The Measure of Worth

"He had been wrong in thinking that successes alone were the measure of his worth in the Word's service. He had been wrong in fleeing his mistakes as if they marked him a failure. It was not as simple as that. All men and women experienced successes and failures, and their tally at death was not necessarily determinative of one's worth in life. This was true, as well, for a Knight of the Word. It was trying that mattered more. It was the giving of effort and heart that lent value." - in A Knight of the Word, ch. 25, by Terry Brooks

What You Will...

Today is the 12th Day of Christmas, and I feel like beating on my drum for a little while: in joy, celebration, and gratitude.

I played cars and trucks on the floor with our five-year-old, and later Yatzee with his older brother. All the while, I listened to Pauline entertaining and gossiping with our dinner guests. From those college days as she and I kept each other awake for all-night study binges, to these days as tag-team-parents, I am incredibly grateful for my intelligent and bold wife. I also cherish that she has a soft, squishy side that few people get to see and hold! It gets bumpy for us, like anyone else, so I'm grateful for her forgiveness and dedication, and the help we receive. What a fun family; it's more difficult and amazing than I ever imagined!

This evening we sat at dinner with a couple who knew us before we had kids. They were loving and helpful when we first moved to the area. Then, having adopted interacially some 30+ years before we did, they were there to share their care and support.  Now, they are grandparents of a beloved adopted child. This couple reminds me of the other couples who have shared bread, lives, and love as we have all walked the path of infertility, grief, and adoption. Thank you, Lord, for bringing us together!

I am also deeply grateful for the pastors of Auburn, Washington who gather each month with the primary goal of mutual encouragement and prayer. I'm sure that there are communities or cities that bring together groups like ours. I pray that they are even more common than I suspect. I wish my own congregation members, and all the others in town, were fully aware of all the pastors who are praying for them! It is a great gift to have a fellowship of pastors that wants the best for each other's ministry, rather than competing with each other to be the best show in town.

And I love my work! This past week, the over-riding theme was stepping back from the drive to achieve or succeed. It seemed every meeting, every counseling session, and every conversation came back to our needs for relationship and walking together, or process versus results. I have conducted well-over 200 funerals, and many, many baptisms and weddings. I get to be with people during the most significant, deep, stressful and shaping moments of their lives! At Christmas and Easter, pastors can be frustrated and cynical about the people that show up once/twice each year. This year, I was deeply moved and grateful to see them. Yep, I'm still here. More important, God is still here, friends. His faithfulness never ends!

Thank you, God, for my church, my work, friends and family!

A Pastor's Response to the Sandy Hook Elementary Shootings

·         [This is adapted from a response I made to a question from a friend who was dealing with his feelings of anger and resentment, and wondered about my internal dialog, as a pastor, after the shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School of Newtown, CT. If it helps, I’ll put it out for others...]

 

·         My friends, I understand and share your anger, frustration and grief. I think we keep waiting for the right time to argue, debate and work together to figure out the right ways to adequately prevent this from happening again and again, especially in our country. Your anger, even at God, and your grief make sense to me; after all, God is Lord of all, all powerful, and loving. How can this keep happening? Where it says we are made in God's image, I think that includes emotions, like anger... and grief and sadness. I wouldn't be surprised if that is how God feels.

I'm not, actually, one who says that this is a part of God’s "plan" or will. It appears to me that he has placed very few limits on what people are able to do with our free will, at least here in the short run. And evil seems to have this way of growing and duplicating itself when we leave it unchecked or keep it hidden. I do believe that God is able to redeem, react within, and bring new life out from these situations. I believe God uses the strength of his will to respond with healing and new life from the wreckage of violence, evil, or tragedies.

I believe he works through heroic actions within it, or compassionate actions after it. Through us, God helps to stop the breeding of that evil. But he doesn't cause this; he didn't desire or plan for this shooting, or even allow it in some kind of distant cold way, just so that he could swoop in.

·        Not everyone sees it the way I do. God may have foreknowledge or could "know" all things, meaning every detail of how things will play out, if or when he wants to. I don't really know how God experiences it as a timeless being. For me, though, I believe that God’s "knowledge" or "plan" is mostly about the unavoidable FINAL destiny, that all things will FINALLY be redeemed by his grace. From moment to moment, though, God actually RISKS his love and hope in us. The greater amazing miracle will be the way that he will have to somehow weave our human history, including our violence, genocide, grief and tragedies into an amazing new creation.

In the meantime, our free will is able to entirely ignore God's desire and will, as this shooter ignored him. I believe God would have much preferred for each of those 20 children and the adults to have had full and healthy lives, with children and grandchildren. I don't think anything said at this point can be fully satisfying if we want an adequate answer to "why" or for what "greater purpose." I suspect, tho', in fact I sincerely believe (most of the time) that our perspective in the life to come, "when we've been there 10,000 years" will help us at last.

Faith.

·         I know that these are the kinds of things, tho', that shake people’s faith to its very core. I don't care how long someone has studied their theology, it can easily lead any Christian or religious person or professional like me away from their faith, especially when it happens to one of us. And yet, it is this same faith that many turn to at times like this. Christians trust a God who--through Jesus--physically and personally endured and continues to endure this kind of violence. He isn't distant from it. He understands and shares the grief and even the anger of the parents. In fact, he still wears it, through his wounds, which are forever a part of his image.

The assurance can come in his promise that things don't remain this way: "I will not leave you bereft. I will not leave you orphaned." It may take many years for God to fulfill those promises on the one hand, but he will. And on the other hand, his compassionate presence is already there, long before the first responders. I believe God was huddled in the closet with library aid Mary Ann Jacob and children as they waited it out. He was with Principal Dawn Hochsprung as she raced forward to confront and stop the shooter. He was with each one who died. He is with families and children and adults who are left in shock and grief. He was even somewhere around Adam, the shooter, begging him to stop, please stop, even as Adam refused to listen him.

·         Ultimately, through Jesus' resurrection, God promises that this is not the end, and that he has eternity to work with and to redeem this.

Anyway, in your note, you asked for my internal dialog. This is some of it, but mostly (as I picked up my own 7+-year old from school yesterday, and took the family out to buy our Christmas tree, and sat cuddling with them later as we enjoyed the blinking lights) mostly I find myself filling up with tears, feeling especially grateful but more vulnerable, and thinking all the while that it's not fair. It's just not fair. There must be a better answer, the final results must be worth it, and for that I am relying on God. I cling to my image of him as a God who is loving, grace-filled, always present and able to redeem all things...in time.

 

He has, and he will again.

Insufficient Courage

(John 16:25-33)

prepared for chapel service – Pacific Lutheran University, 11/28/12

I’m just discovering or constantly re-learning that there is a kind of freedom and courage that come out of insufficiency. I realize that seems to contradict all that you are striving to do as students and teachers in a university, especially as you face “dead-week,” studying, papers, and tests.

And to some degree this has got to be true: more knowledge, experience and skill allow you to say and do things, to understand and affect things, than ever before. I can’t argue; if you study for your psychology test, you will have more ability and confidence than someone who does not, and you will likely do much better. If I go into surgery, I would want a surgeon who has studied and trained and practiced in his or her field. Any person—before you set out in any kind of test or venture—a person wants to feel sufficient and prepared to face the challenges. We like or prefer to take courage based on our abilities and high likelihood of success.

On the other hand, if real courage and freedom is about acting in spite of our fears and stretching beyond limitations and boundaries, then there comes the time that relying on our own sufficiency and ability will limit and prevent what we are truly capable of doing.

I read a lot of fantasy novels. The characters I enjoy the most are the ones that struggle constantly with their internal sense of inability and lack of worth. Sometimes they discover some hidden ability, or they receive some magic device just in the nick of time that helps them overcome the obstacles, or defeat evil powers. Even better than that, I enjoy the characters that act—not from miraculous ability or power—but from desperation and a desire to do what’s right (even if it means failing or dying). Often, they reach out to others, their companions, and they take action regardless of the consequences.

They stretch beyond sufficiency. In fact, they find a strange kind of freedom and reserve to act from their limitations. Success is no longer the point. Justice is. Doing right is.

I recently read about a single mother who took so seriously the task of raising her children, the responsibility of starting a new generation weighed on her shoulders. Each day, it seemed overwhelming to her. In her prayers she insisted to God, sometimes with tears, “I can’t do this! I can’t do this, not alone… not without you!”

As a pastor, I can relate to how unsettled the disciples must have felt in this gospel lesson (John 16:25-33). I am constantly bouncing back and forth between understanding and feeling confident about my abilities and ministry, and then being faced with my insufficiency, between what I think I know and all I find that I don’t know.

At first, Jesus assures them that they can speak to and ask God for whatever they need in his name because they have loved and believed in Jesus. However, just as they respond, “Oh now we get it! Now we understand you and believe that you are from God,” Jesus responds, “What? Now you say you believe? In just a couple hours you are going to scatter and hide, each one of you, in your homes. You are going to abandon me.”

And why does Jesus tell them this? He says, “I tell you these things now so that you may find… peace! You will be afraid. You will face persecution and tests for which you will not be sufficient. I tell you all this so that you can stand. In the face of those fears and failures and insufficiency, you can take courage,” Jesus says, “because I have already conquered the world.”

It doesn’t depend on you. After all the studying, all the practice, reading and cramming, when you have hit your limit, then stop. Admit to God that you cannot do this alone. Use the people and resources he sends, and then take the plunge into the next moment with a certain sense of perspective and freedom. Your salvation, your Christian life, your dignity, and your worth do not depend on this.

Salvation life, Christianity, is a way of life that can seem or feel a bit reckless because it doesn’t depend on self-sufficiency and successes. We act when it is the loving and right thing to do. We are free to act and do amazing things together because it doesn’t depend on my ability or even successful outcomes along the way. In fact, it is our very insufficiency that often causes us to cross boundaries and ignore limitations, reaching out to God and to others to take part in amazing things like feeding hundreds of thousands, or bringing school, opportunities, and freedom to oppressed women, and unbinding those who are dehumanized by unjust laws. Find cures. Bring hope to the hopeless. We don’t do things like that alone.

The truth is, when we have spent too much time and energy trying to be or wishing we were sufficient, capable, and worthy, those are the times we end up feeling the most alone and isolated.

“Take courage.” Jesus says, “You are not alone.” He will not leave you orphaned. Use that time of fear and failure to reach out to those who can help. Let God speak plainly to you, without figures of speech. Put plainly, alongside of him, he loves you, and you matter. His victory is already yours!

Ocean Pebbles

Ocean waves caress

Small pebbles in sandy cups.

Dark and smooth, they rest.

 

-GSKaurin, '12