Zealot

A member of my congregation gave me Reza Aslan's latest book, Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, as a Christmas gift.  It was interesting, because that meant that I was reading a book about the actual historical evidence that we have concerning Jesus, at precisely the time of year when we are most immersed in the decidedly non-historical birth narratives.
Let me start with what I appreciated about Aslan's book: he does a wonderful job of presenting the cultural context of Jesus of Nazareth, he gives a visceral portrayal of Jerusalem and the Temple, and brings some of the fervor and turmoil of first century Palestine to life.  He is also very vulnerable and honest in his prologue about his own involvement and eventual disenchantment with evangelical (American) Christianity.  In that journey, I am with him, I have also experienced a "get saved or go to hell," version of Christian faith as a teenager.  I have also spent years discovering that Jesus of Nazareth is perhaps a much more inspiring and, dare I say, "likeable," character than Jesus the Christ.  I have also been often frustrated by how little Christianity seems to have to do with Jesus.
The difference for me comes in the fact that I do, in fact, believe that Jesus of Nazareth was also Jesus the Christ, and making a distinction between the two is simply splitting theological hairs.  Aslan's entire argument essentially hinges on the self understanding of the man Jesus of Nazareth.  His suspicion is that the divinity of Jesus, which has become so central to much of Christianity, would actually be shocking, even scandalizing to a Nazarene Jew.  I agree, it probably would.  The Gospels tell us that Jesus was highly uncomfortable with people who would elevate him to royal, let alone divine, status.
Aslan is highly suspicious of the Gospel writers agendas, pointing out that all of the Gospels were written in Greek and most likely date after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, which consequently means that they were probably not "eyewitness" accounts of Jesus life.  Indeed, biblical scholarship generally acknowledges the chaotic temporal separation between Jesus' life, death and resurrection, and the beginning of what we know as Christianity, and that the Gospel writers had a certain story that they were telling about Jesus of Nazareth.  For instance, Matthew and Luke include a birth narrative, which they include presumably to emphasize the exceptional nature of Jesus life from it's very beginning and present him as a fulfillment of prophecy (especially in Matthew's Gospel).  However, the birth narratives are a definite chink in the armor for skeptics to begin their assault on the truth of the Gospels.
Believers who have a strong sense of biblical infallibility are going to have a hard time with Zealot. When you strip away two thousand years of tradition and theological evolution, you are left with very little to hang your hat on.  What history tells us, absent the witness of the Gospel, was that Jesus was a Jew from Nazareth, who was executed by Rome for sedition (claiming to be King of the Jews, which represented a threat to Roman authority).  After Jesus' death a movement, headed primarily by his brother James, continued to proclaim him as the Messiah, until that movement was destroyed along with the rest of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  After 70 CE, the teachings of Jesus were primarily left in Gentile hands.  Most of the New Testament was written in Greek, by people who had never actually seen Jesus in the flesh.
So that's the "historical" reality.  If you want the long version, read Zealot for yourself, it's entertaining and well written, and pretty accurate in most ways that matter.
But, if you don't want to lose your faith in Jesus the Christ, let me tell you a little secret: Jesus is more than a historical figure.  I won't argue with Aslan's assertion that Christianity has almost certainly become something that would have been shocking to Jesus of Nazareth.  What we need to understand is the nature of the incarnation, when God became a man, he became an actual man, he was not just pretending.  When Superman is "disguised" as Clark Kent, he still has the powers, and often there are funny moments where Cal-el uses his powers while not in costume, but is careful to hide them.  We can often think that this is what God did in Jesus: he really had powers, he really knew everything, he really understood exactly what was happening all the time.
The Gospels tell us that Jesus certainly had the ability to do miracles, but they also tell us that he learned, that sometimes he was corrected, that sometimes he was uncertain, afraid, surprised and even cranky, all things that we would not expect a supreme, omniscient God to be.  The "secret" agenda of the Gospels is actually to tell us about the Incarnation, not necessarily just about Jesus of Nazareth.  He is where it starts.  If Aslan had not decided to drink the hater-ade about the Apostle Paul and been dead set on labeling him an unstable deviant, who essentially decided to start his own Jesus cult over and against Peter, James and John, he might have noticed that Paul actually started to understand how God was working, despite all the "evidence" of defeat.
What Aslan admits, several times over the course of the book is that he cannot see how anyone continued to call Jesus the Messiah after his death, and after all that transpired in Jerusalem over the next fifty years.  The Messiah was supposed to save the day, the Messiah was supposed to be the superhero, but Jesus "failed" in that mission.
Yes, he did.
But he called others to continue to "do the things that he did."  The Incarnation goes on, in James, Peter, John and yes, even Paul.  It went on at Nicea almost 300 years after Jesus died, it went on in the Reformation, it goes on in Churches all over the world right now, where people believe and follow Jesus.  I agree, that we sometimes get a little too tied up in our own stuff, and we definitely do forget that Jesus really, really wanted us to protect the poor and vulnerable, and we perhaps become far too much like the Temple that Jesus railed against, but when we remember our Savior we can repent, because he called us to it.  When we die we can be resurrected, because Jesus showed us that it was the Way.
The Incarnation was not an historical event, which happened at a specific time and place.  It is something that happens and continues to happen.  Thus, it's no surprise that it gives historians fits.  You can't write history until it's finished.  Zealot, is useful in telling us where the story began.  It tells us what Jesus may have thought about the Kingdom of Heaven, and his identity as the Son of Man, but what it entirely misses, perhaps because it is part of the "agenda" of the Gospel writers, is that Jesus may have actually understood that one man, even a God-man, cannot change the world, he needs help, he needs others to have faith and follow his path.
Maybe it's true that Christianity isn't "pure" in the historical sense, maybe it has been shaped by people who hear the Word, and learn the Way, but I think that's what makes it a living, breathing practice of Incarnation, not a dead set of doctrines.  In fact, I would say one of the things that Jesus definitely wanted to challenge was the notion of purity as a prerequisite for a relationship with God...
But that's a really long story.

What the Duck?

Phil Robertson has been suspended from the television show Duck Dynasty, for stuff he said about his opinions regarding homosexuality in GQ magazine.
A couple questions spring to mind:
1. Why on God's green earth was Phil Robertson being interviewed by GQ magazine?  Isn't GQ a men's fashion magazine?  I think every piece of clothing Phil owns is camo, and while that is in some senses a fashion choice, it's not generally the image that GQ is all about.
2. Why is GQ magazine asking Phil about sin?  Isn't GQ a men's fashion magazine?  Wait, I already asked that question.
3. Why is it surprising to anyone that a guy who looks like Phil, and lives in very rural Louisiana, and makes duck calls for a living, and prays simple earthy prayers before every meal he shares with his enormous family, doesn't exactly have the most cosmopolitan opinions about homosexuality?
4. Why is it that A&E seems hell bent of making a martyr of Phil Robertson?  A while back it was the "threat" that if they didn't stop praying before meals, the show would be discontinued.  Folks were full of righteous indignation over that one, even though it turned out that the real issue was the Robertson clan wanted more of that filthy Hollywood cash than A&E was really wanting to shell out.  It went away as soon as the network realized they were about to shoot the cash cow, and the Robertsons are still allowed to pray to Jesus at the end of every episode.
Now there are already outpourings of support for Phil Robertson, and a predictable backpedaling (but not all the way) apology and an affirmation that he would never treat anybody disrespectfully, no matter how wrong and sinful they may be.
I have to admit, I have very mixed feelings about all this.  On the one hand, I owe a debt of gratitude to Duck Dynasty, because when I spent three days in the hospital, there was apparently a marathon of DD on A&E, and not much else on the TV.  Granted, I was on morphine most of the time and so coherent thought was not really a necessity for amusement, but then, I got to like those bearded goofballs.  Sy and Phil especially, I would really like to hang out with those two, and maybe shoot some things.
Maybe it's just the moderate, rationalist Presbyterian side of me, but Phil's statement in GQ, did not strike me as particularly hateful, or unusual for a man of his ilk.  I think he was expressing some fairly honest (if somewhat incoherent) thoughts on an issue that is complex and controversial.  Reading it, my opinion of him remains entirely unchanged.  And I think, TV show or not, he should have a right to say it, and stand by it.  You can hear vastly more offensive and bigoted opinions on almost any talk radio program that broaches the subject.  I would much rather see A&E, which stands, I believe, for Arts and Entertainment, defend free speech than become the sort of censorious "liberal" instrument of devil that some red state types are always sure is out to get them.
The progress of civil rights for LGBTQ people in this country of ours is moving at a pretty good pace for such a deeply controversial subject as S-E-X.  It would be a mistake to start making victims out of people like Phil Robertson.  He's not a victim, he's a man who has done quite well marketing the ideals of Americana, and the way things used to be.  But if you stand him up next to a faceless TV network who boots him off of his own TV show for stuff he said about homosexuals in a magazine article, I can tell you who most of the people who are avid, camo-wearing, gun-toting, Duck Dynasty fans are going to side with.
I like Phil, if I were his pastor I might talk with him about developing a more coherent and consistent theological perspective on sin, and perhaps counsel him that homosexuality is not the best case study to use in a GQ interview.  I might talk to him about how sin can twist our words and make us sound like bigots, even if we're not.  I might talk to him about how the world is always going to misunderstand and misrepresent the followers of Jesus Christ, and so we should always be circumspect in our words and deeds so that we do not become a stumbling block, even to pagans and other non-believers.  I would talk to him about how the saving grace of Christ, which apparently he has experienced first hand, is for all those who are lost, no matter who they love.
I would certainly encourage him to use the voice that he has to truly represent Christ to the world, if he does it half as well as he makes duck calls, the Kingdom of Heaven will draw nearer to us all.

Ten

Ten years ago, I was 29.  I was nervous.  I knew my life was about to change.  I had no idea how much.  My son, Jack, will turn ten tomorrow, and I will have been a father for a decade.  It's a little hard for me to wrap my mind around that, to tell you the truth, I don't remember too much about how it felt not to be a Dad, because it has become such a part of who I am now.  In preparing my sermon for Sunday on the text from Matthew's Gospel, I came across a quote from theologian Stanley Hauerwas: "You want to learn how to welcome a stranger?  Have a kid."
We like to think of parenthood as this blessed, shining thing, but the truth is, it's terrifying and messy, and you do lots of stuff wrong, and sometimes you wish it never happened... and then your child does something amazing.  The amazing thing is not about some talent they have, it's not about some funny line that they spit out without even realizing how hilarious it is.  The amazing thing is that they just look at you and call you Daddy (or Mommy), they do it with their eyes before they can even talk, they recognize that you are someone they can trust for everything.  It can seem daunting to be sure, having another person rely on you so completely, but there's something about the trust in their eyes that strengthens you for the task.
I love the story of Joseph for the same reason so many women love the magnificat and the story of Mary, because it shows me a father's place in the story of God.  Joseph doesn't get a lot of attention any other place in the story, but he has an important role in the birth of Jesus.  Let's take away all the distractions from the story and look at it in purely human terms: he's engaged to a woman, and she's pregnant, and it's not his baby.  He has every right, by the Law of Moses, to publicly accuse her and have her stoned to death, but he doesn't.  He plans to not make a fuss, break the engagement and send her home to her father, presumably clearing the way for the baby's actual father to take responsibility.  Stuff happens you know, no one needs to get killed.  Besides it may not have even been her fault, she could have been raped or abused, who knows, all Joseph knows is it's not his baby.
Until he has a dream.
It must have been some dream.
He wakes up and decides to be a father.
He decides to give Jesus a name, and a family, and security.
He decides to go beyond just not harming Mary, he decides to accept her, and her baby.
He welcomes two strangers; one being a woman who very well may have betrayed him.
He becomes the man that Jesus can call Abba, Daddy.

I feel deeply sorry for people who didn't have a Joseph in their life, that is a man who was willing to welcome them.  Sometimes things work like they should in the biological sense, it was like that for me, and I'm trying my best to make it that way for Jack.  But human beings have the potential to transcend biology, and so sometimes we get adopted, sometimes another person takes responsibility, and I think it's entirely appropriate that God included such a person in the life of Jesus.
Joseph's presence in this story is very much a part of the incarnation.  He is a very necessary component, without him Jesus would have never been able to do what he did, he would have been an utter outcast.  We talk about how he was poor, and somewhat of an outsider, but being of a low station was nothing compared with being "illegitimate."  I hesitate to even use that word, because I think it's a travesty to call a child something like that, but it is something that many children were labeled and that burden followed them through their whole lives.  In those days, it would have been a curse like almost no other.
Joseph provides legitimacy to the life of Jesus. Joseph illustrates some of the characteristics of God that are going to be revealed in the life of Jesus: welcoming the stranger, forgiving when it's really hard to forgive, accepting responsibility when he bears no fault, being convicted to follow a difficult path for the sake of love and love alone.
I know how important he was when my kids look at me.  I'm not perfect, but they trust me.  Joseph probably got tired and irritated, even with a sinless child.  But he was the one that modeled fatherhood for the man who would one day teach us to pray: "Our Father..."
He didn't have to take it on.
He could have walked away.
But he became a father, who had a son named Jesus.

Bread of Tears

In 2005 I learned what lament has to do with Christmas.  So now, when things like Psalm 80 pop up in the lectionary around this time of year, I don't think it's weird anymore.  2005 was the year we first tried to celebrate the season of joy and togetherness with a hole in the middle of our family. It was almost exactly six months after my brother died, and it was the first real attempt we had made at being together as a family since IT happened.

Thinking back on it, the worst idea in the world was to try to go on like nothing was missing.  Michele and I packed up on Christmas day and drove across Pennsylvania with a two year old and a five month old baby, a day earlier than we planned just to surprise my Mom.  And it was a surprise.  And it was a happy moment.  But it was just a drop of light in a vast emptiness.

Because no amount of presence could fill the absence.

Because we were trying to deny the need to lament.

Because we were trying to sing Joy to the World, when there was no joy in our hearts.

I think that's the worst thing about the holidays for people who are living with loss: everybody seems so oppressively happy, and they like to tell you about it.  And no amount of gifting or gluttony can really even distract you for more than a moment from the massive black hole in your life, and you just wish that somehow you could feel a different way, but you don't, and every reminder of how out of phase you are with the rest of the world just feeds the void.

This will be the eighth Christmas living with the presence of an absence, eating the bread of tears.  Honestly, you kind of get to like the taste.  You actually come to appreciate the difference for what it is, and I think that's the place of lament in a season of joy, to remind you of how empty the glitz and materialism that have overshadowed the birth of Christ really are.

Here's a weird thing: one of the things I wish I could do at Christmas time is get into a rip-roaring, rum-soaked argument about something ridiculous with my brother.  I don't want a perfect Christmas, I don't want to sit around quietly reflecting on the blessings of family, I want to call him a bunch of names and have him call me some.  I want to be mad at him, amused by him or annoyed at him, I want something, anything that would mean his presence instead of his absence.

I want everyone who has the luxury of living with their actual, annoying, messed up, ridiculous, spiteful, jealous, conniving, gossiping, rude and otherwise repugnant family, to take a minute to appreciate them.

Because they're there, and they're what you've got.

I'm getting to a point, where I'm glad that I know the difference.  I'm not sure I'm all the way to peace and acceptance, but it might just be on the horizon.

It is a testament to God's grace that it is possible to transmute the poison of grief and loss, and turn it into a gift of awareness.  The refrain of Psalm 80 is: "Restore us, O God of hosts: let your face shine, that we may be saved."

That is the prayer of people who have faced the void, and felt the emptiness.  That is the prayer of people who are walking in darkness, yearning for a great light.  Maybe we'll never really get the "real" meaning of Christmas until we live through a few dark holy days.

White Christmas

It snowed in Jerusalem... and Egypt... and in a bunch of places it doesn't usually snow very much.
The kids are practicing for their Christmas pageant, where they will play shepherds, magi, Mary and Joseph, all Middle Eastern type folks, who despite being connected to all sorts of Christmas carols were probably not at all accustomed to Sleigh bells and Jack Frost.  In fact, we need to remember that Jesus may or may not have been born in winter, we don't really know, and for most of the history of the Christian faith we haven't really cared.
As I have stated before, and will gladly talk about with anyone who wants to listen, so many of the things we associate with Christmas are profoundly pagan things: winter solstice, evergreens, feasting, gift giving, and figgy pudding (actually not too many people really do the last one anymore, because well... yuck).
I'm not trying to be a Grinch, because I like those things (actually I kind of even like figgy pudding, if you put that sugary butter stuff on top of it).  I have a Christmas tree and we let our kids believe in Santa (at least Cate, Jack has scientifically debunked the mythology).
However, I think it's important that, as modern people of faith, we know what mysteries to hold tightly, and what myths to hold lightly.  As we proclaim the startling reality that God became a man, we need to understand that that alone is enough of an amazing truth. As Christians we should not get bogged down defending the mythological elements of the story and/or traditions, because that simply confuses the issue.
As the Daily Show points out so wonderfully, when people try to defend things that are logically and obviously not true, they just look ridiculous.
The idea that our celebration of Christmas really has that much to do with Jesus' actual circumstances is problematic.  As it is that we think Jesus looked like this:

Instead of this:

Of course, I know that the second image is every bit as speculative as the first.  Since folks didn't have cameras, and since Jesus was not rich enough or famous enough for anyone to actually paint his portrait, we really don't know what he looked like.  But given what EVERYBODY else who lived in that part of the world looked like at the time, I think the second one is a better guess.

Yet what everybody knows is that the first one is Jesus, because of tradition.  Just like everybody knows there were three wisemen (even though the Bible never says so).  Just like everybody knows that Mary and Joseph were cruelly cast out into the cold, because they didn't make proper reservations and ended up in some God forsaken cave with the animals (actually they were probably staying with relatives who had been put upon by far too many out of town family members who had to come to Bethlehem for the census.  Joseph and Mary getting their own stall was most likely a profound act of hospitality, everyone else was probably doubled up or crowded into the common living area.  And I guarantee you, when the baby was being born there were gaggle of womenfolk bustling around, keeping Joseph and the other men far away.  And I guarantee you the baby Jesus cried... a lot.

I also suspect that when a bunch of shepherds showed up in the middle of the night, there were some questions that needed answered before they ever got near the baby.  And when some Persians (read Gentiles) showed up with expensive gifts, there was more than a little consternation among Jesus' Jewish family.

But we don't hear much about any of this, because the really important thing is that something unprecedented had happened: Emmanuel, God with us.  I don't mind doubting or re-evaluating, or re-envisioning any of the details, and I'm not threatened by people who want to tell me that things didn't go down just the way the songs say.  Most of all, I'm not worried or upset when the world gets it all wrong, because that, for me is and important part of the true story of Christmas: when nobody expected it God showed up.

Questions and Faith

I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday.  As is often the case with such revelations, it began with a question from one of my kids.  My daughter, resident question asker and philosopher, posed a question about how long the earth was around before people lived on it.  I thought she had just been watching the Science channel or something so I simply said, a really long time, and proceeded to offer what I understand about the process of planet formation (which is not that much, so it only took a minute).  Then she asked her follow up, "so how come the Bible says it was only a few days?"  Then I remembered  that she is reading her new Bible that the church gave her for going into third grade, it's a "real" Bible, not an illustrated, clipped into stories, kids version.

It's always fun when, as a seminary educated, professional Bible interpreter (aka Pastor), you try to communicate the vastness of creation to an eight-year-old who just read Genesis 1.  They really ought to have a class like that in Seminaries.  I understood, in that moment, why people always want to take the literal route in understanding Scripture, you do open the door to all sorts of doubt about what you know and what you don't know about God.  Maybe it's just my opinion, but the idea of a God who would work for billions of years on a burning hunk of rock hurtling through a frigid vacuum, to create a primordial goo, where a few organic chemicals can eventually coagulate and form amino acids and where those fairly basic chemical structures could eventually, by some happy accident, begin to self organize and replicate into proto-life forms that would then slowly, through a mysterious process, called evolution, begin to variegate into multiple life forms, and within a relatively short period of time you had a staggering variety of these life forms, ranging from the extremely simple to the fairly complex, all fitting into a purposeful creative vision...

Well that's just amazing, and holy, and every bit as glorious as the six day version.

But back to my daughter, miracle of God's creative will that she is, sitting there with all her complex cellular processes happening, having evolved a large brain capable of processing verbal and written language and formulating questions about the formation of the universe, at eight years old.  She is wondering, given the special place that this book has in her life, and in the life of our family: is it true?

I understood why it's so tempting to go the easy way and forget about the billions of years, and the primordial goo, and amino acids and dinosaurs and all of that and just make up stories that fit into a simpler vision.

Then I remembered that even though her brother has logically built a rather ironclad legal case against the existence of Santa Claus, based on keen observation and sound deductions.  Even though he has presented her with said ironclad arguments, my daughter still chooses to believe.  Her faith is strong enough to assimilate the facts and keep knowing the real truth.  Eventually she's going to give up her childlike belief in fairies and flying fat men, but I want to start to build a solid logical ground for faith in God before that happens.  I want to be clear about the difference between reality and fiction. I want to take God out of the realm of fiction in her mind.  She needs to hear now that there is more to truth than just facts, and that stories are not just means of conveying information, they provide structure and meaning to our lives.

Unless I help her start to grow in faith that is rooted in reality, rather than fiction, her faith is going to get ripped away from her.  Unless I help her understand that stories can be true in more than one way, she's going to learn eventually that nothing is really trustworthy.

By helping her appreciate the wonder of life, where a few slimy molecules can eventually become a person who can imagine God saying "let there be light," I hope I'm helping her to realize what a miracle she is. And how her questions teach me more than my answers teach her.

Strange Brew

Religion has become weird.  It has always been strange; the quest for God or gods.  Religion has always been at least marginally concerned with the transcendent.  When I say weird though, I'm not talking about mystical or otherworldly, for those things are merely inevitable side effects of searching for the holy and the eternal.  What I mean by weird is disjointed and confusing, I would almost say schizophrenic, but that would be insulting to some fairly wonderful and interesting schizophrenics I have known.
If you follow the world of religion, as I do, you are subjected daily to a wide range of opinions, rants, and rhetoric.  The interweb gives one a wonderful resource for experiencing the weirdness of modern religion, you can read fairly thoughtful commentary on the life of faith from so many perspectives, but what you're likely to draw out of the whole experience is not clarity, far from it.  You will find that sorting through the mess is far from easy.  You will probably be astonished by how bound and conflicted people can be about sex, and politics.  You will read racist, misogynist and otherwise bigoted opinions from people who claim to follow Jesus of Nazareth.  You can find people who would like very much to kill you in the name of Allah.  You can find people who proclaim that we should use nuclear weapons in the name of Zion, and those are just the big three.
You can encounter all sorts of strange, inbred perversions of the major world faiths up in the hollers and in the backwaters off the major streams.  What you probably have to look fairly intently for is the truth, or some semblance of it.  You find a terrible number of people who take themselves awfully seriously.
But here's why I stick with this strange brew:
Yesterday, the kids of GSPC decorated the Christmas tree in the sanctuary (yes, we have a tree in the sanctuary, and yes, I know it's a pagan symbol that was co-opted by Christianity).  We decorated it with Chrismons (monograms of Christ), little white and gold symbols in the shapes of crosses, doves, crowns, Greek letters, and even a butterfly (a symbol of resurrection, and yes I know it's technically a metamorphosis).
The process was frenetic to the point of chaos.  We were "talking" about what each symbol meant, but mostly kids were just jumping at the chance to put the symbols on the tree.  They were using their imaginations, they were thinking, and most importantly, they were having fun.  Some of what I was telling them may have sunk in, some of it may not.  I don't really think I care very much, because in that moment the kingdom of heaven was there.  Hanging a white and gold triangle on your tree doesn't mean you really understand the doctrine of the Trinity, but I'm pretty sure God: Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer was pretty amused by the utter glee with which it went up
I guess I know it can't all be children's sermons, there are lots of grown up type things that we need to sort through as we grow in faith, but once in a while I think we grown ups ought to try and have that much fun in worship.  That's not too weird is it?