know that this must be a season in which I reflect on my sins and to confront my own self.  But it must be more than this. I must completely undo myself…to remake myself.

            Lent is about putting to death all the things that are in opposition to God. Lent is about self-reflection and re-centering yourself around God’s will for your life.  But…where does this leave me?

            I must die.

            I must undo that which I have become.  I must…unbecome.

            Lent tells me that I must sacrifice all…that I must be willing…no…must be able…to endure the complete reduction of who I am.

            Where to begin? How do you start to…undo yourself?  How do you start to…die?

            The first thing that must go is my idea of career.  I no longer think of myself as a chaplain.  Rather, I think of myself as a person who works as a chaplain.  This might seems as a slight difference, but it is actually very significant.  I do not associate myself as one who is worthy to have the title, “Chaplain,” or “Chaps…” There are also those that hold that title with whom I do not wish to associate.  Is that pride on my part? But I feel that I must not think of myself as a chaplain… ‘chaplain’ as an ontological part of my being.

            Rather, I must think of myself as a man in relationship to his God.  But even so, what does that mean?

            The prophet Micah told the people of Israel to “love justice, do mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.” The season of Lent is an opportunity to learn to walk humbly with their God.

            I will confess that at 44 years old, I do not have a grasp on this.  I want to tell God what His plan is for me.  I want to direct the course of my life and most of all to expand my kingdom and my comfort. What if God’s plan is not what I want? Imagine if God is calling you to a life of obscurity…could we do it? What if God was asking us to give up our hopes and dreams…without the assurance that there is something better.  Could we do that?

            The central image of the period of Lent is Christ on the cross.  Paul writes about this and tells us that Jesus, “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). If Christ was willing to do this, what does that call me…us…to?

            This Lent for me is about reflecting on Christ on the cross and trying to instill humility within myself.  Prayer, reading, fasting are all part of this.  Engaging with the Stations of the Cross on a weekly basis is also a large part of my Lenten observance.   But I feel that I have to do more than this.  Periods of silence, reflection and introspection must become the norm.  Most of all, I must begin to tackle my own pride.  I must let Christ teach me to learn how to die to myself. I must put away my vain ambitions.  I must learn to be a better man…a better husband, a better father…only then can I begin to…come alive.  

Where is God?

“Where is merciful God, where is He?”

This question was asked by a man in a concentration camp as he watched two men and a young boy being hung for stealing food. It is perhaps the defining question that echoes not only from the camps, but also haunts our own lives as well.

Elie Weisel describes the scene in his book Night.

“Then came the march past the victims.  The two men were no longer alive.  Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish.  But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writing before our eyes.  And we were forced to look at him in close range.  He was still alive when I passed him.  His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. 

“Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’

And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This where—hanging here from this gallows…’”

No sadder words have been written, and no truer question has ever been asked.  “Where is merciful God, where is he?”

I listen to people’s pain for a living.  It’s what I do.  I may not be good at it and the Navy may not consider me necessary, but it’s what I do. 

The scenario’s change on a daily basis, “I don’t love my wife any more,” or “My husband is cheating on me…” or “when I was young my father put his hands on me…”  “I’m tired of hurting, Chaps….I’m tired of pain…”

Behind it all, whether they know it or not, they are all asking the same question, “For God’s sake, where is God?”

Now, this is not to compare my life, or any of our lives to the horror of the Holocaust.  There are no words to describe my horror at the events of the camps or to describe my awe in those that survived.  But there is a sense in which we all ask that same question when we think of the pain in our own lives.  Where is God in the midst of all the things we go through:

Broken marriages

Financial Crisis

Cancer

Estranged relationships

Parkinson’s Disease

The death of a beloved child

In my own life, I ask where “God” is in the midst of my estrangement.  I am in virtual exile from my church and my Christian Community. The people I work with on the ship neither understand what I do nor find any value in my position.  I am alone on the other side of the world wondering if this sacrifice is worth it.  More often that not, I feel alone and wonder what I have done to be ostracized.   There are times when I wonder if God is completely done with me, casting me out and abandoning me to the forces of oblivion.

“For God’s sake, where is he?”

As I encounter people on a daily basis, I wonder if God is aware of all that we are going through. 

This is nothing compared to the other horrors of the world.  A mother kills her daughter so that she can stay with her boyfriend.  A man shoots up a church in the name of racial cleansing.  And all day I am surrounded by people who laugh at other’s misery, who take bets on whether someone will kill themselves and who consistently advocate for violent and destructive answers to problems and who belittle and bereate and dehumanize people to accomplish their own goals of self-agrandizement.

“Where is he?”

Wiesel closes that section of his book with the following comment, “that night, the soup tasted of corpses.”

In that sentence, he perfectly captures the desertion of joy, the abandonment of hope, and the futility of life.   There can be no satisfaction in life while the cries of the wounded echo throughout our world.

“For God’s sake, where is he?”

As fate would have it, at the same prison camp that Wiesel wound up was a young theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also asking the very same question, but from a different vantage point.  He writes, “The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who let us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.  Before God and with God we live without God.  God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us…The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering.  Only the suffering God can help.” (Letters and Papers from Prison). 

Only the suffering God can help.  God suffers.  He not only suffers for us, he suffers with us. God is not absent nor has he abandoned us to our fate with no more concern than we have for pizza boxes.  Jurgen Moltmann builds on this and states that the only help we have is the crucified God.  God knows our suffering because he Himself suffered and continues to suffer and will continue to suffer until his kingdom comes in full.

I come from a tradition that has a hard time the crucifix, or at least the corpus on the crucifix.  For a long time, I did too.  After all, Jesus has been resurrected, he is off the cross and no longer suffers the pain of death.  But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I begin to see the crucifix as a reminder that God still suffers.  He suffers on our behalf and he suffers with us and at times he suffers through us.  Perhaps this part of being crucified to the world through the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14). 

When we are going through terrible times in our lives, we can perhaps join our voices with Wiesel, “Where is merciful God?” “He is there” and we can point to the cross, we can point to the wounds of our own lives. 

Road to the Cross: Arriving

Why is this night different than any other night?

This question, asked by children at the Passover Seder all over the world, sets the tone for the evening’s reflection and feast.  The leader then recites the story of salvation from slavery in Egypt.  We hear again of the plagues God puts on Egypt, the slaughter of the Passover lamb and the parting of the Red Sea. We remember the bitter tears of the people as they made bricks without straw and we are given the sweet charoset to remember that life is not only bitter.  But the overriding message is one of salvation and deliverance.

But today and tonight, we ask the same question, “why is this night different than any other night?” The answer is similar, but not the same. For the Christian, the reason for the night’s different lies not in the Passover, but in the Cross.

Today we arrive at the end of the road to the cross.  We have arrived at the foot of the cross to behold the innocent victim slain.

The cross. 

What can we say about the cross that has not already been said?  Perhaps there is no need to say anything new, but to remind ourselves about the meaning of the cross.  For Luther, the Christian must come to a complete stop at the cross to think about the crucified God.  Either we will accept the cross and cling to it, or we will reject it and scorn it.  As Paul said, the cross is “a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

If we reject the cross, we must reject Jesus and leave him behind.  Jesus’ crucifixion was not an accident and it was a failure.  Jesus came into this world and set his face towards’ Jerusalem.  He knew even before He started that his road would lead to the cross.  He accepted this as His purpose and even when he acknowledged the agony of the cross, he still submitted to it. 

But why? What was the point?  What did he do on the cross and why did he have to die on the cross?

Paul hints at the answer to this question in Colossians 1: For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

In the cross of Christ, lays the reconciliation of the world with God.  The world was once alienated from God through the power of sin and death, but now we have been brought close to God through Christ’s sufferings.  Our acceptance and reconciliation lies in Christ’s death.

Our journey to the Cross is our journey to God, because only through the cross can we come near to God.  Our sins must be punished and our debt must be paid.  This Jesus does when He goes to the cross.

This simple act changes our world and creates a new reality for us.  Just like the Jews who were able to escape Egypt into a new world, so now we have been able to escape from a dark world and enter into God’s family, his household.

Many religions offer a way to God, if only you will do x,y,and z.  Christianity is the only religion that says you cannot get to God, that God has to come to you.  Most religions say that you must sacrifice in order to get to God, in Christianity, Jesus is the sacrifice Himself who paves the way for us to stand before God.

This dramatically (or should dramatically change) the world.  The cross and suffering, not military power and wealth, is the way to victory and the way to salvation.  In 323, when Constantine heard the message, “by this sign will you conquer” he almost had it right.  Unfortunately, he saw this as a political answer to create a political empire.  Christianity has never been about a political empire and the cross is the positive sign of this.

Instead of seeking an authority based, power hungry organization to rule the world with an iron fist, the cross tells us that if we want victory, we must sacrifice ourselves, our very lives on behalf of others who not only do not believe the way we do, but mock and scorn us.  The cross tells us that the reconciliation of man with God is not to be sought in power, but in weakness.

Only when we see Jesus nailed to the cross, do we understand not only how deep God’s love is for us, but how deep our love for our neighbor should be.  We see Jesus willing to submit to cruel and vicious people for the good of those who shouted to crucify him.  So too, should the church be willing to sacrifice herself and submit to those who would crucify her.  In this, we see the perfect picture of love and a model for us to minister to a world that needs to be reconciled to God.

When we understand the cross in its entirety, we understand what Jurgen Moltmann meant when he said that "God became man so that dehumanized men might become true men."  The cross is the basis for a new society....one in which fair treatment does not need to be dictated by law but springs up from God's love for us and the new creation.  People are not divided by race, but differences are celebrated as diversity within God's family.  Hatred is replaced by love and war is overcome by peace.  Indeed the entire fractured world is held together by God's love expressed on the cross.

Road to the Cross: Going Up

The Road to the Cross*” is a series of thoughts for the Lent season. These convey some of my hopes, prayers, and even fears as we traverse this season and prepare for the celebration of Easter.

“He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem”–Luke 19:28

Confrontation takes courage, and courage is in strong demand these days.

We have traveled with Jesus and now we come to the beginning of the end.  Tomorrow in the churches, we will celebrate Palm Sunday and the coming of the new king.  But today, we focus on the fact that Jesus went up to Jerusalem and everything that goes along with it.

Jesus was one of those remarkable people who did not shy away from either confrontation or danger.  Neither did he seek it out, but he was strong enough to deal with it head on and not run away from it. 

Jesus had been warned that the people in Jerusalem had wanted him dead.  He knew that his friends would betray him, that he would be misunderstood and that ultimately he would be arrested and killed…and yet still he went.  

As I look at myself, I think I resemble the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz than William Wallace from Braveheart. What am I afraid of?  It seems like a great deal: I am scared of death, I am scared of other’s opinions of myself…I am scared of failing.  And I don’t think I’m alone in this.  I think we live in a generation of cowardly lions.  We live among a people who want take the easy way out and to make sure we are all liked, rather than standing up for what is right and true. 

Maya Angelou once said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” It is courage that gives us the ability to stick to our guns and to do what is right.  It was courage that allowed Jesus to set his face towards Jerusalem and to engage with the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders.  

Nelson Mandela also observes, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Courage is a moral fortitude that keeps us in the game when everything around us is screaming that we should get out. Courage controls us and helps us to do what we know is necessary. 

We may think of courage on the battlefield, in the hospital rooms, and on the decks of ships.  But courage is so much more real and necessary than that.

-It takes courage to confront our brother when we know they are doing wrong.

-It takes courage to talk to our parents about their changing needs as they get older.

-It takes courage to be a parent to our children.

-It takes courage to put our families before our jobs.

-It takes courage to talk about our faith openly in a world that no longer wants to hear it. 

-It takes courage to stand in the minority when the popular mood of the country tilts towards immorality. 

Jerusalem was located on a hill and when you reached the city you had to climb up the hill. That is why in the Bible, it is always said that you “go up” to Jerusalem.  We can imagine that when Jesus reached that hill, it took every ounce of courage to get up it.  

The road to the cross goes up to Jerusalem.  Up there, there is confrontation, hatred, and even death.  In order to get to the cross, we have to go there.  Do we…do I…have the courage to go up?