In the first chapter of Matthew, there is an accounting of the birth of Jesus. It is not as long or as elaborate as the one found in Luke, but I happen to like it better. I have my reasons and would be happy to explain them to you, but I will save that for another time.
In Matthew’s telling of it, there is little fanfare, no harking of the herald angels or adoring shepherds. We are told briefly about Mary and Joseph being betrothed, which in those days was the first step of a binding marital covenant. Usually the bride and husband were called just that after this first step and it could not be ended without some legal process and without good reason. And we are told that Mary was “with child” i.e. PREGNANT! Under the category of “good reason,” that would have certainly qualified.
I have always assumed Joseph was a normal man; that he had the hopes of a normal man and the feelings of a normal man and was probably hurt and ashamed like a normal man would be and probably angry like a normal man. But Matthew tells us “Joseph was a righteous man,” (Mt. 1:19). It is given as a simple, forthright statement of fact. And every time I read it, it hits me right between the eyes. I can’t tell you how many times I have read that and wished he’d written something else!
Being righteous or upright is not about right thinking or even right feeling. It is about right doing. Here was a good man. Here was a right-doing man and he was confronted with something that sure seemed incredibly wrong. Now remember, he did not have the luxury of the explanation that Matthew supplies to us like a secret whispered in our ear. Would Joseph do the right thing? Would he shame her publicly? Would he allow his hurt feelings, his sense of betrayal, his sense of justice and perceived “wrong-ness” of another’s actions to drive his response? Joseph, the righteous man, had determined to do the right thing in the right way and because of that something even more right happened.
If we have chosen to care for people and care about people, we will soon be confronted with things that feel wrong, that are wrong and we will sometimes be wrongly treated even by the people we are trying to help. And it will surely hurt. And we will be tempted to respond in kind. Do right anyway. The angels are watching.
May you be blessed this Christmas season!
Jerald
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Pulling Weeds
Glimmers
September 8, 2011
“When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.” Matthew 13:26 NLT
I share the following with a caution: please do not read this and go away thinking that the chaplain is so spiritual that he is constantly thinking about scripture and God and such. And I refuse to be put on a pedestal. Sometimes I think of spiritual things while I am about the routine tasks of being a homeowner and sometimes I just mow. I don’t mind mowing grass. I love planting new annuals and shrubs. I don’t like pulling weeds.
Last week, unable to stand it any longer, I attacked a patch of weeds in the backyard flower bed. As I was on my knees pulling the weeds from the flowers, some of the flowers were pulled up as well. I tried to avoid it, but even so some of the flowers suffered along with the weeds. Now here is where the spiritual part comes in. I suddenly thought about the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24-30). “See,” said the Voice inside my head, “That’s what I meant.” “Try as you might to distinguish flowers and weeds, you will sometimes mess up.”
This is a cautionary tale- a parable about miss-judgment (I misspelled it for emphasis). Wheat and tares (weeds) look almost identical, especially in the early growth stages. Attempting to separate them out can lead to costly mistakes. Pulling the weeds sounds like a good idea, but wheat will be destroyed in the effort. When Jesus speaks of wheat and tares, he is really talking about people. It is a story to prove a point.
When we judge a person who comes to our hospital as a drug-seeker, a deadbeat, non-compliant, frequent flyer, neurotic who should be making better choices-we may have every reason to think so today- based on empirical evidence and observation. Our judgment about them today may be dead-on. They may look like a weed today. But who knows what will they be tomorrow, or next week, or next year at the end of the process? They may turn out to be something entirely different from what they appear to be today! What if two years from now, having completed rehab, they have found employment, obtained insurance, cleaned up, got their head on straight and they come back into our hospital for appendicitis, would we treat them differently? Honestly now…maybe we would. And that is the point. We don’t know how things will turn out. We don’t know who is a weed and who is a stalk of wheat by looking at them today. “Let them grow up together.” “Treat them all the same and let me sort out all that stuff at the end of the harvest.”
I know I will still have to fight the urge to draw conclusions and distinctions based on the foul language and self destructive lifestyles of some of the people I will meet in the course of my work. I am human after all. But I got the message…and I will fight the urge and do my best to love everybody the same and let God sort out all the rest at some later date.
Jerald
September 8, 2011
“When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.” Matthew 13:26 NLT
I share the following with a caution: please do not read this and go away thinking that the chaplain is so spiritual that he is constantly thinking about scripture and God and such. And I refuse to be put on a pedestal. Sometimes I think of spiritual things while I am about the routine tasks of being a homeowner and sometimes I just mow. I don’t mind mowing grass. I love planting new annuals and shrubs. I don’t like pulling weeds.
Last week, unable to stand it any longer, I attacked a patch of weeds in the backyard flower bed. As I was on my knees pulling the weeds from the flowers, some of the flowers were pulled up as well. I tried to avoid it, but even so some of the flowers suffered along with the weeds. Now here is where the spiritual part comes in. I suddenly thought about the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24-30). “See,” said the Voice inside my head, “That’s what I meant.” “Try as you might to distinguish flowers and weeds, you will sometimes mess up.”
This is a cautionary tale- a parable about miss-judgment (I misspelled it for emphasis). Wheat and tares (weeds) look almost identical, especially in the early growth stages. Attempting to separate them out can lead to costly mistakes. Pulling the weeds sounds like a good idea, but wheat will be destroyed in the effort. When Jesus speaks of wheat and tares, he is really talking about people. It is a story to prove a point.
When we judge a person who comes to our hospital as a drug-seeker, a deadbeat, non-compliant, frequent flyer, neurotic who should be making better choices-we may have every reason to think so today- based on empirical evidence and observation. Our judgment about them today may be dead-on. They may look like a weed today. But who knows what will they be tomorrow, or next week, or next year at the end of the process? They may turn out to be something entirely different from what they appear to be today! What if two years from now, having completed rehab, they have found employment, obtained insurance, cleaned up, got their head on straight and they come back into our hospital for appendicitis, would we treat them differently? Honestly now…maybe we would. And that is the point. We don’t know how things will turn out. We don’t know who is a weed and who is a stalk of wheat by looking at them today. “Let them grow up together.” “Treat them all the same and let me sort out all that stuff at the end of the harvest.”
I know I will still have to fight the urge to draw conclusions and distinctions based on the foul language and self destructive lifestyles of some of the people I will meet in the course of my work. I am human after all. But I got the message…and I will fight the urge and do my best to love everybody the same and let God sort out all the rest at some later date.
Jerald
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Despicable me
Glimmers
March 23, 2011
Among the many positives of having children, and now grandchildren, in my life is that I can watch children’s movies and not have to explain myself. My favorites from when my girls were small are The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. In both, the animation was fantastic, the stories were engaging and the music was clever. If you ever saw The Little Mermaid, you can probably still hum the tune of “Under the Sea.” Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson’s version of the theme song from Beauty and the Beast was so good it was on the pop charts for weeks after the movie debuted. I probably would have never seen either of those if it hadn’t been for the three sweet little girls in my life.
I remember seeing a big poster display in the mall sometime this past Christmas season for the movie Despicable Me. I had no idea what it was about and really had no desire to see it. My grandson asked me if I had seen it. When I said no, he said, “You really need to see it.” I followed his advice and rented it a short while later. I’m glad I did. The lead character is a “criminal mastermind.” He is selfish and self-absorbed. He brings three little orphan girls into his life so that he can use their irresistible charms to further his schemes. He quickly learned, as I did, to never underestimate the power of three little girls to change your life. By the end of the movie he is a different person, totally smitten by their love and more lovable as a result. Forced to attend to their needs, he finds that being selfish and self-absorbed ain’t all its cracked up to be.
Someone once asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment. “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, and strength,” he replied. “And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.” The exchange is followed by the story of the Good Samaritan who unselfishly assists a perfect stranger who had been robbed and left for dead. Helping someone just because they are a “some-one” and not a “some-thing” is the point of the message.
Like the evil mastermind, I fall into “despicable me-ism” on occasion. I can lapse into selfishness as easily as anyone else. Then I meet a “some-one” left for dead beside the road and I remember why I am here.
Blessings to you all,
Jerald
March 23, 2011
Among the many positives of having children, and now grandchildren, in my life is that I can watch children’s movies and not have to explain myself. My favorites from when my girls were small are The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. In both, the animation was fantastic, the stories were engaging and the music was clever. If you ever saw The Little Mermaid, you can probably still hum the tune of “Under the Sea.” Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson’s version of the theme song from Beauty and the Beast was so good it was on the pop charts for weeks after the movie debuted. I probably would have never seen either of those if it hadn’t been for the three sweet little girls in my life.
I remember seeing a big poster display in the mall sometime this past Christmas season for the movie Despicable Me. I had no idea what it was about and really had no desire to see it. My grandson asked me if I had seen it. When I said no, he said, “You really need to see it.” I followed his advice and rented it a short while later. I’m glad I did. The lead character is a “criminal mastermind.” He is selfish and self-absorbed. He brings three little orphan girls into his life so that he can use their irresistible charms to further his schemes. He quickly learned, as I did, to never underestimate the power of three little girls to change your life. By the end of the movie he is a different person, totally smitten by their love and more lovable as a result. Forced to attend to their needs, he finds that being selfish and self-absorbed ain’t all its cracked up to be.
Someone once asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment. “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, and strength,” he replied. “And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.” The exchange is followed by the story of the Good Samaritan who unselfishly assists a perfect stranger who had been robbed and left for dead. Helping someone just because they are a “some-one” and not a “some-thing” is the point of the message.
Like the evil mastermind, I fall into “despicable me-ism” on occasion. I can lapse into selfishness as easily as anyone else. Then I meet a “some-one” left for dead beside the road and I remember why I am here.
Blessings to you all,
Jerald
Monday, December 20, 2010
Feed the Baby
Glimmers
On the occasion of Christmas, 2010
I searched for her name several times in my foggy memory over the past several days. She was a part of my clinical pastoral education residency group at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in 1993-1994. I was remembering her in the context of Christmas’ soon arrival as I thought about something she had said about the same time of year in 1993. It fell to her as the chaplain on-call for the day to deliver a brief devotional message in the hospital chapel on the Friday before the Christmas break.
I could have looked it up, I suppose. I still have all the evaluations for the residency in my files and the group members are included, but I stubbornly resisted. Today, as I donned my sweats for my morning walk, her name suddenly popped into my head. Shelly. Shelly was an Episcopal priest in her forties, with nearly black hair and piercing blue eyes. She typically wore a white clerical blouse with a clerical collar and a skirt. Most often she wore a red blazer with it.
Shelly had suffered a stroke years earlier and with a great deal of determination and effort, she had recovered most of what she had lost. What remained was a bit of aphasia. She spoke slowly and deliberately and it took a bit of work to put her thoughts into words. “Wait, wait,” she would say when someone gave her a phone number to call. She would ask the caller to slow down and she would write it down and read it back to them to make sure she had recorded it accurately.
In her Christmas message, she re-told the ancient account of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus. She talked of how God loved us and reached down to us, came to us in the form of an infant. It was all lovely and wondrous, she said, but it also required something of no small cost to Mary and Joseph. Babies have to be fed. This one was no exception. He would not survive, would not grow, would not speak and would not have amazed the hearers in Temple at age twelve had he not been nurtured and fed. He would not have performed any miracles or delivered the Sermon on the Mount. He would not have died on a cross or been raised from the dead, as Christians believe, had they not fed the baby.
Song after song this Christmas season reference this special, “most wonderful time of the year,” and it truly is wonderful. People smile easily, ask about other’s families and if they will get to see them over the holidays. And even though it is sometimes characterized by economic over-indulgence, it is just as often characterized by dropping money in red kettles, adopting an angel on a tree, feeding the hungry and Toys for Tots. Why can’t this Christmas kind of living and giving last all year? Shelly delivered the zinger with the answer right at the end of her Christmas message. “You’ve got to feed that baby.”
Merry Christmas
Jerald
On the occasion of Christmas, 2010
I searched for her name several times in my foggy memory over the past several days. She was a part of my clinical pastoral education residency group at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in 1993-1994. I was remembering her in the context of Christmas’ soon arrival as I thought about something she had said about the same time of year in 1993. It fell to her as the chaplain on-call for the day to deliver a brief devotional message in the hospital chapel on the Friday before the Christmas break.
I could have looked it up, I suppose. I still have all the evaluations for the residency in my files and the group members are included, but I stubbornly resisted. Today, as I donned my sweats for my morning walk, her name suddenly popped into my head. Shelly. Shelly was an Episcopal priest in her forties, with nearly black hair and piercing blue eyes. She typically wore a white clerical blouse with a clerical collar and a skirt. Most often she wore a red blazer with it.
Shelly had suffered a stroke years earlier and with a great deal of determination and effort, she had recovered most of what she had lost. What remained was a bit of aphasia. She spoke slowly and deliberately and it took a bit of work to put her thoughts into words. “Wait, wait,” she would say when someone gave her a phone number to call. She would ask the caller to slow down and she would write it down and read it back to them to make sure she had recorded it accurately.
In her Christmas message, she re-told the ancient account of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus. She talked of how God loved us and reached down to us, came to us in the form of an infant. It was all lovely and wondrous, she said, but it also required something of no small cost to Mary and Joseph. Babies have to be fed. This one was no exception. He would not survive, would not grow, would not speak and would not have amazed the hearers in Temple at age twelve had he not been nurtured and fed. He would not have performed any miracles or delivered the Sermon on the Mount. He would not have died on a cross or been raised from the dead, as Christians believe, had they not fed the baby.
Song after song this Christmas season reference this special, “most wonderful time of the year,” and it truly is wonderful. People smile easily, ask about other’s families and if they will get to see them over the holidays. And even though it is sometimes characterized by economic over-indulgence, it is just as often characterized by dropping money in red kettles, adopting an angel on a tree, feeding the hungry and Toys for Tots. Why can’t this Christmas kind of living and giving last all year? Shelly delivered the zinger with the answer right at the end of her Christmas message. “You’ve got to feed that baby.”
Merry Christmas
Jerald
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