Both kids are home now. We picked up Rhys for the holiday weekend on Thursday. Maddie is here because, well, because she lost her job for the summer. Long story and not mine to tell but it means that she is here with us until August when she heads back to college (and if anyone needs babysitting done - she’s looking for something to do!) OK, it was not what we were expecting for this summer, but I have to say that I’m not sorry to spend some more time with her these weeks. Plus it means she gets to go to Choir School with me after all, something we both have loved doing. Now if only Rhys could find a job a little closer to home, we could spend our summers pretending that time isn’t passing and that soon they will be gone for good.
Before I get all maudlin about that, I’ll quickly point out that we are also being reminded this weekend that they are, we are all different people and sometimes bump up against one another. And that whole “who’s in charge” thing can be a bit of a pain at times. Yeah, they’ve been on their own, yeah we trust them to make good decisions, yeah, yeah, but here things are different. Here you participate in the family, here you do your share. Here you don’t hibernate in your room until mid-afternoon and then want to be up until the wee hours of the morning. “Why?” they ask as innocently as their current states of mind will allow. Why? Because I said so!
Not the most articulate of arguments, I’ll grant you that. But the buck’s gotta stop somewhere, doesn’t it? The authority has to rest on some set of shoulders and there shouldn’t be a need to question it. Right? I know that isn’t how we live anymore. We question everything, and everyone. We grew up in a nation fixated on independence (Happy 4th of July, by the way), on the supreme power of the individual. And while that makes great action movies, it doesn’t always work when we try to live in community. When we try to live as a family. When we try to be the church.
Wrestling with authority is a common problem. Though I have often wondered why. Is it because we are afraid of what that authority will demand of us? We like our authorities to tell us to do what we wanted to do anyway. Maddie is always trying to get the crazy dogs to obey. She’ll look at Max and say “sit, Max, sit!” Over and over, while Max looks at her like she is speaking in tongues - which I guess to Max she is. And then finally Maddie will say, “Just keep standing there, Max. Good boy!”
That’s the kind of authority we want. The kind of leader we would follow. The one who says, “whatever you guys want to do is fine with me!” Many years ago I tried an experiment in leadership in this model. I was directing a play and told the actors that I wasn’t going to give them direction, to just say the lines and go where they wanted to go and do whatever kind of stage business they wanted to do. As an actor I was of the opinion that I knew more than the director anyway, so I thought, give them a chance. They loved it, at first. Wow, freedom to shape my own character, my own direction. Cool! After a couple of weeks of rehearsal I had a delegation of the whole cast coming to me to say, this isn’t working. We don’t know where to go and what to do, and even when we knew for ourselves, we didn’t know for the others, we don’t know where they will be or how they’ll receive the lines we are giving them. Can you please give us some direction? I said sure and we proceeded from there. And never had a complaint from a one of them the rest of the run.
We don’t like authority and yet we find we need it more than we would like to admit. We need direction, we need to be told which way to go, we need a word from on high. So, let us have it, Zechariah. Tell us the great pronouncement from on high, trot out your “thus saith the Lord” and we’ll grit our teeth and get on with it. Let us have it. What is it that we are supposed to do? Direct us!
Zechariah 7:8-10 The word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying: 9 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; 10 do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
Um, that’s it? Where’s the fire and brimstone? Where’s the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth? Where’s the proper positions for worship, the amount of water needed for a real baptism, where’s the definitive take on what time the service should be and whether 3 out of 4 Sundays is good enough? Where is the divine edict on colors for sanctuaries and the settling of the pew verses chair debate? Isn’t that the kind of stuff that God really cares about?
Or maybe it is the big picture stuff, like world peace and human trafficking, the solutions to hunger and climate change, the corporate greed destroying the planet and the basic human rights being denied those who are different, who stand outside whatever societal norms we have settled on for the time being. Only God cares about that stuff, right? God and Miss America contestants, anyway. Where is the big picture stuff in this list from Zechariah?
Render true judgments. Well, ok, that could be big picture. That could be justice issues galore. And I’m sure it is. But it also sounds small scale. One on one. You, watch your judging! Watch who you point fingers toward, watch who you exclude, turn away from, shuffle to the side. Yeah, we could go to town with that one. Call judgmental everyone who doesn’t agree with our opinions. Shun as shallow or humanistic those who don’t want to make any judgments. After all the Word says render true judgments, not don’t make any judgments. So, there.
But it is followed up by Words that make our enthusiasm about the judgment thing a little less giddy. Show kindness and mercy to one another. Kindness and mercy? Not inquisitions and excommunications? Kindness and mercy. Really? That’s the core of the message? That’s the “thus saith the Lord” word from the ragged prophet standing on a windswept desert rock? Show kindness??
I mean, politeness is good and all. But come on, don’t we have more important things to be about than being nice? We want to change the world! We want to save souls!! We want to overthrow Satan and the forces of evil, whether we see those as supernatural and demonic floating around just out of our sight, or very natural and way too prevalent in our human community, not to mention the human heart. And the fiery eyed prophet comes with a word from the Lord and it is “be nice to one another”?
This weekend we launch our series on the fifth Fruit of the Spirit identified by Paul in the Letter to the Galatians. Kindness. The fifth dimension (up, up and away, in my beautiful balloon ... sorry, old fogey reference) of Love. The second branch, says Evelyn Underhill, that reaches out to the world from the center core of love, joy and peace. Patience, our last series, was about dealing with what the world throws at us as we seek to be at work in God’s world. Kindness, then, becomes the modus operandi of engaging with people - the beloved of God - in the world. It is the means by which we engage, the power by which we transform the world. By kindness. How can this be?
Well, hang with us this series and we’ll go a little deeper. We’ll try to find methodologies, and maybe even some explanations, some arguments for being kind. We’ll get there. In the meantime, why be kind?
Because I said so! Or better, because the Lord said so.
Shalom,
Derek
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