As a hospice chaplain, I am called to be present with people whose spiritual journeys are many and varied. My patients run across the spectrum from people who have a deep and abiding faith tradition all the way to atheists. Regardless of their belief systems, everyone seeks meaning in the end of life journey and my role is to journey with them to find that meaning. And every patient has a unique journey and life story.
One of the patients with whom I journeyed was named John. John was an atheist, but not one of the angry “new atheist” types. John was extremely intelligent and had studied cosmology intently and felt that this all could happen without a God. He was tolerant of those who believed in God and expressed his understanding that some people need to believe in God and lean on that belief to find answers or meaning in life. He just didn’t need that. I assured him at my first meeting with him (as I was wearing my black clericals) that I was not there to change his mind or demand conversion – I said, “That’s now how I roll. My function on the team is to accompany him, help him put his affairs in order, support his family and to reflect with him on what brings meaning to his life’s journey.” John was cool with that.
Ironically, my pastoral visits with John were the longest of any of my other patients. I’d arrive at his house around 1:00PM and the next thing you know it would be 5:00 o’clock! John once said, “You know, I always think we’ll have a short visit but it never turns out that way.” John loved to talk about his music collection, his love of science (especially physics and string theory) and his family. At times, John would poke at my faith but I didn’t let it get to me – in fact, we laughed about it quite a bit. He shared with me how he was raised in a strict Calvinistic upbringing that imaged God as a punishing judge. He just couldn’t believe in a God who would predestine some people to be damned regardless of what they did or didn’t do.
John also had a hard time with the whole “God thing” because he was a concrete thinker. He wanted proof and certainty of God’s existence and he could not accept the punishing God of his childhood. At our last visit, we discussed the concept of a God beyond human projections – a God who is, if you will, bigger than any one religion and who embraces all of creation. John said to me, “You know … I could believe in that God. Maybe we need to rescue God from religion.”
We all live in the tension between living by faith and the desire for certainty. This is the tension we find in today’s Gospel reading. Now one of the conventional ways of reading this story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter’s attempt to walk on the water is to focus on Jesus’ words to Peter after being snatched up from a sure drowning – “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?” This could lead us to believe that if only Peter had more faith, he would have surely been able to walk on water too and if he’d only kept his eyes on Jesus, he would have been ok. Now if you walk away from hearing this passage with the message of keeping your focus on Jesus, that’s a good message – nothing wrong with that at all. But today, I want to approach this story from a different angle as a story about the tension between living by faith and the desire for proof.
The story of Jesus walking on the water appears in all four gospels, but only in Matthew do we have Peter stepping out of the boat. Matthew is writing his gospel for Jews who believe Jesus to be the Messiah and so he uses imagery in this story which had deep meaning in the Jewish community. First, Jesus tells the disciples to get into the boat and go to “the other side.” The “other side” of the Sea of Galilee is gentile territory. This would have raised some concerns for the Jewish hearers of Matthew’s gospel – “Wait a minute. The Scriptures say we are not to mix with those bacon-eating gentiles. Why would Jesus do that?” Additionally, the disciples get into the boat at evening and row into this headwind all night long. Night was considered a time when evil spirits came out – a dangerous time to be traveling and most folks would avoid night travel whenever possible. And one more element of danger – the disciples are on the water. Water is indicative of chaos: it cannot be controlled and it can kill you. So Matthew’s audience is feeling the anxiety of the danger of night, going into the unknown on the “other side” and being on the water. And now, Jesus comes out in the fourth watch of the night – sometime between 3 and 6AM – and he’s walking on the water.
This idea of walking on water, or moving on water, is a common image in ancient near east literature. From the Genesis story where the Spirit of God moves on the face of the water (a walking on water image) to the Epic of Gilgamesh from the ancient Sumerians to our gospel stories of Jesus walking on water, the common image of walking on water is that this is something God does but humans cannot do. So when Jesus walks on the water, he is revealing himself as divine – but the disciples think he is a ghost and they are terrified.
In response to the disciples’ collective fear, Jesus responds with what translates literally from Greek into six words: “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!” It’s important to remember that up until the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, there is no mention of fear in this story. These are fishermen in a boat being battered by a headwind - something they had likely experienced before. They were likely tired from rowing against the wind, but they were not afraid until they saw Jesus and mistook him for a ghost.
Jesus’ words are a call not just to courage but to faith. “Have courage! I AM. Fear Not!” calls the disciples not just to be strong and not fear, but again Jesus reveals himself as divine with the words “I AM.” The way it is phrased in Greek would have jogged the memory of Matthew’s community – “I AM” is the same phrase Moses heard from the burning bush on Sinai. Jesus reveals himself as the incarnation of the great I AM. He is Emmanuel – God with us – and his words to the disciples were a call for them to believe that God is with them even in their struggle against the forces of chaos and uncertainty.
But … that’s not quite enough for Peter. He replies, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Instead of believing Jesus’ words, Peter wants proof: “if it is you.” A similar phrase is used by Satan against Jesus in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to be turned to bread.” It will also be echoed in the words of the crowd at the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” All of these are demands for proof: “Prove yourself Jesus.” So Jesus tells Peter, “Come.”
Peter sets out of the boat but when he feels the wind he becomes fearful – he’s doing something only God can do – and he begins to sink. When Peter cries out “Lord save me!” he has learned that Jesus is God and Peter is not. When Jesus tells him he has “little faith” perhaps this is a statement about Peter’s demand for proof instead of believing Jesus’ statement: “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!”
Admittedly, there are times when all of us would like some certainty, some proof of God’s existence. There are times I wish God would just write in the sky what Anjel is supposed to do. But certainty and proof are the opposite of faith. If we are certain, there is no need for faith. All of us struggle with storms in our lives and times of chaos and uncertainty: losing a job, an illness, moving to a new town, death of a loved one, tensions in our families. It is in these hard times where we might have trouble trusting Jesus’ words, “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!” I think the image of the disciples who stayed in the boat, continuing the struggle of rowing in the storm is important for us. The disciples continued to struggle together in community. As we face difficulties in our lives, it is important to remember we do not struggle alone – we have community as the Body of Christ. Rather than going it alone as Peter did in his quest for certainty, we can rely on our community to hold us up and help us hear and trust when Jesus says, “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!”
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Are you the real thing?
One of my favorite Christmas movies is A Christmas Story. Set in the years of WWII, it is about a boy named Ralph Parker and his hope of getting an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle for Christmas (with the compass in the stock … and this thing which tells time). While this desire for the Red Ryder BB gun occupies the main story line along with the protestation refrain of “You’ll shoot your eye out,” there are a number of subplots in the overall story. One subplot involves Ralphie awaiting the arrival of his Little Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Ring for which he had consumed “gallons of Ovaltine” to get. After sending in those Ovaltine labels and checking the mail every day, Ralphie’s decoder ring finally arrives. That evening, he and his brother Randy tune in the family’s radio to listen to the Little Orphan Annie show. At the end of each show, Pierre Andre (the announcer) would give out the secret message for the members of Annie’s Secret Society to decode. Finally Ralphie would get to be in on the message. He writes down the code and takes it to “the only place an eight year old boy could get any privacy” – namely the bathroom – so that he could decode the message. After feverishly working to crack the code (all the while having his little brother pounding on the door to use the only bathroom in the house), Ralphie uncovers the secret message: “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” “A crummy commercial?! Son of …” well … never mind (those of you who've seen the movie know how that quote ends!). What makes us laugh about this vignette is that we’ve all had a Ralphie moment just like this. We've all had a time when we set our expectations of a situation or a person very high only to have it come crashing down around us.
In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist is having a “Ralphie moment.” Last week's reading was "John the Baptist - the Early Years" where we heard John preaching a very fiery message of repentance and casting an image of the one to come as a Messiah who would come with power and judge the world. He would gather the wheat into the granary and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire! John’s image of this powerful figure who would destroy the wicked and reward the righteous is disquieting on one hand but on the other it’s a rather attractive idea. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we can all look around us and see that the world isn’t right. We see bad things happening – downright evil things happening – all around us. There is something comforting in an image of a Messiah who’s going to come down here, clean up this mess and set things right. This is what John had preached. But now John is in prison and he hears about Jesus’ ministry … and it doesn’t square up with the Messiah image he had been touting.
This Jesus of Nazareth was not acting like the Messiah John expected. He didn't come bursting onto the scene to stick it to the man by confronting the leaders John condemned – the Pharisees and Sadducees. Instead, Jesus was paying attention to the last, lost, little, least, and lifeless – all the marginalized people who in the eyes of the world were “nobodies.” Children, widows, the poor, the sick, the disabled, the dying and dead – all of these people were getting Jesus’ attention and he was giving them hope and a future where before they had none. This wasn’t what John wanted to see. And so John sends his disciples to question Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” In Greek, the statement is a bit more harsh because the word for "another" implies an opposite as in "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for someone totally different from you?" John wants to know if Jesus is the real thing or an empty promise.
Jesus’ response was to quote the signs of the Messiah from Isaiah: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Jesus doesn’t give them a neat “yes” or “no” answer. Instead, Jesus puts the ball back in John’s court and tells his disciples to test the authenticity of his ministry by what had been foretold in Hebrew prophecy and what they see and hear about Jesus. Decide for yourselves whether the man and the message are congruent.
The congruency of the promise and the person meet a deep spiritual longing in all of us. We live in a world full of “crummy commercials” of empty promises and hype over substance. We are now living in a time of transition which sociologists call “post-modern” and ecclesiologists (those who study the Church) label as “post-Christendom.” The post-modern/post-Christendom world view stands in contrast to the modern/Christendom one. There is debate about the definition of post-modernism but there are two characteristics which are emerging. First, the post-modern world view carries a deep distrust of institutions as opposed to a modern view which generally trusts institutions. Institutions have a tendency to fail us; however, the modern person will tend to cut the institution some slack where the post-modern won't be as quick to let the institution off the hook.
The second characteristic is the post-modern experiences truth in this world as conditional rather than absolute as the modern does. A modern person would say truth doesn't change - truth is just that ... truth. The post-modern would argue that truth changes over time. Where the modern would quote the Declaration of Independence saying "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" as an absolute truth, the post-modern would argue that when this was written it only meant white, property owning males and the definition of "all men" has been modified to include more people during our history (a changing face of truth).
I believe much of the polarizing “culture wars” playing out in our country today are a clash between these two fundamental views of modernity and post-modernity: whether one trusts or distrusts institutions and whether one sees truth in this world as absolute or conditional. It's not about liberals versus conservatives as much as it is about moderns and post-moderns. In light of this changing world view between modernity and post-modernity, how does Christianity fit? What does it have to offer? I suggest what Christianity has to offer is something which bridges these two world views by going deeper into the spiritual longing they both have: the longing for something authentic.
Christianity is not about being an institutional religion; it is about a lived relational authenticity: a real relationship with God and with each other. This is precisely the authenticity Jesus offers John and his disciples. It is the authenticity we are to offer the world as the Church – the Body of Christ.
People coming into our church today, this congregation right here, are seeking authenticity and asking a question of us similar to that which John asked of Jesus: “Are you the one or should we wait for another?” or perhaps, “Are you the real thing or should I keep my 7AM tee time on Sundays at Hollow Creek Golf Course?” People want to know if this Church is the one they can count on to be real: the Church which walks the talk of faith, the Church which lives the teachings of Jesus and doesn’t just give them lip service, the Church which cares about the same “nobodies” Jesus cared about … the last, the lost, the little, the least, and the lifeless, a Church which believes eternal life starts now and not just when you die.
Authenticity has always been our spiritual hunger. Christ embodied the realness and fullness of God for our sake and we are called to do the same for the world as the Body of Christ. In a hurting world full of empty hype, broken promises and “crummy commercials” do we have the courage to be the real thing for Christ’s sake?
In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist is having a “Ralphie moment.” Last week's reading was "John the Baptist - the Early Years" where we heard John preaching a very fiery message of repentance and casting an image of the one to come as a Messiah who would come with power and judge the world. He would gather the wheat into the granary and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire! John’s image of this powerful figure who would destroy the wicked and reward the righteous is disquieting on one hand but on the other it’s a rather attractive idea. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we can all look around us and see that the world isn’t right. We see bad things happening – downright evil things happening – all around us. There is something comforting in an image of a Messiah who’s going to come down here, clean up this mess and set things right. This is what John had preached. But now John is in prison and he hears about Jesus’ ministry … and it doesn’t square up with the Messiah image he had been touting.
This Jesus of Nazareth was not acting like the Messiah John expected. He didn't come bursting onto the scene to stick it to the man by confronting the leaders John condemned – the Pharisees and Sadducees. Instead, Jesus was paying attention to the last, lost, little, least, and lifeless – all the marginalized people who in the eyes of the world were “nobodies.” Children, widows, the poor, the sick, the disabled, the dying and dead – all of these people were getting Jesus’ attention and he was giving them hope and a future where before they had none. This wasn’t what John wanted to see. And so John sends his disciples to question Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” In Greek, the statement is a bit more harsh because the word for "another" implies an opposite as in "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for someone totally different from you?" John wants to know if Jesus is the real thing or an empty promise.
Jesus’ response was to quote the signs of the Messiah from Isaiah: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Jesus doesn’t give them a neat “yes” or “no” answer. Instead, Jesus puts the ball back in John’s court and tells his disciples to test the authenticity of his ministry by what had been foretold in Hebrew prophecy and what they see and hear about Jesus. Decide for yourselves whether the man and the message are congruent.
The congruency of the promise and the person meet a deep spiritual longing in all of us. We live in a world full of “crummy commercials” of empty promises and hype over substance. We are now living in a time of transition which sociologists call “post-modern” and ecclesiologists (those who study the Church) label as “post-Christendom.” The post-modern/post-Christendom world view stands in contrast to the modern/Christendom one. There is debate about the definition of post-modernism but there are two characteristics which are emerging. First, the post-modern world view carries a deep distrust of institutions as opposed to a modern view which generally trusts institutions. Institutions have a tendency to fail us; however, the modern person will tend to cut the institution some slack where the post-modern won't be as quick to let the institution off the hook.
The second characteristic is the post-modern experiences truth in this world as conditional rather than absolute as the modern does. A modern person would say truth doesn't change - truth is just that ... truth. The post-modern would argue that truth changes over time. Where the modern would quote the Declaration of Independence saying "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" as an absolute truth, the post-modern would argue that when this was written it only meant white, property owning males and the definition of "all men" has been modified to include more people during our history (a changing face of truth).
I believe much of the polarizing “culture wars” playing out in our country today are a clash between these two fundamental views of modernity and post-modernity: whether one trusts or distrusts institutions and whether one sees truth in this world as absolute or conditional. It's not about liberals versus conservatives as much as it is about moderns and post-moderns. In light of this changing world view between modernity and post-modernity, how does Christianity fit? What does it have to offer? I suggest what Christianity has to offer is something which bridges these two world views by going deeper into the spiritual longing they both have: the longing for something authentic.
Christianity is not about being an institutional religion; it is about a lived relational authenticity: a real relationship with God and with each other. This is precisely the authenticity Jesus offers John and his disciples. It is the authenticity we are to offer the world as the Church – the Body of Christ.
People coming into our church today, this congregation right here, are seeking authenticity and asking a question of us similar to that which John asked of Jesus: “Are you the one or should we wait for another?” or perhaps, “Are you the real thing or should I keep my 7AM tee time on Sundays at Hollow Creek Golf Course?” People want to know if this Church is the one they can count on to be real: the Church which walks the talk of faith, the Church which lives the teachings of Jesus and doesn’t just give them lip service, the Church which cares about the same “nobodies” Jesus cared about … the last, the lost, the little, the least, and the lifeless, a Church which believes eternal life starts now and not just when you die.
Authenticity has always been our spiritual hunger. Christ embodied the realness and fullness of God for our sake and we are called to do the same for the world as the Body of Christ. In a hurting world full of empty hype, broken promises and “crummy commercials” do we have the courage to be the real thing for Christ’s sake?
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Advent 2 / St. Nicholas Day 2009
“… the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins …”
Two days of observance in the Church calendar have come together this year. It doesn’t happen very often, but today we are observing both the Second Sunday of Advent and the Feast of St. Nicholas. Normally, if a saint’s commemoration falls on a Sunday, the day is moved on the calendar; however, I felt it was particularly appropriate to observe St. Nicholas Day and keep it on December 6th. I did, however, retain the readings for the second Sunday in Advent. At first glance, it might seem a strange contrast to have John the Baptist preaching a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and talk about St. Nicholas too. However, the Greek word for repentance is metanoia meaning to change one’s thinking or change your mind. If our observance of St. Nicholas Day today can bring about a change of mind about who Nicholas really is, then I believe we will have a clearer understanding of both the saint we honor and the significance of the coming of Christ at Christmas.
At this time of year, we hear much about St. Nicholas. “Jolly old St. Nicholas, lean your ear this way. Don’t you tell a single soul what I’m going to say. Christmas Eve is coming soon, now you dear old man, whisper what you’ll bring to me, tell me if you can.” “His eyes - how they twinkled! His dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;” “He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.” Our culture has plenty of images of St. Nicholas but what do they have to do with the real person? Well … absolutely nothing! Popular culture has woven an image and embellished the story of St. Nicholas to the point where he’s barely recognizable – in essence, St. Nicholas has been hijacked and I think it’s time the Church takes him back!
The true story of St. Nicholas begins in the village of Pantara on the southern coast of what is now Turkey in the late third century. His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus’ words to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor,” Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Myra is mentioned once in the Bible in the 27th chapter of Acts where Luke tells of Paul’s journey to Rome and says, “After we had sailed across the open sea off Cilicia and Pamphylia, we put in at Myra in Lycia.” Bishop Nicholas became known throughout region of Lycia for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and as Myra was a safe harbor along a rocky coastline he is also known for his concern for sailors and ships.
Under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians, Bishop Nicholas suffered for his faith, was exiled and imprisoned. When the Emperor Constantine came to power and halted the persecution of Christians in 313, Nicholas was released from prison.
Being a bishop in Myra in the early part of the fourth century, he no doubt encountered the Arian controversy – a view which was eventually deemed heretical that Jesus was not divine, but was only human. There is evidence he attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 which would take up the Arian controversy and led to the writing of the Nicene Creed. There is a source which tells of Nicholas losing his temper at the Council of Nicaea. Nicholas was so angry at an advocate of Arianism that, overcome by apostolic zeal, he struck his opponent (there is a fresco of this incident at the Soumela Monastery in Turkey). Not everyone appreciated this blow for Arianism, and the presidency of the Council decided that Nicholas was no longer allowed to wear the ornaments of a bishop. Therefore, Nicholas is shown without mitre on Greek icons. The fact that this embarrassing anecdote survives lends it some credibility and causes us to remember that Nicholas was very human. After all, how would you like to remembered: for being generous or smacking your opposition?
Nicholas died December 6, 343 in Myra and was buried in his cathedral church. In 1087, after the village of Myra fell under the control of the Muslim Saracens, his remains were transported to Bari, Italy where he was buried in the Basilica of St. Nicholas.
Many of the legends surrounding St. Nicholas come to us through oral tradition. One enduring story tells of a poor man with three daughters. In those days a young woman’s father had to offer her prospective husband something of value—a dowry. The larger the dowry, the better the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry. This poor man’s daughters had no dowries and were therefore destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home-providing the needed dowries. The bags of gold were said to have been tossed through an open window. As the story of Nicholas moved into northern climates, where windows would be covered by December 6th, the story was modified to say that Nicholas tossed the bags of gold down the … chimney.
The story of Nicholas’ generosity and the other legends which grew up around him captured the imagination of the Church to the point that by the middle ages, he was as well known as Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In England, over 400 churches bore his name and while the Reformation attempted to remove the veneration of saints from the church, it couldn’t quite get rid of St. Nicholas. As our ancestors came to America, they brought stories of him under the name of Pere Noel, San Nicola, and Sinter Klaas … the latter of which would be morphed into the name Santa Claus.
The true story of St. Nicholas tells of a devout man whose aim in life was not to point to himself, but rather to Jesus Christ. He would be shocked and dismayed to see how our popular culture turned him into the focus of Christmas rather than the Christ child. One definition of Sin is to “miss the mark.” We miss the mark if we make Santa Claus and gift giving the sole focus of Christmas. From this we are called to repent – to change our minds. St. Nicholas, beloved and revered for centuries by the Church, lived a life marked by compassion and generosity which reflected the Light of Jesus Christ. To reclaim St. Nicholas for the Church and celebrate his feast day today, rightly changes our hearts and minds so that we may prepare ourselves for the real gift of Christmas – the gift of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Friday, November 20, 2009
"It's all in how you ask the question" - The Feast of Christ the King 2009
Allow me to be the first one to say, “Happy New Year!” and no, this isn’t some sort of Episcopal oddity. Today is the last day of the Church year, the Feast of Christ the King. So for the Church, this is like New Year’s Eve and next Sunday we will begin a new year with the season of Advent. Christ the King Sunday is a day where we pause to ponder endings and beginnings.
I don’t know how many of you noticed, but since All Saints Day, our Sunday readings have taken us back to Holy Week but instead of focusing on what happened to Jesus, our gospel readings are about what Jesus said and did during Holy Week. Today, we are back at Good Friday with Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator appointed by Caesar to govern Judea. If we read this passage from John’s Gospel slowly, we see that while Pilate asks Jesus several questions, Jesus does not answer them. Pilate’s first interrogatory is, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers his question with a question, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” … in other words, “Are you thinking for yourself or merely repeating what others told you?” – a rather cheeky response for a man whose life hangs in the balance! Then Pilate asks, “What have you done?” and Jesus again does not answer the question – he answers a different question: “From where does your authority come?” Pilate asks, “So you are a king?” Jesus answers without answering again: “You say that I am.” Finally, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and Jesus is silent.
Pilate’s philosophical question “What is truth?” has been asked down through the ages. The word “truth,” in both the English and Greek languages is a noun. Now I won’t launch into Grammar Rock, but we all remember that a noun is a person, place or thing and “truth” would fall into the category of “thing.” Because it is a noun, a thing, we tend to believe that truth is a thing that we can somehow get our arms around … or at least get our minds around … a thing to be grasped … something we can hold onto. This is the image we have when we ask “What is truth?”
There’s a problem with this image of truth as a thing and indeed with Pilate’s question. When we see truth as a “what,” a thing, we can tend to fall into two main ways of understanding truth. On the one hand, we can fall into fundamentalism. We are familiar with this term from a religious perspective but I want to address fundamentalism in all its forms: political fundamentalism, nationalistic fundamentalism, cultural fundamentalism, and so on. Fundamentalism is the belief that we possess the truth and anyone else who has a differing interpretation or idea is just plain wrong. We see this in the Church when one interpretation of Scripture is held up as being the “truth” and anyone else who sees it differently is labeled apostate or heretic. We see it in the political arena when the left labels the right as “wing nuts” and the right labels the left as “socialists.” Fundamentalists make no space for others to express differing ideas because the fundamentalist knows that truth is a thing they possess, and those who don’t agree obviously don’t know the truth.
We can fall into another kind of flawed understanding when we image truth as a “what,” a thing. It goes something like this: “I have worked out the truth of my life. You might have a different truth and I respect your right to have that, but you have no right to impose your truth on me.” While on the surface it appears more tolerant than fundamentalism, this privatized type of truth is actually intolerant of anyone who challenges my understanding of truth … because it’s mine and I know what truth is … for me! There is an illustration of this kind of privatized possession of truth in a book entitled Resident Aliens which I have been revisiting this past week. The book is written by United Methodist Bishop William Willimon and my favorite cantankerous theological curmudgeon Stanley Hauerwas (I consider Hauerwas the grain of sand in the oyster of my faith). Bishop Willimon tells the story of a confirmation class he was teaching where he paired up the confirmands with mentors and he put together a 14 year old young man named Max with a 30-something fellow named Joe. Joe was a young professional who had a girlfriend but really hadn’t “settled down.” Pastor Willimon thought this would be a good opportunity for Joe to step up to a new level of responsibility and that the relationship would be mutually beneficial. Joe took on his new responsibility eagerly and gave Max his phone number and the address to his apartment. He told Max to feel free to call or stop by sometime and they could go out and get something to eat. Well, Max took Joe up on his offer and went over to his apartment one Saturday afternoon. Joe answered the door and was a bit annoyed at Max’s timing. Max quickly figured out why when he saw Joe’s girlfriend was there and, well let’s just say it was obvious they weren’t watching television! At 14, Max knew what was going on and he told Joe that he had a girlfriend too and maybe it was time he and his girlfriend did the same thing Joe and his girlfriend were doing. Joe blew up and told Max that he couldn’t do that! Max said, “Why not? If it’s good enough for you, it should be good enough for me.” Joe shot back with, “You’re only 14! Things are different when you get to be my age.” Max replied, “Oh yeah? Well the church says you’re not supposed to do this until you are married!” Hmm … imagine that! Joe, who was holding on to his private truth about what was ok for him but not for Max, was not prepared to be held accountable to the gospel truth … especially coming out of the mouth of a 14 year old.
Whether one tries to possess truth as a thing and either privatizes it or slips into fundamentalism, both images are wrong and bound in Sin. While their approaches differ, what they hold in common is that truth becomes something centered in my own ego: “I have the truth and you are don’t” or “I have my truth and I don’t want to hear yours.” Both break relationship by centering the truth on our own egotistical understanding and shutting everyone else out.
I am persuaded that Pilate’s question, our question, “What is truth?” frames truth as a “what,” a thing to be possessed and defended and sends us down a path that does not lead to God … because it’s the wrong question. So what is the question? Interestingly, it’s found in Pilate’s question … as found in the original Greek text. The question Pilate asks, “Ti estin alathea” is rightly translated “What is truth?” which works linguistically. But the word ti can also be translated as “who” … “Who is truth?” I believe THIS IS THE QUESTION! Who is truth? Jesus Christ is truth! The man standing right in front of Pilate, the King of the Jews, is truth! John even tells us this at the very beginning of his gospel:
When we ask “Who is truth?” and are able to see the incarnate truth of Jesus Christ, we can let go of the false image that we can ever really possess truth. It is less a thing to be grasped and more of a mystery into which we live. But where do we start? We begin with Jesus’ command in the 13th chapter of John:
Jesus’ command to love one another as I have loved you is the bedrock of Christian community. When we love one another as Christ loved us God gives us grace to be completely honest with ourselves, each other and God. Bit by bit, living in a loving Christian community allows us to peel away the layers of the false self – the self that likes to think it can possess “truth.” As this false self diminishes we become more willing to hear others when their interpretations and experiences differ from ours. We become less defensive when our friends in the Church lovingly hold us accountable to the greater truth of Jesus Christ. The Christian community of love empowers us to be more honest, more authentic … more real. I truly believe the life’s journey of each Christian is not to become more spiritual, but rather more human. French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Our aim is to become authentic, honest, and fully human – to be who we really are in God. This is the journey we are on as Christians and into which we welcome four new companions as they are baptized today and those who are making their commitment to enter this community we know as Calvary.
Changing our focus from “What is truth?” to embrace the real question “Who is truth?” and answer “Jesus Christ is truth” is not a one-time event. It is a process … a journey … the journey of a lifetime to follow Christ the King whose power working in us transforms us into who we really are in God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
I don’t know how many of you noticed, but since All Saints Day, our Sunday readings have taken us back to Holy Week but instead of focusing on what happened to Jesus, our gospel readings are about what Jesus said and did during Holy Week. Today, we are back at Good Friday with Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator appointed by Caesar to govern Judea. If we read this passage from John’s Gospel slowly, we see that while Pilate asks Jesus several questions, Jesus does not answer them. Pilate’s first interrogatory is, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers his question with a question, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” … in other words, “Are you thinking for yourself or merely repeating what others told you?” – a rather cheeky response for a man whose life hangs in the balance! Then Pilate asks, “What have you done?” and Jesus again does not answer the question – he answers a different question: “From where does your authority come?” Pilate asks, “So you are a king?” Jesus answers without answering again: “You say that I am.” Finally, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and Jesus is silent.
Pilate’s philosophical question “What is truth?” has been asked down through the ages. The word “truth,” in both the English and Greek languages is a noun. Now I won’t launch into Grammar Rock, but we all remember that a noun is a person, place or thing and “truth” would fall into the category of “thing.” Because it is a noun, a thing, we tend to believe that truth is a thing that we can somehow get our arms around … or at least get our minds around … a thing to be grasped … something we can hold onto. This is the image we have when we ask “What is truth?”
There’s a problem with this image of truth as a thing and indeed with Pilate’s question. When we see truth as a “what,” a thing, we can tend to fall into two main ways of understanding truth. On the one hand, we can fall into fundamentalism. We are familiar with this term from a religious perspective but I want to address fundamentalism in all its forms: political fundamentalism, nationalistic fundamentalism, cultural fundamentalism, and so on. Fundamentalism is the belief that we possess the truth and anyone else who has a differing interpretation or idea is just plain wrong. We see this in the Church when one interpretation of Scripture is held up as being the “truth” and anyone else who sees it differently is labeled apostate or heretic. We see it in the political arena when the left labels the right as “wing nuts” and the right labels the left as “socialists.” Fundamentalists make no space for others to express differing ideas because the fundamentalist knows that truth is a thing they possess, and those who don’t agree obviously don’t know the truth.
We can fall into another kind of flawed understanding when we image truth as a “what,” a thing. It goes something like this: “I have worked out the truth of my life. You might have a different truth and I respect your right to have that, but you have no right to impose your truth on me.” While on the surface it appears more tolerant than fundamentalism, this privatized type of truth is actually intolerant of anyone who challenges my understanding of truth … because it’s mine and I know what truth is … for me! There is an illustration of this kind of privatized possession of truth in a book entitled Resident Aliens which I have been revisiting this past week. The book is written by United Methodist Bishop William Willimon and my favorite cantankerous theological curmudgeon Stanley Hauerwas (I consider Hauerwas the grain of sand in the oyster of my faith). Bishop Willimon tells the story of a confirmation class he was teaching where he paired up the confirmands with mentors and he put together a 14 year old young man named Max with a 30-something fellow named Joe. Joe was a young professional who had a girlfriend but really hadn’t “settled down.” Pastor Willimon thought this would be a good opportunity for Joe to step up to a new level of responsibility and that the relationship would be mutually beneficial. Joe took on his new responsibility eagerly and gave Max his phone number and the address to his apartment. He told Max to feel free to call or stop by sometime and they could go out and get something to eat. Well, Max took Joe up on his offer and went over to his apartment one Saturday afternoon. Joe answered the door and was a bit annoyed at Max’s timing. Max quickly figured out why when he saw Joe’s girlfriend was there and, well let’s just say it was obvious they weren’t watching television! At 14, Max knew what was going on and he told Joe that he had a girlfriend too and maybe it was time he and his girlfriend did the same thing Joe and his girlfriend were doing. Joe blew up and told Max that he couldn’t do that! Max said, “Why not? If it’s good enough for you, it should be good enough for me.” Joe shot back with, “You’re only 14! Things are different when you get to be my age.” Max replied, “Oh yeah? Well the church says you’re not supposed to do this until you are married!” Hmm … imagine that! Joe, who was holding on to his private truth about what was ok for him but not for Max, was not prepared to be held accountable to the gospel truth … especially coming out of the mouth of a 14 year old.
Whether one tries to possess truth as a thing and either privatizes it or slips into fundamentalism, both images are wrong and bound in Sin. While their approaches differ, what they hold in common is that truth becomes something centered in my own ego: “I have the truth and you are don’t” or “I have my truth and I don’t want to hear yours.” Both break relationship by centering the truth on our own egotistical understanding and shutting everyone else out.
I am persuaded that Pilate’s question, our question, “What is truth?” frames truth as a “what,” a thing to be possessed and defended and sends us down a path that does not lead to God … because it’s the wrong question. So what is the question? Interestingly, it’s found in Pilate’s question … as found in the original Greek text. The question Pilate asks, “Ti estin alathea” is rightly translated “What is truth?” which works linguistically. But the word ti can also be translated as “who” … “Who is truth?” I believe THIS IS THE QUESTION! Who is truth? Jesus Christ is truth! The man standing right in front of Pilate, the King of the Jews, is truth! John even tells us this at the very beginning of his gospel:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
When we ask “Who is truth?” and are able to see the incarnate truth of Jesus Christ, we can let go of the false image that we can ever really possess truth. It is less a thing to be grasped and more of a mystery into which we live. But where do we start? We begin with Jesus’ command in the 13th chapter of John:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
Jesus’ command to love one another as I have loved you is the bedrock of Christian community. When we love one another as Christ loved us God gives us grace to be completely honest with ourselves, each other and God. Bit by bit, living in a loving Christian community allows us to peel away the layers of the false self – the self that likes to think it can possess “truth.” As this false self diminishes we become more willing to hear others when their interpretations and experiences differ from ours. We become less defensive when our friends in the Church lovingly hold us accountable to the greater truth of Jesus Christ. The Christian community of love empowers us to be more honest, more authentic … more real. I truly believe the life’s journey of each Christian is not to become more spiritual, but rather more human. French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Our aim is to become authentic, honest, and fully human – to be who we really are in God. This is the journey we are on as Christians and into which we welcome four new companions as they are baptized today and those who are making their commitment to enter this community we know as Calvary.
Changing our focus from “What is truth?” to embrace the real question “Who is truth?” and answer “Jesus Christ is truth” is not a one-time event. It is a process … a journey … the journey of a lifetime to follow Christ the King whose power working in us transforms us into who we really are in God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Proper 24 - Year B - James and John ... or The Office?
In a recent episode of “The Office,” long time sales representative Jim Halpert gets promoted to be the co-manager of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, PA. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the program, Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) is the perennially clueless yet narcissistic boss and Jim Halpert is more of the quiet and thoughtful type. When Jim gets promoted to be the co-manager in charge of day to day operations and Michael is given charge of the “big picture,” there is immediate squabbling about what constitutes day to day versus big picture. This gets especially complicated when the CEO tells them they only have a small amount of money for raises this year and as co-managers they have to decide who gets raises and who doesn’t. Interspersed with their difficulties in cooperating and their bumbling process of deciding who will get a raise and who won’t is the egomaniacal sales rep Dwight Schute who is out to destroy Jim for getting the promotion he felt he deserved.
While this show is a satirical look at the foolishness of inter-office relationships and politics, it seemingly echoes today’s gospel reading about James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left when he comes in glory … and the response of the other disciples when this request for a “promotion” is discovered.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Beginning with our reading on September 13th (Proper 19) where Jesus tells the disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” After this, we hear of the disciples bickering about who would be greatest in the kingdom after Jesus tells them about his impending persecution, death and resurrection. Jesus tells them in response, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus tells the rich young man to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor and then come follow him and ends that teaching with, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And today’s reading follows Jesus’ third prediction of his being handed over to the authorities, condemned to death, killed and on the third day rise again. Clearly, Jesus is painting a picture of discipleship characterized by giving and serving others rather than acquiring and lording power over others.
But, Mark consistently portrays the disciples … well … as clueless as Michael Scott! In spite of what Jesus is telling them about the real meaning of discipleship, today we hear about James and John taking Jesus aside to ask for a place of honor at his right and left hand when he comes in glory. Jesus immediately tells them they don’t have a CLUE what they are asking! They are seeking traditional positions of honor and power while Jesus’ mission and ministry are the opposite of their cultural understanding of these terms. Jesus in essence asks them if they are able to step up to the plate and go through what he is experiencing and will experience. They reply that they are ready … but we are left wondering if they really know what they are getting themselves into! Jesus promises that they will receive the same cup and baptism, but he is unable to promise them the positions at his right or left – evidently there are even some things that are out of Jesus’ “pay grade.” Interestingly, the only other place where Mark uses the terms “on his right” and “on his left” is when he refers to the position of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. Perhaps even glory looks very different from what James and John envision.
When the disciples hear about what James and John have requested, they get angry. I’m not convinced this was some sort of righteous anger as much as it may have been jealousy – “Who do they think they are asking for a promotion?” I can imagine they were kind of annoyed that they hadn’t thought of asking for this first. Jesus responds to this indignation with a definition of divine greatness: “… whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Life is not about the acquisition of power to rule over others – it’s about right use of power to serve others.
One of the things that make this story so uncomfortable is that we can see ourselves in it. The desire to get ahead, to get the promotion, to climb the ladder of success, to acquire possessions and fame and glory are as much the values of our secular world today as they were in the first century. It’s the stuff of the rat race and, as someone once said to me, “No matter how long you run the rat race in the end … you’re still a rat.” Jesus, in his teaching about true divine greatness, offers a way out of the rat race – give it up and serve others. But how do we even begin to give it up?
I believe the answer begins in one word: love. Our service to others needs to begin and end in love. As you seek to answer God’s call to serve in the days and weeks ahead, check your motivation. Is it love, or something else? Divine servanthood is always motivated by love.
When we ground ourselves in God’s love we can be intentional in noticing God’s call to serve through even the most ordinary of tasks. Whether it is fixing a meal for your family, raking the leaves in the yard, or doing laundry – all can be acts of loving service to others and so can be divine service blessed by God. Seventeenth century Carmelite monk Brother Lawrence captured this ideal in his treatise The Practice of the Presence of God. He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for God’s sake – whether that was peeling potatoes or caring for the 100 pairs of sandals worn by the brothers. Every task, no matter how great or small, is to be done for the love of God.
Finally, individual acts of loving service need to be brought to the Church in order for it to become a servant community. Karl Barth spoke of the Church as a “herald of the gospel” – a servant community which proclaims by word and deed the saving acts of Jesus Christ throughout the world. A servant community goes out into the world and serves others for the sake of God’s love for the world, not for the sake of itself. Being a servant church can only happen when we commit our time, our talent and our treasure to being a herald of the gospel.
This all may seem a bit overwhelming to us; after all, if James and John who were with Jesus and heard his teachings firsthand didn’t get it, how can we possibly live up to the measure of divine greatness through servanthood? Fortunately, Jesus’ message ends with hope: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus came to give his live as a ransom and free us from our captivity to the secular world’s values of selfishness, greed, and abusive power. In Christ, we are freed from this rat race for a life of loving service to others and although we may fall short in our efforts, Jesus’ death on the cross redeems us all. Amen.
While this show is a satirical look at the foolishness of inter-office relationships and politics, it seemingly echoes today’s gospel reading about James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left when he comes in glory … and the response of the other disciples when this request for a “promotion” is discovered.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Beginning with our reading on September 13th (Proper 19) where Jesus tells the disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” After this, we hear of the disciples bickering about who would be greatest in the kingdom after Jesus tells them about his impending persecution, death and resurrection. Jesus tells them in response, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus tells the rich young man to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor and then come follow him and ends that teaching with, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And today’s reading follows Jesus’ third prediction of his being handed over to the authorities, condemned to death, killed and on the third day rise again. Clearly, Jesus is painting a picture of discipleship characterized by giving and serving others rather than acquiring and lording power over others.
But, Mark consistently portrays the disciples … well … as clueless as Michael Scott! In spite of what Jesus is telling them about the real meaning of discipleship, today we hear about James and John taking Jesus aside to ask for a place of honor at his right and left hand when he comes in glory. Jesus immediately tells them they don’t have a CLUE what they are asking! They are seeking traditional positions of honor and power while Jesus’ mission and ministry are the opposite of their cultural understanding of these terms. Jesus in essence asks them if they are able to step up to the plate and go through what he is experiencing and will experience. They reply that they are ready … but we are left wondering if they really know what they are getting themselves into! Jesus promises that they will receive the same cup and baptism, but he is unable to promise them the positions at his right or left – evidently there are even some things that are out of Jesus’ “pay grade.” Interestingly, the only other place where Mark uses the terms “on his right” and “on his left” is when he refers to the position of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. Perhaps even glory looks very different from what James and John envision.
When the disciples hear about what James and John have requested, they get angry. I’m not convinced this was some sort of righteous anger as much as it may have been jealousy – “Who do they think they are asking for a promotion?” I can imagine they were kind of annoyed that they hadn’t thought of asking for this first. Jesus responds to this indignation with a definition of divine greatness: “… whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Life is not about the acquisition of power to rule over others – it’s about right use of power to serve others.
One of the things that make this story so uncomfortable is that we can see ourselves in it. The desire to get ahead, to get the promotion, to climb the ladder of success, to acquire possessions and fame and glory are as much the values of our secular world today as they were in the first century. It’s the stuff of the rat race and, as someone once said to me, “No matter how long you run the rat race in the end … you’re still a rat.” Jesus, in his teaching about true divine greatness, offers a way out of the rat race – give it up and serve others. But how do we even begin to give it up?
I believe the answer begins in one word: love. Our service to others needs to begin and end in love. As you seek to answer God’s call to serve in the days and weeks ahead, check your motivation. Is it love, or something else? Divine servanthood is always motivated by love.
When we ground ourselves in God’s love we can be intentional in noticing God’s call to serve through even the most ordinary of tasks. Whether it is fixing a meal for your family, raking the leaves in the yard, or doing laundry – all can be acts of loving service to others and so can be divine service blessed by God. Seventeenth century Carmelite monk Brother Lawrence captured this ideal in his treatise The Practice of the Presence of God. He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for God’s sake – whether that was peeling potatoes or caring for the 100 pairs of sandals worn by the brothers. Every task, no matter how great or small, is to be done for the love of God.
Finally, individual acts of loving service need to be brought to the Church in order for it to become a servant community. Karl Barth spoke of the Church as a “herald of the gospel” – a servant community which proclaims by word and deed the saving acts of Jesus Christ throughout the world. A servant community goes out into the world and serves others for the sake of God’s love for the world, not for the sake of itself. Being a servant church can only happen when we commit our time, our talent and our treasure to being a herald of the gospel.
This all may seem a bit overwhelming to us; after all, if James and John who were with Jesus and heard his teachings firsthand didn’t get it, how can we possibly live up to the measure of divine greatness through servanthood? Fortunately, Jesus’ message ends with hope: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus came to give his live as a ransom and free us from our captivity to the secular world’s values of selfishness, greed, and abusive power. In Christ, we are freed from this rat race for a life of loving service to others and although we may fall short in our efforts, Jesus’ death on the cross redeems us all. Amen.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Rogation Sunday - 6 Easter - May 17, 2009
A voice was crying in the wilderness … ok actually it was from the back seat of my Scion xB as we were driving home.
“Mom? I have a question for you.” It was my oldest daughter Claire, who at the time was 10 years old. She sounded a little hesitant, so I said, “Sure honey, what is it?”
“Well … is everything in the Bible true?” ...
Oh boy! One minute you're driving home and the next minute you're on the road to a profound moment in parenting! Kids never seem to give you a "heads up" that something like this is coming, do they? Whether or not I was ready was irrelevant, her question was a good one, an important one … and a courageous one. It took a lot of chutzpah for her to ask her seminarian mother if everything in the Bible is true. But I knew there was something behind it, so I said, “That’s an excellent and important question that deserves more than just a quick answer. But I’m wondering what prompted you to ask me this. Can you tell me more?”
“Well, you know I went to camp last week and when I was there, one of my counselors said that everything in the Bible was true. So I raised my hand and asked him, ‘So do you believe that the universe was created in six twenty-four hour days and Adam and Eve were real people?’ And he said, ‘Yes. The Bible is God’s word and God doesn’t lie. If the Bible says it happened that way, it happened that way.’”
Now I must let you know that this young man was a graduate student at an evangelical Christian institution, so his more literalistic approach didn’t completely surprise me. But his answer wasn’t really sufficient for my 10 year old. Her hand went up again and she said, “Well, if that’s true, how you account for dinosaurs? The fossil evidence says they were around for millions of years before people and that doesn’t make sense if the world was created in six days.”
I thought, “Way to go Claire! Play that dinosaur card!” but I asked, “So what did he say to that?”
“He said if I didn’t sit down and be quiet, he’d send me to the camp director to talk this over with her.”
“So what did you do?”
“I sat down and shut up ‘cause I didn’t want to talk it over with her.”
“Smart move. There’s an old saying, ‘You gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em’ and you knew when to let it go.”
But this encounter left her with the question: Is everything in the Bible true?
It may seem odd for me to talk about what the truth of Biblical witness means on Rogation Sunday where we traditionally focus on our relationship with creation; however, given the impact of global climate change on God’s creation, I believe it is more important than ever to find a way forward which integrates the truth of scientific discovery with the truth of Biblical witness. But to do this, we must first ask the same question Pilate asked of Jesus, “What is truth?”
It has only been in relatively recent history that our cultural definition of truth has been tightly bound to factuality. In this paradigm, if something is “true” it must be “fact.” It further develops to say if something is fact it also must be true. This view of truth largely comes from science, a discipline built on what is factual, observable, replicable, and measurable in our world. We are the product of a scientific age which has blessed us in countless ways, but its interpretive lens has narrowed our definition of truth so as to seemingly be at odds with the Bible.
The problem with defining truth as only what is factual is that it fails to give us the full spectrum of what truth encompasses. It’s as if we could picture truth as a rainbow, but then we decide to ignore all the colors except red … and then we say red becomes the definition of what a rainbow is. Pretty silly, right? It is this narrow definition of truth which on the one hand can make hard scientists want to throw out the Scriptures as irrelevant and on the other hand make Biblical literalists want to ignore science as “Godless.” Both are falling into the same trap of narrowly defining truth.
Our pre-scientific ancestors who wrote the Biblical accounts did not approach the holy story with this narrow bandwidth description of truth. In their world, truth was not limited to “just the facts ma’am” but instead included story, metaphor, image, symbol and even sacrament. They saw the whole spectrum, the rainbow, of what truth is. I am persuaded that recapturing this broader definition of truth as something more than mere fact is at the heart of reconciling the truth of scientific discovery and our faith in the truth of the Bible. But how was I going to make sense of that to my 10 year old in the back seat?
I told Claire, “Truth is a pretty deep concept. Truth is more than just facts, but sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that truth is only facts.” At this point, I thought I’d use an illustration that made more sense to her. “You read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Remember what happened towards the end when Professor Quarles (who was overcome with evil) touched Harry? What happened to him?”
“He disintegrated, Mom.”
“Right! And then Harry wakes up in the infirmary at Hogwart’s School and Dumbledore is sitting on his bed explaining what happened: What did Dumbledore tell Harry about why Professor Quarles disintegrated?”
“He disintegrated because Harry had love in him.”
“Right! So … is it true that love conquers evil?”
“Yeah!”
“Right … but … Professor Quarles isn’t a real person … and Dumbledore and Harry aren’t real people either. But was the story true?”
“Yes!”
“So yes, the Bible too is true, but it is more than just facts. I believe the creation story of Genesis says a lot of true things about God creating everything and how it was good, but Adam and Eve don’t have to be real historic people to make it true. And maybe God’s first words weren’t, ‘Let there be light.’ Maybe God just said, ‘BANG!’”
“So my counselor was right – everything in the Bible is true.”
“Yes honey, he was right.”
“And I was right about the dinosaurs too, huh Mom?”
“Yes you were … and the Lord God made them all.”
Amen.
“Mom? I have a question for you.” It was my oldest daughter Claire, who at the time was 10 years old. She sounded a little hesitant, so I said, “Sure honey, what is it?”
“Well … is everything in the Bible true?” ...
Oh boy! One minute you're driving home and the next minute you're on the road to a profound moment in parenting! Kids never seem to give you a "heads up" that something like this is coming, do they? Whether or not I was ready was irrelevant, her question was a good one, an important one … and a courageous one. It took a lot of chutzpah for her to ask her seminarian mother if everything in the Bible is true. But I knew there was something behind it, so I said, “That’s an excellent and important question that deserves more than just a quick answer. But I’m wondering what prompted you to ask me this. Can you tell me more?”
“Well, you know I went to camp last week and when I was there, one of my counselors said that everything in the Bible was true. So I raised my hand and asked him, ‘So do you believe that the universe was created in six twenty-four hour days and Adam and Eve were real people?’ And he said, ‘Yes. The Bible is God’s word and God doesn’t lie. If the Bible says it happened that way, it happened that way.’”
Now I must let you know that this young man was a graduate student at an evangelical Christian institution, so his more literalistic approach didn’t completely surprise me. But his answer wasn’t really sufficient for my 10 year old. Her hand went up again and she said, “Well, if that’s true, how you account for dinosaurs? The fossil evidence says they were around for millions of years before people and that doesn’t make sense if the world was created in six days.”
I thought, “Way to go Claire! Play that dinosaur card!” but I asked, “So what did he say to that?”
“He said if I didn’t sit down and be quiet, he’d send me to the camp director to talk this over with her.”
“So what did you do?”
“I sat down and shut up ‘cause I didn’t want to talk it over with her.”
“Smart move. There’s an old saying, ‘You gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em’ and you knew when to let it go.”
But this encounter left her with the question: Is everything in the Bible true?
It may seem odd for me to talk about what the truth of Biblical witness means on Rogation Sunday where we traditionally focus on our relationship with creation; however, given the impact of global climate change on God’s creation, I believe it is more important than ever to find a way forward which integrates the truth of scientific discovery with the truth of Biblical witness. But to do this, we must first ask the same question Pilate asked of Jesus, “What is truth?”
It has only been in relatively recent history that our cultural definition of truth has been tightly bound to factuality. In this paradigm, if something is “true” it must be “fact.” It further develops to say if something is fact it also must be true. This view of truth largely comes from science, a discipline built on what is factual, observable, replicable, and measurable in our world. We are the product of a scientific age which has blessed us in countless ways, but its interpretive lens has narrowed our definition of truth so as to seemingly be at odds with the Bible.
The problem with defining truth as only what is factual is that it fails to give us the full spectrum of what truth encompasses. It’s as if we could picture truth as a rainbow, but then we decide to ignore all the colors except red … and then we say red becomes the definition of what a rainbow is. Pretty silly, right? It is this narrow definition of truth which on the one hand can make hard scientists want to throw out the Scriptures as irrelevant and on the other hand make Biblical literalists want to ignore science as “Godless.” Both are falling into the same trap of narrowly defining truth.
Our pre-scientific ancestors who wrote the Biblical accounts did not approach the holy story with this narrow bandwidth description of truth. In their world, truth was not limited to “just the facts ma’am” but instead included story, metaphor, image, symbol and even sacrament. They saw the whole spectrum, the rainbow, of what truth is. I am persuaded that recapturing this broader definition of truth as something more than mere fact is at the heart of reconciling the truth of scientific discovery and our faith in the truth of the Bible. But how was I going to make sense of that to my 10 year old in the back seat?
I told Claire, “Truth is a pretty deep concept. Truth is more than just facts, but sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that truth is only facts.” At this point, I thought I’d use an illustration that made more sense to her. “You read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Remember what happened towards the end when Professor Quarles (who was overcome with evil) touched Harry? What happened to him?”
“He disintegrated, Mom.”
“Right! And then Harry wakes up in the infirmary at Hogwart’s School and Dumbledore is sitting on his bed explaining what happened: What did Dumbledore tell Harry about why Professor Quarles disintegrated?”
“He disintegrated because Harry had love in him.”
“Right! So … is it true that love conquers evil?”
“Yeah!”
“Right … but … Professor Quarles isn’t a real person … and Dumbledore and Harry aren’t real people either. But was the story true?”
“Yes!”
“So yes, the Bible too is true, but it is more than just facts. I believe the creation story of Genesis says a lot of true things about God creating everything and how it was good, but Adam and Eve don’t have to be real historic people to make it true. And maybe God’s first words weren’t, ‘Let there be light.’ Maybe God just said, ‘BANG!’”
“So my counselor was right – everything in the Bible is true.”
“Yes honey, he was right.”
“And I was right about the dinosaurs too, huh Mom?”
“Yes you were … and the Lord God made them all.”
Amen.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Epiphany 6 - February 15, 2009
If you had told me back in 2001 when I started my journey towards ordination that I would be where I am today, I wouldn’t have believed you. See I had it all planned out, yessirree! I was going to attend a good Episcopal seminary, probably VTS. After that, I would likely be called to be an assistant at a program sized parish for a few years and later I would seek a call to be the rector of a large pastoral to program sized congregation. Yep, that’s how it would all happen, right?
Well, not exactly. Instead of going to VTS, I ended up going to a Lutheran seminary (and I received an excellent education there!). And instead of a full-time call to be an assistant rector somewhere, my first call out of seminary was to close a congregation. That sure wasn’t in the plan. It also wasn’t part of the plan to face unemployment before the first anniversary of my ordination. And it wasn’t in the plan that I would end up serving a Methodist church part-time because there are no full-time calls open in the diocese. No, that wasn’t going to happen! I had it all planned out, you see?
It’s said that we make plans, and God laughs. I guess I’ve made God ROFLOL (that’s “rolling on the floor laughing out loud” for those of you not familiar with texting lingo). Things don’t always work out the way we think they will, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think about outcomes or get emotionally invested in how we think things should be.
Naaman had that problem. He was a powerful man, very important general to the King of Aram, but he had leprosy. Now leprosy was a catch all term for a lot of skin diseases and we really don’t know what Naaman had, but leprosy was feared and if you could find a cure, you’d definitely want to get it. Naaman’s wife has a Hebrew servant girl who tells her it’s too bad Naaman isn’t in Israel because there’s a prophet there who would cure him of his leprosy. Eventually, Naaman makes his way to Elisha’s house and gets pretty annoyed when the prophet merely sends word through his messenger to go wash seven times in the Jordan and he’d be clean. Elisha also knows that the healing of leprosy isn’t about him having special powers, but is about the power of God alone to heal. But Naaman doesn’t quite get it, so he blows up. “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” Whoa, wait a minute … hold the phone. His wife’s servant said there is a prophet who could cure him of his leprosy. She didn’t say anything about some elaborate ritual he would do to bring about this cure! But somewhere between hearing about this cure and his arrival at Elisha’s doorstep, Naaman has developed this elaborate liturgy about how Elisha would cure him. The prophet would come out? Stand and call on the name of the Lord his God? Wave his hand over the spot? Wow! That’s an elaborate liturgy worthy of an Episcopalian! Naaman is not only invested in a definite outcome of receiving a cure, but he has also concocted the exact process by which it would happen!
Now the leper in Mark’s story has a very different approach. This healing story begins a series of vignettes in Mark portraying Jesus as a crosser of social and legal boundaries. But we must recognize that the leper actually violates the boundary first. In the Levitical codes, a leper was not supposed to engage anyone. They were to walk with their hand over their upper lip and cry out “unclean, unclean” as they came near anyone so that people could avoid them. Instead, this leper approaches Jesus, not with a cry of “unclean, unclean,” but with a cry bidding Jesus to come to him. The verb parakaleo means to “come along side.” It’s the word from which we get the term Paraclete. This leper invites Jesus to come along side him … and Jesus does. He then says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Or, in the AAV (that’s “Anjel’s Authorized Version … not available in stores), “You can cleanse me, if you want to.”
The key to his statement is in the “if.” We only have one word for “if” in English, but the Greeks had two different ones: ei and ean. Ei was the “if of certainty” as in, “If I touch a hot stove, I will burn my hand.” We know the outcome, it’s a no brainer. Ean, on the other hand, is called the “if of uncertainty” as in “If I win the lottery, what would I do with the money?” That’s a very uncertain if! It is this latter type of “if” we find in the leper’s words and it is followed by a form of the verb to choose, wish, will or desire which also suggests an uncertain outcome. What we can make of this is that the leper is not invested in a specific outcome; he isn’t taking this healing for granted as a done deal at all. Unlike Naaman who is highly invested in how it should all turn out and exactly how it will go down, this leper is actually making a faith statement. He says he knows Jesus has the power to cleanse him regardless of whether Jesus chooses to exercise that power or not. If the AAV ever gets published, I’d probably render it as, “You have the power to make me clean. Regardless of whether you want to or not, you have the power to make me clean.” Jesus responds by being moved with compassion, accepting the boundary crossing first proposed by the leper, and heals him.
In the season of Epiphany, the focus is on the question, “Who is Jesus?” In the case of the leper in Mark, Jesus is the one with the power to cleanse, regardless of whether he desires to exercise his power or not. Unlike Naaman, this leper doesn’t get invested in the outcome or a specific process. This is the tension we live in: how do we have a vision of what or how things should be and yet holding it lightly enough to let God do what needs to be done even if it does not match how we think it should happen.
The Christian life is an adventure and there are no guaranteed outcomes short of the fullness of a resurrected life in God. What that will look like and how it will go down is mystery. Letting go of prescribed outcomes and preconceived ideas of how things should happen is what it means to grow in our faith.
Who is Jesus? He is the one with the power to cleanse, the power to make us whole and who promises and abundant life. Our faith challenge is to trust this power and let go of our assumptions of how it will all work out. Amen.
Well, not exactly. Instead of going to VTS, I ended up going to a Lutheran seminary (and I received an excellent education there!). And instead of a full-time call to be an assistant rector somewhere, my first call out of seminary was to close a congregation. That sure wasn’t in the plan. It also wasn’t part of the plan to face unemployment before the first anniversary of my ordination. And it wasn’t in the plan that I would end up serving a Methodist church part-time because there are no full-time calls open in the diocese. No, that wasn’t going to happen! I had it all planned out, you see?
It’s said that we make plans, and God laughs. I guess I’ve made God ROFLOL (that’s “rolling on the floor laughing out loud” for those of you not familiar with texting lingo). Things don’t always work out the way we think they will, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think about outcomes or get emotionally invested in how we think things should be.
Naaman had that problem. He was a powerful man, very important general to the King of Aram, but he had leprosy. Now leprosy was a catch all term for a lot of skin diseases and we really don’t know what Naaman had, but leprosy was feared and if you could find a cure, you’d definitely want to get it. Naaman’s wife has a Hebrew servant girl who tells her it’s too bad Naaman isn’t in Israel because there’s a prophet there who would cure him of his leprosy. Eventually, Naaman makes his way to Elisha’s house and gets pretty annoyed when the prophet merely sends word through his messenger to go wash seven times in the Jordan and he’d be clean. Elisha also knows that the healing of leprosy isn’t about him having special powers, but is about the power of God alone to heal. But Naaman doesn’t quite get it, so he blows up. “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” Whoa, wait a minute … hold the phone. His wife’s servant said there is a prophet who could cure him of his leprosy. She didn’t say anything about some elaborate ritual he would do to bring about this cure! But somewhere between hearing about this cure and his arrival at Elisha’s doorstep, Naaman has developed this elaborate liturgy about how Elisha would cure him. The prophet would come out? Stand and call on the name of the Lord his God? Wave his hand over the spot? Wow! That’s an elaborate liturgy worthy of an Episcopalian! Naaman is not only invested in a definite outcome of receiving a cure, but he has also concocted the exact process by which it would happen!
Now the leper in Mark’s story has a very different approach. This healing story begins a series of vignettes in Mark portraying Jesus as a crosser of social and legal boundaries. But we must recognize that the leper actually violates the boundary first. In the Levitical codes, a leper was not supposed to engage anyone. They were to walk with their hand over their upper lip and cry out “unclean, unclean” as they came near anyone so that people could avoid them. Instead, this leper approaches Jesus, not with a cry of “unclean, unclean,” but with a cry bidding Jesus to come to him. The verb parakaleo means to “come along side.” It’s the word from which we get the term Paraclete. This leper invites Jesus to come along side him … and Jesus does. He then says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Or, in the AAV (that’s “Anjel’s Authorized Version … not available in stores), “You can cleanse me, if you want to.”
The key to his statement is in the “if.” We only have one word for “if” in English, but the Greeks had two different ones: ei and ean. Ei was the “if of certainty” as in, “If I touch a hot stove, I will burn my hand.” We know the outcome, it’s a no brainer. Ean, on the other hand, is called the “if of uncertainty” as in “If I win the lottery, what would I do with the money?” That’s a very uncertain if! It is this latter type of “if” we find in the leper’s words and it is followed by a form of the verb to choose, wish, will or desire which also suggests an uncertain outcome. What we can make of this is that the leper is not invested in a specific outcome; he isn’t taking this healing for granted as a done deal at all. Unlike Naaman who is highly invested in how it should all turn out and exactly how it will go down, this leper is actually making a faith statement. He says he knows Jesus has the power to cleanse him regardless of whether Jesus chooses to exercise that power or not. If the AAV ever gets published, I’d probably render it as, “You have the power to make me clean. Regardless of whether you want to or not, you have the power to make me clean.” Jesus responds by being moved with compassion, accepting the boundary crossing first proposed by the leper, and heals him.
In the season of Epiphany, the focus is on the question, “Who is Jesus?” In the case of the leper in Mark, Jesus is the one with the power to cleanse, regardless of whether he desires to exercise his power or not. Unlike Naaman, this leper doesn’t get invested in the outcome or a specific process. This is the tension we live in: how do we have a vision of what or how things should be and yet holding it lightly enough to let God do what needs to be done even if it does not match how we think it should happen.
The Christian life is an adventure and there are no guaranteed outcomes short of the fullness of a resurrected life in God. What that will look like and how it will go down is mystery. Letting go of prescribed outcomes and preconceived ideas of how things should happen is what it means to grow in our faith.
Who is Jesus? He is the one with the power to cleanse, the power to make us whole and who promises and abundant life. Our faith challenge is to trust this power and let go of our assumptions of how it will all work out. Amen.
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