Inescapable Mortality

Inescapable Mortality

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.   Jesus, Luke 12:34

Good or bad, I’ve not broached the passing of political regimes in my preaching. Ronald Reagan was president when I began to preach. The decades have provided plenty of fodder for personal input: wars, riots, financial and housing collapse – more than once…9/11… through it all, I’ve tried my best to stick to God’s Word and its guidance for our lives in every circumstance, regardless my personal opinions.

People close to me… friends and confidants, are aware, or at least suspect my political leanings, but, to my memory, I’ve not advocated for one political party or politician from the pulpit, ever. Mom taught us “when you’re called to preach, never stoop to be president.” I’ve tried to live by that – and Dad and Mom rarely kept their political positions private – at home or in the church.

I believe our faith should inform our decision making when we choose our political leaders. I also believe it’s the job of the church to serve the eternal in every age. God rules. It’s not the government’s job to monitor or enforce our faith, it’s the work of people of faith to share and shape the world around us with love. When we fail to live out our faith with love and compassion, we fail those in our sphere of influence and equally important, we fail God.

Last November, Debi and I filled out our ballots together, as we’ve done for decades. California’s propositions were more confusing than ever and it was often difficult to discern the proper way to cast our vote – even after reading, research and checking who endorsed what. It was a crazy ballot.

An old friend is very politically active, aware and we usually agree on many of her positions. Posting her endorsements, on the two of three propositions we were struggling with, we found the clarity we needed to cast with confidence on all but one proposition.

Unusually, we were in disagreement. I simply stated the obvious “We don’t always need to vote the same way.”

Looking me directly in the eyes, Debi said “I know this proposition is more money for an uncertain outcome but at the end of the day wouldn’t you rather know that you chose to take the route of compassion?”

Ouch. I voted with Debi and thanked God for her voice of reason in my life.

Watching billionaires make decisions to cut programs to “the least of these” continues to bring the story Jesus told about a man who had so much that he decided to build bigger barns… instead of sharing his wealth with the poor and those in need. Jesus closes the parable with

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” Jesus Luke 12:18,21

Many of us grew up in an era where people who went into public service; government jobs – local or federal – the military, police, firefighting, education, were never going to receive the same accolades or financial rewards of many other professions. Some, like educators, required years of college, others, provided training and money for additional education while on the job. Even still, not the prestige of other professions but the guarantee of knowing their communities would care for them with; insurance for their family, job security and a solid retirement package when the day came.

When we’re young, we rarely take all of that into account, as one generation passes to the next and it’s time to collect on one retirement and some begin to work on a second career – the wisdom of a solid choice in their youth begins to pan out with dividends they’ve served a life to receive.

This month I’ve heard elected officials demean those who serve the common good. People raised on other continents, with no understanding of our heritage or the development of the middle class, take an unceremonious chopping block to thousands of careers, dashing the hopes and dreams of people who gave to serve in our National Parks, halls of justice, countless government facilities, giving their lives, believing that we, as a nation, would have their backs through thick and thin, with something as simple as a government paycheck and the promise of benefits for their families, now, and in retirement.

I’ve wondered about their children. Kids who went to school and when other kids could say exactly what their Mom did for a living, they said: “I don’t know, she works for the government.” Years before they’d be wise enough to swell with pride over the service of a parent who didn’t know how to explain their work to a child.

Now their parents are out of work. Jobs often cut by coders, barely 18 years old, and nowhere near wise enough to begin to understand the depth of sacrifice, service, hope and promise the American Dream requires.

Another translation of the verses above simply has Jesus saying:
“tonight your soul will be required of you…”

It’s the inescapable lesson of mortality – tonight – or some time soon, the end will come. We “cast our vote” daily, with lives of compassion or with actions that only build us up – living for the simple hope of a future filled with “bigger barns.”

Jesus surrounded this parable addressing our concerns about today and tomorrow, telling us not to worry, that God knows our needs, God knows the hairs on our head and see’s the sparrow fall, how could he not know what we need? Even still we shun generosity, build bigger barns, as if we’re immortal.

We’re not immortal. Each of us will face our end with a life spent in compassion or one that labored to build and fill bigger barns.

Christians teach that the words one wants to hear from on high, the day they face their inescapable moment are “job well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into your reward.”

Sadly, Jesus teaches that too often we spend our hours, days, weeks, lives chasing the final epitaph of “Oh thou fool.”
Interestingly or tellingly, Luke 12 begins with Jesus lecturing the leaders of the faith community on their hypocrisy – saying one thing and doing another – reminding them that they weren’t fooling anyone, least of all God.

I realize that a number of the people making the decisions to cut jobs have no relationship to God – not because I know them – they profess to be something called “techno-atheist.” Faith in technology. No need for a god of any sort.

A simple preacher in a little spot on the planet like Riverside would carry no weight in their decision making, so I don’t write letters expressing my concerns. If I were preaching this Sunday, doubtful I’d bring it up from the pulpit, though the cuts and freeze will directly impact people in our fellowship as well as those we serve. I’ve been gifted with what Dad liked to call “the liberty of aging.” He was pretty certain that the older we got, it mattered little what we said because, so few people were going to take us seriously any longer!

I’ve been blessed to serve with some of the most generous people on the planet. People have kept the many works of Central Community active by much more than weekly tithes and offerings. People have given houses – entire houses – cars, vans, box trucks, forklifts, pickup trucks, boats, BIG boats, among our largest cash gifts ever came one evening in a simple text message from a friend – trusting us to put it to good use… absolutely incredible.

The witness of their generosity has reached hundreds of thousands with food on the table, a place to sleep at night for an abandoned child, jackets, backpacks and a warm meal for the homeless and so very much more. Thank you for living with generous spirits. God knows. God sees.

Our mortality may be inescapable but as long as we have today, the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy are great reminders for every one of us who believe – because almost all of us qualify as “wealthy,” in a world where hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, still struggle to simply survive.

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” 1 Timothy 6:17,19

Are you living less than a “life that is truly life?”

Jesus was bold enough to tell a story, that closed with the price of our inescapable mortality, because He knew The Father. Loving people, stretching out his arms in both condemnation and affirmation he extended an invitation to step away from the life of a fool, seeking only their own gain, and into the life of a loving servant, putting God first, living out their reward everyday as they shared with others as The Father shared with them.

Conflicted about how you should vote with your life? Choose love and compassion. It’s how you were created to live. It’s “the love of money” that’s pulled us away from a desire to surrender our lives in service and to honor those who do. While we draw breath, we can celebrate today.

Jesus began closing his message with these words:
But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” Jesus, Luke 12:31,32

I’d encourage you to read the entire chapter and evaluate your personal theology in light of how you’d like to be remembered, by others, and recognized by our Father in Heaven. Are you living accordingly? Does compliance to God’s Word with compassion come first in your life?

We live in a world seemingly divided by almost everything. One thing we can all agree on is our inescapable mortality. It’s going to happen. If not tonight, with each passing day, sooner than later. We can open our eyes, hearts (and pocketbooks), see the need and meet it or we can build bigger barns.

We choose. Whatever your choice is today

Don’t miss your miracle!

Those Who Grieve

This morning I prayed for “those who grieve.”

The loss of a friend or loved one to death, of innocence as senseless violence strikes yet another celebration, of a relationship, a future and a hope – suddenly changed, good health, aging… change, financial loss… we… all of us together, are “those who grieve.”

I have a friend who loves to focus on “the celebrations of life.” It always reminds me of Mom… who detested the transition from funerals to memorial services to “celebrations of life.”  “I expect you kids to be crying at my funeral!” she would tell me.

She got her wish and I think all of us got her heart.

Mom knew grieving. In her 20’s alone she lost her father to a heart attack, brother to WWII, not to mention the family home burned down during the great depression, a sister lost to scarlet fever, they took to picking fruit in California’s central valley for “vacation.”

Mom always said that her family “had it good” through the
depression and WWII.

I think she joined the community of “those who grieve” at a young age.

You may have joined that community without ever taking note: divorce, trauma of abuse, changed majors and changed the course of your hopes and dreams, an injury that never fully healed and that nagging sense that something had changed, was lost…

You were grieving.

Low energy, lack of enthusiasm for today, the constant process of “pushing through” a problem without taking time to assimilate what it is that’s consuming so much of you – in the background, like white noise – but there just the same…

You may be grieving.

It’s tough to get around as we age. Success as individuals often is in alignment with separation from our family. Career and personal goals take us to different parts of the country. Time constraints restrict closer relationships. Soon we’re entrenched in the life we’ve built – apart from the life, family and community that was and remains so essential to our personal history.

Then people begin to die.

Parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings and the physical number of those who remain is tiny in comparison to what once was… and we grieve. We’re mourning the loss of “our” shared story – that no longer exists.

“Our” family, friends, community are all going through the same process. We extend our hands, hearts and prayer but their losses become reminders of our losses – so we seek safe harbor – no longer going out as often, changing locations, disconnecting ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually – but we can’t separate – not completely – and so we grieve.

Grieving becomes our closest companion.

I’ve often wondered about the great cathedrals of the world and the generations of life and wealth that was expected of those who built them. Perhaps, as much as individuals and faith communities aspiring towards the heights in their relationship with God, these mighty edifices were physical manifestations that added value to lives, otherwise filled with grief.

Purpose through the everyday pain they didn’t know how to put a label on or find relief from and so they built.

Part of my “job performance” as a pastor is measured by how well I enter into grief with those who grieve. Scripture calls for us to “grieve with those who grieve” and if everyone you meet is in some form of grieving how do we ever “lift our eyes unto the hills?”

Eastern Europe, the Middle East, shootings in Kansas City… next week? Who knows where. Parts of the planet are open wounds that shed and spread grief like a firehose – as warfare takes the guilty and innocent alike. Every community in America lives on edge with very few people who’ve escaped the anguish of an armed and angry world ready to shoot into crowds.

It’s too easy to blame “mental health” when maybe what’s happening in our cities and around the world is the result of people grieving and unwilling or not ready to work through the difficulty of confronting “the human condition.”

We’re temporary.

We want to feel powerful and in control. Grief robs us of these longings and wakes us up to the harsh reality that control and power are even more slippery than life itself and so we grieve.

The Apostle Paul said that these bodies we live in are like tents, temporary, our Real Home is eternal and not here. Someday, the storms of life will simply take the tents away.

Powerful lesson for when the “tent” is gone but until then, we much prefer the comfort of our chair, the remote control, being in charge and certain that we can handle it.

Sound familiar? It’s called denial.

One doesn’t have to join the country club, church on the corner, eat at all the right places or even be a cub scout. Never join the team. Go your own way. You’re still grieving. Still a member of the one group that goes hand in hand with every breath we take – we grieve – not someday, over someone, we’re grieving now.

“Those who grieve.” This is our community.

All those “happy people,” living as if they’ve never been scarred? They’re grieving. They belong to you and you to them.

We’re the same. If there’s wisdom with age – it’s no different than the certainty of a calendar when you reach October… knowing that November and December are inescapably the final pages we’ll turn.

No amount of celebration, denial or even an open
embrace of the brevity of our tent pegs coming out from the ground – one by one – as we feel the canvas begin to flap in the coming storm can prevent the storm.

This is not our home but we’re so very comfortable here and so we grieve.

I prayed for you, no, I prayed for us this morning – we – those who grieve. I prayed for comfort, presence and healing and maybe I should have prayed for recognition of the wealth that resides in our grief.

This inescapable condition that we rail against is very possibly one aspect of humanity that could unite us – if we would take a moment to consider that so many actions in anger, chaos, retribution and violence are very often the complex outgrowth of grief we refuse to allow to be part and parcel of who we are in life.

Every major religion addresses grief in similar fashion. Few give us steps that seem relevant in a world where we measure success and happiness by how much power (money) and control (health) we have over our lives. The direction we receive often seems existential, impractical or farfetched: trust God, love each other, sacrifice, forgive, let it go… what’s the old saying? YBH? Yes. But How?

Jesus wept and so do we. Jesus mourned the weakness of His friends, as we often have. Jesus faced open betrayal – maybe that’s happened in one of your relationships as well – and He continued on and carried the heartbreak to the cross.

Grief is at the core of who we are. It rarely goes away. There are not enough blessings to undo every burden we carry and so instead of just “soldiering on,” perhaps, without feeling the need to tell everyone else that they’re only grieving, we should simply begin to love people for who they are, where they are and give thanks that we’re part of this same great family, the family of “those who
grieve.

It may not make your load lighter today, but imagine going through the grocery store and knowing – everyone in the store, at some level – knows just how you feel.

You’re not alone. You’re grieving. You belong.

This is who we are.

Those who grieve. I’m praying for us.