Do We Need to Bug God?

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Norman Bendroth

Genesis 18; 20-32; Luke 11: 1-13 / Norman B. Bendroth

            Let me tell you how I learned to play the guitar. When my brother was thirteen he bought this crappy used guitar where the distance between the fret board and the strings seemed like a couple of inches. You had to lift weights to play it. He also bought this Mel Bay “Teach Yourself to Play Guitar” books. After about two weeks he got bored with it and quit. I picked it up and began learning chords. A number of my friends played guitar and we’d get together to jam. I’d always ask them: “Teach me that song.” “What’s the fingering for that chord?” “Show me how to do that lick.” And that’s how I learned. Guitarists are pickpockets, we’re always borrowing tricks and ideas and chords from someone else. That’s how we learn in part, by imitating someone else or asking them to teach us.

You’ve probably done that yourself. Show me how you do that crochet hook. How did you install that new window? How do your pie crusts always come out so flaky? Can you show me how to change my oil?

I think that’s what we see happening in this Gospel story we just heard. All throughout his ministry the disciples had observed Jesus praying. He prayed before meals. He prayed before he performed a healing. He left them at night and went up to the mountains to pray. His disciples obviously saw the powerful impact that this kind of experience had on Jesus. So they said to him, “Would you show us how to do that? We want that same energy and tranquility in our lives.”

And in response to their request, Jesus did two things. First of all, he gave them an actual model of a prayer that they could begin to follow directly. He said, “When you pray, here is how to do it,” and what follows is a shortened form of what is usually called The Lord’s Prayer. This is simply a basic outline of the kind of concerns that make up authentic prayer. This is just like a piano teacher giving a set of scales to a beginning pupil and saying, “If you will practice this daily, it will establish a foundation for you to become a musician.” And I would suggest that one of the finest ways to deepen one’s capacity for prayer is to take the famous words of the prayer that our Lord gave us and make those words our own. In other words, we can begin to learn to pray by letting the Master Teacher direct us into how this should be done.

However, Jesus was trying to teach them a deeper truth than just having a formula to use when praying. And to get at this deeper dimension, Jesus invited his disciples to use their imagination and tells them a story.

He says, “Think of yourself asleep one night and there’s a knock on your door and you go and find a friend, or perhaps even a relative, who is on a journey and is asking that they could spend the rest of the night in your house.” This is the kind of experience that could have happened to anyone of the disciples, because in that day and in that part of the world, the heat was so great that people would not begin a walking journey until late in the afternoon and many times would continue on into the first part of the night. We also need to realize that in those days there were so few public accommodations that the only way peasants could have a place to sleep was to go to some relative or friend and ask for hospitality.

And so Jesus says, you suddenly find yourself with relatives standing at the door. You can’t send these people to bed without any supper. So you go to your cupboard; and, lo and behold, you discover all the Cheerios and Campbell’s soup are gone. Remember, low-income folks in that day lived pretty much hour-to-hour and hand-to-mouth. They couldn’t go down to the 24-hour Shaw’s and pick up a few things. So, instead of being rude, Jesus says you excuse yourself and go next door and knock on your neighbor’s and say in hushed tones, “Could you lend me three loaves? I have an unexpected guest, and I have nothing to set before him.” And the response that you’re likely to get is probably going to get is “What! Are you nuts! It’s three in the morning.” The groggy voice inside the neighbor’s house said, “I can’t get up and give you anything. Didn’t you see the door was already closed? Don’t you realize my children are here around me asleep? If I get up to get you some food, I’ll wake up everybody. I simply cannot help you out. Now let me get back to sleep.”

Back in that day, a peasant’s cottage was little more than a one-room enclosure and everyone would sleep on the floor. Jesus says even though this turkey is being a jerk, if you keep pounding and pleading your case the guy will relent. It’s not because your neighbor wants to help you but because you’re being a pain in the butt. Now the children are awake and fussing, so he gets up, gets some bread and sticks his hand with it out the door. “Please take it, anything, just get out of my hair.” And he slams the door.

When my kids were young, and I’m sure this has only happened to me, they would run around my legs and pester me, “Papa, Papa, Papa can we get some ice cream!” “No it’s too close to dinner.” “But I really want some. I’m really hungry. It’s so hot.” “No, you’ve already had too many sweets today.” “But Papa, Papa, Papa the ice cream truck won’t be here tomorrow because it’s Sunday. Pleeeeeeez.” “No, I don’t have any cash.” “But Papa, Papa, Papa, they take MC, Visa, American Express, and checks.” And finally, to get them out of your hair, you say, “OK, let’s get some ice cream, but don’t tell your mother.”

You kind of get the impression from this story that this is what Jesus’ is telling us to do with God. “Father, Father, Father, I’m going to lose my job, what am I going to do, please help me out, how will I pay the bills, my kids will be on the streets, I don’t want to live on my Pension.” Or, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, my mom has cancer and I’m so freaked out and please won’t you heal her, she means so much to me and I’d miss her so and I promise I’ll go to church every Sunday, work at the hot dog table at the Fair and double my pledge.”

I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of troubling that we have to bug God with our prayers in order to get them answered. Is God really that bad-tempered that we have to pound on heaven’s door until the Almighty finally relents and gives us what we want?  Is Jesus suggesting that God really is indifferent and that we have to wear down the Holy One until finally out of exasperation, God gives us what we’re requesting even though this is not in God’s heart of hearts?

There are some nuances and subtleties in the original language, Greek, that help us better understand this story. There is a tiny conjunction pronounced kai. We usually translate it “and” or we can translate it as “but,” depending upon the situation. For instance, if it’s linking together two things that are similar, then it can be translated and. For example, it began to rain and I opened an umbrella. However, if this conjunction is connecting things that are in contrast or dissimilar to each other, it is appropriate to translate it as but. I was going to see a friend, but he didn’t show up.

So, the whole hinge of meaning in this passage lies in translating the conjunction after the story of the neighbor with a but instead of an and. Learning that I realized this image of an indifferent, reluctant neighbor is not the true image of God that Jesus came to show us.

So instead, the reading would go like this. First, at the end of the story Jesus tells: “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” And here’s the transition: ‘ But I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”

You see? It changes the whole meaning of the passage depending upon how we translate that little word kai whether as “and” or “but.” What the passage is teaching us is in contrast to that crabby man who will only give you bread reluctantly because you’re bugging him, God will gladly hear and respond to your prayers.

Jesus gives the spot on picture of God that should shape our understanding of who God is. God is a caring, loving parent, who when a child asks for something sincerely, the response is not “Stop buggin’ me kid,” but “Of course I’ll help you.” Listen to what Jesus says:

“Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” God is good all the time.

If I were the disciples, I would be scratching my head again. “Uh, Jesus, it wasn’t the Holy Spirit we were asking for it was a cure for my mother’s cancer, it was a job for me.” But that’s how we often think about prayer, don’t we. We think of God as a divine bellhop who will jump at our beck and call. When we come with our laundry list of wishes and wants, we’d like God to hop to and get right on it.

But this passage seems to be telling us that God will not always give us exactly what we ask for, because many times we’re not wise enough to understand what we really need. By saying God will give the Holy Spirit in response to our requests, what Jesus is telling us is that the wisdom and goodness of our heavenly parent is going to determine how God answers to our prayers.

There’s a story about St. Augustine’s life found in his famous autobiography Confession. Augustine was a Bishop in Africa in the 4th century who was quite a rebel before he came to faith. In this chapter Augustine talks about how his mother, Monica, a thoughtful Christian, had so wanted him to come to faith in Christ; but as a young man, he had followed the example of his profligate father. He was living a life of great sensuality. He seemed to have no interest whatsoever in the things that were dear to his mother’s heart. He was a very gifted, young scholar. He was raised in North Africa, and he realized that Italy held artistic promises that North Africa did not possess, and so he resolved to go to Italy that he might study more fully his chosen discipline of rhetoric.       

Monica, his mother, felt if he ever left home, he would never come to a Christian conversion. And so one night she was praying earnestly in a chapel on the coast of North Africa that Augustine not leave her when, in fact, he was boarding a ship and setting across the Mediterranean to Italy. He went to Milan, which was the cultural capital at that time of Italy; and once he got there he was told that if he wanted to hear rhetoric in its finest form, he ought to go down to the cathedral every Sunday because Bishop Ambrose was recognized as the greatest practitioner of rhetoric in all of Italy at that time. The person said you don’t have to listen to what he says, but how he says it is absolutely masterful. Well, as it turned out, the young pagan began to do that, and lo and behold, through Ambrose’s rhetoric, the wonder of the Gospel began to break in on the consciousness of young Augustine.

It was through his human weakness that God eventually brought Augustine to a profound conversion, which led to his becoming one of the great shapers of our Western Christian culture. The interesting thing is that Monica had no idea that of all the people in the world Ambrose was better equipped to bear witness to her son than she herself. And years later as Augustine looked back on that experience, he said of that night when she was praying so earnestly that he not leave her side, God denied her the exact answer of her request that God might eventually give her the substance of it.

The whole point of this story is to invite us to trust, to believe that at the bottom of the river of reality there is nothing but unambiguous goodness; that in back of this bewildering universe is a smiling Providence. God is light and in God is no darkness at all and, therefore, when we pray, we make our requests known unto a wisdom and goodness greater than our own. Then we trust that the way God will respond is not like the indifference of a neighbor we wake from his midnight slumbers; but the response will come from the heart of a heavenly parent who loves us better than we love ourselves and knows in the most profound sense what is best for us.

 

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Midnight Marathon

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Norman Bendroth

In the aftermath of the horror of Marathon Monday week, one “good news” sidebar that has been lost is Midnight Marathon. On the Sunday before the marathon eight hundred plus certifiable “nut jobs” gathered in the center of Hopkinton to ride the 26.2 mile route into Copley Square. It’s a tradition that started in 2009.

It was Vanity Fair as riders of all sizes, shapes and ages gathered. A train from South Station booked just for this event brought scores to Ashland. Three coach buses pulled up with a U-Haul trailer behind toting their bikes delivering several hundred more. Others either biked or were dropped off.

Some riders were decked out in high end, state-of-the-art bikes and bike gear. Others rode their 3-speed Schwinn from when they were a kid in blue jeans and a sweatshirt. Another wore “hoody-footy” pajamas with Holstein spots all over him. One had a homemade drum made out of a plastic bucket below his handlebars drumming along with cadence of the cranks as we rode. Several had speakers mounted on either side of their back wheels serenading or annoying us along the trail. Most of us rode the road bikes and gear we use as weekend warriors.

At midnight we all headed out under a crescent moon and a clear sky. The temperature had dropped from the mid-fifties to the high thirties. The downhill wind bit at my fingers, toes and nose, but I didn’t notice for long. It was an amazing sight to see the red tail lights of hundreds of bicycles wending their way down Rt. 135 as far as the eye could see. Just as they would for the runners tomorrow (though not quite as many were up at 1 am), people lined the route cheering us on, “woo-hooing,” and toasting us as we drove. Even the birds were noticeably chirpy.

We pedaled through Ashland, Natick, Framingham and Wellesley–either lit by the ambient moonlight or the headlamps of our bikes. The shroud of darkness and the stillness of the night made these places strangely unfamiliar. It was a rush to ride by BC, around the Chestnut Hill reservoir, into Brookline and down the middle of Beacon, Commonwealth and Boylston Streets with only the sound of rubber meeting road and people breathing deeply.

People started arriving in Copley at 1:30 am (the elite bikers). I showed up at 2:05:08 (Five minutes faster than the best times on Monday–yikes!). We cheered and high-fived and congratulated one another. Folks shared power bars and took photos of triumphant bikers holding their bikes over their heads. Entrepreneurial college students handed out cookies advertising a cookie delivery business they had started for late night sweet tooth cravings.  A guy in a kilt took a picture of me and my three friends. We photographed a gang of ten Asian students. My friend Lisa and I waited in front of the Copley Sq. T entrance taking advantage of the warm air pouring out. We waited for our other two riding friends who showed up at 3:45; it took three tubes and six patches to get them back.

When they arrived, a young woman decked out in running gear with quads of steel asked us what was going on. We told her and she immediately declared, “I’m going to do this next year.” After she took our picture we asked her what she was doing there. “Oh, I’m waiting for a friend. We’re going to run out to Hopkinton and then run in the marathon.” And we thought we were tired.

Twelve hours later in that same spot a blast went off. Yes, it was freaky. And, yes, it sucked the life out of an event that was so full of goofiness and spontaneity. But, you know what? Just like the marathoners, we’ll be back in spades next year.

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“You’re Not Special”

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Norman Bendroth

Recently, Wellesley (MA) High School English teacher David McCullough, Jr. (the son of famed author by the same name) raised eyebrows at the commencement ceremony when he told students, “you’re not special.” Most commencement speakers throw out accolades to graduates like cheap plastic necklaces at Mardi Gras, but McCollough restrained himself (though not completely).

Reminding them that at graduation “…we are on a literal level playing field.” “That matters,” he continued. “That says something. And your ceremonial costume … shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your diploma … but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.

You are not special. You are not exceptional.

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you … you’re nothing special.”

McCullough also lamented the tendency of Americans as of late to “love accolades more than genuine achievement.”

“It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune … one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School … where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the mid-level curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope you caught me when I said ‘one of the best.’ I said ‘one of the best’ so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You’re it or you’re not.”

McCullough urged the Class of 2012 not to just do things for the sake of personal accomplishment or self-indulgence, but because “you love it and believe in its importance.”

All of this is well and good and a wise, if not clever, admonition to those newly minted graduates. It is true: when my kids were playing youth soccer everyone got a trophy. When my wife organized the teams she received phone calls from distraught parents that accused her of consigning their daughters to a psychiatrist’s couch because she broke up the Red Team. When parent’s were asked to help out with the latest school fundraiser hands shot up with exclamations that “I’m a city planner,” “I’m an architect,” “I write educational grants”–all ways of saying, “I’m special.”

Context, of course, means everything. McCollough’s words were completely appropriate for Wellesley Hills, or Shaker Heights, or Grosse Pointe, but not for Roxbury, Harlem or East L.A. There adolescents can’t hear enough of Jesse Jackson’s refrain, “God doesn’t make junk.” There a trip to the jailhouse or to the emergency room from a random drive by shooting is more likely than a trip to Europe over spring break with the honor society. There children need reminders daily that they are special, even as it means clawing and grinding your way out of your current circumstances. But I digress.

What McCollough says is actually quite Biblical. We are image-bearer’s of the Most High God, yet we have “all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Jesus said he longed to gather us like chicks under his wings and in Revelation he says he wants to spew us out of his mouth because we are so luke-warm.

It’s Luther’s old, Simul Justus et Peccator, simultaneously justified by God’s grace and sinners. We are Jekyll and Hyde’s, mixed up kids who don’t know our own mind, battling this internal civil war, “doing the very thing we don’t want to do.” (Romans 7).

There is a wonderful Hassidic story about a young woman who approaches a respected and learned Rabbi with great fear and trepidation. In very deferential fashion she asks him: “Rabbi, what must we do to be holy?” He shrugs his shoulders and keeps walking. She follows close behind and implores him: “Rabbi, what must we do to be holy?” He stops this time and thinks for a long while. Finally, he says, “Keep your hands in both pockets.” She is startled, confused and a bit perturbed. “What is this nonsense! Keep your hands in both pockets?”

Then, out of one pocket he pulls a handful of dust and says, “Remember that you are dust. From dust you have come and to dust you will return,” quoting Genesis 3:19. Then out of the other pocket he drew a little crown and he said, “Remember, you are made a little lower than God and God has crowned you with glory and honor,” quoting Psalm 8:4.

This is the paradox of being human. On the one hand we are dust. We are water, iron, potassium, sodium, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. We are bones and flesh and teeth and organs. We are jumble of atoms, molecules, chemicals, electricity and dust. When we die, we will return to the earth and rot. But we are also “created a little lower than that angels,” as the King James version puts it. We are made in the image and likeness of God. As such we are spiritual beings, beloved children of God, able to think thoughts after God, able to create beautiful art and life itself, able to communicate, to relate to, and to love another different than ourselves.  “We live at the juncture of nature and spirit,” as Reinhold Niebuhr put it.

Commencement for the Christian is baptism. It is there that we are told that we are special–a unique creature of God, redeemed by Christ, sustained by the Holy Spirit, with days ahead filled with promise and grace even if stony and hard. Yet, we’re also told, “You think you’re special? Not so much.” Baptism is the great leveler. “None is righteous, no not one.” We’re all one at the foot of the cross. If you hadn’t made such a botch of it, why would I have needed to come and clean your mess up? We no more arranged our new birth than we did our original birth. It’s gift. After someone gives you a gift your don’t take a ten out of your wallet and pay the giver. No, you say thank you.

And with the best of gifts, you give it away. McCollough concluded his address with the assertion that selflessness is the best personal quality to possess, and that “the sweetest joys of life … come only with the recognition that you’re not special, because everyone is.”

Sound familiar? “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.'” (Matthew 16:24, New Living Translation).

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No More Goodbyes

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Norman Bendroth

Norman B. Bendroth

It was my last Sunday. I had just finished a very satisfying stint as the Sr. Sabbatical Minister for six months. The folks gave me a wonderful send off with a photo album full of cards with well-wishes, gift certificates, and CD’s of favorite tunes. It was gratifying and humbling. This was my ninth goodbye in 24 years of ordained ministry; two of them as a settled minister and seven as an interim.

When I took the training to be an intentional interim minister we were told that we had to learn to become good at goodbyes. I go through the usual round of “closure” activities when I’m finishing up an interim ministry: write up an evaluation of the time together, say goodbye to those with whom I’ve had special or important connections, mend any fences that may have been broken, have an exit interview, and share a farewell liturgy on our last Sunday together. I’ve become good at it, so to speak, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Psychologist Judith Viorst tells us that our life story is essentially one of loss. In her book Necessary Losses, she explores how our lives are shaped the various losses we experience — from the very first loss of our mothers’ sheltering arms, to the loss of our impossible expectations, to the loss of options and muscle tone as we age, to the loss of loved ones in and out of season.

In this life we say goodbye to people and places all the time.  Sometimes we say “good riddance,” but more often than not they are painful goodbyes.  We say goodbye to peo­ple we love because new jobs and possibilities call them away from us.  We say goodbye to relationships that are some­times ruptured because of harsh words and misunder­standings.  We say goodbye to children who grow up and leave homes stone-still quiet and empty that were once filled with laughter and energy.  We say goodbye to youth­fulness and idealism when gravity, disease, and cynicism wear them away.  We say goodbye to common sights, smells, sounds, and routines whenever we move on in life.

In his book, My Name Is Asher Lev, a young boy, Asher, and his father have an un­expected encounter with death.  They are walking home together from synagogue and they discover a bird ly­ing on its side against the curb near their home.  The con­ver­­sation goes like this.

“‘Is it dead, papa?’ I was six and could not bring my­self to look at it. ‘Yes,’ I heard him say in a sad and distant way. ‘Why did it die?’ ‘Everything that lives must die.’  ‘Every­thing.’  ‘Yes.’  ‘You too papa?  And mama?’  ‘Yes.’  ‘And me?’  ‘Yes,’ he said.  Then he added in Yiddish, ‘but may it be only after you live a long and good life, my Asher.’

I couldn’t grasp it.  I forced myself to look at the bird.  Everything alive would one day be as still as that bird?  ‘Why?’ I asked.  ‘That’s the way the Ribbono Shel olom made his world, Ash­er.’  ‘Why?’  ‘So life would be prec­ious, Asher.  Some­thing that is yours forever is never precious.'”

That is why goodbye is so difficult as pastors because people become so precious to us. One of the great privileges of being a minister is that we get to experience vicariously in one year what many people experience in a life time. We find that ordinary pew-sitters and sermon-hearers have incredible stories of travels, triumphs, suffering and overcoming that we never suspected. I learned from one arthritic woman that she had walked the Appalachian Trail in her sixties and had scaled some of the highest peaks in the world in her younger days. From a retired man I learned that he used to run a general store in rural New Hampshire and was asked to become a recruiter for a new company that had relocated there. He knew the townspeople so well that he could help them make good hiring decisions. He worked his way up to become the head of the Hong Kong office.

It is said that you always remember the people you have laughed with, but you never forget those with whom you have cried. Even during an interim time where we know the relationship will eventually come to an end, it is hard because as pastor and people we have thrown our lot in together for a season. I have felt their pain, shared their laughter, carried their anxiety, heard their stories, and rejoiced in their joys. My life was immersed in theirs and theirs in mine. That separation does not happen lightly or easily.

People are usually bad at good byes. They are painful so we either avoid them, pretend they are really no big deal or do weird things we would never do consciously. Sometimes there is an emotional cut off by ending the relationship abruptly. At other times people cause each other to get angry and storm off so they can say, “See, they were no good anyway.” The best way to say good bye is to raise the emotions to a conscious level, to acknowledge that they are painful and confusing, there will be a loss, and there will be a mixture of joy, regret, and even anger because someone who has meant a lot to us is abandoning us. When saying good bye we should celebrate what our life together has meant, repair or reconcile any hurts, ask for and receive forgiveness where necessary, and joyfully share in specific ways how we have been blessed by one another.

As Christians we remember that our God is not a stranger to good­byes.  We do not have an unmoved mover standing back from the crea­tion with a pitiless stare, barking orders, toying with us.  We have to do with one who said goodbye to all rights, privileges and status as God and became a hu­man being in Jesus Christ.  As a human being, Jesus was well ac­quainted with goodbyes.  After the incident of Jesus con­founding the sages of the Temple at age twelve we hear nothing about his earthly father Joseph.  Apparently Joseph died in Jesus’ youth and he became responsible for his family’s wel­fare earning his living as a carpenter.  He said goodbye to his friend Lazarus who died too young and he wept before his grave.  He said goodbye to the loyalty of his friends and disciples when they all abandoned him at the Garden of Geth­semane.  And finally, he said goodbye to intimate com­munion with his God when he died on Calvary.

Michael Kelly Blanchard is a singer-song writer who captures the poignancy of saying goodbye. It begins with the emotions of having to say good bye to his wife and kids whenever he had to travel for a music gig and ends with the exquisite pain of saying goodbye to someone who has died.

Every time I leave I feel like a magician with nothing up his sleeve; a bag of tricks that no one will believe, every time I leave.  I’m as clear as the rain out the win­dow of this air­plane, and I cannot disguise how I feel: oh this pain here in­side’s much too real.  I wish there were…

Chorus: No more goodbye’s, no more depar­tures with tears in our eyes, no more broken hearts or the lonely insides, just “hello, how are ya’s” and welcome back sighs, but forever no more goodbyes.

Last night I cried with a room full of friends for a friend who had died; oh we cried, we ached so inside, last night I cried.  But then a love took the room and re­solved all the gloom, he only has gone from this place, someday not too long we’ll meet again face to face when there’ll be (chorus)…

God has made a world where goodbyes are possible; a world where we can say “no” to God and go our own way; a world where things break and die; a world where “moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.”  But our God will not be dis­suaded; our God will pursue the promise of life until all our goodbyes find their hello’s

in Jesus Christ, where those tears collected in a bottle will be poured out, when we will receive justice instead of calumny, and shalom instead of shame; a day when there will be no more goodbyes, but “Hello, how are ya’s” and welcome back sighs, but forever no more goodbyes.”

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Bending Toward Lent

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Norman Bendroth

LENT, is a time to look clearly at ourselves and our world to see where we are growing and where we are not living as fully as God intends. This reflection invites us to consciously make some changes in our lives–or some new beginnings.  Traditionally people in the Northern Hemisphere have believed that the word “Lent” comes from the same root as “length” and that it refers to the lengthening of days at this time of year.

Recently, some people have wondered whether it comes from the Latin word lentare, which means, “to bend.”  During the winter we see the branches on our forsythia bushes or rhododendron bend under the weight of the snow.  If they resisted the added pressure, they would break. So instead, they yield to the gentle burden and in so doing, become more beautiful.

We also yield to oncoming traffic when we merge onto Rt. 128.  Not only is it a courtesy, but it’s good for your health!  We would inevitably be sideswiped or rear-ended by an eight­een-wheeler tooling down the highway.  We yield to the ongoing movement of traffic and thus blend in with the forward movement. With that connection, Lent can be seen as a time of transformation or bending, of turning toward a new way of acting or being.  It is a time of yielding to the flow of God’s Spirit.

The night before his execution, Jesus likened himself to another kind of tree, a grapevine.  “I am the true vine,” Jesus said.  “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15: 1, 5). Jesus likened himself to the main trunk of a grapevine that provided the nourishment to the attached branches.  Their job was to bear grapes, but if they didn’t “abide” in the trunk, they would wither and die or their fruit would be deficient.

Abide is a word that implies resting, yielding. Unless the secondary branches yielded, gave way to the main branch, they would choke. If they remained in the trunk they would flour­ish.

After spending a day ministering to the rag tag of the world Jesus gave this comforting in­vi­tation: “Come to me, all of you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11: 28-30).

Another call to rest, to yield, to bend, to abide in the will of Christ. He assumes we are all car­ry­ing burdens.  Is it the grind of a job you really hate?  Do you have the burden of car­ing for an elderly parent while your brothers and sisters live miles away?  Does your teen­age daughter act as if you are a Neanderthal? Is the shame that I’m somehow no good be­come unbearable at times?  Do you still carry regrets about something done years ago?  Is there an addiction in your life that you think is unspeakable?  Jesus knows this.  He’s been part of life.  He’s carried some of the same loads.

Instead, he invites you to put down your pack, and place his yoke on your shoulder.  You’re going to have to wear a yoke one way or the other, so it might as well be his.  His yoke is easy compared to yours.  He won’t flog you for what you’ve done or haven’t done. He won’t remind you how weak you are because you can’t carry the load.  His burden is light.  It’s the burden of love.

When life brings inordinate pressures, we must learn to bend like the bushes under the snow.  There is buoyancy and resilience in those young branches as they submit to that extra weight.  They don’t fight it.  In so doing they become stronger, more able to resist the load next winter.

There is also the pressure of the Spirit asking you to bend, to yield to the will of God more fully in your life.  Might it be to be more prayerful and deliberate about life? Is there an issue of justice I need to attend to? Could it be I need to give up that negative spirit or early morning grousing to God? Am I grieving that my church isn’t as I remember it? Do I need to make room for people who have different tastes, theology or politics? Do I spend more time serving my own needs than those hurting in this world? Does my impatience get me into more trouble than I like to admit? Whatever it is… Yield. Rest. Bend.

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EPIPHANY: A Season to Let Your Light Shine

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Norman Bendroth

The first time I went to an Epiphany service I was not certain what to expect. Having been raised in a non-liturgical tradition, I didn’t know the meaning of the word epiphany. But I looked it up and discovered it meant “an appearance or manifestation, especially of a divine being.”

Epiphany is a composite of two Greek words—“epi” and “phanos”—which means “the appearance of light.” In Christian thought, the appearance of light reached its peak in the birth of Jesus Christ. But that knowledge was a dawning revelation. When Jesus was squirming in the manger, observers suspected there was something unique about this kid, but they had no idea how unique. That discovery was a process that took place over time and continues to take place.

It was also interesting for me to discover the word had special meaning in the ancient world because it was used to describe the appearance of a ruler. The same culture that birthed the Bible and the early church celebrated the visit of its ruler with great pomp and circumstance. The ruler’s visit was always a lavish affair marked by feasting and a celebrative mood. I assumed the service was going to celebrate the Epiphany, the appearance of Jesus, and do so in a lavish fashion.

I was immediately drawn up into the meaning of the service and into the place it played in the unfolding drama of the mystery of salvation as we stood to sing:

What star is this, with beams so bright,
more lovely than the noonday light?
’Tis sent to announce a newborn king,

Glad tiding of our God to bring.

Again, the meaning of why I was there struck my mind and heart as the minister prayed: “O God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest Thy only begotten Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know Thee now by faith, to Thy presence, where we may behold Thy glory face to face; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” (From The Book of Common Prayer)

In the early church the feast of Epiphany originally celebrated the birth of Christ. However, after the birth of Christ was placed on December 25th to replace the pagan feast of the birth of the sun, Epiphany was designated as the event that manifested Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

In the East, Epiphany happens at Jesus’ baptism.  There, when John the Baptist pours water over Christ’s head, the heavens open, a dove (the symbol for the Holy Spirit) alights upon Jesus, and the voice of God says, “this is my Son the beloved.”  Here is another “appearance of light,” a deeper revelation that Jesus is uniquely related to God as “Son.” There is only one “begotten” Child of God; the rest of us are made children of God by adoption into that family.

However, in the West, Epiphany became the day to celebrate the manifestation of Jesus through three great events: the visit of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and the marriage feast of Cana. The significance of the entrance of the Magi is that at “the appearance of light,” they dropped what they were doing and followed it to the Bethlehem manger. The symbol and the message of that event/story is that the light of God has gone forth into all the world—not just to Israel—and is available to all true seekers after God. Christ did not come for a few, but for the world.

Today Epiphany brings us to the end of the Christmas cycle, completing the great rhythm of expectation and fulfillment that defines this period of time. It also points to the beginning of Christ’s manifestation to the world, a ministry that not only happened in the first century but happens now within the church and within us as we travel through the unfolding of the paschal mystery of the liturgical year.

Because Epiphany happens during Jesus’ Gallilean ministry of teaching and preaching there is often an emphasis on the “ethics of Jesus” during this season. May this season of Epiphany be full of “ah-ha” moments for you as you discover the hidden God in surprising places.

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Happiness and Happenstance

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Norman Bendroth

New Year’s Sunday

Have you ever thought how much can happen in a second? When you say, “Happy New Year!” you’re saying a remarkable thing. It only takes a second for your life to be totally changed or totally ended. In a year full of seconds, anything can happen at any second. If we’re going to talk about having a hap­py New Year, there are some things to bear in mind.

We’re not always sure what happiness is. For a lot of peo­ple, happiness depends on their happenings. If their happenings don’t happen to happen the way they happen to want their hap­pen­ings to happen, they’re unhappy!

Stuart Briscoe, pastor emeritus of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, WI, points out that some people spend their time organizing their happenings to make sure everything happens the way they want it to hap­pen. The assumption is this: if they can make everything happen the way they want their happenings to happen, they’ll be happy.  There are two problems with that: you can’t do it, and even if you could, you’d probably be bored. Alexander the great got ev­ery­thing happening his way. He conquered everything and then sat down to cry, because he was so young and there was noth­ing else to conquer.

The Greeks had a word for happiness: makarios. This word de­scribes what they perceived as the experience of the gods. The Greeks had a pantheon of gods, and the gods were sort of hu­man beings writ large. They had all the failings of human be­ings and all the strengths. The way the Greeks figured it, the gods had it made. The word makarios eventually found its way in­to the New Testament, and is translated “blessed” or “happy.”

Jesus picked up on this word, and said some stuff that was ab­solutely preposterous. Listen to this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Bles­sed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Bles­sed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Bles­sed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are per­se­cu­ted because of righteousness.”

Jesus is saying that happiness, or fulfillment, or makarios–hav­ing everything coming up roses–can come from not having ev­erything go right. It can come through being poor, through mourning, through hungering, through thirsting. It can come through being persecuted for doing the right thing. That’s exactly the opposite of what we think is the road to happiness. You can be happy in spite of your circumstances.  It’s a choice.

So, happy New Year! But remember two things. Define hap­pi­ness correctly. Happiness is not just getting all your hap­pen­ings to happen the way you happen to want your happenings to hap­pen.  Secondly, make certain that as you’re thinking through all the possibilities of this New Year, you realize that you may not always be able to control them. With that in mind, let’s turn to our passage from Ecclesiastes:

There’s a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die…a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them…

In the Hebrew, this is poetry. Translators picked up on this rep­etition of the word time. There’s a rhythm to it that’s not ac­ci­d­ental. It gives the reader a feeling of time going on relent­less­ly. The poet says there is a year full of seconds stretching ahead of us. When we being to think of being happy in this com­ing New Year, we’ve got to deal with two things: this year will be full of inevitable and irresistible events.

One of the great myths about humanity is that we are in charge, at least in an absolute sense. I can prove it to you very simp­ly. The second verse of this passage says, “There’s a time to be born and a time to die.” Those are the two biggest events of your experience, and both of them, at least the former, are to­tal­ly outside of our control. We have some relative control ov­er our death by the way we take care of ourselves and the risks we take. Ultimately, we are not masters of our own des­tiny; rather we are stewards of it. You were initiated by birth, and you had nothing to do with it. You’ll be terminated by death, and probably you’ll have little to do with it. In between in­i­ti­a­tion and termination is perpetuation, and there’s little you can do about that either–again in an absolute sense.

Every single moment I am perpetuated because God con­tin­ues to graciously give me life.  There’s a wonderful line in scrip­ture that describes our life in God, “In whose hand is your breath.” All life’s experiences are inevitable and irresistible, coming one sec­ond at a time. You are caught in the middle. Let’s look at one or two of these ideas in scripture.

Scripture says there’s a time to be born, a time to die. In v. 3 there’s mentioned a time to kill and a time to heal. You have this monotonous regularity of life, but you’ve also got these an­om­alies in life. Birth and death couldn’t be further apart, yet they’re part and parcel of life. Killing and healing couldn’t be fur­ther apart, yet they’re part and parcel of life. That’s life.  It is full of extremes. As Frank Sinatra put it, “Ridin’ high in April; shot down in May.”

Then there’s a time to weep and a time to laugh. The scripture tells us that God has given us all things richly to enjoy. God wants us to be a celebrating people. “Rejoice in the Lord al­ways,” we’re told. People who’ve got the idea that God is a spoil­sport have done a nasty disservice to God. Yet, there are things so wrong about us and the world that the honorable and noble thing to do is to weep.  The video of a woman abused, assaulted and beaten by Egyptian military officers in Tahrir Square on the second day of Ramadan should make us weep. The slaughter of demonstrators in Syria should make us weep. The conscription of child soldiers in Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Chad, Somalia and around the world should make us weep. We need to know when to cel­e­brate and when to weep. Sometimes the things that make you laugh or cry are outside of you. They will come re­lent­lessly, and you’ll never know to which extreme they’ll carry you.  Hap­py New Year!

It only takes a second for irresistible, inevitable cir­cum­stan­ces to occur. When I was 12 years old, one second I was stand­ing on a scaffolding helping my uncle and father put al­um­inum edging on the roof. The next second, we were all on the ground, my father, then 42, paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. You can’t resist gravity. Wood will in­evit­ab­ly crack if there’s too much weight on it. If we’re always trying to manipulate and outwit these irresistible, inevitable cir­cum­stan­­ces, if our happiness depends on our happenings happening the way we happen to want them to happen, we have our work cut out for us.  How on earth are we going to make sure that we never mourn and always dance? How can we make sure we al­ways laugh but never weep?

In vs. 9 and 10 of Ecclesiastes 3, we read, “What does the work­er gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on humanity.” Now the writer has a very keen eye for what’s go­ing on, and he has a very deep faith. He’s a fascinating fellow, be­cause he keeps this sort of jaundiced, skeptical view of life and marries it to a deep faith in God. That’s a healthy com­bin­a­tion. As he does this, he says, “I have looked at the way people are living, and I’ve looked at the way I’ve lived my life.  There’s a whole lot of inevitable, irresistible things happening there, and this is really burdensome to humanity.”

What’s the nature of the burden? There are things we can­not regulate, and things from which we cannot escape. You say, “Why would God put that burden upon us?” it is my conviction that struggle is part of the very nature of God. God wrestles with us and the powers that be, because there is a real story, a real history going on. Our choices, actions, hopes and dreams mat­ter. That is the joy and the cost of freedom. We move and God makes countermoves.

One of my favorite theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr, de­scribes us as “standing at the juncture of nature and spirit.” be­cause we are earthbound creatures, we experience finitude and pain. Things break. We get hungry. We get sick. Rivers over­run their banks. But we are also made in the image of God. We are “self-transcendent,” as Niebuhr puts it. Of all creatures on God’s green earth, human beings are the only ones who can stand above their situation and analyze it. God allows the cir­cum­stances of life to help us recognize there is something great­er and grander and richer about life. That burden is upon us to make us aware of the transcendent.

In this passage we’re told what that is.  V. 14 says, “I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be add­ed to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so people will re­vere him.” When people recognize the frailty of their hu­man­i­ty and the limitations of their own ingenuity, when men and wom­en recognize they cannot regulate or escape the irresis­ti­ble, inevitable factors of life, God is waiting. God says, “Hey, look this way for a minute. How about me? How about rec­og­niz­ing that if there’s any sense, if there’s any rhyme, if there’s any rea­son to life, it’s because there is a transcendent God who is work­ing in these circumstances so that the greater good might be realized.”

If nothing transcends the circumstances of life, if this life is all we’ve got, and if we can only find happiness in manip­u­lat­ing and escaping the irresistible, inevitable events that only take a second to come into our lives, we’ll wear ourselves out. The reason for the burden is that we might learn to look be­yond ourselves and revere God.

God has done two other things. V.11 says, “He has made ev­er­ything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of mortals; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to end.” When I begin to recognize that God can work in and through and despite all the irresistible, in­ev­it­a­ble things of life, there’s a possibility of a deeply rooted sense of well-being, far removed from a superficial happiness that comes from getting your happenings to happen the way you want your happenings to happen. That’s futile. But if I can learn to revere God and begin to recognize that God can bring a beauty into all the circumstances of life, there’s hope for a hap­py New Year.

We’re told that God has set eternity in people’s hearts. This is a remarkable statement. C.S. Lewis wrote that humankind, in every part of the world, has a sense of the numinous. The num­inous is that something indefinable that gives people a sense of awe. Whatever tribal group you find, that people will have a sense of something bigger and greater than themselves. Some people may live fifty or sixty years and never sense it. But soon­er or later something happens, and in a second they’re awe­struck.  That is eternity set in our hearts. It makes us rest­less for the transcendent God. It makes us look at the world and ask why aren’t things different than they are?

When I wish you a happy New Year, this is what I mean: I trust the New Year will give you the opportunity to recognize the transcendent One who has given you a sense of awe and mor­ality. God has given you a sense of something bigger and gran­d­er and greater than yourself. God won’t allow you to es­cape them or regulate them. You can begin to recognize your own finitude compared with God’s eternity. You will recognize your own limitations and see God as limitless. As you learn to re­vere God, you take what comes because, first, you don’t have much choice in the matter, and, second, you can know that your times are in God’s good and strong hands.

If this sounds a little cold and callous, let me remind you of one thing: God laid aside the divine glory, stepped down from heav­en’s throne and assumed our humanity. God lived with our pain and circumstances and learned to laugh and mourn, weep and dance. God shared our life. God is not remote and un­touched. Our God is a God who loves us so much that this God comes alongside and says, “I understand, I care, and I know. Trust me. Revere me and discover in me real joy.” Those are a few of the in­gredients of a Happy New year as I understand them from scrip­ture.  Happy New Year!

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Imperfect Christmas Trees

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Norman Bendroth

When I was a kid, my family would go to the local Christmas tree farm or Lion’s Club selling trees in a school parking lot and pick one out. We usually set up our tree two weeks before Christmas. So, when we woke up on the Saturday morning of Christmas tree shopping day, it was quite exciting. It meant there were only fourteen more agonizing days to wait until Christmas.

Inevitably, my dad, being a thrifty Yankee, would pick out what we thought was the scrawniest tree imaginable. We were in despair. What would our friends think? Charlie Brown’s tree would put ours to shame.

He always got an armload of boughs and branches with the tree. We wondered why. We would put the tree in its stand and then dad would work his magic. Wherever there was a gap or a thin part in the tree, dad would drill a hole, whittle down the end of a branch to just the right size, and slip it in. When he was done, the tree was full and lush. With the lights and decorations on it, it was the best looking tree in the neighborhood.

I like to think of Christmas like that. We are like those trees with thin spots, gaps, and missing parts. We each have our own pet sins, peccadilloes, weaknesses, addictions, bad habits, regrets, wounds and hurts we have received or inflicted upon others. We are not the people we should be or God intends us to be. We settle our insecurities and fears by waging wars, we care more about having our needs met than sharing for the common good, we glorify the starlet and the politician rather than the cleaning lady or the plumber, and we divorce one another instead of working hard at our relationships. You could add your own issues to this list.

If we didn’t need saving, God wouldn’t have sent a Savior. But, thank heavens, God has come to us in Christ. Theologians have always made a distinction between general and special revelation. In the former, God is revealed through nature. By it, we can see that the Creator loves beauty, order, design, and diversity. This One is intelligent, powerful, creative, and awe-inspiring. But we would not know if this Supreme Being was merciful or just, loving or indifferent toward us, had plan or designs for us or just created the cosmos and cut it loose.

This is why God had to explain the Divine nature to us. If you wanted to know more about me, you could guess, but you might not be right. I would have to disclose myself to you. This is what God in Christ has done for us. We call this reality the “Incarnation.” God is enfleshed with our flesh. God takes on our problems. God shares our hopes, dreams, and joys. But most especially, God will, in God’s time, bring them to pass.

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Romans 3: 19-23 / Reformation Sunday

I spent my summers on Lake Winnipesaukee where my grandfather, uncle and father built three cottages. I spent many languid hours there, but one thing I can remember is that my grandmother always had the Red Sox on the radio. My father and I spent a lot of time on the living room floor with our backs against a bolster pillow watching Rico Petrocelli, Tony Conigliaro, and Carl Yastrzemski do their magic on our black and white screen. From early spring until mid-October, it part of the air we breathed. Whatever we were doing during the weekends, the voice of Curt Gowdy reporting the Sox games was a part of it. This New England tradition was passed onto me and I gave the disease to my wife.

There is something about the world of baseball that gets into one’s blood. Tom Boswell, sports writer for the Washington Post, says life imitates the World Series. I’ve followed the drama about the Red Sox’ September collapse, accusations of beer drinking in the dugout and out of shape, spoiled millionaire ball players. The rise and fall of Terry Francona and Theo Epstein has been a sight to behold. Once you have spent a summer immersed in league standings; once you have agonized through a tough pennant race with a team, you never quite recover from it. The world of baseball is a dramatic presentation of some of life’s most important and universal lessons. Now I’m not saying that Abner Doubleday intended to make a theological statement about the meaning of life when he invented the game of baseball. But he did invent a game which dramatizes a very human predicament — that of trying to measure up to a standard of perfection, and always falling short.

So on Reformation Sunday, I’m going to talk about baseball. At the heart of the Reformation was the assertion that we are “justified by faith.” In other words, we are saved, set right with God, however you want to put it, not because of my noble efforts, but because of God’s free grace. The Reformation recovered two important teachings: the gravity of human sin and the gravity of God’s grace.

The Apostle Paul talked a lot about standards of perfection that are impossible to meet. To Paul, those standards were the Hebrew Law. Paul said that the law is a curse — always reminding us of how inadequate we really are. The law, he says, is set up to show us that we cannot do right. Just as a thermometer shows us we are sick, God’s Law shows us we are broken people who fall short of God’s requirements. We can never be good enough because we cannot live up to its standards anymore than we can jump across the Grand Canyon flat-footed. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Paul says in our text today in the book of Romans.

Baseball is a lot like that too. Baseball is a game of measuring things against impossible standards — a game of numbers. Everything is tallied up and written down. In his book (and now a movie) Moneyball, Michael Lewis writes about the Oakland A’s use of a modernized, analytical, sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team, despite Oakland’s not having much money to work with. And it worked. For six years they put together a winning team on peanuts by MLB standards. So today, almost every ball team crunches numbers and you can find out every players on-base-percentage and slugging percentage, which are much better indicators of success than stolen bases, runs batted in, or even a player’s batting average. You can find the batting averages of all the players in the major leagues. The Red Sox’ stat computer is called Carmine.

You can read every player’s statistics, every day, all lined up compared against every other player in the league. A player’s batting average is printed in the paper; it’s announced over the radio, and it’s flashed on the stadium Jumbotron, all carried out to the three decimal points. Nobody says, “He’s hitting pretty well.” They say, “He’s hitting .285.” Very precise measurements. There is no way to pretend success. There is no way to hide failure. It’s all right there in the book.

And the interesting thing about it is that nobody does very well. The very best hitters get about three hits in every ten tries. That’s not a very good percentage for most jobs, but if you get three out of ten in baseball, they give you a multi-million dollar salary. And if you do it Many years in a row, they put you in the Hall of Fame.

Take Carl Yastrzemski, for instance. Yastrzemski was one of the all time greats of the game and of the Red Sox. He topped Ted Williams for lifetime number of hits (over 3000) and 1000 of those were extra base hits. Yet Carl Yastrzemski struck out 1,393 times in his career. That’s a lot of strike-outs. And yet he was one of the greats and went to fifteen All-Star games! Nobody is very good when measured against that absolute batting standard of 1.000. That’s a tough standard to fall short of — with the whole world watching. And everyone falls short of it. No one has even come half way to perfection over the course of a season. All have fallen short.

Paul the Apostle would appreciate the similarities in the batting average standard, and the inability of anyone to come anywhere near living up to it. Baseball is a hard task-master and a stern judge of anyone who sets out to be good at it. And life is a lot like that, too. It kicks back. We fall down. We are moral and spiritual failures in many ways.

But there is another side to baseball; a side that is more like the gift of grace. In baseball, everyone gets a chance to bat. Everyone gets the same number of balls and strikes. Each team gets the same number of outs. And what makes baseball fairer than some other sports is that it has no clock. And maybe this makes the game even fairer than life itself because in baseball, you do not run out of time. (The record for the most innings ever played in a single professional game is 33, in a minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings.) Unless it rains, everyone gets their innings in — as many as it takes to decide who wins and who loses. As that great baseball theologian, Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Thursday night, Peggy and I were watching game six of the World Series. It was the ninth inning, Texas was a head 7 to 5, and all they had to do was get three outs to win their first World Series. So we shut of the TV and went to sleep glad for the Rangers. The next morning we learned the Cardinals won it 10-9. In baseball, there is always the possibility that the unexpected will happen. There is always time for redemption.

Take Jacoby Ellsbury. In 2010, Ellsbury only played in 18 games because of bruised ribs he sustained after colliding with Adrian Beltre in pursuit of a foul pop fly. This year Ellsbury was named the come-back play of the year. He was the first Red Sox player and one of four Major Leaguers (the most in a single season) to record 30 homers and 30 stolen bases, and he posted career highs in nearly every offensive category. The center fielder hit .321 with 32 homers, 105 RBIs, 39 steals, 46 doubles, five triples and 119 runs, and he led the Majors with 364 total bases and 83 extra-base hits.

Or take the case of Bob Brenley, for instance. In 1986 he was playing third base for the San Francisco Giants. In the fourth inning of a game against the Atlanta Braves, Brenley made an error on a routine ground ball. Four batters later, he kicked away another grounder and then, while he was scrambling after the ball, he threw wildly past home plate trying to get the runner; two errors on the same play. A few minutes later, he muffed yet another play, to become the first player in the 20th Century to make four errors in one inning. Those of us who have made very public errors at one time or another, can easily imagine how he felt during that long walk off the field at the end of that inning. Then, in the bottom of the fifth, Brenley hit a home run. In the seventh, he hit a bases loaded single, driving in two runs and tying the game. And then, in the bottom of the ninth, Brenley came up to bat again with two out. He ran the count to 3 and 2, and then hit a massive home run into the left field seats to win the game for the Giants. Brenley’s scorecard for the day came to three hits in five at-bats, two home runs, four errors, four runs allowed, and four runs driven in, including the game-winning run.

Life is a lot like that, isn’t it? A mixture of hits and errors. And there is grace in that. Grace means you’ll have another chance. Grace won’t exactly erase your errors, but it will give you a chance to make up for them. If we are just .200 hitters, God will hit .800 to fill in the gaps. It’s not over ‘til it’s over. There are still more surprises waiting. Even if it’s not a level playing field, God can do marvelous things.

Paul puts it in this way, “Since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus…..because in his divine forbearance he has passed over former sins.” He should know because he made a lot of errors in his life. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a ferocious enemy of Jesus, the feared and hated persecutor of the early disciples, who had systematically attempted to destroy the church by annihilating its members. Jesus found him and turned him around, and set him on a new course, building a church through Paul in which the forgiveness of Christ was offered to everyone — no membership tests, no lines of birth or race or accomplishment; a church for people who had made errors.

In fact, Jesus spent most of his time with people who had made a lot of errors. People who had gone 0 for 4 in life, so to speak; people who had often dropped the ball. “Losers” we might call them — uneducated fishermen, prostitutes, people afflicted with unpleasant diseases, and mental disorders, tax collectors, adulteresses, the outcasts, the poor, the unacceptable, the lost—why even the smelly. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. In Christ, the scorekeeper cancels the errors, gives the losers another chance, a new start, a new beginning. Jesus looks past the errors to the possibilities of the future. With God, it’s not over ‘til it’s over. Nothing is finished until God is finished with it. No one is finished until God has completed them.

I can tell you from personal experience that one of the chances we all get in life is the chance to make errors. And I’ve made some serious ones and I’ll bet you have too. But with Christ, we always have another chance. We always have the possibility of a comeback. God’s love is always seeking us — always following us — always overlooking the errors and giving us still another inning — still another chance at bat.

Cause it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

(Thanks to Rev. Nancy D. Becker and her article “A Theology of Baseball” as the inspiration for this sermon.)

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Norman Bendroth | Leave a comment

Thanksgiving 2011

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Norman Bendroth

This Thursday we will once again celebrate our national feast day and harvest festival that we call Thanksgiving. It is always an especially meaningful holiday for new England Congregationalists, since they were our forebears. You may recall that the Pilgrims were an offshoot of a branch of English Protestantism called the Puritans. They were so called because they wanted to “purify” the Church of England and purge it of practices for which there was no biblical warrant. They wanted to stay within the church and reform it.

The Pilgrims, however, were separatists and they were also Congregationalists, believing that the bible taught that the local church was autonomous and had sole authority over its members and it affairs. The church was to be a covenant community comprised only of professing believers. The idea of a national church was anathema. What the Pilgrims did was separate from the national church, which in the legal system at the time was an act of high treason. They were thought to be subversive, anarchical, and disloyal—much as we are today. Thus the Puritans began to persecute them vigorously.

In 1609 they fled to Holland. There they suffered greatly under grinding poverty and because they didn’t know the language and lost their livelihoods. Many died and many children became ill and crippled due to the heavy labor they had to endure. Moreover, their children began speaking in Dutch and were losing their English heritage.

They were in despair as to what to do. They couldn’t go back to England and the surely couldn’t stay in Holland. So, one day while hanging around at the kitchen table one Pilgrim looks to another and says, “Hey, what about the Cape?!” “Geeze, do you think we can get anything there this time of year?” So, on September 6, 1620, they set sail to the new world and landed at the Cape on November 11 and finally settled at Plymouth on December 8.

The Indians and the Pilgrims did share the first Thanksgiving in peace and harmony. The Indians were most generous in sharing their agricultural and gaming secrets. I wish I could tell you this was the end of the story and that they all lived happily ever after. But we now know this was not the whole story. When the Pilgrims came to New England, they were not coming to vacant land, but to territory inhabited by the Pequot and Wampanoag Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a “vacuum.” The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and therefore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural right” did not have legal standing. In the next forty years or so, they decimated the Indian populations.

It’s easy to throw stones with 385 years of hind sight. If anything, it demonstrates the Christian doctrine of sin. The Reformers described Christians as simil justis et pecator—simultaneously justified and a sinner. As image bearers of God who are redeemed by Christ, we still remain sinners and often miss the mark. The Pilgrims certainly had their blind spots and so do we. How will future generations look back on us? What might they ask us? Perhaps, “Why didn’t you guys do anything about global warming?” Or “What was the big deal about homosexuality?” Or “How come you bought so much stuff you didn’t need?”

Perhaps if they had read today’s text in Matthew (Matthew 25: 31-46) a little more closely, they might have seen their Indian brethren and sistren as among “the least of these.” Or, perhaps, that they were the recipients of God’s graciousness at the hands of these native peoples.

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