Speaking the Truth

In Ephesians 4 and 5, the writer offers some “house rules” for living in Christian community. Among them, are these practical guidelines for being a community of truthfulness:

“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, who is Christ . . . ” (4:14-15)

So, then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another (4:25).

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear (4:29).

In Christian community, we seek truth because it shapes us into Christlikeness, because falsehood erodes authentic community, and because the truth, lovingly handled, encourages and empowers those to whom we speak—it “builds up and gives grace to those who hear.”

We need the truth about ourselves if we are to become the people we are meant to be. And some of the truth we have to face is hard; we’d rather not have to come to terms with it. Comedian Rita Rudner said, “I have a method of weighing myself in the morning. I hang off the shower curtain and gradually lower myself to the scale. When it gets to the right weight, I try to black out.”

We avoid mirrors, not so much the mirrors that reflect our appearance, as the ones which show us our hearts. The faces of those we love can serve as that kind of mirror: they register disappointment, frustration, and hurt when we break our promises to them, treat them harshly, and use them selfishly. If we pay attention to the anger or confusion or pain which flashes across their faces, we can see our shadows there. We can also “see” ourselves in those rare moments when we are still and quiet: our consciences whisper to us about our sins, our wounds shout at us about our brokenness, our doubts mock our faith, our disappointments deride our hope, and our indifference ridicules our love. Like the image of ourselves we see on the surface of a placid lake, silence can show us ourselves, which is why we need and avoid silence. Sometimes, of course, the most revealing mirror is the honest counsel, the loving confrontation, of family and friends, who risk telling us the truth about our effect on them.

We tell each other the truth, most powerfully and most lovingly, however, not when we say the hard things, but when we say the good news. That’s why, I think, Paul ends the fourth chapter of Ephesians this way: “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” The best truth we can tell each other is the truth about what God has done and is doing for us in Jesus Christ.

Much more often than I have needed to be confronted about my failures, shown my blinds spots, and challenged in my thinking, I have needed to be reminded of God’s love and mercy for me, of God’s delight and joy in me, and of God’s purposes and hopes for me. Most of the time, I am in close and feeling touch with my incompleteness, deficits, and needs, because life has a way of making those inescapable over time. I suspect that’s true for you as well.

So, we speak gospel truth, Jesus truth, to each other and the world. We remind the guilty and ashamed that Jesus says to them, to us, what he said to that woman, caught in the act of adultery and dragged before him by an angry and punishing mob: “I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more.” We help those who are driven to despair by their unfulfilled longing and craving hunger to hear him say: “Let any one who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
We urge the lonely and fearful to remember that he said: “I will not leave you as orphans. I am coming to you.” We encourage the weary to remember that Jesus still stands with his arms outstretched to all of those whose backs are about to break and whose knees are about to buckle: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus is the truth who serves and saves, who encourages and helps, who loves and heals. And our glad calling is to “speak him”—to be his tender voice—to each other.

Time is Up, Time is Full

According to the Gospel of Mark, the first words of Jesus’ first sermon had to do with time: “The time is fulfilled.” He meant, in part, that time was up. There was a note of compelling urgency in his words—of impending crisis and approaching judgment. Time was running out and winding down. Whatever men and women were going to do about their lives they needed to do quickly, because the opportunity to act was about to be taken from them. At the longest, we are given a mere handful of days, and we live in a wonderful but precarious world where crisis can brew and rage as quickly and dangerously as a storm. Whatever we intend to do with and about our lives, the time is now, because time is nearly up.

In John Steinbeck’s novel Sweet Thursday, there is a character named Doc, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and who makes a living in Monterey by collecting marine specimens from the tide pools and selling them. Doc enjoys his life, but he’s aware of the ticking of the clock and the turning of the pages of the calendar:

The end of life is now not so terribly far away—you can see it in the way you see the finish line when you come into the home stretch—and your mind says, “Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?” All of these, of course, are the foundations of man’s greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. “What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?” And now we’re coming to the wicked, poisoned dart: What have I contributed to the Great Ledger? What am I worth? (Penguin Books, p. 22.)

Doc’s question is a good one: “What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?” When we ask those kinds of questions, we realize the wisdom and challenge in Jesus’ words, “The time is fulfilled.” Time’s nearly up. So, it’s time for you and me to get on with it: to take the hard decision, to make the difficult choice, to let go of the past, to embrace the future, and to live in the here and now the life we know, somewhere deep inside, we were meant to live. It’s time to look in the mirror and to be honest about what we see there, to admit our failures, to acknowledge our disappointments, to name our wounds, to celebrate our victories, to claim our strengths, to grieve our losses, and to give thanks for our gifts. It’s time to look into the eyes of Jesus and be hopeful about we see there: the love he has for us, just as we are, the compassion he has for our brokenness, and the hope he has for us and for the world.

When Jesus said, “the time is fulfilled” he also meant that the time was full of possibility. As you know, in the language of the New Testament, there are two words for time. One of those words describes clock and calendar time—the relentless wearing away of the hours, the ceaseless succession of one day after another, and the tireless passing of year after year. There is nothing to hope for in this kind of time; time is dreary and empty, and life is just one routine and dull thing after another. As the writer of Ecclesiastes once said: “All things are wearisome; more than anyone can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.”

There is, though, another word for time, and it is the one Jesus used when he said, “The time is fulfilled.” It is the word for a season of harvest and fruitfulness; it speaks of opportunity and welcome and bears witness to the new and unexpected. It is time ripe with vitality, permeated with promise, and fresh with creativity.. When Jesus said “the time is fulfilled,” he meant that it was a season laden with potentiality and pregnant with possibility. He meant that the time is right and the time is now to make the changes we want and need to make in our lives. What we couldn’t believe was possible before seems possible now.

It’s possible, because, as Jesus went on to promise, “the kingdom of God has come near.” Jesus has brought the kingdom of God close to us, so close that it is possible for us to live in it, to experience it, and to draw strength and courage from it, even while we still live, simultaneously, in the kingdoms of this world. The kingdom of God exists wherever we acknowledge God’s authority and do God’s will. The realm of God is that place just beyond every place where peace and justice embrace, where the lion and the lamb lie safely together, where the hungry sit down to a feast, and the oppressed lose their chains. It where life is ordered and shaped by the ways of Jesus—where the lonely are invited to the party, where the weak find strength, and where the sinner finds mercy. In Jesus, that wondrous, peaceable kingdom of God has come into history. It is near to us: all we have to do is open our hearts to receive and experience it and reach out to welcome and embrace it. In the energy and strength, courage and passion of God’s will and way—in the kingdom of God—we become what God meant us to be; we do what God meant us to do. Jesus has brought that kingdom near to us, so near that the time is right and the time is now for us to do what we most need to do.

Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.

The famous American novelist, Henry James, once gave this advice to his young nephew, Billy: "There are three things that are important in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind."

We are living in hard times: economic news has been, and remains, grim; we have soldiers in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan; and we see alarming instability in places like North Korea. And, there are more personal difficulties, too: unsettling diagnoses, unexpected crises, and unyielding problems. Even if we are in a season of relative calm, we face daily challenges. One leadership guru says we all have 100 problems a day. Those problems might be small or big, and the total might not be exactly 100, of course. "100 problems a day" is his way of saying that, even when things are good, there are issues and complexities that tax our minds, hearts, and bodies.

In hard times, the temptation is to become harsh: tough on ourselves and on other people. The wise and better thing, of course, is to cultivate compassion and tenderness, to give and receive support; and to offer and open ourselves to encouragement.

Harshness can’t help us; only kindness can.

"Be compassionate," Jesus said, "as God is compassionate."

Moving forward

A small town newspaper reporter once said: “All the people I’ve interviewed can be divided into three categories: good, bad, and indifferent, but I’ve not written about many of the indifferent. The indifferent don’t make good stories.”

Indifference doesn’t make for good stories because it doesn’t make for a good life. We can’t live meaningfully if our response to the challenges we face is simply to shrug our shoulders and walk away. Life gets interesting when we are committed to things that matter, things like truth and goodness, like love and peace.

In a television special several years ago, Bill Moyers told the story of a man in New York City who decided he would try to do something to help the hungry. As he went to work each day, he distributed 100 sandwiches to street people. Soon, the homeless lined the sidewalks waiting to be handed a sandwich. Moyers observed: “New York City’s population now runs in excess of 11,000,000 people. A hundred sandwiches will hardly scratch the surface of the need. But while Sam may never move his world very far, at least the direction he is moving is forward.”

That’s the challenge: to shake-off the indifference that settles on our minds and hearts, to do what we can, and to help the world (and ourselves) move forward.

"Ten Deep Breaths Day"

Singer Jimmy Buffet once said, "I think that we ought to declare a universal 'Ten-Deep-Breaths Day' so that the whole world could stop and everybody just catch their breath." Breathless describes a lot of us, doesn’t it? Running hard and fast to catch up and, we hope, to get ahead. We jam our calendars or overload our PDAs with more and more meetings and appointments. We try to do more than we can ever actually do and feel frustrated by our failure to get it all done. Why are we like this? Where did this hurry sickness come from?

In part, the breathlessness comes from our having lost track of what’s important: it's nearly impossible to set and honor limits if we don't have a clear sense of what matters to us, because, without such clarity, there's no basis for deciding which things deserve our investment of time and energy and in what proportion.

We're headed into the Memorial Day weekend. Maybe at least one of these days could be for us a “Ten-Deep-Breaths Day”--a day to stop, to ponder what matters, to refocus our priorities, and to breathe, just breathe.