God's plan

"The Morning After" given April 8

We have no idea where Thomas the Twin was, or why he wasn't with the rest of them that first Easter morning. Maybe he'd already given up at that point. Maybe he was off some place by himself, sitting on a park bench, trying to sort it all out. What exactly had he just given three of the best years of his life to accomplish? What had it all meant? Who had this Jesus been?

Or maybe Thomas was simply wondering what to do next. Stick around Jerusalem? Go back to Galilee? Or maybe Thomas just happened to be the guy elected to make the run for coffee and sandwiches that particular morning.

It doesn't really matter. The point of the story is that Thomas was not there. He had not seen with his own eyes whatever it was that had gotten the rest of them so excited.

Why did Thomas doubt them? Maybe he didn't have enough imagination. Or maybe he had too much imagination and could come up with a dozen things it might have been other than a resurrected Jesus. Mass hypnosis, a common delusion based on wish fulfillment, fantasy, illusion, a spy in disguise, a ghost-- who knew what it might have been.

Maybe Thomas thought they'd all been dreaming or that they were all drunk. Maybe he thought that their desire to have Jesus back among them and their fears at being left alone had made them see Him--a mirage--as a hungry man will see imaginary bread or a thirsty woman in the desert will see the illusion of water.

I'm sure they told Thomas about the fish that Jesus ate. No doubt he laughed at their fish story. He was not about to believe, to risk such deep disappointment and despair again, merely on the evidence of a missing piece of fried fish.

One thing was for sure. Hard-headed, practical Thomas, Thomas the realist, Thomas the pessimist was not about to believe again, not about to risk any more of his time and his life and his heart solely on the unsupported words of somebody else-- or on the basis of a half-eaten piece of fish.

He would believe-- Thomas told them loudly-- when he touched the nail holes, put his hand in the wound from the spear, saw the scars on the Master's hands and feet-- and not one second before.

A week later, John's Gospel tells us that they once again all together in the Upper Room. Only this time, Thomas was there. Again the Risen Lord appeared among them, greeting them, passing His peace. And this time, Thomas the twin got his wish. Every eye must have been on Thomas as he rose and approached the familiar figure before them.

"Please sir, may I see your hands? Please sir, may I see your feet? Please sir, may I see your side?"

And Thomas saw the hands. And he saw the feet. And he saw the side. And he saw the wounds. And he saw the scars.

And at that point, not even hard-headed Thomas the Twin could hold out no longer. He had no questions left-- no doubts, no desire to do anything now. Except to fall to his knees and exclaim, "My Lord and my God."

Under the circumstances, that was enough.

Then it was Jesus's turn to ask a question.

"Have you believed because you've seen me Thomas? Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe." Thus Jesus gave yet another Beatitude--a ninth, or possibly tenth Beatitude depending on how you count. In any case, it was a Beatitude for the billions who would come after Thomas in the generations yet to be born--a Beatitude for you, a Beatitude for me, a final Beatitude

Church tradition tells us that Thomas left that Upper Room a believer. The story is that he left that room and walked to India, where he brought the Gospel to uncounted peoples and established churches that still exist today--claiming Thomas the Apostle as their founder.

But before Thomas could leave that room, he had to touch the wounds. And no doubt for the rest of his life, that was a cherished moment, central to Thomas's faith. But for those who came in that first generation immediately after the Apostles-- for those of us who have come in every generation since, the question remains. How are we to believe? What's the basis for our faith?

It was easy for the Twelve. They saw Him. They stood in that room and beheld those ruined hands. They heard that beloved voice they knew so very well.

And even though Jesus said that there was a greater blessing in store for those who would come after and believe without seeing, who among us wouldn't trade the promise of that greater blessing to have been physically there beside Thomas-- to have seen that face, to have touched those wounds, to have Jesus take our hands in His and call us by name?

Surely to have been in that room would give us a faith to move mountains, a faith as sure as 2 plus 2 equals 4, a faith that would let us believe in God and Jesus with the same unquestioning certainty that we believe in sunrises and sunsets, a faith that could carry us to India on foot.

The problem for us of course, is that we don't have Jesus here with us-- at least not in the physical sense. We don't even have Jesus here with us in whatever sense it was in which Thomas beheld Him. Jesus is invisible to us.

As a result, many of us-- most of us, I suspect-- have to cope with our doubts now and then. Very few of us could possibly have the rock-solid certainty that Thomas knew after he left that room. We have to rely on the witness of the Bible. We have to believe without seeing. You and I can believe-- must believe, ultimately, only on the basis of our own internal experience of the Risen Christ in our lives.

That isn't always so easy. In times of loss, in times of loneliness, in times of fear and anger, in those terrible wilderness times of despair, sitting on that park bench trying to sort it out-- it's oh so easy, for our doubts to come to the surface. None of us can manage a consistently firm faith, every single day of our lives, year in, year out, in good times and in bad. Some of us wander lost in the wilderness for years, decades even-- like Moses and the Hebrew children. Some of us-- and I suspect we mainliners are often guilty of this-- get stuck on that park bench with Thomas, and we never get up.

Thomas, during that first Easter week is all of us. We want to believe. We want a sign. We desperately seek assurance that this Christianity is more than just a clever fraud, or a two thousand year old mass delusion. We want to know that we have staked our lives on Eternal Truth, rather than human imagination. We pray, we beg God to prove to us that there is a rhyme and reason to Creation, that our very existence is more than an accident, or worse, a cosmic joke.

I remember more than a few years ago, there was a Country & Western song. It was one of those Country songs that you're never quite sure are sincere, or a put-on. Whichever it was, that song spoke to a deep and profound hunger in all of us. "I'd like to see Jesus on the Midnight Special. I'd like to see the Wolfman bring Him on."

I never did watch that program too much myself. But that particular show is one I wouldn't want to miss! Can you imagine Jesus appearing on Steven Colbert ? But if He did, would even that be enough? Would even seeing Jesus on late-night TV do the trick for us?

If the Gospel accounts-- if the story of Thomas has any point it is simply this-- merely seeing Jesus is no guarantee of belief. Pilate saw Him. Herod saw Him. Caiphas and Annas the High Priests saw Him. Judas saw Him. Thomas saw Him. The Twelve and the women saw Him and listened to Him teach and followed Him for three years-- and none of them necessarily came to believe simply because they’d seen him.

Several years ago an international team of scientists, consisting of Christians, Jews, Moslems, and non-believers, set about to prove or disprove the story behind the famous Shroud of Turin-- the mysteriously imprinted cloth that some believe was the burial cloth of Jesus.

The TV news magazine 20/20 featured an interview with one of the scientists, an Air Force colonel who was a specialist in laser technology. He openly admitted that he began the project not only as a non-Christian, but as a person who was openly anti-religious.

I relished this opportunity, he said, to debunk what I considered a childish myth. The interviewer asked him: Now that you have spent four years on this project what is your response. He said:

"After four years on this project, I now fall upon my knees and worship a resurrected Christ."

And here’s the irony of it all. The official results of their findings were inconclusive. They could neither prove nor disprove that this was the burial cloth of Jesus

All the laser technology, all the historical inquiry, all the quests for the historical Jesus, all the literary detective work in the world can't prove Christianity to be real or bunk. For you and for me--for all those who have come after Thomas and the rest of the Apostles, there is no proof-- only faith-- faith in what we cannot see. Under the circumstances, that can be enough-- it has to be enough.

But faith can only come through hearing the Word. Certainty can only come to us through being in His Presence at His Table. Belief can only be born in us through opening ourselves to His forgiving grace as it touches our lives. That Blessed Assurance we sing about can only come through acts of love on behalf of others, through prayer, through service, through His redeeming Love as we experience it in our hearts.

As we read in the First Letter of John,

"The victory that defeats this world is our faith. For who is victor

over the world but those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Like Moses and the Hebrew children, you and I need the Divine Presence to lead us out of the wilderness of doubt and despair. We’ve got to realize that’s where we are stuck-- that we’re lost. We’ve got to yearn with all our hearts to find our way home.

Like Thomas, you and I need to get off the park bench and find our way to the community gathered together in the Upper Room. Once we’re there, we need to do more than simply behold Jesus in order to believe.

We've got to accept Him, welcome Him, handle Him, touch His wounds and bring our own wounds to Him. We need to encounter Jesus totally. We need a relationship.

When you and I at last accept and grasp His whole person in our lives, then our own vision becomes complete and we can believe without seeing. And real understanding, and mature faith is finally born within us. And we know that greater blessing Jesus promised in His Last Beatitude, as we fall to our knees before Him, like Thomas, offering our whole lives and, exclaiming,

"My Lord and my God!"

"Running Toward Easter" given April 1

"There's no need to be afraid." said the young man in white. "I know you were looking for Jesus, who was crucified. But he is not here. He has risen, just as he said he would. Go quickly and tell his disciples that He has risen from the dead and has gone before you to Galilee. That's where you will see Him."

And according to Matthew's account, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary turned and began to run back to the city. But on the way, they met their Risen Lord. Seeing Him, the women fell to His feet in worship. And Jesus reassured them and again gave them a message for the disciples to the effect that He would meet them in Galilee.

And from that moment of awe and recognition, the world has still not recovered. Even after two thousand years, the human race still doesn't know quite what to do with this amazing story. Millions have heard it and believed. Others have scoffed. But no one yet, who has heard it has been able to ignore it.

The Easter story demands a response from everyone who hears it. Believe or disbelieve. Like Mary and Mary, sooner or later, we must all eventually encounter God's messenger, come to the empty tomb, look into it and decide. We must decide in our own heart.

That story, that tomb, that meeting on the road back to town has changed the world. Out of Jesus' ministry came a dream--a dream of equity among people, of abundance and sharing, of peace and justice in relationships and in society. Out of this sad story of His betrayal and death and resurrection, of Good Friday and Easter has come a faith--a faith that has shaken the world--a faith that affected all of subsequent history and all of humanity.

Almost all of us have likely heard that story since we were babies in Sunday School. But we too have to decide. Our faith may have been planted in us by our parents and by a lifetime of church attendance and church school classes. But if we really believe, he at one time or another-- have had-- or someday will have-- to sit down and make a decision.

We have had to consciously and freely affirm our belief. And we've had to do that, not based on logic, or theology, or preaching, or even on the Biblical accounts. Ultimately, we've only been able to make that affirmation based on the experience of the empty tomb-- the actual experience of the living God in our own lives.

Frederick Buechner writes,

The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of man's indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God's unspeakable love.

Unless we come to understand that in our hearts, out of the experience of our lives, then we have no real basis for celebrating Easter. Until you and I have experienced the empty tomb, until we've known the love of God in the coo of a newborn baby, the outstretched hand of another, the supporting shoulder of a friend in time of need, the comforting love of a parent or beloved we don't really understand Jesus and his dream for humankind.

Unless we have, with a certainty beyond words known acceptance, peace, love--then the dream, the Easter message can never be more than a lovely bit of wishful thinking in our lives. And Easter will remain for us nothing more than a day of pink bunnies and chocolate eggs-- an essentially secular ritual marking the coming of Spring.

For the believer, Easter means that Jesus' dream of Humanity living as one family, under the Parenthood of God came true. Easter means that the Kingdom of Peace and Justice and Hope and Righteousness that He preached about has been realized in the hearts of His followers. Easter means that His community is formed, His dream is fulfilled, His love reigns. Easter means that the tomb is empty. Easter means that He came back from the grave and conquered death-- for us.

The New Life Jesus promised, the new way of living he modeled, the new relationships between people, and between God and humanity have all been certified by His victory over the grave. It has all been certified, guaranteed, underwritten, signed, sealed and delivered by the Creator, here on Earth.

They tried to kill Jesus and His new way of life. They tried to exterminate His dream. They seized Him and nailed Him to a tree. Then they pierced Him with a spear. They thought they had buried this dreamer and his dangerous dream. They laid the dream and the dreamer in the grave and rolled a stone over. Then they sealed it up and set a guard of soldiers in front of it.

But the dream came back. New life returned. The vision of worship and society and humanity and relationships all transformed by the power of God came back! It rose up from death. It shattered all the limits. It conquered the grave. And there is nothing that can undo the dream of Easter anymore.

The tomb is empty! And that's a victory worth more than all the bunnies who ever lived, that's worth more than all the chocolate that was ever made. And coming from a certified chocoholic like yours truly-- that's saying a lot.

The dream of Jesus and his earliest followers, the vision of Shalom of peace with justice and equity and dignity for all, the way of life based on loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek, doing unto others has not been vanquished. Rather, it has vanquished. Nothing can stop it anymore. The tomb is empty!

This broken world still writhes in pain and sin and death. But, step by step, inch by inch, life by life, century by century, day by day, the vision of peace and hope and love personified by Jesus continues to grow in the world. It grows, not as a threat, but as a possibility, as a fulfillment of all that humanity can become.

The dream of Easter continues to grow in the world as a Final Benediction, as the last, best, hope of the world. It continues to grow as a final blessing to all of humankind. The tomb is empty! Rejoice! Amen.

"Crucified for Us" given March 30

There is much that we do not know about this man Jesus, whom we

follow and call Lord. The gospels are hardly helpful in reconstructing a full life of the historical Jesus. There are conflicts regarding the date and place of birth. We know nothing of his early, formative years. Various gospels place him in various places in Judea. Few external sources, only A turncoat Jewish Historian named “Josephus”, give us a record of him and his work.

There is only one fact however about Jesus that is undisputed, historically certain, without doubt. He was crucified. In his early thirties, after a brief career around Galilee, the Romans arrested him, tried him, then nailed him to a cross to die. Jesus was crucified.

Crucifixion was a humiliating, painful and lingering death. The person executed actually died from slow suffocation--if exposure to the elements didn't get them first. But that wasn't the end of it. It was typical to leave the body hanging there as food for birds and wild dogs - the final insult among a people for whom burial of the body was important.

The Syrian governor, Publis Quinctilius Varus, had to quell three major peasant uprisings in Judea after the death of Herod the Great four years after the beginning of our era. When he arrived at Jerusalem, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, he crucified two thousand rebels. Here is an account of another mass crucifixion:

Many of the peaceable citizens were arrested and brought before Florus, who had them first scourged and then crucified. The total number of that day's victims, including women and children, for even infancy received no quarter, amounted to about three thousand six hundred.

Four years later, in the early summer of 70 CE, The Roman General Titus' army encircled Jerusalem, crushing a Jewish rebellion.

When caught, they were . . . scourged and subjected to torture of every description, before being killed, and then crucified opposite the walls . . . five hundred or sometimes more being captured daily . . . The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures on their crosses; and so great was their number, that space could not be found for the crosses."

Thousands were crucified in those early centuries-- POWs, common criminals, freedom fighters, rebellious slaves, religious insurrectionists--in particular Jews. Of course, the murder of Jewish martyrs in our own century staggers the imagination.

Yet it is a Christian claim, not only that Jesus was crucified, but that he was crucified for us. Not for any crimes or wrong-doings. Not for his people's independence, or even for the sake of their historic faith. Not for any of those reasons I mentioned a moment ago-- but for us-- for you and for me. Crucifixion itself is tragedy enough. But crucified for me? As Paul says, in Romans 5,

"Why, you might be willing to die for a good person, but he shows

his love for us in that, at the right time, Jesus died for the ungodly"

The ungodly--that is to say-- us.

An archbishop of Paris stood in the pulpit of Notre Dame Cathedral.

He was there to preach the sermon, and his whole sermon was built around a story. Thirty years before, he said, three young students had come into this cathedral.

They were rough, rude, cynical men who thought all religion was a

racket. Two of them dared a third to go into the confession box and make a bogus confession to the priest. They dared him to do it, bet him that he didn't have the nerve. But to win the bet, he did. He tried to fool the old priest, but the priest knew that what he was saying was a lie.

The old priest listened to the false confession, sensed the arrogance in the young man's attitude, and said,

"Very well, my son. Every confession requires a penance, and this will be yours. I ask you to go

into the chapel, stand before the crucifix , look into the face of the crucified Christ and say, 'all this you did for me, and I don't care a damn.'"

The young man swaggered out of the confessional to his friends to claim the bet, but they insisted that before they paid him he would have to finish the performance, complete the penance. He went into the chapel, looked into the face of Christ, and began,

"All this you did for me, and I . . . ""All this you did for me, and I . . . " He couldn't say it. He never finished the sentence. It began for him a painful experience that changed his life and finally brought him into the priesthood. The archbishop telling the story leaned over the pulpit and said, "That young man was this man who stands before you to preach."

It takes a hard heart to be unmoved by all of this.

All the Scriptures agree, whatever else there is to be said about Jesus, he was crucified, one of the millions of Jewish martyrs. He was crucified. This day, this night remember: he was crucified by us, because of us, for us. For us.

"Hooraay for Jesus" given March 25

I remember the Palm Sunday Service that impressed me far more than any other Palm Sunday Service I was ever privileged to be part of or see. It was March 24th 1974, my last year in Seminary. Donna couldn't come with me to Church that day because our daughter Gwyneth had been born three days earlier, and the two of them were still at home recuperating.

The Service took place at Parish of the Holy Covenant, a tiny United Methodist Church on the old Chicago Northern District. We had not been attending for very long, and hadn’t yet gotten to know any of the parishioners. All in all, it would have been very easy to have stayed home, and slept in with my wife and new baby on that dreary, drizzly Sunday morning. In point of fact, there was no really good reason for me to climb out of the sack that day and walk six or seven soggy blocks to church. But I did. I guess I was just supposed to be there.

In any case, I made it out of our apartment in the married student's housing, and to Holy Covenant in time for church. I'm not sure that I was aware that it actually was Palm Sunday until I walked in the front door.

The entire floor of the Sanctuary had been cleared of pews, chairs, everything. A group of people were standing around someone who was showing them how to fold and tear a newspaper in order to make a paper palm branch. Other folks were busily engaged in making signs with poster board and magic markers. The signs read things like "Welcome Jesus!", "I like Jesus!" and "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!" etc.

Well, I quickly entered into the spirit of the morning and was soon busily magic marker-ing a sign of my own. While we worked, some other people were draping the Sanctuary with crepe paper bunting, while some others blew up balloons, or cut up scrap paper for confetti. There was a coffee maker on a side table, and we would help ourselves for coffee, sweet rolls and fellowship while we worked.

Near the end of the hour, we gathered in two lines, along both sides of what was normally the center aisle. Then, without anybody starting us off, we began to cheer. "Hooray for Jesus!", "Three Cheers for Jesus!". For about ten minutes we stood there, cheering and waving our signs, throwing confetti, laughing and singing, as we greeted an invisible Messiah, riding an unseen donkey down an imaginary side street of old Jerusalem.

I returned to our apartment excited and elated. I tried to describe the worship experience to Donna. I don't think I succeeded. Like a good wife however, she was supportive. She said something along the lines of "O Wow, it sounds neat. I wish I could have been there." (We both said "O Wow" a lot in those days.)

I've since tried to describe that Sunday morning to other people. But I suspect I've never succeeded in relating the essence of the experience. Most people, when they hear the story, react with polite expressions that in effect say, "How schlocky!"

What I so often have tried and failed to convey with that story is that on that morning, in joy and gladness, the triumph of Palm Sunday was captured in a tiny mission church on the North side of Chicago. In a symbolic-- and yet very real sense-- Jesus was there. The Messiah rode His donkey down our side street of Jerusalem. The hope that is at the very heart of Palm Sunday, will always, for me, be captured by that morning. Because you, see, I was there when He rode into town.

But today is the Sunday of the Passion as well. When you and I were kids, Palm and Passion Sundays were observed on different days. Now they're on the same Sunday. And that's very appropriate. We enter this holiest week of our faith not only celebrating His triumphant entry, but also His suffering and death for the sake of all of us. We know that in our own lives, tragedy can unexpectedly break in on our happiness. So too, did Jesus within that last fateful week of His earthly life, encounter the full gamut of human emotions crashing down upon Him.

Triumph on Palm Sunday.

Anger during the Cleansing of the Temple.

Deep humility during the washing of His disciples feet.

Fellowship and intense spiritual power at the Last Supper.

Fear and Disappointment with His followers in the Garden.

Resignation and surrender to the Will of God.

The bitter taste of Betrayal at the hands of Judas.

The Humiliation of trial and ridicule.

Torture by the Roman soldiers,

And the ultimate physical and spiritual agony on the Cross.

Maybe you recall a line from a song by the late John Denver. "Some days are diamonds, some days are stones." We've all had our stone days and our diamond days. We’ve all had days in our lives when "nothing seems to go right." Other times we might say, "it's been a good day."

Those of course are only expressions. Most days have their good and their bad moments. Most days have both triumphs and defeats in the face of our personal on-going battle with the vicissitudes of our everyday existence.

If nothing else then, Palm/Passion Sunday and Holy Week ought to forcibly remind us of the sheer humanity of our Lord. They ought to allow us to see Jesus as more than just a teacher of ethics who lived a long time ago-- much less a plastic statue on somebody else's dashboard. Holy Week can-- if we let it-- free us to see Jesus as more than a portrait in a gilded frame with a halo painted behind his head.

On Palm/Passion Sunday and during Holy Week, I am reminded of Dorothy Sayers' comment that for whatever reason, God chose to play the game of human life by the rules, and God chose to play fair. In Jesus of Nazareth, our God came among us and led a life like our own lives, God, in Jesus, endured the same temptations and joys and pains as we, won the same sort of everyday victories and knew the same kind of frustrations and defeats that you and I know.

Like us, Jesus knew what it feels like to be at the top of the world. Like us, Jesus knew what it is to weep, to be down in the dumps. In Jesus the Christ, God our Creator lived out the full range of human experience and emotion-- happiness and grief, joy and pain, hope and hostility.

But somehow, in some ways that we cannot really fully understand or explain, Jesus was more than us. He came from God, and walked with God, and was God. Yet, He had the same kind of body, the same kind of mind, the same kind of spirit and you and I. He knew the same grind of everyday survival in this same old tired world that you and I live in and know. He had essentially the same raw materials for living, the same human limitations and possibilities that we do.

And yet, out of them, came this extraordinary life. It was a life lived solely for the sake of others and in praise of Almighty. It was a life lived in constant day-to-day Communion with our Maker. Faced with the same temptations and joys as we-- living with the same pains and pleasures as we-- this man Jesus never-the-less-- through the power of God-- forged a life to echo down the ages.

It was in point of fact, the most extraordinary and influential life ever lived by any human being in all of history. His life and teachings have placed an indelible stamp on life in this world for two millennia (more or less). Today. the faith built around following Jesus-- our faith-- is the largest of the world’s religions. Two billion people on this planet call themselves Christians.

He was born into grinding poverty, He spent his first months of life on the run as a political refugee. After that, He never traveled 100 miles away from His home village. He ministered for only about three years. He was executed as a common criminal. He died in agony, abandoned by his friends, hanging naked on a tree between two thieves.

Yet His was a life that has come to symbolize victory. For in His life and teachings and wonders and ultimate sacrifice, Jesus won for us the ultimate victory over sin and death. Jesus won a victory to set all people free, over all that would enslave, all that would lessen, all that would bind and restrict us.

Let us then, each in his or her own way, strive to remember Him in this coming week. Remember Jesus in the good and bad the joyful and painful moments of your own life this week. Remember Jesus in each of the situations that He faced during that fateful last week of His life as a human being.

Remember how very much like us He was. And yet how special, how holy, how very unlike us, how terribly and completely unique and tremendous He was-- Messiah and Shepherd, Anointed one and Crucified one, Son of David and Son of Humanity, wandering rabbi and Savior, human being and Son of God.

"New Lives" given March 18

Probably the most frustrating, rewarding, and challenging thing that each and every one of us experiences is our life-long effort to become a better person, to grow emotionally and spiritually, to mature into a real, live, fully-integrated Christian, human being. This becomes especially tough when the necessity arises to literally change our self --our habits, our attitudes, our fears, our hang-ups, our relationships, our emotions, our obsessions, our addictions, even our spirituality.

We may want to change. We may need, desperately to change. We may declare to all and sundry that we want to change. We may even pray for God to change us. But actually doing it is another matter

But do you what’s even harder? Trying to get someone else to change. You can tell people they ought to change. You can encourage them in their desire for change. You can beg, threaten, cajole, cry-- but your chances are usually going to end up pretty slim.

How many times have you seen a friend who was going down some path that you clearly knew to be the wrong one? You pick a time and in conversation, you say to him or her, "Why don't you consider doing this or trying that, instead?"

Those kind of conversations often end in great frustration. You can clearly see that your friend ought to be changing direction in his life. He or she may see it too. But knowing what to do is quite different from actually doing it. As Paul says in the Book of Romans,

"I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it" (Rom 7:15 & 18). Paul speaks for us all.

Your friends may say that they want to change and may be able to see clearly and consciously the path that should be taken. But then, there the matter of the heart. It‘s very difficult to go against the fears and hopes of our own heart. It's pointless for you or me to urge someone to be courageous whose heart is timid. You’re wasting your breath when you urge assertiveness from someone whose heart is self-effacing.

Such moments, says C. S. Lewis, give us just a glimpse of what God must feel like with us on many occasions. God has given us a rich world in which to live, endowed each of us with great intelligence, and even conscience to indicate to us how life ought to be lived.

We have the Divine gift of freedom. But with that freedom comes the risk that we may not live the sort of lives that God wants for us. We are free to become saints or sinners. The goal of our human freedom is salvation-- freely chosen. The price of our human freedom is sin-- as well as human suffering.

This has been a traditional explanation for why things are so out of kilter in our lives. We keep choosing the wrong, doing the wrong, even when we may consciously know better. Freud called it the “universal neurosis of mankind”, Jung called it our “shadow“. Christians call it “sin”.

Back in the dark ages-- before I went into pastoral ministry-- I worked on staff at a neighborhood Community Center. Community Centers, by their very nature, have a lot of social workers around. One day-- the Director's secretary came to work with a black eye. One of the things that a woman in this world simply cannot do is walk into a workplace full of social workers with a black eye and say "Oh, I just ran into a door."

Before the morning was half over, she and her children had been swooped out of her house and into a women's shelter. The next day, she left the shelter and moved back in with her husband. When she came to work the day after that, her boss fired her. The day after that, she and her abusive husband and her kids had disappeared. And the day after that, it was discovered that she had embezzled at least $ 5000 over the previous several months from the Center. She was a co-signer, so she’d cut herself two paychecks at a time and shove a thick pile of checks under her boss's nose when he was particularly busy.

She didn't want out of that relationship. She didn't want to change. Why? She thought that her abusive husband, who by the way was a much smaller person than she was, hit her because he loved her so deeply, so passionately, that he simply couldn't control his jealousy. In short, she was convinced that his abuse was an act of love.

The first time you hear something like that, it seems to be nothing but a horrible justification for terrible behavior. And yet, if you talk to abused women, you’ll hear that claim again, and again, and again. And I’m afraid there may well be a certain sad, twisted version of reality behind that sad point of view.

I suspect abuse often does stem out of some sort of warped misconception of the true nature of love. Such destructive, jealous, possessiveness can arise because the abuser really does love-- love in the same way I love my German Shepherd, or you might love your Corvette. The problem is of course, that people aren’t dogs, or cars, or property-- that we’re not free to treat them that way.

I've remembered that episode over the years. It taught me some valuable life lessons. It taught me to never be a signer on checks where I work. It taught me to always read what you sign. It taught me that when we regard other people as objects-- even prized objects-- we end up treating them like objects-- rather than as other human beings-- as sisters and brothers. It taught me that you can't change people who don't want to change.

Little wonder that, after one, two, three or even more unsuccessful attempts to help someone change, you and I will finally just give up. We begin to avoid the person. We say to ourselves, "Well, she is beyond help. He’s made his choices. I have done all I can."

And that’s where our Maker differs from us. Our God keeps on working on us-- loving us. Our God does not let us go, simply because we are not yet the creatures we were intended to be. The Creator does not merely offer us good advice, or give us a set of laws we ought to obey. But usually, we flat out can't. Our God will not abandon us when in our brokenness and frailties we offend, or shun us when we fall .

No, our Maker lifts us up from the ground. Jesus comes and stands beside us, with us. The Spirit might comfort or confront us, intervene with us, maybe even use circumstances to ambush us, and other people to set us up for change. But the one thing that our God will never do is give up on us.

The Bible is as one long record of God's indomitable determination not to give up on us. Time and again, God came to us, through the patriarchs and matriarchs, the law given to Moses, through the prophets-- calling us, promising us, forgiving us, loving us.

Time and again, our God has made covenant with us

--a rainbow covenant shown to Noah,

--a sacrificial covenant illumined in the stars to Abraham

and later confirmed with Isaac, and Jacob.

--a covenant of law carved on stone

given to Moses and Israel on Mt. Sinai.

Time and again we turned away, disappointed God, broke God's heart. Still, God kept returning to us. God refused to be stumped by our sin, our constant turning toward the wrong. God kept forgiving us.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke of a new day when God would write a covenant, God's law, God's relationship with humanity, not written on tablets of stone, but a day when those covenants would be written on our hearts. That's the great dream --written on our hearts-- written into the very core of our being.

How strange we are. We can know what is right. We can will what is right, and we can decide what to do about it. Then the old, all-too-human heart takes over, and we can no longer do what is right. Until you and I actually do something about our hearts, with their continual tilt toward the wrong, there is no real possibility of change.

Until you and I realize that, we’ll never change. We’ll keep making the same mistakes, covering the same tired ground, reliving the same old failures and disasters, over and over again. You and I must be willing to acknowledge our inability to truly change on our own. Jesus points to this when he reminds us that like a grain of wheat-- we must die to live-- we must be willing to give up our lives in order to gain them.

Freud said that our personalities resemble icebergs. We can see just the tip, rising out of the water, but 90 percent of the iceberg is submerged. Jung compared our consciousness to a cork floating on the ocean.

So it is with us. What you can see of us-- what we can see of ourselves, verbalize about ourselves, and rationally think through--- is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of us is submerged, far below the level of conscious thinking-- the place where all our memories, all our deepest fears and hopes, all the things about ourselves we don’t generally show to others, all the things about ourselves we aren’t even necessarily aware of, dwell. And it is only in that inner realm of heart and deepest spirit where real growth and change can really occur.

If we truly wish to change, you and I must be willing to venture into the deepest corners of our in-most hearts and spirits and deal with who we meet there. Through prayer and devotions, through meditation and honest self-examination, through mutual sharing with trusted others, we can come to know ourselves.

We can come to acknowledge and eventually accept our truest selves-- our hopes, our losses, our failures, our victories, our dreams-- not just the tip, but the iceberg itself. We can confess who we have been-- own up to who we are-- celebrate who Christ calls us to be. And then, we can lose our lives in order to gain them.

If we truly wish to change and enter into that new covenant, You and I must then be willing to take all that we find there in our heart of hearts-- all that we are-- our lives, our minds, our spirits, our wills on the altar-- and freely give them over to the One who made us and loves us unconditionally.

C. S. Lewis was right on the mark when he wrote in Mere Christianity:

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, "If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing." I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.

And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow- creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means..... eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

Now, new---genuinely new life really is possible for us -even for people like us - who find it so terribly difficult to change, to start over, to begin again, to be born new people. Our Lord Jesus beckons, invites us to come to his Table with our old lives in our hands-- freely offering them up to him in service and love.

As His servants, we will find here renewal and healing, strength for living, and hope for our spirits. As His disciples, we will find here purpose and meaning and direction. As His followers, you and I will find here the end of our old lives built around sin and self-- you and I will find here New Life.