“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

It’s a lie.

I know that most of us were taught this little phrase by our mothers to help us manage the small cruelties of our schoolmates. I know that it probably prevented many a schoolyard fight. In my case, the fights tended to wait until we were on the way home. (I walked to and from school for several of my first years of grade school.)

It’s a useful old saw but it’s a lie, and I’d encourage you not to teach it to your children and grandchildren. If it’s true then it’s also harmless for them, for you and me, for anyone to call someone else any name they want, to say whatever comes to mind because “it’s just words.”

Brothers and sisters, words have power.  They have much more power than you or I usually imagine.

For years I’ve been fascinated with the origins and power of language.  I have discovered that language in a world broken by sin is in fact one of the enemy’s greatest weapons. It masks our true intent even when we think we’re being truthful. It creates realities for the powerful and the powerless just by the vibrations it sets loose in the world. It hides us from ourselves and the truest desires of our hearts.

It is no accident that it is by His speech God created the world. Words create realities, and since the Fall language has served to separate us from God and from one another. The Tower of Babel is only the easiest Biblical illustration of that fact.

God created by a word.  The enemy sowed the seeds of our Fall by a lie, by words, and James claims for the tongue this power of destruction in our reading for this week:

We cause real wounds in each other by the way that we label each other, by the way we diminish each other with our words. It matters what we say and how we say it.

God created by a Word, and we have been given the gift of words by which to participate in His continuing act of creation. The world we see around us is largely a product of the way we have used our words. It matters what we say.

It also matters what we listen to.

What words do you put into your ears on a daily basis? Do you listen to words that proclaim the Lord’s majesty, His victory? Or do you listen to words poisoned by fear and anger? Those words do not only reflect your inner anger (some would claim that this is the only power they have) but they also create more of the same in you. In the same way that two speakers making the same sound in phase with each other create a much more powerful wave, this sound resonates with your own broken nature (for we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of adoption!) and makes it stronger!

And if you find yourself using language to condemn those whose language sets all those fires on television and talk radio, know that you are only setting a “backfire” of your own that will one day burn down your own home. That fire cannot be controlled.

So how then do we combat this tsunami of flammable verbiage that assaults us and our families every day?

Not by resisting with the enemy’s tools of name-calling, labeling, and condemnation.

We respond with the Word that redeems all our words.  We proclaim His Resurrection until He comes.  We proclaim God’s victory.

“But what does that sound like?”

When confronted by hateful utterance the one who knows the Riches of His Grace responds something like this, “Yes, perhaps, but this is just a part of the way the world works when it tries to govern itself apart from the Father’s love and guidance. Of course it’s broken! But the Blood of Jesus gives me, gives you victory over that.”  This will undoubtedly provoke some kind of incredulous question like, “Oh, yeah? HOW?” And suddenly you have an opportunity to witness to the power of the Cross in your own life. (This assumes that you know that power well enough to talk about it!)

There is a cost for following Jesus in this way. When we are confronted by this kind of fiery speech the pain it causes (when we haven’t given ourselves over to resonance with it) can be enormous. We want to bring a stop to it before we try to go forward.  This is where we fall into the trap of arguing, trying to silence the painful voices.  Of course, all this does is pour gasoline on the fire.

Our willingness to hear these words without trying to silence them is a part of our fellowship in Jesus’ suffering. (Philippians 3:10) It is also what Jesus speaks of in our Gospel text for this morning. It is a way of taking up our own crosses.

We absorb with Jesus the pain of a broken creation and we proclaim His resurrection rather than return evil for evil.  We restrain our tongues long enough to let Him speak in us rather than give back our own brokenness for the world’s brokenness.

One day “Shulammite Press” will be printing another book entitled “Speaking Peace” in which I’ll explore all the ways in which we can participate in God’s restoration of His creation through our words. There is so much more to be said, but this’ll have to do for today!

In Him,

Jeff

Jeff Krantz is an Episcopal priest, and has been the rector of the Church of the Advent in Westbury, New York for 12 years.  He’s been married to SaraLouise for more than 30 years, and they have three children and three grandchildren. A lifelong Episcopalian, Jeff experienced a crisis of faith after his ordination that led him into a life-giving way of being in relationship to his “Father” that he now wants to share. He leads retreats for men’s groups, parishes, and parish leadership groups. He is the author of the recently published “Hearing His Voice.”

Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Dear Friends,

First, my apologies for the tardiness of this post.  I’m off on vacation and I just couldn’t get my head around writing for a couple weeks there.

But for the last couple of days I’ve been struggling with the writing bug again, so here I go.  Trouble is, for the last 3 or 4 weeks we’ve had those passages from John wherein Jesus speaks to us as the Bread of Life and I’m having trouble finding something to say that doesn’t sound trite.

Most of us, I think, have joined the side of those Jews who took offense at this teaching and muttered, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”

Oh, we don’t say that exactly, but we’ve reduced this saying to something Eucharisitic, or symbolic, or just so un-earthly that we don’t hear it any more.  At the same time we sing “I Am the Bread of Life” so often that we don’t hear the words any more, we just enjoy the familiarity of it and the uplifting chorus, “And I will raise him/them up…” (Depending on how PC your translation is.)

We’re all for being raised up, but not too many of us fancy the imagery of feeding on Jesus’ flesh.  Not the bread, His Flesh.  Not some spiritual symbol of His being, His Flesh.

I know that Jesus in John’s Gospel frequently uses double meanings to talk about things that defy description with our limited vocabularies.  This is surely one of them but I just can’t let that become an excuse for me to spiritualize His Flesh into something that doesn’t rock my world.

In the third chapter of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus speaks of being born “from above” and Nicodemus misunderstands this and thinks of a second physical birth.  From this we have taken the phrase “born again” although this is not what the text says. The thing is, those who have made the phrase “born again” a cornerstone of their relationship with God are trying to describe the totality and violence of this re-birth “from above” and the only image that fits is that of passing through the trauma of entering into life at birth, not some spiritual awakening that wouldn’t offend a New Ager.  So I think that even if the text doesn’t say “born again,” Nicodemus gets the meaning more right than those who insist on the literal meaning of “born from above.”

In the same way I think that we need to recover the enormity of these words about Jesus’ Flesh, the offensiveness of them. Of course you and I don’t feed on bleeding flesh taken from Jesus’ arm or leg, but the gift He gives is no less costly, and the effect on us is likewise no less profound than consuming muscle, tendon, and bone.

The hunger for “being” that Jesus satisfies in us by giving us His Flesh is so ravenous, so carnivorous that we are terrified by it and rarely look deeply enough within to risk its discovery. Still, in the company of the Savior, you and I are encouraged to travel to the place of such black-hole emptiness that it threatens to suck us and everything around us into it. There, at the threshold of of oblivion Jesus gives us Himself, His Flesh, and the ravening and roaring lion is sated.

Then we sing.  Not just songs, but heart-worship. Then we discover ourselves transformed by the Love that has rescued us from the abyss at the expense of Love’s Own Life, possessed of a new life that is truly eternal.

In Him,

Jeff

Proper 13
Year B
RCL

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13
or
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 6:24-35

In the last year or so, I have read many a message from one Christian preacher or another recommending that we and our churches store up foodstuffs and other necessary supplies against hard times to come. In this way, we will not only be able to care for ourselves and our families but also for our neighbors.

This makes a lot of sense, and is often supported by reference to Joseph’s advice to Pharaoh. If there are seven years of famine to come, then we ought to do as Joseph did and make sure there will be provision for the hard days.  Not only for our families but for the Egyptians too.

It seems that many of the Egyptians around us (non-believers) have decided to get the jump on this process. Spending is down, saving is up. Of course, this contributes to the decline of the economy right now and helps to make their fears into some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, but that’s what Egyptians do.

My question is this, though.

Is this what worshipers of the One True God do?

Did Joseph store up his own goods or advise a non-believer how to store up his? No.

I don’t think we learn much from looking at Joseph if we are trying to find support for basements full of canned food and dried milk.

Joseph didn’t store up his own goods to care for the Egyptians or his own family. He was obedient to God so that Pharaoh in his gratitude took care of Joseph’s kindred. Joseph sought God, heard from God, spoke what he heard, and God took care of the rest. It is interesting to me here that we have no indication in Scripture that any of the Egyptians became followers of the Most High God as a result, either.

As we enter into what may indeed be a time of wilderness and deprivation for the Church and her neighbors I think that Moses gives us a better model to follow. He did not teach the people to store up and provide for themselves, but he also obeyed God and taught the people to rely on the God who had delivered them to feed them as well.

This seems to me to be a way of learning to live without fear. If there is anything that will set Christians apart in the years to come, it will be the absence of fear.

Fear drives most of our economy. If times are good we fear being left behind by the “Joneses” we’re trying to keep up with. It drives the accumulation of debt that the enemy uses to bind us. When times are bad we fear being unable to provide bread for ourselves and our families. This too binds us to the old ways, the “fleshpots” of slavery. None of us has failed to note the way that advertising has changed to play on this new fear in the last year or two.

You and I aren’t called to store up “stuff” so that we won’t be afraid (as we have seen, this only contributes to the crisis) but rather, we’re to demonstrate our confidence in God regardless of the state of our larders.

Moses teaches us to trust God to provide bread for today, and Jesus speaks of the same thing. “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” (John 6:27, ESV)

Pursue Jesus. Just Jesus. He is the Bread we need. I know how hard this is to understand, but somehow I know this is true. If we could just set our hearts on Him and His Kingdom we will find that we have all that we need or desire.

This doesn’t mean we’ll just sit around doing nothing! He will lead us into work that will satisfy, but not in order provide for ourselves. Having Him, we will know ourselves cared for and have freedom to live the lives He planned for us. And the work we do will give us joy, rather than being a means to an end.

Some of us may be called to be Josephs to Pharaoh in the weeks and months and even years to come. I don’t doubt that the prophetic witness of believers to unbelievers will play a role in the future but I believe that for the most part, we are called to manifest the trust of Moses, the trust that Jesus commends in the Giver of all good gifts.

2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 14
or
2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145: 10-19

Ephesians 3:14-21

John 6:1-21

When Sara and I lived in Manhattan we worshiped for about two and a half years at the Church of the Holy Apostles.  Sara also did a year’s “Field Education” there, so we became pretty involved for that short while.

Holy Apostles’ great claim to fame is their enormous “soup kitchen.” They serve a lot more than soup. Their menu is designed to provide their guests with a full day’s worth of nutrition, and they serve between 900 and 1200 people five days a week. (Or, those were the numbers when we were there.) It is an enormous undertaking, and it is a model for many other similar ministries.  Sara and I worked in this ministry, but my involvement was limited to the times when they had trouble finding volunteers. This feeding program is so well known and loved in the Chelsea area of Manhattan that they have more volunteers than spaces on most days.

I remembered this ministry and several other food programs I’ve been a part of as I prayed about this week’s reading from John, the “feeding of the five thousand.” I found myself asking, “What if?” a lot.

“What would it be like if our feeding programs didn’t just fill empty tummies, but so confronted us with the reality of God’s miraculous love for us that thousands turned to Jesus as King?”

“What if our feeding programs didn’t rely only on what we can raise from charitable individuals and institutions, but actually manifested the multiplication that Jesus demonstrated?  Didn’t He promise us that we would do greater things than even He did?”

“What if our focus could be on showing forth the Kingdom by signs and wonders, rather than trying to right social wrongs? What would that look like? Would it look much different on the surface?”

I want desperately to lift up this sign that Jesus did as just that, a sign of the Kingdom and not a model for social ministry. I want to say that if we who work in the soup kitchens were as desperate for the food that does not perish as our guests are for what we can serve them, then our guests would receive so much more, and hunger might soon be banished by the wealth that we would discover in ourselves and each other as the Holy Spirit wells up in us unto eternal life.

If we fed on Jesus’ flesh as He intended He would so fill our hearts with His love for our guests that they would be left breathless by their encounters with the Savior.

I don’t doubt for a second the sincerity of the love that so many volunteers have shown in so many feeding programs around the country for so very long. But I want to dream bigger. I want to have a vision that can’t be satisfied by full tummies.  I want a vision that leaves us all scrambling to make Jesus our King.  That vision would so change our hearts that the structural injustices that cause such hunger and poverty would eventually melt away.

If we can just take our eyes off the problems and put them back on the Solution.

Jeff

Jeff Krantz is an Episcopal priest, and has been the rector of the Church of the Advent in Westbury, New York for 12 years.  A lifelong Episcopalian, Jeff experienced a crisis of faith after his ordination that led him into a life-giving way of being in relationship to his “Father” that he now wants to share.  His early email ministry, “Hearing His Voice,” grew into a soon-to-be released book by the same title.   He leads retreats for men’s groups, parishes, and parish leadership groups.  Jeff can be contacted by email at jhkrantz@gmail.com.

Why the NFL works (and why it doesn’t)

Now that the NFL draft is over we have the long haul before the opening of training camp and the preseason.  If only it were voluntary, this absence of football from my life!  Then I could rightly call it a “fast” and pat myself on the back for it.  Maybe, since I don’t watch arena football, it can still count?

No, seriously guys, fasting isn’t about earning credits.  No more than any other discipline undertaken for the sake of my relationship with God.  It isn’t about earning anything, but it is about making room for God to bless me, and even though I don’t have much of a choice until August, this absence of the NFL from my life has made some room for God to show me some things.

I fast because no matter how good a gift from God is intended to be, I often receive it in a way that robs it of any “nutritional” value.  I am called to rely on God, to feed on His Goodness, drink of His Mercy and Kindness, and every gift that comes my way is intended to draw me into that state of dependence on Him.  But when I consume His gifts as though they were mine to dispose of, as though I might fill myself with them, they become twisted and addictive.  Good food can become a false source of comfort when it helps me get by without feeding on His Presence.  Dessert can become a honeyed poison when it becomes a substitute for the sweetness of His Goodness.

And the NFL has become for me a substitute for the source of the warrior spirit that the Father wants to give to all His sons.  Even though players are often criticized for it in times of conflict, there is a good reason that they speak of their games as “combat” and “war.”  Brothers, you and I are called to be on the front line of the war for God’s Kingdom.  We aren’t called upon to win it (Jesus has done that already) but we have been entrusted with the visible working out of His victory!  We are all warriors of one sort or another at heart.  Conquering is in our very DNA, but we have long since lost sight of the spiritual warfare for which we have been enlisted.

It is a sad thing that we complain bitterly about women’s presence on the front lines in earthly battle, but when we look at the prayer warriors in our churches, the vast majority of them are women.  They battle fiercely, but God never intended them to bear this burden alone.  Perhaps because in the carnal world men have found outlets for their “warriors” in sports, in the military, and even in the business world, men have not been as eager to seek out the truest of warfares, that of the Spirit.  Women, largely excluded from the carnal arenas, may have become our prayer warriors because they have few alternatives for expression of this calling.  They have ably taken up this task without our support, but only because we have let our swords fall to the ground.  Side by side, we are to conquer and to consolidate our gains in Jesus, but there are so few men ready to take up the challenge.

The NFL is as popular as it is because the warrior spirit lives in every man.  Because we haven’t learned to engage the enemy in spiritual warfare, we have taken to consuming football games instead.

Spiritual warfare is more exhilarating than even that Dolphins/Chargers playoff game I remember from my youth.  (Still the best game ever played, in my book… Kellen Winslow will always be a hero of mine after that performance.)  When we engage in warfare through the medium of worship (the only place from which to start) the “rush” beats any post-game feeling you’ve ever had.  What’s more, we get to play for the side that always wins!  There may be setbacks from time to time, but for those who persist in praise victory is guaranteed.  Kinda gives new meaning to Lombardi’s phrase, “Victory isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing,” doesn’t it?

We don’t have to win the territory Jesus has won for us in the world, just claim it.  All the hopelessness and despair we see in our communities is just ground that we haven’t claimed for Jesus yet.  We are, as the Israelites were commanded, to take possession of the land that God has given to us.  Just walk in.  “Every place on which the soles of our feet tread” will be ours. (Deut. 11:24, rephrased)  Of course, the enemy won’t like this much, and he’ll do all he can to discourage us and to do us harm, but he is already defeated.  The warriors of God have no need to go on “seek and destroy” missions.  Indeed, there is real spiritual danger in that kind of arrogance.  But we “resist the devil” (James 4:7) and he flees.  We resist through our praises and worship.  The enemy can’t stand to be in the presence of the praise of God.  And we resist on behalf of those too weak in their faith or too blind or crippled (spiritually) to do it for themselves.

This “standing in the gap” on behalf of others is the warfare of intercession.  Many of us think of “intercession” as the reading of a list of names on Sunday morning, but for me, nowadays, it’s like standing with my eyes locked on my Father as He scatters His enemies and laughs.  He really does hold those who oppose him “in derision.” (Ps. 2:4)  And you and I are invited to join that battle whose result is already known.  Spiritual warfare takes other shapes, too, but these are less familiar to most of us, and it is good to begin where we are rather than where we would like to be.

Brothers, during this offseason, I invite you to ponder your hunger for the wild and wooly competition of the NFL season, and to discover that this (hunger, not the football) is in fact your spiritual heritage.  Then begin to explore what it might mean to derive your warrior spirit from the Father instead of the NFL.  I am ready to support you via email or phone in any way that I can.  I have a few books that I can recommend if you like, too.

Let’s see what it might mean to play at some “smash mouth” Christianity…

2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
or
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 23

Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

“Onward, Christian soldiers!”

One of my earliest church memories is of my first grade Sunday school class marching in circles in the second floor parish hall at Trinity Church in Columbus Ohio, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

I know well the history of abuses that caused that hymn and many others with “martial” themes to fall into disfavor.  I was taught those reasons all through the 60′s and 70′s, and I bought the whole package.  For the first 10 years of my priesthood we never, ever sang that hymn in a service that I had planned.

Now we sing it regularly. Not frequently, but regularly. Something has changed in me.

I am desperate to see the Kingdom of God in all its fullness, to see every one of God’s children dwelling in peace and security, knowing the love of the Father that I have come to know.

And I know that in order to bring that Kingdom I will have to engage in warfare.

Because most of the Church has become too entangled with the power structures of this world, she has lost her ability to do warfare on God’s behalf without resorting to the world’s weapons. But “though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.” (2 Cor. 10:3-4, NKJV) It was definitely necessary that we separate ourselves from the carnal means by which we had tried to bring in the Kingdom – colonialism, legalism, materialism.

But the war is far from over, and it is time to reclaim our place as Christian warriors, claiming territory on behalf of our King.

Since the time that I was a little boy, the Church has focused far too much on building temples, acting as though we had the “peace on every side” (1 Kings 4:24) that Solomon enjoyed, while the vast majority of God’s children still wander Fatherless in a hostile world.

In this week’s reading from 2 Samuel, David has established himself in Jerusalem and longs build for God a house worthy of His Name. At first Nathan the prophet tells him he can go ahead, but then God speaks to Nathan and tells him to tell David not to build the Temple. Instead God will build for David a “house,” a family. (You can read all that in 2 Sam. 7)

David goes in to sit before the Lord, accepting God’s decision and asking Him to confirm His promise to David concerning his descendants.

Maybe it happens here or maybe later, but there is a piece to this conversation that we don’t get to hear until 1 Chronicles 22.  David has collected all the materials for the Temple and left them so that Solomon can do the building.  He explains to Solomon, “My son, as for me, it was in my mind to build a house to the name of the Lord my God; but the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have made great wars; you shall not build a house for My name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in My sight.” (1 Chronicles 22:7-8, NKJV)

How heartbreaking it must have been for David to hear that. After all he had done to build the kingdom of Israel, to unite the peoples and drive out the enemies of God, David would not be permitted to build a house for his God, because he’d done what was needed.

It is not for warriors to build temples. One day, when the Kingdom has peace on every side, we will rejoice to behold God in a temple other than the temple that is our own body, but in the mean time, our job is to take territory in the Name of the Father.

David wanted to build a temple, and yet he also writes in Psalm 27:4, “One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple.” Surely David knew how to dwell in the Lord’s Presence, even in the midst of the warrior’s camp.

Brothers and sisters, though we contend not with blood and flesh, but principalities and powers, we contend nonetheless, and it is time for us to lay aside our temple-building plans. Temples are to built by our descendants, when we have won for them the fullness of the Kingdom’s presence. We have no more permission to build structures that are intended to last than David had. For him God dwelt in a tent of skin, one that could be moved at a moment’s notice when the trumpets sounded. Even when the last of his enemies seemed to have been vanquished his role as a warrior prevented him from building the Temple he dreamed of.

I know that longing of his. I know what it is to ache for a time when we can spend every moment contemplating the beauty of the Lord, but today is not that day. We are to keep our sandals on, ready to move, and we cannot afford to build structures that we can’t carry with us into battle.

This begins to make sense for me of that very strange passage in Matthew 11. “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” (Matt. 11:12, NKJV) What this really means is that the Kingdom is sought “violently,” or with great force. The battle is fierce to bring in the Kingdom, and it is established with great force. (Or as in Luke 16:16, entered with great force.) We just cannot pretend as though the Kingdom is already won, and put our efforts all into building a Temple that belongs only in the restored Jerusalem as it descends to us from heaven.

Our ardor is violent, violent to the principalities and powers, to the rulers of this dark age and to spiritual wickedness in high places. We are called to wake up to that overwhelming desire and to march in that strength.

Solomon’s kingdom, a type of the new Jerusalem is our dream and our goal. We all long with David for that day, and by God’s mercy we will all see it.

But for today,

Onward Christian soldiers!

Receiving His Riches 9 – II Advent, Year A

Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

This week, as I was preparing for Sunday’s service, I was very much taken with the “unquenchable fire” with which John says that Jesus will consume the chaff that He encounters.  This isn’t John talking about the end of time, this is John talking about what the One who follows him will do.  Fruitless trees will be chopped down and put on the fire.  Wheat will be gathered, and the chaff destroyed.  When Jesus comes.  Not later, When Jesus comes.  This is no “end times” prophecy.  This is a description of what it means to receive Jesus.

So, I turned to the hymnal to find something to sing on Sunday about this consuming fire, and ya know what?  There really isn’t much.  Not anything that deals with this fire in all it’s power and destructiveness.  We finally settled on one hymn that included a verse that goes, “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all sufficient shall be thy supply, the flame shall not hurt thee I only design, thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”  Nice fire.  Safe fire.  Hurtless fire.  Might be a little scary, but it won’t really hurt.

And I thought that, without trying too hard, I could with my limited experience come up with half a dozen songs from the contemporary worship world that speak directly, desirously of that fire.  Without trying too hard.

I was reminded then of what a friend, another Episcopalian, had once said to me.  “The folks who come to the Episcopal church don’t usually come to be changed.  In the evangelical tradition they want to be changed.”

It’s as simple as that.  We don’t sing about a consuming fire because we don’t really want one.

I can understand that.  For a long time, I didn’t either.  I wanted a church that could comfort me, guide me and teach me.  I didn’t come to the church to be transformed.  And yet, John says that those who encounter Jesus will encounter an unquenchable fire, one that consumes away all that no longer serves the purposes of the kingdom, one that burns away trees that waste the soil, that threaten the rest of the trees with rot if they’re permitted to lie for too long.

I didn’t want that.  For the longest time, I didn’t want Jesus to reach in and torch my chaff because I didn’t know if I could do without it.  I had little or no sense that He would supply what I had learned to find amidst my chaff.  I certainly had no sense that what He could give me was as much better than my chaff as it really is.  I really believed that God had given me my gifts so that I could use them to do my best.  I had no idea that He wanted me to allow Him to burn away all my pride so that He could use the gifts He’d given me to do His best.

But that’s what He wanted, and it’s what He wants from you.  It’s what He wants for you.  If you come to Jesus, really allow Him to draw you to Himself, He will reveal to you the chaff that stands in the way of your ability to permit Him to work in and through you.  And then He will begin to destroy it as you ask Him to.

I have a lot of chaff left for Him to deal with.  I keep thinking that He’s gotten to most of it, that there are just little pockets here and there to be eradicated, but then He shows me a whole new wealth of stuff He wants to take away.  And it hurts.  I’m sorry to say, it really does hurt to let Him work in me.  I think it was this pain that first taught me to run from Him.  I had been taught to expect a painless Jesus, one who comforted but didn’t burn, so when I felt something being scorched, I figured something was wrong, and I ran.  Fast.

Now, when He has something new to bring to the surface, something new from which He wants to free me, He usually lets me sit with it for a while.  He lets me feel the pain it causes me, the stultification, the rottenness it brings.  I have to be with that for a while before I find myself ready to say, “Okay, Jesus, just take it.  I can’t stand the smell any longer,” and really mean it.  And then He does.  And it hurts a bit, but then there is such a lightness that comes afterward.

If you haven’t felt the burn of His fire yet, then you haven’t allowed Him to make room in you for all that He wants to do.  There is no compromise here.  Being close to Him burns, but it only hurts for as long as we confuse what He’s burning up with part of our true selves.  As soon as we’re clear on the difference, we can dance with Him in the light of the fire.

For He really is like a refiner’s fire.  And His fire is a gift, not a condemnation or a punishment.

In Him,

Jeff

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
or
Amos 7:7-15
Psalm 85:8-13

Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Reading this week’s text from 2 Samuel I was taken back to the 80′s, to the first of the “Indiana Jones” movies, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” In the climactic scene the bad guys (Nazis) open up the Ark and find a bunch of dust. Indiana warns his companion to keep her eyes shut though, and suddenly a great burst of light and energy emerges from the box, consuming everyone who looks upon it. As the bad guys scream in agony Indiana screams, “Don’t open your eyes! Don’t open your eyes!”

I remembered that scene because I read in the “comma” for this lesson from 2 Samuel. I read the part the liturgists didn’t think we should read. In it, as David brings the Ark to Jerusalem with great celebration, the oxen stumble, and Uzzah puts out his hand to steady it, lest it fall. God’s anger breaks out against Uzzah, and Uzzah is struck dead for this “error.” David is so frightened by this that he won’t bring the Ark any further and stashes it at the home of Obed-edom.  Only when he learns that Obed-edom has been greatly blessed by the Ark’s presence does he go up to get it again.

David didn’t understand why God took Uzzah’s life for saving the Ark, and neither do the choosers of our lessons it seems. Neither did I until I heard Larry Randolph preach on this passage. If any of you have ever heard Larry Randolph preach and teach, you know his astounding heart for God. If you haven’t you owe yourself that treat. (http://www.larryrandolph.com) He has been gifted with such an awareness of the heart of the Father for His children that he preaches a love that is irresistable.

Larry wasn’t just preaching this passage when I heard him, but he brought it up as part of an explanation of God’s desire to “break out of the box” we have Him in. This is the gist of what he said: Uzzah’s error was not the “touching” of the Ark, it was the prevention of the falling. The stumbling of the oxen was something that God desired, so that He could be with His people in a new and powerful way. God wanted OUT. Uzzah’s error meant that we had to wait until Pentecost to receive what God wanted to give to His people Israel in that day.

I think that’s why the presence of the Spirit on Pentecost looked like flames of fire. The Holy Spirit, when we receive it fully, looks and feels a bit like that swirling mass of fire and light that consumed the Nazis in “Raiders.” It consumes in you and me everything that is not Holy, everything that is not of God, and it scares the bejeebers out of us! And even though we live in a post-Pentecost age, we still have “God in a box.” What Larry Randolph was trying to tell us in that message was that God wants out of our boxes so that He can bless us.

What box do you have God in? Is it your church building? Is it the Bible? (Yes, even the Bible can be made into a box!) Is it your sense of “justice,” or your sense of “morality?”

What scares us is that God wants out, and on some level, because the Holy Spirit is loose in the church here and there, we know it. We’re afraid that after the Spirit roars through our churches and our families there won’t be anything left but dust, like the bad guys in the movie. But that isn’t so. God sees on the heart, and all He wants to remove from us is that which stands between us and our power in Him, all that stands between us and who we really are.

In Him,

Jeff

Oops.

This isn’t a story about who gets “justified” in the end and who misses out.  This isn’t about future rewards.  It’s about knowing the joy of being in full relationship with the Father, and receiving fully His love and restoration.  This is about knowing the joy of the Father in the present, not some distant future.  Knowing what it is that God really wants for us, this is about how impoverished you and I are right now.

Jesus tells this parable to those who “trusted in themselves” and “regarded others with contempt.”  Yes, these are folks you and I are likely to label “self-righteous,” but in doing that you and I fall into the very same trap!  We regard the “self-righteous” with contempt, and so cut ourselves off from the blessing God desires to give us!  No one can regard another with contempt except he or she think that it is by her/his own effort (trusting in themselves) that they are due the Father’s favor.  Those who truly know His favor know better, and they have nothing but compassion for the other who has not yet learned this.

Jesus does not tell this parable to put those who trust in themselves under judgment, but because he desires that they recognize their poverty, and come to the Father for something better.

As I look at the Church today, I see so very few tax collectors, people who know their own blessedness, who rejoice in their “justification,” who know the joy that Paul knew when he said that he wanted to know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.  That is to say, he wanted to know only the righteousness (another translation of the word sometimes translated justification) he gained through Jesus and His crucifixion.

Another way to say this is that, looking at the Church, I see so few who truly know their wretchedness, the “filthiness” of the “rags” of righteousness they wear (Isaiah 64:6) and in knowing this, become available to the righteousness that is theirs in Jesus.  I can tell this because of the frustration and judgment so many of us (myself included) feel toward others in the church.  We may know our own brokenness, but the others are worse!  We may have sinned, but the self-righteous, they have to go home unjustified!  One day, we might be exalted, those folks, they’ll be humbled!  HA!

There is a prophet and missionary who works in Mozambique named Heidi Baker.  One of her lessons to me has been a simple two word admonition, “GO LOWER!”  If you are faced with condemnation, go lower.  If you are faced with resistance, go lower.  If you are threatened, go lower!  If you seek blessing, go lower!  To this lesson, I think she’d add, “If you seek to be justified, go lower!”

Heidi isn’t the least bit concerned with some future vindication/justification.  She wants blessing now, for herself, for her ministry, for her friends, for her pastors, for her children (she has taken in thousands of African orphans).  And she gets it.  When she needs provision, when there seems no way to feed folks, she doesn’t presume on her own works (which are prodigious) but she makes claims on the Lord’s mercy.  She admits her own inabilities, her own failings, and claims blessing based only on the love of God.  She lives “in the dirt” (using her own phrase) and she’s the most joyful Christian you will ever meet.  And the most victorious.  She beats back the enemy time and time again, she sees the Lord’s victories over disease and even death, she sees countless conversions to Jesus from Islam, and she’s just the happiest, silliest “snockered” Christian you’d ever want to know.

Brothers and sisters, this joy isn’t just something you and I were meant to know in heaven.  We can know the safety and security that the lowest know just by “going lower” ourselves.  And God will meet us in those low places, and bless us, and then He’ll invite us to go lower, to give up more of our self-regard so that we might know even more of the power of His love.

And instead of judging our “self-righteous” friends, we’ll go running after them like joyful kids, saying, “Come with us!  Come lower!”

In Him,

Jeff

Jeff Krantz is an Episcopal priest, and has been the rector of the Church of the Advent in Westbury, New York for 12 years.  A lifelong Episcopalian, Jeff experienced a crisis of faith after his ordination that led him into a life-giving way of being in relationship to his “Father” that he now wants to share.  His early email ministry, “Hearing His Voice,” grew into a soon-to-be released book by the same title.   He leads retreats for men’s groups, parishes, and parish leadership groups.  Jeff can be contacted by email at jhkrantz@gmail.com.

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

I vaguely remember a book from many years ago called “The Missing Piece.”  It’s by Shel Silverstein.  In it, a little character shaped like a circle goes looking for the wedge shaped piece of himself that is missing.  He looks a lot like the original “Pac Man” that only a few of us are old enough to remember, and as he rolls along, the missing piece causes him to roll unevenly.

I don’t remember how the book goes very well, but I think I recall that he tried filling that gap with several pieces that didn’t fit.  Those only made the situation worse.  At the end of the book, though, our circular friend has found the right piece, and is rolling smoothly and happily into his future.

This is the image that came to me as I meditated on Paul’s words from the readings for Proper 9 in the lectionary.

I thought about how the world sees that missing piece as a liability.  As something wrong that has to be fixed, filled.

And I thought about how Paul viewed his weaknesses, his missing pieces, as something to boast about.

It’s all about where the glory lands.  When I am rolling smoothly through my life, others are likely to think that I might have had something to do with any blessing I leave in my wake. But when I am struggling, when I am weak, it doesn’t happen that way. My weakness serves to bring glory to God in two ways that I can think of.

First, it keeps me seeking Him.

The greater the mess my life seems to be, the more desperately I’ll be crying out to the Father for my provision. And the more desperately I rely on Him, the greater the blessings He can pour out through me. The stronger I feel, the easier it will be for me to slip and to begin to rely on my own strength, my own wisdom, my own talents. A “thorn in the flesh” helps to prevent that.

Second, my weaknesses bring glory to the Father because they deflect it from me. We live in a world that wants to glorify the individual. Even preachers and teachers often become more visible than the One they preach and teach.

Several years ago I became the proud owner of a 2005 Hyundai Sonata.  That may not sound like much to you, but since I’d been driving a 1990 Volvo 240 before that, it seemed pretty cool to me.  One day as we prepared for our Strawberry Festival, several of my parishioners were working around the rectory.  Some other Westbury folks came by and noticed the car.  “Is that your pastor’s car?” they asked.  My folks proudly (they were glad to see me in something that wasn’t all faded and beat up!) said that it was.  “Oh,” said the others, looking embarrassed.  “Our pastor drives a Mercedes.”

My weakness keeps folks’ eyes on Jesus.  My off-the-rack suits aren’t some kind of false modesty.  They’re a sign that if anything good happens here, it’s not because of my competence, but because of His mercy.  Your “thorn in the flesh” works the same way.

If we want to receive the Father’s riches, and not something of our own making, it’s a pretty good bet that they’ll include a good dose of “weakness.” He’ll want to encourage us to continue to rely fully on Him, and He’ll want to make sure that we draw attention to Him, and not to ourselves.

In Him,

Jeff

Jeff Krantz is an Episcopal priest, and has been the rector of the Church of the Advent in Westbury, New York for 12 years.  A lifelong Episcopalian, Jeff experienced a crisis of faith after his ordination that led him into a life-giving way of being in relationship to his “Father” that he now wants to share.  His early email ministry, “Hearing His Voice,” grew into a soon-to-be released book by the same title.   He leads retreats for men’s groups, parishes, and parish leadership groups.  Jeff can be contacted by email at jhkrantz@gmail.com.