I have been a follower of Jesus for my whole life, but there is no doubt that Jesus’ habit of calling our money-obsessed, success-obsessed, time-obsessed way of life into serious question becomes much more obvious in its pertinacity when you’re going through what I’m going through. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

But how could I buy into this? The culture I grew up in trained me to spend vast energy worrying precisely about these things—taught me to worry obsessively about these things. And, anyway, what does Jesus mean by saying life is MORE? What is the “more”? Well, when your Mom dies, you know. When the doctor says you have a killer disease, you know.

Jesus believed that what makes humans human and what makes life life is found in our capacity for love. And love has tangents: justice, compassion, goodness, pleasure, kindness, helping. The material world is wonderful: even eating, drinking, and wearing clothes. But the material world’s purpose is to be a stage, a venue, where the loving, caring, growing, learning can occur. When we make the stage the point, we go seriously astray. We’ve got means and ends all mixed up.

Capitalists like to say: Time is money. I like to say: Time is much more valuable than money. See the appended story (from our Native American friends) on how “European” time has stolen our joy in time. We turn it—as we turn all things, even love—into a commodity and suddenly we’re hurried and tired and worried. Jesus again gently chides us (siding with the American Indians): “Can any of you by worrying (obsessing) add a single hour to your span of life?” Jesus wants us to enjoy each day and face each day’s challenges and obstacles and then let go. I’ve always “believed” him, but now I know.

You know what I’m hoping for? I’m dreaming of the day when we don’t have to get cancer to believe Jesus. I’m hoping for the day when we no longer marginalize Jesus’ very down-to-earth philosophy by spiritualizing it into an impossible dream to be realized only in heaven. Jesus wanted folks to start the loving right now—today. Jesus is asking us to reorganize our lives, our homes, our schools, our banks, our work places, our courts and legislatures around this wild idea that the purpose of life is love and that everything we do and every institution we create should serve love. Preposterous? Naive? Crazy? Not from where I stand today. My mind has been concentrated. Colors and textures are renewed. Mammon is a God that always betrays us. Only the God called Love can set us free for real life.

Yours in Christ,

--Pastor Bastien

 

Taken from Footnotes, October 2004