Do Not Test (Sermon)

Matthew 14:22-33

            What was Peter’s mistake in this passage? There’s a tendency to think that it is he becomes afraid and doubts. People like to say that if Peter had kept his eyes on Jesus, if he had kept the faith, he wouldn’t have sunk. Let’s think for a second about how that sounds to people we know who feel like they’re drowning in their circumstances, “If you keep your eyes on Jesus… if you just believe… don’t worry or be scared…”

            Those phrases make it sound like it is always your fault if you can’t keep your head above water. Sometimes our choices or other people’s choices cause us to falter, to sink, to become afraid. However, just because those things happen does not mean they are God’s will.

            Peter’s mistake happened before he even got out of the boat. In the ancient world up through the time of Christ and even into more recent history, the sea represents chaos. In Judaism and Christianity, the sea is a realm of unknown dark, wherein life disappears. The sea was unpredictable and could be confusing, defying patterns people learned to read. With this in mind, the sea becomes what only God can tame. Only God can bring order out of chaos and triumph over the unknown.

            When Jesus comes walking across the water, the writer of the gospel (Matthew) is creating a scene to help the reader understand that Jesus is God. Furthermore, when the terrified disciples see Jesus, but don’t know it is he; Jesus uses the words that echo the story of the burning bush. God spoke to Moses in Exodus from the burning bush, saying, “I am.” Jesus says exactly the same thing to the disciples, “I am. Do not be afraid.”

            With Jesus walking on top of the water, demonstrating control over chaos, AND using the words that would have been familiar to the disciples from a story they would have known well, it is clearly demonstrated that Jesus is God. God is present in Jesus. Me explaining all this to you is the set up to recognizing Peter’s mistake.

            While he is still in the boat, Peter says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” If it is you… Peter is testing Jesus. Despite seeing and hearing things that Peter knows can only be true if Jesus is God, Peter decides to set up a test. Peter’s mistake is not when he becomes afraid or when he doubts or when he asks for help. His mistake is in testing what he already knows to be true about God. Just before this story in Matthew, Peter has been witness to the feeding of more than five thousand people through Jesus’ blessing and effort. This was certainly not the first miracle Peter witnessed nor was “I am” the first time that Jesus used words that echoed the words of God from Hebrew Scripture.

            But Peter tested him. Peter tested God. Rather than trusting the relationship he had with Jesus or relying on his own experience of God’s mercy, Peter pressed into asking Jesus to prove himself, as though he hadn’t ever done so before.

            What does this look like in our time? Surely we who are Easter people, who have heard of Jesus’ resurrection, his restoration to life from death, wouldn’t test God. Yet, in this day, it is not unusual to hear people who have been diagnosed with cancer to examine their faith. It is not far-fetched to hear abused women or children or isolated men to reflect on what they did wrong. It is not out of the ordinary to hear people assured that if they have maintained a relationship with God in exactly the right way, with precisely the right words, at the correct church, then surely they would not suffer. “If it be your will, O God…”

            We KNOW the will of God. It has been revealed to us through the life, teaching, healing, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We know that God’s desire is for life, for mercy, for hope, for wholeness, for community, for relationship with every person and all creation. We know that there are forces that oppose God and try to interfere with those plans.

            Yet, the testing of God continues as though God had not shown these things to be true. In the midst of tragedy and chaos, wars and diseases, poverty and struggle, when we wonder why God doesn’t do something, we act as though it is God’s job to prove that God does not want these things to happen.

            Let me tell you definitively here and now, God does not want these things to happen. Jesus is the proof of that. The sustaining of the witness of the disciples by the Holy Spirit through two thousand years is additional confirmation. Our own experiences with God, not what we’ve read, not what we’ve heard, but the truths of our own encounters tell us that God’s plans are for life and that abundantly.

            Oh, Peter. You saw Jesus coming to you over the sea, taming the chaos. You heard the words that you knew belonged to God, “I am.” The taste of bread and fish miraculously multiplied is still in your mouth. And yet you ask for proof. Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

            You know the truth. What more can God say to you than has already been said and done through Jesus for your salvation, your hope, and your faith. The will of God is that you will live, grow, serve, be whole. There is no need to test that, only to live trusting in its truth and power.

Amen.

Unseen Transfiguration

Transfiguration Sunday 

John 9:1-41        

         After he tells the blind man to go wash, Jesus disappears from the story until verse 35. Nowhere else in this gospel do we get 28 verses without Jesus speaking and acting. Instead, we have a man who has been touched and affected by Jesus, but who has never seen him.

            Is there anyone here who can relate to that- having been affected by Jesus’ words or presence or actions, but never having seen Him? The blind man is seeking Jesus, working toward understanding his transfiguration, rejoicing in the change in his life.

            Remember that in this gospel, in John, sin is not about actions. Sin is not what you do- it is what you believe or fail to believe. So the man’s blindness is not in this story so that we (or anyone else) might reflect on sin, what causes sin, and what happens after sin. The blindness just is.

In this circumstance, it is an opportunity for God’s work. God’s work in Jesus is revealing the divine nature and desires. The Spirit’s work around Jesus is supporting belief, trust, faith that Jesus makes God plain. 

The people around Jesus, even in his absence in these verses, are being transfigured by his presence and his actions. They are coming to faith, coming to a deeper understanding of God in their midst, or they are resisting that understanding. Transfiguration, being transformed, undergoing change isn’t easy. It can be painful, frustrating, and feel lonely.

In the beginning, God created out of clay and breath- bringing people into being and into relationship. God transfigured with an eye toward relational possibility, a new way of being together.  Here, Jesus heals with clay and with breath- bringing this man into a new being and into relationship. Jesus transfigures with an eye toward relational possibility, a new way of this man being together with his community.

We can get stuck in these stories because of our modern understanding of disability. We know that blindness or deafness or other physical difficulties (or mental difficulties) are caused by congenital problems or by accidents. We are caught in the action part. Try to let your modern mind go for a minute. This isn’t now, and never was about the disability. Instead, God is using the opportunity (again) to reveal the Divine Desire and ability through Jesus.

For us, this becomes a story about transfiguration- about the areas of blindness in our life, about truths we don’t want to see, about relationships we don’t want to embrace. The tough gospel news about Transfiguration is this: we, you, I can be transfigured by something we haven’t seen. We are being transformed by something that is beyond us. We can be, and are, shaped by something we don’t fully understand.

That is God’s work in Jesus, through the Spirit, in us, in our lives, in our world.

Transfiguration of Desires

Transfiguration Sunday comes right before Ash Wednesday. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday in Lent.

In the coming week, many of you will be choosing something from which to fast in the next forty days.

May I recommend that you reflect on Transfiguration? Approach Lenten fasting and feasting with a desire to see Jesus.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on what we want God to transfigure in our lives and in the world.

Whose Blueprint

I strongly recommend the sound file of this sermon (at the bottom) to you , as it has the transitions missing in the text. 

Easter 7 (Narrative Lectionary, Year C)

12 May 2013

Galatians 3:1-9, 23-29

What bewitches us?

            We are (all) easily distracted (or seduced) by things that are not important. How many times have you lost an hour or three to television or to the Internet and ended up feeling guilty about that time? Very few of us have had that same experience in prayer or devotional time. Yet, false piety can be equally bewitching. We are not called to live lives of sequestered prayer and study, but prayer and devotion in word and deed. Our prayers are in how we live, how we use our time and talents, how we reveal our trust in God’s grace.

            The Galatians were “bewitched” by false teachers who continued to emphasize the necessity of fulfilling all of the laws of Judaism in order to be assured of God’s blessing through Christ. Paul rejects this notion. The law was and is important for those who were born into it, he says. However, God is bringing others into the good news of freedom in Jesus Christ. Their right-ness with God comes through Jesus’ faithfulness alone- not through anything that they are able to do to merit that grace or favor.

What do commercials/ads tell us is important?

            We are all subjected to advertizing- both subtle and overt- that says we are not yet what we could be. We can be stronger, faster, more beautiful, smarter, more useful, more clever, a better parent/neighbor/child/spouse… with just one more product, one more item, one more thing. That final thing will give us what we’ve been missing to have a perfect life. Until we get it and we find that we are still lacking. In addition to exacerbating and exploiting our fears, commercials reveal a poor system of creation- where the only way a person can succeed is if someone else fails. In the commercialized and commodified system, people become the means to our achievements- not through support and mutual aid, but because we can climb over them in our race to the top. 

How can we live into God’s grace in our lives?

            Faithful living seems daunting when we understand it to be a system of perfect and perfected belief. The Spirit tries to draw us away from that idea- into an understanding that the life of faith is one of trust in God’s promises and actions. Neither our belief system nor our actions save us or even get God “right”, but we trust in God’s work of justifying us through Christ. Furthermore, our trust is not in the on-going act of justification (being made right), but in the completed action of justification. It’s not something God is doing that God could decide to stop. Bringing the world into right relationship through Jesus Christ is something that God has already done. It is finished. (Heard that phrase before?)

            Thus, we are being helped by the Spirit to understand that justification, to accept that right-ness, to live into the trust that God’s on-going work of creation and healing serves to help understand what God has already done. Not to earn it. Not to complete it. But to come to see ourselves and everyone around us through the light of Jesus.

Blueprint

            This is a blueprint of a proposed remodel/addition to this church dated May 1969. There is a note on it from 1977 saying that this proposal was never used. Yet we’ve saved it. We have saved proposed changes to a building that no long exists as it did forty-four (44) years ago.

            Why do we still have it? Some of you would say it is because we never throw anything away. I suspect that for years, people said, “We might use it. It might be useful. Don’t throw it away just yet.”

            Even as the building changed and changed again, we still held on to an old idea, an old picture, a possibility- even though it wouldn’t work.

            This is what so many of us do when it comes to grace. We keep our old blueprint. We say: Yes, we are clothed in Christ. Yes, we are new creations. Yes, we have been made right with God through God’s own actions. But we want to keep this blueprint… We want to hold on to our notions of how the world works… We are afraid… and we might need a fallback plan- in case God doesn’t come through.

            Don’t raise your hand. Has anyone thought that before? It sounds so terrible when I say it out loud, but it is what so many of us do. We trust that grace is true, but we want to hold on to our blueprint- our way of seeing the world, just in case.

Bewitched by our illusion of control

            We are bewitched by our illusions of control. When my grandmother died, the rabbi for the funeral home (who didn’t really know her), spoke very briefly at her funeral service. I am sure he meant to be comforting and inclusive when he talked about remembering her and her legacy and then said, “Whatever God there is or isn’t…” I thought, “What?!? Whatever God there is or isn’t…” It is one thing to be cautious about the actions one attributes to God, but it’s another thing entirely to straddle the fence at a time of proclamation.

            I called another pastor after the service and complained, “Who says that? I could do better than that.” The pastor laughed and said, “Sure you could, but more importantly, God does better than that.”

            We have been called, through the Spirit, into lives of proclamation- lives that say “God is”, lives that are lived without fear, lives that are carried forward because of what God has already done.

            When we hold onto our blueprints- our maps and attempts to say that we might need our own power later- we are living lives that say, “Whatever God there is or isn’t…” When we refuse to listen to the siren song of the commercial world or the whisper of the forces that oppose God, when we swallow our fears and live by trusting in God’s grace… we are living like Abraham and Sarah.

            When we trust that we are not defined by our work, our race, our abilities, our body types, our mental state, our family’s achievements, our church’s size, our ability to pray… when we trust that we are defined by Christ and Christ alone… then we have the courage to welcome all people, to care for our neighbors, to work for change in our community, to appreciate creation.

Trust is not about fully comprehending and explaining a formula or creed. It is about prayerful and devotional living- without fear- through confidence in what God has finished in Jesus Christ.

            The promise we have inherited is not that there may or may not be a God who may or may not be working on something for the future. The promise we have inherited is that God who knows all things, who made all things, who has saved all things has included us in that salvation through Jesus the Christ. It is on the authority of this promise that we throw out our plans and live into God’s blueprint- an outline that has remodeled us all into the image of Christ. 

Washed and Fed for the World

Easter 4 (Narrative Lectionary, Year C)

21 April 2013

Acts 8:26-39

The Holy Spirit does not hold to geographic boundaries. The Spirit does not hold to racial lines or ethnic markers. The Spirit does not detour to avoid the people we’d prefer not to see, not to hear, not to sit beside, or have included in our gathering. In the passage from Acts 8, that person is the Ethiopian eunuch. A eunuch is a man who does not have functioning testicles- either because they did not develop or because he has been maimed. A eunuch’s ability to reproduce has either withered on the vine or been pruned.

A eunuch is still a Jew, but may have been excluded from the assembly. Thus, for the purposes of temple life and worship, a eunuch is a man who is essentially a woman. And women don’t get to offer sacrifices. They don’t have standing. One’s blessings come through one’s husband and one’s ability to be receptive to his offerings, so to speak. (This is just awkward for everyone, but this eunuch is important. So stay with me.) A eunuch cannot fulfill the “actions of a man”(so to speak), so he does not get the privileges of being a man… including gathering in the assembly of the faithful. (Deut. 23:1)

Now, in your reading of Isaiah, you may recall a little song about eunuchs with a different tune. The prophet writes: Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.” And let no eunuch complain,“ I am only a dry tree.” The prophet goes on to say that God will give a memorial better than children to faithful eunuchs, to faithful people. It might have served for God to mention that in one or two other places, since repetition is one of the main ways we learn, but sometimes I think God says to us, “How many times do I have to tell you this stuff?” (Isaiah 56:3)

            The Ethiopian eunuch is a servant in the queen’s court, chosen for that valued position because of his sexual safety. He will not overthrow the government because he cannot have children to continue his line, so (presumably) it would not be worth it. He obviously understands himself to be Jewish because he has traveled to Jerusalem for worship, for worship in the community that may not receive him. He goes to be present with people who are, mostly, of much lower social status than he is as a royal servant. The man has his own chariot and copies of Scripture. Even Peter doesn’t have that!

            Now consider this: how badly would you have to want to worship to travel hundreds of miles to go to a place that wouldn’t receive you to worship a God whose people have conspired to exclude you from the fullness of community? How much would you have to crave sacramental life to be enriched by just being close to it, much less participating? How much would you have to desire to know more about God’s salvation, which might not include you, to be reading a scroll of Isaiah on a bumpy chariot ride back to your home country? Does anyone here have that much desire? Is anyone here willing to allow the Spirit to be that powerful in his or her lives?

            And Philip appears- running alongside the chariot. Philip, who has been assigned to be a part of the food distribution in the Jerusalem meeting houses, is now speaking to someone who might as well be from the ends of the earth. Philip says, “Do you know what you’re reading?” and then goes on Isaiah’s servant song in the light of Jesus Christ. When Isaiah wrote it, it was understood in to apply to God’s servant Israel and Israel’s people. The Spirit’s interpretive expansion helped the early followers of Jesus to understand him (and their own call) as the servant who suffers for the sake of God’s work in the world.

            Moved by this interpretation, moved by this Bible study, the Ethiopian eunuch stops the chariot and says, “Here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He is so transformed by hearing Philip’s discourse on Jesus that he cannot wait to be included in the community through God’s promise in water and word. Baptism will change his allegiance, and his alliances, but it will be worth it because he will be drawn, clearly, into the story of God that the Spirit has been whispering in his ear.

            Does anyone here desire baptism that much? Does anyone long to revisit their baptism? Have you held yourself back from just splashing your face in the font- to remember, to clear your vision, to wake you up to your life reorientation in Christ? We trust that God loves and uses people who are not baptized, but in the Christian community it is the marker of beginning and belonging. It is a moment we can revisit again and again- a moment when the salvation we work out with fear and trembling became tangible. We are supposed to crave this moment- remembering it and desiring it for all around us.

Along with holy communion, the baptismal font give us a different lens for seeing ourselves, the people around us, and the people who we encounter outside of these doors- the same expanding circles of Spirit-inclusion that are in the Acts reading (the people in Jerusalem, the people in Judea, the people in Samaria, the people in Ethiopia and beyond). These sacraments, two places where we are assured of Christ’s presence, make us citizens in the kingdom of God with work to do right now. Part of that work is sharing the message that is implicit in these acts of communal washing and eating together- the message that all people are children of God.

When the world says, “racial minority”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “sexually suspect”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “illegal immigrant”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “homeless by choice”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “Palestinian or Israeli”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “mentally ill”, we say “child of God.”

When the world says, “terrorist”, we say “child of God.”

            The naming of our people, our friends and our enemies, as children of God puts us in the position to do the work of Christ. Work of feeding. Work of peace-making. Work of creating equality. Work of ensuring justice. The work of making God’s presence real by revealing that presence through the actions of God’s people. I am not saying we make God real through our right actions. I am saying that who God is becomes understandable through the clear actions of the people who call themselves people of God.

            In a world full of terror, natural disasters, and preventable human tragedies, there are people who crave good news. There are people who need advocates, though they may be in the wrong. There are people who are certain that they will never belong to the community of God- but they read the story anyway. In a world with this kind of longing, how do you account for the hope that is within you? Do we dare to cheapen God’s grace by assuming that the font and the table exist merely to assure us of God’s affection for us?

            These are dangerous places. They change the way we see the world and the way we see all children of God. We should approach these places with trembling- longing for the truth of their promises and afraid of what faithful participation will lead us into doing?

            The Holy Spirit does not hold to geographic boundaries. The Spirit does not hold to racial lines or ethnic markers. The Spirit does not detour to avoid the people we’d prefer not to see, not to hear, not to sit beside, or have included in our gathering.  And the Spirit does not, cannot, will not, pass by you. 

Amen.

Between Jesus and Me

In this week's coverage of the scandalous words of Representative Todd Akin of Missouri (see: Akin, "legitimate rape", "shut that down"), his frantic retraction, and the push from other Republicans for him to step down from his race (not because he was wrong, but because he was public)... I have run through a gamut of emotions.

I have revisited how I felt when assaulted by men who did not heed my words to stop and how I felt for friends who experienced far worse assaults than I did.

I have pondered what I will say to the child I currently carry in my womb regarding rights, women, and America.

I have been angry at the attempts to discuss abortion instead of the very real rights and bodies of women- women who are currently alive, women who (theoretically) have constitutional rights, women who are not magical vessels for pedestals or damnation.

All of these emotions swirled in my mind until I had this exchange with myself, in my head, while driving:

I'm so angry about this. I want to write about it, but I don't know how. 
What specifically are you angry about? 
Being made to feel helpless. 
How will you expand upon that? 
I would discuss previous times this has happened. 
Boring. 
Well, I could... talk about it makes me feel depressed and vengeful when men tell me what I can and can't do with my body.
To whom does your body belong? 
To me... 
What about R (your husband)? 
No, except through my consent and our mutuality. My body belongs to me. 
What about your children? 
See above re: husband. 
What about to Christ- think of your baptism? 
Ugh. Now Jesus is just another man, laying a claim on my body. 

WAIT A MINUTE.

This is where I nearly wrecked my car. I could not believe the sentence about Jesus ran through my head- exactly like that. "Now Jesus is just another man, laying a claim on my body." I pulled into the parking lot at work and sat, attempting not to hyperventilate, and thought about that sentence- several times.

The thing is... I do believe that my baptism into Christ's death and resurrection does have a claim on my body.

AND NOW I AM RESENTFUL OF ANYONE WHO WOULD DIMINISH THAT RELATIONSHIP BY ATTEMPTING TO PLAY GOD WITH MY PERSON.

That's right, Akin and other supporters of fetal personhood over maternal/female personhood, by attempting to abort my status as a person via amendments and rhetoric, you nearly came between Jesus and me.

It seems that you'd like to think you're God- knowing the ins and outs of human bodies and minds, but it ain't necessarily so. In fact, it necessarily ain't so.

You are not God.

You are not God. I am not God. You are not me. You are not a mediator in the relationship between God and me. You do not get to claim that your work creates me, saves me, sanctifies me, redeems me, or frees me.

You don't own me. Or any part of me.

What you have not made, what you have not saved, what you are not making whole... you may not claim. You cannot claim. You will not claim.

Jesus appreciates that women can think. I refer you to his conversations with the Canaanite/Syro-Phoenician woman (Matthew 15, Mark 7), in which Jesus yields to the reasoned argumentation of a woman who pleads for the healing of her child.

Jesus believes that women have strength and that women who do not have or may not have children are worthy participants in community life. I refer you to Mark 5, in which a girl who is not yet bearing children and a woman who may be past child-bearing are both healed and restored to their families/communities.

Jesus understands that social situations may lead a woman to make poor choices or to feel trapped by circumstance. Thus, Jesus tells the woman caught in the act of adultery (brought forth without her male partner in John 8) to go and sin no more- granting her the personhood to be bigger and resistant to the male forces that would shape her world. Jesus gives hope to the Samaritan woman at the well, in talking with her as a person of intellectual being, capable of seeing her way to new life, new choices, and renewed hope.

Jesus affirms that women can handle and do handle many types of jobs and tasks. Sometimes they sit and listen, like Mary in Luke 10, to learn and to be part of discussion. Sometimes, like Martha in the same story, women play the role of host- making guests comfortable and providing a gracious space.

Jesus inspires the gospel writers to understand that women are an integral part of the salvific act of resurrection and sharing the good news. All four gospels have women playing significant roles in the spread of the resurrection story. Not as gossipers, but as evangelists- sharing truth with all whom they encounter.

As I consider this Jesus, this Jesus whom I claim to follow, this Jesus in whom I am said to be clothed, this Jesus whose story still brings hope to me and many... this Jesus is a man whom I am willing to allow to lay claim to my body.

Because He sees it.

He knows it.

He saves and renews it.

Furthermore, if and when there is a time when I feel separated from God, because of what has happened to me, because of what I have done, because of choices or actions... I can trust that Jesus will be with me. He will not abandon me. I am and remain a person to (and through) Christ.

But you, Akin and others, ... you do not see me. You do not know me. You have no claim on me. And you have dared to attempt to come between me and God, by way of my uterus, my vagina, and my identity as a woman.

Do not offer your words regarding my potential child or other fetal life. Do not offer hasty retractions- apologies for having been caught, not for your actions. Do not wring your hands about loss of life, when you are so clearly willing to dismiss my life as being less than.

There is one man who can make claims upon my body. That man also happens to be God.

And you, your ilk, your fellow travelers, your co-conspirators...
You. Are. Not. That. Man.











Good reading from this week for includes:

Martha Spong on Old Husbands' Tales
Julie Craig on To Be a Girl, In this World

Judgy Wudgy was a bear

Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today. Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye. [Jesus said, during the Sermon on the Mount], Matthew 6:33- 7:5

Jesus said to his disciples, "Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, 'I repent', you must forgive." Luke 17:1-4

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law, but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor? James 4:11-2

On the heels of my last post, I felt the need to comment a little bit more about judgment in the Christian life. (Which is different than judgment in the Christian afterlife- though one may affect the other.) I loathe proof-texting, which is takes portions of the Bible that prove one's point and disregarding texts that do not. In my own interpretive stance, I try to look at things through the lens of Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Frequently there is a struggle today in modern churches of all kind on judging and how we are to judge one another and one another's behaviors. If we lived in Calvin's Geneva, the laws of the land would echo the laws in the Bible and we would never be confused. Except that it seems that some people there were.

Whenever we take it upon ourselves to judge the theological soundness or spiritual health of our neighbor, we're into dangerous and deep waters. So how can we uphold what we believe to be the truth (Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12)) and what we know is sometimes reality (some parents do not treat their children well, to put it mildly)?

If we do know and believe that all sins are equal in the eyes of the Lord and that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Lord, then we know that we each persist in sin. (Except me.) We do things that we know are not in keeping with God's laws or the spirit of the laws or within the right behavior prescribed and described for us by Jesus.

How do we speak the truth in love, saying "I think what you're doing is wrong. I want to help." Who knows what is wrong? 1) Is the sin causing people to lose faith in Jesus? (Causing others to stumble) 2) Is the sin separating people from God, beyond by its definition and in reality interfering with their relationship of prayer, praise, confession and forgiveness and daily relationship?

Within history, there have been movements within the Christian community that caused rifts and still do. Some churches split on geographical lines during the Civil War. Some churches divided and remain divided over the ordination of women. Some churches don't allow women to wear pants. Some Christians don't drink caffeine or alcohol. Some churches reject people who are divorced.

When we can clearly see that someone's actions are hurting other people or themselves, we are called, through a Biblical pattern, to intervene. We stand against free will when we have an intervention for an alcoholic, when we call the police during a domestic dispute, when we sit on the jury during a murder trial. Through God's word and the laws of man, we are bound to stop things that hurt other people.

As a church, we walk a fine line of showing love, of using repentant posturing, of praying for our neighbors and of offering corrective actions. In deciding how to handle any matter, we not only look to the Bible, which gives instruction and framework, we also pray and consider how God is leading us at this very time.

If we believe that we can only receive instruction through the Bible, the implication can be that God is no longer speaking. If we disregard the Bible, the implication can be that it has no authority and we may mistake our own desires for the will of God, because we do not recognize God's voice. If we disregard reason, the implication can be that God desires unthinking automatons. If we disregard faith, the implication is that God isn't using us, but that we are forging ahead through our own knowledge of what is right, wrong and true.

Surely, there is a better way.

But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:13

Is that helpful? Maybe not. Is it easy? Definitely not.

But it's better than a millstone around the neck.

Give me a head with hair

Daniel 3:27

And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counsellors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men; the hair of their heads was not singed, their tunicswere not harmed, and not even the smell of fire came from them.

Matthew 10:28-31

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

1 Corinthians 11: 13- 16

Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. But if anyone is disposed to be contentious—we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.

I had my hair trimmed yesterday and I spend most of the time talking with the stylist about how frustrated I feel with my hair. My husband likes long hair (great, let him grow some!) and I don't mind it, but I think my hair looks better in the style it's in now. I hate to grow my hair, only to wear it up all the time. When I go to a new stylist, I always say I have three hair rules: 1) no big bangs, 2) no mullets and 3) nothing that requires more than five minutes or more than one product. I know myself and I know the amount of time I'll spend on my hair. None. (It probably looks like it, too.)

I do shampoo, condition, brush and occasionally blow dry. I ignore it for as much as I possibly can and then (about every 6 weeks) suddenly it's all I can think about. I'm not an impulsive person, but I will do impulsive things with my hair. Perm it. Color it. Grow it (a looooong impulse). Cut it off. All, of course, in accordance with the rules.

So, yesterday, I started think about the Bible and hair. (Which is very different than thinking about the Bible and Hair.) Hair appears many times in the Bible, from descriptions of someone's hair (Samson or the woman who washed Jesus' feet) to injunctions about hair (don't cut the corners) to God's thoughts about hair (He knows how many you've got).

In some ways, the amount of discussion about hair is comforting. When God was with the three men in the fiery furnace, they weren't smoking even a little. They came out with every hair in place. Since I've singed my own ends at least once lighting a gas grill, that's a miracle. It serves to show that God is not only interested in the details of our lives, but that God is present in the details.

Often we think that we have to issue an invitation to God to encourage his involvement in our life. In fact, God is already present, active and inviting us to be as involved in what we do as He is. Many times, we float through life, without regard until we're overwhelmed by life events. We wonder where God was, but God is with us all the time.

I'm not sure that it's really important to God how I wear my hair. I do think it's important to God, though, that I remember my hair is a visible portion of my body, which is a temple housing the Spirit. What I do with my hair reflects on me, which reflects on what people can or may think about a person who says they are a Christian.

There are many strong feelings about hair within Christianity. Ultimately, there's no prevailing custom and we're not called to judge one another on hair, but on... wait, how are we called to judge one another?