What God Wants For Your Life

Are you the sinner-in-touch-with-your-sin or Simon-in-denial?

In helping you to answer that question, I want to make a few points you should keep in mind. Today, this:

God loves you and wants to forgive you — and you can’t do a thing about it.

God is going to go loving you and longing to forgive you, even if you refuse — for whatever reason.

And that’s good news. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. We can delay the gift. We can make it difficult for God to get to us. We can say to ourselves that we don’t need God’s love or forgiveness. We can compare ourselves with other sinners beat ourselves up over the sins we can name, or just convince ourselves that we are just plain unlovable. But that is not going to put God off.

God is in the love and forgive business.

I had a student years ago whose mother told her in a hundred and one ways she was unlovable and unforgiveable. Her mother had two boys and, then, finally, her daughter. The girl was the focus of her mother’s aspirations — for a mother-daughter relationship, for frilly dresses and bright pink everything.

But Ellie was born into a house dominated by two brothers and a father who lived easily, laughed, loved, fished, hunted, and played football. So, not surprisingly, Ellie wanted to be a part of the action.

Instead of going along, her mother’s disappointment hardened into brittle disapproval and Ellie felt it all. By the time she was a young woman she had internalized her mother’s message: you are ugly, you are unlovable, you are a disappointment, you are unforgiveable.

For Ellie it wasn’t just what she did that made her unlovable, it was who she was that was unlovable. And nothing her father, brothers, or even her husband told her could fill the chasm her mother’s hurtful messages had created.

It was only, when with the help of a spiritual director that she could name the things that had driven her, forgive her mother for the hurt that she had caused her, and release the hatred in her own heart that had grown in response, that God’s love and forgiveness broke through.

But whether it is who you are, or what you have done that is the obstacle, there is nothing that can keep God from loving you.

“Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’”

Sweet Jesus, meek and mild?!?!

Not really. No holds barred…no quarter given…in your face spiritual direction. But what is his point?

Big sinners who love big get forgiven? Pious types who go to the Temple all the time, don’t? That’s certainly the way I’ve heard this one preached. In fact, a lot of preachers go one better. They argue that the woman was a prostitute and the next thing you know we are talking about prostitutes with a heart of gold. Great material for a seedy detective story, not such great theology and not such great exegesis.

There is no direct evidence in the text that the woman is a prostitute. She isn’t forgiven because she loves, she loves because she has been forgiven. And while Jesus is really tough on Simon, there is no indication that he believes Simon isn’t forgiven or even loving. It’s just clear that Jesus believes there is a difference between the extent to which the woman and Simon are in touch with how much they both need to be forgiven.

So, what we have here is not the lionizing of big sinners and the big time smack-down of the apparently religious. What we have here is a story about the spiritual life that in the final analysis describes the spectrum of growth that is possible.

And the growth possible is directly related to the ability we have to grasp our need for forgiveness. So, the take away, the bottom line here is this question: On the spectrum Jesus describes — how in touch are you with your need for God’s forgiveness? The more in touch you are with your need, the more you will live with love and freedom.

My wife’s eldest son and his wife had their first child last night. His name is Henry. And I found myself wondering this morning, do grandchildren change everything?

Grandparents who are well on the other side of that divide will know better than I do. The experience is not even 12 hours old yet. But I am betting that it does.

We talk a great deal about future generations. But when we are young, life can feel like it is all about us. When we have children of our own, life can still feel like it is all about our generation, even if it is not just all about us.

But grandchildren have a way of changing everything.

It becomes clear that our own lives are a brief chapter — partly told, partly untold, understood, and misunderstood, begun and almost over, present and already past —- part of a much longer, larger story.

Grandchildren also have a way of populating that future. It is no longer an untold future of unnamed generations. It is a future into which Henry has already moved and will grow. And that makes it a future for which we feel far greater responsibility than we did yesterday.

The world might not be a different place than it was, but our sense of it has cdertainly changed.

Welcome, Henry.

Reassuring wisdom from a medieval saint:

We have learned that every soul—
even though sin-burdened, vice-entangled, pleasure-enticed;
even though in exile, a prisoner-of-war, incarcerated in body,
mud-stuck and mire deep, limb-fastened and care-fixated;
even though strung-out over business wrangling,
fear-knotted and sadness-crushed;
even though errant in wrong-headed wanderings,
in anxious uneasiness,
in restless suspicions,
even though a foreigner in a foreign land, among enemies,
and—as the Prophet says—one polluted by death with the dead
and numbered among those going down to hell—
even so, we have learned, I believe, that every soul
(however condemned, however hopeless)
can turn around, can turn back, and breathe once more
not only the hope of mercy, the hope of pardon,
but can even dare breathe the aspirations of wedding-nights
with the Word.

Bernard, SCC83.1
William Harmless, translation, in Mystics, 56

The most recent edition of the Harvard Business Journal explores the importance of a “decision audit.”

The authors, Michael Mankins and Paul Rogers, note that businesses are often reorganize in the effort to grow, but it rarely pays off. What businesses need to do is conduct a decision audit. Decide which big moves need to be made that will change everything and which small moves, made on a daily basis, will yield fundamental differences.

In business, the life of the church, and in our individual spiritual pilgrimages, the same principle applies — not just because it works, but because there are spiritual issues at stake.

Reorganization, fatalism, selling property, retrenchment, and endless conversations about how our lives and the lives of our communities are going to be different one of these days often have their roots in a lack of faith, rather than in sound decision-making.

To identify decisions that need to be made and to act on them requires courage and boldness; and in its most deeply spiritual form that kind of courage and boldness is an act of faith, not bravado.

God worries less about our failing, than about our failure to decide.

Some years ago, Gary Smalley wrote a book in which he outlined the elements of a common Hebrew practice — the blessing. Used as a means of conveying property rights, the practice also served as a means of extending the divine blessing to each successive generation. The elements Smalley identifies are:
A meaningful touch
Spoken words,
Affirming the value of the one blessed,
Picturing a special future for the one blessed,
And promising active commitment to the one blessed

No one in the ancient world would have broken the practice down into individual elements, but Smalley’s treatment does provide a picture of a practice that is all but missing from modern life.

Both men and women often spend a lifetime looking for all five elements in the intuitive search for a sense of connection with the presence of God in their lives.

Where and when have you been blessed?

Where and when have you blessed others?

Ok, I’m going out on a limb. If this bumper sticker is on the back of your car, I’m in trouble. I’ve seen before, but I saw it a few days ago with new eyes:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

I know what it’s meant to say…wake up, there is more to life than eating, drinking, buying, and selling. Don’t dither your way to the grave collecting a bunch of stuff that they won’t let you take with you.

But when you examine it more closely. When you consider the wisdom of that bumper sticker with a careful, critical eye….it’s — well, to be technical — stupid.

Just exactly what is the human experience if it is not spiritual and what is a spiritual experience if it is not human?

Think about it…

Are the choices you make about what you do with your body really empty of spiritual significance?
Is the way you rear your children without spiritual consequences?
Are the ways in which you spend money a guide to what you really value?
Are you really untouched by being a man? By being a woman?
Have all the experiences you have had, growing up, winning, losing, loving, grieving, left you spiritually untouched?

And if you took all of that human behavior out of the equation, what would be left?

What is spiritual experience if it isn’t grounded in life?

And what on earth — or anywhere else, for that matter — are we talking about when we talk about spiritual beings that aren’t human?

Are we talking about Zombies? Martians? The life of bees?

The truth is we are both human and spiritual — and to fail to acknowledge that we are both closes us off to important truths.

The truth that our lives are an integrated whole.
The truth that we can be fully healed, body, mind, and soul.
The truth that our bodies are not less important than our spirits.
The truth that our minds need not be at war with our souls.
The truth that our emotions can serve us as spiritual guides.

And that, at least in part, is what Jesus is telling his disciples —- the resurrection changes everything. The spirit of truth is going to show you how. And the message is this: “God loves you better than you love yourself and you were meant for glory.” Put that on a bumper sticker.

God in human form, experiences life, plows the way spiritually, shows us what transformed, liberated, God-centered life looks like and —- then —- in the resurrection of his body, pronounces that which was always good, the object of God’s love.

I am convinced that life brings every one of us to the point where we recognize the need for a healing word that promises we are loved.

The mother or father who loses a child needs to know that their child is loved, cradled and embraced by a God who doesn’t know children generically, but loves their Christie, Bobby, or Jenifer.

The person who loses a job wants to know that God loves him or her, values her, and that his self-worth did not evaporate along with the job.

The person who struggles with a critical diagnosis wants to know that he or she is still Robert or Martha — and not the cancer patient or heart attack in room in 316.

And even when things go well, we all need to believe that the decisions we make in our homes, on the job, and in our communities have spiritual consequences and bless the lives of others.

Human life is spiritual and spiritual life is human.

Sister Joan Chittister is a Benedictine Nun and writer. I had the privilege of meeting her some years ago when I invited her to speak at Washington National Cathedral.

Her order which is based in Erie, Pennsylvania, runs a kids’ café that provides a safe after-school environment for over 250 children. A young man who grew up in the neighborhood, but moved away years ago and (I suppose) wanted desperately to put the experience behind him took her to task one day.

“Look, why are you doing this? Why spend so much time and energy?”

She looked him squarely in the eye and responded, “We are doing it because you moved away, but I’m going to give you a second chance.”
I worked for years as a volunteer in a Catholic hospital and I witnessed this kind of in-your-face spiritual direction more than once. It is a role that nuns play particularly well. Like our mothers, they can sometimes tell us things with the kind of direct, brutal honesty that only a handful of people can tell us in a way that gets through our defenses and takes root.

The broader message she taught the young man and the message we all need to hear, I think, is this:
We have two things we can do with painful experiences: We can run from them or we can mine them for insight and compassion. There is nothing wrong with transcending our circumstances, but there is great and good reason for listening to even painful experiences and learning from them.

Memorial Day…

This morning’s newspaper featured the story of a World War II veteran who died not long ago without ever telling his family that he had earned six medals, including the bronze star between the years of 1943 and 1945. In fact, he never claimed them.

So after some research done by his grandsons, the medals were given to his widow. The officer in charge of locating people like this explained that it is not uncommon. I hold a fairly significant medal as well, he explained, but I don’t feel that I deserve it. I was doing my duty and I didn’t do anything that many others did not do.

For some people, the challenge in staying morally and spiritually focused lies with the fact that it is so difficult to chart our progress. Ground is gained and lost. The right choices are not always easily identified and, when we do live courageously, there is no one there with a medal.

Those who have done things to earn themselves medals and never claimed them have something to tell us. Courage is what we are called to exercise. Medals are not necessary.

Tom Robinson is a videographer who has captured the result when the vacuum in an incandescent light bulb fails. The process is rather spectacular and it vividly illustrates what actually happens when we say that a light bulb burns out.

The same video is a great parable for what happens when we fail to cultivate a life of deep dependence upon God. When we don’t, life becomes a frantic, tiresome effort to maintain the integrity, or vacuum that feeds us. And when that vacuum fails, we burn out.

That is life without prayer
Life lived on our own terms
Life lived in dependence upon our own efforts

Don’t be an incandescent bulb. Find a light that never fails.