Meditating on Proper 19: Pleasing God

 

Proper 19    

The Sunday closest to September 14

O God, because without you we are not able to please you,
mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct
and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and
for ever. Amen.

Preface of the Lord's Day

The Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after September 14 are the
traditional autumnal Ember Days.

Image by Grok

What pleases God? Have you ever wondered that?

When I first started attending church, the focus of the sermons always seemed to be on the wonderful loving power of God. God was described using the three big O-words (Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent) – all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present. Like Santa, God knew what I was doing, what I was thinking, how I was feeling – and I was scared to death.

Why? What evil had I done? What wickedness lolled around that brain bucket of mine?

Nothing as best I could tell, and yet the idea of never being able to get away from God, or having my every thought scrutinized and judged scared the heck out of me, because I had no control over those things. I could be oh so nice to people to their faces while thinking in the back of my mind, “What a piece of work THEY are,” or “Just how more stupid could you be?”

See, my actions were almost always decent. I didn’t run around stealing things. I didn’t bully anyone, including my brother and sisters. I listened to my parents and respected them. I went to church when they took us. I had been baptized and confirmed. I was even starting to think God was calling me to be a priest. Goodness; had God just suffered a major stroke?

Oh, there I go again. That brain. That soul. That spirit of mine. What a worthless worm I am. And God wants me? God wants me to be a priest? How on earth can I do that when I am convinced with 99% certainty that I am going to the place that if you say the name people get upset? 

Yes, when I was growing up, there were words one did not use in polite company, but I knew them all (or at least a good portion), and even if I didn’t say them, they banged around that space behind my teeth just trying as best they could to escape. Words, especially cuss words, do not like to be restrained!

I have since learned that God does not call us to be perfect. God, indeed, does know what lies in a person’s soul and what wants to escape a person's tongue. And unlike the kindly old soul who sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil, God sees, hears, and knows. But God also loves, and just as a mother washes down a scraped knee and applies Bactine, Mercurochrome, or their modern equivalents, so does God wash and tend our wounds, kiss our boo-boos to make them feel better, and grant us time we need to rest and heal.

So what is pleasing to God? To pass it on; to pay it forward; to do unto others as God has done unto us; to forgive relentlessly.

I should say a word here: to forgive does not mean to forget or let bygones be bygones. It doesn’t mean eliminating accountability of those who said or did hurtful things. It doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation. No victim of bullying or abuse needs to forgive if that entails letting the other “go.” Forgiving means passing that hurt along to God, who will judge, who does judge, and who deals with their children as best they need to.

To forgive means to say, “I am not responsible for what you have said or done.” To forgive is to remove the chains or shackles to that “other” so that both you and they are free to move along, each responsible and answerable to God, and God alone. We don’t do any of that perfectly, of course. Life is messy. People can change, or stay the same, or find new ways to fool us, hurt us, or let us down.

Our task, though, is to please God, which is the heart of our prayer today. Our lives are messy. We are imperfect. Sometimes I don’t want to do what God wants me to do. Sometimes I want to run away like Jonah or cut off someone’s ear like Peter. So we ask God to help us. 

Without God’s help, we simply cannot please God. We ask God’s Spirit to rule and guide our hearts so that everything we say or do will be more like incense rising to heaven than burning tires. When it comes to pleasing God, I rather think we are daring to approach God like Oliver, empty bowl in hand, and asking, “More, please.” And unlike the harsh headmaster, God is pleased to smile and say, “As you wish.” Amen.