Was Jesus Naive?

If we say that the Golden Rule is naive, we are saying that the man who laid it down is naive.  And that man was Jesus.

The irony is that we seem to actually believe that Jesus lived some easy life with no understanding of the dangers we face, forgetting that Jesus died as a victim of torture of the worst kind; that Jesus was the defendant in a show trial; that Jesus was himself murdered in a public, shameful, excruciating way.

We forget that the man who laid down the Golden Rule for us also laid down his life for us.

We forget that he knew suffering, he knew death, he knew shame, he knew anger and he knew temptation.

I think what we’re really doing is turning our backs on the demands of our faith in favor of its gifts, as if the two could be separated.

And where, oh where, is the disclaimer that the rule we call golden (as in something to be valued or treasured) not be observed when we are in groups (as in how we behave as a nation)?

Jesus knew what we face, the challenges of our lives.  He always has known.  Perhaps the earth journey was simply to show us that he’s always known, so we’d get it, the way a parent may share an episode from her youth with her teenager, to show the teenager that she really does understand.  Maybe.

Whether it took a trip to planet earth to redeem us or whether it was an elaborate object lesson or something else entirely, of all the things Jesus was, naive was not one of them.

What we call the golden rule was part of his father’s business – the very family business that we, his followers, have inherited.

There are other businesses.

But this one is ours.

How we are to conduct that business is very clear.

We can come up with all the reasons in the world not to follow it.

But then, we’re about somebody else’s business, aren’t we?

Praying for Our Nation's Leaders Today in Church

Dear Leader,

Today in the small village of McDowell, Virginia, we gathered at the usual time for worship.  At the beginning, as is our usual custom, we lifted up our prayer concerns, which included you.  During worship, we prayed our concerns for our nation’s leaders out loud and included our blessings for you in those prayers.  It went something like this . . .

Gracious God, 
We pray for the leaders of our nation.  We ask that You grant them all spirits of honesty. . . hearts of reconciliation and conciliation . . . perseverance in the face of challenge . . . lives lived and decisions made which follow the leading of Your Spirit . . . ears to hear the will of the people and wisdom to know when that will should be ignored in favor of what is best . . . 
And we pray that You grant our leaders showers of Your blessings . . . the blessings of good health and wellness . . . loving family . . . safe haven . . . happy lives . . . love and forgiveness . . . renewed energy for the task at hand . . .and inner peace – that peace which surpasses all human understanding . . . 
Amen.

This is the prayer I will send to our nation’s leaders from one small congregation in the western mountains of Virginia.

It took some getting to, this prayer.  There were jokes and sarcasm, despair and disgust, prayers for our own individual and particular political agendas, and a very difficult time in naming blessings as we grappled with the brokenness of our political process in this particular season.

The preacher (that’s me) got a little crusty with the congregation (shame on her) in the grappling.

This is at the core of my own preacherly struggle: when is it good, necessary, right, important, to create space for the naming of frustration, anger and just good old-fashioned venting of spleen – especially when it comes to praying?  And when is it time to let go of all that and genuinely pray for the good of the other, even and especially another with whom we are angry, frustrated, etc.?

Can I genuinely pray these blessing prayers equally for Ted Cruz and Barak Obama?  If not, is that about who’s right or wrong?  Or is that just about my own unwillingness or inability to let go of my own judgments even on the holy ground that is prayer?

I tend to think it’s the latter, but then that puts me in the place of judging others who think differently.

Turns out it’s just as hard, if not harder, to pray our politics as it is to live them.

The Ways of Peace

The ways of peace are largely untried, but successful more often than we think.

I can almost remember the moment (I was in my late 40's) when I learned that the Cuban Missile Crisis was settled not by President Kennedy’s public showdown behavior, but rather was settled with a behind-the-scenes peaceful negotiation.

I was always taught that the Crisis ended because Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t back down.  I was shocked to learn that the United States actually negotiated a settlement whereby we would withdraw our missiles from Turkey and the then USSR would withdraw its missiles from Cuba.

I felt so betrayed because what I had been taught was a lie and it is a costly lie.  That lie led me and lots of others to believe that the only way to deal with world enemies was with force and the threat of force, when, in fact, the situation was resolved not by force, but by peaceful negotiation, by talking to our enemy, by making concessions and compromises.

We live in a time when the word ‘compromise’ has become a dirty word, where everything is tinged with the language of righteousness.  And the rightness of our cause, whatever it may be, becomes the justification for force.

Thus this president, along with every president I can remember, whatever party they belong to, speaks openly about protecting not only Americans and American land, but also American interests around the world.  A public Pentagon document planning through 2020 I once read refers to military readiness to protect American ‘interests’ around the world.

And now, we’re talking about military action, directly or by proxy, against Iran -- not around the nuclear threat, but against their stated intention to blockade the Strait of Hormuz (where much of our oil flows through Iran’s territory).

Thus I am, as a citizen, literally required to ask, “How many people am I willing to kill in order to drive my car?”  I know it’s not that simple, but the idea of self-defense has been expanded to mean not merely the protection of my life, but also of my way of life.

I don’t like or excuse Iran’s behavior.  But their bad behavior does not justify mine.  That, I think, lies at the heart of the Golden Rule.