The Accidental American

Less than two weeks from now, Leah and I will be leaving the continent of North America. After a five-day stopover in Madrid to see our oldest daughter and her husband, we’ll be continuing on to South Africa to take up our new lives.

These days are full of packing, disconnecting from services, and saying goodbyes to friends. I’m fairly used to the routine after years of being moved around by a bishop, but this time, I can’t help reflecting on another powerful reality.

As I pack boxes, I am acutely aware of my privilege. That’s a loaded word; most of the time the word is used, it refers to race, as in the term “white privilege.”

But I want to use it in a slightly different sense. Let’s talk about the privilege that comes with holding a navy blue passport, the privilege of being a citizen of the United States of America.

Despite the labyrinthine complications of procuring a visa to South Africa, there is no doubt that it’s easier to get one as an American than it is from many other places in the world. 

In world travel, there is a marked advantage to being a US citizen, for many reasons. For one, we are still the world’s lone superpower, at least for now. Americans might be mocked or ridiculed, but we are always taken seriously by other nations. 

The dollar remains the most-desired currency in the world, too. Everywhere you go, people want the green bills. 

And compared to the vast majority of humans on the earth, we live in luxury.

We can pretty much go anywhere in the world. Many of us have the disposable income to travel whenever we want, wherever we want. We can visit practically any country in the world, and be warmly welcomed in doing so.

Think for a moment how recently in world history this development has taken place. A century ago, a vacation to Europe meant a long boat trip, horse and buggy rides, and the means to sustain oneself for a very long stay away from home. Today, you can make all your plans in a single evening on a computer screen and go to Paris and back in less than a week!

But we should never forget that this is a luxury enjoyed by only a small percentage of the world population. International travel is still reserved for those who can afford it. The vast majority of the world’s people don’t have a travel “bucket list.”

Not only that, but when Americans travel or live in other countries as we will be doing, there is always a safe place to return, a place to which we can go back. No matter where we go, there is always the option to return to the US. 

That’s an extremely reassuring thought; no matter where we go, we can always come back. But it’s a privilege that many people don’t have.

Imagine being a refugee family and being chased out of your home, unable to return. Or think about what it’s like to be one of those hundreds of thousands of people who are in the US right now without proper documentation because they have fled their home country for safety or economic security. This week, the President of the United States has essentially announced that these people are personae non gratae, a Latin phrase which means “people who are not appreciated.” 

I am an accidental American. I was born here, and I had no say at all in where I was to be born. I am lucky, or fortunate, or blessed. Percentage-wise, it was much more likely that I would have been born in Asia, or in another time period, but here I am. 

And there you are. 

We are privileged. That’s the hard truth. 

We didn’t do anything to deserve the privilege that comes with being an American citizen, it happened without our input. Our privilege doesn’t make us any more or less deserving of God’s grace, nor does it make us more or less a child of God. 

But it does make us more responsible. Our privilege becomes a responsibility for those of us who believe in the shalom and justice of God. When we look at the world, we recognize that there are billions of people who are not likewise privileged. We recognize that there are millions of people in our own country who suffer from the disparities of race and wealth. We come to realize that our privilege is something that is truly accidental.

As Christians, we have a responsibility to look out for those who are not privileged, those who suffer from poverty or geographical hardship, those who are not appreciated. 

So … what are you going to do with your privilege?

Don't Skip to the End!

Are you one of those people who reads the last couple of pages before starting a book? Or do you fast forward to the last couple of minutes of a movie before watching the whole thing? Do you need to know how something ends in order to decide to commit?

If so, I’ve never understood that impulse. The fun of reading a novel or watching a film is sustaining the mystery of how things will end. The narrative or plot is what matters, the flow of events from one to the next.

In the same way, I don’t understand people who attend only Christmas and Easter services. Essentially, these folks are cutting out the entire life, ministry, teaching, miracles, and crucifixion of Christ in order to focus merely on his birth and resurrection.

I feel the same way about those of you who only attend the Sunday services of Holy Week. If you skip directly from Palm Sunday to Easter, you’re missing some important pieces of the narrative. To go from the celebratory mood of Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem directly to the glory and majesty of Jesus’ resurrection is to skip directly to the ending!

The faith which we share and call “Christian” is really nothing but a story, a narrative of how God has worked in the world to bring salvation to all people. It’s tempting to focus entirely on the end; yes, it’s great news that we are saved by grace, forgiven of our sins, and raised to new life.

But the whole story matters. We need to know how God accomplished this salvation, because it tells us something important about God and God’s nature. Put simply, the fact that God in Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross should assure us that none of us are truly alone in our suffering. Jesus Christ embraced the entirety of what it means to be human in order to unite us to him. We are never separated from God, because God consented to be with us in our humanity.

Nowhere does this become so clear as in the story of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday. We will celebrate Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem this Sunday by waving palm branches and singing songs of praise. 

In our Maundy Thursday service, we will remember and reenact the Last Supper, in which Jesus left his disciples the example of his servanthood in washing their feet, and instituted a ritual meal in which his ongoing presence is celebrated.

And of course, on Good Friday, we will hear the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture, and crucifixion. None of it is pretty, but the details are important. We need to peer closely, to pay attention to what happened.

All of this sets the stage for what happens on Easter morning. The Easter story simply doesn’t have the same weight unless you are clear on what came before. Easter doesn’t matter unless Maundy Thursday and Good Friday happened. 

For that reason, I hope you make plans to attend our extra Holy Week services. Even if you already know how it ends.

God Has No Point System

The opening scene of the pilot episode of one of my current fave TV shows finds Eleanor (Kristen Bell) sitting on a couch in a waiting room staring at the words “Welcome! Everything is fine” painted on the wall opposite her.

A door to an inner office opens and a man in a blazer (Ted Danson) invites her in. They sit across a desk from each other, and he introduces himself as Michael. She responds by asking, “Where am I?”

Michael says that she is dead. “Your life on earth has ended, and you are now in the next phase of your existence in the universe.”

Eleanor answers, “Cool, cool. I have some questions … Am I … (pointing upwards) or is this … (pointing downwards)?”

“It’s not the heaven-or-hell idea that you were raised on,” Michael says. “But generally speaking, in the afterlife, there’s a Good Place and there’s a Bad Place. You’re … in the Good Place.”

Did I mention this is a comedy?

It doesn’t take long before the show’s central conflict reveals itself — Eleanor shouldn’t have been sent to the Good Place; she was actually a pretty terrible person on earth, and the only way to get to the Good Place is by accumulating a net positive amount of points. She is the first to realize this problem, and tries her hardest to keep from being “outed.”

What plays out over the next three years of NBC’s “The Good Place” is a hearty dose of ethics, smart metaphysical humor, and a sassy robot girl named Janet. Except she’s not really a robot, but … it’s complicated.

One of my favorite scenes is the orientation video produced for new arrivals to the Good Place. You can watch it above. I’m especially fascinated by the point system that the Good and Bad Places are based upon.

In the video, Michael explains:

During your time on earth, every one of your actions had a positive or a negative value depending on how much good or bad that action put into the universe. Every sandwich you ate, every time you bought a magazine, every single thing you did had an effect that rippled out over time and ultimately created some amount of good or bad … When your time on earth has ended, we calculate the total value of your life using our perfectly accurate measuring system. Only the people with the very highest scores, the true cream of the crop, get to come here, to the Good Place.

In “The Good Place,” going to heaven or hell depends on one’s final “score.” That might sound amusing, but it absolutely amazes me how many people live their real lives according to this reasoning. This kind of moral reckoning likely makes sense to lots of people. In fact, I would guess that a large percentage of Americans believe in heaven and hell, and most of them probably believe that the way to get to heaven is to accumulate more good actions than bad.

What shocks me even more is that so many Christians live this way, too. Throughout my career as a pastor, I have visited more than one person on their deathbed who has said to me, “I’m not worried about going to heaven. I know I’ve been a good person.”

I want to say to them, though I usually don’t say it as bluntly as this, that BEING A GOOD PERSON HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HEAVEN OR HELL.

In fact, that’s the exact opposite of the good news of Jesus Christ. The core gospel message is that God loves us — period. We are all sinners, all flawed and broken, but God forgives us anyway, and not because of anything we have done, but on the merit of Jesus Christ’s advocacy on our behalf.

This was the central theological point of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther protested the clergymen who were traveling the countryside selling “good points” to folks to boost their chances of gaining heaven. Luther insisted that God didn’t work this way; we couldn’t earn our way to heaven, but could only rely on grace to get us there.

In other words, God has no point system.

Paul put it like this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph. 2:8-10).

The good news is that we are saved by grace, not by good works, but that we are created to be people who do good works. The good works are not a means to an end; they are the end themselves. They are what constitute a meaningful, purposeful life.

You are already loved, already saved, already held in the arms of God. Nothing can tear you from God’s arms, nothing can separate you from God’s love. You are secure.

You will be in the Good Place one day, along with everyone else.

But until then, let’s do everything in our power to make this planet, this earth, this nation, this neighborhood, God’s Good Place.

Join us at our next Faith on Tap session, Feb. 12, 7 pm at 723 Ft Worth Ave, as we take a deeper dive into “The Good Place” and what it means to be good.