The stone the builders rejected

“Why have you broken down the walls,

so that all who pass may pluck its fruit?”  --Psalm 80: 13

One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 80 with that great image of the vine brought out of Egypt. As the psalmist tells it, the vine grows and thrives and begins to tower over the trees and spread to the sea, even casting its shadow over the mountains.  Under God’s care, that vine is doing pretty darned well.  Then there is that abrupt change, as the psalmist cries out:  Why then have you broken down its walls? Now, everyone who passes by can pluck its fruit! By golly, even the beasts of the fields and the boars of the forest eat its fruit and ravage the vine, Oh Lord!  Why would you do this, God?  Why would you build something up and then just pull away Your protection and let it be ravaged and torn down and even despised and rejected?  Why?

And with this past Sunday’s reading from Matthew we hear a possible answer.

“Have you never read in the scriptures: the stone that

the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was

the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” (Mt. 21:42)

Yes. It is amazing in our eyes. We who long for success and smooth sailing and promotion after promotion as confirmation of our actual value –we who lick the earth (to paraphrase another psalm), we who cannot imagine success without some kind of pleasure –at least as our reward.  It is amazing to us that the one rejected could possibly become anything, let alone the cornerstone. Truly amazing. Yet, it is the Lord’s doing. And perhaps we should remember –often it seems to be a singular mark of how He works.  The one who is rejected, who is denied, who is ridiculed –that one becomes the cornerstone.

And so we look again at the vine from the psalm.  It is ravaged and plucked by any and all who pass.  Why would God let such a thing happen?  Is it possible that the answer is to make cornerstones?  Think of Christ on the cross: He is dying a failure and a ridiculous fool to those with any power.  They laugh and taunt Him. Even one of those dying with Him cannot resist the desire to pluck at what remains of His early dignity:

If you really are the Messiah, save yourself and us! (cf LK 23:39)

But that isn’t how God works.  God makes His cornerstones out of the stones the builders reject, and to prove that –Jesus must feel the utter rejection of feeling abandoned even by God.

“Why have you broken down the walls?”

“So that all those who pass by may pluck and ravage My vine…”

It seems to me that Jesus is teaching us something about recognizing God’s amazing hand in what looks to us (and the world) like failure.  When we feel plucked and ravaged and rejected, perhaps we should take heart and trust that God is working on us. He is forming us and shaping us and turning us into cornerstones. That may not make the rejection feel any less painful, but it may be some consolation to know that perhaps this is how He builds His kingdom.

But now I wonder –does that mean any time I fail, I am being formed into a cornerstone?  Possibly… but when I lean over to kiss my wife and she says, “Honey, please! Not right now…”  What kind of cornerstone does that make me? One with garlic breath?

The blessing of vulnerability --further reflections

“Go from your country, your kinsmen

and your father's house to the land
that I will show you... You are to be a blessing.”

–Genesis 12:1-2

What are the Beatitudes but a call for us to leave our place of security and comfort and go to a foreign land –a place of vulnerability, of risk and of blessing.  In Genesis, God calls Abram to leave his homeland, his kinfolk and his father’s house to go forth to a land that God will show him.  In that place and by becoming vulnerable to the curses and blessings of these foreign people, by leaving behind his security and earthly support system and putting his trust wholly in God Abram becomes a blessing. 

“Blessed are you who are poor…”

“Blessed are you who hunger…”

“Blessed are you who mourn…” –cf. Luke 6:20-21 & Mt. 5:3-11

Is this not a call to us to leave behind our homeland of culture and identity, our kinfolk of support and insurance, our father’s house of security and comfort and go to a foreign land that Jesus is showing us: a land of hunger, poverty, mourning, meekness and abuse?  Go not where we are safe and feel secure and accepted, but where we feel some risk of rejection and martyrdom even.  What greater love is there than to give up your life for another? 

But how do we live this out?  What does it mean in our daily life?  For me, there was a wonderful incident the other night that assured me that I had stumbled in the right direction.  I was volunteering at the hospital with the chaplain’s office. The chaplain tapes a list of names to his door for me. It is usually a longish list, but he will highlight the ones that he wants me to visit. Usually I just visit those highlighted names; I tend to be a rule follower. But as I was heading to the elevator I noticed a name --someone I had visited before–not highlighted. And something inside me made me feel that I should visit that patient.

I imagined that I would go up, say hello to him, perhaps offer a prayer and be on my way.  But when I got to his room on the 4^th floor, he was asleep.  So I was about to go back to my assigned list when I noticed a man who looked a little troubled in the room next door. So, I poked my head in and asked if there was anything I could do for him.  He was very hard of hearing, but he was also quite clearly agitated and needed someone (or something).  So I struggled to talk with this elderly man, but I listened as he told me that he was anxious about his daughters and confused about why he was being left at the hospital. After a while I offered to pray.  He didn’t understand at first, but as I began to pray the Our Father, he fell right in with me –as if suddenly something clicked.  A nurse arrived while we were praying and when we finished, she began her business with charts and scans, but she also began to ease his worries by reminding him why he was in the hospital. 

I left and tried the other man again. He was still asleep.  As I turned to leave and go back to my assigned names, another nurse approached me.  He wanted to know if I was the chaplain, because a patient had just died and his family needed someone.  My first reaction was a start of fear. I’m not a chaplain and I wasn’t sure what to do.  But, instead of hiding behind my lack of qualifications. I explained that I was a volunteer, and asked him to show me where the family was.  Standing at the door to the room, I asked God for a blessing and went inside to be with a family in deep and unconsolable mourning.

That was a place and a moment where I felt weak and slightly afraid. I hungered for the security and safety of the “right words,” but I had only my presence and a selection of psalm to offer them. I felt fearfully vulnerable. But, it was the place God lead me. And so I trusted. I trusted that whatever happened –this wasn’t about me. It was about their sorrow and their need to have someone come and pray with them in their time of mourning.  And so I went. And praying with them, sharing psalm 42, listening to their memories and their pain, hearing what a loving father the deceased was, all of it –I believe it was a blessing for them, but I am certain it was a blessing for me.

And it all started with me reading a name on my list that wasn’t selected for me by the chaplain, but (I guess) was by the Holy Spirit.  The first step was leaving the safety and security of the highlighted names, to go somewhere God was leading me.  Then, visiting the man who was almost deaf was a second step. He wasn’t the one I felt an attachment to, and I only stepped into his room because I could see him through the window and saw what looked like fear and confusion on his face –in his eyes. It was uncomfortable and awkward trying to talk with him –but because I tried, because I didn’t just give up and walk away, I was still on the floor when the other man died and because I left his room when the nurse started her work I happened to be walking out the door just as the other nurse came looking for a chaplain. 

And by being vulnerable what did I find?  An opportunity to become a blessing.  And an opportunity to be blessed.  And you know, I think in that moment of blessedness I had a brief glimpse of another foreign land: Heaven. Perhaps what Jesus is telling us in the beatitudes isn’t just that being poor, or meek, or hungry or thirsty or suffering for Christ is good for us; perhaps what He means when He says “blessed are…” is that to offer ourselves in this way is truly blessed; it is a taste of Heaven. 

Think about your own life. When did you feel most blessed? Was it in a moment of earthly success (a 100 on a test, a new job, successfully completing a project or getting an award for some achievement) or was it when you offered yourself completely (in all your brokenness and insufficiency) and found that you were received and you were a blessing to someone who needed you?

To become a blessing is to be doubly blessed.

Exulting in hardship Pt. II

  

   Why on earth should we exult in our hardships? What is the real life applicable human truth that God is revealing through Paul’s words? It sounds so weird to our human ear: “exult in our hardships,” “rejoice in our afflictions” “boast in our sufferings,” “glory in our tribulations.” How alien that idea is to our modern consciousness; and yet if the Bible is the word of God then should we not seek for God’s truth in it? And should we not be considering how to apply that truth to our daily lives?

   For me, this all ties into a year that began with me being kicked out of the diaconate program –after three years of training and many more of discernment and prayer and hope—and ended with my brother’s sudden death by cancer (almost exactly a year later).  In between there were many personal and professional setbacks and disappointments but all them were marked by the feeling that I had been rejected. I had been found lacking.  I was not the person I was certain God had made me to be. 

   Standing in the middle of all that, I felt no desire to rejoice. And I saw nothing to boast about. Why on earth would anyone exult in it? I only wanted to escape or hide—to protect myself and my family from further hardships, or tribulations, further reasons to rejoice. Physically, I was tense and anxious and emotionally I was often fearful. My back ached and my shoulders tightened as I waited –constantly—for the next blow.  I began to avoid eye contact, avoid friends, avoid even the hands that reached out to help me.

   And, I think that position I found myself in may be key to what Paul is telling us –or telling me:

Paul isn’t recommending that we should eagerly seek out afflictions as opportunities for boasting and rejoicing, --as if we might go out for a letter jacket in suffering. And he isn’t claiming that positive thinking will make afflictions go away. This isn’t pop psychology 101.  I think there are two things going on here. First, out of a natural desire to avoid pain or discomfort, I was becoming tense, isolated, defensive –my heart was hardening.  And Paul’s words certainly are addressed to that attitude. Becoming hard and isolated is self-destructive. Perhaps the spiritual practice of exulting in our hardships, is a way of learning to receive both good and bad, not as curse or blessing, but as invitation (so to speak) –as a way for God to reveal Himself in and through our life. 

Second, it occurred to me that one of Paul’s themes in this letter is the question of whose slave we are?  Do we belong to sin or God? (cf. 6:16-19) If we belong to God, then we need to live that way. Like a good slave, we need to receive whatever we are given not with whining and moaning, but with rejoicing and exulting. Not because it feels good or feels bad, but because we are God’s, and every moment of our life, every success and every failure, every joy and every hardship we give back to Him. We offer it to God as a chance for His glory to shine. 

   This doesn’t mean we don’t stand up for ourselves, or for others.  It doesn’t mean that we pull out that old trump card: It must have been God’s will.  We don’t know why you lost your job, but it must have been God’s will. We don’t know why your house burned down, but it must have been God’s will.  Exulting in our hardships doesn’t mean we hide behind “God’s will.” It also doesn’t mean we just sit back and take it.  We can praise God and exult in our hardships even as we work to help immigrants or homeless people or prisoners or even as we stand up for someone being mistreated at work. We can exult in our hardships even as we stand up for the underdog. The world may call us hypocrites and fools and all kinds of names, but the world isn’t who we are called to serve. We are slaves of the one we obey. The world abhors hardships. The world is afraid of affliction.

We are slaves of God.  And God calls us to exult even in our hardships, to rejoice even in our afflictions. Not because hardships are really blessings, but because even in those moments –God is with us. Even when we feel crushed, it is the Lord who holds us up and it is the Lord who stretches out His hand to help us bear the load. And, like Paul, perhaps we are making up in our flesh something that is lacking in the afflictions of Christ (cf. Col 1:24).  And again, what if God is using your hardship as a way to call someone else, family, friend or coworker, even a stranger, to an act of charity –calling them to respond to His presence in your pain? Asking them, through your affliction, to come closer to Him by reaching out to you.  Not everyone will respond. Sometimes no one will. That, again, is not our business. God may be using us to plant seeds to grow His holiness in someone we will never know.  Our affliction, our hardship, our disappointment, our sorrow may be an opportunity for someone else to become a saint.

    Come to think of it, that sounds like a good reason to exult.

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls, 

 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

--Habbakuk 3:17-18 

Exulting in hardship

“…let us exult, too, in our afflictions, understanding that hardship develops perseverance, and perseverance develops a tested character, something that gives us hope, and a hope which will not let us down…” --Romans 5:3-4

Ah, this is hard. If you want to be counter-cultural, try this.  Exult in your afflictions –boast of your hardships. Not in the woe is me, self-pitying kind of way, but with a true understanding of their worth. Try it.  Struggling at work? In your marriage? With your faith? Feeling friendless? Ignored? Misunderstood? Oppressed? Overwhelmed by health or financial woes? Do you wake up feeling like Job?  Instead of cursing God and dying… exult in your hardships! Rejoice in your afflictions. Ah… this is hard.

But that seems to be Paul’s advice for building up character and gaining hope –a hope which will not let us down.  And yet, what does he actually mean? Does he mean boasting of every affliction we suffer to our co-workers or spouse or strangers on the bus? Is that how Paul would have us witness to the glory of Christ?  I don’t think so.  I think he intends something else entirely.  I think he means in your heart, in your spirit, in your prayers –exult in your hardships, rejoice in your afflictions. Thank God for the life you have been given –including the hardships.

None of us knows why we are called to bear the crosses we bear.  None of us knows God’s plan or God’s will for our lives. We know God wills only good, and we trust that God is with us, that Christ is with us always “even unto the end of the world” (Mt. 28:20). But the thing that so often troubles us is that our afflictions seem meaningless, at best, and –at worst—almost signs of our distance from God.  We may feel like Job, but we think like his friends: that suffering is a sign of God’s displeasure.  But, what if it is as Paul says here? What if that which feels like suffering to us is in actuality an opportunity for exultation, for rejoicing. Not in a self-pitying or masochistic way, but in a sincere and faith-filled way. What if the challenges God puts in our lives, the difficulties and afflictions are the way our spirit and faith are grown? What if that is how it feels to be stretched and opened up to receive the “love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (5:5b). 

I don’t mean to imply that God is “cruel to be kind,” (cf: Hamlet III.4 or Nick Lowe’s 1979 single), but that growing in faith and love and hope might hurt. And, that part of the process of growing in our faith and hope and love is learning to praise God for everything we receive—to rejoice not just in the good, but even in our hardships.  That in praying “Thy will be done…” we don’t actually mean only Thy will that feels comfortable and makes my family life easier.  But, instead we truly pray “Thy will be done…” because Thy will –whatever it is, and however confusing and even frightening it may appear—Thy will is what is always to bless us. I choose to submit to Thy will because I put my trust in that blessing. In You, Oh Lord. Whatever You will for us is –in fact—a blessing, oh Lord. And that is where I plant my hope. That is where I trust it to grow. And I understand that growing pains can be hard to bear, but I will rejoice in those hardships. Because I know that is how I will learn perseverance, and that is how I will be tested, and that is how I will gain hope. And all that is asked of us is a little joy. Rejoice! Open your heart. God is waiting to fill you up.