I was going to go see Bishop Willimon speak at FUMC Huntsville tonight, but I’ve decided that I need to conserve some energy. As it is, I’ll be at MUMC every other night this week with Holy Week activities, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be able take Good Friday off from work as I’d hoped to be able to do.
The great thing about forgiveness is not just the act, but that the act pushes us forward towards mending and harboring relationships. I did get the forgiveness that I sought last night, and I’m fully aware that I have an opportunity coming up in my life for a far larger dollop of forgiveness from, unfortunately, folks I’m afraid are far less likely to do so.
But the thing about forgiveness, again, is that it spurs us towards making it a habit. We’re made to be social creatures, and as such we care about relationships. I’m trying to be optimistic about the upcoming opportunity that I’ll have for that reconciliation. Father God, give me the courage to continue forward with a contrite heart.
Whoever noticed that we so often are angered by attributes in ourselves that we don’t like expressed by others was quite correct. I blew up today at a person I barely know over a slight that he didn’t seem to intend. There was definitely miscommunication on both sides, but what set me off was a perception of “I Am Right and You Are Wrong” being tossed down at my feet as a gauntlet. Rather than burying the hatchet there, I chose to bury the hatchet right through his rib cage—exhibiting the same “I Am Right and You Are Wrong” attitude back.
Stupid, frustrating, and predictable. Yes, I’ve asked for forgiveness. I hope to receive it.
22So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. 23Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. 24And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, 26and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
– 2 Timothy 2:22-26, English Standard Version
That’s quite convicting to me tonight.
This week’s study focus in Harnish’s Living With the Mind of Christ is about humility, and … that just hits home with me. Harnish discusses the subject in a number of ways, things that I’m still unpacking at this point and hope to make time to write about later this week. The key thing that he noted, though, is that true humility is neither being a dormat nor a license for an inferiority complex writ large, but rather is a focused attitude that is mindful of the fact that none of us is any better than the rest of us.
I’m sure that the ideal of humility is one to which we can all aspire, but for practical purposes, I think we largely suck at it. Yes, that’s why we have grace, but boy, is this ever something that we should press toward.
More when I’ve unpacked this some more.
As many heterosexual Christians do, I struggle with concepts relating to homosexuality. For one, it seems pretty clear that God believes that homosexuality is immoral and a sin. But on the other hand, you have the proclamations of many homosexuals that they feel born into their homosexuality and feel as if they have no choice. Like many Christians placed at this crossroads, I find it hard to deny their argument—because it’s never seemed to me that I’ve had a choice in my heterosexuality.
For some reason, a thought popped into my head this morning: being born homosexual is no different than being born a glutton, or an alcoholic, or a pathological liar, or any other such predilections. Frankly, we all have our own unique predilections to sin; great among my many sins is pridefulness and a need for recognition for good works that do not truly originate within me, but from Christ within me. [Case in point: I weblog discussion points I'd never make at church.] We cannot control how we are made; we can control what we do with our deficiencies and how we let them rule us. Not because it is easy—for it’s truly hard—but because, freed for joyful obedience, we must do so.
Or so goes my working theory of the moment.
I’ve been enjoying working with the Junior High Bible study at MUMC that our pastor, Larry Wright, has been leading the last few weeks. [I get to teach the last lesson on 30 Apr! 
] Tonight, we talked about belief in God, and one of the questions in the lesson centered on whether or not that it was a sin to doubt. The lesson gave the answer that it’s not a sin, arguing that all believers in Christ doubt, and that doubt raises questions that can be answered through study of the Word. Their argument, then, is that doubt that brings us closer to Jesus is not, in and of itself, sinful.
I think I’d disagree. If we are saved by faith alone [sola fide] in Christ alone [solus Christus], and if doubt is the antithesis of faith, then doubt is, essentially, something that separates you from Christ’s salvation; sin is often defined as anything that separates us from God.
I understand why this might not be considered an age-appropriate discussion—this lesson plan is age-appropriate—but I fear that we tread close to danger when we say that all Christians doubt and say that this is a good thing. I can’t consider faithlessness to be a good thing.
23And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 25And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
– Mark 9:23-25, English Standard Version
I think Mark’s telling of Jesus’s healing of the boy with an unclean spirit because of his father’s belief in Jesus is instructive: even in the midst of unbelief, of weakness, we’re given healing as we repent of our unbelief and place faith in Christ Jesus. That’s certainly powerful and instructive to me, a sinner greatly in need of redemption through repentance.
Randall Goodgame writes on the changes that happen to us when we forget Jesus:
If I am honest about the state of my mind when I forget about Jesus, I don’t like what I see. I worry, I flirt with temptations, I lose my temper, I lie, I cheat, I am threatened by all of the vices disguised as comforts for a man looking out for number one. But they are no comfort at all.
I think that, when I slip up, one of the reasons I wallow in sin a while is because I just tend to be pretty hard on myself. Given that I grew up in the 1980s, I heard the “To whom much is given, much is expected” bit all the time as a “gifted kid”. Those who grew up in the same era know what I’m talking about—it was a mantra, and it’s a good thing, but … if you’re of the right [or, wrong] mindset, well … yeah.
So when I screw up—no matter if it’s big or small—I seem willing to fall back into whatever I shouldn’t be doing because, well, hey … I’ve already screwed up, right? I clearly suck and am incapabale of the self-discipline that brings me back to that whole joyful obedience stuff.
It’s silly, though. Very, very silly.
I’m finally back home. I’m looking forward to get back in the swing of things, and chief among them is back to studying, learning, and sharing.
Well, I figured that traveling was going to be too much for me in terms of keeping up with my Lenten sacrifice. While I’ve probably focused too much on that in the last 24 hours, I’m also quite aware that I’ve not cut out time to study. Mind you, as I sit here in the Wintergarden of the GM Renaissance Center of Detroit, this is the first “alone” time I’ve had in three days, but … still.
That’s why we have grace, to make up for our misgivings and frailities.
Holding to your Lenten sacrifice is hard when you’re on the road. I made it, though.
Sorry, too wiped out from the trip to be more cogent at this point. I feel out-of-touch with everything from being away from home and out of my groove. I’ll just have to work that much harder tomorrow.
Of course, at this point, I’ve been awake for … 18 and a half hours. I slept … mmmmm, two last night. I was awake 18 hours straight prior to that. Two hours sleep in 38? Probably only five the night before that.
Okay, now I’m trying to hold a conversation and write this. It’s not working. So … yeah. Keep the faith, Lenten sacrificers!
I hadn’t sung with our men’s ensemble for a month! I was sick two weeks in a row, and then we sacrificed practice last week for Ash Wednesday service. Needless to say, I was really missing singing with the men.
Our group is an interesting mix—the tenors are mostly 40-50-ish guys, with one high school guy as a second. We have a father-son pairing for our two baritones, and then the three basses are myself, Steve, and Stephen. Stephen’s 16; Steve’s probably in his late 40s. Steve wasn’t there tonight, but there was discussion of who had bought out his company and that he still had a job. Come to find out, he’s a Ph.D. in a field that my friend Stephen Granade relates quite closely to … now I have to wonder if they know each other. 
In the Venn diagrams that constantly map relationships inside my head, this is the smallest group at my church. I cherish my time with them, and it’s truly a joy to sing and fellowship with them.
Now, if I can only work myself back down to the off-the-bass-clef E that I used to hit so well in high school …
Tonight was the first in MUMC’s Lenten series based around James A. Harnish’s Living with the Mind of Christ. I was a little surprised by the demographics of the room; I’d put the median age at 63 or so. I was the only one in the room under 45 or so; those folks under 60 typically were folks from chancel choir that I knew pretty well. I was comfortable with being around folks older than my parents, though, for some reason.
The first week of Harnish’s study centered around the power of agape love expressed in our communities changing our minds [and, I'd add, hearts]. Harnish drew on the writings of Philip Yancey, Luther D. Ivory, and Martin Luther King, Jr., in making his point. Harnish also used the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a talking point.
I wasn’t so much stirred by Harnish’s words as I was the responses to the questions posed at the end. One fellow congregant spoke of how encouragement to join our community of believers after his wife died truly brought him into the family of God as he never had before, as he was largely what most of us think of as an “Easter and Christmas” Christian [my term, not his]. It was inspiring to see someone come to now God through His son late in life and to hear his testimony in his own words. Others spoke of the encouragement and love shown them by their wives. I spoke of experiences in youth ministry where kids I mentored showed love to others outside our church community simply because God first loved them.
All the discussion affirmed to me that I’m in the right church body for me at this point in my life. I look forward to seeing what the love this community shows me does in changing me. They have already started.
During Lent, Madison UMC is gathering on Tuesday nights for a Lenten Bible study based around James A. Harnish’s Living with the Mind of Christ. Harnish’s pamphlet has seven sections:
I’m looking forward to it. Our associate pastor felt greatly challenged and refreshed after he read through it; I figure that any pamphlet that can do that to a man easily in his 70s can’t be all bad. I’ve got to do a little reading tonight to be ready for tomorrow night …
Two little tidbits:
It being the first Sunday in Lent and the first Sunday of the month, we took Communion at church this morning. I’d had some things I was struggling with that I needed to repent of, and while the Getting Things Done side of my brain was chiding me for procrastinating the repentance, Communion gave me a great opportunity to set that down at the foot of the Cross.
As I prayerfully contemplated things, something jumped out at me from the liturgy in the Confession and Pardon response in A Service of Word and Table Ii in the Methodist hymnal:
Merciful God,
we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have failed to be an obedient church.
We have not done your will,
we have broken your law,
we have rebelled against your love,
we have not loved our neighbors,
and we have not heard the cry of the needy.
Forgive us, we pary.
Free us for joyful obedience,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Larry’s sermon echoed, in part, what he’d preached on Wednesday: how none of us is ever so good that we fail to need Jesus. He said, “We can sometimes get caught in that ‘Woe is me, for I am a sinner and unclean’ place, forgetting that Jesus frees us from sin and binds us to Him.”
It all sorta clicked for me; in this particular case, as with anything in the world of repentance, I was rebelling after being given forgiveness for this particular sin.
—
I’m reminded here of my childhood dog, Buttons. [Hey, my brother named her, not me.] Anyhow, we lived along US 80 in the middle of Mississippi’s poultry district in the 1990s, and from time to time, a chicken would escape the truck as it zoomed past our house. Chickens, being largely flightless, would end up dead on impact. We tried to watch for this and act quickly, but we weren’t always successful.
One time, we didn’t get to the bird until it had been decomposing for a week or more. Buttons, however, decided she had to check it out. She ended up rolling around in it for reasons that have forever escaped me. I had to hose her off with the garden hose outside, then carry her inside for a bath—the stench was just that bad. It was hard to do—at this point, the dog was probably 14 or 15, and so she really wasn’t up to being hosed off with cold water. I apologized to her the entire time.
A few days later, she went and did it again. This time, I wasn’t so loving, as I was frustrated. She’d also done a more thoroug job of getting mucked up the second time, so I had to bathe her once outside before I gave her a second bath inside. I never will forget the scared look she gave me that day, that night, and into the next day. She was an eternally forgiving dog, always willing to forgive me my transgressions within a half-hour or so. I don’t think she ever really regarded me in the same way after that day, at least not until she was near death and was ready to spend her last days cuddling with us. [Pardon me if I'm a little distracted from here, folks; I still miss that dog almost a decade later. She was my constant companion as a kid, and she lived far longer than we expected.]
—
Thankfully, Jesus isn’t like me, frustratedly turning the garden hose on us.
21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
–Matthew 18:21-22, English Standard Version
Of course, Jesus goes on to tell the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, which is instructional for any of us who hold grudges. But if we mortal men are to forgive so many times, how many times is God willing to forgive? Far more, I’d imagine.
Of course, that doesn’t invite us into using Jesus as fire insurance, which brings us back to joyful obedience. I find repentance to be wholly necessary because the act of forgiveness, when well and fully done, ends up with me forgetting what the depths of that sin really were. God forgives through Jesus’s sacrifice, and then I forget … and, sinner that I am, I fall back into the same old traps. But, through joyful obedience, I can remain repentant and not turn back. I already have today, and that’s a start.
It's all just a stream of consciousness for me, folks.