St Andrew's Presbyterian Church – Duncan, BC

The husband was more than angry. A tell-tale vein on his forehead was visibly throbbing with frustration. “You weren’t listening to me,” he blustered towards his wife. “I just told you of my needs, and how dare you say No to my requests. Why won’t you listen to me?”

The exchange was difficult on a number of levels. It is always sad to observe a couple struggling in their relationship, but perhaps especially when the conflict represents not so much an inability but an unwillingness to hear one another. Sadly, in this case, the one who really was not listening was the husband. His problem was in fact two-fold. First, he was unwilling to accept his wife’s quite appropriate boundaries which she was trying to maintain for herself. But secondly and just as challenging was his inability to understand that his wife’s refusal to submit to his selfish demands did not mean she was not listening to him. She could hardly ignore his broken-record behavior and loudly bellowed demands for her subservience to his expectations. Rather, his guilt-insinuating complaint to his wife that she “wasn’t listening” to him really translated, “You won’t let me have my way.”

I find it curious how much more prevalent is this type of accusation in our age of entitlement. Of course, part of the very nature of sin is that it loves to hide behind the accusation of blame towards some other – the tendency goes back to the Garden where Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent for their trespass. Still, the unwillingness to accept the appropriately given “No” of either another person or of the community seems to be epidemic in our day. Perhaps it is because it is so relatively easy to demean the character and integrity of others without fear of reprisal. Or perhaps it is because it is so easy to rally enough other grumpy, disaffected people around one’s complaint as to foster the illusion of being justified in one’s behavior. I love the old story of the man rescued after years of being marooned on a tropical island. The man was explaining to his rescuers why there were three little thatched huts on the island. One, he noted, was his home, and one was his church. When asked about the third, the marooned man scoffed derisively and said, “Oh, that’s where I used to go to church.”

When I was the ripe old age of twenty, I ran for political office and bottomed out at the polls. While busy complaining that the public had not listened to my arguments for change, an older and much wiser friend suggested that perhaps the community had in fact listened quite carefully to me and then with much sounder insight, simply said “No” to my platform.

If the others “aren’t listening to me,” if we don’t get our way and if the universe is not unfolding in a way to suit us, how quickly we decide it’s permissible to pack up and leave marriage, work, organization or community, rather than look at ourselves and consider whether we might be the one who needs deep surgery and redemption in our attitudes, behaviors and most of all, in our soul. But of course, it is so much more comforting to believe that everyone else is to blame.

I was reading an article in the most recent Maclean’s magazine in which writer Michael Friscolanti details the Shafia honour killing trial that has just concluded in Kingston, Ontario. I was heartened by the author’s assertion that the justice system had been scrupulous in its effort to assure fairness towards the accused in what I suspect most Canadians would adjudge to be a grisly, tragic and incomprehensibly evil act.

Fairness towards someone facing trial is something that most people would long to know had occurred, no matter how obviously guilty a person might be. Fairness or just process is an essential right to be protected because who knows that someday it might be that just fair process that works for our own safeguard. A bulwark of a democratic society is, after all, that a person has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, beyond all reasonable doubt.

It’s too bad we didn’t practice that principle in ordinary relationships. Too often I’ve seen people’s reputations demeaned, slandered and ruined by a three-fold character assassination. First comes the mean-spirited attack that can be based either upon a downright lie or else upon a portion of the truth but which has been so callously twisted and deliberately distorted that it is only a shadow of the original facts. The second level of assassination occurs when too many other folk give thoughtless acceptance to the attack, never bothering to check whether there is any credibility to the charges by speaking to the person involved or to anyone other than the complainants. Then, thirdly, the assassination continues as folk jump on the proverbial bandwagon fanning the wildfires of outrage through conscienceless gossip.

I’m not sure what perverse part of our sinful, fallen hearts it is that just loves to think, believe and repeat the worst about others. We seem inordinately eager to dehumanize and demonize. It is as if we believe that if we can make somebody else out to be some sort of terrible monster or evil-hearted scumbag, then we don’t have to deal with the ugliness of our own souls and the monstrosity of sin in our own lives.

Mark McMinn, in his book Why Sin Matters, noted that sociologists have repeatedly documented our tendency to over-inflate our self-perception, whether in terms of intelligence, ability or morality. We want to think more highly of ourselves than is reality, so one sure-fire way to prove it to ourselves is to focus the spotlight of condemnation on someone else. Always the perceptive judge of human nature, Jesus pointed to our terrible blindness and arrogance in the story of the Pharisee and tax collector at the temple. The sinner who knew he was all that and more dared not enter the holy ground of the temple but stood outside, begging God’s mercy. The sinner who refused to admit that he was blustered into the temple, advising God how fortunate He was to have him, the Pharisee, on His side. Only one of these two, Jesus said, went home at peace with God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. (Luke 18:14)

I wonder how many marriages might have been preserved and renewed had the partners spent less time condemning each other for their supposed faults and instead gave serious attention to acknowledging and repenting from their own dysfunctions, selfishness and pride. I wonder how many fine public servants our nation has lost because they finally got tired of being a punching bag for insult and contempt by every self-appointed critic, all too many of whom know virtually nothing of the sacrifice required in public office nor understand the complexity of leadership in our day. I wonder how many friendships have been ruined because tongues got too quickly busy wagging abuse, rumor and spite and then, when challenged in their behavior, stubbornly refused to admit wrong and ask forgiveness.

Justice was certainly on the mind of Jesus when he warned that we ought not to judge lest we be judged, for in the same way we judge others, will we be judged, and with the measure we use, it will be measured to us. (Matthew 7:1-2) Jesus also said “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37)

To whom might we owe some justice for a change?

Whichever English version you might consult, the translation of Joel 2:28 is essentially the same. When God pours out his Spirit on his people, the gift is to everyone. Young and old, sons and daughters – there is no difference. All receive an empowering from the Lord as part of God’s great redemptive grace, and the purpose is for seeing the future God intends for his people. The empowering is so that absolutely everyone would share in the dreaming of how his people would be part of that glorious new creation. The gifting of the Spirit is so that all would not just have dreams of God’s kingdom fulfilled, but have visions of their part in it.

Has God given you a dream lately? I don’t mean a simple dream during your REM sleep pattern, one that you may or may not remember when you come fully awake. No, I mean the holy dreams by which the Lord wants to summon you and me and us together as the church, as surely as he called the saints before us, from Abraham to Mary to Paul to those great men and women of faith who have inspired and taught us to love and trust the Lord with all our heart. God still calls, and I believe, calls us, to embrace a great purpose, to step forward for holy daring and to believe with bold faith that He would use us for mighty blessing to someone in our world.

Has God given you a fresh vision of the majesty and beauty of his love for you and his love for this world? Again, I don’t mean just some nostalgic remembering of how things used to be or fanciful wish of what would life would look like if it revolved around our prejudices, fears or comfort zones. No, I mean a Spirit-breathed vision of living so extravagantly within God’s freedom and joy and living so passionately with his loving kindness and goodness towards this world that miracles could and would happen.

I long and pray for us that, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in my life, and in yours, we would once again dream the dreams and see the visions of God’s grace exploding in our world as it did when the Spirit blew in upon those first apostles in their holy, frightened huddle in a barricaded upper room and blew them out into the world proclaiming the gospel with might and power and fervency. Thousands believed in Christ and were baptized. And the world would never be the same again.

Dreams and visions and prophetic words have not dried up nor has the Spirit of God ceased  to haunt Christ’s church looking to propel us with gospel on our lips and grace in our hearts to a world longing for hope. What’s the holy dream God is laying on your heart? What is the vision of promise and purpose with which He would challenge you? Scripture promises that not one of us will be overlooked with the gifting. Who’s ready for a dream and ready to dare and pray and serve and celebrate it into reality?

Sometimes in trying to send one message, we inadvertently convey another and different message, often one which we really did not intend. The church billboard read: “Church Parking Only! Trespassers will be baptized.”

The sentiment was meant to spark a chuckle as well as get the message across to those who might otherwise have been tempted to park their car on the church premises and leave for shopping, movies or whatever else their focus might be, other than attendance at worship. Yet I wonder how many folk might have read that billboard and understood something altogether un-funny. I wonder how many read “Community/Strangers/Non-Members Not Welcome.” I wonder how many folk who have no Christian memory whatsoever were utterly confused because they weren’t really sure what baptism means, and worried that some sort of   religious S.W.A.T. team was going to swoop down on them the minute they stepped from their car and haul them away to God-knows what sort of inquisition or unwanted initiation. Which led me to ponder what other unhappy messages are being inadvertently communicated to the non-church-going by our signs and our buildings, our advertising and our behaviors. (These reflections, by the way, are prompted not only by the above-mentioned church sign but by looking around at our own property here at St. Andrew’s.)

I question, for instance, how differently our buildings are perceived by people who have had no connection whatever in their lives with the religious institution of the church compared to those well accustomed to visiting, attending and participating actively in a congregation. Is the church building communicating a message that says “Open for Business” or “Closed Except for Club Meetings?” Does our building have attractive display windows, inviting glass doors and large foyer areas where a person can enter, get their bearings and perhaps get a sense of comfort, or does our building seem more like a fortress, sterile bureaucratic maze or, if nothing else, a private establishment where it is immediately more than evident that the person definitely does not belong? Does our facility, through our signage, décor and space declare “This is a Place of Hospitality and Welcome – Come Hang out and Look Around and Make Yourself at Home” or does it say “Outsiders Under Suspicion?”

One of the realities of our age is that the church so allowed itself to be edged out of a central place in society that to a large proportion of our community we have really become not only irrelevant but simply foreign. The church, in our secularized Pacific Coast culture, must become once again as much a front-line mission station as were the missionaries in prior centuries to lands that had never heard the gospel message. And not unlike those earlier missionaries, there are several first tasks for us as the church wanting to make an impact.

The first and perhaps single most important task is to choose to love the folk around us simply for who they are – children of God. Too often, I am afraid, we really go about the work of mission from a standpoint of wanting to make them become just like us, and if they do so successfully enough, then we deem them worthy of respect and love. Somehow, I never sense Jesus offering conditional grace to leper or tax collector, prostitute or cripple. Rather, he met and loved them just as they were, and then reached out with healing, life-transforming grace because he saw them as beloved. The privilege of sharing the gospel of grace is only afforded us when first we have demonstrated the grace of the gospel in ways of humble, respectful compassion. The adage remains true: the world does not care how much we know until it knows how much we care.

A second task is to learn the language and culture of the world around us so we can communicate effectively the good news message we have to share. The world of Christendom is long passé, and with it the ability to presume that the world around us essentially knows and understands Christian faith. Minimally two and more like three generations abound in which there is essentially no Christian memory whatever. That is, there are three generations of people who have never been inside a church, read a Bible or heard it spoken aloud and who have no frame of reference for the language of faith. A similar experience would be of the person who knows nothing about computers listening to a couple of computer techies talking about all the specs, capabilities and program functions of various machines. The language and jargon we often use within the church is utterly alien to someone who has never had any connection with the faith. So if we want to speak of those elements of faith that alone can give hope in a human life, and want to communicate truths of deep spiritual meaning, we are going to need to learn to do so in terms and ways that ordinary folk can understand. If we do not, we are again putting up walls and barricades against the world, and then blaming the world for lack of interest.

More and more I believe the world hungers for hope. More and more I believe people in our community are desperate for grace. More and more, I see men and women desiring to be embraced by a community that truly cares, extravagantly forgives and prodigally loves. More and more I am convinced that the world around us is ready to be loved into the Kingdom. But what are our signs, and what are we, really saying?

It’s been said that one of the reasons Christianity seems so impossible a faith to embrace is that grace simply confounds us. That is, the stumbling block for so many is not the wild assertion that God came to earth in the flesh and blood humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. Nor is the major stumbling block the declaration that that same human being, Jesus, found little welcome on this earth most notably from the very people and leaders who had steadfastly prayed for God to show up. No, in terms of stumbling blocks for people, I don’t believe that either the belief that God’s son was crucified for his troubles nor even the idea that he rose from the dead is the biggest obstacle. Rather, I have found time and again the biggest difficulty for so many is simply believing that grace could be that good, kind and real.

Philip Yancey, in his lovely book What’s So Amazing About Grace? suggested that there is not only a deep yearning in the heart of the world for grace, but a sort of inherent understanding of what grace is. However it might be described, there seems to be this longing for a holy kindness that would dare to reach out to us and help us despite all our unloveliness and failure and lack of deserving.

Yet, the invitation to hope in and receive that grace provided in Jesus is so often met with incredulity and resistance rather than wonder and joy. Our refusal to accept grace seems to flow from an unwillingness to see grace for what it is – an absolutely free, desperately needed and entirely undeserved gift. Sadly, some of the greatest resistance to grace comes from folk who have been in the church for years. What is perhaps more tragic is that the disbelief seems to flow from an unwillingness to let go of guilt and shame. It is as if we believe grace can only be merited if we experience a sufficient degree of humiliation and self-loathing. Which suggests that because we don’t believe we are worthy of grace, then how could God ever choose to see us as worthy of grace, and therefore go beyond everything that might be considered just and reasonable (at least by human standards) and offer through his son’s death a grace that is absolutely undeserved? Yet it is precisely that undeserved and unmerited grace which we so need – a grace which we will never be able to live up to or pay back or adequately honour no matter how bad we may feel about our sin and failure in the past or how good, grateful and holy a life we may henceforth lead. We are and always will be debtors to that majestic and mysterious grace of God who chooses to see us, through Christ, as worthy of the most incredible sacrifice and love.

That is not to say that we need not deal with the reality of our sins. Mark McMinn in a wonderful book, Why Sin Matters, argues that if we do not have a healthy understanding of sin and our sinfulness, we will never have an adequate grasp of the marvel of grace. Yet at the same time, an inadequate view of grace will always stunt our ability to comprehend the otherwise desperate situation in which we stand because of sin – a situation from which we can be rescued only by grace. Sin and grace, McMinn says, are part of the same story and if we leave out either part, we end up with a shallow, life-draining theology.

Why grace is so amazing is that it is the only real answer to sin, and only in the light of grace can we fully comprehend how terrible a problem sin is and how desperately we need to be set free from our sin – and in truth have been by the power of Christ. Old John Newton grasped that reality so powerfully when he penned those wonderful lyrics:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound  That saved a wretch like me.                                 I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see.                                     Twas grace that taught my heart to fear And grace my fears relieved.                     How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed.

Grace ought never cease to be utterly amazing for us because there is no moment this side of heaven when we do not stand in complete and absolute need of that grace. Wretches we never cease to be on our own. Blind and lost are we save we rest in the good news that Christ has found us, is healing us, is freeing us from our fears and sins and hopelessness, to live in the promise and hope of grace that is bigger than our sins past, present and yet to come.

Someone once wrote that grace not only saves us from our sins – grace frees us from the Enemy’s desire to keep us forever trapped in a crippling shame. Grace frees us to move from the necessary “I’m sorry” to the far more essential “I’m redeemed! I’m forgiven! I’m set free by the mercies of the Lord! Thanks and praise to God and to the Lamb and to the Holy Spirit! Hallelujah! Amen!”

Jesus told his disciples that they ought to love their enemies, do good to those who hated them, bless those who cursed them and pray for those who mistreated them (Luke 6:27-28). St. Paul echoed that command in his admonition to the church in Rome to bless those who persecuted them; bless and do not curse (Romans 12:14). While I know those words to be wise, true and healing, why is it that my wounded heart would far more happily echo the longing of the Psalmist (58:8) that my enemies should vanish “like a slug melting away as it moves along?”

“Why is forgiveness so hard?” the man asked. “I know I need to forgive if I am to have any peace in my life. I know that as long as I harbor all this bitterness and resentment, it is my soul that is left all twisted, aching and poisoned. Why can’t I just make a once-for-all decision to forgive and have the pain go away? I try to forgive, and some days can actually feel as if I had. Then the next day comes and some trigger will bring all the hurt and anger back like a tidal wave. Why is it so bloody hard to forgive and forget?”

I expect any of us that have gone through hurtful experiences in which friendships have been shattered or relationships deeply strained understand all too well the difficulty of forgiveness. If we have suffered any degree of rejection or betrayal, of abuse or cruelty, especially from people whom we considered loved ones or friends, we know that the wounds pierce to the deepest part of our being. Just as a physical knife wound, for instance, might require extensive surgery, so too harsh emotional attacks may require deep spiritual surgery by the Lord in repairing our ability to trust, restoring our courage to love and renewing our capacity for compassion. As a physical wound often requires a long slow time of recovery, our souls need time to heal, regain resiliency, hope and laughter.

Forgiveness is critical if we are to be emotionally and spiritually well, but as with a physical wound, we can cause far more damage by trying to minimize or ignore the extent of our injury or rush our recovery. One wise writer suggested that forgiveness takes as long as forgiveness takes, and everyone’s journey of forgiveness is unique. Like the old saying about eating an elephant, one bite at a time, forgiveness is a journey taken one step at a time, in which, bit by bit, we carry handful, armful and heart-full loads of pain, anger and resentment to the Lord, lamenting what happened and seeking grace to forgive like we have been forgiven. Forgiveness must certainly be a determined work inasmuch as we will either be stoking the fire of our rage or feeding the flame of our compassion. One fire will consume and destroy us, and end up wounding others around us; the other will prove to the source of solace, warmth and mercy and will bring blessing to those around us.

Perhaps forgiveness is so difficult because ultimately it is the process of letting the Holy Spirit chisel away our brittle hardness and mold us more into the likeness of Christ whose last best words were of forgiveness and pardon. As with any meaningful character-building work, the prayerful struggle to become forgiving is the process of letting God past all our hurt-formed walls to the place where we dare allow him to change our hearts. And it is the process of letting go of our jealously guarded anger and pain and letting God grace us with his power and peace, by which we come not simply to the place of yielding forgiveness, but meaning it. It is the slow work of letting God heal and change us that will transform us into people who no longer desire to curse, but truly long to bless. And in forgiving and blessing, find our peace.

I had a graveside service today for a young man whose death makes no sense. Oh, I could offer the medical explanation, and note the rarity of genetic conditions, but at the end of the day, such explanations do nothing to touch the heartache of the family members gathered by a tomb in the ground beneath a grey sky and shivering in the cold rain. The medical answers might provide ample logical clarification, but the mourners at a graveside don’t really care about such matters. All their hearts know is that they have lost someone they loved, and their world will never be the same again.

Later this week, I will be conducting another memorial service, this time for a gentleman who lived a good full life. While I suspect that while his family may not be suffering the same acute sense of tragedy as the family whose son I buried today, still the heart’s sense of loss, sorrow and emptiness will be no less. One widower once commented to me that he knew he should be grateful for the more than fifty years he had had with his wife, but he wanted still more. She meant everything to him, and it felt like half his heart had been amputated. Every death comes before we are ready to release those who are precious to us, and every death confronts us with questions of why, and what now.

Certainly at the graveside today, I had no answer to give that would make sense to wounded hearts. This side of heaven, we naturally grapple with all the “unknowables” of why tragedies occur, but heaven rarely gives any meaningful, specific responses to the “whys.”  A couple of weeks ago, I had a funeral for another young man who died from a drug overdose after years of being clean. Again, all sorts of declarations could be made about the horrors of addiction and difficult battle to remain clean. Lots of comment could be given about the hurts and wounds of life that together with poor choices can lead to drug use and addiction, and that set a person up for that one disastrous slip. One could talk about the evils of the drug trade but again, at the end of the day, all the theories, blaming or explanations mean little in the face of the grief and loss and tears being wept by the folk left behind. We simply are never ready to release to death those we love.

Rarely is the challenge of ministry so sharp as at the time of a funeral, when so often the heart cries out its “whys?” when there are simply no answers to give. Because the challenge is not to try to answer the “why” question. The challenge is instead to shift to the “what now” question and point to those promises from scripture upon which alone we can rely in the midst of grief. The challenge is to point to Christ’s invitation to come unto him in our weariness and with our heavy-laden hearts (Matthew 11:28) and receive the rest, healing and grace he offers. The challenge is to remind broken hearts that they can take all their confusion, frustration and rage to God (consider the expressions of outright anger in the book of Job or in the psalms of lament), and the Lord not only patiently receives our most unholy venting, He lovingly and compassionately receives us. The challenge is to point us in our tears to the hope that God’s mercy is greater than our worst mistakes. His tenderness is far more vast than the abyss of our pain and His care for us is more powerful and lasting than even death itself.

Standing at a graveside, I am always acutely reminded that there are no good answers to give to why? But the gospel of God’s love given in Jesus is an answer that always has been and always will be more than sufficient for the question, what now?