“Thanking God the Way God Wants to be Thanked” - written by Toby Jones, 11/22/15

How many of you have ever heard of or read “The 5 Love Languages” by marriage guru Gary Chapman? I have several times, and I highly recommend it. Basically, Chapman’s argument is that all of us have our own love language – that is the way we like to receive love and be loved AND the way that we’re most comfortable giving or expressing love to another. Chapman argues that there are five basic categories or “languages” into which our various expressions of love fall. Some of us feel the most loved when we receive gifts and presents; others feel most loved when we receive words of affirmation and love from our partner. Some feel love when the other is being physically affectionate toward them, while still others would rather share quality time together.

            Now the challenge with all this, when it comes to marriage, is that you and your partner might not speak the same love language. Your husband might like to receive physical affection, while you might be more comfortable with gifts and presents. As you might imagine, Chapman maintains – accurately, I think – that the key to a lasting marriage is for both partners to learn the way the other likes to receive love and is then be sure to deliver love in that particular way – in that love language with which the the other is most comfortable.

            At this point, some of you may be wondering, “What is Toby doing? I thought I was coming to a worship service about Thanksgiving, and here he is launching into a “Save your Marriage” seminar! Bear with me, and, for the record, I can pretty much guarantee that the one thing I’ll never be qualified to do is give you or anybody else marital advice.

            I opened with Chapman’s love language typology, because I think when we’re trying to please God, we need to be sure that we’re using God’s preferred love language. Yes, God has a preferred love language too! And thankfully, God has been incredibly clear with us about what his love language is. He tells us explicitly, especially in the gospels, how he wants us to show gratitude and love to Him. It was in both the passages we heard from Matthew. Did you catch it…?

            God’s love language is not words, though I’m sure God appreciates us saying “thank you” in our prayers. God’s preferred love language is not our rituals, our sacrifices, or our worship services, though I’m sure God appreciates gatherings like this one. God’s love language is the way we treat other people – the way we treat his children. We love God by serving others. We thank God by taking care of His children – especially the most vulnerable of them. The letters of John, toward the back of the New Testament, reinforce this: “Whoever does not love others does not know God, because God IS LOVE!” John writes. (I John 4:8) The prophet Micah in the Hebrew Scriptures put it this way: “God has shown you, O people, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you…? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

            Any of us who are parents know and understand God’s love language, right? If someone says or believes that she loves me, but then mistreats Eloise, that person does NOT love me in any way that matters. If I say I love you but then am mean, disrespectful, or uncaring toward your child, I clearly don’t love you. If I really love you, it is going to show in the way I treat your children, because they’re the most precious things to you, Amen?

            Every single person in this world – EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS WORLD – is a beloved child of God. We cannot genuinely love God if we are mistreating or failing to meet the needs of ANY of His precious children.

            This, by the way, is how we know that the people who unleashed all that terror in Paris just over a week ago are NOT Muslims in any sense of the word. Muslims are peace loving, God-loving people. To treat ANY of God’s children EVER with that kind of terror and horror and disregard is the opposite of loving God. As I’ve said before, the kind of terrorists who murder God’s innocent children are no more Muslims than Hitler was a Christian, which, by the way, Hitler did claim to be.

            So this Thanksgiving, if we truly want to give thanks to God – and to do so in a way that honors God’s preferred love language – we should reach out in love and kindness to some of God’s children, particularly those who are in desperate need.

            If we want to thank God in God’s preferred love language this Thanksgiving, then we should try doing what an anonymous Canadian man did on a city bus last week. A homeless, white man sat alone on the bus with two plastic hairnets covering his feet, because he had no shoes. Another passenger, a real Muslim, upon noticing the white man’s “footwear,” promptly took off his shoes and socks and gave them to the stranger, saying, "I don't need them and I live nearby." He then hopped off the bus barefoot, before the man could even say thanks, according to the bus driver and The Toronto Sun. “It made my heart melt,” that veteran bus driver explained. When reached by phone, the kind-hearted man asked that the media not identify him, because his Muslim faith teaches that charitable acts should be anonymous. Make no mistake, folks; that Muslim on the bus who gave up his shoes – he spoke God’s love language. He was fluent in it! (Nov 17 issue of the Huffington Post)

            Do you want to say thank you to God this Thanksgiving in God’s preferred love language? Try doing exactly as Jesus instructed in Matthew 25 in his parable of the sheep and the goats. If you see or hear about someone who is without food, feed him. If you come across someone who is thirsty, give her a drink. If you know of someone without shelter, take him to The Refuge or simply volunteer to work there. I’ll be working there tonight, by the way, and do you know why? Because I know for a fact that no matter how good this sermon might be, my sermons are not in God’s love language. So if it’s God that I want to thank, my words are not nearly as valuable to Him as my loving actions toward His most vulnerable children are.

            That passage that Sal read earlier from Matthew 18, the one known as the parable of the unforgiving servant, is an absolutely haunting story. But I wanted us to read it because it clarifies what God’s preferred love language is. It doesn’t take a seminary degree to understand it, right? It couldn’t be any clearer. A king calls in one of his debtors and demands that he pay off his rather large debt. The indebted servant begs and pleads for more time, and the merciful king grants him more than more time; he cancels the debt, and strikes it from the record. On his way home, on his way home from that incredible and unexpected moment of mercy, that forgiven servant encounters one of his debtors, a man who owes him a paltry sum. The recently forgiven man demands that his debtor pay up. He won’t even hear his request for more time, and instead has his debtor thrown in prison. Well, as it always does, word of this trickled back to the king, the forgiving, merciful king, and he was not happy. He throws that unforgiving forgiven servant in jail until he can pay off the debt.

            Now there’s not a person sitting here who doesn’t share that king’s anger at that man who had been forgiven so much. It’s still inexplicable, even to us sitting here 2000 years later! We can’t even imagine how someone who had been forgiven such a huge debt, could turn around and be so unforgiving to one who owed him so relatively little….Or can we…?

            Close your eyes for a few moments. I want you to picture a person in your life whom you are still struggling to forgive. Everyone of us has somebody in our life we still haven’t forgiven, don’t we. Keep your eyes closed. Look at him or her – look really closely. Isn’t it time to let that anger and bitterness go? Isn’t it time to cancel that debt? Here’s what I want you to do. Open your eyes, grab a piece of paper and a pencil. Write that person’s name on the paper. Don’t worry; you don’t have to show it to anybody else. Put that piece of paper in your pocket or your purse and promise yourself that sometime between today and Thursday – Thanksgiving Day – that you are going to reach out to that person – maybe by phone, by email, or even face to face. All you have to say or write is this: “I’ve held on to my bitterness and anger toward you long enough. I want you to know that today, I’m letting it go. I forgive you.”

            Our forgiveness of others – that’s another way to thank God in God’s preferred love language. We can’t claim to love God or to thank God if we’re still clinging to the bitterness toward somebody who did us wrong. This Thanksgiving, if you really want to make God happy, if you really want to say Thank You in a way that God will appreciate and remember, go to that person you still feel bitter toward, and tell him or her that all is forgiven.

            We’re entering the holiday season, folks. And the way I understand it, these holidays are not about making ourselves or even our loved ones happy; they’re about making God happy. God is the object of both of these holidays. On Thanksgiving, we’re supposed to bring our thanks to God. And on Christmas, we’re supposed to honor and celebrate the birth of Jesus. So shouldn’t we celebrate both of these amazing holy-days in a language that God understands? God has a preferred love language. God prefers that we thank Him by taking care of his children – starting with the least of his children – and by forgiving those who have hurt us and let us down. Jesus showed us how to do both of these things. Jesus taught us to speak God’s language of love. The rest is up to us. So let’s celebrate Thanksgiving this year in the language God prefers. Amen.

"Developing Our Gratitude Muscles" - written by Toby Jones 11/15/15

Something really unusual happened to me about seven years ago. I was at an all time low in my life. I was unemployed and in economic hardship. I was going through a divorce with Eloise’s mother, when Ella was a tiny baby, I had broken my ankle and leg in a freak accident with no health insurance, my chronic insomnia was at an all-time high, and I was pretty depressed to boot. I got together with a friend of mine named Jim, who was an older, wiser soul. He was in recovery from both an alcohol and a drug addiction, and he had become a good friend, a sounding board, but also he was someone who would kick me in the fanny when I needed it.

            We were having a conversation  - or more accurately – I was whining about my many sorrows and disappointments. I was going over and over my litany of laments – the divorce, my unemployment, my financial burdens, my lack of health insurance, my chronic insomnia, and on and on and on. And when I ran out of breath and he had run out of patience, he said, “Sounds to me like you need to start a gratitude journal. You need to spend some time each and every day writing down all the things you have to be grateful for that day.”

            I was dumbfounded and more than a little ticked off! “Haven’t you heard a single thing I said?” I shouted. “My life is awful. I’m dying over here! And all you can say is that I need to start a gratitude journal!” Jim held his ground. “Yep. That’s the best thing you can do for yourself spiritually, emotionally, and practically. Trust me. Try it.”

            I was not convinced. It reminded me of my mom’s rather Polly-annish refrain that I must have heard a million times throughout my youth: “Count your blessings each and every day, Toby. You have so much to be thankful for.” I used to hate when mom said that with her syrupy smile. But for some reason I can’t quite explain – perhaps I was just so desperate and had exhausted every other option – I tried Jim’s idea. I actually started a gratitude journal. I placed an 8 and ½ x 11 spiral notebook next to my bed, and every night, before turning the light off, I would write down anything I could think of from that particular day – no matter how tiny or seemingly insignificant – that was worth being thankful for. Maybe it was a hug from my daughter, an unexpected call from a friend, a day’s work on a little painting job, or just a moment of laughter during a TV show.

            Some days the list was pretty short. Other days, it was a bit longer and a little more substantive. But as I stuck with this curious practice, I couldn’t help but notice a few things in my life getting better. The first thing I noticed was that I began to sleep better. Having the very last thing I thought about and did at the end of the day be to write down my blessings seemed to ease my worried mind a bit and slow my breathing. And I actually started to get some sleep.

            The second thing I noticed, the more I kept with this daily practice of keeping a gratitude journal, was that I started noticing more stuff each day to be grateful for. I’d have a conversation with someone and I’d think, “I need to remember this for my journal tonight.” I’d read a good book or a thoughtful article and think, “I’m thankful for this.” Each night’s entry would get a little longer, as I seemed to be almost training myself at a subconscious level to pay attention to the good things that happened each and every day.

            The third thing that started happening was I would notice more people each day who seemed to be hurting or struggling, and I’d think, “what can I do to give them a glimpse of hope or a little something to be thankful for?” I noticed a more generous spirit emerging within me. Here’s an example. I’ve never been much of a tipper at restaurants. Whatever the established minimum was that’s what I’d give. But despite my worst financial situation ever, the few times I’d let myself go out for a meal, I’d leave bigger tips than I used to. This really surprised me, and I didn’t fully understand it at the time. But I guess that the more I used and developed my gratitude muscles, the more aware I became of other people’s plights, the more compassion I felt for them, and the more I wanted to help them. The more aware of the many tiny blessings in my life I became, the more I wanted to be a blessing in the lives of others.

            Gratitude is a curious thing. I used to think that people either had it or they didn’t; that people were either grateful by nature or they weren’t. But through my friend Jim and his unusual suggestion that I start keeping a gratitude journal at one of the lowest, saddest, and most worry-filled times in my life, I’ve come to redefine gratitude. I see it now as a bona fide spiritual discipline, a practice that we can actually work at and get better at. Gratitude is like a muscle inside us that either gets exercised and thus stronger, or that goes unused and begins to atrophy. And perhaps the strangest thing of all that I’ve learned about this muscle, is that the best time to use and exercise it might just be during those times when we believe we have the most to complain about and the least to be thankful for.

            Despite my earlier views of gratitude – namely that we were either born with that attitude or we weren’t – I now see that it’s something that is equally available to all of us. It’s just that some of us fail to use and develop it. For 47 years, I confess that I was one of those people who simply failed to exercise and use my gratitude muscle. But I’m psyched to say that for the last six or seven years – some of the toughest years I’ve ever had – I’ve developed a pretty strong gratitude muscle…and it’s changed everything in my life.

            In the passage that Jason read for us, we heard Paul commanding the Thessalonians to “give thanks always, in ALL circumstances.” Maybe Paul knew what I’ve only recently discovered, that all kinds of great things result from giving thanks. Maybe Paul knew that developing an attitude of gratitude changes more than just how we feel; it changes how we SEE! Gratitude changes what we notice each day, helping us notice more and more of the beauty and goodness and blessings all around us.

            The story I presented from Luke’s Gospel about the 10 lepers Jesus heals is a powerful parable of how ungrateful we can be. Leprosy was one nasty disease. It pretty much ruined all of the victim’s life. Your skin became hideously discolored and actually began to fall off, and not just the outer layer either. It was painful, puss-y and horribly contagious. Worst of all, having that disease was something you couldn’t hide. Everyone could see it, and it made others – understandably - terrified of you. Lepers were kicked out, banished from their homes, from their families, from their towns – even from their temples - and confined to the worst kind of existence you can imagine.

            In just a single moment, Jesus used his incredible compassion and power to give ten lepers their lives back – their health back, their families back, their town and communal existence back. With a word, Jesus gave them everything. And yet, only one out ten of these restored, blessed people came back to Jesus to say thank you…only one…only one.

            Maybe those other nine had become like I had become seven years ago – so familiar with their pain, so accustomed to their sadness, so used to complaining, and so beaten down by life, that they’d simply stopped exercising their gratitude muscle. I hope and I pray that the same thing hasn’t happened to us. I hope and I pray that we have not forgotten all that Jesus has done to give us our lives back – all the second chances, all the forgiveness, all the healing when we’ve been sick, all the beauty and love that surrounds us.

            We all have a muscle that connects our heart and our mind, and it’s called “gratitude.” Are we using it…? Are we exercising it…? It’s a “use-it-or-lose-it” muscle, folks. Which will it be for you?

            I met a homeless woman this week named Sonya. She came by our parish house Tuesday morning after spending Monday night over at the Refuge. I sat down and had a cup of tea with her as she waited, with all of her belongings in a black trash bag and a red duffle. She was so thankful for a warm place to wait. She was incredibly grateful that two of our church members were going to drive her up to Petoskey and for the people of the Mary Margaret House up there that would receive her and give her a place to rest for awhile. If a homeless woman in her sixties can be grateful, shouldn’t we be too?

            As you know, I’ve been visiting with many of you in your homes in the past two months. Some of you have been really sick – heart attacks, cancer, diabetes – and you’ve still been grateful. Some of you have had your retirement years drastically altered by having to take in grandchildren to live with you. Not exactly the retirement most of us dream of, but you’ve been thankful nonetheless. Others of you have lost loved ones in the last year or two – life partners, parents, even children. And yet, I’ve seen and heard your gratitude muscles at work, even when it would be so easy, so understandable to let them atrophy.

            I want all of you in this amazing church family to know that your gratitude in and through such tough situations is affecting me; it’s making me even more grateful to be here as your pastor. This tiny little church hasn’t had an easy go of it over the years. You know that way better than I do, but I’m learning about it with each visit I make. You all have taken your lumps – both individually and collectively. But you keep counting your blessings; you keep your thankful hearts; you are exercising your gratitude muscles, and it lifts me up. I think it was Meister Eckhart, that 13^th century mystic, who once wrote: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank You,’ it will be enough.” And it will…it will be enough. Amen.

"What Christianity Can Learn from Islam" - written by Toby Jones, 11/1/15 (Part 4 in a Series)

Today we wrap up our month-long sermon series on what Christians can learn from other religions, and we do so with the religion of Islam. When I teach this faith in my World Religions course at the college, I always challenge my students with the rather obvious truth that this is the faith about which American Christians have the most negative stereotypes. All of us are bombarded with misinformation, both about Islam and those who practice it, at every turn. So if ever there was a call for us to own up to our own negative preconceptions and to fight them off with a truly open mind, today is the day.

            I also like to start my teaching on Islam with that same quotation from sociologists John Monaghan and Peter Just that I mentioned last week. They write, “Many of the great world religions began as revitalization or reform movements of some sort.” Islam is no exception. The prophet Muhammad lived from 570 to 632 AD, so both Judaism and Christianity were flourishing in the Middle East by the time he came around. While Muhammad grew up in a polytheistic culture with countless gods, he also had a deep, personal awareness of and respect for both Judaism and Christianity. But he also believed that both those fellow Abrahamic faiths were flawed and in desperate need of reform.

            The most significant thing Muhammad took issue with in his ancestral faiths was the fact that Judaism and Christianity were not lived out on a daily and hourly basis. Muhammad’s contention that Jews and Christians weren’t living out their beliefs on a regular basis can hardly be disputed. Even today, we have a huge percentage of Christians who come to worship on Sunday but don’t really DO what Jesus called us to the rest of the week. Muhammad loved Jesus and saw him as the most significant prophet in history. Did you know that Muslims recognize Abraham as the father of their faith, just like Christians and Jews do? Muslims recognize Moses and Joshua and all the prophets right up through Jesus of Nazareth! Muhammad and all Muslims see Jesus as one whose teachings were divinely inspired and well worth following. What Muslims don’t believe is that Jesus is the son of God, and the reason they don’t is that they are strict monotheists. Equating Jesus or anyone with God divides the one God into many. So Muslims honor and revere both Jesus and his message. What bothers them is that Jesus’ followers don’t follow Jesus’s teachings. Muhammad felt the same way about Jews and the Torah – great laws, right on track – but rarely followed consistently.

            So in Muhammad’s revelation – recorded in what is now the Koran – he ramped up the call to faithfulness and faithful living …BIG time. Close readers of the Koran will find tons of parallels to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The difference, though, is that the Koran doesn’t really give one the choice of following or not. The word of Allah MUST be followed. And so what we see in the Koran is this ramped up attempt to get people to faithfully follow God’s law – 24/7/365. We see this most clearly in the Koran’s teaching about prayer. While Christians and Jews are advised and even admonished to pray, Muhammad called for people to pray 5 times per day – every single day, and at the same 5 proscribed times: sunrise, noon, 5 pm, sunset, and bed time. And so, faithful Muslims DO this – 5 times a day, every day, no matter what. I might have mentioned in a previous message that my eldest brother had a Muslim business partner, Moshin Meighi. And no matter what was going on in their day – what meetings they had or client calls or whatever – when any those 5 prayer times came around, Moshin excused himself, got his prayer rug out, and hit the deck. I taught and lived with Muslim students in a couple boarding schools, and it was the same with them – 5 times a day, no matter what. In Islam, practices are non-negotiable. They are not optional. Muhammad’s reform of the other Abrahamic faiths sought to get people to practice what they believed, seven days a week. And I am thankful for Muhammad’s reforming impulse.

            We see this same desire to bring people’s actions in line with their beliefs in what Muslims call “Zakat” or giving to the poor. Judaism and Christianity, as you know, recommend that we share what we have with the poor; Islam requires that it be done and that it be done at a particular percentage of one’s income. For a Muslim giving these alms to the poor is no more optional than paying one’s income taxes; again, it’s non-negotiable.

            So I think one of the things we Christians can learn from our Muslim brothers and sisters is the value of really putting our money where our mouth is, of truly, regularly, consistently DOING what our faith calls us to do. That is what all of our morning scripture passages called us to, right? “Faith without works is dead!” James writes. “A tree is known by its fruits,” Jesus said. There is tremendous devotion within the faithful Muslim community, and that is probably one of the main reasons Islam is growing so rapidly, while Christianity is declining at an unprecedented rate. As one of my favorite contemporary Christian theologians, Shane Claiborne once put it, “We don’t really know if the message and teaching of Jesus would work, because we’ve never really tried it.” Ouch!

            The other thing that must be understood about Islam is that it is truly a religion of peace. The very word “Islam” comes from the root “salam” which means “peace.” Islam can also be translated as “submission” as in submission to God,” or Allah, as they call him in Arabic. Our Western media - and sometimes even our government -would have us believe that Islam is a violent religion that endorses terrorism. And, to be sure, there are factions – tiny, radical sects within Islam who have perpetrated awful things, supposedly in the name of Allah. But to judge Islam on the behavior of these sectarian fanatics is no more accurate than judging Christianity on the basis of those who carried out the crusades, endorsed Hitler, bombed abortion clinics, or terrorized homosexuals.

            Yes, some awful things have been perpetrated by Muslims, just as some pretty awful things have been perpetrated by those claiming to be Christians. But every religion has its radical factions and evil-doers. And newspapers don’t sell and television ratings are not raised by the stories of what good, peace-loving folks in the religious mainstream are doing.

            I want to tell you my 9-11 story, because it taught me a lot about Islam. On the fateful day, I was serving a boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Our school was truly international; we had students from every continent and from over 100 countries. September 11^th happened to be the day that new students, new ninth graders, were being dropped off on campus. 14 and 15-year-olds from Japan, Thailand, Eastern and Western Europe, South America, and places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, India – countries with high concentrations of Muslims.

            Now the “lucky” families had flown in on the 10^th and stayed in hotels within a few hours of our campus. They were driving in and dropping their young teens off with us when the towers went down. The less lucky were in the air on the morning of 9/11. Several of those kids would later tell me that they looked out their plane window at 20,000 feet to see two F-15’s at each wing pointing down – as in get out of the sky right now. It would take those students almost a week to get to us.

            I’ll never forget those Muslim mothers and fathers and how angry they were at the terrorists. They were absolutely horrified that this kind of god-less, gutless murder could be perpetrated in the name of Islam, in the name of their peaceful, loving Allah. As angry as so many American Christians and Jews were, I never saw anyone so angry, so embarrassed, so betrayed as these faithful Muslim parents were in the wake of 9/11.

            Our dorm became a refuge for the next week. None of the parents – Muslim or otherwise – wanted to leave their 14-15 year-olds at such a time. So our dorm went from housing 70 boys to housing about a hundred of their parents as well. For almost a week we lived together, ate together, prayed together, and tried to make sense of this awful, senseless tragedy together. As people began to leave, I remember several Muslim mothers coming to me, thanking me, and making me promise that I would protect and watch over their sons. They feared anti-Muslim backlash, even though the 9/11 terrorists were no more Muslims than Hitler was a Christian.

            What we Christians can learn from the Muslims I was with on 9-11 is that we must never, ever judge a religion or the people who practice it on the basis of its violent, fundamental fringes. The Muslims of the mainstream are extraordinarily peaceful, devoted, prayerful people. In Muslim cultures there are people called Muezzin who stand on the highest balcony of the minarets with a bullhorn, calling the faithful to pray. I don’t know about you, but I could really use a Muezzin in my life, to get my attention – maybe even with a bullhorn - reminding me to pray throughout the day. So I’ve decided to do the next best thing. I’ve programmed my phone with 5 prayer alarms each day, just a little special beep – my own personal cyber-Muezzin - to remind me that this IS the day the Lord has made, and I need to rejoice and be glad in it! “Pray Toby! Pray. You don’t need to say anything…just be with God and listen.” I’m hoping some of you will join me in this attempt to do a better job of practicing what we preach and praying throughout the day.

            Islam is a beautiful faith, full of beautiful people. Some of them, to be sure – like some Christians – have gone astray, left the peaceful mainstream of their faith in favor of some awful, violent corruption of it. But I’m grateful to Yahweh for the prophet Muhammad and for his impulse to reform Judaism and Christianity, to urge us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. And I’m especially grateful for his Koranic revelation about prayer and the tremendous benefit of submitting ourselves to God at least five times throughout the day. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to pray…Amen.

"What Christianity Can Learn from Buddhism" - written by Toby Jones, 10/18/15 (Part 3 in Series)

“We can never know about the days to come…But we think about them anyway.”

Ain’t that the truth! I am 54 years old, and I’m just now beginning to understand how much of my life I have frittered away thinking and worrying about the days to come.

Have any of you ever read Eckhart Tolle’s compelling book, The Power of Now? It is a brilliant and life-changing book, which has been heavily influenced by Buddhist thought. The Power of Now argues that, while we may like to think that we control our minds, the truth is that our minds actually control us. Buddhists and Hindus are in complete agreement on this, on our minds being pretty much out of our control! And the Buddha tells us that the particular way our minds control us is by filling our heads with both regrets about the past and worries about the future – past regret and future worry. And as long as our minds are stuck on the past and future, the one place we can’t be is “here.” Our bodies and physical selves may be “here,” but our minds can be in so many other places. And whenever our minds are somewhere other than right here, right now, where our bodies are, we are missing out. As a good friend of mine once told me in his inimitable Brooklyn NY accent, “Tobes, you know what your problem is? You got one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and you’re just pissing all over the present!” If we’re not here – really here in the present – once it is past - is something we can never, ever get back.

As we continue our series on what Christians can learn from other religions, I want you to know that it has been the teachings of the Buddha that have helped me begin to get a better handle on this tricky business of time and the way my churning mind focuses on everything but the present. Much like the their Hindu forbearers, Buddhists believe that the human mind – and the stuff we allow ourselves to think about - is our biggest problem when it comes to living fully in the present, the way God intended us to live.

Jesus, like the Buddha, taught that we shouldn’t worry about the future. He said the each day has enough troubles and challenges of its own. But you know as well as I do, especially if you’re a worrier, that somebody telling you “not to worry” - even if that somebody is Jesus or Buddha - is a little like telling someone not to picture a pink elephant. It can almost do more harm than good.

Fortunately, neither Jesus nor Buddha stopped at just telling us not to worry or not to think about the future. They both gave us some tools to help us in this struggle with our minds, ways we can be more present. The Buddha introduced his followers to a practice called “mindfulness.” In this practice, one zeroes in completely on his own breathing, on the in and the out breath, with a focused concentration. From there, the practitioner begins to concentrate only on his immediate surroundings, what is right in front of his nose, be it a flower, a sidewalk, or a dear friend’s face. If you are walking, being mindful might mean trying to actually feel and pay attention to each footfall as it touches the ground. If the wind is blowing, a mindful person endeavors to feel its breath on her cheek. A mindful person takes careful, appreciative notice of whatever is right before him or her - right here, right now, in this moment and only in this moment.

There’s a great story about this very thing in the Christian scriptures. It’s the story I presented about Martha and Mary, for it recounts in chilling terms both what happens when we are mindful…and when we are not mindful. Jesus enters this home and immediately sister Mary drops everything to sit at the Lord's feet, to listen to every word Jesus said. Mary takes a deep breath and focuses on what it right in front of her, the Rabbi Jesus. Mary is mindful. But Martha, we’re told, was “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.” She’s scurrying around, trying to prepare the perfect meal, trying to find the perfect centerpiece for the table.

You can see the struggle, right? You can feel the tension and grasp the trade off, right? Martha is playing the hostess. She wants to show her love and respect for Jesus by straightening things up, by making the house look nice, and by fixing him a really good meal. And so soon Martha comes to Jesus in bitterness, crying, 'Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!' And the mindful messiah replied, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about so many things, but only one thing is needed just now. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'" (Luke 10:38-42) Had Carly Simon been around in Jesus’ day, he might have sang to Martha - “And I wonder, if you’re really with me now…Or just chasing after some finer day…”

Now to me the question this story raises is not so much which sister is right and which sister is wrong. It’s more about how satisfied each sister winds up being with the approach she took. Martha is clearly agitated, frustrated, running around like a chicken with her head cut off, and ticked that her sister isn’t helping her. All of her scurrying around and well-intentioned hospitality didn’t bring her any contentment at all. We know how unsatisfied Martha is by what she says and how she reacts.

Martha missed the present. She missed the gift, the gift that can only be experienced in the moment. And she can’t get it back. We can only imagine how Martha must have felt when Jesus left her house that night – never to return - for he was dead in a matter of weeks. Talk about regret! Talk about not being present! Mary was the mindful one; she looked at what was right in front of her, leaving all else for later, for another time. Again, to quote Carly Simon, Mary tried “to look into your eyes right now, and just stay right here, cause these are the good old days!”

I think that Jesus understood that these ARE the good old days, that THIS is the day that the Lord has made…and we are to rejoice and be glad in it and in every moment. Not only did Jesus understand the power of now, but he actually did all that he did in order to bring us more fully into the present. Think about it…what were the two biggest thrusts of his ministry? First, Jesus  focused relentlessly on forgiveness, on getting us to understand, believe, and accept that God had wiped clean the slate of our past. There is no question in my mind that one of the main reasons Jesus was so focused on forgiveness in his ministry was so that we wouldn’t waste another moment of our lives regretting and lamenting our past and our mistakes.

The second thing Jesus did in attempt to pull us more fully into the present was to give us countless assurances about our future, our future with him. He told his disciples that his Father’s house had many mansions, plenty of rooms for all of us. Jesus emphasized this in hopes that we wouldn’t waste another moment of our lives worrying about the future. He wanted us to know that our ticket had been punched, that our future with God was utterly secure. 

When we think about these two major points of emphasis in Jesus' ministry, we can see that he was after something very similar to what the Buddha was after – getting his followers to be more fully present in the here and now, in this very moment. It’s almost as if Jesus directed his entire ministry to assuring us about two things: 1) our complete and utter forgiveness – that God has forgiven our past and 2) that we have a place to which we’re going, a ticket that has already been punched for an eternal future with God.

Brothers and sisters, to regret our past or to worry about our future is not only a colossal waste of time and energy; it is also a complete dismissal of Jesus’ cross and resurrection. Jesus’ entire life AND death were aimed at getting us – his beloved children – to live in the present with joy, passion, and gratitude. Maybe if we can accept and trust these two central thrusts of Jesus’ ministry – that our past has been forgiven and that our future with God has been secured – maybe then we can open the door to the truly amazing present. Maybe if we can practice -on a daily and even hourly basis - what the Buddha called “mindfulness,” maybe then we will “stay right here…for THESE ARE the good old days!”

"What Christianity Can Learn from Hinduism" - written by Toby Jones, 10/11/15 (Part 2 in Series)

Last week, I noted Mahatma Gandhi’s summary of the religion of Hinduism: “To learn to see the Lord in ALL creatures and then act accordingly.” I love that synopsis, and I happen to think that if we could hear from Jesus on the subject, he’d be 100% comfortable with those exact same words summarizing the essence of his yoke, his teaching, his gospel.

            Today, I want us to look more closely at what is behind Gandhi’s words, or perhaps, better put, what is underneath his definition of Hinduism. To understand Hinduism and its purpose, we need to begin by understanding the Hindu concept of Brahman and Atman.

            Hindus believe in one God in many manifestations or forms. Their God - with a capital G – is Brahman. But Hindus also believe that each and every creature has, at the very core of our being – a piece, a sliver, a flame of God. It is called the Atman. So deep down in our heart and soul is a piece of God Himself, that is always there and always will be there.

            Does any of this sound familiar…God giving us all a part or piece of him, to live forever inside us. God making us in his own image, imprinting on our hearts his own self? In this morning’s passage from John 14, which Helen read, Jesus said,

           

            “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor        to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world    cannot accept God, because it neither sees nor knows God. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not     leave you as orphans; I will come to you…On that day you will   realize that I am in my Father, and you are   in me, and I am in you.

            What a great concept - that God lives and dwells within us! And by the way, did you know that Hinduism is more than 3000 years older than Christianity? So this concept of a God who dwells inside human hearts was NOT Jesus’ idea. This notion of an Atman was around way before Jesus, another reason we ought to be a bit more humble about our faith and a bit more respectful of other faiths.

            So Hindus believe in this Atman, this particular manifestation of God that abides in every living creature. But what I think is even cooler is the fact Hindus also believe that this Atman – while it never goes away – does get covered up, buried, squelched by all the crap that we put and allow into our lives.  Huston Smith puts it this way:

            “The Eternal Atman is buried within us, under an almost      impenetrable mass of distractions, delusions, and self-serving         instincts that comprise our surface selves. A chimney,” continues Smith, “can be covered with dust, dirt, and mud to the point where            no light pierces it at all. The human project, according to Hindu     philosophy, therefore, is to clean one’s chimney, to uncover that           buried light within – the Atman - so that it may radiate fully.”

            This, then, in essence, is what the spiritual journey of every Hindu is about – clearing off the dust that covers our Atman, the sliver of the Divine within. (Didn’t Jesus say something about not letting the light that he put in our lives get covered up or hidden under a bushel?) For some, ash might take the form of material possessions; or it could be ash that is produced by all the technology we expose ourselves to, or the damaging relationships. The ash on our Atman could be produced by drug and alcohol use; or by any of the countless things we allow to poison our minds and bodies. But guess what Hindus believe to be the worst atman burier of all?  The mind. The mind is the most likely force that will bury the Atman in all those incessant thoughts we allow to run around up there.

            Hindus often describe the mind as a “drunken, crazed monkey, cavorting about in its cage.” One Hindu teacher wrote, “I tell my hand to rise and it obeys. I tell my mind to be still and it mocks my command.”

            So every Hindu practice is aimed at doing the same thing; freeing the Atman, allowing its light to shine. And since the mind is the biggest barrier to that happening, Hindu practices are about trying to clear the mind, trying to shut down this raging producer of ash. Have you ever noticed how much garbage runs around in your mind? How much worry and regret and fear. It’s non-stop. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that virtually all Hindu religious practices are aimed at quieting the mind, silencing all the other voices, so that the voice of the Atman – the voice of God – can finally be heard.

            This is one of the reasons our yoga studios are so full and our churches are so empty. Yoga may seem to you like a form of physical exercise and stretching. But the very word “yoga” means unity; it’s one of the many Hindu disciplines designed to reunite the Atman with the Brahman. In yoga, the practitioner gets quiet, both outside and inside. For it is only out of the silence that God can speak.

            We should know plenty about this from our own Christian tradition. We remember Elijah in I Kings 19, right? He so wanted and needed to hear from God. He begged God to speak to him. An earthquake came but God wasn’t in the earthquake; a raging fire came but God wasn’t in the fire; a huge hurricane wind blew but God wasn’t in the wind. And after the wind, a still small voice. It was only in the silence that Elijah could hear the still small voice, the gentle whisper of God.

            How hard it is for us to be still and stay still…How difficult it is for us to enter silence and abide there. Our lives have become so accustomed to noise that silence scares us. Our worship services – yes, even here – have become so filled with noise in the form of words and readings and songs and sermons. Where has all the silence gone? When does God get to speak…?

            This brings me to the second thing that we Christians need to learn from our Hindu brothers and sisters. I think we need to learn how to pray all over again and pray more like Hindus pray. When Hindus pray they don’t talk – not even silently, in their heads. Hindus seek to empty their minds when they pray – not fill them with requests and needs and all manner of things they want God or Brahman to know about.

            Hindus meditate and do the hard, hard work of creating silence –without and within – and then staying there. There are no shortcuts for quieting one’s mind – that raging monkey we talked about before. If you really want to get all the ash, all the crap off your Atman, that real presence of the Divine in you, you’ve got to sit quietly and listen…Listen.

            It’s a shame that we have to turn to Hindu’s to learn how to pray, to learn the value of being silent and keeping still. I’m reminded of one of my favorite stories about Mother Teresa, a Christian who knows how to pray. Toward the end of his life, Peter Jennings interviewed Mother Teresa and asked, “When you pray, Mother Teresa, what do you say…?” That diminutive little giant of the Christian faith scrunched up her wrinkled face, gave Mr. Jennings a confused look, and said, “Say…? Say? I don’t say anything when I pray. I listen. I listen.”

            I believe her. I believe that she spent a huge portion of her life in silence, listening for God and His still, small voice, AND, because of all that listening, that tiny woman was able to do some HUGE things! We Christians need to reconnect with our own tradition of stillness and silence. We should know a little something about “be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) We should know something about not filling our prayer time with words – be they spoken out loud or silently in our heads. What was it Jesus said in our morning gospel passage?

            And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites…  Do not keep on      babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of    their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

It’s time we started to listen in our prayers. It’s time we started trusting that God already knows what we want and need. Prayer is not so much about God hearing from us; true prayer is about us hearing from God. It is about us getting quiet enough and still enough and unplugged enough to hear God.

            Tony Campolo, one of my favorite Christian speakers of all time – who will be speaking up in Petoskey later this month – once compared the way we pray and the way it must make God feel to a one-sided phone conversation. Joan answers the phone and hands it to her husband Tom, saying, “It’s for you.” Tom picks it up. “Oh, hey, Josh…Yeah, I’ve been busy. Work is crazy, non-stop. The kids are going in a million directions and it seems I’m running a chauffer service. All the church stuff is really ramping up. So busy. I’ve been traveling a lot too. There’s just no time for anything…Ok, I’ll talk to you later, man.” Tom hangs up and says, “Man, Josh sure doesn’t say very much.” Joan replies, “How could he? You never gave him a chance! You talked non-stop.” Campolo says that most Christians pray that very same way. We never shut up. We allow no room for God. For us, prayer has become, truly, a one-way conversation, and yet, we complain that God never speaks to us nor answers our prayers.

Hinduism is a beautiful, beautiful faith. It has been around far longer than Christianity and it has much to teach us. Jesus and his teachings were clearly and heavily influenced by Hinduism, certainly in the two areas we looked at this morning. I thank God for Hinduism and what it has taught me, and the way that studying its principles has made me a better Christian. Amen.

"Toward a More Respectful Christianity" - part one of a series on "What Christianity Can Learn from Other Religions" by Toby Jones, 10/4/15

Today is World Communion Sunday, a day designed for us to remember and celebrate the fact that all people all over the world are God’s precious children. This first Sunday of October we are reminded that people in every country and every land are loved by God, whether they are Christian or not and, therefore, they should be loved by us as well.

            Last Sunday, you may remember, that I mentioned my late father and his reluctance to accept the possibility of non-Christians attending God’s heavenly party someday. I want to mention dad again, but this time in the context of just how much the world has changed from his generation to mine.

             In dad’s generation - and in those generations previous to his here in America - it was entirely possible – and actually quite likely – to live all of one’s life - 82 years in dad’s case - without ever speaking to or encountering a real living, breathing Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. To dad, and to most folks of his generation, people of other religions were “foreigners” in the truest sense of that word. People of other religions and cultures weren’t people that my dad’s generation ever had to deal with in any personal way. Muslims and Hindus were people dad saw on Fox News or read about in distant National Geographic articles.

            But my life and the lives of those in my generation have been very different from that of my father. My older brother, for instance, had a Muslim business partner for years, who became a dear and trusted friend. I had Muslim and Hindu professors in both college and seminary. I taught students in three different prep schools from every major religion. One of the prep schools in which I served was over 70% Jewish. In another boarding school, I had Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Buddhist students living on the same dorm floor with me, sitting side by side in my English classroom. People in my and my daughter’s generations have Facebook friends and regular skype chats with people half way around the globe. If Eloise grows up to attend a school like University of Michigan, she’ll have Jains and Sikhs on her dorm floor. She’ll have sorority sisters who are Buddhist and Muslim and close friends from countries my father had probably never even heard of.

            Friends, the world has shrunk. It truly is a global village we live in, and most people who are under 55 don’t see or experience the world anything like my father and his generation did. It was one thing to say that Jesus was the “only way” in 1950’s, 60’s, or 70’s America. It is an entirely different matter to make that claim in 2015. For in taking such an exclusivist approach, Christians now would be condemning our own friends, our neighbors, our professors and our college roommates, and that is something that fewer and fewer people are willing to do.

            And maybe – just maybe - that has a little something to do with the fact  - the FACT – that the average age now in Christian churches in this country, across denominational lines, is almost 70 years old, the very age one would have to be to have lived that much of life without regular, first-hand exposure to people – real, wonderful, thoughtful people – of other religions.

            It seems to me that we Christians have a good ways to go in terms of offering respect to other religions and those who practice them. One of the reasons we might not be as respectful as we could or should be is that we don’t know very much about other faiths, do we? Many of us, like my father, simply lack personal experience with other faiths and those who practice them. And, of course, it doesn’t help that so many Christians continue to make an exclusivist claim on religious truth….ie “Jesus is the only way.” My own opinion is that the longer we in the Christian church cling to the claim of Jesus being the only way, the sooner we will preside over our own extinction. There just aren’t that many people around – particularly young people - who are still willing to believe in, much less worship, a God who would condemn 2/3rds of the people on this planet.

            So it seems to me that World Communion Sunday 2015 is the perfect opportunity to begin to explore and celebrate both what the other religions of the world have to offer us and what they share in common with us. In each of the next four Sundays, I’m going to introduce you to one of the other major world religions to see what we might learn from them. Not only am I hoping that you will come for this exciting series, but that you will invite your younger, non-church going friends, who will probably be pretty excited to learn that your little church is doing something like this.

            But for the rest of our time this morning, I’d like to point out just two of the most important things that all of the great religions share.

            The first thing that is shared by all five of the great religions of the world is a commitment to taking care of the weak and vulnerable of society – the poor, the widow, the sick, the hungry, and the outcast. We know, of course, that Jesus said that whatever we do to the least of these – God’s children – we do also to him. Mother Teresa took this so seriously, that she actually believed that when she picked up a starving child from the streets of Calcutta, she was picking up the Lord himself.

            Mahatma Gandhi sounded this exact same call in Hinduism. Gandhi himself defined the essence of Hinduism as “to learn to see the Lord in every creature, and then to act accordingly.” (rep) Hindus believe that they have five daily duties, five actions that they must undertake each day to be faithful. Two of them involve feeding those who are hungry and welcoming strangers or visitors into their homes.

            Many Christians are surprised to learn that Islam not only advocates giving a portion of one’s income to the poor each and every week, but the Koran actually requires it! Faithful Muslims are required to give between 2.5 and 5% of their total income to the poor, the hungry, and those in need of life’s basics.

            In the Hebrew scriptures, not only do the prophets constantly remind the Israelites of their responsibility to care for all of society’s poor, they even go so far as to tell the people that God wants no part of their songs and prayers in worship, unless they are accompanied by concrete, consistent actions on behalf of the poor.

            So there is a strong thread in all 5 faiths calling all of us to take care of the poor and of all those who can’t take care of themselves. But there is an equally strong thread in all of the major religions calling the faithful to pray. For our brothers and sisters in the east, Buddhists and Hindus, the practice of prayer is more of a silent meditation or reflective type of prayer. In the Eastern faiths, prayer is more about getting quiet -both inside and out - so that one’s inner voice might be heard. In other words, for them, prayer is much more about listening for God than it is about expressing one’s self to God. (I’ll say a lot more about this in the next two weeks.)

            Our Muslim brothers and sisters take prayer so seriously that they do it five times a day for about 20 minutes a shot. These prayers take place at specific times, thereby uniting all Muslims in these sacred rituals. Those times are just before dawn, at noon, late in the afternoon as work is ending, at sunset, and at bedtime. These times are intentionally spread throughout the day so the faithful Muslim will be thinking about God all day long. I mentioned earlier that my brother had a Muslim business partner for many years. While my brother is a very faithful Christian, he was constantly amazed and humbled by the consistency and devotion of his partner, who would come to work each day with his brief case in one hand and his prayer rug in the other. No matter what was going on in their work day, and no matter what country or time zone they were in as they traveled, his friend would excuse himself at noon and again at five to fulfill his prayer practice.

            I’m sure that many of you – like me - were probably raised in a Christian tradition that was, essentially, exclusivist, that is, teaching us from very early in our lives that Jesus was “the only way,” that our Christian religion was the only valid and legitimate one. I think today is the perfect day to acknowledge what that must feel like and sound like to God’s children in India, in China, in Israel, and throughout the Middle East.

          Those of you who were here throughout our recent kingdom of God series will remember a couple of the NT passages we studied. Remember the one about the weeds growing alongside the wheat? And the disciples asked Jesus if they should get out and pull up the weeds, and what did Jesus say…? Then we looked at that moment where Jesus talks about having sheep that are ”Not of this fold…”

            Today, I want to close with one more NT passages that exclusivist Christians never seem to want to talk about. It’s in Luke 9:49-50. John, the disciple, comes running like a tattle-tale to Jesus, saying, “Master, we saw some men casting out demons! We told them to stop because they were not with us or one of us.” Jesus replies, “Don’t interfere with their work; if they’re not against us they are for us.”

            Jesus looked at the work these “others” were doing and saw the compassion in their healing, the kindness in their concern for those who are suffering, and says, “Don’t stop them nor interfere with them. Their work resembles our work. They are not against us, so they are for us.”

            There are deep commonalities in all the great faiths. World Communion Sunday is the perfect time for ALL of us to stop focusing on our differences and to start celebrating what all religious traditions share. The Jesus I’ve come to know and believe in is mighty big, much bigger than my limited brain, much bigger than my theological system or framework, and much bigger than Christianity has made him out to be. When we celebrate this communion meal today, let’s picture ALL the people of the world, ALL the religions of the world coming to this very table, a table of grace, not of judgment; a table of acceptance not of rejection; a table that is NOT about deserving to be here, but is, instead, about a God who has enough food to feed Everybody. Amen.

"Grace in the Kingdom of God: You Can Take it, but Can You Dish it Out?" - written by Toby Jones, 9/27/15

    “During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of this. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. ‘What’s all the rumpus about?’ Lewis asked. In reply, his colleagues told Lewis that they had been discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, ‘Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.’” (Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? P.45)

 Lewis is right. When all that Christianity shares with other religions is stripped away, all we’re really left with is grace. ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, twas blind but now I see.’ Martin Luther shared Lewis’s appreciation for grace in his famous Reformation battle cry: “Solo Gratia!” “By grace alone” we are saved, Luther argued. Other theologians have defined grace as ‘the unmerited, undeserved goodness of God.” Some kids in a confirmation class I led years ago defined grace as “God’s tendency to spare us the punishment we deserve and to give us something wonderful instead.” I like that one!

            ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound?’…Or is it? Well, Grace wasn’t such a ‘sweet’ sound for the older brother in the prodigal son story, was it? Remember him – the one who stayed home, who did everything right, who never strayed from his father’s wishes, while his selfish little brother skipped town with the inheritance and went on a bender that made Jack Kerouac’s On the Road look like child’s play? Anyway, when the father in that story extended grace to that good-for-nothing younger brother in the form of the most lavish welcome home party anyone had ever seen, grace didn’t sound the least bit ‘sweet’ to that older brother!

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound?…Not if you’re one of the workers who worked all day in that land owner’s vineyard and then watched as the boss paid the johnny-come-lately’s who showed up an hour before closing time just as much as he paid you!

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound?…Not if you were in that family that was robbed and probably beaten by that thief who was hanging on the cross right next to Jesus. I can’t imagine they were any too pleased to hear Jesus assure that low-life scoundrel a place in heaven, complete with a confirmation number for that very day!

Careful, thoughtful readers of the New Testament understand that “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound” only tells half the story. For in every moment when grace is dispensed, somebody ends up feeling ticked off or even cheated. In fact, if we are really honest about it, the parables of grace – like the one I just presented a few moments ago about the laborers in the vineyard - tick us off too, don’t they? And that stands to reason, for we live in a world that lives by what Phillip Yancey calls a system of “ungrace - tit for tat, the early bird gets the worm, no such thing as a free lunch, people should get what they deserve – nothing more, nothing less.”(p. 64) That’s how the world we live in operates – a system based on, at least, the presumption that people should get what they deserve – and that system, whether we like it or not, is the absolute opposite of God’s system, for God’s chosen system is based on grace.

So living the way we do in the world we do, it’s no wonder that we sympathize with the older brother when we hear the parable of the prodigal son, or with the laborers who worked a full day in the story of the laborers in the vineyard. It’s no wonder that we sympathize with the family who had been robbed by that the thief on the cross. We identify with the people in all these stories who seem to be getting the raw end of God’s grace-filled deal! But what we’ve got to understand is that it’s only a raw deal if we’re ignoring Jesus’s most important and unique principle – the principle of grace. It’s only a raw deal if we fail to see our own sin, our own shortcomings. That, by the way, is why we confess our sin every Sunday. It’s not to beat ourselves up; it’s to make sure we never ever forget that we’ve screwed up too. We’ve hurt other people too. We have failed to do God’s will too. So in that sense, we don’t “deserve” God’s grace anymore than anyone else does.

In Christ, God entered a world of ungrace, and proclaimed that there was a new economy emerging, an economy of undeserved grace, an economy where, as Phillip Yancey writes, “a widow’s pennies count more than a rich man’s millions, where an employer pays the Johnny-come-lately’s the same amount as his trusted regulars,” where a criminal who repents on his deathbed gets the same reward as the one who lived his entire life for Christ. (p. 60) Phillip Yancey calls this “the atrocious math of the Gospel.”            Like it or not, fellow Christians, there’s another side to the initially ‘sweet’ sound of grace. And make no mistake: if we’re going to call ourselves ‘Christians’ we’ve got to line up behind God on this one. Perhaps the most bitter pill God requires Christians to swallow is that we don’t get to decide who receives grace and who doesn’t. It’s not our call. If Jesus’ life and ministry are any indication, pretty much everyone gets grace, except, perhaps, the ones who would withhold it from others. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable in others, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in us…” (repeat) (What’s so Amazing… p. 64)

My dad died of lung cancer about 16 months ago, and he was an interesting character. For now, I’ll summarize dad’s leanings by saying that he kept Fox news on 24 hours a day, literally! He was so far on the right wing of things that he made both President Bushes look liberal. He spent his life in the mainline denominations of Methodism and Presbyterianism, and to put it as gently as I can, dad was accused of many things over the course of his life. But the one thing no one EVER accused my dad of was being open minded. So about two months before he died, I asked him a question he’d never been asked before…I said, “Dad, let’s say that when you die you go to heaven. And let’s say that in addition to mom, your parents and friends, that everyone else is there too. And I mean EVERYONE, dad. Jews are there; Hindus are there; Buddhists are there; even Muslims are there! What would you think, dad…? How would that be?”

Without hesitation, dad responded, “Well I wouldn’t like it…not at all!”

“But why not?” I asked. “You’re there…Mom’s there…God is there and it’s totally amazing! What’s the problem?”

“Well it’s not what I expected. It’s not what I’d always been taught. I’d feel cheated.”

“But, dad, you’re there!” I repeated. “You are in! So is mom! How can it feel disappointing or like you’d been cheated!”

Here, dad hesitated, struggling to find the words. “I just don’t like the idea that everyone gets to go.”

I think we all feel a little like my dad, deep down inside. There’s something that sticks in our throat about God’s grace being showered on everyone. And I’m NOT saying that I somehow know that heaven is going to be like how I described it to my dad. But I DO know that we had better get used to that possibility. We had better get ourselves and our church to the point where we are OK with God’s grace and mercy, love and forgiveness going to everybody.

I can’t say with any certainty what heaven is going to be like or who is going to be there. But I’m quite certain that as followers of Christ we are called, even required to be open to everybody being at the party. We have to get our hearts and minds to the point that our love is big and broad enough to embrace the folks Jesus embraced – the sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the demons, the scoundrels, the folks that aren’t a part of our religious group.

You know what I believe…I believe that if you are still alive today, it’s probably because God is giving you more time to grow a bigger heart. If you’re alive today, it may well be because your heart hasn’t been BIG and expansive and inclusive enough for heaven, and God is giving you more time to let it grow.

As our world gets smaller and the religious complexion of America gets more diverse, more and more people are asking, “Who goes to heaven and who doesn’t? What happens to all the millions and even billions of people on the earth who don’t know Jesus or don’t practice Christianity?” I find it troubling and more than a little ironic that it’s Christians – Christians whose religion that is based on grace - who respond to these huge and heartfelt questions in the most grace-less way. How can we Christians, who have been saved by grace alone, so quickly and callously sink to the quoting of an isolated scripture verse like, ‘Jesus is the only way to the Father. No one gets to heaven except through Him.’ Trust me when I say that I have memorized those same verses, but I’ve also wrestled faithfully and diligently with the larger Biblical narrative in which they occur, and with what Phillip Yancey correctly calls “the atrocious mathematics of the Gospel,” I have a different answer to the question of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. It’s an answer that seeks to take grace into account. It’s an answer that takes the parable of the laborers and the vineyard into account. It’s an answer that takes the thief on the cross into account. When someone asks me, “What about people from other religions?” the first thing I say is, “God makes it clear that such weighty decisions and judgment calls are to be left to Him, not me.” And the second thing I say is, “But I do know this: the God I worship has a well-documented habit of extending grace to those who least deserve it – the thief on the cross who gave an 11^th hour confession; that day-laborer who only worked one hour but got paid for the entire work day, or that younger son, who was given a hero’s welcome when he returned from his trip to Hedonism III. So if you’re asking me, ‘Will God welcome people into his eternal party who don’t really deserve it or who don’t meet some religious standard that makes sense to me…I’d say the odds are that God probably will. My job is to be ok with that possibility and to live my life giving grace as freely and as indiscriminately as my Lord does.”

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound - it’s a great song, isn’t it? But as great as it is, I do wish that John Newton would have added another verse or two, verses about the call upon each and every one of us who wants to help build the kingdom of God – the call to accept and cooperate with God’s indiscriminate scattering of grace. For whether we like it or not, the God of the scriptures rains His grace down on the just and the unjust, on the saint and the sinner, on the good and the wicked. The kingdom of God that we’re supposed to be building is a kingdom of grace and love for all, not just for some.

So with all due respect to John Newton, I’d like to close with my proposed additions to the greatest hymn ever written:

 5)  The grace that Christ has given me, it is not mine alone

 His grace is made to ever flow, through me to all God’s own

 6) And when Your grace my rival finds, may I not bitter be

 But pray his joy would equal mine, that day Your grace found me    Amen.