September 12, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

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I just got a phone call from an acquaintance of the church who used to periodically stop by and “look after” the two homeless people who lived in our parking lot. (They are still around our neighborhood, but no longer in the parking lot). She was concerned, because they had disappeared today. I assured her it was temporary. They will be back with the rolling cart within 24 hours.

It prompted a longer conversation, however, for this lady and I to talk about the problems of homeless people in general and this couple in particular. I brought her up to speed on the number of attempts we have made to get this couple into one of the shelters and the programs that stand ready to help them. They just won’t go.

But the situation underscores the truth that these individuals are free and independent human beings. No one can force them to go into a shelter if they are still considered mentally competent to make their own decisions. In truth, they do have mental “issues,” but I think they would be evaluated by any qualified professional as still being able to make their own decisions. The down side is that they make bad decisions. The current bad decision this summer was to pass up offers of shelter and shower in order to remain free and unfettered on the sidewalk.

All manners of life’s problems grow in the soil of bad decisions freely made.  Alcoholism doesn’t usually start as a drinking problem. Alcohol just irrigates life’s many other problems (pre-existing conditions!), rather than washing them away.  Substance abuse and other self-destructive behaviors, prostitution, poverty, crime, fraud and racketeering, and downward-spiraling nutrition and health, etc., all come from making bad decisions. Theologian and best-selling author John Bradshaw  (Healing the Shame That Binds You, Homecoming, Bradshaw on the Family) finds shame growing in this soil as well.  Psychologist Nathaniel Brandon (The Disowned Self, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem) knows what poor self-esteem does to contribute to the same list of tragic failures.

Life’s bad decisions play out as both spiritual terrors and physical catastrophes. We cannot separate mind, body and spirit. Is mental illness the cause, or the effect, of so many people living on the streets in Hollywood?

Christians and our churches often fail completely to address these inter-connected problems, whose roots are entangled in everything human.  Christian thought often addresses the “bad decisions” of life with words such as “sin” and “evil.”  But there is great resistance nowadays to hearing these words used to describe realities which are far more complex.  Some of life’s poorest decisions for an individual may properly be labeled as “sinful,” but once those decisions play out, and trigger other unintended consequences, does it matter any more if the cause was sin, or errors in judgment, low self-esteem, victimization, bad breaks, or the prejudices of other people?

As time passes, I find it harder and harder to say that “repentance” is a cure-all for what ails the people of this world. Yet I know that “redemption” continues to describe what God wants for all of us. The answer to life’s bad decisions is God’s good grace, generously poured out.  It is God’s will to love and redeem the world no matter what—the homeless, the addict, those who become trapped in the errors and excesses of sexuality, money, power and other gratifications. God sends us out to bring hope and healing. So get going!

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

This post may also be heard with Windows Media Player here:  audioblog091207.mp3

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September 5, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

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Yesterday afternoon, I raced to E.R. in a nearby hospital, to the bedside of a member of the church. They are doing tests to see if he has had a heart attack. He has been living with HIV for a number of years, but now some of the ailments of old age are also too close for comfort.

We prayed. We talked about God’s grace and purpose for his (long) life, about the gift of healing, about the 42 pills he takes every day, and about his community of support – faithful care-givers who have never given up on him, who are also members of our church community. His own life partner died of AIDS two decades ago. Now he relies on the love and care of his friends.

Care-givers teach me something about faith. Christians place our faith in God, or so we say. Sometimes we pray for more faith, greater faith, deeper faith—as if faith were some kind of repellant that, when sufficiently applied, will keep doubts from stinging us.

Maybe faith is better understood through the eyes and hands and feet of Christian care-givers. People who are sometimes family members and quite often not family members, who are there for a person in need. Week after week, year after year. In them I understand faith, because it is the steadfastness of love that will not quit or even count the cost of remaining in the game.

“Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed . . . for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. . .” — Matthew 25:31–46

Faith is not simply agreeing to a set of mental propositions that have been presented without any proof.  Faith in God, and faith in the goodness of God and the grace of God have ample proof, if we need proof in order to hold to those propositions.  The proof is that there are selfless, caring, generous, steadfast people out there, who have decided on their own (or through the inspiration of the Spirit) that they need to be a care-giver for someone because he or she is in need.The proof of God’s existence, and God’s loving-kindness is found in the countless angels who make that love real for someone in need.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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September 4, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

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We Lutherans talk a lot about being saved by grace. Usually as if it were some future event. Evangelicals, who don’t emphasize grace as much as decision, think of being saved as a past event. “I got saved. . . when I answered an altar call and asked Jesus to come into my heart.”

Lutherans more correctly could say “we were saved 2,000 years ago when Jesus died for us on the cross.” It is not my decision for Jesus that saved me, but his decision for me.

One cannot say “saved by grace” without acknowledging that this is God’s initiative, through Christ, God’s decision, God’s gracious acceptance of us and all who come to him for Jesus’ sake.

I have often said (only half-jokingly) that I know I am saved because God does not have the heart to throw me away. But believing with all our hearts that we are saved (present tense?) doesn’t finish the thought. The more immediate question is what it means to live by grace, not just believe that one is saved by grace.

For one, you don’t have to watch your back. Narrowly-focused control freaks have overblown the idea that one can “fall from grace.” Yes, I suppose, and one can walk away from it, too. Or walk right by it and never notice it. People who might be at risk of falling from God’s grace usually don’t read theology blogs. What are you worried about? The rest of us need not be preoccupied about our missteps, failures, inadvertent errors or unconfessed sins which might ruin everything with God. To worry that God might have a change of heart and condemn us forever and ever is not to live in the grace which is promised to us. It’s obsessing about the reliability and mechanics of redemption. That’s a waste of time, because God’s word is reliable, and there are no mechanics: we are redeemed, saved, bought back, made righteous simply by the decision and announcement of almighty God. None of that is affected by anything we do or fail to do on our end. Just believe it and accept it.

Go ahead and live joyfully. Why is it that so many Christians live their daily lives like sourpusses? What are they so unhappy about? Have we forgotten that we are in relationship with the God who is Love? Remember that Jesus said, “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” This doesn’t just mean long life— one long, cheerless, resentful, dour watch until the end comes. You call that life? Living joyfully really does mean living well, richly, fully alive, and worry-free. Living by grace means living a grateful life—filled with the realization that we are wonderfully blessed just to be alive and to be loved. Living by grace means living a generous life—however you do it and in whatever measure, sharing, giving, offering the gift of happiness to anybody else you meet.

Keep your eyes on the horizon. If you’re living by grace, you have a lot to live for. Jesus has redeemed you and then commissioned you to follow him. His mandate is clear – to build for himself a people called form every nation, every background, every former kind of life there is, in order to help him redeem the entire world. You have your work cut out for you. All Christians have this same mandate, so you don’t have to go it alone. Look into the future, imagine the world the way God created it, the way Christ wants it to be. And keep your eyes peeled to find Christ out ahead of you, doing the very things he has invited you to do also. Go ahead, ask yourself: Who would Jesus redeem? Who would Jesus heal? Who would Jesus feed? Who would Jesus forgive?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

[Read Living by Grace, Part 2]

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