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It�s an inside out life
November 2005

Many at the parish have asked me how they might grow in their relationship with Christ. I recall a sage of the Eastern Church who gave this particular, and very curious, piece of advice about making progress in the Christian life: �Love God... and then do what you want.� At first blush, the saying seems nonsensical, even hypocritical. In loving God we are not granted a license to indulge our every thought and whim. Surely the Christian life does not consist of one day of worship, followed by six days that bear no witness to the reality of the God whom we love. Surely the sage could not be commending a �lip service� spirituality.

Well, not exactly. The advice expresses, with no small subtlety and depth, the profound reality of a life lived in communion with the living God. The saying teaches exactly the opposite of what it appears to say. Here�s the key: it is precisely by loving God that we change what we want to do. In loving God, the desire of our hearts becomes to act, think and feel in such a way that honors God and manifests our love for Him. Over time, the more we love God, the more we will want to align our wills with his will, with the result that we become more like God, more like Christ. This simple statement expresses what is at the heart of our discipleship: the transformation, from the inside out, of our inner selves. In a few words the sage has captured the spiritual freedom we enjoy in Christ. Loving God is the first step toward the autonomy we all seek but misuse when left to ourselves. It is in loving God that we will want what God wants! It is in loving God, seeking him in prayer and study and fellowship, that we become, not better people, but wholly new people, rebuilt by the Holy Spirit from the ground up... inside out. Real transformation in Christ is not accomplished through the exercise of reluctant choices made contrary to our true desires. We cannot remake ourselves on our own. That way leads only to failure; or at least to resentment, frustration and a lack of fulfillment. It can only happen by virtue of a deep, mystical change in the core of our being that leads us to joy: a joy so abiding that it endures even in the midst of suffering, loss and pain.

This is a lifetime�s journey. Some of us will make good, steady progress. Others will lurch around in fits and starts. Still others will grow only slightly into their new selves. God honors all movement toward him, be it big or small. He will work miracles in us with whatever we give him. It involves humility and openness before the presence of God. It involves the cultivation of a teachable spirit that seeks to be shaped and formed by Scripture�s witness to Christ. It involves the exercise of a sort of gospel-rooted imagination that can seize hold of a vision of the Kingdom of God as described and embodies by Jesus himself, and which we then enter into as we live out our rough and tumble lives.

God offers us no arid moralism or stultifying legalism. By his grace, he offers us the most exciting challenging thing we will do in our lives. He invites us to love him; and then trusting us with the transformed, inside out life he gives us, he sends us out into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit, to do what we want with it.

October, 2005

I remember living through a major hurricane. I was five or six years old; too young to really grasp the full extent of the threat. All I recall were the frantic efforts to secure our house. My parents spent a lot of time stuffing the bottom of the exterior doors with towels. They made sure all of the windows were secured and that all of the loose objects around the house were picked up. After all was said and done, all we could do was wait and hope and pray. Why, you might be wondering, did we not evacuate to safety? Well, there�s no real place to escape on an island that�s only 110 miles from top to bottom and 240 miles across. Short of hopping on an airplane sufficiently in advance, there�s nowhere to go. Your only choice is to wait and hope and pray. We got through it without much damage, which was more than I could say for other parts of Kingston, which didn�t stand a chance against wind, landslides and flooding. As a child, it was scarier to see the aftermath than it was to live through the storm. Up to then in my short life, all I had experienced of weather was Caribbean sunshine and the downpours of the Jamaican rainy season. It was terrifying to look at all the places you just assumed as a child to be rock solid and to have those assumptions swept away. You can only be scared if you know enough to be scared.

The natural disasters that have befallen us these past few months and years bring to mind certain of Jesus� teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, most particularly Matthew 7:24-27. We all look for a modicum of security in life. We put our trust in things that seem rock solid: houses, roads and bridges; or money, wealth and influence; or in the recent situation: the ability of the government to protect and rescue us, or alternatively in insurance policies. Religious or not, we are all people of faith. The real question is what we place our faith in. Jesus challenges us to recognize our vulnerability and dependence as creatures in a hostile world. We go through life as children, blissfully unaware enough to be scared. We really do think that we are invincible, or at least shielded from major disasters of life. The lesson is a difficult one. Our only true security is our relationship with God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is not to say that we should go around afraid of our shadows, but rather that we not be fooled by the apparent certainties of life. Yes, disasters happen from time to time. That is simply a given. Their infrequence should not lull us into being shocked when they happen.

In these unsettling times, there is a wonderful prayer that I say often and which I commend to you. It comes from our Compline service.

Be present, O merciful God , and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Us versus Them, unfortunately
September 2005

It is always interesting to return to the place where we spent our formative years. For me, that place was London, and my recent trip included several days in the blessed city. Every time I visit, I find that the city itself has changed. Every time I visit, I find that I too have changed. The result, of course, is that one�s primary delight becomes not the place itself as it exists in the here and now, but increasingly an association with a prior time and place that lives in our memory.  I found myself walking around the city remarking �Oh, I remember this little hotel.  The front room was where I had my ninth birthday party!� Or   �I remember this restaurant.  This was where mum and dad and I used to go out to eat sometimes. The place began to act as a sort of time machine, taking me back to a happy life lived long ago. The whole city, in effect, became a sort of sacrament�an outward and visible sign of a deeper emotional and spiritual reality that is my past.

I might have been tempted to lose myself in sentimentality, had it not been for the fact that I was visiting London in the midst of the brutal reality of a real and present terrorism. I was in the city when the second round of (this time failed) attacks took place. It was shocking to see policemen in train stations carrying machine guns. This was a strange sight in a country where most police have not needed to carry guns of any sort.  It was a shock to the nation when a Brazilian citizen was shot on sight by police on the Underground.  Although it turned out later that he had no connection to the bombings, he fit the profile: a dark skinned Asian male wearing a backpack. He also made the fateful and ill-considered decision to run from the police when they tried to stop him. All of this pointed to the tension and skittishness that results from trying to combat an invisible and unknowable threat. The enemy could be anywhere. We all felt it. I found myself sizing up everyone I encountered in my travels.  Did he fit the profile? Did he look disreputable? My suspicions were being aroused simply on the basis of outward appearances.  I was violating the very principles of Christian love I have preached about so many times from the pulpit!

All of this is to underscore the pernicious effect that terrorism has on human relationships. Think about it for a moment: in a normal situation, the weapon and the person are distinct. We take consolation in the fact that perpetrators of crimes will not put themselves at risk. We find safety in the fact that there is a point beyond which they will not go in order to kill us.  They value their own lives enough that they are unwilling to become the weapon itself. It�s akin to a pilot on an airplane.  We take comfort in the fact that he will fly the plane properly because it�s his life at stake too!  Suicide bombers make a mockery of that assumption. They violate the human contract. So, instead of looking at a person as someone made in the image of God, we are forced to look at them as potentially deadly weapons, as things capable of bringing death. We react out of a need for self-protection, against an enemy who knows no such need.  They force us to dehumanize not only the perpetrators, but also the wider innocent group (Middle Easterners, Asians, Muslims) of which they are a part. Our reaction is not rooted in an ignorant prejudice, but in the very real horrors and changed rules of human engagement initiated by the terrorists.

Under these very specific circumstances, are we excused from loving those neighbors who fit the profile? Are we excused from respecting the dignity of every human being?  No, of course not.  We must always remain open to proclaiming by word, deed and attitude the redeeming love of Jesus Christ.  Suspicion, distrust and fear are normal human reactions. It is part of the reality, the ugliness, created by terrorism. The casualties are not limited to those who lose their lives; we are all casualties. As followers of Christ we must always seek to embrace the stranger, but we must be forgiven if we do so with one eye looking over our shoulders.

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