Living By The Spirit - 11

11 - LOVE

Love is the basket into which all the other fruits may be gathered. Or it is like the preservative that keeps all the others fresh and usable in the ordinary person’s life. Without love, all the other eight would quickly rot away.

How many volumes have been written about this one word? It has been defined and illustrated in countless ways. "The Alpha and Omega of the Apostle’s thought.... This queen of graces .... prime fruit of the Holy Spirit ... minister of Faith ... ruling principle of Divine law, " gushed one Victorian Age scholar, Professor G.G. Findlay, of Headingly College, Leeds, England, in his 19th century commentary in The Expositor’s Bible Series (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891).

Although we have studied the fruits of the Spirit in reverse order, Paul placed love at the head of his list. Our task now is to discover what the Greek word he used (agapé) may mean for us in the context of the 21st century.

In many respects, this is a uniquely Christian word. As scholars have frequently told us, the Greeks had four words for love. Only two of these appear in the New Testament, but one predominates: agapé. The others refer to different kinds of love - family affection (storgé), brotherly love (philia), sexual attraction (eros).

The word agapé is found in many New Testament letters, especially those of John, and in the four gospels. The noun and the associated verb agapan appear more than three hundred times throughout the New Testament.

Yet the word did not appear in the Greek language until relatively late. It was never used in classical Greek, although the verb, agapan, was fairly common. Yet it was not unfamiliar to those Jews who could read Greek texts. It appeared only fourteen times in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures which appeared in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3rd century BCE. Two books from the pre-Christian era, Wisdom (3rd century BCE) and the Letter of Aristeas (1st century BCE), used it to convey what they meant by the love of God or the love of wisdom. Philo, the Greek-speaking Jew of Alexandria, an older contemporary of Jesus, also used it in his philosophical writings.

The Scottish scholar, William Barclay, wrote that agapé is not a sudden emotion that overtakes us, but something we deliberately achieve by an act of will. It requires a constant attitude of mind to be motivated to behave in this manner in all our relationships. That, of course, is impossible for any human being. Yet that is the very point that Paul makes in his letters again and again. It comes not by human effort but only through the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that motivated Jesus throughout his ministry.

Sinless or Fully Human?

The doctrine that Jesus was both human and divine prevents many people from accepting any suggestion that at any time in his whole life Jesus lacked the gift of the Spirit. In one of the later books of the New Testament, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes this point by saying that he was "tested as we are, yet without sin." Recently, some scholars have begun to question that, to the distress of more conservative Christians. Traditional doctrines often prevent us from seeing how Jesus might have developed his loving, compassionate personality so vividly portrayed in the four gospels.

One particular scholar, Bruce Chilton, of Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has written what he called "an intimate biography" of Jesus under the title of Rabbi Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 2000). Chilton goes so far as to suggest that Jesus was, in fact, regarded as an outcast in his home town of Nazareth because of his suspicious birth. The question asked by Jesus’ neighbours in Nazareth would have been, "Was he or was he not Joseph’s and Mary’s son?"

Chilton repeats what most biblical scholars have also said: Mary’s conception of Jesus by the action of the Holy Spirit is a late and rather limited New Testament idea. It only became prominent toward the end of the first century when the Christian fellowship was predominately gentile rather than Jewish. It appeared as a means to bridge the gap between Jewish and Greek concepts of sexuality and spirituality.

For Jews, spirit could only be expressed through the body. For the Greeks, spirit was totally separated from the body, especially sex. Matthew based his understanding of virgin birth on what many now see as a mistaken interpretation of Isaiah 7:14. That is a reference to the wife of King Ahaz bearing a child. The early church interpreted that as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus. Luke’s version of the virgin birth also had links to Old Testament prophecy, in particular the prophets’ concern for social justice and the hope for a messiah to deliver Israel from its enemies. This linkage is found most prominently in Mary’s response to the angelic message that she would bear a child, now known as The Magnificat (Luke 1:26-55).

No matter how he had been conceived, Jesus would have grown up in isolation as a member of the caste known as mamzer, a bastard in the earthy terms of the King James Version of Deuteronomy 23:2. According to Jewish law that was something akin to an untouchable in traditional Hindu custom. In Old Testament times the term was applicable to children born of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. The root of the Hebrew word mamzer is a verb that means "to alienate."

There is a tradition the that Joseph died while Jesus was still quite young. As a mamzer, he would not have been allowed to attend Joseph’s funeral. According to Chilton’s analysis, this would have had an enormous effect on his later development, contributing greatly to his sense of always being an outsider. It led him to become a disciple of John the Baptist. Under John’s guidance Jesus received a good deal of his training as a teacher. This formative process came to its crucial moment when he received the gift of the Spirit following immersion by John.

As a result of these early experiences during his so-called hidden years, Jesus felt real alienation and led a very lonely life. Love came to him as a gift from God, not as an innate part of his being. In the words of Luke 2:52, he underwent a normal developmental process in all aspects of his personality. He too experienced something of a conversion and learned to love in the way that became the core of his ministry in Galilee. Radical as this may appear on the surface, Chilton’s approach has much in keeping with what is known of Jewish life at the time. It makes Jesus a truly human being instead of a demi-god as some would have him be.

Another Alienated Jew.

Paul too knew how it felt to be an alienated Jew. As Saul, a native of the Jewish community in the Greek city of Tarsus, he never felt comfortable in Jerusalem. He had a foreign accent. He knew all about Hellenistic culture and its scorn for everything Jewish. He had worked in the marketplace of a port city where ships from all over the Mediterranean world came and went.
Diligent to extremes at keeping the strictest ritual laws of Judaism, he became frustrated by continual failure. Try as he might, he failed to make his mark in the holy city. To make matters worse, his own teacher Gamaliel had gone soft about this new sect that preached the resurrection of a criminal (Acts. 5:33-39). Paul not only witnessed but approved the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr for this new heresy of Judaism. He ravaged this motley crew of lawbreakers at every turn, throwing them into prison whenever he could. Then with murder in his heart, he set off for Damascus with orders he had wheedled from the high priest to capture as many of these rabble-rousers as possible and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial and punishment.

How else but by the grace of God could love have become the dominant quality of Paul the apostle? He had sought all his life to be worthy in his relationship to God. To him, that was the sole purpose of Israel’s covenant with God and its strict code of ritual laws. On the way to Damascus the totally undeserved grace of the loving God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth accosted and captured him. His alienation from God disappeared as he learned from Ananias and other followers of Jesus the whole story about this strange man of God who had risen from the dead. Like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, he realized that he too had been forgiven. He now could claim the relationship with God he had so long desired, not because he had proved himself worthy, but because he was loved by God.

In the Hebrew scriptures which Paul knew so well, the two words chesid and racham appear nearly 200 times. The King James Version of the Bible translated both as mercy. The New Revised Standard Version uses the much stronger phrase steadfast love. The experience and understanding of this steadfast love came to Paul with such transforming compassion that he spent the rest of his life thanking God he had seen the vision of meeting Jesus himself on the Damascus Road.

Steadfast Love Today.

Twenty centuries later, in a time of global competitiveness, corruption and violence, how to experience and live by God’s steadfast love remains our major problem.

Michael, a participant in an Internet forum, told of how he had spent much of his teen and young adult years indulging in any drug he could get his hands on. He had committed a number of crimes beyond drug possession. He had been an all-around bad egg. When he finally came back to the church of his early childhood, he didn’t identify with the prodigal son for quite a while. Recently, he began to understand that he had more of tendencies of the elder brother. Now comfortable in his faith and his position as a pastor, it is far too easy, he says, to forget that he had been taken in not because he is good, but because God is. He says that with an exclamation mark. That is exactly how Paul felt. If Bruce Chilton’s reconstruction of Jesus’ early life has any validity, that is how Jesus must have felt too. Could that not be the way he both understood and shared with others his unconditional love the four gospels describe so clearly?

In a short paragraph in 1 John 4:7-12, the word love appears in one form or another no less than fifteen times. Most startling of all those references are these two simple statements, "For God is love;" and "If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." I committed these to memory in my earliest years in Sunday school. They remain the primary guideposts of my religious experience. The daily challenge is to match that experience with behavior.

In his remarkable hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul said a great deal about how one lives entirely dependent on God’s gracious love. Taken as a whole, the Bible can be read as a love story about how much God loves us and how we can respond by loving other people.

Tommy’s Story.

A professor of the theology of faith at Loyola University, in Chicago, told about a student named Tommy who came into his class on fall semester. He had a head of flowing flaxen hair that reached six inches below his shoulders and a smirk on his face that paraded his cockiness. It was his questions that bothered the professor most. He kept interrupting with objections to the possibility that there was an unconditional loving God. After a while teacher and student learned to tolerate each other.

When he turned in his final paper at the end of the semester, Tommy asked the professor, "Do you think I’ll ever find God?"

"No," the professor said firmly. Then instantly regretting it he added, "I don’t think you’ll ever find God, but I’m sure God will find you."

Tommy shrugged and left the classroom. In time he graduated and disappeared from the campus. But the professor often thought of him and wondered what had happened to him.
One day, a knock came at the door of the professor’s office. There stood Tommy, now totally bald. He had lost all his hair to chemotherapy. He explained that he was being treated aggressively for cancer in both lungs.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked the professor.
"Sure," Tommy replied. "What would you like to know?"

"What it’s like to be twenty-four and dying?"

"Well, it could be worse."

"Like what?"

"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real 'biggies' in life. But what I really came to see you about is something you said to me on the last day of class. I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, 'No!' which surprised me. Then you said, 'But God will find you.' I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time.
"But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the doors of heaven.

"But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened.

"One day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care...about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'

"So I went home and I told my Dad that I really did love him. And he did something he had never done before. He cried and he hugged me and told me he loved me. Then we talked all night even though he had to go to work in the morning.

"It was easier to do that with my Mom and kid brother. I was only sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long. Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.

"Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with him. Apparently God does things in his own way and at his own hour.

"But the important thing is that he was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for him."

The professor asked Tommy if he would come and tell his story to a new class of students. He agreed, but he didn’t make it. He called a few days before he died and said to the professor, "I'm not going to make it to your class. Will you tell them for me? Will you. . . tell the whole world for me?"

God’s Persistent Love.

In 1893 Francis Thompson wrote a poem called, The Hound of Heaven. It begins with these lines:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

We cannot and do not all love God in the same way. Nor does God love us all in the same way. Divine love is as diverse as the six billion people who live on this planet. And how many more stars in the universe like our sun have planets where billions more of God’s creation live? And God loves them all. There is always more of God’s love for us at every stage of our lives. It takes all the fruits of the Spirit to experience it. Even then, we have only touched its outer limits.

An English clergyman told of taking his children down to the beach. One day he saw one of his sons struggling up the beach with his bucket and assumed he had some interesting creature he had caught, so I asked him "What have you got in there?"

"The sea."

The father pointed to the English Channel stretching as far as they could see.

"What about that then? I thought that was the sea."

"I've got as much as I can carry, thank you"

That clergyman posted this insight to an Internet discussion forum:

"The wisest and best informed of us can only stand on the edge of the ocean of God's love and take away as much as he or she can carry. If someone has a different bucket and carries more or less of that love, neither of us can carry all of the sea, and those with whom we disagree may have much to teach us so long as we respect each other and realize that none of has more than a drop of that ocean of love which is God."

Ralph Milton publishes a weekly e-mail magazine called RUMORS "for active Christians with a sense of humor." It’s free too. He invites anyone who wants to read what he writes to subscribe by sending an blank e-mail to this address: rumors-subscribe@joinhands.com. Among a lot of anecdotes, wisecracks and short excerpts from the many books Ralph has written, he briefly summarizes the weekly scripture lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary. Here is one of Ralph’s inimitable comments.

"The central Christian question is about the meaning of the word love, and how we live that meaning. Jesus defined it for us. ‘Love is when you are willing to lay down your life for the one you love.’ And he also told us to "love your enemy." Ergo, I should lay down my life for my enemy? Get real!

"But that's exactly what he's saying. If you are a weak-kneed, wishy-washy Charlie Brown kind of character like me, you can't conceive of that, much less live it. For me, it is impossible. That's why I found today's passages (on love) profoundly discouraging until I got the right question. Then they became profoundly inspiring. On my own, not much is possible. The question is, "How can I let go and let God do the loving through me?" Then I might find, not just the needle in the haystack but the ‘pearl of great price.’ When I let go, and let the love of Christ soak down inside and take over the controls, then everything is possible! It's the letting go that's so hard!"

One of Mother Teresa’s most quoted sayings describes the essence of her life: "Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand."

Perhaps we can best grasp what loving means by looking at its opposite. These anonymous couplets may not be great poetry, but they tell a simple story about what may happen when people refuse to love.

THE COLD WITHIN

Six humans trapped by happenstance, in bleak and bitter cold,
Each one possessed a stick of wood, or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs, the first man held his back,
For of the faces 'round the fire, he noticed one was black.
The next man looking 'cross the way saw one not of his church,
And couldn't bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes, he gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought of wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned from lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge as flame passed from their sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the white.
The last man of this forlorn group did naught except for gain,
Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game.
Their logs held tight in death's still hand was proof of human sin,
They didn't die from the cold without: they died from the cold within.

Centuries ago, an anonymous contemplative included this among his thoughts in a classic we know as The Cloud of Unknowing: "Genuine goodness is a matter of habitually acting and responding appropriately in each situation, as it arises, moved always by the desire to please God." Could there be a better description of how to love?

In another issue of RUMORS, Ralph Milton expressed much the same thought: "We can't usually choose how we will feel, but we can choose how we will live. We make choices about our actions. By making choices to live in a loving way, we find ourselves living in love."

Years ago I had an intense debate with a friend about absolute moral values. He claimed that there are four: absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. I felt that there really is only one: absolute love. Love includes all the others. We never settled our debate. I still cling to my original belief.

In 1944, when World War II was at its height, Aldous Huxley, noted British author of the 20th century, wrote in The Perennial Philosophy, "Only those who manifest, in however small a measure, of the fruits of the Spirit can persuade others that the life of the spirit is worth living."

"The fruit of the Spirit," said Paul in his Letter to the Galatians, "is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Later, writing to the Corinthians he said, "Now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

Living By The Spirit - 10

10 - JOY

Anyone who has seen the feverish dancing by members of some of the most orthodox Jewish sects will readily recognize the enthusiastic joy with which they express themselves. Even political events that to others may seem tragic have been for them occasions for such dancing.

It may be no more than a stereotype, but do Jewish people have a cultural affinity for the comic arts? I got that impression first while attending a high school in Montreal in which 80% of my fellow students were Jewish. Could that be the result of their Jewish culture rooted in religious traditions which have endured through more than three millennia, much of it filled with tragedy? Is their joy and laughter an antidote for the pain they feel?

Can comedy be equated with joy? Dictionary definitions suggest otherwise. Comedy tends toward the merely amusing or farcical. It often brutal, making people the butt-end of the jokes. Mothers-in-law, dumb Newfies and miserly Scots are frequently abused in this manner. We may laugh at those jokes, but no one can get much joy from them.

Joy is a more intense sense of pleasure; "extreme gladness" says The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. And joy is one of the most elusive of the fruits of the Spirit. The scholars who wrote the commentaries on Galatians seem to have had trouble defining just what the word meant to Paul and his contemporaries. Or else they thought that it did not need further explanation.

Joy in Scripture.

Like a diamond artfully cut to reflect light from every direction, the Hebrew scriptures have some twenty-seven different words for joy derived from thirteen distinct roots. All of them describe some aspect of joy or joyful participation in life and worship. The most common Hebrew word is simchah (the ch is pronounced like a gutteral k).

Simchah is most frequently associated with the gracious gifts and actions of God toward faithful people. Joy seems to have come especially through the material blessings God gave to the people of Israel and in their worshipful response to blessings received. Such joyful response often took physical expression in singing, dancing, clapping hands, leaping or stamping the feet. Celebrations of feasting and worship through offering sacrifices marked the harvest, prosperity, good health, a wedding, the birth of a son, a personal triumph or a military victory.

To the psalmists even all of nature could be joyful and praise Israel’s God. As we read in Psalm 96: "Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the fields exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he is coming." Again in Psalm 98, "Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord." A great many psalms sing God’s praise with joy as does Psalm 47: "Clap your hand, all you peoples; shout to God loud songs of joy." Psalm 150 assembles a whole orchestra of musical instruments along with every human voice to praise the Lord.

The Greek word used most commonly in the New Testament, chara (pronounced as kara). It is closely related to charis, which means grace, the unmerited gift of divine love. The associated verb in chairo. Usually these words express joy of all kinds.

The major difference between the Old and New Testament attitudes to joy is that several New Testament writers make it clear that there can be joy in suffering. Not all suffering, of course; only when one suffers for one’s faith. In Matthew 5:11-12, Jesus is quoted as saying, "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets."

Paul said something similar in 2 Corinthians 11:22-12:10. First, he listed a long series of privations and sufferings he had endured as he went about his work as apostle to the Gentiles. Then he told of some special kind of illness or disability which tormented him constantly. He called it his "thorn in the flesh." Although he had asked God three times to remove it, the only answer he got was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." While he never defined what his disability actually was, he felt that it had been given to him to keep him from being too proud. The suffering wasn’t the source of his joy. Rather, he rejoiced in depending on God rather than his own physical strength and moral courage to endure it.

Meditating on what the suffering of being crucified may have meant to Jesus, the unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews says something totally beyond the range of our experience. After citing many of the heroes of the Hebrew tradition and what they suffered for their faith (Hebrews 11:4-40), he spoke of Jesus whom he called "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." Then he added, "who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2)

Joy in Suffering?

Joy in suffering a painful, horrible, torturous death? Joy in death, however it may happen? Isn’t that reaching a little too far?

Many people have had near death experiences to which they have witnessed after recovering. One story in my own family tells of my grandfather’s death when, it would seem he had such an experience, but did not live to tell of it. He was on his deathbed in a room adjoining the one where the family were eating supper. They heard him stir and rushed into the bedroom to see what was happening. He was sitting up, although he had been unable to do so for many days. He was staring into the corner of the room with a look of great beauty and joy on his face. He turned to tell what he was seeing, but fell back unable to speak and quietly passed away. To the day he died many years later, my father believed that this was the only evidence he needed for life beyond death.

One of my friends was in hospital with a serious heart condition. While there, he survived a series of cardiac arrests - more than twenty of them, he said. At one point as the hospital staff worked to revive him, he felt he had left his body and moved cautiously toward a bright light. As he approached it, he saw his hunting buddy on the other side of a deep chasm. He heard his friend say to him, "Come on across, Herb. It’s okay." But he turned back and wakened in his hospital room with the staff desperately trying to resuscitate him. Months later, when he told of his experience on a national radio program, he revealed how it had changed his attitude to life and death. His hunting partner had already been for dead ten years when this near death experience occurred. My friend spent the rest of his days with an abiding sense of joy for each day as it passed.

Some serious scientific research has shown that near death experiences happen to people of faith and people without faith. A survey carried out in the cardiac emergency ward of a British hospital has shown that of the patients treated for cardiac arrest over a period of one year, six per cent reported having near death experiences. Similar results have been obtained from surveys in the Netherlands and the United States. This has led the chief researcher on the project to conclude that consciousness is a fundamental entity in its own right and continues beyond death when no longer dependent on brain cells and their molecules.

Pam Barrett, former leader of the New Democratic Party in the provincial legislature in Alberta, Canada, had a near death experience as a result of a reaction to a dentist’s anesthetic. When she recovered, she resigned her political office and began to research various religious traditions. She finally came to a deep spiritual experience outside of institutional religion. She found herself "comfortable with the universe in a unity of consciousness, which is God,"she said in a television interview. She joyfully related her experience as a brush with eternity. "There are no wasted minutes," she claims. "Time doesn’t exist; only eternity."

The 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, (1342- 1416?) may well have also experienced what we now call a near death experience. Julian lived many years secluded as an anchorite in contemplation and prayer in a cell adjoining a church in Norwich, England. She lived during one of the most disruptive periods of the late Middle Ages. A recurrent pandemic of bubonic plague known as the Black Death wiped out as many as one third of Europe’s population. The subsequent shortage of labor and failed crops led to the Peasants Revolt of 1381. Followers of John Wycliff, the first to translate the scriptures into English, suffered death by burning in the Lollards’ Pit a short distance from Julian’s cell. The Catholic Church engaged in open warfare between two factions, each with its own pope, one in Rome and the other in Avignon, France. Historian Barbara Tuchman called this "the calamitous 14th century."

Despite all that, Julian once said that the fullness of joy is to see God in all things. Again and again she described her deep spiritual experiences of the loving presence of God with the simple words, "All shall be well and all shall be well; and all manner of things shall be well." This came from a joyful dependence on the love of God which she had experienced in a brief period of what she called "Showings." These had come to her within a few hours as she recovered from a nearly mortal illness in 1373. Her later recollection of her Showings or revelations became the first book written in English by a woman. As Canadian author Ralph Milton described her message in his paraphrase of Julian’s Showings, "above all she wanted to convey what it means "to move through our lives with a sense of joy and holy presence."

Joy Is for Others.

The 20th century contemplative, Thomas Merton, believed that God does not give us joy for ourselves alone, but only so that we may let it overflow from us to help other people rejoice in God too. But we may never know whom we have helped, he added, until we get to the life beyond death.

One of the most celebrated joyful Christians of recent decades was the late Mother Teresa. Her great joy was to see Jesus in the faces of abandoned children and dying indigents she picked up off the streets of Calcutta. In begging from the rich to help the poor, she determined that both rich and poor could meet her Lord by sharing her utterly optimistic joy. "Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls," she once said.

In his book, Pathways to Serenity, Philip St. Romain, a contemporary contemplative and spiritual director, has some very simple advice for those who would be joyful in their faith. He suggests that we need always to focus our consciousness on the present moment, on what is happening in us, to us and around us at this present time; to be aware of it always with love for ourselves as for those with whom we may happen to be. "Be here now in love and all will be well," is his favorite aphorism. "Take on a gentle, loving presence, now. Do not project past or present joys and sorrows into the future. Leave the future open in hope, and you will remain in reality."

Reality? "Are these people really real?" the skeptic may ask. People who show constantly enthusiastic good humor may be suspected of being in the manic phase of a bi-polar disorder.
"Happiness," said Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish movie star, "is good health and a bad memory." Despite her fame, she died from breast cancer at 67 after a life of repeated tragedies. In all of human experience is there such a thing as joy unalloyed?

Still, successful American politician but unsuccessful presidential candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey, could advocate what he called "the politics of joy." During his tenure as party whip in the US Senate and later as vice-president to Lyndon Johnson, he consistently used his political skill to advance the welfare of the less privileged. His legacy to American society includes some of the most advanced legislation for social justice which he had initiated or helped guide through the Congress. Civil rights, medicare, the Peace Corps, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty all came from his prolific socially conscious mind or were enacted by his strategic use of power.

Political analyst Michael Barone was asked by an interviewer to name a couple of politicians who had been particularly influential during the decades that separated the presidencies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) and Ronald Reagan (1980-1988). He immediately named Hubert Humphrey. Asked to elaborate what it was about Hubert Humphrey that was so special to him, Barone replied, "Well, here is a man who is an incredible optimist, bubbling over with ideas.... He contributed to the tone and a character to the positive achievements of American liberalism. A sort of ‘Everybody is welcome, let's all move ahead’ kind of tone, which is one of the good, positive contributions American liberalism has made over the last 50 or 60 years.... And, when Hubert Humphrey, bless him, made the statement about the politics of joy in 1968, which was not a joyful year, it fell flat because it was the wrong time."

Joy Can Be Different.

Joy is almost always expressed differently in different cultures. Even within the same community this may be so. Even men and women have different ways of expressing joy.
Two American pastors, one male, the other female, were discussing personal mountain-top experiences on an Internet forum. The man told of having totally unexpected open heart surgery. During his recovery he had listened to his fellow cardiac ward patients react to what had happened to them.

"I saw a lot of angry people.... People who saw this surgery as interfering with their busy lives ... who were angry with God ... who didn't see this as opportunity for new life as I did. It was interesting and unbelievable to me. I felt my life had been spared and was filled with joy. Every moment was a gift from God. But they didn't see it that way in terms of their own lives at all."

The woman wrote of a quieter joy which can only be felt in a reflective mood long after the event: "One friend talks about what passes for contemporary worship at his church. He calls it bubble gum for the soul. People are delighted because they ‘feel good’ when they leave. Is that what's it's all about? Or should our worship leave us with different emotions each week-- sometimes wonder, sometimes joy, sometimes "pondering", evaluating, musing?"

Haroon Siddhiqui, a columnist with the Toronto Star, told of visiting a cultural festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Abdullah, de facto ruler of Arabia for the past several years, was in attendance. About a hundred other princes and commoners formed a sort of chorus line for an ardhah, often mistranslated as a sword dance. In fact, it is an exhibition of swordsmanship, but with a difference. With left hand resting on the shoulder of the man in front and the right hand grasping a highly decorated sword that shimmered in the light, the line shuffled forward waving their swords. When the line reached the place where the crown prince sat, they invited him to join them. He did so; and for twenty minutes, they all danced about the arena lost in their joyful mood, oblivious to the foreigners who stood watching them.

An elder of one of the churches where I served in the 1970s went to South Carolina for a brief midwinter break. On Sunday, he and his wife wanted to visit a local church and were directed to one just down the street from their hotel. As soon as they entered, they realized that it was very different from the one they attended back home. They were the only whites present. But they stayed and participated in a worship service such as they had never shared in before. "We were totally astonished. It was such a joyful noise," he told me after they returned.

One of my favorite pictures of Jesus is of a long-haired, bearded man, his mouth wide open in a hilarious laugh as if thoroughly enjoying some wisecrack uttered by one of his close friends. I knew the artist of that drawing, the late Willis Wheatley. I shared his friendship in a congregation where my family worshiped for a few years in the 1960s. Willis’ day-job was as art director in our denominational publishing house. He drew this picture as one of four for our church school curriculum to illustrate the various moods in which we may see Jesus portrayed in the gospels.

Willis also illustrated a poem of mine published twice in one of our church papers. My poem described an ecstatic experience at a curriculum training seminar. His picture showed a monarch butterfly with the hole in its wing resting on a late summer flower. The poem speaks for itself:

IN FLUX

I worshipped as a butterfly
Hovered on wings that flashed bright red
And orange in the setting sun;
The wings were still,
And in that moment, brief as an infant's breath,
I saw that one was pierced through, imperfect,
So that light shone through without reflecting
Back to me the glorious colours of the dying day.
"All is imperfect!" then I cried;
"And nothing in this life can be complete,
In nature, man, or things that man can make;
A hole there is for ever found in everything!
Perfection lies in change,
In time becoming what we are not now,
A constant growing, body, mind and soul
Reaching for a goal that lies beyond
And, never will be reached;
For once a change has taken place and that
Which once was far away is near
Another greater goal still lies ahead,
Still beckons to the restless soul of man,
And he is anxious till he moves once more
In search of what he seeks and never finds."
The moment flew; the butterfly flew away
Taking with it worship's passing peace;
The storm within my soul surged forth once more
To rage and tear at consciousness and sleep,
Disturbing both till seams of sanity were
Stretched beyond the breaking point.
In sickness I found health, and God became
The one who loves me as I always am,
In flux.

Not all experiences of joy are ecstatic, although many are. Perhaps more common are those moments of quiet joy when we become conscious of a spiritual presence that lifts us beyond our currently chaotic life into a meaningful oneness with the universe and with God. I believe that this is the joy of which Jesus spoke when he is quoted in John 15:10-11, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full."

But in the end, with so much violence, tragedy, and suffering in the world around, could it be that what the New Testament refers to as the joy that Jesus offers us is an eschatological joy. Is it really a gift of grace that comes and goes on infrequent occasions in this life, and will be experienced only as the fulfillment of faith in life beyond death?

1

Living By The Spirit

9 - PEACE

A busy mother found this item in her church newsletter and posted it to the Internet so that others might benefit from its wisdom:

SYMPTOMS OF PEACE

Watch for the signs of peace:
1. Tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fear based on past experiences.
2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy every moment.
3. Freedom from judging other people.
4. Freedom from judging self.
5. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
6. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and with nature.
7. Frequent attacks of smiling.
8. The uncontrollable urge to extend love to others.

If you have all, or even most of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition may be irreversible. If you are exposed to above exhibiting these symptoms, remain exposed at your own risk.

This mother liked this notice so much that she placed it on her refrigerator with other important information, like cat food coupons and dentist appointment cards. She also noted that all eight symptoms are thoroughly positive.

The major difficulty many find in this search for peace is that it tends to focus on the individual.

A section in a older hymn book bore the title of "Peace and Joy." In most of the well-loved

hymns in that section, the pronoun "I" predominated. This spiritual individualism was a particular emphasis of the evangelical movement in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

At the mid-point of the 20th century, the late Dr. James Sutherland Thomson, then Dean of the Faculty of Divinity (now Religious Studies) at McGill University, Montreal, told a class in theology, "We have gone about as far as we can go in the individual understanding of the person and work of Christ. We need now turn our attention to the implications of Jesus Christ for society as a whole."

Individual or social, peace is something for which everyone hopes and dreams. Sadly, not everyone is committed to working for it. The tragic 20th century began with such high hopes for a world of peace and prosperity through technological advances made by human enterprise and ingenuity. Yet the century was marked by the most brutal and destructive wars in human history. At least three racially motivated holocausts occurred - the Armenian, the Jewish and the Rwandan - in which as many as ten million people were slaughtered. In Russia alone during World War II, twenty-five million people died in battle, from starvation and the scorched earth policies of Nazi aggressors and the brutality of Josef Stalin against some of his own people.

Yet there were people everywhere in the world who then and still hope for and are seriously committed to finding better ways to settle such conflicts. However weak, ineffective or failing, the League of Nations and the United Nations were formed to bring those hopes and commitments to bear on the real issues of making peace.

Searching for Peace.

In October 2000, the World Community for Christian Meditation held a three-day seminar in Belfast , Northern Ireland. The presence of the Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, added significantly to the harmonious atmosphere of this event. He met with political leaders from opposing sides of the centuries-old strife in that country.

Young people, clergy, victims of the more than 30 years of the violent "Troubles," and 500 other participants in the seminar all witnessed some extraordinary things happening. Well-known former Anglican priest and journalist, Tom Harpur, attended as a participant and reported in the Toronto Sunday Star some of the miracles of peace-making he witnessed there.

Children as young as five years old and hardened politicians alike acknowledged that the Dalai Lama had made a deep impression on them. One experienced city councillor of Belfast discovered to his surprise that the Dalai Lama had made him reconsider some of the simple teachings of his professed faith which he had neglected for many years.

Asked to respond to an address by Mary McAleese, president of the Republic of Ireland, the Dalai Lama said, "Our religious differences amount to nothing. The religious sectarian disagreements in Ireland are really nonsense when you stop to reflect. We can leap-frog over these splits by moving to a more inner, more central issue in all religion - the journey to a wider perspective by going within through daily meditation."

Protestants and Roman Catholics alike had their prejudices challenged and found peace in forgiving those against whom they had harbored much hatred for the harm done to them. One of them, a Protestant whose best friend had been murdered at 14, later served a prison term for being part of a group of brutal gangsters. No longer feeling a pawn in a political struggle, he realized that he could now make a contribution to reconciling differences by accepting his responsibility for some of the violence and working with other prisoners to atone for his crimes.

Another man had been left blind in both eyes when struck by a British rubber bullet. He testified that he no longer held resentment toward the soldier who shot him, and now could get on with his life. After hearing this man’s testimony, the Dalai Lama told him, "You may be blind, but you have been given new vision."

Not just in Ireland, but in India too, the Dalai Lama brought his message of peace in action to trouble spots of the world. On January 24, 2001, the holiest day of the Hindu festival, the Kumbh Mela, at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhists, came to join the sacred Hindu ceremony of prayer and offerings to the river.

Peace begins where people live, not on the bloody battlefields of the world. A generation or two ago, interfaith or interracial marriages created some very nasty family conflicts. A Toronto journalist from a Jewish background and his Protestant wife struggled to find a way to meet their own and their children’s needs for a faith that united them. He liked to attend an orthodox synagogue in the neighborhood where they lived. She felt very uncomfortable there because husbands and wives were seated separately. They did find a more congenial and satisfying atmosphere in a local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. This church welcomes anyone who feels like an outsider, especially those of homosexual orientation rejected by other churches. When they worship in this church, the Jewish journalist wears his yarmulka and is listed on the church records as a Friend of the Congregation. His wife has taken the formal step of becoming a member.

Writing about his experience in the Toronto Star, the journalist said that he shares the religious philosophy of Franz Rosensweig which requires people to do only as much as feels right for them. If we imagine God at the centre of a circle, he said, our spiritual task is to keep working our way toward the centre. That is why he and his wife rejoiced with that congregation when they heard the minister read the banns of marriage for two homosexual couples who were to be married in the near future, thereby challenging the legal restrictions against the registration of such unions.

Peaceful Words.

In both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, the word peace has a very prominent place, occurring more than 400 times. In recent years, the common Hebrew word has become an English term too - shalom. For generations the Greek word, eiréné, has been transliterated as a woman’s name, usually with the first e omitted and other two unaccented, Irene. A Greek scholar of my acquaintance used the original Greek spelling and pronunciation when he named his daughter. As an adult, she dropped the accents but kept the spelling.

Obviously, the word peace has many implications for human relationships. In ancient times, the Greeks gave the word a corporate, social sense. They used it to describe the stability and security a country enjoyed under a just and beneficial government. Villages had a public official who served as the community’s peace officer, much as do modern police forces.

For Christians, peace depends on one’s relationship with God. As the angel chorus sang over the pastures of Bethlehem, God’s desire for all humanity is peace and good will. Only in peace can we be what God wants us to be, individually or corporately. Peace is that state of personal and communal harmony with God and neighbor that makes for the highest common good.

In the New Testament, peace is always the gracious gift of God. The gospels frequently described Jesus giving peace to friends and disciples, and so exercising his divine authority. Paul typically began his letters to the churches he had founded, "Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ."

Peace at Home.

Every parent knows that when children are sick their demands disrupt the normal routines of the home. Every writer knows how difficult it is to concentrate when other members of the family interrupt the creative process. Consequently, many writers find a secluded place to do their work. Or if that is impossible, they do their writing at hours when there will be few distractions. For some parents, peace comes only momentarily amid the hustle and bustle of a busy family life. Here is what one mother wrote about such an experience.

We are having our first cool spell in Central Texas after an unusually hot, dry summer. It is now the time of butterfly migration. The butterflies - of many varieties - have arrived swirling in the bright fall sunshine, clinging to the under branches of our trees, languidly fanning the air with their wings. The leaves are finding a touch of gold and brown as well, and beginning to drop. So to see something bright and colorful fluttering from the branches, one doesn't know at first look whether it's the cast-off leaf, harbinger of winter dormancy, or if it's a living butterfly.

She had found peace in what to many may appear as a very ordinary situation. She had watched her four year old daughter coax a migrating butterfly to settle on her finger so she could examine it with a child’s fascination.

Another mother of four, admitted that the only place she could find for her daily periods of meditation and prayer was literally in the closet in her bedroom. Her children knew that when they couldn’t find her, that’s where she would be. They also quickly learned to honor those times when she was following the actual words of Matthew 6:6 about the appropriate place for prayer.

If peace is the gift of God, then surely prayer is the way to peace. The World Community for Christian Meditation recommends thirty minutes of quiet, contemplative prayer using no words except the ancient petition, "Maranatha." This is an Aramaic word, the language Jesus spoke, used by the earliest Christians. It means, "Come, Lord." It occurs only once in scripture, at the very end in The Revelation of St. John 22:20. This single word asks Jesus to be present with us and in us, to the exclusion of all else. Whenever our minds do fill with other concerns, we simply set them aside without anxiety or guilt and return to our one word prayer.

Praying for Peace.

The single most devastating act of war in the 20th century was the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. The city was founded in 1594 on six islands in the Ota River delta. It grew rapidly as a commercial city, and after 1868 was developed as a military center. In 1940 the population of Hiroshima had reached nearly 350,000. The blast from the first atomic bomb destroyed more than 10 sq km (4 sq mi) or about 60% of the city. Casualties numbered 129,558 killed, injured, or missing. Another 176,987 were left homeless. In 1949 the Japanese dedicated Hiroshima as an international shrine of peace. Every August 6 since 1947, thousands participate in interfaith services in the Peace Memorial Park built on the site where the bomb exploded.
Sadako, a young Hiroshima survivor, suffered severe radiation poisoning. While in hospital she began folding paper cranes as every Japanese child is taught to do. There is a legend that if you made 1,000 paper cranes your wish would come true. As she folded, she wrote on the wings "This is my wish, this is my prayer, for peace in the world"

Unfortunately she died before getting to 1,000. So her friends decided that they would make a thousand. Their friends heard about it as did others. Soon there were hundreds of thousands of paper cranes, each with "This is my wish, this is my prayer, for peace in the world." Every year people always place folded paper cranes at the monument in Hiroshima. It is their way of praying for peace.

August 6, 2000 fell on a Sunday. A Canadian minister posted on the Internet some of his thoughts for his sermon that day:

I recently had the tremendous privilege of attending a performance of a new oratorio, written by Victor Davies, entitled "Revelation". As the music proceeded to a modern working of "Worthy is the Lamb" and other versions of the words so familiar to one raised on the beauty of Handel's Messiah, I had a feeling something like the one Dorothy had in the Wizard of Oz, when she said to Toto, ‘I don't think we're in Kansas any more.’ The contrast was so great it was upsetting at first, but soon one begins to realize that here is the timeless message in a modern setting, and it is powerful and beautiful in its own way. More important is the fact that the essential message of this prophecy is coming through loud and clear.

We Christians too often lose sight of the global and eternal dimensions of the work in which we are involved for Jesus. We quarrel over petty things, creating divisions amongst ourselves, and we cause the gospel to lose power, truth and relevance. We need to recast the ancient truths in modern, shocking expressions so that we will not lose sight of the glory and eternal majesty of our goal: nothing less than bringing all dominion, power and authority under the feet of Christ. It may not be Kansas, but it will be a far, far better place than we can now imagine!

Creating Peace.

As the peace-keeping forces in various trouble spots of the world have learned by hard experience, it isn’t easy to keep the peace where centuries of hatred and hostility have corrupted the relations between close neighbors.

There’s an old story about two brothers with adjoining farms who had a falling out after 40 years of working together, sharing machinery and all the seasonal tasks. One day, in a fit of anger, the younger brother brought in a bulldozer to create a ditch between their farms. Then he punched a hole through a levee protecting the farms from a nearby river and filled the ditch with water.

Early one morning soon after, a man carrying a box of carpenter’s tools came to the door of the older brother’s farm house asking for work.

"You can build me an eight foot fence along that creek so I won’t be able to see that other place," the farmer told him. "You can do that while I go to town for the day."

As the farmer disappeared down the road, the carpenter set to work. When the farmer came back near sundown, instead of a fence there was a bridge across the creek. As the farmer stared in astonishment, his younger brother came across the bridge with his hand outstretched.

"You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done," he said.

The two brothers met at the middle of the bridge, taking each other's hand. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder.

"No, wait! Stay a few days," said the older brother. "I've a lot of other projects for you,"

"I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but I have so many more bridges to build."

So saying, he trudged slowly off into the distance along a dusty road.

Is Peace Always Possible?

Sometimes it isn’t possible to make peace with someone with whom we may have been in conflict. Death comes before reconciliation is possible. One minister dealt with just such a situation during a funeral service for a man who had been one the outs with his siblings for most of his life. As she led the congregation in prayer, she offered the following:

Cleanse our hearts and redeem our memories. For those things we left unsaid, give us confidence in your healing wholeness. For those things we wish we had not said, grant us the knowledge that you forgive us even before we forgive ourselves, and give us the peace that only you can give.

Peace comes to a community when someone decides there is a better way to live together and sets out to find it. The Nobel Peace Prize has been donated since 1901 to the person or institution making an outstanding contribution to international peace. Only two institutions have won it more than once: the International Red Cross in 1917, 1944 and 1963; and the United Nations Office for Refugees in 1954 and 1981. It has not been awarded to anyone on nineteen occasions, particularly during World Wars I and II. Swedish chemist, Alfred Nobel, donated the funds initiating this and other prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine and literature from wealth gained from his development of dynamite. The gift was inspired by an explosion that killed his brother three years before Nobel mastered the chemistry of a safe way to manufacture nitroglycerin.

The way to make peace, Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, is to live in harmony with one another. "Do not repay evil for evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, given them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:17-21)

Paul was able to say this with such confidence because earlier in his letter he had also said, "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom. 5:1) Not, we shall have peace, perhaps someday in the sweet bye and bye. We have it. Now! This peace comes through a new relationship with God. It is the gift Jesus gave us by his birth, life, death and resurrection. He lived it himself and makes it possible for us to follow in all our other relationships.

Living By The Spirit - 8

8 - PATIENCE

As we have seen, "flaming" on the Internet amounts to telling one another off in no uncertain terms. One person says something the other doesn’t like; so that person retorts with increasing intensity. Subsequent exchanges often descend to the level of person insult.

Here is a sample of what happened in one instance. The names are fictitious. The excerpted dialogue came from people with denominational affiliations ranging from Roman Catholic to Quaker. The discussion centered on Martin Luther’s view of sin and grace.

Alan quoted Luther’s saying that we should "sin strongly." Brent had some difficulty with that. He admitted that he had never understood Luther on this point. Suddenly, Cindy, a Roman Catholic, accused Luther of having taught what she called "cheap grace."

Don immediately jumped to Luther’s defense. "You do all of us of the Protestant tradition wrong, Cindy," he wrote sharply. "Where do you get the idea that Luther claimed cheap grace? To a Protestant that is tantamount to saying to a Roman Catholic that Thomas Aquinas depended too much on the philosophy of Aristotle."

Then he castigated Cindy for being generous to some faiths, but not to others. He added a caustic anecdote about a professor who chided his class, "The denigration of great intellect is the disease of small minds."

Cindy retorted, "And you sir, are arrogant to decide that those who disagree with you have small minds. Who made you the judge and jury of my own personal opinion? And your snobbery is not attractive at all. Your bias is as biased as my bias."

This is a rather mild example of "flaming." Internet forum moderators constantly remind participants to be respectful in expressing themselves or warn them to desist when the flames get too hot. Online, patience is the key to good communication.

A Peculiar Greek Word.

The New Testament word for patience is somewhat odd. It does not occur in classical Greek and very rarely in later Greek literature. Makrothumia is one of those delightful words created from two others: makros meaning "long or far" and thumos meaning "passion." A now obsolete English word describes exactly what it means: "longanimity." More common is the word "forbearing." It means to abstain or desist from speaking out.

The Roman army never admitted defeat. A passage in the apocryphal First Book of Maccabees described how the Romans built their empire and gave the Jews the opportunity to rebel against their Syrian overlords in 166 BCE. "They had gained control of the whole region by their planning and their patience." (1 Macc. 8:4) The way they captured the rebel stronghold of Masada in 72-73 CE is a case in point. For three months they assembled all they needed to build a narrow ramp for their siege tower on top of natural rock spur. Once it was in place, they forced their way over the wall.

Several commentators on patience in Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit refer to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. There Paul wrote about how love behaves, often in the most aggravating circumstances. Endowed with love, the person with patience can afford to wait, cannot be provoked by opposition, incited to do injustice or humiliated by contempt because she knows that God sustains her.

John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople, in the early 5th century, spoke of the patient man as one did not seek revenge when he had the opportunity to do so. Historians of the 20th century point to revenge motivated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 at the end of World War I as a major factor in the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany. Had the leaders of the Allies followed the advice of one of their support team, future US President Herbert Hoover, patience and generosity might have avoided the deaths of millions in World War II.

Patience in personal.

Patience may be much more effective in personal relationships. A young woman in love was angered that the man who had been courting her did not seem to want to become engaged. Her college roommate reminded her of a proverb she had learned from her father: "More flies are caught with honey than with vinegar." This proverb may have originated in the rather amusing, but frightfully sexist legend of Samson’s failed suit of a Philistine woman told in Judges 14.

Patience enables one to endure whatever ills life brings upon us. Social analysts tell us that much of modern technology increases efficiency but also increases stress.

A friend in western Canada can send me an e-mail a message in seconds. One day, he noticed that the e-mail conference he was moderating had not been functioning properly. He asked a technician to help sort things out. In doing so, she inadvertently hit the wrong button. Before she could correct the mistake, more than four hundred copies of the same message had been sent to every computer address on a list of hundreds participants scattered around the globe. Whenever someone on that list signed on to get their e-mail messages, all those hundreds of copies came through to their computer. The moderator himself suffered the same fate.

Naturally, both he and the technician immediately extended profuse apologies. When we got over our dismay, those of us on the receiving end willingly forgave them. But it took more than a little patience to delete all those messages.

My wife and I bought a car - unexpectedly. One afternoon we wandered into a used car lot and saw exactly what we wanted. We made a hasty decision, signed the deal and picked up the car three days later. We then sold our older car to our daughter and son-in-law for the same amount as the dealer had offered us on a trade-in. That’s when our patience was stressed to the limit.

We did not realize that since we had purchased our previous car the regulations for insurance coverage and selling a car privately had changed. Because had not checked those details first, we had to make two trips to the licencing office, two trips to the bank, a trip to a garage for a safety and exhaust emissions check, and a trip to an agency which inspects and photographs the car for an insurance operations study.

Add to that several calls to our insurance agent. An electronic answering system constantly put our calls on hold, played supposedly calming music in our ears or asked for voice mail messages so the agent could call us back at her convenience. That meant waiting for several hours before getting our questions answered to our satisfaction. Muttering to myself, I sat down to write these paragraphs.

Developing patience.

Stress isn’t all bad for us, of course. It pushes us to develop patience, although not always without some scars. Healing from an injury takes lots of patience, but may leave a scar.

A well-to-do lady went into a furniture factory to order a large sofa, insisting that it be upholstered in real leather. When it was finished, she came back to inspect it. Instead of giving it her approval, she became very upset.

"Why, there are scars and lines in the leather," she exclaimed. "I don’t like that!"

The manager called the master upholsterer, a grizzled older employee with years of experience. He looked at the leather carefully for several minutes, all the while moving his experienced hand over the defects the customer had pointed to.

"Ma’m," he explained, "no critter ever lived long enough to grow a hide that big without getting some scars. Those scars prove that the leather is real. The places where the scars are is tougher than the rest of the leather. If you tried to cut the leather through the scar, you would see that it is tougher there. So...do you want this sofa, lady? Or would you prefer a one made of vinyl?"

Near the high school in Montreal I attended as a teenager was a large Roman Catholic oratory honoring one of French Canada’s saintly heroes, Brother André. Tourist buses drive right up the door of this great domed shrine situated on the mountainside high above the city. But thousands of pilgrims going to pray at the shrine make their way up long flights of stairs from the main street. Many do not walk up the stairs; they go up on their knees praying their rosary at each step. To do so is regarded as an act of unparalleled piety. It also develops patience few less pious people possess.

The patience of Job.

In his book The Message of Galatians, John R.W. Stott wrote about patience being directed toward people rather than God. Those who have spent many days or months waiting for answers to fervent prayers might well differ about that. In the Old Testament book of Job, neither patience nor prayer nor seething anger brought an answer to Job’s struggle with undeserved suffering. In the end, God did speak to him, but not in the comforting words he hoped for. A flood of rhetorical questions out of a whirlwind served only to humble Job and turned him to repentant trust. The issue of why the innocent suffer remains unresolved.

The first Sunday of every month I conduct worship for a small congregation in a seniors’ residence in the town when I live. One of the regular worshipers is a woman of middle years stricken with multiple sclerosis. She knows that there is little hope of her recovery even if a sudden discovery should give medical science the key to overcoming this disease. Each time I see her she is a little weaker, a little more restricted in her movements. She introduced me to a moving little book, Tuesdays With Morrie, by a well-known Detroit sports columnist, Mitch Albom.

The book tells of Albom’s weekly meetings with one of his college professors during the last few months of his life after a twenty-five year absence. Morrie Schwartz, a professor of sociology at Brandeis University, had ALS, amyotrophic lateral schlerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease. The professor’s and student’s learning experiences in this one on one seminar form the entire content of the book. Morrie’s funeral was Mitch’s graduation.

I greatly admire the patience of both my friend, Catherine, and Morrie Schwartz. They make me wonder how I would fare if I were in their situation.

We live in such a fast-paced world with so many infectious diseases having been conquered by modern antibiotic drugs that we easily forget how difficult it is for people to live with incurable illness. Persuaded by effective advertising and media coverage of scientific research, we look for the next miracle cure to come tomorrow. We are surprised when scientists offset the latest media bulletins with cautious reminders that the solutions they are seeking are still a long way off.

Patient suffering.

"Longsuffering" was the way the King James Version of the Bible translated macrothumia. When one reads the letters and journals of pioneers in 19th century Canada and the United States, one realizes just what that meant. We may well marvel at the way so many of them endured the ills of life with such good temper and sincere piety. Reconstructed pioneer villages show us the conditions under which they not only survived but thrived. Yet not one tourist visiting such places ever expressed a desire to live under those conditions - without electricity, running water, central heating, air conditioning, prepacked foods - all the comforts we take for granted in our modern homes and workplaces.

For our pioneer ancestors patience was an active response to real life, not a passive aspect of strong character. It was the only way they could triumph over incredible odds with broad shoulders and indefatigable perseverance.

In the summer of 1945 I lived in a community of homesteaders in northwestern Saskatchewan. Most of them had come from the drought-stricken prairies of southern Saskatchewan during the 1930s. They had started over from scratch on land covered with poplar trees and alder brush wherever there weren’t shallow sloughs and soggy muskeg. Some of them had made great progress in the few years they had been in the region. A few had cleared full section of land on which they had planted wheat. One farmer had acquired a combine with which he hoped to reap his own harvest and that of his neighbours. But the wheat had to be left a few days longer to ripen so that it could be combined. The day before he was to begin the harvest, a hailstorm swept through the district. Instead of putting his new combine to work the next morning, the farmer turned his herd of cattle to feed on the gleanings of a square mile of wheat stubble. With incredible patience he said, "Well, next year perhaps."

Waiting with patience.

An article in Newsweek told of Ford Motor Co. heir Bill Ford's plan to spend $2 billion renovating a key Ford auto plant that formerly was one of the worst looking artifacts of the Industrial Age. He will have a natural roof (grass, etc.) and all sorts of other ergonomic and environmental friendly aspects.

A sharp-eyed Wall Street analyst was quoted as saying, "That's different. What's the return on investment?" In response, someone else asked, "In what time frame?"

Many corporate directors and executives have the will to wait. Some investments have a negative return over the short term (as even Jesus experienced) but a priceless return in the long term. Those who dig for oil or mine for diamonds must take the same long term approach.

How long has God put up with the human race in its flagrant rebellion and unbelief? In Romans 2:4, Paul wrote of patient as an expression of God’s love. He related it closely to kindness: "Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance." He reiterated God’s inestimable patience in more a sharply worded rhetorical question in Romans 9:22, "What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction ...?"

In recent years the story of a 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, has come to the fore. She was the first woman to write a book in English. A Canadian author and former publisher, Ralph Milton, has produced a novel about her, Julian’s Cell (Wood Lake Books/Northstone Press. 2002). Ralph also moderates an online forum about Julian from the Wood Lake web site, . Under the subject heading "God’s Tolerance," Ralph and Father John-Julian, the author of one of the translations of Julian’s Showings, held an online discussion of the theme of this story with several other participants.

Ralph wrote: "Julian says that God allows evil to happen. More than that, she says that all that God allows is ‘worshipful.’ ... Traditionally, Christianity has spoken of a kind of cosmic dualism between God and Satan. And that idea doesn't really hang together because if God created everything, then God must have created Satan. Julian takes this to its more logical conclusion, I think. She believed in the reality of Satan who appeared to her in one of her visions. Here she says that everything Satan can do, is done because God tolerates it. And this tolerating of evil is ‘rythful’ and ‘worshipful.’"

Fr. John-Julian replied: "The issue that lies behind (this) ... is free will - the ability to choose against good and for evil. And if God did not allow that to happen, then free will would be a joke, and we'd all be automatons, not humans. But, there is that constant hope that somehow God will make things better even if I screw them up. And there is some truth in that. God will certainly not let my choice of evil mess up his ultimate will. Notice: God will always forgive anything that we want forgiven. Compassion and forgiveness are part of his very nature, and he cannot do anything else and still be the God we know, but he will not force forgiveness on anyone. It's there for the taking, but he can't make us take it or he wrecks our free will."

Ralph added: "A God of infinite love and infinite patience will eventually win over even the most evil of people. Until that happens, Julian's prophecy that all shall be well cannot be fulfilled, and all is not well."

Another participant chimed it: "One of the joys of faith is trusting that all is well for us because of God's redeeming love in Christ. Everything will all come out copacetic in the end. Yet there is a dangerous sense of determinism about this. On the other hand, one of the troubling aspects is that God's love is so indeterminate that we have been given free will to mess up and thumb our noses at the offered life of friendship with God for as long as we like. And some may well thumb their noses until the end of time, come what may. I am equally convinced of that God will certainly not let my choice of evil mess up his ultimate will. But there have been and will be a lot of hapless victims before the final denouément of history. What does that say about the divine will and love? Doesn't God care?"

Ralph Milton ended this exchange: "One of the reasons I found Julian liberating is her insistence that God yearns for us and aches for us the way a mother does for her child. And her morality springs not out of fear but out of love for God and her fellow humans.... That, it seems to me, is the struggle Julian was having, all through her book. She finally comes to the conclusion that it doesn't all make sense and we can't all figure it out, but we trust anyway. And if we trust, all will be well."

So patience reveals that we are loved by God. And being patient is another way of showing love for God and neighbor.

CHAPTER 7 - KINDNESS

7 - KINDNESS

My good friend Ralph Taylor, a minister in Toronto, Canada, tells this story.

When I first arrived at this church there was this gentlemen, Bill. He came to church each Sunday with his spouse and was always welcomed. He was very trusting of her and he was always a part of our community until he physically could no longer attend. He also was a member of our men's Bible study class. His wife brought him and one of the members took him home. Even when his abilities lessened and he wondered where the place in the book was he was welcomed. The men who sat on either side of him made sure they had the same translation and when following in the Bible was impossible enlarged photo copies were made. Three copies for Bill and his seat mates. At the last closing communion where Bill attended he gave me a gift that will be mine forever. As the bread was passed and he took some and ate it, he spoke up and said, ‘I want some more.’

Isn’t that how Jesus went about in Galilee - just being kind and compassionate, particularly to those who most needed help from anyone who could give it? A great many people - perhaps more - were as despised and alienated in those days as we find in our day. Several lists made by well-known Jewish rabbis of Jesus’ time and after designated several despised occupations. Some of those listed would shock us - butchers, doctors and shepherds, for instance. It is quite clear from the gospels that both lepers and the mentally unbalanced were so regarded. One wonders how people like Bill suffering from Alzheimer’s disease would have been treated.

William Barclay recounts an old legend about the sign outside the carpenter shop in Nazareth. Because most people were illiterate, the sign gave passers-by all the information they needed about what went on inside. The sign was a simple ox-yoke. For those who could read, the words beneath the yoke said, "My yoke is easy." It was written in both Aramaic and Greek. The Greek word for "easy" is chrestos. The Greek word for Christ, of course, is Christos. All that distinguishes the two are the two simplest letters of Greek alphabet, iota and epsilon. A yoke that is chrestos doesn’t chafe the neck of the ox that wears it. Or if the yoke is one a man wears to carry buckets of water or some other heavy burden, it fits neatly to the man’s shoulders so that the weight is evenly distributed. That is the kind of yoke Jesus Christ asks us all to wear. The question is whether we are willing to wear it, however long and wearily we may be asked to carry it.

Paul’s Words and Jesus’ Actions

Paul used the noun chrestotos to denote what he meant by this fruit of the Spirit, kindness. In the majestic words of 1 Corinthians 13:4, he expressed a similar idea: "Love is kind." Then he elaborates: "Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful." Sometimes the word is translated as "gentleness," especially in the King James Version. The Roman Catholic Rheims Version uses "sweetness." Old wine is chrestos, mellow.

In Mark’s Gospel (5:21-45), there are two brief stories woven together in an unusual way that show just how Jesus dealt with people in the kindliest way. The leader of a local synagogue had come begging Jesus to heal his twelve year old daughter who was dying. While they were on the way to the man’s house, a woman suffering from a hemorrhage that had lasted for years crept through the tightly packed crowd and touched Jesus’ garment. Immediately he stopped and asked who had touched him. When the woman identified herself, he said to her gently, "Daughter, your faith has made you well." Then he went on his way to heal the dying child.

Arriving at the home, he had to deal with two different groups of people already mourning the child’s death. One group wanted the father to trouble Jesus no further. Others had already begun the weeping and wailing typical of that culture’s way of mourning. In his inimitable kindness, Jesus ignored them both. Approaching her bedside, he simple took the girl by the hand and gently said, ‘Little girl, get up." And she did.

In a society where taboos prevented any Jewish man from touching a bleeding woman or a dead body, Jesus acted with the revolutionary kindness. He gave both of the woman and the girl their lives back, redeeming them there and then.

If we look closely at all his healing miracles, they follow much the same pattern. It was the most natural thing in the world for him to treat the lowliest folk that way. He had a kindly disposition and he showed it in his contacts with people. Can we do any less?

Modern Occasions for Kindness

Debates about the details of biblical scholarship frequently deteriorate into vehement clashes between those who adopt different methods of interpretation or hold different interpretations of the same passage. Respect for each other’s point of view vanishes. Sharply honed arguments slide into angry berating and dismissive tongue-lashing. A graduate seminar in a university may deteriorate in to such a confrontation, but one does not look for such behavior in open discussion in a congregational setting. Unfortunately, it has become particularly evident in the most modern medium of communication - e-mail. A new definition of an old word has come into the language to describe such exchanges: "flaming."

The sound-bites of scholars or news analysts on television panels often lead to this kind of disrespectful confrontation too. Such controversy may characteristic of television as entertainment. Conflict makes the story. Putting another person down or denigrating her sincerely held argument is the very opposite of kindness as Paul thought of it. The most recent editions of dictionaries include a word for it: "dissing." It is an abbreviation of the word "disrespect," says The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. That is somethng people from minority groups know a lot about.

A Life-saving Kindness

One day, when two freshman in the same high school class, walked home on opposite sides of the street. One of them, named Kyle, was carrying all of his books. His classmate Jason thought to himself, "Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd." With a weekend planned - parties and a football game with a friend the next afternoon - Jason shrugged his shoulders and went on.

As Kyle made his way home, a bunch of other kids ran past him knocking his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying.

Seeing what had happened, Jason jogged over to him as he crawled around groping for his glasses. As he handed Kyle his glasses, he noticed a tear and a terrible sadness in Kyle’s eyes. So he said, "Those guys are jerks. They really should get a life."

Kyle looked up and said quietly, "Hey thanks!" There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.

The boys got to talking. As it turned out, they lived close to each other. They talked all the way home, and Jason helped Kyle carry his books. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid. Jason asked him if he wanted to play football on Saturday with the gang.

They hung out all weekend and the more Jason got to know Kyle, the more he liked him. And his friends thought the same. Over the next four years, Kyle and Jason became best friends. When they were seniors, they decided to go to different universities, but they knew that we would always be friends. The miles between them would never be a problem. Kyle was going to be a doctor, and Jason was going for business on a football scholarship. Kyle was valedictorian of class. Recalling how they had met, Jason teased Kyle about being a brainy nerd. He was so glad it wasn't he having to get up there and speak.

On graduation day, Kyle looked great. Jason could see that he was nervous about his speech. So, he smacked him on the back and said, "Hey, big guy, you'll be great!" He looked at me with one of those really grateful looks and smiled. "Thanks," he said. Clearing his throat, Kyle stood up to start his speech.

"Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years. Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach...but mostly your friends. I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them. I am going to tell you a story."

Jason just looked at his friend with disbelief as Kyle told the story of the first day they had met. He had planned to kill himself over the weekend. He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn't have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home. He looked hard at Jason and gave a little smile.

"Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable."

A gasp went through the crowd as this handsome, intelligent and now popular boy told the audience all about his weakest moment. His mom and dad looking at Jason smiling that same grateful smile. Not until that moment did Jason realize the depth of the kindness he had shown to Kyle.

An Alternative to Aggressive Competition

At a time when aggressive competition in business and politics receives such massive social approval, we have developed a sense that kindness or gentleness are weak, effeminate characteristics. Women have a hard struggle to break through the so-called "glass ceiling" into the executive suites because, it is said, they don’t have the aggressive attitudes it takes to get there. They are too soft, too kind, for the rough and tumble conflicts of the business world.

One needs only to see Jesus through realistic eyes to discover how revolutionary it was for him to be compassionate and kind in all his relationships. In no way did this weaken him in confronting the forces marshaled against him. It appears to have made him a great deal stronger than they. On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus stopped to give a blind man back his sight (Mark 10:46-52) and to visit with a hated tax-collector, Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10). Those incidents paralleled his kindness to the children his disciples would have kept from him (Mark 10:13-16). In his prayer from the cross, "Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," (Luke 23:34) he exemplified unbounded generosity and compassion. Whom did he forgive? Those many officials, Roman and Jewish, who had manipulated the justice system to bring about his execution? The soldiers who had nailed his hands and feet to the cross, then gambled for his garments? The disciples who ran away rather than face what seemed inevitable? You and me?

Will kindness work in this modern age when so many divisive factors prevent it from being applied in so many areas of life? Political parties have made a vision of "a kinder and gentler society" into a campaign slogan. In economic terms kindness to the weakest and most vulnerable among us had been denounced as being too costly a burden for the tax system to bear. We are constantly harangued that taxpayers want to have more of their money for themselves. So governments should reduce spending on programs that distribute wealth from those who have more to the less affluent. A flat income tax system is promoted as the solution to wasteful government welfare programs. Such a system would yield most benefit for those with the highest incomes while those with the lesser incomes would benefit least. Those businesses which cannot make it in competition with others would be allowed to fail, not subsidized as being important wealth creators for their communities. Yet those corporations which can pay for the most effective lobbies receive the greatest benefits from the system.

Kindness Works in Social and Corporate Realms

In June 2000, Rt. Rev. William Phipps, Moderator of The United Church of Canada, issued a statement that arose out of an eighteen month process he had organized by means of electronic mail. This twenty-seven clause Declaration on Faith and the Economy had as its premise that because human history has entered a new era of both change and opportunity, this should be a time for thanksgiving for God’s gifts, confession for our failure to use them wisely and a courageous, ethical response to the challenges before us. Such a view of the world economy imagines a system inspired by God in which all parts work together harmoniously for the benefit of all. It is a system where moral decisions guide national and international policies. Such a system regard economics and politics as spiritual issues.

Corporations and communities which fail to function in this manner succeed only in creating greater divisions between those who prosper and those who suffer privation. They destroy the social harmony that could exist when compassion displaces consumerism. They generate greed rather than good will and relationships based on mutual caring. The end result is moral bankruptcy. In some cases such as the Enron Corporation’s massive deceit of its employees and investors alike, it results in financial bankruptcy as well.

A vigorous debate has been taking place about the need for improvements in the provision of health care in Canada. In March 2002, one of the first to make a presentation to the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care was the premier of Saskatchewan, the province where Canada’s universal health care system began. As might be expected, he asserted that a single payer system in which all Canadians are enrolled is fairer, more efficient and cheaper to operate. Fairness comes from the fact that the costs are paid from income taxes. Those who have greater incomes pay more taxes than those with less. But everyone receives the same level of care regardless of income. Efficiency and savings come from the fact that this is an insurance system where costs are paid from the one source with only one administrative structure.

How one person can affect the quality of life of a whole community was told by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his recent book, Living A Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

A devout Jewish businessman suffered an enormous personal loss in a fire that destroyed a textile factory he owned in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Motivated by his faith and personal integrity, he felt genuine compassion for the community and the three thousand employees who had lost their jobs a few days before Christmas. Defying his insurance adjusters, lawyers and financial advisors he rejected the option of transferring his plant to another part of the country or across the world where operating costs would have been less expensive and his profits greater. Instead he rebuilt the factory in the same community.

Special Kinds of Kindness

Such opportunities and challenges may not be open to every person. Yet each one of us is a steward of the gifts God has given us to help create a beautiful, peaceful world where abundant living is a reality, not just a dream. It begins with taking care of that portion of the world’s resources which are within our control, however little they may be. Being kind to the environment is just as important as being kind to our neighbors.

A woman in Montreal, Canada, whose husband worked in a biological laboratory, had an opportunity to rescue a number of chimpanzees destined to be euthanized after their usefulness to the pharmaceutical and the entertainment industries had ended. At her own expense she made a protected home for them to live out their natural lives in relative comfort.

The movie, Iris, tells the story of Irish Murdock, a noted British author who died in 1999 from Alzheimer’s disease. Based on the book written by her husband, John Bayley, who cared for her for several years before she died, Iris presents a strong case for advocating increased Alzheimer’s research funds and political support from individuals and corporations. Ellie Tesher, a journalist with the Toronto Star, had watched her own mother vanish behind the blank curtain of this disease. She wrote about the movie’s message for aging baby-boomers who face the daunting task of providing for the health care, nursing facilities and home support network for parents suffering from what Tesher called, "this silent stalker." She wrote, "Anyone who has seen the future’s possibilities in the vacant stare of a relative knows that these needs are critical, not a political option."

After a successful intervention in the emergency for children following the war in Kosovo, War Child Canada is carrying on two levels of work in a new relief project in Afghanistan. In the field, it works with Afghan Female Refugees to meet the desperate needs of children in refugee camps. At home in Canada, it is working to create a culture of caring especially among youth. Said one of its officers in a television interview, "We have a responsibility as global citizens to do something to help those who suffer from global conflicts."

In a lecture in 1950, the late Professor James Sutherland Thomson, then dean of the Faculty of Divinity (now Religious Studies) at McGill University, Montreal, said that we have gone about as far as we can go in the discovery of what individual salvation through faith in Jesus Christ means. The next stage of development will be the application of our belief in salvation to the social, political and economic spheres of human endeavor. In his Robertson Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1954, he elaborated this theme:

The promise of all economic good is within the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Jesus taught us that food and clothing should not be concerns that engender anxious worry, much less project totalitarian strife. ... There is no heavenly gospel indifferent to the hopes of the earth. His word is that in seeking the Kingdom of God and the divine righteousness all these things should be ours as well. We are therefore to seek a righteousness of God in the economic world not because we want it, but because it is His will to give it, not as a secular engagement, but in the assurance that we are fulfilling a divine purpose. Here lies a vast evangelistic field whitening to harvest. And the time is short.

The time has come to realize this hope of economic evangelism for the whole of humanity. It is the natural product of kindness written into the mandate of all governments and businesses.