The Smiling Face

Consequences. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word simply means those “things or circumstances which follow as an effect or result from something preceding. That which follows logically.” Break the word apart and it literally means “with sequence” – one thing following naturally, sequentially after another.

Consequences.

· Like if you neglect to service your car, it will lose its ability to service you.

· Like if you spend all your money on trinkets at the first gift shop at Disneyland, you won’t have any left to buy the treasure you discover later in the day.

· Like if you spread gossip about those around you, you won’t have any friends.

· Like if you study hard you’ll make good grades.

· Like if you exercise regularly and eat right you’ll stand a better chance of staying healthy.

· Like if you “do the crime you do the time.”

Of course the sequence isn’t guaranteed. All kinds of factors can intervene to separate an act from its consequences – parents who rescue their children so they never experience the learning power of consequences; creative dodging; good luck; government bailouts of those deemed “too big to fail”. Who knows why some people can smoke all their life and never get lung cancer? And some people can study seriously and diligently and still flunk the test. There are exceptions. But the point is precisely that: they are exceptions to the natural or logical sequence of events.

And sooner or later we come to hate that natural rhythm, at least when it comes to pain. Oh, there are times when we love to watch it happen. My brother once said that “everybody, sooner or later, tends to get what’s coming to them, and every so often – ever so rarely – you get to be the one who gives it to them.”

But more often than not we find ourselves banking on the exceptions – hoping for them; praying for them; assuming we are exempt from the natural consequences. Maybe it’s because we like to think we are immortal – that, like human Teflon, bad things are simply prohibited from coming our way, or if they do they’ll simply slide harmlessly away. Or maybe it’s because we believe we are too good to deserve anything unpleasant. Or maybe it’s that childlike naiveté that earnestly trusts that life will simply give us a break.

My hunch, however, is that most of us nurse along the mistaken delusion that consequences are largely those things that happen to everybody other than ourselves. When complications arise in our lives – when bad things happen, when pieces fall painfully apart – it’s because of other people’s mistakes, bad luck or coincidence, cultural or economic forces larger than we are, or the malice or aggressiveness of our competitors.

· The economy changed.

· The neighborhood changed.

· Fads changed.

· Somebody cheated.

It doesn’t have anything to do with anything we’ve done. This couldn’t be a consequence of our choices or actions or practices. The problem is out there, not in here where we could be in any way responsible.

Years ago I received a phone call from a grocery store pay phone just minutes before the store was to close for the night. The caller, a stranger to me, was out of money, hungry, and wanting me to hurry up to the store to help him with some food. I would need to hurry, he insisted, because the store was soon to close. When I told him that there was no way I could meet him or his deadline that night, he became upset.

“How, then, am I supposed to get something to eat?” he indignantly wanted to know. What he was suggesting was that this was my problem, not his. If I would only alter my behavior, his problems would be solved. It didn’t help matters any when I wondered aloud to him if it might have occurred to him earlier in the day – when lots of options might have been available – that he might get hungry that evening? But like I said, he was only interested in the consequences of my actions, not the consequences of his.

And isn’t that the way it often plays out:

· “If only you would change.”

· “If only you wouldn’t be mad.”

· “If only you would forgive me.”

· “If only you would speak to the boss.”

· “If only you would loan me the money.”

If only you would respond, then everything would be all right with me. If only you would change, then I wouldn’t have to.

I don’t like to say this, but that’s the kind of tinny echo I hear reverberating through this psalm. The poem is a lament – a prayer to God in the context of something terribly wrong. We can’t say with any degree of precision exactly what the situation is; only that the prayerful aren’t accustomed to it, don’t like it, want it to change, and believe that God can accommodate them. Now, in and of itself, that’s something of a complimentary word of faith. “We are in a mess, dear God, and we have faith that you can get us out.”

But there seems to be a little more to it than that. A closer reading suggests that God is not simply at the core of the solution; the people doing the praying seem to be believe that God is at the core of the problem. God has turned away from them. The God who had cared for this people like a shepherd; who had tended this little vine like a gardener – clearing the ground, watering, shading, nurturing and protecting – has stepped aside and let the fences be breached. Now, according to the psalm, any old passerby reaches in and plucks away the fruit. Wild animals come in gnaw away at the roots. They are being overrun and humiliated because God is either mad at them or not paying attention. “What’s wrong with you?” the people want to know of God. “Why have you abandoned us? If only you, God, would lift up your hand in our defense; if only you would smile on us, then we would be saved.”

God is the problem – this “inattentive, inactive, and absent” God. It’s interesting to me, under those circumstances, that they are bothering to pray at all. Apparently this inattentive, inactive, and absent God is not altogether out of touch.

And surely there is reason to depend upon some measure of divine repentance. If the people are correct, God will need to turn away from anger and return to a posture of grace. But the discomfort, for me, is the absence of any perceived need for repentance on the part of the people. Nowhere is there mention of any self-assessment by the congregation of its own lifestyle. Nowhere is there any sense that the current problems could in any way be related to their own particular actions. Nowhere is there any awareness that the problems could be the direct and natural consequences of the way have been living out their life, their faith. The problem is “out there.” If God would only change, everything would be different.

Church founder Alexander Campbell once made an assertion we used to have printed on poster board and hanging in our Fellowship Hall:

To pray for anything for which we will not take counsel together, for which we will not jointly labor, for which we will not contribute with all our energies and means, is only mocking God and disappointing ourselves.

“Let your face shine on us,” the people pray, “and we will be saved.” We are familiar with the prayer. In the benediction we often use to close our service, taken from Numbers 6, the phrase is paralleled by other terms: ‘bless,’ ‘keep,’ ‘be gracious,’ and ‘give peace.” Be close to us, in other words, and good to us and help us to have good things. “Let your face shine on us.”

But I can’t help but imagine God would like to see a little face-shining on our part as well. There is life to be lived and work to do – as disciples and as a church – and don’t we know, beyond a doubt, that the task requires more than we have to bring. But let us know, as well, that it does not require less than we have to bring. We will need God’s transforming strength and grace and, indeed, God’s forgiveness.

But our own efforts are not immaterial. What we do is consequential, and we’ll get nowhere dumping all the blame or responsibility somewhere else – even on God. There is wonderful life begun in you; wonderful fellowship, ministry and witness planted in us with care and nurture and inspiration, and I do not believe it is for nothing. I believe, with the apostle Paul, that “the One who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

But let us remember that the work is in us, not in spite of us. There is responsibility for us to take – it will not do to pass it off onto someone or something else. Perhaps, then, the psalmist had it almost right. May the prayer that guides us be, instead:

Let your face shine, O God. And ours. Amen.