She Could Have Known

Reporter Inez Sainz, who calls herself the hottest reporter in Mexico, entered the Jets' locker room after a tense game against the Baltimore Ravens (which they lost.) She got "harassed" by the players, and Jets' owner Woody Johnson, has publically apologized. I don't condone unwelcome sexual advances of any kind, and the apology publically upholds that ideal of our culture. The men were out of line.

On the other hand, she said she wasn't too concerned about what happened…understandably. That kind of behavior in Mexico is quite common and not seen as offensive. Perhaps they have a better sense of the real vs. the ideal. Ideally players will act the gentleman and ignore the cleavage and the tight jeans. Reality, however, is often quite different. Football is driven by testosterone, in the males who play and in the males who watch. (The women's side of that story is another one altogether.) Pumped up like that, they go into their "cave" (the locker room) to nurse their wounds, and low and behold, into their space comes a female, an attractive one at that, wearing what our culture deems suggestive clothing. We men are culturally and physiologically wired to be the initiators. Granted, the substance of the initiative behavior was out of bounds, and is not OK, but it is certainly understandable given the circumstances.

If she doesn't want this to happen in the future (which is not at all clear at this point) perhaps she shouldn't combine testosterone with suggestion. After all, we men are rather hard-wired to be the initiators.

But it does launch the dialog about the ideal vs. the real. Ideally we are redeemed in Christ, fully forgiven and acceptable to a holy God. Reality, however, is that we continue to struggle against sin. We must be honest about both, and we must not confuse the two. And finally, we must recognize that our struggling is a grace given by God, and even our failings can work His will in the world. What that will might be in terms of Sainz and the Jets is yet to be seen, but perhaps it can help us not be so uptight about our own failings without losing sight of the goal.

To Keep a Promise

30 years ago Nancy (now) Brinker promised her sister the world. At a time when people thought breast cancer was contagious, her sister, Susan, died of it. On her death bed she asked Nancy to make it so her death was not meaningless, and Nancy promised to find a cure. She launched the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation with just $200 and a shoebox full of contacts. Now, 30 years later, her foundation has assets of 1.5 billion and is the largest non-profit non-governmental source of funding for breast cancer research. Due partly to research funded by the foundation, survival rates have risen to %98 in developed countries. The reality today speaks volumes about Susan's relationship with her sister, but it is most eloquent about Nancy. She is a woman of incredible vision and drive.

God saw the relationship between divinity and creation crack and crumble in an instant one day in a garden, and promised to redeem it. Over the millennia in countless ways God has been up to fulfilling the promise. Now, through Christ, the tension that seems so natural between being human and being divine is an unnecessary burden to bear, we can lay it down and be finally truly free, not that we become gods, but that we participate and harmonize with the divine in such a way that we begin to share divine characteristics and properties. The ancient doctors of the Christian faith called it "theosis," from "theo," the Greek word for God.

Nancy shares a bit of that theosis, in that she also dreamed big for the good of creation, and made it happen. Hats off to a powerful woman who shows us something of what God is like.

Like Water to a Fish

You've all seen it before. The little boy sits in his high chair glaring. He didn't want to play "airplane" with his peas. He threw chicken nuggets on the floor, he even turned his nose up at ice cream for dessert! And to all his nastiness his mother forces her frustration out of sight, and looks for another way to engage, another way to break through the barrier of tiredness and willfulness. All of a sudden his eyes begin to droop, and before you know it his head is headed for the mashed potatoes that still remain on the tray. A quick hand catches him, and soon he is nestling into mommy's warm shoulder on his way to bath and bed. All through the frustrating scene there is a constant. Mommy loves her little boy, and there's nothing in the world that can change that.

A mother's love is one image of God's love, but there are others in Scripture. In today's Gospel lesson. Jesus is criticized by the Jewish leaders for mixing with the wrong crowd. In response Jesus tells them the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. Which one gives greater joy in heaven, the righteous one or the sinner who repents? The righteous already knows the love of God, when the sinner comes to accept the love of God it is clear that it has always been there. You get the point now. The love of God is like water to a fish, like air to a bird, always there, always sustaining, always life-giving, and relentless in its desire to be known and to be in relationship.

So what difference does it make? Ask a fish or a bird! A fish will die without water, a bird is earth-bound without the air. You and I are nothing without the love of God, in it we can become everything we should be. More concretely, the Love God makes us free.

The love of God makes us to be OK. The love of God prods us to move.

The Love of God makes us free. The same little boy who had such a bad time at supper one day learned to walk. As he took his first steps his mother was right there ready to keep his head from colliding with the corner of the coffee table. He may or may not know it, but his mother's love is giving him the freedom to learn to walk. We are children of our heavenly Father. The love He has for us is the very love that created the world. As we learn to live as we were made to live His loving hands are right there around us. We can risk, make mistakes, even fall—God will always be there. The cave that you fear contains the treasure that you seek. The love of God gives us the courage to face the fear and find the treasure, which is relationship with Him, with one another, with ourselves, and with the earth.

The Love of God makes us to be OK. Thomas Harris, MD published a book in 1969 that became a New York Best Seller. I'm OK, You're OK, was a transactional analysis approach to human maturity. The late Bishop Donis Patterson of Dallas once rephrased the title. I'm not OK, you're not OK, but because of Christ, that's OK! He missed the point of the book, but he nailed redemption right on the money! Our creation is good, we start out OK. But sin corrupts us and then we're not OK. So God did something about it, something we couldn't do—He sent His Son to redeem us. Now in Christ, we're OK with God, and we can become OK with one another, with ourselves and with the earth.

The Love of God prods us to move. Movement is part of healthy human existence. Learning to walk, becoming OK…when you stop moving you're dead. The question is, where are we going? Things are not as they should be. We are ignorant of wisdom, we are short-sighted in action, and sometimes we're just out-of-sorts bad, like the little boy at the beginning of this sermon. Where we need to go is toward what God made us to be. His greatest glory is shown when we are who we should be, the greatest bliss is ours when we are as we should be. It's a win-win, who wouldn't want it? Sometimes God entices us. I had an administrator once who was a past master at facilitating my action. I told myself that when I grew up I wanted to be like him...God entices us into what is good for us. Sometimes God pushes us. In Ecuador once I ran across a pack train on a trail. One donkey wouldn't climb the muddy hill. One of the drivers took his tail, bent it in half, and squeezed. All of a sudden the donkey thought better of his stubbornness! But we can know this, whatever God prods us into is for His best glory and our greatest happiness. We can depend on that.

The love of God is everywhere, even in money. Your pledge tells the world that you are free to do with what is yours what you believe is consistent with who you are. At the very core of you is your relationship with God. You are not bound by the expectations of a consumeristic world. You are free to manage your finances in such a way that they reflect that inner truth of who you are. You are free to give.

Your pledge tells the world that in Christ you are OK. The world makes demands on your material possessions, but you are the owner of them, not the world. YOU are capable of choosing what you buy, not your television set. You can also choose to live on less than 110% of your income by trimming things that are really not necessary. You're OK, you can do that. You can even choose to tithe.

Your pledge pushes you to move. God has set a pattern for giving that is a picture of the heart's relationship with Him. 10% for God's peoples' needs, 90% for your own needs. If you are giving less than 10% then here's your push—see what you can do to move it toward that goal. I'll tell you now that Karisse and I give 10% and more, and we are not in need.

The love of God is the very foundation of our being. What is the area in which you feel bound? God wants you to know that if you just relax in His love you will be free. What is the area in which you do not feel OK? God's love for you holds you to be well worth the effort of loving. What is the area in which you need to move? God wants you to move, God will push you to move, because He loves you.

The God Gene

Scientists in Germany have isolated the ability of humans to be altruistic with one another as one of the primary differences between ourselves and the great apes. If this ability is the place where we are pre-programmed to seek the highest good possible, it makes us incorrigibly religious—homo orans, the praying man.

Genesis portrays us as the pinnacle of creation, not just last, but strategically balanced between creation and eternity—breath of God, clay of the earth. The King James misleads us moderns with the words, "fill the earth and subdue it." They reflect the last vestiges of a medieval understanding of society which was highly hierarchical, with God at the top and everything below serving the next step higher. A better rendering for today would be "fill the earth and manage it."

Here in we are called to offer creation precisely what it largely cannot offer itself—the call to serve the higher good. It falls to us to manage, to keep as to keep a garden, but not our own garden, though we are sustained by it, but the garden belonging to that higher good.

"Good", "God," one word is the shorter version of the other, as if the first is the particular, the latter is the general. That which is good by definition draws its goodness from God, and in that it partakes of godness, and so we call it good. The priest is the one who stands between the divine and the community of faith. Humanity stands as priest of creation. When we fail we are merely animals.

Of Monkeys and Men

Researchers in Germany are exploring the real difference between the great apes and humans. It's part of a particularly Western quest to establish the real meaning of what it means to be human. Other cultures around the world do not concern themselves with the question. After all, monkeys are part of the community in their own rite and in their own niche, and humans occupy another part of the community in our own right and in our own niche. But since the Reformation when the church's definition of human as having a soul found itself without scientific support, our increasingly empirical society has wondered what functional difference sets us apart from our closest relatives, the great apes.

Their findings are quite telling. It seems the difference lies in our ability to put ourselves in another's skin and see the world from the other's point of view. Empathy. The ability to relate to you and not merely use you or work out a mutually beneficial truce that lasts as long as my perceived benefit outweighs my perceived investment, the desire to cooperate even at my own expense, is clearly present in children from an early age, but absent in the great apes at any age.

So the missing link has been found. Depth psychologists like Jung talk about the concepts of the higher self vs. the lower or darker self. We acclaim the one who gives of him/herself without seeking reward, and call those who use others "inhuman." No matter how unjust the war, the self-sacrificing soldier is a hero. The difference between a politician and a statesman is the clear trust we place in a statesman to serve the larger good and not some hidden personal or local agenda. And Jesus said, "There is no greater love than when a man lays down his life for his friend."

Have these scientists discovered the place where we are genetically programmed to relate to the highest good possible? Could we call it the God gene?

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

The billionaire breaks up with his live-in girlfriend and won't grant his bastard children normal inheritance rights to his vast wealth. She takes it to court and finds out the truth…she wasn't his wife. Another moneyed couple breaks up and fights over who gets the L. A. Dodgers. She said he defrauded her into signing away rights to them, but now she wants him to ante up. No wonder the church didn't want to have anything to do with marriage until about the 8^th century! We thought it was about sex, but we were wrong. It's about money—inheritance money, who gets what.

The church calls it a sacrament, a means of grace. Where's the means of grace here? Certainly neither of the parties is being graceful! The ones who celebrate the sacrament of marriage are not the clergy, but the couple. Each promises to love the other until death parts them. It is intended (as per Ephesians 5) to be a model to the world about how God's love works. It seems to me that if these two couples had come to it from a Christian understanding the first woman would have had a ring on her finger and the second wouldn't care who owned the Dodgers. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't be breaking up in the first place!

An Old Warrior

The wallow was fresh, I could tell by the imprint of hog hair on the edges—but not so fresh that a raccoon hadn't come through afterwards to leave his little fingerprints like a child playing in the mud. It was a place where wallows were common, laying as it did on the uphill side of a cattle pond, and I had often checked the little swale of trees just beyond it. Once or twice I had surprised the hogs there and even less frequently I had taken home the bacon, so to speak.

Ranchers don't like feral hogs. They tear up pastureland and destroy fences, and a big angry boar can be dangerous. He can kill a dog and send a grown man to the hospital in a hurry. They have been known to kill and eat fawns, and nothing can kill them except the animal that first brought them to this continent—humans. I like feral hogs. I like to match my wits with them, and I like to eat the younger results of a successful hunt. From past experience I knew that after years of stewing in his own hormones an old boar may be edible, but he's not palatable unless you're really, really hungry.

This hunt had not yet been successful, but I'm a creature of habit, so more out of habit than anything I had checked the wallows. I scanned inside the trees. Thanks to the cows the underbrush was virtually non-existent, except for a ring around the edge. Since for the last three years all I had seen was bare earth littered with leaves, I took an almost cursory glance through the ring. My eyes riveted on a big black hulk sprawled under a small cedar. His legs lay extended to my left, his head was on the far end of him, and the most prominent part of him from my point of view were his sizable gonads. My hands began to tremble at the first rush of adrenaline. He wasn't 30 yards away, and apparently unaware of my presence.

I took my dark glasses off and slid up to a sapling. I leveled the 30.06 and squinted through the scope. No good. I could angle a shot under his front leg, through his neck and into his head, but it was dicey at best, and I passed. If only I could sneak around further to the left. At any moment I expected him to suddenly huff and blow out of there, leaving me trembling and double-guessing myself, but as far as I could see, he slumbered on.

5 tense minutes later I was 15 yards to the left. Another sapling presented a steadying rest, and I trained the crosshairs on his chin. I had a clear view of the underside of his jowls. The rifle spoke, and the great beast trembled as all animals do when they are head-shot. A red badge of death began to leak his life into the dirt that had been his bed from between the great jaws.

I approached, a little awed. An impressive upper tusk curled his lip into a snarl. A long, hooked snout would have daunted any ancient Sythian boar hunter. Wavy black-and brown bristles, caked with mud, gave him a royal look. His tight, hairy ears and straight tail told me his genetics came more from Sythia than the barnyard. From this close vantage point I knew better than to try to put him in my freezer. I wasn't that hungry!

I looked into his eye, but the black depths told me nothing at all. I tugged at his back leg. His final reflexes sent his legs into a kicking fit, as if to offer a token attempt at either fighting or fleeing. For an old boar hog it's one or the other—freezing like a rabbit is just not an option. I pressed his lower lip down to see how big his lower tusks were—and found instead a mostly-healed scar, I could only assume that only the root remained from some great fight. I lifted his head and checked the other side. That one was broken off in an ugly shard just at the jaw-line. The upper tusks lacked the flat side formed by the lower tusks rubbing against them, keeping them both razor sharp.

Then I stood back, more than just a little awed. Here was an old warrior, laying under his cedar at the end of life, like a knight after his final battle, standing in the mist with a broken sword and a rotting shield. But it wasn't like he was quite done. More out of curiosity than anything else I felt the top of his head between his ears. There was no corresponding badge there, at the other end of the bullet's path. The bone was solid. He had stopped 220 grains of hot lead at 20 paces.

I wondered how such a grand old one could lay there and let me send him to his eternal reward so easily. The thought hit me—perhaps he wasn't slumbering after all. Perhaps he knew his date with destiny, and accepted it with dignity. I thought about dragging him into the pasture to let the beasts of the field profit from his final remains, but I didn't. I couldn't dishonor him so. I left him where he chose to die.