A Diner at the End of Time

The church of the 21^st century will of necessity be courageous in living in the tension between change and conventionality. A sense of courage will require the willingness to risk and the willingness to embrace the new. It will also need to find healthy ways to embrace the inevitable changes that will be encountered. How do we know this? We can look over our shoulders and see how our elders faced the challenge of their time. Despite living in a climate of chaos, the first-century church of Jerusalem found a sense of mission that
guided them through the rough moments when the stress of change created conflict among them.

The church of today is immersed in one of the greatest times of reformation of the modern
era. The old wineskin of the past has proven itself inadequate for the new wine of the needs of the future. Processing the changes necessary to reach a new generation will require that the church adapt itself to the culture and climate of change. Church leaders must choose to either be guardians of the past and its false security or learn to live in the new world of change. Church leaders will need to embrace the need for change and navigate the chaos of conflict if they are to lead a dynamic church to do the work of God.

Ed Rowell offers these thoughts for leaders facing momentous change[1]:

Forget consensus and expect polarity. Waiting around for everyone to get on board is usually a subconscious mechanism for avoiding the change altogether. True consensus is rare in any group, especially in a local church.

I can’t change an organization without changing myself. Any significant change will demand more of me than I have to offer right now. If the vision I’m casting is really of God, it exceeds all my natural gifts, abilities, insights, and even character.

I either shape change or am shaped by it. Nothing stays the same. We live in a dynamic world created by a dynamic God. We can be dynamic believers in a dynamic church if we are willing to follow the first-century church model.

Change creates change. One of the many benefits of a long-term ministry is the ability to create an environment where change is the rule, not the exception. Certainly it is possible to lead too far, too fast. But as one success builds on another, credibility escalates, and
the process and result of change loses its ability to inspire fear.

A change agent always lives in two worlds. We must simultaneously be where our church is and where it is going.

People need to release the old before they can embrace the new. Because leaders tend to see the future much more clearly, we tend to release the old more easily. We often tend to underestimate the emotional attachment people have to buildings, traditions, and
methodologies. The church must utilize its pastoral care skills in leading the church through change.

The courageous church of the first-century faced a dilemma of spirit among their members and found a way to meet the need through Christianity sensitivity and a healthy decision-making model that utilized the resources of the church to meet the need. As a result, “the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly” (Acts 6:7).

[1] “Six Insights in Leading the Church Through Changes,” Ed Rowell, teaching pastor and discipleship team leader at The People’s Church, Franklin, Tennessee

All things being equal, there’s not a lot of difference between any of us. In fact, we’ve got more in common than we have that’s different. I’m amazed at the utter uniqueness of us all, but take away our faces or the distinguishing differences of race or ethnicity and everything else seems eerily similar.

A few years ago the well-traveled exhibit “Bodies Revealed” was held at Union Station. This exhibit featured bodies donated by persons from the Republic of China that presented a startlingly unique way for us to see ourselves. These bodies were preserved through a polymer process that gave the viewer a chance to see an actual body from the inside out. Each body had had the skin removed and each organ had been treated and preserved so the entire body was exposed.

What can we learn from this? It’s apparent that stripped away from our outermost organ of skin we look largely alike. We can be tall or short. We can be a red head or a blond or have finely curled black hair. We can have freckles or wrinkles. We can have the varied hues of darkened skin of Hispanic or Indian or African-descent or we can have the paler skin of Anglo-European descent. We can have delicate features or we can be blocky and blunt. Others can consider us as pretty or plain. And yet in the end, all those things are merely the outer accoutrements that distinguish us from one another merely by our outer appearances.

Sit in a place where large numbers of random persons are passing by and it’s stunning to realize that with 6.6 billion persons and counting, there are a mind-blowing variety of appearances just in our faces alone. In all our varieties we may be the snowflakes of God’s created children, but underneath it all we are all cut from the same pattern.

Strip us all down and what you discover is with all that random variety, we are still very much alike. The notions of inclusion or exclusion we insist upon enforcing in our world based upon physical characteristics alone therefore become intriguing.   All of us, the Hebrew Scriptures tell us, are created in the image of the Creator (imago dei as it’s known in the Latin).

Strip us down to our skivvies and take away our distinguishing masculine or feminine features and we’re united by this simple truth:  We are all created in the model of God’s own being. While I do not understand all this means, I realize the truth of Imago Dei means something essential about how God has created us and that humbling truth coaches us into a new way of relating to one another.

Does a mother look into the newly birthed face of her child and experience a strange and wonderful tug of looking into the sweet new face of the one who bears her image? Likewise, does the father see some unspeakable beauty in the child he holds in his arms? I think the divine Creator looks into the face of each of us on the day of our birth and exclaims, “My goodness! That’s one beautiful baby!” simply because we bear something beautiful about the Creator’s own image.

So how is it we reject anyone simply because of the color of their skin or the wave of their hair or the structure of their frame or for any other arbitrary reason we choose to distinguish one from another? Exclusions based on appearances, on internal differences of intellect, or social boundaries of ethnicity or class or orientation or any other human boundaries, are falsely made and stand in judgment of what the psalmist understood when he wrote:  “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Just because a professor retires, it doesn’t mean he or she stops teaching, although some do. My friend Leroy Seat grew up in Missouri but the horizons of his life were vast as he kept studying and writing until he and his wife were called as missionaries to Japan where he taught theology for 38 years. These days he teaches at Rockhurst University and writes a blog appropriately called, “A View From This Seat.” I’m a regular reader of his blog
because he has something worth saying. Frequently his posts are included on www.ethicsdaily.com. You can read past essays here:  http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-homosexuality-sin.html.

This past week, Dr. Seat wrote about the question of whether homosexuality is a sin. I invite you to link to his blog to read his comments. As usual, they are the comments of a mature, scholarly Christian believer who’s as honest as anyone I know.

In the end, I simply cannot answer the question, “Is homosexuality a sin?” for you or for this church. Each of us must study the whole of our faith, our Scriptures, asking God to speak to us on this issue. There are only a handful of Scriptures that speak to the issue and each of those have particular historical and religious contexts from which those texts are created and have particular meaning. Jesus, living in a hedonistic Roman culture, said
nothing about it. One must be careful in wielding such a small word from Scripture in order to claim a final word on any topic. We are to listen to the Word of God both when it speaks and when it is silent.

While I cannot speak for you, I can speak as your pastor about what I think and believe. In a sermon last summer, I said these things:  Perhaps we should be clear … what would a “welcoming church” look like? In order to fully answer that, we have to hold in our minds’ eye: A welcoming church does God’s work in the world by offering a welcoming gospel so good it’s almost too good to be true. We should have a word of affirmation only God could offer. We serve up a truth so wildly true and so radically true that we can’t help but share it with others.

Look around … there are signs and symbols here in this room of that kind of welcome, but we mostly overlook them because we’re not paying close attention. There’s a baptistery where folks who come to stand in solidarity with Jesus who was baptized. The
table befor e this pulpit is a table whose purpose isn’t merely as decorative furniture – it’s a table meant for a meal.

At dinner we look around to see who’s there and who’s missing. We should do that at this table too when the bread is broken and the wine is poured and we’re all called to holy memory about that time when Jesus and his followers shared a meal together and this meal was served for the first time and we were all called to “do this in remembrance of me.” The table asks one more question of pertinent value:  Who feels excluded?Strangely, there are folks who don’t feel particularly welcomed and they are who I want us to think about.

Over the years, I’ve come to meet a good number of the friends of my adult children, Ben and Alex. Their friends are about as mixed a group as I could picture and they’re all bright and lively and they’re all children of God. But there are some who don’t feel welcomed when they come to church. Interestingly, they know I’m a Baptist pastor and that’s seldom a good thing when they first hear it. As a Baptist, if they’re gay or lesbian, a quick assumption is that I will reject them. My kids assure them I won’t do that and I don’t. I’ve come to know some who’ve suffered terribly from the sting of “unwelcome” from the church that would shame them or deny them God’s great welcome. A surprising number of them are children of the church. They long for the comfort of the hymns and the chance to pray to God and worship but the pain of rejection stings mightily and they stay away as though they’ve been banished from the place where hospitality ought to flow freely.

I’ve come to the place where I cannot sit back and merely apologize. I’m saying honestly and openly with you that God’s great welcome has no boundary to these kids. We’re the ones who put these boundaries up and we should stop. Let’s call discrimination what
it is and let’s explore our faith so we can join God in loving others in God’s name.

Remember the “no separation” words of Paul in his letter to the Galatian church?  No separation due to gender; no separation because of class or economic concerns; no separation because of religious purity laws. By naming Jew and Greek, he says there is no clean or unclean in God’s all-seeing eyes otherwise none of us would enjoy God’s love. [1]

Is homosexuality a sin? It can be. “Not much of an answer,” some would say. “Not true to the Bible’s utter condemnation of homosexuality,” others would respond. In my estimation, it’s about as likely for homosexuality to be a sin as for heterosexuality. It depends on what you do with it.

That’s where my mind and my heart are on this subject. God’s great welcome is at the heart of the life and teachings of Jesus and that’s how grace is given and grace is received.

Advent and Christmas must have been created for the sake of the artists. Poets, painters, writers, composers, sculptors and every other artist has seemingly been moved to create art in order to capture the beauty of the story of the birth of Jesus. Running beneath the ground of the artist’s creative impulse is a river of joy. That river of joy is the heart’s response to what the soul recognizes as the work of God in the world moving through the birth of a baby
the salvation of the world.

The river of joy is found in the psalms as the psalmist beckons the worshiper to express what’s in the heart. That joy is the basis for songs of praise and gratitude for what God is doing in the world.

I

The psalms are not the first texts that come to mind when we think of Christmas, but neither is it a bad place to explore the poetry and the beauty of God entering human history in the form of a baby as promised by the prophets in the days of old. The psalms give our songs an expansive mood of joy and celebration. It’s an exclamation of praise that’s perfect for Christmas Day.

Scholars have argued whether these psalms were originally used as enthronement songs for ancient Judean kings, or as others think, they were used as a part of the celebration of the Ark of the Covenant. No matter. It takes a big song to mark a big moment and so it’s perfect for this day when we can sing with absolute clarity of how God has moved in history in bringing this child to the day of his birth.

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises, Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD. Psalm 98:4-6, NRSV

Besides that, any psalm that inspired Joy to the World, that great hymn of Christmas, can’t be all bad. Joy to the World was Isaac Watts’ attempt to put Scripture to music and the hymn is thus based on Psalm 98. It was this psalm that inspired him to call us to rejoice in the Savior’s birth. Neither can we miss the connection between this psalm to the Magnificat, the song of praise offered by Mary upon meeting her cousin Elizabeth when arriving at the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

II

At every birthday celebration I’ve ever attended there was music and singing and today is no different. This is a holy season with its own sound track. Read Luke’s gospel closely and pay attention to the music. Luke’s gospel is a Christmas pageant with arias that proclaim beautifully about the God who was acting in history in bringing forward the long-awaited Messiah.

This past week a K-State music professor was interviewed on NPR to reflect upon how music affects the brain. She described how researchers have utilized the popularity of Christmas music to measure the effects on brain activity noting that Christmas music has been the focus of a great deal of research on the effects of music on the brain. Christmas music is a body of music universally understood and enjoyed and so it is an adequate research tool for scientists to study how the brain works as it hears music.

In summarizing their findings, the professor noted that music is the most highly stimulating discipline for setting the brain in motion and she noted that when the researchers utilized Christmas music for these brain studies, they remarked that brain activity lit up like … yes, you guessed it … like a Christmas tree!

The brain is stimulated by the combined and powerful forces of tradition & sentimentality, emotion & memory, when it hears Christmas music. All of us have memories that are attached to these songs we’ve been singing since before we can remember. Those memories are likely ways to emotionally describe our homes
of origin and our families. Our Christmas memories carry with them powerful emotional forces and the brain can’t help itself by being highly stimulated in multiple areas of the brain.

III

But the Psalms are clear in tying our gratitude through song to God’s Shalom, God’s peace and it’s hard to read the psalm and wonder why there is no peace. The irony is obvious because we’re celebrating today the birth of the Prince of Peace and yet we’re inexplicably mired in our lust for conquest and control. We’ve
spent the last two decades at war in Iraq and have finally begun to extract our troops from that land. We’re also approaching a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and some of presidential candidates have even bounced around the idea of bombing Iran. We may be leaving Iraq but we’re still consumed with the urge for war.

My writer friend, novelist Robert Flynn posted on his blog this past Friday a cryptic reminder of just how mixed up we are in our attempt to follow the One who calls us to work for peace:  “Jesus
is the Prince of Peace. And we are his warriors.”

The words of the hymn, I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day, admit honestly there is no peace on earth. Certainly, these words were true as Christmas Eve 1914 turned to Christmas Day. “The Guns of August” that ignited the World War I spread death and ruin across Western Europe. A snaking band of trenches that varied from 200 to 1200 yards apart extended across Central Europe from the North Sea to the Swiss Border and defined the Western Front. Along this line the wreck and rubble of war was everywhere.

The idealism of late summer had turned to the despair of winter spent in the trenches. It would become the first of four winters experienced by the armies as the bleak misery of war. It would be hard to imagine a time when there was less peace on earth or more
despair in the hearts of men. The six infantry divisions of the British Expeditionary Force suffered a 90% casualty rate in the first five months of World War I. Between August and Christmas of that first year of war, over a million men lost their lives in the fighting engendered by the outbreak of hostilities.

As Christmas morning dawned, a strange stillness fell across the British sector of the Western Front. Spontaneously and certainly without any governmental approval a Christmas truce developed. The author Winston Groom described this event as “one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of warfare.” Christmas trees were variously posted atop the front line trenches. Quietly the troops began singing Christmas songs they had learned as children. But the songs of Christmas bridge from one culture and language to another and so when the Germans sang “Stille Nacht, Heilige
Nacht,” the Brits responded and sang “Silent Night, Holy Night.”

That’s how it began because soldiers from both the German and British armies emerged from their trenches to exchange food, trinkets, and uniform items. Joint burial parties were formed and many of the dead of No Man’s Land were buried. Music drifted across the battlefield as Christmas carols were sung and the 23rd Psalm was read by troops from both sides of the line. Somehow for just those few hours peace reigned. It was a strange spectacle for these bitter enemies, those that one writer described as “death’s men,” to fraternize and celebrate Christmas together.

There is wonder and mystery in this story as there is always wonder and mystery at Christmas.  God is incarnated. The least of us are chosen to witness God’s miracle of love and grace. If only for a little while, hate and despair are put away.  In spite of all that men can do God’s peace breaks into the valley of the shadow of death to
divert us from our worldly and deadly ways. As we approach the manger again on Christmas Day 2011 we would do well to remember the mysterious Peace of God that was manifested long ago amid the horror, squalor, and death of Christmas 1914. God was at work then and God is at work now in the most unlikely of
places when we seek this Prince of Peace and seek to follow Him. The work of salvation was birthed in Bethlehem but the work of salvation goes on all around us and in us as we seek the transforming power of peace.

Nothing captured the spirit of this so-called parable better than what a church in California did ten years ago as an experiment in faith. Somehow the pastor talked the church elders into freeing up $10,000 in cash to give away to their fellow church members. At the end of his sermon, he explained that the church would participate in an experiment together. He asked for 100 volunteers to step forward. When they came forward, he handed out 100 crisp one hundred dollar bills, one to each volunteer.

They were told the money was not theirs to spend on themselves, but it was God’s money and should be spent in whatever manner they believed would further God’s kingdom in the world. At the end of ninety days, they were to report back to the church what took place. Sure enough, at the end of the three-month experiment, the church gathered and heard the many exciting stories of all that had transpired. No small thing, the ten thousand dollars had miraculously grown to five hundred thousand dollars making the feeding of the 5,000 using a little boy’s lunch cause us to wonder, “What’s the big deal?”

What seems truthful about the parable of the talents is that the parable seems to deal with the issue of our willingness to risk for God rather than being about the gifts we offer back to God out of our own resources. Look at the story, what part of themselves do the three servants offer to God? It was not their own money they were dealing with. The money came from the master. They simply accepted it and the instructions he gave them. Then they were forced to deal with their willingness to accept and act on the risk of the master’s assignment.

This parable of the talents is about a master who both rewards and punishes those who work for him according to what they do with the money he entrusted to them for safekeeping. A little housekeeping is in order when hearing this story…

First, the word talent is a misleading word in its translation from Greek to English. Today, we think of a talent in terms of some special ability or aptitude, such as a musical talent, or a talent in some athletic activity. But the English word derives its meaning from this story and the use of the Greek word, talanton. Admittedly, it’s not a terrible misuse of the concept to think that this story includes the offering of our abilities or aptitudes as gifts to God, but that’s not the central meaning of this parable. This story is about money … cold, hard cash. It’s about what the servants do with the money given to them by their master. And it’s also about the master’s response when he hears what they did with what he placed in their charge.

Secondly, most readers of this story vastly underestimate the sums that are given to these servants. When Jesus tells the story of a master and the distribution of “a talent” to his servants for safekeeping, it was a word that was a unit of measurement of wages weighed out for work done by a common laborer for something like 6,000 days of work, equivalent to some 15-20 years of labor. Let’s crunch the numbers so we understand exactly what kind of numbers we’re talking about. Using the minimum wage and the workweek of a common laborer with long days and no time off, it only amounts to a poverty level of income in our culture, but multiply that meager figure by 15-20 years and you get an amount conservatively in the neighborhood of $300,000. So with those calculations, the master gives to the first man five talents. That’s $1.5 million. Think that changes the way we hear this story?

These three trusted servants understood the rules … the master expected them to be wise with the money and to do everything within their power to see that the value of the money was not diminished. Today we would call the servants financial managers.

The first financial manager invested it all and over the course of time that the master was away, he was able to invest profitably, doubled the money, and returned to his master $3 million dollars, the equivalent of ten talents. Obviously the master was thrilled with his financial manager and rewarded him generously.

Wouldn’t you think, however, most folks see themselves more like the second servant? You’ve attained a modest place in life through education and hard work and through your God-given abilities. You’ve tried your best to make the most with the hand that has been dealt to you. Admittedly it’s true that you’ve benefited from living in the most prosperous years in the history of humankind. But you’ve also worked hard to get where you are.

The difficulty of being middle class is the upward pull we feel about the lifestyles of those who make more than us. We’re lured into thinking that through a little credit debt here or there, we can create the illusion that we have more by stretching our buying power. And before you know it, we’re spending regularly more money than we actually make. We’re maxed to the point of frantic anxiety that makes us do some dumb things financially. We’d love to be more involved in the work of God, but we can’t. We’ve become slaves to our debt.

The financial manager given the $600,000 was still able to return another $600,000 to his master. Because of his faithfulness and his willingness to take the risk of his assignment, he was rewarded generously and praised by his master.

Between this trinity of investors and their responses to the master who entrusted his great wealth into their care, we have a glimpse into the element of risk we assume whenever we become followers of Jesus. The first two financial managers see the master’s assignment as something that needed to be done.  They were strong in their faith and immediately set out to invest the funds wisely and to see that the funds were effective in accomplishing those things the master would have done had he not left town.

Lastly we come to the tragedy of the one-talent manager. Given less, but still given a significant amount of money, he was overcome by his fear and did what so many of us do … he dug a hole in the ground and buried the money. The problem was not that he was given less than the other two. The problem was that inside, he was a hole-digger, a fear-driven man afraid to explore the investment of the gift for the sake of his master.

John Ortberg suggests the one-talent servant may have assumed his responsibility was not worth that much in comparison to the other two who was given more to oversee.  While his money was less, he squandered the opportunities that existed for him and he returned only the principle amount. No interest, no growth. This was the man who saw a different side of his master. No praise. The master turned on him and took away his reward and gave it instead to his two colleagues. To live in fear, Matthew tells us, is to misunderstand who God is and what God wants.

One of my preacher buddies in San Antonio invites us to imagine that we’re sitting at home watching our favorite television show when a news announcer interrupts our show with breaking news.

Looking into the camera, the reporter said, “We have just learned of an extraordinary occurrence. An individual known simply as ‘The Master’ has returned from an extended business trip. Prior to leaving, he had handed over to his three most trusted managers large sums of money. In fact, it is alleged that he handed over all his money to his employees with absolutely no instructions as to what to do with it. Two of his managers are now very rich, we understand. Let’s speak with them now.”

The camera widened to include the Master’s employees. Two of them are beaming with grins that stretch from ear to ear.

The news reporter said, “I understand the Master has given one of you 1.5 million dollars and the other six hundred thousand. Are you surprised?”

“Well, not really,” one of them said. “You see, we know The Master. He’s the most generous guy on the face of the earth.”

“Yeah,” said the other manager. “He was always giving us extra days off, unexpected bonuses, tickets to join him in his luxury suite at the Chiefs games, and a pat on the back whenever he would see us. Heck, just being around the guy made you want to be as generous and as trusting as he was.”

The reporter then thrust her microphone in front of the third guy who had the wide-eyed look of a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching Mac truck. “And what about you, sir?”
 
“Well,” said the sheepish little man. “I know the Master too. He gave me those bonuses and Chiefs tickets as well. But you know, you never can trust the boss. Deep down inside they’re all the same. They’re just out for themselves and woe be unto anyone who stands in their way. Can’t you see what I mean? The Master’s taken my quarter million dollars and given it to these two guys. It just goes to prove that I’ve been right all along about The Master.”

The story Jesus tells invites us to answer the question, “Are we hole diggers or risk takers?”

A spoken word misspoken
A false rumor
Ugly words spoken in anger
The written word followed by hitting, “send”
The breaking of a window
The shooting of a bird
Wrecking the family car
Slipping on ice
Oversleeping an important appointment
Toothpaste squeezed out of the tube
Using an ink pen on a crossword puzzle
Singing one beat earlier than everyone around you
Your first (whatever) … after that, nothing else can be your first
The backseat of a car or the morning after
Saying “I do”
Forgetting your anniversary
Losing your wedding ring
Telling a lie
Having an affair
Hurtful words
Lost trust
Identity theft
A missed putt
Dropping a pop fly
Discovering your fly is open
Forgetting the baking soda in a recipe
The smell of burnt popcorn
Scalded soup
Breaking wind on a crowded elevator
A prank that goes wrong
An act of meanness
A tattoo
A personal confession on Facebook
Photos on the Internet

To be a person of faith, to have an adequate basis for our awe and worship, we’ve got to think BIG when we think of God. Our God is beyond what our brains can hold or hope to handle. Our God is a God of really big numbers! Think big, not small! Our God is a BIG God and we need a big faith to even begin to think of God in appreciable proportions. But there have always been some who want to contain God within a smaller, more confined space and time.

To put God’s grandeur in context, let’s consider how big the universe as God’s handiwork, is that’s been made by our Creator God. The Psalmist says God laid out the universe by the span of God’s fingers. Before our telescopic view of the universe was widened through the Hubble telescope, it was generally understood that based on the estimates of the world’s population, there were two galaxies for everyone alive. That may sound simplistic but toss alongside that number that in round numbers each galaxy harbors at least 100 billion suns.

But since the Hubble was unleashed in 1990 with its all-knowing eye, we’ve had to revise those numbers. It appears from all this research there are nine galaxies for every person – the result of calculating there are 80 billion galaxies (each on the average holding 100 billion suns).

But that’s not all. In the information gathered by Hubble we’ve also had to tinker with the age of the universe estimating the stars are not 12 but 13 billion years old and that the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago with life appearing at least 2.5 billion years ago. In our galaxy alone, the one we affectionately call the Milky Way, there are estimates that range between 200 and 400 billion suns and the width of the Milky Way is estimated to be 100,000 light years across. For a sense of depth, understand the Milky Way’s an orbiting disc, and as such it’s about 3,000 light years in depth.

To unpack what that means, remember that a light-year is the distance light travels in a vacuum in one year’s time. To measure this distance we take the speed of light and calculate how far it would travel in a year’s time. From that calculation if we figure it right, light pops across the universe 6 trillion miles in a year. Now, you do the math as to how big the Milky Way really is to be 100,000 light years across. Then consider the Milky Way is merely one galaxy out of 80 billion galaxies even if it’s considered twice as big as the average galaxy. Annie Dillard’s tongue-in-cheek observation about such immense numbers is to think “these astronomers are nickel-and-diming us to death.”

This becomes the language and mathematics of the stargazers who look up into the night sky and wonder in awe, “When I look into the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established: What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4 NRSV).

We must push the boundaries of faith to see that the God of creation cannot be contained in a small-minded faith that can be contained in small numbers. Such parsing of the numbers diminishes God. God is no magician waving a magic wand of the moment creating an ancient world instantaneously. God has been at the universe’s beginning and has been involved in the tiniest of details throughout time that is nearly immeasurable. It takes a deep-rooted faith to see God working slowly, imperceptibly, creating and recreating the world over long spans of time.

All of us at one time or another have faced the question, “Who am I?” and that question naturally opens up the question that naturally follows it, “Why am I here?” It’s the question we ask of ourselves as creatures with consciousness about whom we are, why we exist, and can distinguish ourselves from the rest of the created order.

When in doubt (as most of us are on occasion), we should go to the doctor … Dr. Seuss, that is:

If you’d never been born, then what would you be?
You might be a fish or a toad in a tree.
You might be a doorknob or three baked potatoes.
Worse than all that, you might be a wasn’t.
A wasn’t just isn’t. He (or she) just isn’t present.
But you – you are you, and it’s truer than true
That there’s no one alive who is you-er than you.

When I was a child, I learned what a surprise it was to my parents that I was conceived. Never did I hear them call me an “oops” baby, but since I was born 50 weeks after my older brother, who was born nine months after their wedding, I was the surprise that arrived before they could celebrate their second anniversary.

Why are you here? The Bible tells us we are here because God wanted us to be here. While we all have unique birth stories, in the deepest of truths behind those birth stories we learn God created us and as God’s children we are meant to have fellowship with God, to be God’s girl or boy, God’s man or woman, here in this place and in this life, right now and throughout our lives.

Hear the blessing from the creation story in Genesis:  Then God said, “‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’” … God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”

Our faith offers us a simple yet meaningful answer to the question of existence. We are a special creation of God. We are more than a fish or a toad or a clam; we are the very image of God. Woman or man, fresh-faced and freckly, or bent over and wrinkled, we are here because God wants us here. We are here because God put us here.

We cannot help ask the question of existence at various stages of life. We first ask, “Who am I and why am I here?” when we’re young. Often the answer comes in the form as borrowed identity from our parents or an older sibling who loans us a transferable part of their identity.

First I was Delbert and Libby’s surprise second boy. Then I was Donnie’s little brother. But eventually I learned I had my own identity, earned mostly or wholly on my own merits based on those things I did well and those things I did poorly. I had to rise or fall on my own according to my sense of self and my willingness to live a truthful life.

I didn’t know it then, but in the contract of life I accepted by being born, I was made a steward of my life. I was given charge of this body and all my relationships and the work I did and all the love I shared as a responsibility to the One who made me and launched me in the world. I may have been Delbert and Libby’s surprise little boy, but I learned I was also my own self, made by God and given responsibilities to do something hopeful with the life I found myself in charge of.

But the question is one we face at all the important stages of life and again after childhood I pondered the meaning. I revised and updated my self-image based on my decision to marry and again when I became a father to two children who looked to me for the needs of their lives not to mention guiding them toward answering the questions of existence for themselves. I worked my way through several layers of education and experience as a minister and the nature of the question deepened as I lived an existential life, meaning I could not be a minister without living with a deep knowing of my own identity.

A 24-year old young woman in Biloxi Mississippi was so despondent about her life she jumped from a wharf in an attempt to end her life. As she later said, she was simply “tired of living.” But it also happened that a man saw her jump and thrashed about in the water and he knew in a flash what she was doing. Forgetting that he didn’t know how to swim, he stripped off his coat in dived in after her. When he came up, he thrashed in the water and was in serious danger of drowning himself. The woman saw this in amazement and paddled over to him. He gulped water down with his open mouth as he bobbed up and down in the water so she grabbed him and pulled him from the water. Instead of taking her own life, she saved the man from drowning.

In that crucial moment, when she saw this young man struggling for his own life, her own life suddenly had meaning. She suddenly had something that had been missing before. What drowned beneath the wharf was not her spirit but her despair.

Most of us face the question of purpose with a sense of dread or anxiety because we’re afraid the answer to the question will just be another opportunity to feel shame or guilt over how our lives have been underwhelmingly lived.

But many know the question continues persistently to the later stages of life. Older adults sometimes ask, “Why am I here?” But that question comes more honestly, “Why am I still here?” Often the question is voiced in the shadow of some dark illness or the loss of one’s partner in life. The question is typically wearying and often asked out of some sense of despair.

A woman, who eventually lived to see her 101st birthday, found the courage to answer the question of “Why?” this way: She determined that as long as she had life and breath, she would pray. No longer was she able to do the things that had defined her life. So she faithfully prayed for her church and her pastor. She prayed for her friends who might be experiencing sickness or loneliness. She gave herself to a new purpose after her body no longer gave her strength to work. She adopted a new self-identity for the last stage of life reflecting her acceptance of her contract with her existence.

In truth, we are stewards of this life and it’s ours to live, but it’s not ours to live for us alone. It’s a gift from God meant to guide us toward service and sacrifice.

Life looks big. That’s the first thing we learn as children and some carry that perception with them through every significant stage of life. Our point of view in childhood is mostly at knees and ankles. We look up craning our necks to look into eyes that are mostly focused our direction. Eventually we look all grown up, but inside us there’s a child that keeps asking, “Am I big enough to do this?”

There are scary and demanding things out there that keep us from being all we can be. There are challenges that look at first glance to be impossible. Yet there’s also a hope that keeps us going and there’s a sense in which first steps form the beginnings of paths taken that go down the hard roads and yet lead us on a journey that’s celebrated with a deep sense of accomplishment.

It seems to me it’s the little threads of life that make our lives meaningful and that have more to do with how well we do than the big things that threaten us into a lifeless submission. I think there are little threads of hope and optimism that can lead us in new directions but where do we go to identify those strands?

What do you collect? Some collect matchbooks from all over the world. Some collect musical instruments or paintings or books or CD’s. Others collect rare glassware or thimbles. My next-door neighbor in San Antonio had a collection of antique clocks. Both his living room and dining room were covered up with loudly ticking clocks. The tick-tock, tick-tock was bad enough, but every fifteen minutes, some of the clocks would intrude upon the ticking silence with their noisy clatter marking the quarter-hour. Half hours were worse and the top of the hour was utter chaos! They were unique and priceless because no one makes clocks like this any more. “Enough to raise the dead, preacher!” my neighbor said to me in a voice that rose above the racket of his expensive collection of rare clocks.

There is a book of the Bible that showcases a “little threads” collection gathered and attributed to King Solomon but it’s unlike my neighbor’s clock collection as there aren’t any objects saved or stored other than words and sayings. The book of Proverbs is a reminder that there was once a time when wisdom was so valued, it was saved and turned into a collection that was instructive for life. Proverbs has something to say that deals with the whole spectrum of life’s great needs.

“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” Proverbs 27:1) Jesus took this one a step further in Luke 12 and James added a nice image to bring it to life, “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away,” (James 4:14). We all live as though there’s no end in sight until we begin to explore life’s losses and realize the vapor is us. Life forces us to come to grips with the reality that we have limits placed upon us and can’t bank on tomorrow with any certainty. I’ve come to appreciate the mystery of not knowing. It adds a spicy understanding to the gifts of the day and my ability to enjoy them as the good gifts from God given as a sign of God’s love and blessing. Tomorrow may have more blessings but I should take care to enjoy today’s gifts while they’re here and let tomorrow take care of itself as God gives us breath.

Or, how about this one?

“Go to the ant, o sluggard … observe her ways and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6) I love this one, don’t you? What would happen if we went out in the flowerbed and lay on our stomachs and watched an ant mound with all its activity and paid attention to them? Besides being stung mercilessly, what else would you learn? There is not an ounce of laziness among them. Everyone seems to have a task they’re busy doing. In all the chaos, there seems to individual purpose and a larger goal they all seem to be working towards. Other lessons might help us understand the need to stay at it, or to work towards the building of a unified whole.

Here’s one someone from my home church gave me to guide me when I left home launched myself in college … “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)  That was helpful to me when I was asking all the questions of who was I and where was I going. It continues to be helpful because we all get to the edges of what we know and need to draw upon the wisdom of God who wants to be an active participant in our lives. Need direction? Go to God and expect God to answer.

The last little thread is problematic for those of us who cling to our need to dole out retribution to our enemies.

“If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink; for you will heap burning coals of fire on their heads, and the LORD will reward you.” (Proverbs 25:21-22)  There is power in reversing the order of things. When we break free from the need to protect our own interests that are defensive in nature and turn hate into love, we are swimming upstream. This is what Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. used in combating the hatred of the dominant against the hopefulness of those who were controlled by it to break free.

The little threads are actually powerful agents of change. They breathe life into the mundane. The lead rather than follow towards life that has purpose and meaning. Something to ponder…

Robert Fulghum (pronounced full-jum – even with two vowels, read it as if it was only one syllable) leapt upon the national scene two decades ago with his wildly popular collection of our generation’s wisdom literature, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things. I think the book paved the way for other similar writings some might call “bathroom books” because they can be read in short sessions.

Fulghum’s gift has been to drink in the world as it comes to us … day-to-day observances and events to see goodness and mystery and marvel in them. If there’s a brilliance in being able to open one’s eyes and see clearly, Fulghum’s vision is twenty-twenty. Over the years I’ve come to love and respect his wholesome approach to life and faith and what I would call “a holy reverence and observation” about life.

Fulghum grew up in Waco and escaped by his own wits in avoiding becoming a Baptist. That’s a modern day miracle don’t you think? Waco’s surely the most Baptist city in America with more Baptist churches there per capita than any place on the face of the earth. Not only that, but Fulghum served time before he became rich through his books as a Unitarian minister. I like what he has to say and value his ability to capture life and faith in his quirky view of the world.

One of the best things he’s written in my estimation is From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives. This book is near-holy in its savoring of the rituals that define our lives from birth to death. It would make for a smart discussion book for a group that’s wanting a stimulating read to help the group members tell their stories to one another as an act of communion over their shared lives.

But I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew with Fulghum’s latest publication, Third Wish. It’s a 5-volume book in two bindings held together in a hard cover box set. I lifted the first book, volumes 1&2, and discovered I could do arm curls with it, as it was heavy and taxing. Marcel Proust would smile in envy at the audacity and ambition of it!

But on the backside of the box I ran across a quote worth passing along from Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis (names I can write but cannot pronounce). It’s titled, Instructions for Wayfarers. For accuracy, I looked up the word “wayfarer” and half-expected to see a small photo of Tom Cruise in his Ray-Bans and boxers; instead, here’s what the dictionary says it means: “One who travels, esp. on foot”

Wayfarers aren’t all that common these days. We drive our car across the parking lot to get closer to the next store on the same block. The loss of our car to the repair shop for even one day is like an amputation, for goodness sakes!

Back to Alexandros … here’s the quote that reads like ancient wisdom itself:

They will declare: Every journey has been taken.
You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.

They will insist: Everything has been spoken.
You shall reply: I have not had my say.

They will tell you: Everything has been done.
You shall reply: My way is not complete.

You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.
Fear not, You are the gate – you, the gatekeeper.
And you shall go through and on …

Thanks Brother Fulghum for stirring the pot of ideas and keeping us on our toes to the liveliness of the world at hand!