7 Bits of Good News

I don't know about you, but every now and then I have to pull back from the unrelenting bad news of the world and just take a break -- stare out my window, listen to the birds and watch the sunlight filter through the full-on green of the forsythia bushes that run along two sides of the house, even taking in the sounds of intermittent truck traffic as somehow reassuring.

Then I go trolling like a junkie in search of some good news.  It's always there.  I simply forget it sometimes as the noise of the catastrophes (and they are real) drowns out what I know is also there -- small and large glimmers of the glorious.

Here are 7 I found today:

1.  Acts of kindness in Ferguson, as neighbors help each other and good deeds all but escape unnoticed by the larger world.  Huffington Post

2.  Sir Nicholas Winton turned 105 today.  He helped smuggle over 600 children destined for the camps out of Nazi strongholds to Great Britain.  And Great Britain took them in.  Something to remember, I think.

3.  An Imam in Calgary speaks out against ISIS.  And so does Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti (top religious leader in the country), who calls ISIS and Al-Qaeda ‘enemy number one of Islam’.   Huffington Post  Yes, ‘they’ do speak out – they, Muslims, they, religious leaders, they, not of ‘us’, they.  ‘We’ just don’t always know it.  The Daily Beast

4.  People of faith, like people of no faith, struggle with things like illness and dying every day.  For people of faith, contrary to all objective reason, often their faith is deepened rather than not by the challenges they face.  And people of faith experience that as a good thing.  It's happening again today.

5.  Nuns are still getting on the bus.

6.  Governmental minds can be and are changed.

7.  Enemies became friends today.  I’m not sure where exactly, but it happens every day, so I’m pretty sure it happened today.

That's my list of good news for today.  I wonder what's on your list?

Sermon Cliff Note: It Was Evening When He Came

It was evening when he came . . . and they, well, they were afraid – hiding behind locked doors – dreading every sound, hearing every creak upon the stairs as the threat to their existence that it was . . . they were next – simple as that . . .

It was there . . . behind the locks and the doors . . . in the foggy dimness of twilight . . . in a room filled with the stench of fear . . . that Jesus stood, as if he had been there all along . . . and calmly pronounced the accompanying reality of God’s own peace to a group of people who could barely imagine such peace let alone feel its accompanying presence . . .

And then the risen Jesus does this extraordinary thing . . . as part of his divine sending, he breathes the Holy Spirit into them . . . God has come to become their very breath . . .

And thus what happens in that room is the very Genesis act of creating and recreating . . . God breathes . . . we live . . .

As one translation of God’s creation of humanity in Genesis has it, “And Yahweh God fashioned the humanity of the dust of the ground, and breathed into its nostrils the breathing of life, so the humanity became a living breath”. . . because God breathed, we became . . . a . . . living breath . . .

Medieval scientist, nun, theologian, poetess, chastizer of popes and bishops, and songwriter, Hildegard of Bingen, once wrote, “My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

Every  breath we take is infused with God . . . every song, every word, every shout, every cry . . . floats on the breath of God . . .

God’s breath is like an ocean surrounding us and infusing us . . . how very silly we must seem to God as we spend so much time unaware that we are filled with and in the midst of God’s life-giving, life-saving ocean of breath. . . an ocean of love lifting and holding us up . . . safely floating us to our destination while we, unaware, dream we are swimming . . . or worse, nightmare we are drowning . . . when God’s life-sustaining breath is there all along . . .

Understood this way, perhaps we can see Jesus and ourselves as God’s breath . . . inhaling . . . taking into God’s very self all that is wrong and broken and bad in our world . . . and in us . . .// and exhaling . . . breathing into us and through us, into the world, as God’s gifting all that is of God . . . God’s goodness . . . God’s wholeness . . . God’s health . . . God’s peace . . .

For Jesus’ words convey clearly that what God sent him to do, Jesus sends them, sends us to do on his behalf . . .

And what is that thing for which Jesus was sent?  It is that simple and oh-so-hard-in-the-doing thing we call forgiveness . . . the better translation of the Greek is release, as in set free from bondage . . .

As Jesus says, it’s quite simple, really: If you forgive others, they are forgiven . . . this is the work I am sending you out to do . . . everywhere . . . with everyone . . . for if you do not do this, then . . .

Well, the usual translation is that if you don’t forgive, they’re unforgiven, which most interpret to mean Jesus’ followers are invested with the divine ability to forgive . . . or not . . .

The ‘or not’ is problematic when considered with the entirety of the gospels . . . recall Jesus’ own words in his Sermon on the Mount: forgive others if you yourself would be forgiven . . .

Jesus is not setting forth a menu of choice for his followers; rather, Jesus is reminding them that forgiveness, setting free, is the very center, the heart, of what he came to do and teach us to do . . . the Greek makes it a bit more clear by saying essentially if you do not let them go, then they are held . . . The Message translates it thusly:   “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”

Precisely: if we don’t forgive, if we don’t set ourselves and others free with God’s forgiving word, then what?  What will we do instead?

This Jesus, resurrected from a cross . . . spent not one moment on how he got there or who put him there . . . forgiveness . . . the real-time demonstration of freedom from the bondage to the past . . . is Jesus’ central gospel theme . . . and thus it must be ours . . .

When he sent the disciples, investing them with the priestly power to proclaim forgiveness, this, then, is what he came for . . .

And notice what he did not do . . . he did not proclaim them forgiven . . . what he did was actually even more extraordinary – he gave unto the ones in desperate need of forgiving the very power to proclaim forgiveness . . . after all, who better?

The only question left is . . . Are we going to live out his gospel or our own?  His forgiveness or our refusal?  His release from bondage or our insistence on enslavement?  His joy or our bitter condemnation?  His grace or our justice?

Thus every day do we choose . . . locked doors . . . fear. . . guilt . . . shame . . . or freedom . . . joy . . . grace . . .

Here then is the Good News in a nutshell:  breathe in God’s spirit
and the only thing you can breathe out is peace . . . God’s own delivering, releasing, freeing . . . peace . . .

The fear-filled trembling followers hiding out behind locked doors, so frightened were they of what was to come, became faith-filled believers, betting everything on God and letting it ride.

The question for us is a simple one: do we want to be that kind of follower?  If so, pray for it - pray for the kind of faith that will give you the miracle of giving it all away.

The Good News Clock

Friend Hank sent me this link today – it’s a clock – well, sort of.  I mean, there is a measure of time, but it’s

Doomsday Clock

not really measuring time, this internet ‘device’ – it’s measuring the annual accumulations of the world in numbers . . . people born . . . people dying . . . (both at least implicitly seen by the counting creators as bad news) . . . murders . . . fuel consumption rates . . . how we’re dying . . . what illnesses are piling up on the collective body human . . . extinction rates . . . how much we’re consuming . . . well, you get the picture.

What grabbed my eye, however, is the category Smile (it ain't all bad news).  I’m not sure what I expected, but beyond ‘# of 1st kisses’ (which I keep wondering how on earth they claim to measure), I find their categories pretty depressing: # of divorces . . . beer (and wine) consumption rates . . . cars purchased . . . Coca Cola’s drunk . . . and # of Google searches.

Really?

Even tongue-in-cheek, this is the best you can do for smilie-good news?

In the tongue-in-cheek mode (or not), how about # of FB friends made . . . or # of blades of grass growing without human help . . . or # of cat videos posted on YouTube (you know you watch them – and hey, if someone’s making a cute cat video, chances are they’re not up to mischief – a good thing, I’m thinking – and yes, on a scale of the good, I put cat videos ahead of drinking a Coke) . . . # of Top 10 lists posted . . . # of times people turned off their computers . . . # of good dreams (I’m guessing if they can measure first kisses, dreams wouldn’t be much of a stretch) . . .

Or better yet, if it’s a measure of genuine good news we seek, how about measuring and reporting on the number of new species found . . . trees planted . . . hungry fed . . . those who went to bed safe the night before . . . have adequate clothing . . . found shelter . . . received needed medical attention . . . went to school . . . have loving parents . . . were not murdered . . . lived to a ripe old age . . . heard a kind word . . . spoke a kind word . . . read a book . . . created something . . . preserved something worth saving . . . had an idea . . . served someone . . . loved . . . worshiped . . . praised . . . laughed . . . danced . . . enjoyed the sunshine . . . were brave . . . got their dream job . . . or just got a job . . .

It’s another day on planet earth and there are those among us who count and measure the passing time by what’s happening.  I wonder why so many of our professional counters measure to the doom, without also including the many bits of good news.

I’m no Pollyanna, but it seems to me that we’d be far better off as a species if we remembered not only the bad news, but also the good; and there is actually quite a lot of good to remember.

And that’s a blessing.

The Good News: You're Welcome Here

A woman new to these mountains shares with a neighbor, one of my flock, about being ousted from a church because she has tattoos.

He calls me with a question: Do churches really do that?

Me Sadly, yes.

Him Why?  Who does that?

Me People for whom the rules are really important, I suppose.  And there is a reference in Jeremiah to the avoidance of designs on our bodies (tattoos).

Him But why?

Me I don’t know.  All I know is I’ve got a tattoo.  So maybe you could tell her that so she’ll know she’s welcome here.

Him I’ll do that.  And I’ll take her some cucumbers.

Fresh garden cucumbers are a fine accompaniment to the good news, don’t you think?  Eddie and his cucumbers make fine evangelists.

And isn’t you’re welcome here the good news at its heart?  I know it was for me.

Panning Rise of the Guardians

Santa Clause May Not be a Pacifist, but the Easter Bunny Is!   (Actually, I think Santa Claus is too.)              

There’s a new movie set to be released Thanksgiving week called Rise of the Guardians.  It features an animated Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Sandman, and Jack Frost as the ‘guardians’ of the happiness of the children of the world.

At the risk of entering the saga in the role of Scrooge, I admit that (a) while I love adventure flicks, (b) the previews of this movie bother me greatly.

I am not above some gratuitous violence in a movie, but this is a children’s movie and it uses children’s icons.

Icons are just that: symbols of something.

Santa Claus, derived from a variety of historical and imaginary figures, has his origins in Saint Nicholas, with the gift-giving tradition arising from stories about his many and secret gifts to the poor.

The Easter Bunny probably arises from pagan observances incorporated into Christian practices in celebration of Easter and the resurrection, the rabbit or the hare and the egg long having been symbols of life itself.

In Rise of the Guardian, Santa Claus is a sword-wielding warrior (modeled by the author on James Bond) and the Easter Bunny throws egg bombs and a “mean boomerang” in the battle against evil.

The problem is this: the icons of Santa and the Easter Bunny, distinctly Christian for centuries, are symbols of the nativity, the herald of peace among people, peace being specifically understood to include justice and care for the poor; and Easter is the defeat of death and the victory of life, achieved not by violence, but by sacrifice.

Mythologies teach us something.  There are important lessons brought by these icons:  care for the poor, the blessing of giving, the understanding of Jesus' advent as a gift for all humanity, God cares for children, humility as a way of life, life itself as divine gift, the certainty of the resurrection promise, to name but a few.  The James Bond lesson that the ends justify the means is a problem.

The Christian tradition recounts the battle of good and evil and the triumph of good.  These icons bear witness to that story.  It is the story of life, of courage, and of sacrifice as the ‘tools’ Jesus uses to bring about the triumph of good.

A sword-carrying Santa and a bomb-throwing Easter Bunny?

Not Good News.