aspiring to a wholehearted life

I just finished a book this afternoon for class.  [Class hasn’t actually started yet—our first meeting is tonight, but the book pulled me in and I couldn’t put it down.]  This book is called Toughest People toLove: How to Understand, Lead, and Love the Difficult People in your Life—IncludingYourself, by professor-pastor-counselor Chuck DeGroat. 

We all have tough people in our personal and professional lives (let’s be honest…) so when I saw this book on our syllabus for this quarter, my first thought was, Oh yeah… this is gonna be good.  And it was. 

The long and the short is that I still don’t know how to deal with the people whom I love dearly but drive me crazy—any more than they probably know how to deal with me in my crazy.

The truth is, we all have a little bit of crazy, and we’re all tough, because we’re human. 

But that was kind of the point:  dealing with each other well ultimately means dealing with ourselves and coming to terms with our own messy, annoying, glorious humanity. 

Take the following for example:

The other night I got so frustrated because Matt put a billion chopped onions in our homemade enchiladas.  I had found and followed a recipe in the past which we loved, and this time we decided to do multiple batches at one time because we’re lazy on weeknights and love easy leftovers… but I come into the kitchen, and we’re talking a massive heap of onions in the frying pan.  My immediate (and very verbal) response was to cite the holy grail of cooking texts that was the online enchilada recipe, and flush red over the fact that the onion-to-other-ingredients ratio was about to be massacred by my husband.  I went into a downward spiral about how my cooking decisions are never good enough, how he always wanted to change things, and how he wasn’t taking my desires into consideration.

None of this was true, of course.  He was only trying to be nice and help me make enchiladas.  And he happens to love onions.

The real issue is that I struggle to bend the rules.  I am far more comfortable with following recipes and controlling outcomes.  If I feel “ownership” of a task, I want it to go my own way.  I wanted him to cook how I wanted, not the other way around. 

I can be, apparently, a tough person.

The lesson here is one I’ve been hearing from a cascade of literary and pastoral voices over the last few years—Brené Brown, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Ronald Richardson, and others…

They all seem to grasp the concept that part of being in healthy relationships with others is being in right relationship with God and yourself—experiencing what the Hebrew Scriptures call shalom, a deep and abiding peace and wholeness.   

Part of the problem in my relationships is me.  My life feels disorganized, my brain is fractured, my desires and aspirations are self-absorbed, and I drag around what DeGroat called a “long, invisible bag” stuffed with all the parts of myself I don’t like and don’t want others to see.  The bag gets heavier the longer I pull it around, and unfortunately it doesn’t get lighter without patiently airing out some of that dirty laundry.

I don’t want to do it.  I’d rather have you all think I’m perfect. 

But let’s be honest, “perfect” is boring.  And it’s fake.  The Greek word that we translate “perfect” in the New Testament—as in “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect”—is telios, which (in my imperfect understanding) is similar to shalom:  complete, mature, whole.  It’s less about one ideal standard than all parts working in harmony.   

“Perfect” is annoying, because it’s what we can all pretend we want to be, but no one actually believes we are.  “Whole”—or “wholehearted”—is real and honest and a bit broken, but also somewhat put graciously back together.  And it’s relatable:

It’s the deep breath you get to take when you can admit your own mistakes.

It’s the glass of wine you can have on your couch with a friend with your feet up and your shoes off as you talk about the movie you loved or the work project you’re struggling with.

It’s the spattering sound you can appreciate when you look up from your phone screen and see that it’s raining outside.    

It’s that blog post you never thought you were interesting enough to write. 

It’s the realization that it’s okay to put up boundaries with people that try to claim a lot from you.

It’s the grace that we find in Jesus’ tender and outrageous mercy. 

Failing is okay.  Being honest with ourselves and others is okay.  Putting too many onions in the enchiladas is okay.  The moral of the story here is that my crazy is going to try my best to love your crazy, because beneath all of our collective crazy and deep flaws, our name is Beloved and God said that we are all “very good.”

the fate of the fig tree: a sermon for lent

I was invited to give the sermon for the third Sunday in Lent at our church in Seattle on March 24th.  The lectionary text was Luke 13:1-9.  I’ve edited it down for brevity, but here it is:

*****

In the season of Lent, the church remembers Jesus’ journey to the cross; and this week’s text in Luke takes place as a part of that journey—when Jesus travels from Galilee (where he began his ministry) to Jerusalem (where it will end).  The crowd opens the conversation by asking Jesus about some troubling recent events: 

“There were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices”

…almost as if to say, “Did you hear about this Jesus?  Men from Galilee went to worship and Pilate had them murdered in the Temple.  What do you have to say about that?”

I have to admit, I’ve had some similar thoughts lately, things that I’d probably like to ask Jesus about if he were around…
Did you hear, Jesus, about the 50 Muslims who were killed in the shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand? What do you have to say about that? 
Did you hear, Jesus, about the anti-Semitic murders at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  What do you have to say about that?
Jesus, have you heard about the students who were shot in their classrooms at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year?  What do you have to say about that? 

And Jesus says, yeah… yeah, I know about that.  I know about the Temple.  I know about Christchurch and Tree of Life and the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.  I know about Sutherland Springs, and Charleston, and Orlando, and Vegas, and everywhere else.  I know.  Are you asking me if God had a hand in those things?   

The common understanding at the time was that God rewards those were righteous and punishes those who sinned—so if something bad happened to you, it must be a direct result of something you did wrong. 

“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? …Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.”

Jesus essentially says to them:  I know you want me to justify these things, I know it will make it easier to think that there’s a reason that they died, but I won’t… because that’s not how God works.  But he follows it up with an ominous warning: 

“…but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he tells them a parable about a vineyard owner who looks for fruit on the fig tree growing in his vineyard, and after three years of finding nothing tells the gardener to cut it down so it won’t waste the soil.  The gardener replies:

“‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

And we’re left with a cliffhanger… Does the owner listen to the gardener, or does he cut the tree down?  Does it ever produce fruit?

What is the fate of the fig tree?   

The crowd has just been reminded of two instances in which people’s lives were lost.  God’s doing or not, life is sometimes unexpectedly short.  And what Jesus seems to say in this text is:  repent, or your life too will be lost. 

Sometimes being faced with the reality of death is enough to get us to repent, and to start walking in the way of Jesus, because he gives hope of something more, something eternal.  And maybe that’s what this text is… a reminder that we often need to turn our lives around and start producing fruit. 

Now I have a confession to make:  I have a healthy relationship with Netflix. 

And by “a healthy relationship with Netflix”… I mean an unhealthy relationship with Netflix.

I watch too much Netflix.

But I discovered a new show a few weeks ago.  It’s a reality TV show where a group of five gay men (called the “Fab Five”) are invited to help makeover an individual’s life—hair, wardrobe, living space, diet, etc.  And one of the Fab Five is named Bobby, and Bobby grew up in the church.  He says he spent almost every day there as a kid, his family was very involved, and he loved it… but when he came out as gay as a teenager, his parents and his church completely disowned him.  They thought he wasn’t producing the right fruit and no longer belonged in the vineyard, so they cut him out. 

As I was reading this text after watching this show, it made me think:  Do we really have a God that’s like the vineyard owner?  Do we have a God who looks at us, and if we’re not producing fruit wants to cut us out?

On first read, Jesus seems to say, ‘Don’t worry—God doesn’t punish people for their individual sins… but if you don’t repent, you will be punished.’  The parable makes it very much sound like we need to fear a God that walks around the vineyard with an ax.  Many people, and many Christians, have read this text and have left thinking exactly that.  And it’s true that we genuinely believe that there are sins we need to repent from, and that orienting our individual lives toward God in Christ will help us produce fruit. 

But the fruit is not moralistic legalism, and the fig tree may not just be one person.

What I learned in studying this text this week is that the fig tree was often used as a metaphor for the people of Israel… as an entity, as a unit, as the holy body of God.  The prophet Hosea, for example, writes,

“Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your ancestors.”

I also found that fig trees were occasionally planted in vineyards to help prop up the vines.  So not only should they be producing their own fruit, they were also supposed to support the vineyard—they had a job.  And the people of Israel were given a job too.  In Genesis 12, at the very beginning when God establishes this holy, chosen people, he tells Abraham:  “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing… in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God intended for this holy people to be a gift to the entire world, to produce fruit, and it was not happening.  As it turns out, it is so much easier to take what is good and try to wall it in with rules and customs and traditions, to clearly define who’s in and who’s out.

And why should God not be exasperated at that? 

Many years I’ve been waiting for you to produce fruit… I’ve given you space and soil and water and I haven’t found what I’m looking for.  My heart is for this vineyard, and I’ve planted you here to help it, and it turns out, you’re failing to produce the fruit that will bless everyone else.

What is the fate of this fig tree?

Photo Credit:  BiblePlaces.com

But the gardener… thank goodness for that gardener. 

We can still make this right, he says.  Let me tend to it, till around it, put some fertilizer on it… go to the cross for it.  Don’t cut it off just yet—it can still be a blessing to the vineyard. 

And the irony is that the owner and the gardener are the same. 

They both care about the fig tree. 

They both care about the vineyard. 

They both know that anything less than true repentance does not produce a people that embody the fruits that the Spirit of God seeks to bear:  love… joy… peace… patience… kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

That is our gift, our mission, to the world.   

And we’ve screwed up a lot.  The church at large and the church in America have had a hand in discrimination against the LGBTQ community, people of color, women, and many others… we’ve not always embodied these fruits. 

But we can.  The fate of the fig tree is left open for us.  We can repent and know that the gardener is still with us.  He’s tilling us and feeding us and bearing the cross for us… so that we can be the tree that produces the fruit of the Spirit of God for the world:  peace, joy, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… and love. 

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”

– John 13:35