When I think about Genesis chapter 22 I am always struck by the threat to the promise found within these 18 verses. Everything that comes before—every promise, every salvation of the promise, every victory snatched from defeat—is laid bare with the command to sacrifice Isaac—the promised son.
God is the Promiser, the Faithful One who will bring about a new and amazing thing—bringing a barren couple out of their homeland and creating a new people.
Yet God is not the Promiser; God is the very threat to the promise, God will slaughter the very center of his promise. If God is followed the promise becomes a lie.
I affirm that God is the Promiser. I affirm that God is not the Promiser. Between these two statements—the cataphatic (positive) and the apophatic (negative) I find the God beyond god. I push through the meaning of these words and these concepts and am forced to wrestle with a God beyond description and peek behind the veil of language and experience, and hear on God’s own terms the words, “Abraham, Abraham—I am not that kind of God.”
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Sunday, May 09, 2010
What my mom received along with a Bonsai tree
Motherhood is affirmed
When a child becomes an adult
Success! Mom! Success!
When a child becomes an adult
Success! Mom! Success!
Friday, May 07, 2010
Let play who can find Chris' articles
So the april fools edition of the Seminarian came out today. I wrote three articles in it. Can any of my readers catch which articles are mine?
Peace,
Chris
Peace,
Chris
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Jesus Christ Super Star 2000
Well, your friendly neighborhood blogger is sick. You already knew that you say? Not that kind of sick! I’ve been aching and cold for most of the day, and keep falling asleep.
That said I did manage to slink over to the couch and pop in a Netflix DVD—Jesus Christ Super Star:2000.
Maybe its my illness, but the flick stunk/maybe my heart just goes all aflutter for the hippie rendition of 1973, but the 2000 version didn’t feel right.
In 2000 Jesus and his disciples aren’t very likable. They’re brooding and cynical. They all look like they could be out of an Ambercrombie catalogue. There is no comradely or love expressed between any of them. They’re all too busy posing and giving one another snotty and hurt looks. Even Mary Mag’s “I don’t know how to love him” is focused on the line “I’ve had so many men before.” Part of the tragedy of JCSS is the break down of friendship and hope into disillusionment, betrayal, and ultimately crucifixion. None of that was present in 2000.
Speaking of dark and brooding… if you think the disciples are bad you should see the Council and the Romans. They look like storm troopers, all decked out in black and often masked. Here’s the problem though, “the Jews” are also dressed in all black (trench coats and fedoras for the men and burka-ish things for the women).
Why is this a problem? Well, you can’t really tell them apart. Part of the tension in JCSS is that there are clearly four factions, Jesus’ band, the Romans, the Council, and the average Jew. The average Jew sort of waffles and could be described as morally ambiguous, first joining Jesus on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, then latter shouting for him to be killed. No such tension in 2000. In 2000 the Romans are storm troopers in black, the Council are storm troopers in black (minus military insigia), and the average Jew are basically secret police. In fact they don’t participate in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (only the Ambercrombie crew do that).
Worse still, when Pilate decides to flog Jesus it’s the average Jew who flogs him… literally “the blood is on their hands.” Anyone who knows any history of passion plays and the unfortunate anti-Semitic use of this particular trope knows that this ain’t good.
Also the set is SO dark. I get that they are putting Jesus into a fascist world and therefore it needs to be dark, but some of the JCSS music just doesn’t fit with dark and brooding.
Also Jesus actually seems a little bored with the whole process at times, for example when he visits Herod.
That said I did manage to slink over to the couch and pop in a Netflix DVD—Jesus Christ Super Star:2000.
Maybe its my illness, but the flick stunk/maybe my heart just goes all aflutter for the hippie rendition of 1973, but the 2000 version didn’t feel right.
In 2000 Jesus and his disciples aren’t very likable. They’re brooding and cynical. They all look like they could be out of an Ambercrombie catalogue. There is no comradely or love expressed between any of them. They’re all too busy posing and giving one another snotty and hurt looks. Even Mary Mag’s “I don’t know how to love him” is focused on the line “I’ve had so many men before.” Part of the tragedy of JCSS is the break down of friendship and hope into disillusionment, betrayal, and ultimately crucifixion. None of that was present in 2000.
Speaking of dark and brooding… if you think the disciples are bad you should see the Council and the Romans. They look like storm troopers, all decked out in black and often masked. Here’s the problem though, “the Jews” are also dressed in all black (trench coats and fedoras for the men and burka-ish things for the women).
Why is this a problem? Well, you can’t really tell them apart. Part of the tension in JCSS is that there are clearly four factions, Jesus’ band, the Romans, the Council, and the average Jew. The average Jew sort of waffles and could be described as morally ambiguous, first joining Jesus on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, then latter shouting for him to be killed. No such tension in 2000. In 2000 the Romans are storm troopers in black, the Council are storm troopers in black (minus military insigia), and the average Jew are basically secret police. In fact they don’t participate in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (only the Ambercrombie crew do that).
Worse still, when Pilate decides to flog Jesus it’s the average Jew who flogs him… literally “the blood is on their hands.” Anyone who knows any history of passion plays and the unfortunate anti-Semitic use of this particular trope knows that this ain’t good.
Also the set is SO dark. I get that they are putting Jesus into a fascist world and therefore it needs to be dark, but some of the JCSS music just doesn’t fit with dark and brooding.
Also Jesus actually seems a little bored with the whole process at times, for example when he visits Herod.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Genesis 16--The Journey is messy
The Journey is messy
I bring you greetings, from Renee, Gregg, Gavin, Gwendylyn, Mecedes, Jennifer, and Justin. They told me to tell you they’ll be back this afternoon, unless the weather is nice, in which case they’ll be staying on the Eastern Shore for a few more days, or maybe a couple of weeks.
I also bring you greetings in the name of Jesus.
It was getting late Friday evening. The sun was dipping out of existence. We sped along I-50—Pastor Gregg—who may be known forevermore as pastor-led-foot was in the lead, Gwendylyn following him, and Justin and I followed her.
Just out of curiosity, and boredom, it’s a 150-mile drive after all, Justin and I turned on my GPS to see if it liked the path Pastor Gregg was taking us.
And it didn’t. Every 300 feet it would say, “Make a U-turn” and when we continued to follow Gwendylyn it would say “recalculating” and then tell me to again, “make a U-turn” or, sometimes it would phrase its dislike of our path slightly differently and say, “Turn Left, then turn left.”
You see in my GPS’s mechanical mind there was only one way to get to 10,301 Costal Highway Road, and Pastor Gregg’s way of getting there wasn’t it.
My machine’s mechanical mind believed that if things didn’t go a particular way—things just don’t go.
In fact when we arrived in the parking lot of the retreat center my GPS let me know that we still had an hour’s journey left before we would arrive at the retreat center.
I bring this up because, like our journey to the Son and Sand Retreat Center in Ocean City the journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy. The Journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy.
Let us pray: Lord God, be with me as I preach. I pray that my words may be acceptable to you and that all the things that my words elicit in both myself and others may be the same. Amen
As we read in Paul’s letter to the Galatians Genesis 16 can be read as an Allegory… That is it can be read symbolically (I would go so far as to call this type of reading mechanical). Hagar is no longer Hagar, Sarai no longer Sarai, Ishmael no longer Ishmael. Instead, for Paul, the whole story is a way to express a particular view about the theological concepts of Law and Gospel to the community in Galatia.
And as exciting and helpful as this way of reading our lesson for the day is, I believe allegory can do damage to God’s message and the plain meaning of today’s scripture. I believe it simplifies the real and raw human and divine drama that is before us today. It stops us from hearing how God acted in the mixed-up, messed-up lives of these people of faith.
After all an Allegory can’t express contempt, but a person of faith can. An Allegory can’t be okay with an agreement until its not, but a person of faith can. An allegory can’t run away into a deadly desert, but a person of faith can. In short, an allegory doesn’t express the messiness of a faith journey
Likewise, when we tell the story of the founders of our faith we often flatten their stories. We erase the smudges on their records. We clean up the messiness of their lives.
We ignore Abraham pimping his wife in Egypt as Pastor Gregg preached about last week. We mute Moses’ mumbling. We insist that Job is a patient man even though 39 of the 42 chapters of the book named after him involve him complaining!
It’s like we put together a photo album but crop all the photos with our ex-es present.
It’s like creating a family tree, but removing the limb that contain our crazy aunt and creepy cousin.
Its like we insist on taking a U-turn and going on the Ocean City Expressway when we’ve already went 12 miles down Ocean Gateway.
But by going all the way back to these stories of Abraham, the founder of three faiths, we aren’t allowed to do that!
Instead we are confronted by the messiness of, Sarai, Hagar, Abraham, and Ishmael’s journey with God.
We might like to simply say, “Abraham was faithful, and God blessed him, and that is that.”
We might like to say “God promised a child and Sarai had a child.”
But we would hear the GPS of scripture saying, “recalculating” and “Make a U-turn” because we find the holy couple waiting for 10 years in the Promised Land without receiving the promised son.
We might like to simply say, “Through Abraham’s second wife, Hagar, God created his chosen people and everything worked out.” But again we would hear “Recalculating” “turn left and then turn left.” Because Jealousy strikes and Sarai asks for God to judge between her and Abraham. Instead Abraham dons the judge’s robe intended for God and judges between Sarai and Hagar.
But surely then we may sum things up, “The offending wife, Hagar, is thrown out and order is restored!”
“Recalculating.” “Make a U-turn!” Despite Hagar having cursed Sarai—and despite God having said to Abraham that he would bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him—God steps in with a blessing. Its like a reverse Exodus.
A reverse Exodus.
Just as the people of the promise were oppressed in Egypt and God heard their cries an Egyptian woman was oppressed in the Promised Land and God heard her cries.
Just as we read today in Exodus, God looks out for the oppressed and for the resident alien!
So finally, we can sum things up!
“God blesses this son of Hagar with a life of ease and plenty… “Recalculating” “turn left and turn left.” No! The blessing God bestows upon Hagar’s child is a baffling mix of hardship and health, of anguish and hope.
Finally, finally, we can say happily ever after! No, because even when we reach the end of today’s lesson such as assessment must be met with Recalculating…. Make a U-turn! Because the Journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy.
The Journey Of Faith Is Messy.
Now, you might ask why I belabor this point. Why am I making such a big deal about this? Why am I insisting that any reading of “The mixed-up, messed-up Origins of our faith” is incalculably in need of a U-turn if it is mechanical? Why is Hagar’s journey off track if it is track-able?
Because hearing about how, and in what conditions, God acted in the past for other people shapes our understanding of how God acts in our present! Hagar’s story shapes our story.
And you see, now that its summer I’ve got out into the neighborhood more. In fact last Saturday—for the second time—I set up a table out from of the church for people to just come and sit and talk about their faith with me.
And from the stories I’ve been hearing here-and-now I have to assume the way “The mixed-up, messed-up Origins of our faith” have been told is inaccurate, it is simplified, it is mechanical, it is allegorical, it is in need of a U-turn.
Because when I talk to people about what God is doing in their life they so often respond, “I’ll worry about that once I get my life straightened out,” “I’m not good enough for God yet” “I’ll go to church once -I- take care of some things.”
First off I asked what God was doing in their life… I didn’t say anything about church!
But second, waiting to get everything together before you enter a journey of faith is, to quote the Goo Goo Dolls, like being a “young men sitting in the old man’s bar/waiting for his turn to die.”
If God can work in the messy lives of the founders of our faith God can work in our messy lives too! Even if things aren’t going a particular way that doesn’t mean they aren’t going at all!
The Journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy. Its driving behind a led-footed pastor on I-50 in rural Maryland. Its 10 years of barrenness in the face of God’s promise of a child. Its jealousy and misjudgment. Its mysterious blessing in the face of curses. It’s a mixed blessing in the desert. Its messy!
Yet its also a journey to a life giving well called “God sees” and a journey to a magnificent cost-line, a blue horizon-line bumping up against the curvature of the earth—the white-cap waves sparkling in the rising sun.
The journey of faith is messy, but God’s there in the messiness, and its worth it!
A+A
I bring you greetings, from Renee, Gregg, Gavin, Gwendylyn, Mecedes, Jennifer, and Justin. They told me to tell you they’ll be back this afternoon, unless the weather is nice, in which case they’ll be staying on the Eastern Shore for a few more days, or maybe a couple of weeks.
I also bring you greetings in the name of Jesus.
It was getting late Friday evening. The sun was dipping out of existence. We sped along I-50—Pastor Gregg—who may be known forevermore as pastor-led-foot was in the lead, Gwendylyn following him, and Justin and I followed her.
Just out of curiosity, and boredom, it’s a 150-mile drive after all, Justin and I turned on my GPS to see if it liked the path Pastor Gregg was taking us.
And it didn’t. Every 300 feet it would say, “Make a U-turn” and when we continued to follow Gwendylyn it would say “recalculating” and then tell me to again, “make a U-turn” or, sometimes it would phrase its dislike of our path slightly differently and say, “Turn Left, then turn left.”
You see in my GPS’s mechanical mind there was only one way to get to 10,301 Costal Highway Road, and Pastor Gregg’s way of getting there wasn’t it.
My machine’s mechanical mind believed that if things didn’t go a particular way—things just don’t go.
In fact when we arrived in the parking lot of the retreat center my GPS let me know that we still had an hour’s journey left before we would arrive at the retreat center.
I bring this up because, like our journey to the Son and Sand Retreat Center in Ocean City the journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy. The Journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy.
Let us pray: Lord God, be with me as I preach. I pray that my words may be acceptable to you and that all the things that my words elicit in both myself and others may be the same. Amen
As we read in Paul’s letter to the Galatians Genesis 16 can be read as an Allegory… That is it can be read symbolically (I would go so far as to call this type of reading mechanical). Hagar is no longer Hagar, Sarai no longer Sarai, Ishmael no longer Ishmael. Instead, for Paul, the whole story is a way to express a particular view about the theological concepts of Law and Gospel to the community in Galatia.
And as exciting and helpful as this way of reading our lesson for the day is, I believe allegory can do damage to God’s message and the plain meaning of today’s scripture. I believe it simplifies the real and raw human and divine drama that is before us today. It stops us from hearing how God acted in the mixed-up, messed-up lives of these people of faith.
After all an Allegory can’t express contempt, but a person of faith can. An Allegory can’t be okay with an agreement until its not, but a person of faith can. An allegory can’t run away into a deadly desert, but a person of faith can. In short, an allegory doesn’t express the messiness of a faith journey
Likewise, when we tell the story of the founders of our faith we often flatten their stories. We erase the smudges on their records. We clean up the messiness of their lives.
We ignore Abraham pimping his wife in Egypt as Pastor Gregg preached about last week. We mute Moses’ mumbling. We insist that Job is a patient man even though 39 of the 42 chapters of the book named after him involve him complaining!
It’s like we put together a photo album but crop all the photos with our ex-es present.
It’s like creating a family tree, but removing the limb that contain our crazy aunt and creepy cousin.
Its like we insist on taking a U-turn and going on the Ocean City Expressway when we’ve already went 12 miles down Ocean Gateway.
But by going all the way back to these stories of Abraham, the founder of three faiths, we aren’t allowed to do that!
Instead we are confronted by the messiness of, Sarai, Hagar, Abraham, and Ishmael’s journey with God.
We might like to simply say, “Abraham was faithful, and God blessed him, and that is that.”
We might like to say “God promised a child and Sarai had a child.”
But we would hear the GPS of scripture saying, “recalculating” and “Make a U-turn” because we find the holy couple waiting for 10 years in the Promised Land without receiving the promised son.
We might like to simply say, “Through Abraham’s second wife, Hagar, God created his chosen people and everything worked out.” But again we would hear “Recalculating” “turn left and then turn left.” Because Jealousy strikes and Sarai asks for God to judge between her and Abraham. Instead Abraham dons the judge’s robe intended for God and judges between Sarai and Hagar.
But surely then we may sum things up, “The offending wife, Hagar, is thrown out and order is restored!”
“Recalculating.” “Make a U-turn!” Despite Hagar having cursed Sarai—and despite God having said to Abraham that he would bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him—God steps in with a blessing. Its like a reverse Exodus.
A reverse Exodus.
Just as the people of the promise were oppressed in Egypt and God heard their cries an Egyptian woman was oppressed in the Promised Land and God heard her cries.
Just as we read today in Exodus, God looks out for the oppressed and for the resident alien!
So finally, we can sum things up!
“God blesses this son of Hagar with a life of ease and plenty… “Recalculating” “turn left and turn left.” No! The blessing God bestows upon Hagar’s child is a baffling mix of hardship and health, of anguish and hope.
Finally, finally, we can say happily ever after! No, because even when we reach the end of today’s lesson such as assessment must be met with Recalculating…. Make a U-turn! Because the Journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy.
The Journey Of Faith Is Messy.
Now, you might ask why I belabor this point. Why am I making such a big deal about this? Why am I insisting that any reading of “The mixed-up, messed-up Origins of our faith” is incalculably in need of a U-turn if it is mechanical? Why is Hagar’s journey off track if it is track-able?
Because hearing about how, and in what conditions, God acted in the past for other people shapes our understanding of how God acts in our present! Hagar’s story shapes our story.
And you see, now that its summer I’ve got out into the neighborhood more. In fact last Saturday—for the second time—I set up a table out from of the church for people to just come and sit and talk about their faith with me.
And from the stories I’ve been hearing here-and-now I have to assume the way “The mixed-up, messed-up Origins of our faith” have been told is inaccurate, it is simplified, it is mechanical, it is allegorical, it is in need of a U-turn.
Because when I talk to people about what God is doing in their life they so often respond, “I’ll worry about that once I get my life straightened out,” “I’m not good enough for God yet” “I’ll go to church once -I- take care of some things.”
First off I asked what God was doing in their life… I didn’t say anything about church!
But second, waiting to get everything together before you enter a journey of faith is, to quote the Goo Goo Dolls, like being a “young men sitting in the old man’s bar/waiting for his turn to die.”
If God can work in the messy lives of the founders of our faith God can work in our messy lives too! Even if things aren’t going a particular way that doesn’t mean they aren’t going at all!
The Journey of faith is not mechanical, but messy. Its driving behind a led-footed pastor on I-50 in rural Maryland. Its 10 years of barrenness in the face of God’s promise of a child. Its jealousy and misjudgment. Its mysterious blessing in the face of curses. It’s a mixed blessing in the desert. Its messy!
Yet its also a journey to a life giving well called “God sees” and a journey to a magnificent cost-line, a blue horizon-line bumping up against the curvature of the earth—the white-cap waves sparkling in the rising sun.
The journey of faith is messy, but God’s there in the messiness, and its worth it!
A+A
Thursday, April 22, 2010
My mom's take on her time in B'more
Tue
: Arrived in time for a nice dinner--stir-fried shrimp/scallops/calamari cooked by Chef Chris! Then on to his evening Bible study--got to meet a few congregation members, who complimented me on raising such a fine man--I agree(though I don‘t take credit for it!) Also got to meet Chris’ cat, Simul.
Wed:
We went to a Baltimore Orioles game with Joe & Joel--Methodist & Lutheran interns. Orioles lost 9-1, but we had a good time!
Thurs:
We went downtown to the Inner Harbor--saw awesome city views from atop the Lutheran Center, had lunch in Little Italy, saw a fun art museum, and went to the fabulous Baltimore Aquarium!
Fri:
Went to Annapolis--had scrumptious crab cakes for lunch & met Christina, Chris’ friend who’s interning as a Unitarian minister. Went on a harbor tour by boat, and met Eileen & daughters Katy & Jackie for coffee--she’s my friend since Brussels, and we had a wonderful visit--felt 20 years younger!
Sat:
We went to Fels Point, Ft McHenry(where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner), and later to a play--Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat--with Kelly, whose husband Ward cooked up some amazing burritos for dinner!
Sun:
We attended services at Chris’ church--got to meet his awesome Pastor Greg & the congregation, & see Chris in action. We went bowling in the evening.
Mon:
Returned to the Inner Harbor, also walked around the Johns Hopkins University campus. Packed to head home--flew out at 5PM, arrived home at 10PM, in time for a quick night’s rest, as Tuesday was back to work.
: Arrived in time for a nice dinner--stir-fried shrimp/scallops/calamari cooked by Chef Chris! Then on to his evening Bible study--got to meet a few congregation members, who complimented me on raising such a fine man--I agree(though I don‘t take credit for it!) Also got to meet Chris’ cat, Simul.
Wed:
We went to a Baltimore Orioles game with Joe & Joel--Methodist & Lutheran interns. Orioles lost 9-1, but we had a good time!
Thurs:
We went downtown to the Inner Harbor--saw awesome city views from atop the Lutheran Center, had lunch in Little Italy, saw a fun art museum, and went to the fabulous Baltimore Aquarium!
Fri:
Went to Annapolis--had scrumptious crab cakes for lunch & met Christina, Chris’ friend who’s interning as a Unitarian minister. Went on a harbor tour by boat, and met Eileen & daughters Katy & Jackie for coffee--she’s my friend since Brussels, and we had a wonderful visit--felt 20 years younger!
Sat:
We went to Fels Point, Ft McHenry(where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner), and later to a play--Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat--with Kelly, whose husband Ward cooked up some amazing burritos for dinner!
Sun:
We attended services at Chris’ church--got to meet his awesome Pastor Greg & the congregation, & see Chris in action. We went bowling in the evening.
Mon:
Returned to the Inner Harbor, also walked around the Johns Hopkins University campus. Packed to head home--flew out at 5PM, arrived home at 10PM, in time for a quick night’s rest, as Tuesday was back to work.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
My mantra is getting smaller
As the sun comes out and I walk the labyrinth in front of St. John's and try to break down my prayers into a stark and easy to remember phrase I’ve reached this so far:
I bow
Forgive
Save
Sustain
Here
I bow
Forgive
Save
Sustain
Here
Sunday, April 18, 2010
April 18th Prayers
We pray Lord, for this church—for St. John’s, may our ministries mirror your calling to the cruciform life—may our communal life reflect your light. LIYMHOP
We lift up our Health and Wellness committee—especially those who served this community in our food pantry, may those who look upon them see you. LIYMHOP
We pray too Lord for the Delaware/Maryland Synod. We pray for interim Bishop Sneider and as we proceed to pick a new Bishop we pray, “Come Holy Spirit, come!” LIYMHOP
As you prayed for your followers “that all may be one,” we too pray that we might be one and in that oneness your message of love, mercy, compassion, and justice might save the soul of this world. LIYMHOP
We commend Park Heights into your care—that it might be healed of social strife and decay. Strengthen neighbors in purpose and concern for one another. Create here a community of mutual trust and peace. LIYMHOP
We pray too for the victims of violence in Waverly. Strengthen that community to face their tragedy. LIYMHOP
We lift up all the leaders in this city, this state, this nation, and this world. May those entrusted with power serve all citizens. Drive from them cynicism, selfishness, and corruption, grant them honesty and humility. LIYMHOP
We remember with the people of Poland the passing of their president and so many of their leaders. Hold them tight in this, their time of need. LIYMHOP
We remember too all those toiling through economic hardships and trapped by economic trouble. Especially Lord those who hunger, those who are unemployed or underemployed, and those without adequate housing. LIYMHOP
We ask that you would send wisdom and discernment to all who wonder what is next in their life and who look forward with trepidation instead of trust. LIYMHO
Lord, we pray for those who suffer at the hands of loneliness, abuse and neglecte. LIYMHOP
For those oppressed by addiction and humbled by sickness of mind, body, and soul. LIYMHOP
At this time we lift up the names of all for whom we pray: LIYMHOP (JC Amen)
The peace of the Lord be with you all.
We lift up our Health and Wellness committee—especially those who served this community in our food pantry, may those who look upon them see you. LIYMHOP
We pray too Lord for the Delaware/Maryland Synod. We pray for interim Bishop Sneider and as we proceed to pick a new Bishop we pray, “Come Holy Spirit, come!” LIYMHOP
As you prayed for your followers “that all may be one,” we too pray that we might be one and in that oneness your message of love, mercy, compassion, and justice might save the soul of this world. LIYMHOP
We commend Park Heights into your care—that it might be healed of social strife and decay. Strengthen neighbors in purpose and concern for one another. Create here a community of mutual trust and peace. LIYMHOP
We pray too for the victims of violence in Waverly. Strengthen that community to face their tragedy. LIYMHOP
We lift up all the leaders in this city, this state, this nation, and this world. May those entrusted with power serve all citizens. Drive from them cynicism, selfishness, and corruption, grant them honesty and humility. LIYMHOP
We remember with the people of Poland the passing of their president and so many of their leaders. Hold them tight in this, their time of need. LIYMHOP
We remember too all those toiling through economic hardships and trapped by economic trouble. Especially Lord those who hunger, those who are unemployed or underemployed, and those without adequate housing. LIYMHOP
We ask that you would send wisdom and discernment to all who wonder what is next in their life and who look forward with trepidation instead of trust. LIYMHO
Lord, we pray for those who suffer at the hands of loneliness, abuse and neglecte. LIYMHOP
For those oppressed by addiction and humbled by sickness of mind, body, and soul. LIYMHOP
At this time we lift up the names of all for whom we pray: LIYMHOP (JC Amen)
The peace of the Lord be with you all.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Road to Emmaus
I’ve had four open-heart surgeries so far in my life. Up until yesterday afternoon I believed there was a good chance that I was about to have another one very soon. As some of you know I don’t always read people well, but I do generally read doctors very well. I can tell when they are anxious or confused. I know what a doctor acts like right before she or he say, “we need to operate.”
And, that was the way the doctor here in Baltimore had been acting toward me. So, for the last two and a half weeks, I have been waiting on pins and needles to be told that the bell, it tolls for me.
I had thought through some of the implications—Internship would end, I would have to find some place to recuperate from the trauma of having my chest cracked open and my internal organs messed with. My candidacy to ordained ministry would likely be sidetracked.
Yet, even as I thought of all these things I pushed them to the back of my mind. I got back into the game of keeping on keeping on.
I preached on Good Friday and I prayed at our Easter service. And it was a beautiful Easter service. It was a great meal beforehand too…I even ate three helpings of breakfast… but I have to admit some of that was because I thought that might be the last time I would get to eat home cooked bacon for the foreseeable future.
Well, I got some good news yesterday. After extensive study of my insides they decided my heart will hold up for at least another year. It turns out that the reason they were acting like they wanted to cut me open was they wanted to fix something that my surgeons had decided since I was three days old didn’t need fixing.
I didn’t know quite how much this was weighing me down until this burden was lifted from me! Though I didn’t know it at the time my worries about this heart surgery were affecting my attitude, my way of viewing the world, everything! Easter itself didn’t entirely feel like Easter.
But now its like I can see in color again. Its like I’ve been given my life back. Its like its finally Easter for me too.
And, I’d imagine that’s about where Cleopas and his companion are too. Yes, Easter has happened, but it hasn’t happened for them.
But this is the Easter season and we can say without a doubt, “Christ has risen. He has risen indeed. Alleluia.”
It is the Easter Season and I can say this to them and to myself and to all of you, “Easter Continues.” “Easter continues.”
Let us pray:
Lord God, thank you for all you have done and continue to do for us. Thank you for your resurrection power. May my words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen
There is one big thing that has often bothered me about the Road to Emmaus—the miraculousness of it. That Jesus isn’t recognized at the start and that Jesus disappears before their eyes after his is recognized.
But after this last two and a half weeks in which I didn’t do a particularly good job of seeing my own level of stress until after the stress was over. After even not really seeing Easter! I get it. I get it!
For them Easter was a second hand account. It was an account of resurrection mediated by an unreliable source. Yes, there were rumors of resurrection, anecdotes about angelic visions, but for them Easter was still becoming. They needed to know Easter Continues.
And that’s what they got. Not the angels or gardeners, but they got something. They were wrestled free from their sorrows by ripples of the resurrection.
You get what I mean by ripples of the resurrection right? Life is a pond, God chucked a big stone off of the tomb of His Son, and the waters are, to this day, still unsettled.
We, like Cleopas, in a sense still live on the Good Friday side of the Gospel message. We too do not have precise here-and-now first hand experiences of the Resurrection, as it was experienced early Sunday morning by those women.
Unlike the women at the tomb we aren’t at the epicenter of the pond when that rock was rolled away. We weren’t when the greatest splash of the spiritual life of humanity happened.
None the less, like them, the ripples upon that water, the ripples and reverberations of resurrection power, still touch us.
Easter Continues.
Easter continues and we just have to keep our eyes and our mind open to signs of His resurrection!
Easter continues as we sulk across the stage of life “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” and a stranger comes up to us.
This stranger calls us out of our own belly-button-gazing and asks, “What are you talking about?”
We think, “this person has no manners! Can’t he see our sadness?” “What else would we be discussing! Is he seriously the only person on the planet that doesn’t know about what just went down?”
But think about what we’re saying! We are telling the one who has first-person experience of these events a second-hand account of him being handed over!
But this ripple of the resurrection gives Jesus an opportunity here. Its sort of like that reality TV show “Undercover Boss” in which CEO’s are hired on at their own company and get to see how things look from the bottom up.
Jesus is able to ask that famous question, “who do you say I am?” without his disciples knowing it is he who asks.
And we respond, “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
In the person of a stranger Easter continues on, rippling out from the empty tomb and into our lives through the presence of unknown people along our walk of faith. We, as the letter to the Hebrews so eloquently puts it, “often entertain angels unaware.”
Easter Continues when this stranger, this Christ who plays dumb with his disciples, switches tactics and tantalizes us by talking about scripture.
And I have to say as a Hebrew Scripture guy myself I’d kill to be on the Road to Emmaus—to see where in “Moses and all the prophets” Jesus finds himself.
Easter continues in scripture because it grounds us in that old old story we love to hear so well! It grounds us in our story.
There are a lot of stories out there. There are stories that tell us if we just consume a few more things we will find salvation. There are stories that tell us violence is redemptive. There are stories that laud loneliness as masculinity and submission as a girl’s grace. There is even Cleopas’ own story—we thought he was the one.
And so we need to be reminded of our own story. It is a story of God’s constant faithfulness toward us, of God loving us so much that even when we kill his Son he comes back and continues to love us.
Easter continues even when we reach our destination for the night. Because we invite the strangers in. Easter continues when we invite strangers in!
When we do evangelism—not because we want our churches full, not because we want our churches to survive, not because we want the ELCA to survive, but because we value hospitality. Easter comes.
Easter comes Because we can say in all honesty that we find life here! Because we want others to have life and have it abundantly. Because we believe in our hearts and in our souls that abundant life is what we are inviting the stranger to here. When we ask the stranger in because we know that we have shelter for the evening. Easter continues.
Easter continues even as things get a little strange. Easter continues in the breaking of the bread—in the tantalizingly short moment in which we are jarred by the presence of Jesus just long enough to realize he’s vanished.
Easter continues in the sharing of a meal the reveals Jesus.
And that shouldn’t be any big surprise for St. John’s. We’re known as the church that eats.
You see we don’t eat together because we’re a bunch of gluttons, but because food and faith have always been intertwined. Easter continues when we get together over food. Grace filled moments happen when we get together over food.
Additionally you can’t talk about breaking bread without considering communion. That too is a ripple of the resurrection. The bread and wine that we eat and drink—proclaims the Lord’s death, and yet speaks of His new life here and now with us and in us!
The center of the breaking of the bread is grace. God’s grace—a physical sign that God is for you and for me! Jesus is actively engaged in entering our existence. When we eat at the altar Jesus shows up. Because as we eat bread we are transformed—we become what we receive—the body of Christ.
Easter continues as we find the fellow faithful and tell then about this stranger we met along the way. About his reading of scripture. About inviting him. About his revealing himself in the bread.
Easter continues right here, with other Christians. Cleopas and his companion aren’t the only ones talking. We aren’t the only ones talking about the ripples of resurrection. We aren’t alone in our experiences of Easter.
When Christians reflect upon our experiences of Jesus with one another Easter continues. When our journey upon the Emmaus road comes into contact with Simon’s experience or the experience of the women at the tomb. When one experience calls to another they eventually sing together in tones of majesty and grandeur. The pond that we are all floating in together makes better sense, the rock that was rolled away from the tomb becomes more real. Easter continues!
A+A
And, that was the way the doctor here in Baltimore had been acting toward me. So, for the last two and a half weeks, I have been waiting on pins and needles to be told that the bell, it tolls for me.
I had thought through some of the implications—Internship would end, I would have to find some place to recuperate from the trauma of having my chest cracked open and my internal organs messed with. My candidacy to ordained ministry would likely be sidetracked.
Yet, even as I thought of all these things I pushed them to the back of my mind. I got back into the game of keeping on keeping on.
I preached on Good Friday and I prayed at our Easter service. And it was a beautiful Easter service. It was a great meal beforehand too…I even ate three helpings of breakfast… but I have to admit some of that was because I thought that might be the last time I would get to eat home cooked bacon for the foreseeable future.
Well, I got some good news yesterday. After extensive study of my insides they decided my heart will hold up for at least another year. It turns out that the reason they were acting like they wanted to cut me open was they wanted to fix something that my surgeons had decided since I was three days old didn’t need fixing.
I didn’t know quite how much this was weighing me down until this burden was lifted from me! Though I didn’t know it at the time my worries about this heart surgery were affecting my attitude, my way of viewing the world, everything! Easter itself didn’t entirely feel like Easter.
But now its like I can see in color again. Its like I’ve been given my life back. Its like its finally Easter for me too.
And, I’d imagine that’s about where Cleopas and his companion are too. Yes, Easter has happened, but it hasn’t happened for them.
But this is the Easter season and we can say without a doubt, “Christ has risen. He has risen indeed. Alleluia.”
It is the Easter Season and I can say this to them and to myself and to all of you, “Easter Continues.” “Easter continues.”
Let us pray:
Lord God, thank you for all you have done and continue to do for us. Thank you for your resurrection power. May my words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen
There is one big thing that has often bothered me about the Road to Emmaus—the miraculousness of it. That Jesus isn’t recognized at the start and that Jesus disappears before their eyes after his is recognized.
But after this last two and a half weeks in which I didn’t do a particularly good job of seeing my own level of stress until after the stress was over. After even not really seeing Easter! I get it. I get it!
For them Easter was a second hand account. It was an account of resurrection mediated by an unreliable source. Yes, there were rumors of resurrection, anecdotes about angelic visions, but for them Easter was still becoming. They needed to know Easter Continues.
And that’s what they got. Not the angels or gardeners, but they got something. They were wrestled free from their sorrows by ripples of the resurrection.
You get what I mean by ripples of the resurrection right? Life is a pond, God chucked a big stone off of the tomb of His Son, and the waters are, to this day, still unsettled.
We, like Cleopas, in a sense still live on the Good Friday side of the Gospel message. We too do not have precise here-and-now first hand experiences of the Resurrection, as it was experienced early Sunday morning by those women.
Unlike the women at the tomb we aren’t at the epicenter of the pond when that rock was rolled away. We weren’t when the greatest splash of the spiritual life of humanity happened.
None the less, like them, the ripples upon that water, the ripples and reverberations of resurrection power, still touch us.
Easter Continues.
Easter continues and we just have to keep our eyes and our mind open to signs of His resurrection!
Easter continues as we sulk across the stage of life “full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” and a stranger comes up to us.
This stranger calls us out of our own belly-button-gazing and asks, “What are you talking about?”
We think, “this person has no manners! Can’t he see our sadness?” “What else would we be discussing! Is he seriously the only person on the planet that doesn’t know about what just went down?”
But think about what we’re saying! We are telling the one who has first-person experience of these events a second-hand account of him being handed over!
But this ripple of the resurrection gives Jesus an opportunity here. Its sort of like that reality TV show “Undercover Boss” in which CEO’s are hired on at their own company and get to see how things look from the bottom up.
Jesus is able to ask that famous question, “who do you say I am?” without his disciples knowing it is he who asks.
And we respond, “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
In the person of a stranger Easter continues on, rippling out from the empty tomb and into our lives through the presence of unknown people along our walk of faith. We, as the letter to the Hebrews so eloquently puts it, “often entertain angels unaware.”
Easter Continues when this stranger, this Christ who plays dumb with his disciples, switches tactics and tantalizes us by talking about scripture.
And I have to say as a Hebrew Scripture guy myself I’d kill to be on the Road to Emmaus—to see where in “Moses and all the prophets” Jesus finds himself.
Easter continues in scripture because it grounds us in that old old story we love to hear so well! It grounds us in our story.
There are a lot of stories out there. There are stories that tell us if we just consume a few more things we will find salvation. There are stories that tell us violence is redemptive. There are stories that laud loneliness as masculinity and submission as a girl’s grace. There is even Cleopas’ own story—we thought he was the one.
And so we need to be reminded of our own story. It is a story of God’s constant faithfulness toward us, of God loving us so much that even when we kill his Son he comes back and continues to love us.
Easter continues even when we reach our destination for the night. Because we invite the strangers in. Easter continues when we invite strangers in!
When we do evangelism—not because we want our churches full, not because we want our churches to survive, not because we want the ELCA to survive, but because we value hospitality. Easter comes.
Easter comes Because we can say in all honesty that we find life here! Because we want others to have life and have it abundantly. Because we believe in our hearts and in our souls that abundant life is what we are inviting the stranger to here. When we ask the stranger in because we know that we have shelter for the evening. Easter continues.
Easter continues even as things get a little strange. Easter continues in the breaking of the bread—in the tantalizingly short moment in which we are jarred by the presence of Jesus just long enough to realize he’s vanished.
Easter continues in the sharing of a meal the reveals Jesus.
And that shouldn’t be any big surprise for St. John’s. We’re known as the church that eats.
You see we don’t eat together because we’re a bunch of gluttons, but because food and faith have always been intertwined. Easter continues when we get together over food. Grace filled moments happen when we get together over food.
Additionally you can’t talk about breaking bread without considering communion. That too is a ripple of the resurrection. The bread and wine that we eat and drink—proclaims the Lord’s death, and yet speaks of His new life here and now with us and in us!
The center of the breaking of the bread is grace. God’s grace—a physical sign that God is for you and for me! Jesus is actively engaged in entering our existence. When we eat at the altar Jesus shows up. Because as we eat bread we are transformed—we become what we receive—the body of Christ.
Easter continues as we find the fellow faithful and tell then about this stranger we met along the way. About his reading of scripture. About inviting him. About his revealing himself in the bread.
Easter continues right here, with other Christians. Cleopas and his companion aren’t the only ones talking. We aren’t the only ones talking about the ripples of resurrection. We aren’t alone in our experiences of Easter.
When Christians reflect upon our experiences of Jesus with one another Easter continues. When our journey upon the Emmaus road comes into contact with Simon’s experience or the experience of the women at the tomb. When one experience calls to another they eventually sing together in tones of majesty and grandeur. The pond that we are all floating in together makes better sense, the rock that was rolled away from the tomb becomes more real. Easter continues!
A+A
Saturday, April 10, 2010
It feels like I can see in color again!
As some of you know I’ve been anxiously awaiting the results of an MRI of my heart.
What you may not know is how anxious I was. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I too didn’t realize quite how large a burden I was carrying—until I was released from it today.
The way the doctors were acting was the way they acted when I was 18 and ended up having emergency open-heart surgery. I genuinely believed I was going to cracked open within the week.
And with that I figured my internship was done—I would have to leave St. John’s and Baltimore and find somewhere to recuperate and relearn all those basic things that your body kind of forgets when it has had a massive trauma to its core. I figured I would be held back in the call process. I figured, because the seminary insurance has all but dropped me because they’ve seen fit to call my life a “congenital condition” this was in a sense also economic finality for me. I also remembered that open-heart surgery is not without danger, without a chance that I could die.
But I just sort of soldiered on and put it in the back of my mind. I did take time and write about it some. I also did talk to a few close friends about some of my fears. So no problem… or so I thought.
Then today I found out the doctors were acting funny because they were unsure how/why the doctor who did a particular part of my first full correction when I was a three years old.
Since finding out this afternoon I feel like a burden has been lifted. When I drove to a friends this evening for a meal I genuinely thought the sun was brighter and the colors that naturally occur on this beautiful earth were more vivid. The steak my friends and I ate, was, better… then again Ward is a damn good cook… but none the less, I just feel so relieved.
It feels to me now like Easter wasn’t last week, but today.
What you may not know is how anxious I was. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I too didn’t realize quite how large a burden I was carrying—until I was released from it today.
The way the doctors were acting was the way they acted when I was 18 and ended up having emergency open-heart surgery. I genuinely believed I was going to cracked open within the week.
And with that I figured my internship was done—I would have to leave St. John’s and Baltimore and find somewhere to recuperate and relearn all those basic things that your body kind of forgets when it has had a massive trauma to its core. I figured I would be held back in the call process. I figured, because the seminary insurance has all but dropped me because they’ve seen fit to call my life a “congenital condition” this was in a sense also economic finality for me. I also remembered that open-heart surgery is not without danger, without a chance that I could die.
But I just sort of soldiered on and put it in the back of my mind. I did take time and write about it some. I also did talk to a few close friends about some of my fears. So no problem… or so I thought.
Then today I found out the doctors were acting funny because they were unsure how/why the doctor who did a particular part of my first full correction when I was a three years old.
Since finding out this afternoon I feel like a burden has been lifted. When I drove to a friends this evening for a meal I genuinely thought the sun was brighter and the colors that naturally occur on this beautiful earth were more vivid. The steak my friends and I ate, was, better… then again Ward is a damn good cook… but none the less, I just feel so relieved.
It feels to me now like Easter wasn’t last week, but today.
Monday, April 05, 2010
A Prayer
Because I know You
I bow before Your sacredness
Come to me
Thread Your being throughout my life
Remind me of Your mercy
Infuse my soul with Your spirit
Be with me
All that sustains me is from You
It gives me great joy
I am marred, and You love me
I am mangled, and You keep me
May I too love and keep my siblings
I am thrown into ambiguity—may I trust You are with me
Bring me from the valley to the mountain peeks
Through the cloud to see Your face
Yes!
I bow before Your sacredness
Come to me
Thread Your being throughout my life
Remind me of Your mercy
Infuse my soul with Your spirit
Be with me
All that sustains me is from You
It gives me great joy
I am marred, and You love me
I am mangled, and You keep me
May I too love and keep my siblings
I am thrown into ambiguity—may I trust You are with me
Bring me from the valley to the mountain peeks
Through the cloud to see Your face
Yes!
Saturday, April 03, 2010
My bishop's reflection on Holy Saturday
The Vigil of Easter
May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.
Joan Chittister writes that everyone who has ever lived, or who will ever live, will someday undergo a Holy Saturday of their own. Someday we will all know the power of overwhelming loss when life as we know it changes, when all hope dies in mid-flight. Then, and only then, she writes, can we begin to understand the purpose of Holy Saturday.
No doubt about it: this is the day of going down into the tomb---our own as well as Jesus'. It is now time for us to die to false hope. It is also time for us to die to faithless despair. Finally our hope is in the mercy of God in Christ, and not in our faithless attempts to construct hope in our own image, for our own ends. Finally, to begin to see the world as God sees the world and trust that God is the light in every darkness, is hope, whether our eyes can see the hand of God, or not.
To be able to come to that point before the beginning of the Easter Vigil, before the cantor sings the Exultet into the darkness, is what Holy Saturday is really about. Then loss is gain, and silence is a very clear message from God.
Adapted from The Liturgical Year, Joan Chittister
prayer
Merciful God, you heal the broken in heart and bind up the wounds of the afflicted. Strengthen us in our weakness, calm our troubled spirits, and dispel our doubts and fears. In Christ's rising from the dead, you conquered death and opened the gates of everlasting life. Renew our trust in you that by the power of your love we shall one day be brought together again with all whom we have loved and lost. Grant this, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
ELW, page 285
--Bishop Allan Bjornberg
May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.
Joan Chittister writes that everyone who has ever lived, or who will ever live, will someday undergo a Holy Saturday of their own. Someday we will all know the power of overwhelming loss when life as we know it changes, when all hope dies in mid-flight. Then, and only then, she writes, can we begin to understand the purpose of Holy Saturday.
No doubt about it: this is the day of going down into the tomb---our own as well as Jesus'. It is now time for us to die to false hope. It is also time for us to die to faithless despair. Finally our hope is in the mercy of God in Christ, and not in our faithless attempts to construct hope in our own image, for our own ends. Finally, to begin to see the world as God sees the world and trust that God is the light in every darkness, is hope, whether our eyes can see the hand of God, or not.
To be able to come to that point before the beginning of the Easter Vigil, before the cantor sings the Exultet into the darkness, is what Holy Saturday is really about. Then loss is gain, and silence is a very clear message from God.
Adapted from The Liturgical Year, Joan Chittister
prayer
Merciful God, you heal the broken in heart and bind up the wounds of the afflicted. Strengthen us in our weakness, calm our troubled spirits, and dispel our doubts and fears. In Christ's rising from the dead, you conquered death and opened the gates of everlasting life. Renew our trust in you that by the power of your love we shall one day be brought together again with all whom we have loved and lost. Grant this, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
ELW, page 285
--Bishop Allan Bjornberg
Friday, April 02, 2010
Surveying the wondrous cross
“When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died/ My richest gain I count as loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.”
When I survey the cross, something happens. It changes the way I look at the world, and at myself. When I survey the cross I am struck by the man stuck on that tree. I am struck with fear and trembling that it is in fact God who is on that tree.
God is crucified on a cross, and I am surveying that cross. It forces me to pay attention. It makes me look at the world around me in a new way and with new questions. It forces me to wonder why I’m down here and God is up there. It-throws-me-out-of-myself.
(Turn to your neighbor and repeat after me) When I survey the cross. It throws me out of myself.
When I survey the cross. When I survey the cross.
Lord God, on this, the remembrance of your passion and death, please allow me to speak a word that is true. Please allow me to preach a word to these people about you. May the words of my mouth and the meditations upon all of our hearts be acceptable to you this Good Friday. In the name of your son, Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
When I survey the cross I see a man going up to Jerusalem. This capital city. This center of faith.
And he doesn’t look like much. He’s just another pilgrim from the countryside. He argues and debates with his fellow Rabbis. They argue about the same thing humans are always arguing about: Life, death, and taxes to Caesar.
Then he does some street theater. He rides that donkey that makes all the difference rough shod over Roman warhorses.
He even goes a step too far to bring his message home. He symbolically attacked the Temple. He rearranges the money changers.
But doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he know about revolt and repression?
Doesn’t he know about the slaughter of a few years previous?
Hasn’t he heard that a few years back a Roman soldier made an obscene gesture toward the Temple. Doesn’t he know that caused a riot? Doesn’t he know about Roman “Peace Keeping”? Doesn’t he know of the thousands of bodies that littered the street that year?
Riling up folk on the biggest holiday of the year, that’s a good way to get your fool self killed.
And that’s just what happens. He ends up at that lonely garden praying those fervent, frantic, and faithful prayers. And his friends fall asleep—for they can not stay awake with him even for one hour.
Then there is the betrayal. His friend came with a well-armed crowd and this man was caught by a disciple’s kiss.
When I survey the cross I see a troubling trial. I see a man beaten, lashed with Roman whip.
He is paraded around, he is mocked. Thorns are threaded together into a crown. They are placed upon his brow in a kingly coronation of pain.
But that isn’t enough. When I survey the cross I see a man who has to be dealt with. It is said he is a king. It is said he refused to pay taxes to Caesar. It is said he would destroy the temple.
It was this first charge, his claim of kingship, I believe, that got him killed.
When I survey the cross I see a man being executed for expediency. A man with big dreams and expansive ideas being killed because he talked about “The Kingdom of God.” Killed because kings don’t like their kingship questions and threatened.
So they execute him on a cross. They kill him along with thieves and criminals.
When I survey the cross I see a massive tragedy perpetrated by a mad system, scared people, and this man Jesus simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. In a sense, when I survey the cross, I simply see foolishness.
Yet. What a shift, if on that cross hangs God.
If the Creator of all that is, hangs upon a two by four and breaths one last breath. If the one who can say, “I am,” and end that statement with a period has become flesh. Become flesh to the point of crying out to God in anguish, God screaming out in God-forsaken-ness!
Then, then, we are knocked flat when we survey the cross. We are thrown out of ourselves, when we survey the cross. Any belly button gazing, any righteousness we believe we have collected is found to be folly. Any wisdom is foolishness and any strength weakness, when we survey the cross.
Oh yes, when we see the curse of the tree and the life of the Messiah meshed and mashed together we see the paradox of power and weakness, wisdom and foolishness. Because we’ve been thrown out of ourselves.
All the systems that we have set up to cope with the world as it is are judged in light of killing God. Every piece of reality and every piece of ourselves is confronted by the cross.
All that brought God to the cross, all that nailed Jesus to the tree, all that crucified God, is unmasked as an idol.
When we survey the cross we are thrown out of ourselves and realize our religious assumptions killed the Messiah, our power to mete out punishment lead to the Passion of God!
And I wish more people could be thrown out of themselves when surveying the cross.
I wish that religiosity was not a way to mangle lives and torture God.
I wish that brute force and violence was seen as an enemy of God. Our purity and our power are idols that we will sacrifice God for.
Look at the headlines. Catholic Bishops hiding sexual abuse, hiding rape! They did this to make sure hierarchy and structure appeared holy—so that religious authority would not be questioned. So that purity remained.
And, I don’t want to single out our Catholic sisters and brothers. After all we can admit hard truths at the cross. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was one of the first churches to settle a sexual abuse case.
Look at the headlines. A so-called “Christian” militia was recently arrested by the federal government. They were preparing to confront and kill a cop and then increase the carnage by exploding a dirty bomb at the funeral. Fanatical fantasies of power and violence replaced faith.
But it is not enough to point to the idols manufactured by those who protect pedophile priests. It is not enough to point out the idolatrous sliver in the eye of right wing militants.
What of ourselves? What about you? What about me? After all we are thrown from ourselves—I from myself and you from yourself.
What idols are reveled by the tree on which our God rests?
Do I need alcohol? Do I need drugs? Do I need romantic relationships? Do I need sex? Have they became as indispensable to me as breathing?
Has appearance become my idol? Does my appearance dictate who I am? Do other people’s appearances dictate how I treat them?
Am I needy without meeting the needs of others?
Have I fedishized my title, my calling, my degree, my uniform, my religious garb, my future plans?
Do I refuse to let go of the past even as it crucifies me?
Does violence satisfy some secret, or not so secret, longing of my heart?
Has my faith become a church thing, instead of a God thing?
What golden calf is revealed by the 3 hours of darkness when they crucified our Lord? What do I fear more than I fear God? What do I love more than I love God?
Surveying the cross shakes our assumptions about religious wisdom and strength. It causes us to see our own guilt and culpability in the crucifixion of the Christ. It reveals idols. If God is brought low by wisdom and strength, what does that say about wisdom and strength?
But what of those who come to the cross, not in pious wisdom or strength? What of those who do not view the cross from a place of disinterest, nor do they see the man on the cross as a threat to their idols? What of those who come to the cross because find themselves there too.
They too are thrown out of themselves. Out of their situation. Out of their sin. Out of their painful places and difficult decisions.
When I survey the cross I am thrown out of myself and thrown into God! Into the open arms of Jesus on the cross.
There was once a Jewish boy named Elie (LE) Weisel. He survived the hell of the holocaust. Later he would come to write about his experiences. At this point he has written 54 books and has even won a Nobel Prize in literature.
In his most famous book, Night, he describes a very horrible time amongst the dreadful canvas of horrible times. At one point people were being hung. As the bodies piled up at the foot of the scaffold and the situation became more dire, a young boy was hung, and because he was so malnourished was strangled by the rope instead of having his neck broken by it.
And a man asked, “Where is God now?” And the author “heard a voice within” himself answer, “Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”
Yes, this is a word of despair—of tragedy. But it is also the truth we affirm on Good Friday. God hangs from the gallows with us and for us. Foolishness and a stumbling block, yes, but there God is! We are thrown into God.
When I survey the cross I hear God—emptied of all power and might for our sake—intercede for his captors saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” I don’t know if there are any sinners in this church other than the one in the pulpit—but I want you to know tonight that God forgives you!
When I survey the cross I see God, even at the hour of His death, looking to a criminal in need of consolation and saying, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” To those caught up in things, who feel you have no chance, know that in Jesus there is always a second chance. Ours is a God of second chances.
When I survey the cross I see God providing His bereaved mother companionship, a son. Those that are lonely can look to your right and to your left, in front of you and behind you, there are brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.
When I survey the cross I hear God crying out as we all do in our moments of despair, “Why have you forsaken me.” You who are forsaken struggling through the Dark Night of the Soul Jesus wants you to know that Psalm 22 doesn’t end with the word “forsaken!”
When I survey the cross I see parched lips and hear a crackling voice—God crying out in thirst—just as millions of God’s children cry out for clean and dependable sources of water.
When I survey the cross I see God with us to the end. Abandoned? No, never alone, never alone!
When I survey the cross I hear God sending His Spirit on, trusting, always trusting, that God is a merciful Father. Fear God? Fear not!
Not only that! When I survey the cross I hear God saying to the abused “that’s not purity, that’s foolishness.”
When I survey the cross I hear God saying to the victims of violence, “that’s not power, that’s weakness.”
When I survey the cross I am thrown out of myself. When I survey the cross I am thrown into God!
“When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died/ My richest gain I count as loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.”
When I survey the cross, something happens. It changes the way I look at the world, and at myself. When I survey the cross I am struck by the man stuck on that tree. I am struck with fear and trembling that it is in fact God who is on that tree.
God is crucified on a cross, and I am surveying that cross. It forces me to pay attention. It makes me look at the world around me in a new way and with new questions. It forces me to wonder why I’m down here and God is up there. It-throws-me-out-of-myself.
(Turn to your neighbor and repeat after me) When I survey the cross. It throws me out of myself.
When I survey the cross. When I survey the cross.
Lord God, on this, the remembrance of your passion and death, please allow me to speak a word that is true. Please allow me to preach a word to these people about you. May the words of my mouth and the meditations upon all of our hearts be acceptable to you this Good Friday. In the name of your son, Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
When I survey the cross I see a man going up to Jerusalem. This capital city. This center of faith.
And he doesn’t look like much. He’s just another pilgrim from the countryside. He argues and debates with his fellow Rabbis. They argue about the same thing humans are always arguing about: Life, death, and taxes to Caesar.
Then he does some street theater. He rides that donkey that makes all the difference rough shod over Roman warhorses.
He even goes a step too far to bring his message home. He symbolically attacked the Temple. He rearranges the money changers.
But doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he know about revolt and repression?
Doesn’t he know about the slaughter of a few years previous?
Hasn’t he heard that a few years back a Roman soldier made an obscene gesture toward the Temple. Doesn’t he know that caused a riot? Doesn’t he know about Roman “Peace Keeping”? Doesn’t he know of the thousands of bodies that littered the street that year?
Riling up folk on the biggest holiday of the year, that’s a good way to get your fool self killed.
And that’s just what happens. He ends up at that lonely garden praying those fervent, frantic, and faithful prayers. And his friends fall asleep—for they can not stay awake with him even for one hour.
Then there is the betrayal. His friend came with a well-armed crowd and this man was caught by a disciple’s kiss.
When I survey the cross I see a troubling trial. I see a man beaten, lashed with Roman whip.
He is paraded around, he is mocked. Thorns are threaded together into a crown. They are placed upon his brow in a kingly coronation of pain.
But that isn’t enough. When I survey the cross I see a man who has to be dealt with. It is said he is a king. It is said he refused to pay taxes to Caesar. It is said he would destroy the temple.
It was this first charge, his claim of kingship, I believe, that got him killed.
When I survey the cross I see a man being executed for expediency. A man with big dreams and expansive ideas being killed because he talked about “The Kingdom of God.” Killed because kings don’t like their kingship questions and threatened.
So they execute him on a cross. They kill him along with thieves and criminals.
When I survey the cross I see a massive tragedy perpetrated by a mad system, scared people, and this man Jesus simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. In a sense, when I survey the cross, I simply see foolishness.
Yet. What a shift, if on that cross hangs God.
If the Creator of all that is, hangs upon a two by four and breaths one last breath. If the one who can say, “I am,” and end that statement with a period has become flesh. Become flesh to the point of crying out to God in anguish, God screaming out in God-forsaken-ness!
Then, then, we are knocked flat when we survey the cross. We are thrown out of ourselves, when we survey the cross. Any belly button gazing, any righteousness we believe we have collected is found to be folly. Any wisdom is foolishness and any strength weakness, when we survey the cross.
Oh yes, when we see the curse of the tree and the life of the Messiah meshed and mashed together we see the paradox of power and weakness, wisdom and foolishness. Because we’ve been thrown out of ourselves.
All the systems that we have set up to cope with the world as it is are judged in light of killing God. Every piece of reality and every piece of ourselves is confronted by the cross.
All that brought God to the cross, all that nailed Jesus to the tree, all that crucified God, is unmasked as an idol.
When we survey the cross we are thrown out of ourselves and realize our religious assumptions killed the Messiah, our power to mete out punishment lead to the Passion of God!
And I wish more people could be thrown out of themselves when surveying the cross.
I wish that religiosity was not a way to mangle lives and torture God.
I wish that brute force and violence was seen as an enemy of God. Our purity and our power are idols that we will sacrifice God for.
Look at the headlines. Catholic Bishops hiding sexual abuse, hiding rape! They did this to make sure hierarchy and structure appeared holy—so that religious authority would not be questioned. So that purity remained.
And, I don’t want to single out our Catholic sisters and brothers. After all we can admit hard truths at the cross. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was one of the first churches to settle a sexual abuse case.
Look at the headlines. A so-called “Christian” militia was recently arrested by the federal government. They were preparing to confront and kill a cop and then increase the carnage by exploding a dirty bomb at the funeral. Fanatical fantasies of power and violence replaced faith.
But it is not enough to point to the idols manufactured by those who protect pedophile priests. It is not enough to point out the idolatrous sliver in the eye of right wing militants.
What of ourselves? What about you? What about me? After all we are thrown from ourselves—I from myself and you from yourself.
What idols are reveled by the tree on which our God rests?
Do I need alcohol? Do I need drugs? Do I need romantic relationships? Do I need sex? Have they became as indispensable to me as breathing?
Has appearance become my idol? Does my appearance dictate who I am? Do other people’s appearances dictate how I treat them?
Am I needy without meeting the needs of others?
Have I fedishized my title, my calling, my degree, my uniform, my religious garb, my future plans?
Do I refuse to let go of the past even as it crucifies me?
Does violence satisfy some secret, or not so secret, longing of my heart?
Has my faith become a church thing, instead of a God thing?
What golden calf is revealed by the 3 hours of darkness when they crucified our Lord? What do I fear more than I fear God? What do I love more than I love God?
Surveying the cross shakes our assumptions about religious wisdom and strength. It causes us to see our own guilt and culpability in the crucifixion of the Christ. It reveals idols. If God is brought low by wisdom and strength, what does that say about wisdom and strength?
But what of those who come to the cross, not in pious wisdom or strength? What of those who do not view the cross from a place of disinterest, nor do they see the man on the cross as a threat to their idols? What of those who come to the cross because find themselves there too.
They too are thrown out of themselves. Out of their situation. Out of their sin. Out of their painful places and difficult decisions.
When I survey the cross I am thrown out of myself and thrown into God! Into the open arms of Jesus on the cross.
There was once a Jewish boy named Elie (LE) Weisel. He survived the hell of the holocaust. Later he would come to write about his experiences. At this point he has written 54 books and has even won a Nobel Prize in literature.
In his most famous book, Night, he describes a very horrible time amongst the dreadful canvas of horrible times. At one point people were being hung. As the bodies piled up at the foot of the scaffold and the situation became more dire, a young boy was hung, and because he was so malnourished was strangled by the rope instead of having his neck broken by it.
And a man asked, “Where is God now?” And the author “heard a voice within” himself answer, “Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”
Yes, this is a word of despair—of tragedy. But it is also the truth we affirm on Good Friday. God hangs from the gallows with us and for us. Foolishness and a stumbling block, yes, but there God is! We are thrown into God.
When I survey the cross I hear God—emptied of all power and might for our sake—intercede for his captors saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” I don’t know if there are any sinners in this church other than the one in the pulpit—but I want you to know tonight that God forgives you!
When I survey the cross I see God, even at the hour of His death, looking to a criminal in need of consolation and saying, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” To those caught up in things, who feel you have no chance, know that in Jesus there is always a second chance. Ours is a God of second chances.
When I survey the cross I see God providing His bereaved mother companionship, a son. Those that are lonely can look to your right and to your left, in front of you and behind you, there are brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.
When I survey the cross I hear God crying out as we all do in our moments of despair, “Why have you forsaken me.” You who are forsaken struggling through the Dark Night of the Soul Jesus wants you to know that Psalm 22 doesn’t end with the word “forsaken!”
When I survey the cross I see parched lips and hear a crackling voice—God crying out in thirst—just as millions of God’s children cry out for clean and dependable sources of water.
When I survey the cross I see God with us to the end. Abandoned? No, never alone, never alone!
When I survey the cross I hear God sending His Spirit on, trusting, always trusting, that God is a merciful Father. Fear God? Fear not!
Not only that! When I survey the cross I hear God saying to the abused “that’s not purity, that’s foolishness.”
When I survey the cross I hear God saying to the victims of violence, “that’s not power, that’s weakness.”
When I survey the cross I am thrown out of myself. When I survey the cross I am thrown into God!
“When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died/ My richest gain I count as loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
The authority is gone!
This morning, before listening to MLK’s speech on my I-pod, I was woken to further news about the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. There is a chance it goes all the way up to the top, to the “Vicar of Christ.”
Well, this “Vicar of St. John’s” was none too impressed by the Pope’s response. Essentially, “aren’t those Bishops of mine naughty”… and, “man, there are a lot of rumors out there.”
I mean we’re talking about rape, rape of children!
It feels like people in authority just don’t care. It’s like this “too big to fail” mentality has been taken up by people we genuinely trust. It’s like authority means never having to say you’re sorry. I mean I don’t like “the Pope’s bulldog” turned Pope, but I figure if you’ve got a bulldog the least you can do with it is use it to protect children!
I know half a generation turned counter-culture after Nixon’s breach of trust was revealed, and the war in Vietnam was called into question. I wonder if we’re at another such moment.
My generation has seen some pretty big shifts in the world, and they definitely don’t make those in charge, or those institutions that put them there, look very good.
There was the dot-com bust and the impeachment of President Clinton. Then we had democracy called into question with a close election in 2000 that some claimed was rigged. Then the myth of America being a safe place was stripped from us on 9/11. Then there was the half-truths that got us into Iraq. Then there was the abuses of Abu Ghraib. Then there was a more popularized understanding of how our actions affect the environment. Then there was the giant economic downturn. Then there has been the response to the 2008 election of America’s first African American president—people have been throwing more and more partisan, and sometimes racist, vitriol out there and people are actually turning violent!
And now the most recognized figure of global Christianity may be directly involved in a cover up of child rape in his home country and indirectly involved in such actions throughout Europe, and perhaps the world.
I mean… I mean… I mean, I was raised by fairly non-conformist parents—I affectionately refer to them as a biker and a hippie—I listen to Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving—because I wanted to end the war and stuff… but you know!
You know! I kinda held out hope that those people and systems that had been given authority would at least use them wisely. In fact, I would go so far as to say I had some affection for authority figures—my way of rebelling against the morals and norms of my parents I suppose—but I think its getting pretty hard to do…
…You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant
Well, this “Vicar of St. John’s” was none too impressed by the Pope’s response. Essentially, “aren’t those Bishops of mine naughty”… and, “man, there are a lot of rumors out there.”
I mean we’re talking about rape, rape of children!
It feels like people in authority just don’t care. It’s like this “too big to fail” mentality has been taken up by people we genuinely trust. It’s like authority means never having to say you’re sorry. I mean I don’t like “the Pope’s bulldog” turned Pope, but I figure if you’ve got a bulldog the least you can do with it is use it to protect children!
I know half a generation turned counter-culture after Nixon’s breach of trust was revealed, and the war in Vietnam was called into question. I wonder if we’re at another such moment.
My generation has seen some pretty big shifts in the world, and they definitely don’t make those in charge, or those institutions that put them there, look very good.
There was the dot-com bust and the impeachment of President Clinton. Then we had democracy called into question with a close election in 2000 that some claimed was rigged. Then the myth of America being a safe place was stripped from us on 9/11. Then there was the half-truths that got us into Iraq. Then there was the abuses of Abu Ghraib. Then there was a more popularized understanding of how our actions affect the environment. Then there was the giant economic downturn. Then there has been the response to the 2008 election of America’s first African American president—people have been throwing more and more partisan, and sometimes racist, vitriol out there and people are actually turning violent!
And now the most recognized figure of global Christianity may be directly involved in a cover up of child rape in his home country and indirectly involved in such actions throughout Europe, and perhaps the world.
I mean… I mean… I mean, I was raised by fairly non-conformist parents—I affectionately refer to them as a biker and a hippie—I listen to Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving—because I wanted to end the war and stuff… but you know!
You know! I kinda held out hope that those people and systems that had been given authority would at least use them wisely. In fact, I would go so far as to say I had some affection for authority figures—my way of rebelling against the morals and norms of my parents I suppose—but I think its getting pretty hard to do…
…You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant
The Meta-narrative is broken?
This morning, as I exercised, I listened to Martin Luther King’s sermon “Paul's Letter to American Christians.” In it he goes off on the following trope:
“For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development.
But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about "improved means to an unimproved end." How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.”-- http://www.mlkonline.net/christians.html
Now, this isn’t the only sermon in which he wonders at the scientific advances of his age (and how much more our own?). He is consistently impressed by skyscraping buildings.
As a caveat he calls on his listeners to move forward in thinking, in morality, in matters of the heart, to a point at which we truly match our physical sciences with the science of the spirit.
But, being influenced in my thinking by Paul, Augustine, and Luther I know humans are both dust and spirit. Even at the heights of our powers and even our morality there is a propensity to do evil.
And then I remember my own vision for the world. The closest thing I’ve ever written to a dream for the time I reside in. I re-write Genesis chapter 22 to speak to a time in which religion and violence have become, for some, synonyms:
“And Abraham weeps, and puts down his knife, and comes to his children and hugs them tightly. And he suggests that they bind themselves to an oath, saying, “Yours is a generation unlike mine. In my day only God could knock down the tower of Babel,” and he picks up the sacrificial knife off the ground, “now 19 men armed only with these can do similar. Sectarians have been unbound throughout Babylon, and it is in flames. Man’s consumption can cause a new flood and his bombs can bring Armageddon. Cuneiform tablets and riders on horses have been replaced with the keyboard and instant communication and so being respectful to one’s neighbor is now a global affair.” With that he throws the knife onto the altar, “Yours is a generation where individuals can impact the whole world as never before. You carry a responsibility that previously was the burden and pleasure of only the elites and the statesmen of the world. We have become god-like and never even noticed. The myth of redemptive violence, a myth I unwittingly have given to each of you, must be extinguished. So bind upon your hearts a promise to shake off the nihilism of violence.”—“Religiously Motivated Violence and the Akedah,” in An Uncomfortable Bit of Rope” page 92.
And I wonder if I am simply diagnosing, in more mythical terms, the same malaises of our age—simply pointing to the shadowy cloud that billowed from those sky-scrapping buildings instead of the fact that they scrape the sky. King, in the 50’s looked at technology with wonder and hoped for a morality to match. We, in this millennium, look with horror at our morality and don’t even realize “we have become god-like.”
The world King read he read in a prophetic way—projecting forward that which was to come, a mix of hope for what is and anguish for what will be. We, on the other hand, are living amongst the rubble and in the midst of the anguish, with only a peep of hope, like that faint feather resting in Pandora’s box.
So, the questions are: Is this continuity or discontinuity? Is the myth of progress, either moral or material, still something that is worth talking about? Or have we reached an age at which we may no longer reach for the heights of beauty, truth, honor, pity and compassion? Is the only question remaining the very question William Faulkner spoke against in his Nobel prize speech, “When am I going to be blown up?”
“For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day. In your age you can travel distances in one day that took me three months to travel. That is wonderful. You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development.
But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about "improved means to an unimproved end." How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances.”-- http://www.mlkonline.net/christians.html
Now, this isn’t the only sermon in which he wonders at the scientific advances of his age (and how much more our own?). He is consistently impressed by skyscraping buildings.
As a caveat he calls on his listeners to move forward in thinking, in morality, in matters of the heart, to a point at which we truly match our physical sciences with the science of the spirit.
But, being influenced in my thinking by Paul, Augustine, and Luther I know humans are both dust and spirit. Even at the heights of our powers and even our morality there is a propensity to do evil.
And then I remember my own vision for the world. The closest thing I’ve ever written to a dream for the time I reside in. I re-write Genesis chapter 22 to speak to a time in which religion and violence have become, for some, synonyms:
“And Abraham weeps, and puts down his knife, and comes to his children and hugs them tightly. And he suggests that they bind themselves to an oath, saying, “Yours is a generation unlike mine. In my day only God could knock down the tower of Babel,” and he picks up the sacrificial knife off the ground, “now 19 men armed only with these can do similar. Sectarians have been unbound throughout Babylon, and it is in flames. Man’s consumption can cause a new flood and his bombs can bring Armageddon. Cuneiform tablets and riders on horses have been replaced with the keyboard and instant communication and so being respectful to one’s neighbor is now a global affair.” With that he throws the knife onto the altar, “Yours is a generation where individuals can impact the whole world as never before. You carry a responsibility that previously was the burden and pleasure of only the elites and the statesmen of the world. We have become god-like and never even noticed. The myth of redemptive violence, a myth I unwittingly have given to each of you, must be extinguished. So bind upon your hearts a promise to shake off the nihilism of violence.”—“Religiously Motivated Violence and the Akedah,” in An Uncomfortable Bit of Rope” page 92.
And I wonder if I am simply diagnosing, in more mythical terms, the same malaises of our age—simply pointing to the shadowy cloud that billowed from those sky-scrapping buildings instead of the fact that they scrape the sky. King, in the 50’s looked at technology with wonder and hoped for a morality to match. We, in this millennium, look with horror at our morality and don’t even realize “we have become god-like.”
The world King read he read in a prophetic way—projecting forward that which was to come, a mix of hope for what is and anguish for what will be. We, on the other hand, are living amongst the rubble and in the midst of the anguish, with only a peep of hope, like that faint feather resting in Pandora’s box.
So, the questions are: Is this continuity or discontinuity? Is the myth of progress, either moral or material, still something that is worth talking about? Or have we reached an age at which we may no longer reach for the heights of beauty, truth, honor, pity and compassion? Is the only question remaining the very question William Faulkner spoke against in his Nobel prize speech, “When am I going to be blown up?”
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