Call it an occupational hazard, but I think a lot about the church. I think about the congregation I serve and the ones I have served. I think about the Presbyterian Church (USA). I think about the many other denominations that comprise the church in this country and around the world. I think about the whole notion of being the Body of Christ, and that last one is usually where I smack myself upside the head and go "D'oh!"
It's easy to begin to wonder if God really thought this thing through.
I have served some wonderful churches and been privileged to know some genuinely good and loving people. And I have also been profoundly annoyed by some genuinely good and loving people. And I have been disappointed when those genuinely good and loving people were profoundly annoyed with me.
Genuinely good and loving just isn't enough.
Sin is a really big three letter word.
I have often heard those who would defend the church as an organization and/or an institution start to trumpet the genuinely good and loving things the church does and has done over the centuries of it's existence, and the list is not insignificant. Then again, neither is the list of catastrophic failures: corruption, violence and general complicity with worldly evil. It all pretty much comes out in the wash.
Sometimes, in moments of uncharacteristic optimism I can almost see the balance shift a little bit to the good, and then some representative of some part of the church does something horrific, or just plain stupid. For every Mother Theresa, there are five pedophile priests, for every Billy Graham there's Jim Bakker AND Jimmy Swaggart; after a while the math just gets depressing. Then you have majority that are not exactly staggering failures, but you can't really get 100% on board with what they're up to either: Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, Joyce Meyer, Charles Stanley, TD Jakes etc. They preach a very particular brand of Gospel, and sometimes, even if you generally like them, you get this creeping suspicion that perhaps they're peddling snake oil. Maybe it's because they always seem to be trying to sell you something.
My point (I actually do have a point here) is that, from the beginning, Jesus gave his mandate to some profoundly flawed individuals. He vested authority in a bunch of clowns who, honestly, were better suited to hauling fish out of the sea of Galilee than they were to continuing the incarnational ministry of God. As hard as it is to believe from the results, God actually planned it this way.
Yahweh has always been a fan of seemingly random, often slipshod and momentary victories, using the worst possible candidates in the most unlikely situations. Like the point guard who slips at half court and has the ball fly out of his hand... and then hit nothing but net for a game-winning three pointer. Yeah, he totally meant to do that.
Marketing the church of Jesus Christ with slick, results-driven, advertising-inspired, sorts of strategies, while it makes perfect sense to our modern minds, is probably rather contrary to God's actual plan for the church. The stories of the Passion narratives kind of reinforce that notion in my mind. There are no heroes in those stories. No one saves the day, no one comes up with a really clever way out of the mess they're in. Jesus himself prays for the cup to pass from him, but... no dice.
It all starts with a lot of promise and ends in a big hot mess.
The disciples start the week riding high on a wave of hosannas and end it hiding in the cheapest motel room they could find thinking about how they can slip out of Jerusalem without getting tacked up by the Romans. It's not a pretty picture, but there you have it: our spiritual heritage, hiding in rented rooms thinking about maybe dying our hair in the bathroom of a Texaco so we can get out of town without being picked up by the man.
The really disturbing thought in all of this is: maybe that is the will of God after all.
Maybe the reason why the church is floundering and failing is because we've gotten too big for our britches and God is getting back to grassroots. Maybe God wants some more glorious misfits like Abraham, Jonah and Peter instead of slick, smiley, dudes and well coiffured platinum blondes preaching and singing to arenas full of clamoring sycophants who "really feel uplifted" by the wonderful atmosphere.
Maybe I'm being cranky.
Maybe this mosaic of messed up, confused, self-absorbed, cult-of-personality driven, anxious, and complaint-ridden group of people who sit around wringing their hands about where they are ever going to find some "new" people to come be a part of this borderline psychotic community (honestly sometimes well over the borderline).
How's this for a new way of pitching the church: Messed up? Crazy? Lazy? Directionless? Anxious? Afraid? Combative? Obstinate? We know how you feel. We've been that way for two thousand years, but for some reason God still hangs out with us.
We've tried just about everything else, maybe we should give honesty a try.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Having the Right Accent
Dialogue is difficult when there is no trust.
Anyone with a little experience in group dynamics will bear witness to the fact that a conflicted group is unlikely to make serious inroads into resolving that conflict until they have established a bare minimum level of trust. I will call this bare minimum level of trust mutual forbearance, which means that both sides of the argument have agreed to a certain level of co-existence. Sometimes that certain level is just barely enough to keep them from strangling each other, other times that certain level may actually involve a willingness to actually listen to the positions and opinions of the other.
Unfortunately, in many conflicted situations, mutual forbearance is actually the only achievable form of peace. I think of the detente that existed between the Soviet Union and NATO during the Cold War and the tenuous, volatile situation in Israel/Palestine. Sometimes mutual forbearance is only a temporary stay of an inevitable violent conflict, sometimes it is a foundation to an actual discussion or negotiation.
Thanks to technology and the complex web of developments that is vaguely referred to as "globalization" there are more and more opportunities for groups of people holding disparate social, economic and ideological opinions to be put into a situation where dialogue is necessary. You no longer have to just get along with the people in your neighborhood, you could be required, by something as simple as calling technical support about a troublesome printer, to interact with someone on a different continent, from a different culture, with a different accent. This depending on your disposition at the time, and whether or not the person is able to actually help with your problem, may result in certain discomfiture.
The companies that outsource things like customer service and technical support to foreign countries are well aware of the lack of mutual forbearance that is triggered in the American consumer by an unfamiliar accent, and thus, they train their people to mask their accent and use American sounding names and thus Raj becomes Tom and Suki becomes Stacey, in the hopes that they will gain your trust or at least prevent an immediate negative response to their attempt to help.
As an interesting experiment, one of the companies ought to attempt to train their Asian folks to speak with a British accent when dealing with Americans, In my experience, though I'm not sure why, we colonists still attribute intelligence and dependability to the Queen's English, even if we don't particularly care for her tariffs.
Which brings me to my main point, which has to do with debates and discussions in the church. I attended my first meeting with National Capital Presbytery this week and listened to a presentation by Dr. Joseph Small, that was an expansion on an article he wrote called Internal Injuries, about the moral divisions within the PC(USA). Dr. Small made some excellent points about how majority rule inherently disenfranchises the minority. This is particularly salient in regard to certain moral issues that are now being debated by the national church, where percentages are precarious indeed (often running 52%-48% or even narrower margins of difference). I think I heard, somewhere in about an hour and half of talking, a challenge to try, particularly as the church, to try and do more than just achieve detente and narrow "victories." Amen to that.
The problem is, as I saw it, not with the idea, but the presentation. The talk was DULL. Wow, was it dry and well... Presbyterian. I thought of how important some of the ideas were, and how unlikely they were to ever be heard by the majority of the people who really ought to consider how exactly they engage in dialogue with their brothers and sisters in Christ.
But it's not just being dry and boring that will get you in trouble in the world of the church today. You can be too slick and engaging as well. Enter Rob Bell. Bell is the poster boy for the emerging church. He has been a mega-church pastor with the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids Michigan and now he is out there doing his rock-star-author thing. And he has some really good things to say, some things that really twist the knickers of his former brethren in the evangelical movement, and he says some things that just don't bear very close theological scrutiny, but he delivers good, bad and indifferent with a certain style and hipster coolness that makes you want to unquestioningly agree with what he says.
I have read several critiques of Bell who seem to be leveling the accusation that perhaps he is just a little too cool to be trusted. Maybe he is, there certainly are aspects to his theology that push the edges of what conservative/evangelical Christians would call orthodoxy. Then again his ideas seem rather tame and perhaps even passe to progressive Christians. What I find about Bell is that he is a skillful compiler and illustrator of theological ideas. He finds little flecks of gold among tons of gravel and holds them up and says, "Hey, look at this! Isn't this cool?"
They may be out of context, they may be heretical in some people's mind, but they are, in fact, pretty cool.
Bell takes some very old ideas, and puts them in a blender with some of the better modern theology. He gathers a smattering of Origen, Clement and Augustine and then dashes them with Calvin, Barth, Tillich and Buber and then finishes it off with a little N.T. Wright and Eugene Peterson and it just goes down smooth like a mocha latte. But most of it is derivative, and it all is presented with a certain non-threatening, "hey whaddya think?" attitude.
He may not be the most careful and consistent theologian, and he certainly has his critics, but he definitely has the right accent.
So in the church, when we sit down and try to discuss and deal with difficult and seemingly intractable issues, we have to deal with this sort of dynamic as well: it's not just what you say, but how you say it. You can have some good ideas, but if you're dull, you may not get traction. You can speak with a prophetic voice, but don't be too slick about it, or people will sit around and dissect your hipster persona. You could actually have an idea that might just "fix our printers" permanently, but if you talk like a furriner, we ain't gonna trust you.
Lord, have mercy on us, poor sinners.
Anyone with a little experience in group dynamics will bear witness to the fact that a conflicted group is unlikely to make serious inroads into resolving that conflict until they have established a bare minimum level of trust. I will call this bare minimum level of trust mutual forbearance, which means that both sides of the argument have agreed to a certain level of co-existence. Sometimes that certain level is just barely enough to keep them from strangling each other, other times that certain level may actually involve a willingness to actually listen to the positions and opinions of the other.
Unfortunately, in many conflicted situations, mutual forbearance is actually the only achievable form of peace. I think of the detente that existed between the Soviet Union and NATO during the Cold War and the tenuous, volatile situation in Israel/Palestine. Sometimes mutual forbearance is only a temporary stay of an inevitable violent conflict, sometimes it is a foundation to an actual discussion or negotiation.
Thanks to technology and the complex web of developments that is vaguely referred to as "globalization" there are more and more opportunities for groups of people holding disparate social, economic and ideological opinions to be put into a situation where dialogue is necessary. You no longer have to just get along with the people in your neighborhood, you could be required, by something as simple as calling technical support about a troublesome printer, to interact with someone on a different continent, from a different culture, with a different accent. This depending on your disposition at the time, and whether or not the person is able to actually help with your problem, may result in certain discomfiture.
The companies that outsource things like customer service and technical support to foreign countries are well aware of the lack of mutual forbearance that is triggered in the American consumer by an unfamiliar accent, and thus, they train their people to mask their accent and use American sounding names and thus Raj becomes Tom and Suki becomes Stacey, in the hopes that they will gain your trust or at least prevent an immediate negative response to their attempt to help.
As an interesting experiment, one of the companies ought to attempt to train their Asian folks to speak with a British accent when dealing with Americans, In my experience, though I'm not sure why, we colonists still attribute intelligence and dependability to the Queen's English, even if we don't particularly care for her tariffs.
Which brings me to my main point, which has to do with debates and discussions in the church. I attended my first meeting with National Capital Presbytery this week and listened to a presentation by Dr. Joseph Small, that was an expansion on an article he wrote called Internal Injuries, about the moral divisions within the PC(USA). Dr. Small made some excellent points about how majority rule inherently disenfranchises the minority. This is particularly salient in regard to certain moral issues that are now being debated by the national church, where percentages are precarious indeed (often running 52%-48% or even narrower margins of difference). I think I heard, somewhere in about an hour and half of talking, a challenge to try, particularly as the church, to try and do more than just achieve detente and narrow "victories." Amen to that.
The problem is, as I saw it, not with the idea, but the presentation. The talk was DULL. Wow, was it dry and well... Presbyterian. I thought of how important some of the ideas were, and how unlikely they were to ever be heard by the majority of the people who really ought to consider how exactly they engage in dialogue with their brothers and sisters in Christ.
But it's not just being dry and boring that will get you in trouble in the world of the church today. You can be too slick and engaging as well. Enter Rob Bell. Bell is the poster boy for the emerging church. He has been a mega-church pastor with the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids Michigan and now he is out there doing his rock-star-author thing. And he has some really good things to say, some things that really twist the knickers of his former brethren in the evangelical movement, and he says some things that just don't bear very close theological scrutiny, but he delivers good, bad and indifferent with a certain style and hipster coolness that makes you want to unquestioningly agree with what he says.
I have read several critiques of Bell who seem to be leveling the accusation that perhaps he is just a little too cool to be trusted. Maybe he is, there certainly are aspects to his theology that push the edges of what conservative/evangelical Christians would call orthodoxy. Then again his ideas seem rather tame and perhaps even passe to progressive Christians. What I find about Bell is that he is a skillful compiler and illustrator of theological ideas. He finds little flecks of gold among tons of gravel and holds them up and says, "Hey, look at this! Isn't this cool?"
They may be out of context, they may be heretical in some people's mind, but they are, in fact, pretty cool.
Bell takes some very old ideas, and puts them in a blender with some of the better modern theology. He gathers a smattering of Origen, Clement and Augustine and then dashes them with Calvin, Barth, Tillich and Buber and then finishes it off with a little N.T. Wright and Eugene Peterson and it just goes down smooth like a mocha latte. But most of it is derivative, and it all is presented with a certain non-threatening, "hey whaddya think?" attitude.
He may not be the most careful and consistent theologian, and he certainly has his critics, but he definitely has the right accent.
So in the church, when we sit down and try to discuss and deal with difficult and seemingly intractable issues, we have to deal with this sort of dynamic as well: it's not just what you say, but how you say it. You can have some good ideas, but if you're dull, you may not get traction. You can speak with a prophetic voice, but don't be too slick about it, or people will sit around and dissect your hipster persona. You could actually have an idea that might just "fix our printers" permanently, but if you talk like a furriner, we ain't gonna trust you.
Lord, have mercy on us, poor sinners.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Time, the Universe and Everything
Wendell Berry on the theory of the Big Bang as the origin of the universe:
1. What banged?
2. Before banging how did it get there?
3. When it got there where was it?
-Leavings (2010)
I have to confess, I am a bigger fan of poetry than of science, but I'm curious and I find scientific inquiry to be a fascinating field. But I guess I have enough of an "outside" perspective on the world of science to notice when science rather glaringly ceases to be science. Such was the case as I watched a show about Stephen Hawking and his opinions about the universe on the science channel last evening. Hawking is a brilliant mind and a remarkable story. He has pushed the envelope of human knowledge while being confined to a wheelchair for over 50 years and slowly losing his capacity for movement, speech and nearly everything but the smallest movements of his eye. The fact that he is alive and functioning is a wonder of science and technology.
I do not question Hawking's credibility as a scientist, or as a genius. I do question his credibility as a theologian, which apparently is his latest field of endeavor. Quite frankly, he's not very good at it.
Hawking claims that he has disproved the existence of God by determining that the big bang could have taken place by the random appearance in nothingness of something, that then exploded and formed the universe as we know it. He speculates that since, we think, time ceases to exist in a black hole, black holes somehow give us a glimpse into what there was before there was something and ergo before there was something there was no time. The Science channel says there is very sophisticated mathematical proof of this fact, that we probably can't understand.
I have no doubt that there is sophisticated mathematical proof, and I am sure that I probably can't understand it. I am willing to accept that, in the nothingness of a black hole, there is no time, not just that time stops, but that it doesn't exist. I've watched Dr. Who for a really long time, I get it, the universe is amazing. I will even cede the point that time began with the big bang (yeah, I'll give you the whole theory), but then Hawking makes a leap of faith that is rather mysterious for a man of science: the absence of time before the big bang means there is no god...
Really?
That's an interesting correlation to draw. He said something like, there was no time for God to create the universe. Okay... hmmm.
The first thing is that Hawking seems to have discovered a very old theological debate: the chain of causation/ first cause inquiry. I hate to burst the bubble of such an eminent mind, but a bunch of primitive folks who still thought the earth was flat have pretty much put that to bed as a serious challenge to the existence of God. Subsequently the search for God as a sort of "first cause" has generally been found to be rather bad theology, because it assumes that God exists in the same physical universe that we do, which indeed would make it rather difficult for God to create said universe.
I'm not going to just shout, "TRANSCENDENCE!" and disappear back inside my faith bubble though. I am going to note that my introduction to systematic theology course included a rather in depth look at the idea of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. The definition of nothing being rather a tricky proposition, because we in fact are something, our universe, even the vast empty space and the mysterious blackness of black holes, is in fact something. Because we really have no way of defining absolute nothingness, we can only really come to the edge of the void and see that which we do not understand. Some people look into the void and say, "Aha! That proves there is nothing there! Look at all that nothing! There can't possibly be something there!" That, apparently, is what Hawking has done. He has got his wheelchair to the edge of the void and sees nothing, and refuses to admit the possibility of something that he doesn't see.
The problem with that approach is not found in theology, but in science. Science is constantly pushing the edge of the void farther and farther back. Einstein uncovered a reality that pushed the edge of the void significantly farther back than Newtonian physics had thought possible, and now quantum physics is challenging the "edge" that Einstein set.
I am of the opinion (and that is honestly what it is, an opinion), that no matter how far we push back the boundary of the void, the only thing that will always remain unknowable is God. God is outside time, because God is the author of time. Proving that time had a beginning is not to disprove God.
I have long found that no matter how much we may try to challenge faith, human beings are inherently wired to put our faith in something. People like Hawking and Richard Dawkins want to say that they put their faith in science. If that were true they would not be Atheists, who say there is absolutely no God, no transcendence. If you want to put your faith in science, you cannot say that something does not exist, you can only describe things that are observable and measurable within the bounds of time and space, which is what science, by definition, does.
True scientists should leave the mystery of God well enough alone, unless they want to try their hand at theology. If so, they ought to go take at least an introductory course in systematic theology so they don't end up sounding like a fool or a megalomaniac.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Confronting the Bigness
You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.
-Jesus, John 12:8 NIV
Within hours of reading the text for Sunday, which includes the above comment, I had some poor people sitting in my office asking for help. Not a surprising event for the pastor of a church. I know for a fact that they are making the rounds to the local churches trying to get the help they need, and I know they've got big problems, bigger problems than I can fix.
What I try to do is find out how to help, without just shoving some cash in their hand and sending them on their way. In this case, we could pay for a couple nights in a motel, to postpone homelessness. I can maybe point them in the direction of agencies that have the resources to help them, but I have no idea if they will truly qualify or if they will even follow through. I have no idea if they're telling me the truth. I have no idea if their situation is as dire as it sounds, or if their efforts to pull themselves up are in earnest.
But they are pretty surely poor, and pretty surely down on their luck, and pretty likely to stay that way.
We gave them two days. Depending on your point of view, it's either just a drop in a dry well, or just enough to see them through the desert, they seemed to think the latter.
Confronting poverty is a discouraging experience, even when you can help a little, you never feel like you've really done any good, because the problem is quite simply enormous.
When Jesus said, "you will always have the poor among you," he knew what he was saying. The world is just like that, the reality of limited resources mingles with bad luck and bad decisions, and stirs around in societal and economic systems and some people always seem to get drowned in the stormy seas.
I wish I had one of those "silver and gold I have none, but what I have I give to you," moments where I could just fix the problem, but I didn't. I just paid their motel bill until Thursday, and I will pray for them.
Even if I gave them all the money in the Good Samaritan Fund, they'd still be poor, they'd still be on the bottom of the whirlpool with the weight of inequity and generations of poverty pressing them down.
Maybe they were grifters, maybe they were taking advantage of the charity of the church, maybe they will just move on down the street and repeat their story and someone else will give them some more.
So be it.
They are the poor, honest or not. They may not be noble, but they will always be with us.
My only hope and prayer is that, in some way, I faithfully represented Christ to them. Maybe the other churches they visit will do the same. Maybe through all those people being a little like Jesus, they will make it through another week of hard times.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Confessions of a Consumer
Things are in the saddle and ride mankind
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode to W.H. Auden
I've never considered myself much of a materialist, but lately I have had to come to grips with the reality that I just have way too much stuff. Not only stuff, but services, some of which go with the stuff, some of which are stand alone things. Michele was talking about her grandfather this morning; how he would pay cash for almost everything (even cars, which is hard for me to imagine) and probably didn't even have a credit card.
I considered the fact that tomorrow morning I am going to speak with an accountant because, with a mortgage and taxes and all sorts of new, complicated financial realities, I feel ill equipped to cope. I need professional help in dealing with the money I make and spend and what I owe to the government. being a grown up is hard a lot of the time.
I started thinking about how much money we spend in a month, I didn't want to, I just did.
I started thinking about how a good chunk of the money goes simply to try and buy some sense of security for all the stuff I own: health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, now homeowners insurance.
Insurance didn't used to be a thing that your average, ordinary person had. These days it would be stupid and in some cases illegal to do without it.
Probably because we have so much stuff that we "can't live without."
I also "can't live without" a cell phone, high speed internet and 400 TV channels (with HD), even though, for most of my life I lived without all those things (funny how necessity just seems to creep up on you). I realized that I send more dollars to Verizon every month than people in some parts of the world earn in a year, and that doesn't make me feel very good. We are decidedly middle of the road when it comes to material wealth. We don't just throw money around and we try to live within our means, but because I live in a nation that consumes way more than a decent share of the world's resources on a per-capita level, I know I need to periodically take stock of what I have in order to get some perspective.
That perspective can be sobering, and depressing.
It doesn't do any good to feel guilty about it (but I do anyway).
I begin to see that when Jesus told that rich young ruler to give away everything he had, he wasn't just being a jerk, he was trying to save that guy from his stuff. Stuff can get a good strong grip on you, and it doesn't like to let go. That man didn't have to give away everything in order to follow Jesus, he needed to give away everything in order to be free from a trap.
Before Michele starts to hyperventilate, I'm not planning on selling everything and dropping out of society. Sometimes you just need to contemplate the possibility of such a radical step, and think about how much you want and what you actually need. The thing is, most of the time, you get those two categories terribly, inextricably confused.
In a few months, I am going to be walking away from most of my stuff, at least for a week or so. I am very much looking forward to that. But I have already started to make a list of things I need for my walk on the Camino de Santiago. Believe me, the irony of buying fancy gear to take on pilgrimage is not lost on me, but somehow or other, I can't help myself. I NEED those new boots, I NEED those fancy hiking pants with zip off legs, I need a solar charger for my cell phone... dear LORD please have mercy on this sinner.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Now There Were Some Present...
Sometimes an idea overflows what will fit in a sermon.
So this morning, I've got my sermon in the book and ready for tomorrow, but there's this little snip from the Gospel lesson that is stuck in my craw. Some of what sticks probably isn't going to make it into the sermon, this blog is like the deleted scenes on a DVD.
The inciting incident in Luke 13: 1-9 is the fact that the Romans had "mingled the blood" of some Galileans with their sacrifices to their pagan gods. This probably means that they had put some captured revolutionaries to death in a religious rite. The Romans had a reputation for this sort of terror, not only killing people but making a statement while doing so, kind of like Kevin Spacey's character in Seven, but on a much larger scale. As a matter of fact, crucifixion was their favorite form of brutal, humiliating execution, but they probably got bored with that sometimes. Also, being pagans, human sacrifice holds a certain grim promise of favor with blood thirsty deities.
Luke 13 begins with "some" people telling Jesus about Pilate and the Romans, probably expecting that he would get a good righteous head of steam and start really laying into the Roman Empire. There are always "some" people who really seem to enjoy hearing about how the wrath of God is finally going to come down on "the world," meaning all those other humans who are not us.
Jesus does rather the opposite. Instead of railing against those wicked Romans, he starts talking about how being slaughtered by Rome or having a tower collapse on your head is really not a sign that God is angry with you. Things like this are going to happen, it's just how the fallen world works.
Jesus somehow manages to turn the whole conversation around on those "some" who were present, telling them that THEY should repent.
Now, this is not the kind of thing that wrath of God types usually enjoy very much. The next time someone starts talking to you about how the world is really going down the tubes, how morals are shot, how God has forsaken us because we (insert favorite categorical moral failing here). Try telling them that none of that really matters and what really needs to happen is that they need to repent of making God as fickle, stupid and narrow-minded as they are. Yeah, because that's what Jesus did. I don't imagine he made too many new friends that day.
I suppose it goes right along with the whole: take the log out of your own eye, before worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye, dynamic. However, this seems to kick it up a notch. Jesus seems to accept that Rome will always be around. He equates Pilate's brutality to the random tragedy of a tower collapsing. He calls people to see a reality where God can help us all rise above that sort of mess.
The idea that, if you're faithful, God will be "on your side," is attractive, but it's ultimately an idol. The reality of this world is that bad stuff happens to good people, the rain falls on the fields of the just and the unjust alike. The reality of this world is that deranged people walk into elementary schools and start shooting, they fly planes into buildings, they kill their own children. We might cry out to God for justice, but we need to learn to see how clearly, firmly and infuriatingly God refuses to take vengeance. Instead God takes his place with the victims. We find God under the rubble of the collapsed towers, we find the blood of Christ poured out on a Roman cross.
Strangely enough, I find that much more comforting and useful in dealing with the reality of the world, than the vain hope that someday God is going to stand up to all the bullies and dictators and put an end to all the tragedy in the world. I find much more hope in the reality that God wants to be known by me, than in the ultimately pagan presumption that I can figure God out. I can trust a God who loves me much more fully than I can trust a God who is only concerned with winning some cosmic duel with evil and chaos.
Maybe some of that will make it in the sermon after all.
So this morning, I've got my sermon in the book and ready for tomorrow, but there's this little snip from the Gospel lesson that is stuck in my craw. Some of what sticks probably isn't going to make it into the sermon, this blog is like the deleted scenes on a DVD.
The inciting incident in Luke 13: 1-9 is the fact that the Romans had "mingled the blood" of some Galileans with their sacrifices to their pagan gods. This probably means that they had put some captured revolutionaries to death in a religious rite. The Romans had a reputation for this sort of terror, not only killing people but making a statement while doing so, kind of like Kevin Spacey's character in Seven, but on a much larger scale. As a matter of fact, crucifixion was their favorite form of brutal, humiliating execution, but they probably got bored with that sometimes. Also, being pagans, human sacrifice holds a certain grim promise of favor with blood thirsty deities.
Luke 13 begins with "some" people telling Jesus about Pilate and the Romans, probably expecting that he would get a good righteous head of steam and start really laying into the Roman Empire. There are always "some" people who really seem to enjoy hearing about how the wrath of God is finally going to come down on "the world," meaning all those other humans who are not us.
Jesus does rather the opposite. Instead of railing against those wicked Romans, he starts talking about how being slaughtered by Rome or having a tower collapse on your head is really not a sign that God is angry with you. Things like this are going to happen, it's just how the fallen world works.
Jesus somehow manages to turn the whole conversation around on those "some" who were present, telling them that THEY should repent.
Now, this is not the kind of thing that wrath of God types usually enjoy very much. The next time someone starts talking to you about how the world is really going down the tubes, how morals are shot, how God has forsaken us because we (insert favorite categorical moral failing here). Try telling them that none of that really matters and what really needs to happen is that they need to repent of making God as fickle, stupid and narrow-minded as they are. Yeah, because that's what Jesus did. I don't imagine he made too many new friends that day.
I suppose it goes right along with the whole: take the log out of your own eye, before worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye, dynamic. However, this seems to kick it up a notch. Jesus seems to accept that Rome will always be around. He equates Pilate's brutality to the random tragedy of a tower collapsing. He calls people to see a reality where God can help us all rise above that sort of mess.
The idea that, if you're faithful, God will be "on your side," is attractive, but it's ultimately an idol. The reality of this world is that bad stuff happens to good people, the rain falls on the fields of the just and the unjust alike. The reality of this world is that deranged people walk into elementary schools and start shooting, they fly planes into buildings, they kill their own children. We might cry out to God for justice, but we need to learn to see how clearly, firmly and infuriatingly God refuses to take vengeance. Instead God takes his place with the victims. We find God under the rubble of the collapsed towers, we find the blood of Christ poured out on a Roman cross.
Strangely enough, I find that much more comforting and useful in dealing with the reality of the world, than the vain hope that someday God is going to stand up to all the bullies and dictators and put an end to all the tragedy in the world. I find much more hope in the reality that God wants to be known by me, than in the ultimately pagan presumption that I can figure God out. I can trust a God who loves me much more fully than I can trust a God who is only concerned with winning some cosmic duel with evil and chaos.
Maybe some of that will make it in the sermon after all.
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