“What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. “What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you love to sit in the seats of honor in the synagogues and receive respectful greetings as you walk in the marketplaces.  Yes, what sorrow awaits you! For you are like hidden graves in a field. People walk over them without knowing the corruption they are stepping on.”  “Teacher,” said an expert in religious law, “you have insulted us, too, in what you just said Luke 11:42-45

…but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles          I Corinthians 1:23

Jesus was pretty hard on the “religious experts”. He chastised them because they were so intent upon meeting the letter of the law that they missed its deeper content. In this passage from Luke, he “insults” the religious leaders, and they were not happy! They were, after all, the interpreters of the law, and he was just some itinerant teacher who was stirring up the rabble with his teachings and his healings.

So, when he challenged them about their hypocrisy, or even their lack of understanding of the law itself, they were naturally upset. It is no surprise that Jesus had opened himself up to his eventual arrest and execution. The religious leaders did not kill him. They simply made sure that the Roman authorities did their dirty work for them.   

The deeper message of the Gospel, that we are to show mercy and grace to those who are poor or oppressed, is often still lost today. The law that the religious leaders failed to understand was too simple. It did not require tedious attention to tithing laws and dietary laws. It did not include picking out those who were not of the same tribe for exclusion and shaming.

Jesus said that there would be a stumbling block. It was a stumbling block because it was too simple.

Love God by loving others as yourself.

Prayer: Open us, Lord, to your simple truths. Amen

So encourage each other to build each other up, just as you are already doing            I Thessalonians 5:11

We are used to hearing the corollary of the above statement, namely “what is wrong with you?” That is a statement made when we question the behavior or decisions of others. As a clinician, I was trained to look for certain symptoms in order to determine a diagnosis. We check for thinking errors, delusional thinking, hallucinations, mood changes, signs of anxiety and depression, as well as certain physical symptoms that might suggest a mental health disorder. Even physical appearance plays into this evaluation to determine the mental status of the client as they present for treatment. We are trained to look for problems.

I still need to look for problem symptoms in order to render a diagnosis. While that is very important, it is of great importance to look for the strengths of clients. As I have grown in my experience, I have seen that identifying client assets and strengths is crucial in treatment. Looking for “what is right” is often even more important than finding what is wrong. Clients typically know when they come to see me that there is a problem, identified by themselves or someone near to them. When I can also concentrate on finding strengths, and pointing out what I see to the client, I have given them a framework to build upon for healing.

So, be looking for what is right in others. It gives a positive start to building rapport and healing.

Prayer: Lord, help us to see the things that are right with others, Amen.

Yesterday was June 19^th. It was the anniversary of my parents’ wedding in 1936. That day is worth celebrating because without it, my three wonderful siblings would not be on this earth, and neither would I. I am so grateful for their love and commitment to another and to God. They decided to take one another for life, and to do their part to honor God with their pledges to one another.

Yesterday was also the commemoration of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 that a group of slaves in Texas found out that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and by the end of the Civil War some two months earlier.  

I first heard of Juneteenth in 1973 when I began my career as a social worker. I was 23 years old, and I had not heard of this momentous day in all my years of education up to that time. It was a moment of cultural awakening for me as I was working with African-American co-workers who helped me to expand my rather narrow (at the time) cultural horizons.  

So, June 19^th is a special day to be celebrated – for a lot of reasons.  

“Ask the beasts, and they will teach you the beauty of this earth…”                                      St. Francis of Assisi

“Mr. Francis”. That was the name given to our statue of St. Francis of Assisi by my son’s baseball friend many years ago. Saint Francis presided over our pond and garden area for many years until his untimely fall, occasioned by a neighborhood cat this past winter.  The statue shattered in the frozen air, and we have yet to replace him.

I contend though, that his spirit still rules the area. Our pond and backyard remain the home to five frogs, one very large “mutt” goldfish who has dominated the pond since his placement about seven or eight years ago, and various snails and possibly a few snakes.

Near the pond are two birdfeeders, one filled with thistle for the goldfinches, and one filled with sunflower seeds for the house finches, cardinals, wrens, and other assorted winged creatures. In other words, our backyard is somewhat of an animal sanctuary. The squirrels feast on what drops from the sunflower seed feeder, and some unknown critter continues to bring a little gift of abandoned wasp nests to our deck stairs.   

My point here is that we love to be part of the array of life that graces our backyard. I think that we are called, as much as we are able, to live harmoniously with creation. Yes, indeed, in the past my son and I did battle with some invasive raccoons (a story that deserves its own space), but by and large, we love to witness and protect the natural wildlife around our house.

We constantly are amazed at the beauty and grace of nature around us. I think in that small way, we are heeding the command for us to live peaceably with creation, and to see it as God’s handiwork.

Prayer: Lord, thank you for the marvelous diversity of creation, Amen

A woman who had suffered a condition of hemorrhaging for twelve years—a long succession of physicians had treated her, and treated her badly, taking all her money and leaving her worse off than before—had heard about Jesus. She slipped in from behind and touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, “If I can put a finger on his robe, I can get well.” The moment she did it, the flow of blood dried up. She could feel the change and knew her plague was over and done with.                                   Mark 5:25-29

We recently heard a sermon at church about the time that Jesus healed a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years. We do not know the cause of this, but she possibly had some complication of menopause. The point is, when women were menstruating, they were considered unclean, and she would not have been able to enter the Temple. Indeed, according to Jewish law, whomever she touched would also be considered unclean.

In desperation, she reached out to simply touch the cloak of Jesus as he passed by her. She exhibited great faith in this gesture. When she became healed, Jesus called her out. My speculation as to why Jesus did this was one of compassion. This woman was known to have been unclean for many years, and certainly, she was shunned by others as being ceremonially unclean. Jesus wanted to restore not only her physical health, but her social standing. He wanted others to know that this woman was healed. She could now fully participate in Temple life and she would not be shunned.

I think that healing takes place on all the levels on which we function- physical, spiritual, and emotional. Jesus healed her physically, allowing her to participate in her religious as well as her social life again.

The Creator of the universe wrote the rules of healing, and he was teaching them to us as he walked the earth.

Prayer: Lord, thank you for the complete healing that you offer us, Amen

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…                                        Philippians 2:5

My cousin recently sent me a short video from Rabbi Shais Taub. Taub does work in addiction recovery and has a following in both Jewish and Christian communities. Rabbi Taub explains in this short video that there are two types of people- thermometer people and thermostat people.

He goes on to explain that thermometers measure the temperature in the room. They merely reflect what the present environment is. Thermostats, on the other hand set the temperature of the room. They influence their environment, and are not merely recipients of the atmosphere- they set it.

So it is with attitude. We can be thermostats and be responsible for setting the attitude we want, or we can feel subject to reflecting the present attitudes around us. Given the current unrest and irritability of the culture at this time, we have a choice as to how we want to respond. Do we want to set a tone of love and acceptance, or will we be overrun by the anger and mistrust we often find around us?

Prayer: Lord, help us to set a tone of peace and love wherever we go, Amen

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us…”  “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”                                                                                                           II Corinthians 4:7-18

I was particularly struck by the first and last verses of this reading from II Corinthians. We have this treasure- that is, spiritual eternal life- in clay vessels. The most precious gift one can imagine comes packaged in a very breakable, fragile clay pot. Yet, more often than not we honor the package more than the prize inside because the package is clearly visible, maybe even attractive. Maybe this is like the child who opens a present then quickly disregards the present for the fun of playing with the box it came in. We can laugh at the irony of that, yet in a sense, we may do that quite often ourselves.

We are essentially spiritual beings housed in a very fragile body. That body is prone to illness, pain, addiction, and aging, yet that is what gets the majority of our attention rather than the eternal life unseen inside. Verse 18 tells us that we are to see with spiritual eyes, not focusing on the “seen” but the “unseen”, because the unseen is eternal. Once again, we see the paradox of the spiritual life. Our soul is eternal, and it lasts forever. Our body, the clay vessel, will, in time, become broken and ultimately will no longer be able to hold the soul. The soul will seek after its Creator if we follow life as we were created to do- to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.(Mt. 6:33)

Finally, let’s consider verse 16, ^“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” While we recognize that our bodies are literally wasting away day by day (a thought we mercifully relegate to denial land), our spirits are being renewed, because the resources for that are eternal and unseen. God is at work in us through His renewal agent, the Holy Spirit. So, we need not worry about where our strength comes from, we know it comes from our relationship with God and His unseen, but constant work in us.

Prayer: Father, thank you for your constant renewal of us. These clay vessels to which we have become so attached are not forever, but our relationship with you is, Amen

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.                    Psalm 34:8

I was speaking recently with a client about energy inputs. Just like the physics of motion, we need to have an input of energy to move a system away from its current inertia. Systems at rest tend to stay at rest, unless they are moved upon with some type of energy. In the classic case of breaking a set of billiard balls on a table, one must input energy (a vigorous plunge of the cue stick on the cue ball) and that energy will get transmitted to the racked balls, causing them to (hopefully) scatter around the table.

The same is true with our behavior. We must have some input of energy into a behavior in order to get a desired result. The idea is that the energy we expend should result in positive outcomes for us. We trust that the energy we spent will be worthwhile.

The hard part, especially if one is depressed, is to muster that energy toward a goal of some kind. I believe it is true that whatever energy we can muster toward a positive goal is energy well spent. Even though we do not yet see the positive outputs, we need to trust that our efforts will be worth it.

To that I say, taste and see. Just try the behavior and see if the results are not worth the effort. Typically, after making an effort at a perceived difficult behavior (getting out of bed a little early, exercising, making that hard phone call, etc.) people usually find that the effort paid more in outputs than the inputs of energy it took.

Prayer: Lord, give us the strength to take on those hard tasks, Amen

My wife and I visited Springfield, Illinois several years ago as we meandered down old Route 66 on vacation. We visited a lot of the Lincoln spots in Springfield- the Lincoln museum, the Lincoln Library, his old residence, and his burial memorial site. We were moved by these visits. Abraham Lincoln was a study in moral leadership, statesmanship, courage, and a forgiving spirit.

Indeed, I have always been touched by his second inaugural address, delivered just weeks before he was assassinated. In that marvel of a speech, Lincoln stated that the nation needed to begin “binding the wounds” that four years of Civil War had wrought on the nation.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln’s rhetoric here was a classic example of moral leadership. This speech was delivered on March 21, 1865, nineteen days before the surrender at Appomattox Court House which effectively ended the Civil War. The nation was still at war, in the most bitter confrontation this country has experienced. People on both sides were NOT in a mood of reconciliation and forgiveness. Lincoln’s bold proclamation may have even shortened his life since one of the attendees of that speech was John Wilkes Booth. This may have solidified for Booth that Lincoln must die for his belief about binding wounds and finding a way to move ahead with “charity, not malice”.

I was saddened again in visiting this great man’s grave, wondering how things may have been different had he lived to oversee a reconstruction that looked very different than what later happened under Andrew Johnson.

I also pondered the power of moral leadership and how it helps to shape a national psyche.

Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way.  As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you.  God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands.                                                          Acts 17:16-17

 

In this present era, we experience a type of communication where people are talking across one another instead of to one another. We see Paul as an example of one who knew how to engage people. Paul had a message of good news which he desperately wanted to share with people, because he believed that spiritual life and death were at stake. Instead of demeaning and mocking the primitive beliefs of the idol worshipers at Athens, Paul showed respect for them in their search for truth. He acknowledged their sincere search for truth, and he showed his interest in their culture. He walked around the city and observed what was important to them. He did not judge them, but pointed out and affirmed their own desire to know the “unknown god”. The Athenians were open to the idea of a god that they did not yet know, and they had made idols to various gods. However, in the interest of not leaving any out lest they anger one of those deities, they made an idol to the “unknown god.”

Paul was able to use their own language and concepts to help introduce them to the God that could offer them peace and salvation. He did not mock their feeble attempts to placate the unknown god, he introduced them to the God of their need, the God that they sought and did not yet know.

Paul’s approach is needed today. We need to listen, and understand the language of people with whom we disagree. We need not, and should not, shame and dishonor those with whom we disagree. We need to love them enough to hear their world view. It may be very different from ours, yet people come to a particular world view for a reason. It is arrived at due to a journey different than ours oftentimes.

As we enter the heated environment of political rhetoric which is so visible these days, let us pause to understand that with which we disagree. You will read, if you complete the 17^th chapter of Acts, that Paul gained a hearing from the people of Athens because he cared enough to hear their story and their world view, different as it was from his. Let us be intentional in respectfully hearing views with which we disagree.

It is good for our soul, and the souls of those whom we love, and yet do not agree with.

Prayer: Lord, grant us the patience to hear what we do not agree with, and the grace to patiently share your love, Amen.