Being Wrong About Being Right

The scriptures referred to are Deuteronomy 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 8:1-13.

I don't know who edited the passages we read each week in our lectionary but they often end the selection too soon. In the verses that come after our passage from Deuteronomy, there is a test given to see if a prophet is speaking for God or not: if what he foretells does not come to pass, he is not speaking for God. In that case, verse 22 says, “The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.” I think this part is important. In fact, I would like to see those who say they take the Bible literally apply it to some of their own. Pat Robertson, for instance, has prophesied that the Tribulation, the 7 year period preceding Jesus' return, would start in 1982. And then in 1984. And then again in 2007. He predicted Jay Rockefeller would become president in 1996 and Mitt Romney in 2012. His track record is terrible and yet his viewers do not follow the instructions found in Deuteronomy and abandon him as a false prophet.

And remember Harold Camping? He was the president of Family Radio, a Christian network that broadcast in 150 markets in the US. He predicted that Jesus would return to rapture believers on May 21, 2011. When that date passed, he revised it to October 21 of that year. He retired and his network suffered significant losses of their revenues and staff. To his credit he admitted that his attempt to predict a date was “sinful” and that he should have heeded Jesus' words that no one knows the day and time when he will return. (Matthew 24:36). Too bad he didn't come to that realization after he first predicted things, such as Judgment Day occurring  on September 6, 1994.

In the words of Deuteronomy, these men, and others who have said erroneous things in the name of the Lord, are doing so presumptuously (“arrogantly” is another good translation) and we need not be afraid of them. But this is nothing new. Many, including Pope Silvester II, thought the world would end on January 1, 1000 AD. William Miller preached the world would end in 1843 and then revised it to October 22, 1844. The day after was known as the Great Disappointment to the between 50,000 and 500,000 Millerites. Today's Seventh Day Adventists came out of Millerism. Christopher Columbus and Cotton Mather came up with multiple dates for the end of the world. Isaac Newton said it could not happen before 2060. He later revised that to 2016. So we are living on borrowed time.

Newton is not the only scientist to predict the end of the world. German mathematician Johannes Stoffler thought the earth would be flooded in 1524 when all the known planets would align under Pisces. In 1910, some scientists thought all life might perish when the earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet. Most scientists, though, predict the world will end a long time in the future. 300,000 years from now, WR 104 is expected to go supernova and explode, according to astronomer Peter Tuthill. The burst of gamma rays could threaten life on earth. Presuming we don't get hit by an asteroid in the next 500,000 years, the Geological Society predicts a supervolcanic eruption in 1 million years, comparable to the Toba supereruption that took place 75,000 years ago and may have triggered a 1000 year glacial period and severely reduced the global human population.

But as entertaining as all this mass death is, perhaps there is a bit of wisdom in ending our passage from Deuteronomy where the lectionary does. The point is that there will be people speaking in God's name and some will be false prophets. Both listening to the false ones and not heeding the real ones are spiritually dangerous. We need to be discerning.

One way to avoid problems, in my experience, is to notice if the preacher is making a big thing out of stuff not covered in the Bible, as if God had somehow left out the most important parts of his message. I once had a lady denounce our church for having a headquarters! I'm not sure how you run a national church without some kind of central location for its administration. I'm also sure scripture says nothing against having a headquarters. And there are preachers who get bent out of shape by whatever the latest fad is whether it's clothing fashions or popular games or movies or the Internet. At the Christian college I attended, traditional playing cards were forbidden, because they could be used for fortunetelling and gambling. I remember a book that came out in the 1970s denouncing Star Wars as Satanic. I was happy that my son got into Dungeons and Dragons. When people asked me if I didn't think it was of the devil, I would tell them that the most diabolic thing about it was that to play the game, you have to buy an encyclopedia's worth of rule books. It was however a brilliant sales strategy. Thus it taught my son to make and save money if he wanted to buy the latest tome. And he had no money left over to buy drugs (were he so inclined.) Today he and his wife play it with friends. It reminds me of the Canasta parties of my parent's generation.

The Bible doesn't cover absolutely everything that the future will bring, at least not in detail. The best we can do is judiciously apply the principles we derive from it to new developments. Obviously we need to avoid anything that is harmful to ourselves or others, whether physically, psychologically, or spiritually. But sometimes we just need to stop fearing every single thing that comes along.

In Paul's day, a major controversy had arisen over whether it was all right to eat meat sacrificed to idols. After pagan priests offered the meat to the idols, it was consumed by people, of course. Usually there was so much excess that the meat was served in the temple's dining hall (kinda like today's banquet venues) and sold in its meat markets. When there was a major pagan religious festival, there was so much meat left over that it had to be consumed before it rotted and the beneficiaries of this oversupply were often the poor, who could not otherwise afford the luxury of meat. The problem for Christians was how to act when dining with pagans, such as business associates or members of their trade guild or when guests at the wedding of a friend or relative. And what if they were poor and could only eat meat during pagan festivals?

Now some Christians reasoned that, since there are no gods other than Yahweh, the ritual sacrifice meant nothing and therefore they could eat such meat with a clear conscience. That is the “knowledge” to which Paul is referring. And they felt that having such knowledge made them stronger Christians than those with weak consciences, that is, consciences not able to withstand temptation.

Remember that most of the Christians in Corinth were converts from paganism. Eating at a temple or eating meat bought there could cause some of them to relapse. So Paul said to those with stronger consciences that they should, out of love, refrain from exercising their right or freedom to eat temple meat, at least when with Christians who were less secure in their faith. Knowingly endangering the faith of a sibling in Christ is tantamount to sinning against Christ.

I think the key verses in this passage are the first three. Paul says that “knowledge puffs up but love builds up.” In other words, being knowledgeable can inflate your ego but being loving builds up other people spiritually. Also knowledge is not always accompanied by wisdom. People with lots of knowledge do not always know what to do with it. Smart people can be thoughtless. Being an arrogant know-it-all who simply criticizes others as stupid does not make the world, much less the church, a better place. That's what Paul means by “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge.” I like the way the New Living Translation renders this: “Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn't really know very much.” It sounds like Paul is describing the Dunning-Kruger effect: people who are ignorant don't know enough to realize just how little they actually know.

But it is not really a lack of knowledge that is the problem; it's a lack of love. Paul's phrase “...but anyone who loves God is known by him” recalls 1 John 4:8, “The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” If we really know the God who is love, we will not use our knowledge, however sophisticated, to harm another person.

I had situation that was similar to the one Paul is dealing with. I have a friend who is Muslim. The Halal diet of Islam are roughly analogous to the Kosher diet of Judaism. We were at the Cheesecake Factory and I think I was going to order either pork chops or a club sandwich, which of course has bacon. My friend asked that I not order pork while eating with her. So I changed my order. I could have protested that as a Christian I have no dietary restrictions and it wasn't like I was going to make her eat what I was eating. But out of friendship, which is a form of love, I refrained from indulging in what I had every right to consume.

Think of what you would do if dining out with a friend in recovery for drinking. I hope you would skip ordering anything alcoholic. Or refrain from buying lottery tickets with a friend who has a gambling problem. Or from watching a war movie with an Amish person or a prize fight with a Quaker.

Now Paul does not say that the Christians with no qualms about the meat need to give it up entirely. In chapter 10 he says they should not participate in pagan festivals or eat in temples (1 Corinthians 10:7, 18-21) but he also says, “Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for 'The earth is the Lord's and everything in it.' If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if anyone says to you, 'This has been offered in sacrifice,' then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience sake—the other man's conscience, I mean, not yours.” (1 Corinthians 10:25-29) The principle, says Paul, is “Nobody should seek his own good but the good of others.” (v. 24)

There are two other principles to consider as well. When Paul is dealing with the same issue in his letter to the Romans he says, “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on his reasonings. One person believes in eating everything but the one who is weak eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not despise the one who doesn't, and the one who abstains must not judge the one who eats everything, for indeed God has accepted him. Who are you to be judging another's servant? Before his own master, he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person judges a certain day to be holier than another day and another judges every day to be alike. Each must be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Romans 14:1-5) After all, each person should be doing or not doing it to glorify God. And Paul reminds us, “each of us will give account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:12)

Paul is saying that good Christians can differ on certain nonessential matters in dispute. But it is vital that you be fully convinced of your opinion, which means doing research and thinking long and hard about what the data, including the Bible, says. And it is equally vital that you not look down on your fellow Christian, even if he holds a different opinion.

Some of the issues Christians differ on today are a lot more serious than eating meat offered to imaginary idols. The two most prominent are abortion and how we treat LGBTQI people. How can what the Bible says help us with these?

First of all, abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Old or New Testament. There are passages some cite as indicating life starts in the womb and historically the church has been pro-life. In the first several centuries that meant opposing abortion but mostly it meant opposing the practice of exposing infants, that is, leaving babies that people didn't want or couldn't afford on the side of a road. They might be adopted and cared for by others; they might raised as slaves; they might simply be left to die. The church opposed the practice, though it's also not mentioned in scripture. And as we said, you cannot oppose abortion on the basis of any clear prohibition by the Bible. Believe it or not, devout Christians can have different opinions on the matter. It's not that some Christians love the idea of abortion but they feel there are circumstances, usually dire ones, where it should be an option and it should be left to the conscience of the pregnant woman.

Some preachers have said that abortion takes a terrible psychological toll on women. A rigorous study that followed 1000 women for 5 years found that those who underwent the procedure did not have any more depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or dissatisfaction with life than those who were denied abortions. Again some Christian organizations say there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. Scientific studies say there isn't. So those preachers were wrong in what they predicted would happen to women. According to Deuteronomy, they spoke presumptuously and we need not fear them.

That doesn't answer the question of whether we are dealing with life or not. So as Paul says, let each person be fully convinced of their position and not judge those with different opinions.

Now the Bible says nothing positive about homosexual acts. But it only mentions them 7 times out of 33,000 verses. Homosexuality is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments and Jesus never says anything about it. Some say the homosexual acts mentioned in the New Testament aren't consensual but are actually pedophilia and rape. They say it is better for gays to be in stable faithful relationships than casual and chaotic ones. They point out that Jesus said no other commandment is greater than the ones to love God and to love others. (Mark 12:31) But some just can't get over those 7 passages. Let each person be fully convinced of their position and not judge those with different opinions.

There have always been and there will always be disputes among Christians on issues that are important but not essential. For the most part we differ in what we emphasize and how we interpret certain passages and apply them. We should agree on the core beliefs, as summarized in the Apostles Creed, and the commandments to love God above all and to love all whom we encounter as ourselves. We are commanded to treat everyone with love, even our enemies. And when it comes to our fellow Christians Jesus commanded us to love one another as he loves us. He gave up his life for us out of love. Can we not give up insisting that our take on controversial but nonessential matters is the only option for Christians, and can we not do so out of love? Love is how Jesus said the world will know that we are his followers. (John 13:34-35) And in this contentious world, where parties, movements and nations cannot cohere because of differences in opinion, what better witness can we give to the God who is love than to work with, and to worship with, and to love all our brothers and sisters in Christ, including those with whom we disagree?

Get Out

The scriptures referred to are Jonah 3:1-5, 10.

As chaplain, I try to meet the spiritual needs of all inmates: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Rastas, Buddhists, etc. So I have to know more than the average person about religions I don't belong to. But the inmates who dumbfound me usually call themselves Christian while having a unique and idiosyncratic take on the theology. I recently had one start out by asking me about the divine names in Genesis but when I explained about the Hebrew words underlying the English translations, he stopped me. The English words “God” and “Lord” were really acronyms, he said. G.O.D. stands for Governor of Denizens. I forget what Lord stands for. And then he explained his very different personal interpretation of the Bible. I just listened. I usually correct misconceptions when they are about things that don't require interpretation, like what the text of the Bible actually says or church history. No, the Caesar mentioned in the account of Jesus' birth is not Julius but Augustus. No, Constantine did not determine which books should be included in the Bible. You are entitled to your own opinion; you are not entitled to your own facts. But this inmate's retelling of the birth of Jesus was so original in so many details, there was no place to start. One thing I did push back on was his assertion that people in churches blindly follow their clergy. In cults, yes, but in the average church, I am afraid not. There are times when I wish I had the power to make everyone do what I say. There is a TV series in which a preacher has that power but it is correctly labeled as fantasy. And as we see in the book of Jonah, not even God can make a prophet do what he says. It takes spending 3 days in a fish's gut to persuade Jonah to preach to Nineveh.

What is Jonah's problem with Nineveh, anyway? It's probably that it was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, one of the cruelest in history. We have unearthed ancient tablets showing their soldiers torturing their enemies, skinning them alive, blinding them, impaling them on stakes. One of their kings boasted of burning teenage boys and girls and building a pillar of heads in front of his city. They would often totally obliterate cities that resisted them. When Senacherib conquered Babylon, he burned its buildings and then diverted the river to flood it, eventually turning it into a field. So fearsome were they that, upon learning the Assyrian army was approaching, the king of Urartu stabbed himself in the chest rather than face it. This is the empire which would conquer the northern kingdom of Israel and take the so-called 10 lost tribes into exile, never to return. So this was like sending a Jew in the 1930s to preach to Berlin in Nazi Germany. And the thing that really stuck in Jonah's craw was that God was giving the people of Nineveh the chance to repent. And Jonah didn't want them to. So the whole book acts like a parable and the message is that God is cares about the welfare of all people.

That's a pretty radical message for the Hebrew Bible. More often the focus is on Israel as God's chosen people and usually references to its enemies are pronouncements of judgment upon them. Yet if you really pay attention you can detect even in the Old Testament the fact that Yahweh is not merely a local, tribal god. He created all people and he cares about them and has a plan for them.

It begins in Genesis. When God calls Abram out of Ur, he promises “...all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3) And in fact, you can see the entire Bible as God executing his plan to save the world, by working through Abraham, and then his son Isaac, and his son Jacob, and his son Judah, and his descendant David and finally through his descendant Jesus. And then it reverses. Mirroring how God's focus narrows throughout the Old Testament from many people down to one, in the New Testament the focus widens from Jesus to the disciples to the church to the whole world.

We see this foretold in Isaiah, a book Jesus quotes frequently in the gospels. In the 2^nd chapter it says, “Many peoples will come and say, ' Come, let us go up to the Lord's mountain, to the temple of the God of Jacob, so he can teach us his requirements and we can follow his standards.' For Zion will be the center for moral instruction; the Lord will issue edicts from Jerusalem. He will judge disputes between nations; he will settle cases for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up the sword against other nations, and they will no longer train for war.” (Isaiah 2:3-4, NET) And more importantly in one of the passages addressing the Suffering Servant of the Lord, God says, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:5-6) Indeed, Simeon echoes this when he calls the infant Jesus “a light, for revelation to the Gentiles...” (Luke 2:32)

Perhaps the richest source of evidence of God's universal love is the book of Psalms, the book that Jesus quoted the most. Psalm 145:9 says, “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.” In Psalm 22:27 it says, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.” And Psalm 67:1-4 proclaims, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us—so that your ways may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations. May the people praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the people with equity and guide the nations of the earth.”

One area where we see surprising but consistent ongoing support for non-Jews in the Hebrew Bible is when it comes to foreigners or aliens in Israel. This starts in Exodus, just 3 chapters after the giving of the Ten Commandments. This was their charter as a nation and it says, “Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) So God here is appealing to the empathy of the Israelites. They were recently aliens living in a foreign county so they should understand what it's like for aliens living among them and therefore treat them with compassion. This is expressed even more forcefully in Leviticus 19 where it says, “The alien living among you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:34) Not just tolerate, but love these resident aliens! This is the same chapter and just 16 verses after the command to love our neighbor as yourself. So you should love him even if he is an alien. After all, as it says of God in Deuteronomy 10, “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:17)

This means, of course, equal justice must be given to aliens. Again the Bible says, “You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 24:22) You are to help the alien as you would a fellow citizen, looking out for his welfare. “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you.” (Leviticus 25:35)

Consequently, mistreatment of aliens was one of the things the prophets warned God's people about. In Malachi it says, “'So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,' says the Lord Almighty.” (Malachi 3:5) Notice that a lot of the things fundamentalists think God is especially concerned about are absent, while things they rarely preach about, like not paying workers and not giving aliens justice, are highlighted.

God's concern with all people, including those who are not part of his covenant people, becomes even clearer in the New Testament. Jesus heals Gentiles. (Luke 7:1-10; Matthew 15:21-28) In his parable of the last judgment, Jesus says how we treat the less fortunate is how we treat him and he includes aliens along with the naked, hungry, thirsty, sick and imprisoned. (Matthew 25:31-46) When speaking of himself as the good shepherd, he says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd.” (John 10:16) And of course when the Risen Christ sends out the disciples, he says, “...make disciples of all nations.” The Hebrew word for “nations” is goyim, usually translated Gentiles. He is sending them outside their our country and into the world of Gentiles.

Surprisingly the person whom God chooses to be the apostle to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:8) is Paul, a Jew and zealous Pharisee. Seeing who chiefly responds to the gospel when he preaches, Paul realizes that his view of God was too narrow. “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.” (Romans 3:29-30) Paul also writes, “There is neither Jew or Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

It would be nice to say that this resistance to those outside a group was limited to the Israelites of the Bible. But all groups tend to be nice to their own members and not so nice to those outside the group. This is true whether the group is made up of people belonging to a political party, a profession, a country, a race, a fandom, sports team supporters or even a religion. Studies show that infants seem to very early prefer those who look like their parents over those who are different. Sadly in some families and cultures, this feeling is not transcended but is built on and expanded into an explicit doctrine of racism and xenophobia.

When we lived in tribes of about 150 individuals, most of whom were blood relatives, it may have been a good rule of thumb to be suspicious of those who were different. But ever since we started living in towns and cities and countries with people of all kinds of origins, ethnicities, languages and customs, we have needed to live with and work with those who are different. It was and is vital to the survival of the community and the nation. Here in the US, where everyone who is not a pure-blooded Native American has descended from immigrants, we are supposedly united by our adherence to the ideals embodied in our Constitution. As it says in the Declaration of Independence, we believe God created all people as equals, in their worth and in their treatment. Having a darker skin tone or a different language or a different country of origin doesn't enter into what makes you an American. It recalls what Paul said about there being no race or gender or class in the church because we are all one in Christ.

In Revelation, John has a vision of heaven. “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9) There are no external qualifiers that set Christians apart from other people; we are united by the love of Jesus.

And since everyone we meet was made in God's image and was someone for whom Jesus died, we cannot treat anyone differently than we would treat Christ. God has a special interest in those who lack power, who lack food or water or shelter or health or freedom or who have lost a spouse or a parent or have come here from another country. Comedian Peter White has the best take on how not to sexually harass a woman. He said, “If you're a man, don't say anything to a woman in the street that you wouldn't want a man to say to you in prison.” In the same way, if you're a Christian, don't say or do anything to a person of a different race or nationality or citizenship status that you wouldn't say or do to Jesus. Instead, look for Jesus in them and be Jesus to them.

As the Spirit pushed the apostles out of Jerusalem and out of the Holy Land to spread the good news, so he is pushing us out of our comfort zone. He is calling us to reach out to those who are different, who do not look or speak or dress or act like us. Because just as he created a huge variety of animals and plants and other organisms, and a tremendous diversity of breeds and lines within species, so also he has created an enormous array of human beings. He made them all, he loves them all, and he expects us to do the same.

For all our apparent differences, we are so alike that we can receive blood transfusions and organ transplants from any race; we all have the same emotions—sadness, anger, fear, disgust, happiness and love; once we translate them, we can share and understand the same stories and ideas; and to a large extent we share the same values: care for family, loyalty to friends, an expectation of justice and fairness. Our similarity is so obvious that folks have to really twist the facts and torture their interpretation to argue that this race or that nationality is radically different from another.

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during World War 2, said, “The church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” That's because it is based on love and love draws us out of ourselves. Love makes us care for someone other than ourselves. Love can even make us care for someone more than ourselves. It can do so to the point that we will give up our lives to save them. That is what divine love made Jesus do for us. And that is what our love of Jesus should move us to do as well.

"The safest place for a ship is in the harbor. But that's not why ships are made." Jesus didn't come for you to stay safe and cozy, surrounded by what and who is familiar. Get out. Let the Spirit of God's love drive you out into the ocean of humanity, into the larger world. That's what the world needs and that's why you were made.

Abnormal and Unnatural

The scriptures referred to are 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.

One of the glories of English is its huge vocabulary, using words often pilfered from other languages. One of my favorite Facebook pages is Grandiloquent Word of the Day, from which I have discovered such gems as “jentacular,” which is an adjective meaning “of or related to breakfast.” Tea is my favorite jentacular beverage. And who was your qualtagh? That's the first person to enter your home or else whom you met after leaving your house on New Year's Day. Did you hurple last week? That is, did your shrug your shoulders up around your neck and creep about shivering in the cold? During the holidays did you reach your Yule hole? That's the last hole to which you are able to stretch your belt at Christmas dinner.

We have so many wonderful words that it really bothers me when people use words with specific meanings in place of other more appropriate words. Two long-running peeves of mine are people using either the words “normal” or “natural” to mean “good.” We have the word “good” and a plethora of synonyms to use instead. And “normal” actually means “usual, typical or expected.” It is normal for a toddlers to throw tantrums. That doesn't make it a good thing. Psychologists tell us it is normal for people to lie every day. That isn't good. In the same way, people argue that some things, like herbs and plants, are better than artificial medicines because they are “natural.” But “natural” simply means “existing in or caused by nature.” Hemlock, poison ivy and poison oak are all natural. You wouldn't recommend ingesting, smoking or even touching them. Or they excuse behavior because it is natural. Again it is natural for black tailed prairie dogs to not only kill the infants of close relatives but even to cannibalize their own offspring. It's not something you'd want to emulate. Neither “normal” nor “natural” gives one a basis to make a value judgment. They describe how common something is or how it arises.

Paul seems to be making a similar distinction in our passage from 1 Corinthians. It looks like people were misusing Paul's teaching about Christian liberty to justify sinful behavior. Paul taught that Christians do not live under the law, that is, the Old Covenant. Jesus freed us from that law and we live by the Spirit instead. Folks misunderstood this, perhaps willfully. First quoting his opponents and then making a crucial qualification Paul writes “'All things are lawful for me' but not all things are beneficial. 'All things are lawful for me' but I will not be dominated by anything.” Let's look at his point using our own legal system to illustrate.

Some people think that just because something is legal, it's OK. Yet the two biggest problem drugs in our society are tobacco and alcohol. According to the CDC, cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 people in the US each year, accounting for about 1 in 5 deaths. It is the number 1 cause of preventable deaths in the US.

Alcohol kills 88,000 people a year. That includes not only its role in liver disease, heart disease, cancer and other deaths from illness, but also car accidents, falling, fires, homicides, suicides and other “acute causes.” Which makes alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the US. And it doesn't take into account the way alcohol can ruin your life without taking it. People have lost jobs, marriages, custody of their kids, cars and homes due to alcohol. 40% of inmates incarcerated for violent offenses were under the influence of alcohol at the time.

Tobacco and alcohol are both legal. Provided you are of age, you can buy and use these substances until they kill you. They may be lawful but they are not beneficial to you.

Want to know what the 2^nd largest cause of preventable death is? Poor diet and physical inactivity. Perfectly legal.

(BTW in doing research I came across a website that purports to give the real time current death toll in America. At the top it reads: “Someone just died by:” and periodically a cause like “Hospital Associated Infection” or “Texting While Driving” or “Smoking in Bed” will pop up in red. I am assuming they have programmed the site using several “every __ minutes someone dies of ___” metrics. Then follows a list with the cumulative numbers. At the bottom of the nearly 3 dozen causes is “Spontaneous Combustion: 0.” Someone at this fundamentalist website has a sense of humor.)

In case you are interested in how the Keys compares with other counties in Florida, according to monroe.floridahealth.gov, we “smoke more, engage in considerably more incidents of binge drinking, have more car accidents resulting in death, and have unprotected sex at rates higher than the state” average. Consequently we have higher rates of Hepatitis A and B, HIV and AIDS. We have a higher death rates for heart failure, prostate, cervical and skin cancers. The percentage of adults with diabetes is higher as well.

Much of that is preventable and most of causes of those conditions are legal. The law is really only interested in preventing things that have an immediate negative effect on society. Unfortunately we humans are really bad at identifying slow or gradual threats. If it doesn't kill you outright, it must make you stronger, right? Ask someone who broke his legs if he is in fact stronger. Spiritually, maybe, but even that is not a given.

Besides being outright harmful, there is another reason to avoid some things that are legal. Paul writes “I will not be dominated by anything” in our translation. Other translations render this: “I will not be mastered by anything,” “I must not become a slave to anything,” and “I won't allow anything to gain control over my life.” Almost sounds like addiction, right? Opioids are painkillers that can be obtained with a legal prescription from your doctor. Overdoses of them alone has led to more than 20,000 deaths in 2016. If you include the heroin and fentanyl people turn to when they can't get oxycontin legally, it rises to 64,000 deaths. That's almost equal to the number of motor vehicle deaths and gun deaths combined. (Guns and cars are both legal as well.)

It turns out anything that increases your brain's secretion of dopamine can be addictive. Some people are adrenaline junkies, doing things that put their body into a fight or flight mode by doing scary (they would say “thrilling”) activities, like base jumping or rooftopping. This latest craze involves climbing high buildings and taking selfies while hanging off them. A 26 year old Chinese man fell from the top of a 62 story skyscraper doing just that. He left behind a fiance, a sick mother and a million followers on a video website.

People get addicted to gambling, which comes to rule their lives. And it's now legal at lots of places through the US. There are people addicted to shopping, to plastic surgery, and to the Internet. People get addicted to sex. I thought this was a load of you-know-what until I heard an interview with a man who described how he passed up going out with friends and other activities to arrange hook ups with strangers on apps and skipped sleep to spend hours on porn sites. Contrary to what you think, it made him miserable. It turns out addiction is not really about liking something so much you can't stop. It is, as one researcher put it, about craving. Dopamine makes you crave things, even if you don't actually enjoy them. Which reminds me an awful lot of Paul's talk of finding himself doing what he doesn't want to do in Romans 7:7-25. Paul was onto the nature of addiction 2000 years before science confirmed it.

Wisdom is knowing that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Christians should never let the law act as a proxy for ethical behavior. Nor should we fall for the “It's normal” or “It's natural” line of argument. That's the thrust of the next thing Paul quotes his critics as saying. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.” And yet, as we know, some people get addicted to food, which is really tricky because they can't obviously stop cold turkey like these other addictions. They have to learn moderation or die. There are dram shop laws that make places that sell liquor to intoxicated people liable for any damage they do. But who's going to not sell food to a morbidly obese person? However, that's not really what Paul's critics were talking about. Paul gets the subtext to their “it's a natural function” argument: they are comparing eating food with having sex.

Corinth was the Sin City of its day. It was a port city offering sailors and travelers whatever they wanted. Aristophanes actually coined a word that meant “to act like a Corinthian.” It was a euphemism for getting debauched. The temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, looked down upon the city from a hill. Everyday the temple prostitutes would come down the hill, recruiting “worshipers.” Their sandals were embossed with letters that spelled out “follow me” in the impressions they left in the dirt.

In this “anything goes” atmosphere believers in Corinth were constantly faced with temptation. Small wonder certain so-called Christians decided to give in and tried to use Paul's teachings on liberty in Christ in ways he never intended.

Paul contrasts the temporary nature of food with the permanent nature of our resurrected bodies and the fleeting union of casual sex with the everlasting union with Christ. But his chief argument is that our connection with Christ is not an external one.

Aphrodite's temple wasn't the only one in town. By virtue of the indwelling Spirit, every follower of Jesus is a temple of the true God. Our body is not our own. It has been “bought with a price.” Jesus died that we might have his life. Which in turn means we must give up our life. As Paul says in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) And as the Right Reverend John Pritchard, retired Bishop of Oxford, put it at our retreat, “we need to learn to die. We need to learn to let go of our lives so God can live his life through us.”

We don't like losing control. That's really at the heart of fear: losing control. We don't want to lose control of our lives. Nor control of the lives of others, Bishop Pritchard added. We do like to think we have some control of others. For some powerful people, like Harvey Weinstein and other men exposed as sexual predators, that may be true. Popular actors and directors, radio and TV show hosts, conductors and dance masters can make or break careers and they used that power to extract what they wanted from the less powerful. But they were brought down by the power of the word. When light flooded the darkness of their lives, their power was broken.

Most of us have a lot less power than that, but we like to think there are a few people whose lives we can control. Yet as parents of a toddler discover, you really can't control someone. Not without their consent. We can't even control our own lives. That control can be wrested from you in a split second by an accident, an illness, or a reversal of fortune. So in reality God is asking us to relinquish what we never really had a firm grasp on. He wants us to let go of the illusion that we are the captain of our fate. We are to give it over to him. It's in better hands that way.

We are to be God's presence in whatever part of the world and in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. But we can't do that if we are in the driver's seat, so to speak. We must let the Spirit, God within us, take the wheel. We need to deny ourselves, as Jesus said; “disown” is actually a better translation. We give up all rights to call the shots in our life and let the Spirit take over.

Which is scary. If losing control is scary, giving that control over to another is especially so. It takes trust, or as we usually call it in Christianity, faith. We need to have faith in God that he will use our lives lovingly, to do the maximum amount of good with them.

In 1896, the Rev. Charles Monroe Sheldon decided to tell a story, one chapter at a time, for his Sunday evening services. They were collected and published under the title In His Steps. In the book, after he turns away a homeless man, who consequently dies, a repentant minister preaches a sermon in which he tells everyone that for the next year, before doing anything, they should ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” The rest of the novel follows his congregants as they apply the principle in their work and in their lives. Few people know that Sheldon wrote a sequel called Jesus is Here! in which Christ appears in the same small town that is the setting for the first book, appearing “as an average man. Only different.” What I find interesting is that the book refers to the Holy Spirit 18 times as being essential to people doing what Jesus would do. Without relying on his strength and resources, a person would burn out quickly. That is why we must be in daily contact with God, read his word, pray, and weekly, at the very least, join with others in worship. Otherwise it would be like trying to participate in an Olympic sport without food or rest.

But for the title of the sequel to be appropriate, Jesus need not get incarnated a second time. We are the body of Christ. We are to be the ongoing embodiment of God's Spirit in the world. Where we are, especially where 2 or 3 of us are gathered, Christ is there in the midst. In other words, if we, the church, are here, Jesus is here. He is demonstrating his love and grace and justice and mercy and forgiveness and reconciliation through us. He has shown us how. He has given us the means, his Spirit, to do what he has done. He has given us each other, with our specific skills and gifts, to help us do it. What he asks of us is what God asked of Mary 2000 years ago: to be willing to let him work through us. If we are truly being led by his Spirit, what we do will be one and the same as what Jesus would do. By human standards living our lives in such a self-sacrificially loving way towards friend and foe alike would be abnormal and unnatural. But it would be splendiferously beneficent in any language.

Dispirited

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 1:1-5, Acts 19:1-7 and Mark 1:4-11.

Isn't it frustrating to see a meme on the internet that expresses a great thought, and even has a beautiful or arresting photo behind it but you hesitate to share it because of a misspelling? I saw one that actually spelled “Christianity” as “Christinanity!” Is there no spellcheck on meme generators? In some cases it's a grammar check that's needed, like the person uses the wrong “you're/your” or the wrong “it's/its.” For those of us who are professional writers who constantly hunt for elusive typos in longer compositions, it's infuriating that people don't do it before posting one sentence. Especially when the sentiment expressed is worth sharing. I want people to read it but I don't want to look like an idiot who doesn't know the difference between “there,” “they're” and “their.”

Another thing that bothers me, and maybe it's just me, is the inspirational post that overgeneralizes. Like all those memes that tell you to pursue your dreams no matter what anyone else says. There's a big problem with that. Your dream might not be achievable. Sometimes people have unrealistic dreams that they should give up on. I think of all the episodes of American Idol where they focused on people whose singing sounded like a cat with its leg in a bear trap. I noticed we never heard the people who were almost but not quite good enough. That's not entertaining. What we heard were people who were genetically incapable of hitting the right note or maintaining a beat and who either had absurdly supportive friends and family or followed the advice of never listening to anyone who tells you what you don't want to hear. The worse case scenario of following your dream no matter what is someone whose dreams are just plain wrong, like those of Charles Manson, Ted Bundy or Adolf Hitler. There are timid creative people who need more self-confidence, but sadly confidence does not always accompany competence and a strong belief in oneself can go hand in hand with a disregard for others. I like what Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem If: “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting, too.”

What triggered this is a post by a colleague that was a list of something like 2 dozen good, short pieces of advice, like “Live beneath your means,” “Be kind to unkind people,” “Realize and accept that life isn't fair,” and “Listen more; talk less.” But the last two lines were; “Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff.” The problem is it's not all small stuff. Some things in life are huge: deciding whether to marry someone, deciding to ingest a recreational drug or not, deciding to follow Jesus. And some things that seem small may in fact make an enormous difference: a gesture, a word, or even an inflection. That last changes the whole meaning of a key sentence in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. You should always be suspicious of statements that make sweeping generalizations. Or use words like “always.”

In today's lectionary texts we have a couple of what appear to be oversights that make a huge differences. One is in our Old Testament passage. It reads, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over of the face of the waters.” There are no perfect translations of the Bible but the NRSV is one of the best. Still I question their translation of the Hebrew words ruach elohim here as a “wind from God.” The word ruach can mean “wind” but it can also mean “spirit”and everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible that phrase means the “Spirit of God.” Plus the verb that precedes it means, at its root, “brood, hover, flutter.” Wind doesn't do that. Birds do and the symbolism is that of the Spirit of God brooding over creation, as a bird broods over a nest of eggs that are about to burst with new life. As we see in our gospel, the Spirit actually appeared as a dove at Jesus' baptism. And for the believer, baptism is the start of new life in God. Once again, in the Bible, spirit is associated with life. One is dead when one's spirit leaves the body. For all these reasons, I think the traditional translation of the Spirit of God hovering over the formless void before creating the world is preferable.

The lack of the Spirit is crucial in our passage from Acts. Apparently the message of John the Baptist reached Ephesus and he had a dozen disciples there. But they only knew of his baptism for repentance. They didn't know of the Holy Spirit, nor, it seems, of Jesus! Paul corrects their knowledge (Luke gives us a bare bones summary of what Paul told them), baptizes them into Jesus Christ, and lays hands on them. And then the converts speak in tongues and prophesy. This is a sign which we see in the early church whenever a new group, like Samaritans, Gentiles, etc, comes to Christ and receives the Spirit.

The point is that Christianity without the Spirit is incomplete. And yet the mainstream church is leery of the Spirit. And the reason is that you can't predict how he'll act. Other aspects of the faith can be quantified and summarized and institutionalized. The Spirit, as Jesus said, is like the wind and we “do not know where it comes from and where it is going.” And more disconcerting, Jesus says, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) People led by the Spirit can be unpredictable and disruptive.

In the second century there was a movement called New Prophecy started by a man named Montanus. He spoke in tongues and delivered prophecies and said the Spirit was speaking through him. Two women rose to leadership in the movement and Montanists had women priests and bishops, citing Joel 2:28-29, where it says that in the end times God's Spirit would be poured out on all. They emphasized the imminent coming of Jesus and advocated an ascetic lifestyle which contrasted to the laxity they saw in the church. The movement was welcomed at first. It was joined by prominent Christians like the theologian Tertullian. It was not initially condemned by the bishop of Rome. But eventually it was declared a heresy by the church. The frustrating thing is that historians can't find any solid reasons why it was condemned. I suspect it was because such a movement is hard if not impossible to control. Who knows what a person who claims to be a prophet could say or do?

For instance, cults usually have a charismatic leader who says he is God's spokesman. Even if these groups start off as ostensibly Christian, they usually leave orthodoxy, often with a revelation that the cult leader is in fact Christ or God. That happened with Jim Jones of Jonestown and David Koresh of the Branch Davidians in Waco. In the Latter Day Saints, it can cause real problems since, according to their beliefs, all Mormon men are embryonic gods. That means they can, for instance, tell young women whom they fancy that God has revealed that they are to marry. Mormon women pretty much have to take them at their word, since they don't have the same status in their theology. All the leaders of the various Mormon fundamentalist split-off groups claim to be THE Prophet foretold by founder Joseph Smith.

Such abuses and the potential for chaos and schisms are big reasons why organized religions either say that the age of prophecy is over or restrict prophecy to their leader. The interesting thing is that the New Testament churches allowed ordinary believers to prophesy. And, yes, that included women, provided their hair, an object of lust in that culture, was properly covered. (1 Corinthians 11:5) And by prophesying, Paul was speaking of preaching. He writes “But the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouragement, and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds himself up, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.” (1 Corinthians 14:3-4) Usually we think prophesy is all about predicting the future. But it is primarily speaking God's word to others to strengthen, encourage, console and build up the church.

And that's one way to see if someone is actually prophesying or just expressing their own views. Not only should we ask if what someone preaches is in line with what Jesus taught (John 16:12-13) but also does what he or she says help church members? Does it strengthen their faith? Does it encourage them to follow Jesus? Does it console them when life is hard? Does it build up rather than tear down the church? Does it in fact make us better Christians?

The Spirit's immediate actions may be hard to predict but his intentions are always the same: to channel God's gifts to us. And since they are myriad, not all the gifts are the same. As Paul writes, “Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are different ministries, but the same Lord. And there are different results, but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for benefit of all....It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7, 11)

And not all the gifts are prophecy. Paul follows this passage with his metaphor of us all being individual parts of the body of Christ. His point is that unity doesn't require uniformity; it requires everyone having the same Spirit and working together for the same overall goal.

I saw this when I was involved in acting at the Marathon Community Theatre. You need more than just people emoting and saying lines. You need a director to oversee everything on stage. You need a sound engineer, a lighting director, a set designer, a stage manager, a prop master, a wardrobe mistress, makeup artists, a producer to oversee the budget, salesmen to get the sponsors, a graphic designer to do the posters and lay out the program, a publicist to get articles in the media and to place ads, and a business manager to handle that side of things. If you are doing a musical you also need dancers and a choreographer and music director and musicians. Most are volunteers and yet not all of them are performers. So why do they do what amounts to a second unpaid job? Because they love the theatre.

The church should run the same way and for the same reason: our love of Jesus. That love unites us and motivates us to serve Jesus in the church and in the world. Without the love of Jesus in our hearts, we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13:2). And that love is channeled through the Spirit. As Paul put it, “...the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

Besides communicating God's love to us, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Life. (Romans 8:2) And he is the life of the church. Without the Spirit of Christ animating it, the church is dead. It is lifeless organization, incapable of passing on life or changing the lives of others. It is simply another group of people discussing and doing nice things, like the Elks club or the Knights of Pythias. But Jesus envisioned a church that was growing. Growth is also a sign of life. And the only way for the church to grow is to reach out and bring more people in.

Episcopalians and Lutherans are not enthusiastic about evangelism. And you really can't do much if you aren't enthusiastic. The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek and literally means “possessed by God.” If we really believe the Spirit of God is in us, that alone should excite us. If we believe that God is asking us to work with him, that should excite us. If we believe that God is asking us to invite others into his family, that should excite us. If we look at everyone we meet as either someone who is already our brother or sister in Christ or someone who can become our brother or sister in Christ, that should excite us.

I've seen a lot of schemes and programs to help churches revive and grow. But none of them will work without the Spirit. Leaving him out of the equation is a grave oversight, like leaving him out of a translation or out of a baptism. The Spirit gives life. The Spirit gives gifts. The Spirit gives love. The Spirit can make us do crazy things, at least to those on the outside looking in. But we need the Spirit. This group needs the Spirit, the breathing, burning, enlightening, soaring presence of God. Or we're as good as dead.

Let us pray.

Lord God, Heavenly Father, King of the Universe, pour out your Spirit upon us. Fill us with your overflowing love. Shower us with your gifts. Drive us out into the world to share them. Give us the words we need to tell others about your son, Jesus. Send us out on missions to see your son in everyone we meet and then serve him through serving them. Give us the joy of truly living, of making our lives count as Jesus' life did. We ask all these things in the name of your son our savior Jesus Christ and through the power of your Holy Spirit, who live and reign with you, Father, one God forever and ever, Amen.

In the Middle

The scriptures referred to are Titus 2:11-14.

There are a number of articles on the internet devoted to listing what episode or episodes of a beloved TV program you should show to someone to get them hooked on it as well. In other words, what episodes are both really good and also representative of the kind of stories it specializes in, and that show off the characters and their relationships best. These are almost never the pilot episode. They figure that if the viewer likes one of the later episodes, then and only then will he or she be interested enough to go back and see the series from the beginning.

And if you think about it, mathematically you are more likely to find good stuff in the middle than at either end. Rarely is a pilot a great episode. The writers, director and cast are still trying out things to see what works. Rarely does a popular series end on top of its game but usually it is a season or two past its prime. A TV series is considered successful if it gets to its 100^th episode, because then it can be sold into syndication. But if you take out the first and last episodes, you still have 98 left and odds are you will find the really good ones among them.

The same is true of life. We don't remember our earliest days and that's good. If you could it would be like comedian Stephen Wright's diary he supposedly kept as a newborn. “Day 1—Still tired from the move. Day 2—Everyone talks to me like I'm an idiot.” Seriously, though, would you want to remember being totally helpless and only being able to communicate, whether tired, hungry, afraid, cold, lonely or in need of changing, by crying and hoping the adults would guess right. Scientists think that at age 4 our brain purges our early memories since we do not need to remember learning to walk, talk, dress ourselves, take ourselves to the potty, etc. It may have been wonderful for your parents to witness, but it would feel pretty mundane and laborious to us. Your best days and years are yet to come.

Likewise, your best days are unlikely to be your last, unless you win the Olympics, the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony in rapid succession in the prime of your life and die suddenly and painlessly in your sleep basking in the afterglow of your acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. Only a fifth of people die suddenly and without warning. Sadly, most of us will succumb to a chronic illness that will affect us for the last several years of our life. Our best days, healthwise at least, will have been behind us.

So our best days are somewhere in between our first and our last. Which is good. We will spend most of our lives in the middle of them, when we have a great deal of personal agency and a minimal amount of restrictions to what we can do. In fact, we spend most of our time in the middle of the history of things. My generation was the first to see a man walk on the moon but the moon landing was the culmination of many years' work. The Soviet Union had crash landed an unmanned craft called Luna 2 on the moon in 1959. We didn't put a man on it until 1969. And the technology behind it goes back farther, to the German V-2 rockets of World War 2. Similarly, we celebrate the birth of a baby but it doesn't come out of nowhere. It was gestating for 9 months. And the component parts existed in its parents before they came together at conception. For that matter, parts of the DNA go back thousands of years to our earliest ancestors.

In our passage from Galatians Paul writes that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” Jesus did not appear when he did by a fluke. It was part of God's plan. But why then?

One answer is the Roman empire. There were empires before it but they tended to be smaller and more localized. Most were roughly the size of today's nations and they were primarily in the Middle or Far East. Rome' s empire not only covered a lot of territory, ringing the entire Mediterranean Sea but it connected Europe, Asia Minor and Africa: West, East and South. The Romans built roads and successfully fought piracy, making trade and travel easier. Their might ensured peace from one end of the empire to the other. The Romans wisely decided that instead of imposing their native Latin, they'd keep the Greek spread by Alexander's successors as the lingua franca, so people all over the empire could communicate with each other, despite their nationality.

All this made it possible for the apostles to spread the gospel by traveling and to oversee churches by sending and receiving letters. Paul chalked up about 10,000 miles over 30 years. And because of the Jewish diaspora, he found a ready audience in the major cities of the Empire. And the surprising side effect was that there were Gentiles who were exposed to Judaism and who worshiped Yahweh, though they didn't convert. These Godfearers, as they were called, were enthusiastic adopters of the Christian faith Paul preached in the synagogues. All in all, it's debatable whether Christianity would have spread as fast and as far as it did had Jesus come into the world before the Roman Empire came together or after it fractured.

But even so, the way of the gospel had to be prepared for. The Hebrew Bible is the saga of God working with one people to teach them what kind of God he is and what he expects from us. Some parts they readily get: God will protect his people. Some parts they can't seem to get the hang of: God expects loyalty and demands justice and mercy, especially in regards to the poor and disadvantaged. Also they missed the parts where God expressed his concern for all people, not just those he chose to work through. They did pick up the idea of the Messiah, an anointed prophet, priest and/or king whom God would send to establish his kingdom. But again they missed or ignored the parts where he would suffer for the sins of the world. God was preparing his people and the world for his son.

So when Jesus came, it was not the beginning of God's work to save us, nor was it the end. It was the middle. It was pivotal and absolutely necessary to the whole enterprise but it was not like God had been cooling his heels till then.

And it was not like the whole thing was over after Jesus had taught, died and rose again. He commissioned his students to go throughout the world and teach folks about him and make new students. It was the beginning of a new phase of what God was doing.

We know how this story ends: with God recreating his world as a paradise. Some Christians think we are at the end but not quite. I don't see any beasts with 7 heads rising out of the sea, nor all the rivers turning to blood. And we are certainly not at the point where there is no death or mourning or crying or pain. We are somewhere in the middle.

Why do we feel that the middle is not as important as the beginning or the end? Yes, nothing happens without a beginning and all things end but it's in the middle that things develop. You are not the person you were as a baby or as a child, though some traits persist. You are hopefully not the same person you were when you were in your teens or your 20s. I think it is fortunate that I did not get ordained in my 20s, though that was originally my intention. I think I have more understanding of people and of life now. I have experience of life outside ministry.

In the middle is where growth happens. It is where we apply and modify what we were taught. It is where experience and preparation meet and either intertwine or clash. It is where we can confirm the direction of our life or change it. Paul's life and career were going very differently before he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. I daresay all of the apostles had envisioned quite different lives before meeting Jesus. For that matter as they were following Jesus but before his crucifixion they probably saw the conclusion of their discipleship under him in a different way. But the middle is where the plot twists lie.

We wouldn't have watched any more Star Wars movies if Luke had become a farmer like his uncle. Who would care about Peter Parker had he noticed and avoided that radioactive spider? The Bible would be very different if Moses had not investigated the burning bush or had David backed down from facing a giant Philistine.

How would your life have been different had not something changed in the middle of it? What would it have been like had you not met your spouse or not taken a key job or not left your hometown? How would it be different if you hadn't heard of Jesus or hadn't joined the church?

It's in the middle that the arc of a character's story turns to either tragedy or triumph. We will know whether Kylo Ren continues along the path of the dark side of the Force or turns to the light before the end of the next Star Wars film, not after the closing credits. Even in the case of the thief on the cross, we learn of his change of heart before he died, not on a note found on him afterward.

And that's the point. As long as you are alive, you can change. It gets harder as you get older but it can be done. Every second of your life is a second chance to do something right or turn your life around. Jesus is very big on second chances.

We find ourselves as Christians somewhere in the middle of God's plan to redeem humanity. In our Eucharistic prayer we look back at Christ's death and resurrection while looking forward to his coming again. We are living, however, between the two. And Jesus told us to spend this time spreading the good news and inviting people into the kingdom and loving and taking care of one another.

He didn't get real specific on how to do that either. We are left to decide which way or ways we should communicate the good news, make disciples and show God's love in our actions towards others.

Christians have always been on the cutting edge of ways to communicate the gospel. Besides preaching in churches, they have used catchy music (Luther, the Salvation Army, Christian rock bands), printed material (Bible translations, tracts, magazines), visual material (painting, comic books, posters, bumper stickers), performances (plays, movies, radio, TV), and the internet (apps, literally millions of websites for denominations, individual churches and ministries, blogs and vlogs). There may be new ways to do so being developed as we speak and Christians will be using them.

Besides founding churches, Christians have started specialized ministries serving patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices, motorcycle and racing enthusiasts, athletes, the homeless, prisoners, migrant workers, the hearing impaired, the military, rodeo workers, even adult film workers.

Christians have shown the love of Christ for others in hospitals, medical missions and clinics, in all levels of education, in setting up shelters for the homeless, for refugees, for those dealing with substance abuse, and for abandoned and runaway children, and even in the National Parks.

Human life is so widespread, varied and complex that the Spirit of God equips us with an array of gifts, skills and walks of life that we might reach everyone. And one way to do so is to remember that almost everyone you meet is in the middle of something. They are in the middle of their adolescence, or their early adulthood, or middle age or old age. They are in the middle of dating, or a relationship, or a marriage, or a breakup or a bereavement. They are in the middle of schooling, or looking for a job, or establishing a career, or changing careers, or retirement. They are in the middle of caring for children, or caring for a parent, or caring for grandchildren, or caring for a spouse, or being cared for themselves. They are in the middle of financial problems, or legal problems, or family problems or personal problems. And so are we. We are somewhere in the middle of one or several of those things and we can minister to folks stuck in the middle with us and even be ministered to by them.

We spend the vast majority of our existence in the middle of some stage of life or process or transition. And it helps to realize that and not be so obsessed with beginnings and endings. I may be wrong about this but I sometimes wonder if some people who cheat on their spouses do so because they want to recapture the excitement of the first days of love or a relationship. Maybe they just don't like being in the middle of a relationship, when you have to do the hard work of maintaining what you've built and nurturing what you've planted and the slow routine of growth. The truth is if you don't pay attention to things in the middle, the end is almost guaranteed to be a bad one. I've never understood guys who thought fathering children was manly but being there for the kids and raising them and doing your best to see them grow into successful adults is not. Which is harder?

To get through the middle, you need perseverance and, paradoxically, flexibility. Giving up won't help but neither will rigidly doing the exact same thing over and over if it isn't working. Remember that it's in the middle that change can take place. And it's where you build towards the ending. You don't get remembered for simply being born unless you are Dolly the sheep clone. It's what you do after that which makes people sorry when you die.

For Christians it's what we do after being born again that makes Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” It is during that time that we will encounter and serve Jesus in the least of his siblings, those lacking the physical and social basics of life. It is during that time that we grow in Christ and produce fruit.

Some day this life will end. But we know that Jesus will usher us into a new phase of our eternal life. And that will never end. So let us drop our obsession with endings and let go of our nostalgia for beginnings. God is from everlasting to everlasting. God is infinite. We will never find an end to God or the riches he has for us. We will always be in the middle of of discovering how loving and wonderful and good he is. And that's a great place to be.