His Fingerprints

I intended to continue the conversation on humility this week but I am going to postpone that for a week. I had a conversation with my sociologist-daughter about last weeks’ post. Her stance is that she cannot know who to help and who to walk away from because she has not lived in the poor persons, circumstance. In general, she believes that our circumstance shapes how we think to a large degree. So much so that some people would choose the company of a pet to the offer of free shelter. This was clearly demonstrated in New Orleans after the hurricane where some chose to stay on their roof surrounded by 18 feet of water rather than to leave their dog.

It doesn’t make sense. It is not logical. In my economy the life of a dog or cat is not worth the life of a human. But to them it is. That pet has become more than an animal to them. The part that haunts me about this phenomenon is the apparent inability of these people to think otherwise. Is it their choice or are they emotionally trapped? Are they actually a slave to the circumstance that formed them?

I have always believed that everyone has a choice. If you turn down an apartment and a kennel in the garage for your cats because the landlord won’t let the cats in the house, well, it’s your choice and you have chosen the consequences of life-on-the-street. At that point I would say there is a total lack of humility and I would walk away. This is where I was at the time I wrote the last blog. But, then, a persistent thought came. I don’t remember if it came before the conversation with my daughter or after. None the less, it caused me to look at Luke 4:18 again. In summary it says:

• The Spirit has anointed me to:
• Preach the gospel to the poor
• Proclaim release to the captives
• Proclaim recovery to the blind
• Set free the oppressed

This is how Jesus described His ministry not only once but He said the same thing in answer to John the Baptists’ question, “Are you the one or should we look for another?” This, then, by association is my ministry. However, I have a question about this verse. Was Jesus talking about four groups of people or just one group? Could it be that this verse is a description of the poor? A paraphrase could be, “Preach the Gospel to the poor. You know, those people who are captives of their circumstance; those folks who have been poor for so many generations they can’t see any other way. They are blind. Give them sight. They are the ones that the powerful oppress and exploit. Preach the gospel to these people, the poor, because the Gospel can free them.”

OK, where does that leave me? How do I help the poor, even the ones who spurn the offer and literally disrespect me? Is there ever a time to say enough is enough? Here is another question that I really need to find the answer to. Am I hung up on the exception or will most of the poor respond like the van-man? My experience with the poor is so limited I have no data. I guess I better go get some.

This week I am continuing the discussion about the poor. A friend of mine commented on last weeks’ blog saying that her definition of the poor includes the poor emotionally, relationally and spiritually as well as financially. I agree with her. However, what I am saying is that the church she and I attend and most of the churches we are acquainted with have multiple programs for all the poor except the financial/social group.

Be that as it may, what I would like to talk about this week is another aspect of our responsibility to the poor. Also, it may be that my conclusions this week are equally applicable to all the classifications of “poor”. The question that is begged here is do we minister to all the poor or is there a time and circumstance to walk away? I have to tread lightly here least I sound like I am compromising on my previous stance. I don’t mean to do that at all. It is just that it only took a couple of weeks after writing the blog titled, “Luke 4:18”, for circumstances to arise that made me investigate the question. Remember the man-in-the-van from a couple of weeks ago (see “Luke 4:18, blog 1/10/10). He has begun to cop an entitlement attitude. My pastor gave him some requirements for ‘camping out’ on our church parking lot. Two of them were he needed to attend a service and he had to vacate the lot when school was in session. In turn, van-man did none of these things and was rude to one of the secretaries of the school. He also turned down an offer of an apartment because he has three cats living with him in his van and the landlord would not allow pets in the apartment. So, how far do we go here? What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do?

I may have found and answer, at least one that works for me. When/where did Jesus walk away from people? Two instances come to mind, when He returned to Nazareth and in Capernaum when most of His disciple left Him because of what He had told them. What attitude or characteristic did the people exhibit in these two accounts that caused Jesus to reject their requests at Nazareth and push them away with His words in Capernaum?

If you recall the people of Nazareth wanted Jesus to perform the same miracles He did in other places. Instead he reminded them of how they and their fathers rejected all the prophets before Him. In Capernaum Jesus told His followers that following Him meant more that a free meal. It meant total sacrifice and they left.

I think the reason is that Jesus sensed in the people of Nazareth and His followers at Capernaum a lack of humility. There was no recognition of any need for grace. Since Jesus was a Nazarene the people thought He should put on the same “show” for them and they got mad when He didn’t. His many disciples were in it for the free ride and maybe the glory but not because they had a desperate spiritual need that Jesus could fill.

The longer I think and study about humility the more clearly I understand why many of the ancient philosophers like St. Bernard and St. Thomas Aquinas considered humility as the foundational virtue second only to faith. Next week I would like to further explore the virtue of humility leaning heavily on the writings of C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller. But, back to the van-man, what would Jesus do here? I think He would tell him to go away and wait until He, Jesus, saw that van-man had recognized a need for grace both physically and spiritually.

I sat down today to write a poem about the poor, perhaps a story of a homeless person. I wanted to create something that would touch the emotions of those that read it. I found that I could not do it. The topic is so broad and I know so little about it.

The poor are like a nation within a nation, a culture if you will with sub-cultures. Take the homeless for example. It seems to me that the majority of these people were not born into this group. They joined it in their twenties and older. But, I really don’t know this. I have heard about homeless children who survive on the streets but I have never seen one. For all I know there may be more homeless children than adults worldwide.

I am told there are homeless who have jobs but choose to live on the streets. I don’t know, I guess it’s so. Now that I think about it I had more contact with the homeless in my childhood than now. You see, I grew up beside a railroad track and we would occasionally give a homeless man (it was always a man) a meal. Back then we called them hobos and it was fairly safe to do that sort of thing.

What about the teaming thousands that have a place to live that is more substantial than a cardboard box but their income is below some government assigned level. They too are the poor. It is relative, though, isn’t it? The poor in say Chicago would be middle class in Haiti right now. But lets keep it at home for now.

As I said, I grew up in a lower income neighborhood. I could look across the tracks onto Maryland Avenue where kids had more that I did. But I never felt disadvantaged. I did not think of myself as poor. I saw them as rich and I wanted to be there but it spawned no resentment. I would just wonder what it would be like. And you know what, now I know. I raised my children in neighborhood better than Maryland Avenue. Even when I was poor or close to it, by government standards, I did not experience it.

I remember asking Dad to drive through the slums of Canton, Ohio. It was actually a pretty small area. I was probably 10 or so and I was fascinated by these people that had to survive. They had a toughness that I did not have but respected, almost envied. I didn’t know how close to them I was.

Am I expressing myself clearly? Can you see that I know nothing about the poor, how they think, who they are, really? Here are some questions I have:

Are the poor a culture or are certain cultures poor?
Is being poor a way of thinking or a state of being?
I have been below the poverty line but I did not feel poor, why?
Does social capital make up for financial capital?

That’s it isn’t it? To be truly poor you must be lacking financially and socially. Take a look at my heritage. My Dad was truly poor as a child, bare foot, mother-taking-in-boarders kind of poor. But, first they were white and second she provided the love and guidance necessary for Dad to graduate from high school and eventually become a truck driver. This allowed him to eventually buy a very modest house where he raised me beside the railroad track.

I didn’t feel poor because Mom and Dad filled the financial holes with social capital. They pushed my oldest brother to go to college. He was the first in my family to do so. He broke the ice. From there my road was defined. All I had to do was make good decisions and walk right into upper-middle class professionalism in my career, my church, my community. I know nothing about the poor.

Here is a thought. Could it be that the root problem is not financial? Jesus said, “Go and preach the Gospel to the poor.” He also said that I will be judged by what I do about and with the poor. At the moment, I am overwhelmed. Nearly frozen in place by the size of the task and a little frightened.

I would like to follow up on the blog titled, “Why Are You Valuable?” posted two weeks ago. A very simplistic conclusion came to me this week. I think it is going to prove to be profound (at least for me) but it is so simple I hesitate to write about it. The idea is centered on the concept that all value is given. Said another way, if something has value it is because someone or something holds it as valuable.

My hang up has always been that I need others to see me as valuable. I will work my tail off to become valuable to my boss. I will volunteer for all manner of tasks to become valuable to my pastor. I will make many sacrifices to be valuable to my closest friends. It goes without saying that the motive is the problem here not the activity itself. With this motive I am controlled by the will and perceptions of others. In a very real sense I am a captive (Luke 4:18). Even God does not want to control me in this manner.

Now, here is the simple, subtle change. All value is given. Value does not exist intrinsically. The opinion of others has no value for me if I don’t assign value to it. I don’t know when or where I began to put so much value on the opinion of others. It has been there for as long as I can remember. The ridiculously simple insight is that I do this to myself. It is not something that is predetermined and inexorably written into my DNA code. I can undo it simply by deciding to undo it.

Ok, it is a simple decision but it does no good to try to change this by saying to myself, “Stop that!” I need to have value so if I am going to switch the source of my value I must have a new (safer) source.

If you recall, I spent a little time in the previously mentioned blog wondering if we can give ourselves value. I concluded that humans are probably the only beings that are self-aware enough to assign value to ourselves. That is the new source. I will decide when my value goes up and when it goes down. I think it works like this for me:

I am more valuable to me when:

• God speaks to me.
• I understand a new facet of God’s character
• I learn a new skill like playing the piano. (even though no one will ever hear me play)
• I create something like a poem or composing a simple piano piece.
• Every time I struggle with and solve a problem.

There is a pattern here. Dare I say it? My value goes up when I am proud of myself. This is not the debilitating pride that comes from comparing yourself to someone else. It is what Paul was talking about in Galatians 6:4, “Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else,”

So, why do I write about it if I don’t care what others think? There are two reasons. The first is that it helps to solidify it in my own mind. The second reason is found in Luke 4:18c, “HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES”.

Dr. Luke the author of the Gospel of Luke records in chapter 4 that after Jesus was tempted by the devil he traveled through Galilee teaching in the synagogues and He ended up in Nazareth where He grew up. While in the synagogue He was invited to speak and was handed a scroll of the Old Testament. He opened it to the book of Isaiah and read the following portion from chapter 61.

“THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR.
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES,
AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,
TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE DOWNTRODDEN, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”

Then, he sat down and began to speak to the congregation. We don’t know all He said. We only have one summary line, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He must have said much more. He must have told them of His call to take His message of mercy and love to the common man and how He was sent of God to release people from the burden of the Law. I imagine that He told of how he not only healed the physically blind but that some, perhaps only a few, saw the grace that He was to provide and were no longer spiritually blind.

All was going well until they asked him to do the same miracles in Nazareth as He did in Capernaum and He told them that He couldn’t because they did not accept Him as a prophet or His message. Then, they turned on him and tried to throw Him off a cliff. They wanted to experience His power but not His message.

However, what I really want to point out is how Jesus took this passage from Isaiah and brought it forward in time. He literally implanted it in the imaginations of the people so strongly that Luke says they were marveling at His gracious words. Then, when it got personal, they were so engaged that the reaction was immediate and emotional.

I serve as an Elder under a young senior pastor. This is his first assignment as the lead pastor and he has chosen Luke 4:18 as the theme and direction for our church. He did a number of sermons on the text explaining his vision. This was brought home to me in a forceful way during a recent Elders’ meeting. As I was walking to the room where the meeting was to take place I noticed an extension cord snaking it’s way from somewhere inside the building, under the back door and out into the parking lot. I went into the meeting and it started as usual. Then, the pastor explained the extension cord. A homeless man had asked to be able to plug into the churches electricity for the night to run a space heater in the van that he was living in. He, the pastor, then asked the question to the board, “What is the correct response to this man in light of Luke 4:18? Is there more we should be doing for him besides letting him plug in for the night? (It was 20 degrees F at the time.)

We discussed this for awhile and I need to quickly report that the responses were Christ-like and correct. Then, we went on to other things. However, I could not get peace over the situation. I went home that night and did not sleep well. I reread Luke 4:18 and reread it in Isaiah as well. I noticed, again, how Jesus seemed to bring the old prophecy forward and made it live in the imaginations of the people gathered in the synagogue. So, I let the passage come forward in my imagination. I saw our pastor proclaiming this scripture as his vision for our church and all is going well until God plants a homeless person in our parking lot and makes the message personal. We did not turn the man away. We handled him correctly, in love but we may have missed the bigger picture.

The Elder board reflects the congregation as it should and the conversation that night turned from the discussion of the homeless fellow to problems with the music ministry, the Christian Education ministry, and visitation. In my imagination I saw us saying I hear your gracious words and I agree with them but give me what the other churches have (in Capernaum). Give me the music I want and a pastor that is my age to call on me. When what God is actually saying is I want you to set the oppressed free. I want you to minister to the poor.

A couple of days later I learned of some pretty exciting events that took place after the Elders’ meeting. One man went home that night and told his wife about the homeless fellow camped out at church. His wife made breakfast for him and that gentleman delivered it Tuesday morning. I am told that they had a meaningful discussion as well.

By Wednesday the cold snap had not ended and our new friend was still in the parking lot when the Wednesday night prayer service convened. Of course, the folks were curious about the van in the lot with the extension chord running to the church. After appropriate explanations were made, the group held the homeless fellow up in prayer but it didn’t stop there. One of the families attending the prayer meeting had a vacant apartment and a meeting was scheduled to see if some arrangement could be worked out. I don’t know the result of that meeting but I am very proud of how these members of our congregation reached out to this fellow.

I also had a conversation with an interested third party about church vision and how I was applying it. She told me in a loving way that I was the one being narrow. That if Luke 4:18 was the vision for the church it had to affect and direct functions inside and outside the church. It must be applied to CE, music and visitation as well as the homeless and pub-groups. She also helped me see that our problem is not so much defining the vision but getting the vision into the hearts and minds of our people. Implementation truly is the hardest part.

May the Holy Spirit fill our pastors and lay-leaders for the task.

Amen.

Recently a dear friend of mine told me that the question, “Why are you valuable?” was used as a discussion point during his small group meeting. It is a great question and I have been thinking about it, on and off, ever since. My ponderings led to a corollary question, “Why are you valuable to yourself?”

Well, first, what definition of value shall I use? Does self-value go up when I am pleased with myself and down when I am disappointed? I don’t know. Let’s look at a simpler model. When I have an object that I consider valuable, I find that I have assigned value to that object in every case. Others may or may not give it value but I do and, therefore, it has value as long as it is within my sphere of influence. So, is value always something that is given? Is there such a thing as intrinsic value? Is it even possible for me to ascribe value to myself? For the moment, I am going to say that value is always given and that it is given when the valued thing gives benefit or pleasure to the value giver.
This would explain why I assign more value to myself when my value increases to others. It brings security, satisfaction or sometimes pleasure. For example:

When my boss is pleased with me
If my pastor appreciates my insights
When my wife appreciates what I do for her
When I sense that God is pleased with me

There is another circumstance when I feel an increase in value. When I succeed in some kind of personal conquest my personal stock goes up. This can take the form of a physical challenge like repairing a car or a more intellectual, problem-solving thing.

As far as I can tell these are the two sources of value for me, personal conquest and through the eyes of others. But is this as it should be? Should the opinion of others determine my value? Should my success rate at reaching self-set goals be able to affect my value? Furthermore, is this the source of my fear of failure? Does my fear of failure come from the self-devaluation that happens when I disappoint those that are important to me and/or myself? If this logic is correct the original question becomes very, very important to me because the only way to solve the fear problem is to detach the valuation of myself from both the identified sources of personal success and the opinion of others (even God?).

Now, we are back to the topic of intrinsic value. Is there value without it being given? If not, can I as an individual give value to me? It occurs to me that we may be the only entity in all of creation that has a shot at being self-aware enough to give ourselves value other than God Himself. Does this fact alone provide value? Did God make me that close to His image? Is it enough to stand on to be freed from the control that the fear of devaluation brings? I cannot be devalued because I am self-aware.

One of the great philosophers said (if you know which one, please let me know). “If I thought this horse was self-aware I would get off his back and call him friend.” I am beginning to see what he meant.

I think I have taken one more step toward freedom.

It is Christmas morning. I have no young children so it is possible for me to be alone in the morning even on Christmas. I have been thinking about and looking for the counter-story in Christmas. The lesson that goes counter to today’s culture and, therefore, affects our ethic and practices. This was a struggle for me and I didn’t know why until after I saw it. You will see why as you read on. Anyway, the method is to recognize the historical context, then, to move the context into present. This usually involves a heavy dose of imagination and results in valuable insight.

I am not sure why but I did not make any progress with this until I reread the account of the Christmas story in John. It was something about John’s sweeping literary style in the first chapter. How he covers time from creation to Jesus in 18 verses that got me to thinking broadly enough to see the context I needed to see. I needed to get away from the stable, shepherds and angels to remember the historical context.

For thousands of years the Jews were looking for a messiah, one man who would lead them into prominence and even dominance in the world politic. Rome would be overthrown and Israel would emerge as a nation of strength and identity all centered on YAHWEH. What they got was something entirely different. Jesus came to offer them an invitation not to nationalize and control but to spread the fabric of their identity, a relationship with God, to the entire world. It was completely counter to what they expected or wanted. Power and control had nothing to do with it.

Now, in trying to bring this context forward into the present I found that I struggled to see the connection. That is when it hit me. I have never needed a messiah in the political sense. My culture is the dominant one, my race, Caucasian, my country, United States, my social class, middle, my political affiliation, Republican, my religion, Evangelical Christianity. How much more control and dominance could I want! Yes, I know well my need for a personal savior but not a messiah.

However, not much needs to be changed about my heritage and life situation to imagine the dream of a messiah. Just change the race from white to black, slavery wasn’t that long ago and Civil Rights in the U.S. is barely out of its’ infancy. These people were and still are looking for a messiah. I suppose some would say Martin Luther King filled that role and we killed him for it. This is just one example of hundreds as you look across the globe.

So, what is the counter-story of Christmas for us? Whether you have the control or are the one being controlled the message is the same. It is not about control. It is not about legislating behavior, demanding consensus in Biblical interpretation or fighting for equality whether in race or gender. It is not about power at all. The counter-story of Christmas is an invitation to love, to enter a school that teaches servant hood. This doesn’t seem fair to those who want/need the control and it is repugnant to those of us who have it at the moment. But it is how the Jews would have felt. The military wanted to defeat Rome and the Pharisees wanted to control the people. Jesus asked them to give it all up and join His kingdom and they killed Him for it. He is asking us the same thing.