Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Finding God In The Conversation

Reading the Gospels, it is hard to shake the feeling that one is listening to one side of a telephone conversation. So much of what is written is really Jesus speaking ‘at’ people, rather than ‘to’ them. Sure there are questions peppered in, but they seem more like excuses for Jesus to go off on His own tangent, more like literary devices than the words of real people.
The reason for this is simple: the Gospels are based on an oral tradition that rose up around the person of Jesus. Since what was retained was primarily what He said, and not what was said to Him, the Gospels come off too often as a series of sayings and events rather than as the life of a concrete individual. And His lessons seem more like sermons, rather than one part of a broader conversation, which they probably were.
There are a few exceptions to this tendency in the written Gospels, and one can be found in Mark 12. Here we have an example of Jesus in conversation, and while it still feels like a lot is being left out, we get a much more organic picture of Jesus’ interaction with those around Him. There is a particularly beautiful exchange with one of the teachers of the law in verses 28-34, where Jesus gives the Greatest Commandment. Jesus is impressed by the young man and you can almost feel Jesus smiling when He tells the man that he is ‘not far from the Kingdom of God’.
This image of Jesus as someone who engaged in dialogue and dialectic is of supreme import to me. For me the primary picture of Jesus is God in this everyday person, just talking to people, having conversations with them. In and through those conversations lives, and ultimately the world, were changed. It must have been an experience like no other: to just be able to sit and talk to God in human form, like He was any other person. It is in conversations with others that I personally have had the most profound encounters with Christ, and so that image of Jesus is the one that I cling to most.
This has been the very nature of the youth groups I’ve led: just sitting with a group of individuals focused on important moral, religious, and theological issues and through that conversation finding God. One person brings up some point, another comes along and criticizes it, or bolsters it, and through it all we are trying to reach out to Something Bigger than ourselves. In those moments, through these people at this time, just talking these matters through, I feel lifted up to some Higher Place, and I know that we are all reaching out to something Ultimately Real, and that it is also reaching out to us. It is not like God is one factor within the conversation. The Revelation of God takes place in and through the conversation itself, through the struggle, the self-examination, and the directing of hearts and minds toward the Divine. That is what Christianity, and revelation, is all about to me. This transcendent experience, found in and through dialogue and community, has colored my entire view of the Bible. I see scripture as a dialogue between God and man, and between man and man, and I see God’s Revelation as being within the very fabric of that dialogue.
When Jesus is called “The Word of God” I take that to indicate that we are in conversation with the Divine, and that Jesus is the center of that conversation. Whenever people of good conscience come together to try to discover who they are in their relationship with each other and with God, and use dialogue to overcome their isolation and find something deeper, higher, and better, if you look with the right eyes, you can see the very Incarnation of God. You can see Jesus Christ. I know I do.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

The Double-Edged Sword of Apocalyptic Language

One of the great spiritual 'advances' I've made in my own life in recent years was to become comfortable, really comfortable, with apocalyptic imagery and to come to a real understanding of it's value. When I talk of 'apocalypticism', I'm speaking of the kinds of images one finds in Zechariah, Daniel, and especially the Book of Revelation. When people talk about these books and the imagery contained therein, they usually focus on the prophetic aspect of the writing. But it is particularly the Combat Motif that has both bothered me, and intrigued me, for some time now.

The Combat Motif is the theme of there being some evil counter-force in the universe working against God. In contemporary Christianity this is imaged as something like a fallen angel. The idea of a devil is bothersome to most mainline protestants. We emphasize a juridical model of atonement, and so success or failure to receive salvation is based on the fulfillment of some moral demand: either in action or more commonly in terms of our beliefs. We are expected to do or believe something specific and our success and failure in life, at least spiritually, is based on us living up to this expectation. We believe in free will, and we want to take responsibility for our own actions. I am also inclined towards belief in free will and I'm big on personal responsibility. I don't like the possibility of giving someone the excuse 'the devil made me do it'. Plus generally speaking modern people don't like to sound silly or childish, like we believe in the boogeyman or something.

But as I've come to respect Eastern Orthodox visions of atonement, whereby Jesus Christ breaks the power of satan through his sacrifice, a healthier respect for the Combat Motif, and for apocalyptic language in general, has developed within me. I think that while we've recognized the danger of fleeing from responsibility, forgoing apocalyptic language altogether has robbed us of part of what we need to talk in a fulfilling way about the meaningfulness of life, the reality of evil, and even the glory of salvation. I wonder if part of the reason for the success of the more evangelical faiths, over the more mainline protestant and catholic movements, is because they are able to speak much more naturally about the cosmic battle between good and evil. By placing our own internal and social moral struggles within the context of truly cosmic forces within the universe, they speak to life as it is actually experienced by us. They have a phenomenological reach, if you will, that the more common denominations seem to lack. The reality is that the Combat Motif reaches back to antiquity, and it plays an important role both explicit and implicit throughout the Bible. This issue is big in my current unpublished book BREATH OF GOD. And many churches just don't do a very good job of really wrestling with its place in our lives.

William James once said that life 'feels like a fight'. I'd tend to agree with him.
Apocalyptic language continues to be relevant because it speaks powerfully to that fact. It can distort the nature of the fight, and it is a danger that we will spend so much time fighting monsters under our bed that we will fail to fight the ones in our own hearts. But without it, I'm convinced that the full measure of life as it is lived, and the actual meaning of life in the world, can be concealed. There is a reason it is called "revelation".

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Gospel According To Earl

Both our junior and senior high youth groups are using the TV show MY NAME IS EARL to study the Bible. With its rather low-brow humor, it may not seem like the ideal choice, but in reality the show is full of moral and religious musings that make wonderful fare for a good discussion of various Biblical passages and principles. Some may also be upset that the show's central religious theme is Buddhist, rather than Christian. Earl, the show's main character, is obsessed with karma, the idea that what goes around comes around. In it he tries to balance out all the bad karma he's built up by making up for many of the mistakes he made in his rather shady past. This would not sit well with many Christians, who see karma as something antithetical to the Christian message. But, truth to be told, the Bible itself has a tradition within it that is very much like the Buddhist concept of karma.

The Deuteronomistic interpretation of history, which predominates in many of the historical books, the Book of Deuteronomy, and many of the prophets, interprets all historical events in the light of God's justice. Suffering is supposed to be the result of our own past sins or the sins of our ancestors, and success (by the Deuteronomical lights) is similarly the result of fealty to God. This insistence that suffering is the result of our own behavior, inculcated into the prophets a sense that all difficulty must be met with increased trust in God and personal virtue. Eventually, other members of the Israelite community began to criticize this worldview. The Book of Job, the Book of Ecclesiastes and prophetic books like Habbakuk, essentially are a turning to the prophets and saying 'hey God, hey prophets, the world doesn't really work that way. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. The world is more complicated than you seem to say it is'. Much of what is written in the Bible is an affirmation of, or a protest against, a karmic view of destiny.

The issue is a difficult one because in one sense, what the prophets were saying we should DO in response to suffering was, for the most part, correct. The prophets encountered a God that was so good that next to Him all human goodness looks like, in Isaiah's words, 'but filthy rags'. The idea that the only proper human response to our encounter with God is humble worship and repentance, and the idea that suffering must be met with faith, are largely correct. But the problem is that any rudimentary examination of the world will find that most events, good and bad, are not tied to anyone's behavior. Moreover, however true it is that all people are equally distant from God in terms of morality, it is not true that all people are equally good or equally bad, any more than the fact that both 7 and 8 are equally distant from infinity means that 8 isn't greater than 7. Relative moral judgments have to be made in the world, and if God can't guide those, then He can't guide the ethics of our lives here and now.

Figuring out how to reconcile the prophets' experience of God as infinite goodness, our need to meet suffering with faith, and the fact of evil within the world, is one of the primary challenges for any person of faith. The truth is life is not as simple as it is made out to be in MY NAME IS EARL. But examining what life would be like if it were, and what that means for us as people in the here and now, is something that is very fruitful for any Christian. It is no wonder that our discussions during this study have been particularly stimulating.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Culture and Bible Studies

In the youth group I lead, we often use movies and television shows to teach the Bible. We have two meetings each week, one on Wednesday and one on Sunday. On Sunday we often have a study focused solely on the Bible or some piece of church history, and on Wednesday we usually use a TV or movie-based Bible study. This isn't universally true, we have some movie studies on Sunday and some in-depth Bible-only studies on Wednesday. But, generally speaking, this is how our youth group works.

Well last Wednesday a young lady from our group asked whether the parallels that we find between the movies we watch and the Bible are there on purpose, or by "accident". It is an important question. Over and over again, my youth come to me with pieces of cinema or entertainment that we can use to illustrate various Bible passages. I have produced, with the help of many of my youth, over 50 Bible studies using every kind of movie and television series. How can this be so? How can SO much modern entertainment be related to what we do in church of all places?

To answer that question, let me talk a little bit about the process I use to write these studies. Those who have worked with me are well aware of my 'triangulation' method of curriculum development. I start with the movie itself. That might seem strange and somehow sacrilegious. Shouldn't I start with the Bible and move from there? In point of fact, I assume that the Bible relates to ALMOST every human experience in some way or another. The Bible is an extended meditation on people's relationship with each other and with God, extending over 1500 years or more. This is literally thousands if not millions of people, encountering God, encountering life and reflecting on what it all means. It is such a great record of, if nothing else, just people living life. Almost all art and entertainment also relates to some concrete human experience. Even the most abstract films have to speak to something of our actual encounter with the world to be entertaining or moving in any way, shape, or form.

So starting with the film I look for any particular scene or moment that brings up some important moral question or reflection on the human condition. I then turn to the Bible and look for lessons or images related to the same issue. So it is not true that EVERY movie is related to the Bible, directly, but some part of the Bible and the film are likely to be related to some issue we all have to deal with. Life is the reference point. The Bible is life at its most raw, to the degree any film or television show also relates to life, it'll also relate to the Bible. And that becomes the third angle in my method. After we've looked at the issue raised by the film and seen what the Bible might have to say about that issue, we ask questions about our own lives. It gets personal, as any good religious meeting should. Religion is both a very personal, and a very public thing. The key is to use the movie and the Bible as 'lenses' that let us look at life in a new way, and help us clarify our own vision about this grand adventure called the human experience.

Phillip K Dick believed that the Book of Acts unveiled a reality that is hidden underneath the veil of common experience. I think Dick was on to something, though I'm loathe to accept his ontology. I believe that the Bible, and religion in general, can help us see into the world at a level of 'depth' that other points of contact miss. That depth dimension is, in reality, the very ground of the common experience Dick saw as illusion. But whereas other points of contact with the world, like scientific investigation, give us a lot of precision and certainty, religion's vision is necessarily vague and risky. You have to sacrifice precision to get deeper, and when you get deep, your vision gets murky. That is just the cost of being a limited, embedded human being. I believe the Bible is a special kind of access to that deeper level of existence. If I didn't I wouldn't be a Christian. But it isn't the only access we have, nor is it in all ways complete. Other religions, and all kinds of art, can also help us keep in contact with that deeper place that gives us a glimpse of who we really are, and what it means to be in relationship with that Wonder we call "God". So I find it perfectly appropriate to use movies and television and music, which are for better or worse the prevailing artistic endeavors of our day, to help us on our spiritual journey. And I don't think it should surprise us at all when we keep finding connections between the art we love and the Holy Scripture that is the foundation of our lives.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

IONA Presentation on Ruth & Naomi

The story of Ruth and Naomi is told in the Book of Ruth, which has been for a long time one of my favorite books of the Bible, and a book of real significance, a significance I fear is often overlooked. So it is my pleasure to talk to you about it today.

The Book of Ruth begins with the story of the family of Naomi and Elimilech, who leave their ancestral home of Bethlehem during a time of drought and famine, and settle in the area controlled by the Moabite tribal group. Now in Moab they set down real roots. Their sons Mahlon and Chilion married Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah respectively. But eventually tragedy struck the Elimilech family. Elimilech himself died, and eventually Mahlon and Chilion also died, leaving Naomi alone with her daughters in law without any familial support system at a time when it was very difficult for women to survive without such a support system. So Naomi, broken and dejected, decided to return home to Bethlehem where she could, perhaps, find aid from family members. Ruth and Orpah tried to persuade Naomi to let them go with her, but Naomi refused. She said in essence, "my family system cannot be your support, and I cannot produce a new family for you. So you go back to your own people, and your own gods." Orpah reluctantly agreed to stay in Moab, but Ruth would hear none of it. She insisted on staying with Naomi and finally Naomi relented and let Ruth return to Bethlehem with her.

Now once in Bethlehem they must have found the support system they sought, because they seemed to find a place to live. We are told at one point that there was some family holdings of Elimilech, and that is likely where they took up residence. To boot, Ruth found work gleaning in the fields of a relative of Naomi's named Boaz. Gleaning was the practice of picking up the crops that were dropped during harvest. In Leviticus, the Hebrews were commanded to leave whatever they dropped while harvesting crops for the poor, and that is how Ruth and Naomi survived. Now Boaz took a liking to Ruth, inspired by her willingness to work so hard for a woman she wasn't even related to by blood. He showed her kindness and conspired with his workers to make sure she got more than what she and Naomi needed. And they survived like this for about a season.

Naomi detected in Boaz's kindness to Ruth a possible attraction, and so she told Ruth to lay at Boaz's feet and ask him to 'spread his cloak over him', which would be a sign that he would be willing to redeem or marry her. So one night Boaz was half passed out from drinking in one of his barns, and Ruth laid by his feet. When he woke up she asked him to lay his cloak over her. He was deeply moved by Ruth's willingness to choose a mate not based on what was best for her, but what was best for Naomi. That inspired Boaz and he said that he would indeed marry her, but that there was a relative more closely related to Mahlon who had first rights to her and the Elimilech family holdings. So he met with this relative and kind of played a trick on him. He said to him in essence "Hey, you are entitled to the property of Elimilech's family, but I have to warn you, if you accept it you will also have to marry the wife of Mahlon, Ruth." The man detected in Boaz's words a warning and passed on his rights, leaving Boaz free to marry Ruth, which he did. And they had grandchildren for Naomi that brought her great joy. One of those grandchildren was Obed, who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. And so Ruth is the matron of the Davidic Dynasty.

Now when talking about the historical significance of the book, I want to go back to a particular passage towards the beginning that I think embodies most of what is really important. When Ruth is trying to convince Naomi to let her go with her to Bethlehem she says to her "where you go, I will go. You're people will be my people, you're God will be my God, and where you are buried I will be buried. May God deal with me, be it ever so severely if anything other than death separates you from me."

You see there is a tradition in the Bible, a tradition of exclusivism and particularism. It is the idea that God had a special relationship with the Israelites and that His grace was for them alone, and it is an idea that permeates scripture. But there is another tradition, a tradition of universalism (little "u" not big "U"), a tradition that says that God's purposes are world wide in scope. That picture of Ruth INSISTING that she become one with Naomi's people and God is a perfect illustration of that tradition. Those who held to universalism believed that God's special relationship with Israel was meant to draw other nations to them and thus also to worship of Yahweh.

Another important aspect of Ruth illustrated in that moment is the theme of friendship. This is the first time in the Bible that a human friendship is elevated to the same level as, say, the parent/child or spousal relationship. There are Biblical friendships before this point, to be sure, but here we see friendship as the very embodiment of Divine Love, and this is the first time that happens. We are told that Ruth CLINGS to Naomi, in language very similar to how Genesis talks about the husband/wife relationship. That theme then repeats in the story of Jonathon and David and Esther and Mordecai and on into the New Testament.

There is also this sense in Ruth that God is not a particular actor within the story but the background for the story as a whole. There is no individual point in which God comes in. There is no theophany to move the story along, no miracle that gets people out of their problems and no prophet to reveal God's will. This is a simple, human story of people just trying to be the best people they can be. But the writer sees in that human drama a Revelation of the Divine as clear as any other. And that motif is repeated in Esther, in 1 Maccabees, in Judith, in Nehemiah and elsewhere.

And finally there is a circumstantial historical significance to the book. For in the Book of 1 Samuel we are told that King David is able to survive the onslaught of Saul in part because he can hide among the Canaanite tribes, most notably the Moabite tribe. Now it is entirely possible that his ability to connect with these Canaanites was due to Moabite ancestry. And so David's entire dynasty may have been established, in part, because of his connection to Ruth. It may be for that reason more than any other that the story teller is able to see behind this everyday human experience, the very hand of Providence. Thank you.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The Great Shift

Perhaps the most important ethical shift in my life was a shift from feeling like I was owed something to feeling like I owe something. For so long I was overly concerned with the bad things that happened to me and the good things I had done. Everything was a calculation, figuring out just how much I had suffered and put into life and how much I should expect out of it. I lived in envy of those who had more and was constantly complaining about how unfair life was. At my worst times, heck probably most of the time, I'm still like that. But as I searched for the meaning of life and the truth behind the religious quest, it became clear to me that my main impediment to happiness and fulfillment, and really to relationship with God, was this basic attitude.

Strangely enough, it was a film about Buddhism that helped me move out of this pattern. The film is "The Razor's Edge", the story of a man who is psychologically damaged by his time in World War 1. Embarking on the search for a meaningful life, he separates from many of the people he loves most, who seek a shallower and easier existence. At the end he tells one of his former friends what his quest was all about, beginning with a reference to his commanding officer in the war, who had died saving his life: "When Piedmont died, I knew I had to pay him back for my life. Along the way I learned there's another debt, we all owe for the privilege of being alive." I remember when I first heard those words, they struck me to my core. They soon became the center of all my thinking on such matters, and later on I found powerful intellectual and emotional exposition of this same idea in Victor Frankl's MANS SEARCH FOR MEANING, an account of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of the Holocaust.

These ideas now form the foundation for my understanding of Jesus' sacrifice and the meaning of grace. It is the idea that all that you have and all that you are, that every breath you take is a gift, and more than a gift it is a gift that cost God the life of His Only Son. The idea that creation and salvation does not come at the whim of God but through the Pain of God is the idea that, ultimately, all suffering has to be seen in the shadow of God's suffering. I am happy only so long as I keep my eyes on that Truth. To see each day as a gift, as something that I don't deserve and as something that comes at a cost to the Divine Spirit is to free myself from resentment and live from a place of happiness rather than making happiness some ephemeral 'something' I seek out there, somewhere.

And that gift then comes to me as something I have to use for God's good purposes. I know I can't pay back what I've been given, but I can try, and I think the trying is important. If a relative gives you a car it is a gift to be sure, but it is a gift that comes with real responsibilities. To crash the car in a street race the day after you receive it is to have made the gift into a curse, likewise the grace Christ gives is freely given, but it comes with real responsibilities. It is the shift from a sense of being owed anything to owing everything. Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 7 that we were 'bought with a price', is in truth the very foundation of a good and meaningful life. The shift from feeling you are owed to feeling that you owe is a massive one, but it is one I commend to anyone and everyone. Strangely enough responsibility is not the enemy of happiness, but its foundation.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

A Homily On Jacob's Struggle With God

This homily was given to St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Nassau Bay, TX, on July 31, 2011

When I found out that I was going to be preaching on this day, on this day in particular, I got very excited. That is because the readings for this day include my favorite passage from the Old Testament, "Jacob Wrestles With God". Its so mysterious, so alien, and yet somehow, so familiar. The imagery: Jacob all alone, the river, the dark and then God. A God so incarnate that in their subsequent wrestling match, God actually dislocates Jacob's hip. And then when God blesses Jacob He names him Israel, which is the name that would be given to God's people. And Israel doesn't mean "loves God" or "serves God" but rather "struggles with God". To be blessed by God, to be one of God's people, is to be called "struggles with God". I don't know about you, but that's my whole life right there man.

The other thing I like about this story is for an analytically minded person like myself, a historical background for the story is easily reconstructed. A more superficial reading is possible; because Jacob sends his family to the other side of the river. It's clear he's conflicted. He's asking himself "am I going to do it? Am I going to face the brother I betrayed all the years ago? Am I going to do the hard thing? Am I going to do the right thing?" And so the struggle is, on this reading, a struggle of conscience. It is something every day; something we all can relate to: we've all failed in life and had to struggle with the question of whether or not we would face the music for our failure. But to keep the reading on this level without the other is, to miss the point, for the point is that through that simple human moral struggle Jacob discovered God. He discovered a God that isn't high and raised up, distant from him, but an incarnate God, a God that was closer to him than he was to himself.

And the Gospel reading is the sort of thing. A historical reading is possible, especially when we realize that in the John version of this passage, the original loaves and fishes were brought by a little boy. It is easy to imagine using this young man's sacrifice to inspire the people there to give, and they did give until there was enough for everybody and more. But again, to leave the reading at this level without the other is to miss the point, for what really matters is that in that moment, the people there felt God moving in a way they never had before. They saw in the face of the leader who had inspired them to give the very face of the Divine.

One of my favorite theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was a gifted pastor and prolific writer. Perhaps one of his most enduring lessons is that if we want to encounter Jesus Christ, the living incarnate God we must discover Him through the moral struggles of our lives in the world. He said this explicitly in a letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge the day before he was sentenced to death for his involvement in the plots to kill Hitler. He said, "I learned later, and I am still learning up to this moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in life's duties and problems, successes and failures. Taking seriously, not our own suffering, but the suffering of God in the world. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, standing with Christ at Gethsemene. That, I think, is faith. That is metanoia, and that is what it means to be a Christian, and a man." The Genesis passage, and the gospel passage are no less profound than this. They are about a cosmic dimension behind human moral experience; a divine theater within which everyday human life takes place.

As a Christian educator, I have come to believe that instilling a sense of cosmic significance behind everyday human life is the primary challenge for the Church in the 21st century. This realization was driven home to me when a friend of mine came to me with a problem. Her child, I think he was six at the time, said to her one night, "mommy, I want to see Jesus. I don't want Jesus to just be in my heart I want to see Jesus right now." My friend didn't know what to say and to be honest, neither did I. But I've spent a lot of time reflecting on that child's simple request, and I think it corresponds to a need I see within the young people I meet. You see the young people of today are seeking faith, but they are seeking a faith that is relevant to life in this world. They will not abide a religion that demands that they stand at the edge of life and look to a time after death when they will finally know the relevance of their beliefs and finally see the face of their Creator. They yearn for the sense that what they do in this life matters, and matters ultimately.

This is a need I think that we as a church would do well to take very seriously, because I think it gives us an opportunity to reflect upon what Christianity is really all about. For I have come to believe that Christianity at its best is not primarily a set of doctrines and beliefs, which isn't to say that doctrines and beliefs don't matter. I don't even thing that Christianity is, primarily, a way of life, which isn't to say that actions don't matter. I believe that Christianity is, at its best, a way of seeing; a way of seeing the world and a way to see God in the world. And so Christian education is primarily not a teaching what, but a teaching how: a teaching how to see life in a whole new way. It is the instilling of a skill. The problem is that the church has been stuck in patterns of teaching what, rather than teaching how: teaching what to believe, and teaching what to do, and like I said all that stuff matters. But the real challenge to day is not giving laundry lists of beliefs and actions but the raising of consciousness, the changing of perspectives and the instilling of new points of view, and that is a much more difficult challenge.

Now, I am not sure how we meet this challenge exactly. I know that in my own ministry, television and film have played an important role. We watch a particular piece of art, we change the way we look at it and hopefully, over time, this helps us change the way we look at every day life: art can be a wonderful way to change perspectives. But I know that this methodology is limited, and that there will be more to it than that. As I said I don't have all the answers. Its a challenge, its a calling, but it is a calling I feel we must heed, because if we don't than we fail to communicate an incarnational theology and thus why Jesus matters at all.

To teach people how to struggle with God, to teach them how to struggle alongside God. That is what it means to be Israel, to be God's people, to be Christians and to be truly, fully, human. Amen.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Alpha & Omega

This was originally posted in the Easter 2010 Edition of the EPISCORIFIC E-ZINE

Recently I saw a most remarkable film, HUBBLE 3D, at the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s IMAX theatre. It was the story of the Hubble itself intermixed with actual images, in 3D, that Hubble has picked up from deep space. The pictures of nebulae, supernovas, and birthing planetary systems are so amazing to behold, that your mind almost will not let you believe that what you are seeing is real. It is a consciousness-expanding, life-changing experience, and I encourage everyone to go see the film.

As I watched the movie, with Easter fast approaching, I was struck by how truly UNIVERSAL (in the most ultimate sense of that word) the themes of death and rebirth, of resurrection, are. One of the things that convinces me in this religiously pluralistic world that Christianity itself is particularly relevant and has an important handle on the truth when it comes to the nature of God, is the centrality of these issues to the faith.

In one particularly moving scene in HUBBLE 3D (this one image alone is worth the price of admission), a super-massive star which is burning itself out creates ‘cocoons’ of living solar systems within the gas of the Orion Nebula. In yet another, a supernova produces a dance of color and light almost too beautiful to behold. Astronomers believe that our solar system itself was formed from the remnants of a supernova, the last gasp of a dying star. They know this because of the presence of iron in our world. The element iron is probably forged in the heart of a dying star. The redness of your blood, caused by the presence of iron, is likely the result of a star that died out in our galactic neighborhood some 10 billion years ago. You are, in part, made of that very star, it lives in you and me and everyone else. What a thought! As we see in the film, even a black hole, that cosmic image of total destruction and nothingness, is often in fact the locus that causes the formation of, and continually energizes, many galaxies, including our own, creating out of stellar death a dance of beauty and creativity.

Now the ancient writers of the Gospels knew none of this. But what they did know was that they had seen their all-important leader die, and all they knew and hoped for wiped away, only to have it return again, when they encountered their leader again in a whole new way. They realized in that moment that they had encountered something of cosmic, indeed Divine, proportions, something significant in an ultimate sense. That sense of a Divine encounter in the Risen Jesus gave rise to the image of the Cosmic Christ, found primarily in Revelations. Here Jesus is called “The Lamb Slain from the Foundation of the World” (Revelations 13:8), who because of His slaying is worthy to open the seals of God (Revelations 5:12), and destroys evil of cosmic proportion (Revelations 17:13-15).

Astronomers looking out on the cosmos have indeed shown us a universe of being overcoming non-being, of rebirth overcoming death. In that discovery, I see the very truth of Good Friday and Easter, and it gives me confidence that in those events something of the very nature and power of God has indeed been found. The Hope and Truth of Easter is simply that the end of every story leads to the beginning of a new one. And to that I say, Amen.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

On Mythical Motifs And Religious Validity

There is a lot of evidence that all religious myths and doctrines go through a process of re-interpretation, often incorporating historical data and the cultural milieu of the immediate writer/thinker while incorporating the earlier insight and adapting it. Older myths and proverbs were a way for people to interpret, understand, and talk about the situations and experiences they were immediately encountering.

This happens in our own culture today. Part of the reason religion still remains a part of the cultural economy is that religion often gives people a way to talk about what they are experiencing that other modes of discourse don't. So the African American struggle for civil rights is interpreted, for instance, through the lens of the Exodus, and any scapegoated person is likely to talk about being 'crucified'. Not to mention the way stories and sayings in the Bible are just a part of the way we talk...'read the writing on the wall, 'pearls to swine', 'you need to be a good samaritan'...I could go on and on.

People find a nexus between their own experiences and the stories, ideas, and outlook of the Biblical stories. So the story of creation, for instance, helps me express the otherwise ineffible experience of the beauty of a sunset or sunrise. I might, and often do, recite a psalm to try to describe to someone what that beauty comes to me AS, effectively.

Another way to illustrate what I am talking about is to look at the Jewish writings from the Hellenistic Period, the WISDOM OF SOLOMON or the MACCABEES. Images like the suffering servant from Isaiah are used to interpret the experience of the suffering of the Jews under Greek and Roman rule, and a key to how that suffering should be understood and responded to is found within the Servant Songs. What's more, the experience of, say, the Maccabean revolt itself went on to shape how later writers (like the gospel writers) understood and looked at the servant songs themselves. So its two way, with mythological and religious language shaping culture and historical experience, and historical experience influencing and changin how the myth and language itself is used and understood.

There is tons of historical evidence to back up this account. This is simply how religious language functions. It shapes the experience and is shaped by the experience.

People are right, for instance, when they point to the evidence that the resurrection account of Jesus has mirrors in earlier cultures. But this makes good historical sense, and religious sense. One can construct a reasonable historical scenario where the disciples use the earlier stories to express what they were experiencing in and through the events surrounding Jesus. THOSE stories were ways for them talk about what was happening to them. And indeed the experiences surrounding Jesus then shaped how we think about death, and rebirth, and plays a role in how we Christians experience life. The real question, the fundamental difference is whether these interpretations serve to hide, or reveal, something about the experience and possibly life itself. I am loathe to bring those old arguments up yet again. I'd rather focus on something new.

Another way to put all this is like this: we need not think of memes as parasitic. We can be impressed by the idea that ideas themselves act alive in some sense without assuming that they impose themselves upon us without any deciding subject involved. It may be that I CHOOSE to become apart of this or that living idea because it indeed allows me to say, see, think, the truth in a way I couldn't otherwise do.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Peace Within The Storm

Peace Within The Storm

One of my favorite Biblical passages is 1 Kings 19:11-13. Elijah, after facing down 400 enemies on Mt. Carmel, has fled to Horeb. There God proclaims that He will appear to Elijah. Elijah encounters a windstorm, a firestorm, and an earthquake but, we are told, God was not ‘in’ any of these. And then a gentle whisper comes to Elijah, and in this whisper Elijah finds God.

Religious experience is rarely something overpowering. God is self-emptying, as Jesus Christ is self-emptying, and as such He does not overpower or overwhelm anyone. God always gives us the power to say ‘no’ to Him. This is simply the nature of Suffering, Self-Giving Love. Alfred N Whitehead, the philosopher and mathematician said of religious experience that it is “equally individual and general, equally actual and beyond completed act, equally compelling recognition and permissive of disregard.” And that is the paradox. God’s word comes to us as something of supreme import; it calls us to not only response but action. Yet, it is always permissive of disregard, it always allows us to choose who we want to be.

The problem is that in this world, there are so many other voices, and those voices are not subtle, not quiet, they scream to us all the time, and they are terribly distracting. This is especially true of young people, bombarded as they are by all kinds of media and social influences. And it is not only external voices that are distracting. We are so often pulled in so many directions by our impulses, our instincts, and our desires. It is so often hard to even HEAR God’s voice, and even harder to trust in it the way we know we should. And again, if this is true for all of us, it is especially true for those in the formative stages of their adulthood. So the question arises, how can we learn to listen to and trust the still small voice that IS our very encounter with God?

First and foremost, we have to learn to recognize what God’s voice sounds like. To do that we have to spend time with scripture, we have to learn what other people hear when they hear God’s voice. Without community, tradition, and a study of scripture, we will never be able to recognize God’s call to us when it comes. Second of all, we have to learn to still the other voices, if only for a moment. Prayer and meditation help. So does getting away from all the input. That is what Elijah did: he went away from the crowds to a mountaintop all by himself. Obviously, there is a tension between the need for solitude the need for community, and finding out how to balance is something that takes a lot of time and work.

These are the ways, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with, by which we learn to HEAR God’s voice. But I wonder how much of our trouble is not an inability to hear but an unwillingness to listen. So many of those other voices are that of the stranger, the adversary, the one who wants us to doubt God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s existence even. In those moments when you are pressed upon to walk AWAY from the still small voice, to doubt, it what is so often needed is resolve. You have to reach out to God for strength, and make a decision that right here, right now, you are going to give yourself over to that vague sense that you are called to something better. So, ironically, that freedom that God is giving us BY keeping His voice small and still is also the very key to our success in following Him. The Way is not always smooth and straight, sometimes you have to crawl on your hands and knees and fight for every inch, but in that whisper calling you forward, you can find genuine peace within the storm.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Eulogy For Artlisa Rouse

Artlisa Rouse Eulogy

Wow, Great-Grandma huh? What an adventure, what a life! We are here to celebrate that life. Both the life she lived in the body, and the life she lives forever unto the Lord. But you know there’s another life, that she lives, here, now….in all of you, in me, in every life that she touched. When we remember someone, we are not just looking back to who they were, we are finding out who we are. The self, the soul, is not like a marble that bounces off of other marbles: it’s more like a narrative, a story, and it’s a story within a story.


When Abraham went out to Canaan he was not looking to be remembered by nations, he was looking to BECOME a nation. He wanted his story to live on in as many people as possible, and that’s exactly what happened. Nobody is more alive today than Abraham is. How did he accomplish that? He didn’t stay home, where it was safe. He went off on the road, into radical insecurity and uncertainty, not knowing where it would lead, but just trusting that something important was going on out there. I think great-grandma Rouse was like that.


How many people did she raise? How many people did she help raise? I had as good a relationship with her as most people do with their regular grandparents. And how did that happen? It happened because she didn’t stay home, because she went out on the road, even when we didn’t want her to any more (joke). She pushed life as far as it would go. And what was the result? There were wonders…a life that spanned two states, as I said before the raising up of entire people, a new century come to pass…and there were horrors: the death of some of her children. But she didn’t let those horrors deter her from the road, she had to be a part of whatever was going on, because she felt like it was something important.


I remember spending a weekend with her when I was a little kid. And she played with me, she played like a little kid herself when she was 80 years old, because she could still see life in wonder and amazement.


And so my message to you today is to make that story, your story: to go out on the road and live the adventure of life, as she did. To push life as far as it can go.


I also want to give you a warning: we do great-grandma Rouse no good by idealizing her. CS Lewis, after his wife died, said he could feel her slipping away, not because he was forgetting her, but because the parts he was remembering were only the good parts. So what he wound up with was the memory of an image of her, rather than his wife as she really was…but his wife was not an image, she was a person.


When someone passes, especially someone so wonderful as great-grandma, someone who did so much for so many, it is so easy to idealize them, to remember only the parts of the story we like. But great-grandma was a human being, flaws and all. It is important that we remember the whole story of who she was. This point was driven home to me when I visited her a couple of days before her 100th birthday. Her favorite topic of discussion was her neighbor Manuel and all these people who came by and helped her. And she said it made her realize she had been wrong about some things in her life, about certain types of people. Now reflect on that for a moment. At 100 years old, great-grandma was still growing as a person. If there is anything to learn from her story, it’s that. But you can’t do that if you don’t face her for what she was: an imperfect person, wonderful, helping so many, but a sinner like all God’s children.


And I think, man, if she helped us so much when she was imperfect, how much more now, now that she no longer sees through a glass darkly, now that she is made complete, now that the imperfect has been made perfect. How much more now is she helping all of us all the time and people all over the world and maybe all over the universe is ways we can’t even imagine? But don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can understand and have a relationship with what she is now by holding onto the ideal I talked about earlier… Uh-uh, what she is now is beyond our imagining. And you can only be a part of it if you learn to love the person she is for you, the person she was when you knew her directly. Because God had to love the imperfect before it could be made perfect, and because her story is one you can learn so much from. You can learn to go out on the road, to push life as far as it can go, knowing that there will be wonders, and horrors, but not letting those horrors deter you from the road, seeing them not as defeats but as challenges to be overcome. And realizing that you will make mistakes, but fighting against those mistakes to your dying breath, while trusting in the love of God. If you can make do that, if you can make that a part of you, then like great-grandma, your story will not end where someone else’s begins. It’ll never end. Amen.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Reclaiming A Scandalous Christianity

Christians have gone to great lengths to emphasize Jesus' rejection of the Old Testament conception of Messiah. Jesus, we are told, disavowed political and military power, and instead sought a Kingdom more universal, and more spiritual, than the one the Jews of His day sought. Thus Christians tend to see Jesus' mission as a success. Jesus did indeed usher in a Kingdom spiritual and 'catholic'. It is just at this point that, I fear, we lose the full force of the Gospel message. The Gospel, we are told by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:23 is a 'stumbling block' and 'foolishness’. Indeed, early Christianity was considered scandalous by most people. But where is there any scandal in a fully successful Jesus?

Luckily, we are part of a tradition that allows us to utilize source-critical tools in studying the Bible, and one of the values of this kind of approach is it can allow us to re-discover the scandal of the gospels. Because the real scandal is that by the yardstick of Jesus and His disciples, Jesus life ended in failure. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the conversations surrounding the Last Supper. Here we see a fully Jewish Jesus with a fully Jewish mission which He is trying to fulfill. At this paradigmically Jewish event, the Passover meal, Jesus proclaims a paradigmically Jewish image of The Kingdom of God. In Luke 22:29-30, the disciples are promised a place of real political authority in a worldwide Kingdom centered in Israel. To be sure, Jesus disclaims political and military authority for himself, and rejects the idea that the Kingdom of God will be brought about by the political machinations of mankind, believing that God alone will come to 'make things right'. However, the substance of that ‘made right’ Kingdom is a fulfillment of the hopes and wishes of the Jewish people: a universal kingdom of peace and justice, centered in Israel herself. Ultimately Jesus' obedience to God was an attempt to fulfill scripture in such a way to ensure that this kind of Kingdom would indeed come to pass. But it is clear that God did NOT come and upend the fortunes of Israel, or supplant the Roman Kingdom with a Universal Jewish Empire. Is it any wonder that some of Jesus' last words are a cry of confusion and abandonment?

The idea of a failed Jesus may bother Christians, but it is just at this point that Jesus' real salvific role can become apparent. Looking, for instance, at the horror going on in Haiti right now, seeing so many lives lost, so many stories that will never be told or remembered in this world, I realize just how profound the idea of God-In-Christ really is. The scandal of Jesus is the salvation of mankind. It is proof that even at our lowest, when all of life seems empty and loss, God is still with us. Jesus did not know, could not have known, the full breadth and meaning of what it was He was doing. His promises to His disciples betray a more limited goal, one that was not fulfilled. But in that unfulfilled dream, in Jesus not-knowing, we see the most profound meaning of His Divinity: the salvation of all that we have, of all that we are, and the sharing of God in our own lives at the point when they seem the most lost and void of meaning. Jesus can only truly be the God of our lives when we finally face what it meant for Him to be a man in this world.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A Wedding Homily

A Wedding Homily About Eden
One of my favorite parts of the wedding ceremony is the mention of the Creation Story in Genesis. The exact words that are referenced read 'It is for this reason that a man will go out from his mother and father and cling to his wife'....beautiful.

You know the Creation Story, Eden, is relevant to everything that came later in the Bible. The prophets used the image of the perfect world, as a judgment on the Israelites actions, and as a call to where they were supposed to be as a people. Every image of the Kingdom of God has some element of Eden within it. I think a wedding is sort of like that.

Jason and Carrie, this is your Eden, a perfected image of what your marriage is supposed to be. And if you use it right, it can be relevant to everything that comes afterwards. In this place, at this time, each of you have your assigned roles, knowing exactly which parts you are supposed to play and what jobs you have. You are supporting one another in those roles, doing all you can to help the other person fulfill their specific duties. You have, I hope, decided not to sweat the small stuff, aware that not everything today will go perfectly, and to forgive any small mistakes that may be made, especially by your minister during the service (joke). You have invited your friends and family to the table and given them a role to play as well. And most importantly, you have invited God in, you've given HIM a place and are grounding yourselves in the highest of values.

And my message to you today Jason and Carrie is this: as you move forward and face times that will not always be this perfect, use this day. Use it as a call to where you are supposed to be, and a judgment on wherever you are at, never being satisfied with 'just good enough'. Let it remind you to: not sweat the small stuff, to define your roles precisely, to support each other in whatever jobs you may face, to give your friends and family a seat at the table of your lives, and to remember God always. And Jason and Carrie if you can do that, if you can live more days closer to today than you live days farther away, then your entire lives together will be a revelation of the Kingdom of God for the rest of us. I have every confidence that it will be. Amen.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

A Defense of Universalism

Originally posted on FACEBOOK:

My pastor, friend, and employer Father RW Hyde gave a sermon today in defense of conditional salvation. Reverend Hyde gave a powerful defense of his contention that true Universalism is false, and yet emphasized the ultimate mystery surrounding the nature of salvation, leaving open the question of what conditions must be met to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He made it clear that he thought all who had a relationship with Jesus Christ could be counted among the saved, but also warned against drawing any lines clearly demarkating who was 'in' and who was 'out'. Let me begin by saying that I found the sermon moving and impressive. I found his position both nuanced and theologically sound. "Father Bill" was in rare form, and I found a lot in the sermon that I agreed with and liked. Whats more I found those parts I didn't agree with challenging and inviting. It is to those parts that I now turn.

The biggest beef I had with Father Bill's defense of conditional salvation was his reconstruction of the basic Universalist argument. He put the argument in the form of a syllogism: "God loves all people, God will save anyone He loves, therefore all people will be saved". This was the reasoning he then went on to argue was non-biblical. I want to contend here that this is not the strongest possible argument for Universalism, and offer an alternative argument from Biblical sources. I am not one to contend that we are forced to stick to the Bible slavishly when reasoning about God, nor do I think that the Bible is as monolithic on the issue of salvation as Reverend Hyde implies (in fact I think there are passages that clearly support Universalism and passages that clearly support conditional salvation, and we are forced to adjudicate between the two). However, I'd like to offer what I think is the strongest BIBLICAL argument one could give in defense of Universalism, if nothing else then to stick to the spirit of the sermon as it was given.

In this argument I will make the following contentions: first, I will contend that the central ETHICAL question with which Jesus is concerned is the question of the nature of the self. Jesus, I will argue, was less concerned with what we do, or how we believe, or even what the meaning of our lives is, than He was with the simpler but perhaps more difficult question of "who am I, really, anyways?" I will further argue that given Jesus' answer to this question, it is impossible for any one person to experience salvation unless all people experience salvation. That ultimately, we are only left with two options: either everyone is saved, or no one is.

I will begin with one of Jesus most powerful, mysterious, and famous sayings: "Anyone who tries to preserve one's life will lose it, and anyone who loses it will save that life alive." (Russell Pregeant's Translation). This saying stands as a paradox. What does it mean to 'lose one's life'? And how can one 'lose one's life' and yet 'save it'? What kind of teaching is this? It is first and foremost, NOT a straightforward ethical teaching. Jesus gives us no roadmap to follow to discover its meaning. It is mysterious and foreboding on purpose. It is, at base, a challenge for us to ask that all-important question 'who am I'? In the same vein, Jesus' injunction to 'turn the other cheek' (Matt 5:39 B) to 'give your cloak also' (Matt 5:40) or most shockingly to 'hate your mother and father' (Matt 10:34-35) should not be taken as straightforward moral teachings. They are, rather, vicious attacks on our normal sense of who we really are. Just as shocking to the Jews of Jesus' time is the claim that one's neighbor is the 'Good Samaritan' (Luke 10:30-36). To the hearers of Jesus' time the term 'Good Samaritan' would've made as much sense as talking about a 'Good Nazi'. It is, in fact, another way to disorient us, to destroy our normal sense of OURSELVES, to push us to 'lose our lives' and ultimately to identify who we are, with those people in the world with whom we CANNOT identify ourselves. Ultimately to 'lose your life' is to transcend yourself, and to 'save your life' is to find out that only when you have transcended all the little circles you like to draw around yourself (I am MY family, MY country, MY race, MY 'good people', MY 'saved') do you find who you really are. In the end, Jesus is calling us to identify our very selves with the whole of things, with all other people, to find our fulfillment in the fulfillment of all reality, and all people.

Let me be clear, this is not a matter of simply wanting other people to be happy, or wanting other people to be fulfilled. It is to realize that their happiness IS your happiness, that their fulfillment IS your fulfillment, and ultimatety that their sin is your sin as well. You cannot draw strict lines between 'me' and 'that person' between 'us' and 'them'. There is no line, you will never truly understand yourself until you understand yourself as a part of and as being constituted by, all of reality, including all people. Imagine who you most cannot identify yourself with...and now realize that you are a part of them, and they a part of you, what Jesus is talking about is no less radical than that.

The implication for salvation should be clear. In the end I cannot disentangle myself from anybody. If anyone fails to take part in salvation, then a part of me fails to take part in salvation, and I cannot in any way truly claim to be 'saved'. If any part of me burns forever in Hell, then how can I in any way claim salvation? If any part of me is obliterated into nothingness, how can I claim to find the real fulfillment I seek (which is only discovered in the fulfillment of the whole of existence)? Whats more, Jesus claim is inclusive of God. Part of the community, the wholeness, the selfhood Jesus was inviting us into was God's selfhood, that was the very significance of the Incarnation, that God Himself had chosen to become a part of all of us. So any unsaved people would in effect be parts of God Himself cast into the darkness. God in Christ has become a part of all of us, and we a part of Him, and we have discovered we are all a part of each other. In such a system, which lies at the very heart of Jesus' ethical teachings, Universal salvation is the only possible choice. Because we are all part of each other, if any of us is not saved, none of us is saved, and any one of us can only partake of salvation, if every one of us does.

Monday, February 28, 2011

A Reflection On The Parable of the Talents

Originally printed in our monthly EYC newsletter:

One of my favorite Bible stories is Jesus’ Parable of the Talents. This parable has come up many times in our youth group, because I think it is an important reflection on what faith itself IS. In some ways, for me, it all starts with this parable. We are told over and over again that Christianity is first and foremost about faith, but until we get a clear view on what faith even is we cannot begin to really struggle with what follows from our having it. Recently, while reading the Gospel of Matthew, a new dimension of the parable became clear to me, and because it brings up some interesting issues in contemporary Christian life, I thought I’d share it with all of you.

Mainstream Biblical scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written long after Jesus died, and are at least in part reconstructed from an oral tradition. Snippets and stories from Jesus life were floating around within the early Christian community. These snippets are called pericopes, and likely when the gospel writers received them, they came in no particular order, and so it was on the writer himself to try to put the various snippets together into a coherent whole. The writers of Matthew and Luke put the Parable of the Talents in very different contexts. Because of that, I’d long read the Parable as a stand-alone, as a complete idea all its own. The other day, when I read the Matthean version in its broader context, something powerful struck me. Now I think that it must be looked at as part of a larger pericope, one that runs from Matthew 24:1 through Matthew 25:30, and that changes things significantly.

That larger pericope is concerned with how Christians will behave if Jesus doesn’t return very quickly. Jesus warns that people will return to their normal patterns of behavior, and quit living out the Christian life passionately and faithfully. I’ve long known that the Parable of the Talents is about a contrast between a life of risk and venture on the one hand and a life of security on the other. But now I realize that Jesus is directing this to future Christians and not simply His immediate followers. Jesus is telling us in essence that to turn religion into another kind of safety and security, into something that makes life easier and more comfortable, is to lack faith. Christianity, Jesus is saying, is about living outside of safety and security, and living a life of real risk. We are being warned that doing just enough to get by because we fear God is to live without faith. Going to church once in a while, and saying the right prayers, and believing the right things, is not enough. It’s not faith. The life of faith is one where we push our religion as far as it can go, where we take real risks with ourselves, and explore life in all its depth and breadth.

This is so hard for people nowadays, especially young people. They have so many things that they are committed to doing and being a part of, and much of it is such an important part of them making the kind of future for themselves they want. But for all of us, a sacrifice must be made somewhere, life must look different because we are Christians, and not just on Sundays. In the Parable of the Talents we have been warned, that it is so easy to get trapped by the structures, and to start living a life geared to making things as comfortable for ourselves as we can, and that’s not what Jesus intended. I am guilty of it, we all are, but that is just death in tiny steps. We must discover in ourselves the real adventure of following Jesus. Such an adventure can only come with sacrifice and risk. But the rewards for us, as it is for the faithful servants in the story, are boundless.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

A Homily About Music

I gave this homily at the Winter 2011 "Jam Out" Lock-In:

I love music. I love all kinds of music. I love to talk music, ya know? To critique songs and artists. I LOVE live music. I'll attend almost any live show you invite me to. The process of making music fascinates me. Probably has something to do with the fact that I have NO musical talent whatsoever. But for whatever reason, making music might as well be doing magic, to me. Or its like when your favorite song comes on the radio, and you have the urge to push your ear against the speaker because it sounds like right on the other side of it is another world, and you are listening, into it. And then that moment comes with that certain line or note and you're lifted outside of yourself. Its almost like music itself is trying to tell us something. There's a film called THE SOLOIST and its about this schizophrenic homeless man who is also a virtuoso cellist and violinist. Its a true story, I've seen interviews with the real guy. Most of what he says is incoherent, because that is what happens when schizophrenia gets real bad and goes untreated, it becomes hard even to string words together. But when he taks about music, he says some beautiful and profound things. He talks about it like its alive, like its a person. One of things he says that I love is "Music is trying to tell us that life isn't that bad". I think thats pretty close to the truth. You see, musicians communicate the content of experience, what its like to experience something. I'd have a hard time writing a formula which would let you understand 'what its like' for me to see a beautiful sunset or what its like when I fall in love, but a musician using sound and word can communicate these things. Throughout human history the fullest range of human experience has been explored in song. And the amazing thing is, over and over again, at the foundation of almost every human encounter of the world is found something profound, or true, or fun, or funny, and almost always beautiful. In short, something good. And if the human encounters with the world can all be reduced to something good, then in a very real sense music is telling us that life is good, and can be embraced.

There is a tradition in Christianity of self-denial, of...puritanism, of removing oneself from the world. Now, I think this tradition is important, I think it has something to teach us, I don't want to give up on it fully. But there is another tradition, exemplified by the John passage, that tells us that Jesus came to give us life abundantly. It tells us that in Christ's death God is telling us that we can step out onto the adventure of life with reckless abandon, knowing that indeed we will make mistakes, and that horrors will even be produced by those mistakes, but that God has taken those horrors into Himself and overcome them, and so we can see life as good, and worth living. I think that is what we can learn from music. And the thing I like about it, is given THAT definition of music, it means that all music, sacred or secular, can get us closer to God. Because if the message is that life is good, then over life there can only be...love. Amen.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

A Cosmic Incarnation

Of all the advancements made in the 20th and 21st centuries…the technological and scientific achievements, the expansion of rights and international awareness, the maturing of our understanding of the human mind…few are as unnoticed, nor as monumental in scope, as the advancements that were made in the field of theology. Many intelligent men and women of the last century and current century put their minds to the great theological questions of the ages.
They came up with some amazing, creative answers to these questions, and posed questions of their own at least as interesting. Expressing these insights to the general religious populace, finding ways to explain their relevance, is one of the major jobs of modern ministry. And nowhere can one find a more interesting line of discussion than on the issue of the incarnation.

Much of the significant theologizing on this subject has been a corollary of some deeper project, and no greater ‘discovery’ was stumbled upon than the image of incarnation that took place among theologians whose main focus was not Christology, but cosmology. I’m talking about those men in women who sought to grapple with the rising scientific consciousness of mankind and what our expanded understanding of the universe might mean for the Christian worldview.

The most striking thing that came out of these musings was that modern science has forced us to see the universe itself as undergoing a kind of evolutionary process. The universe, these people suggested, is not a finished project, but a work in progress. We have to stop thinking about God as having ‘created’ the universe and instead realize that God ‘is creating’ the universe. The implications for incarnation have been this: God’s incarnation is not something that happened at one particular point in time, but rather is also a part of this cosmic process. Science, seen through the eyes of faith, is not only a journey of discovery, but a journey of self-discovery. Who we are is in part inclusive of the whole cosmic evolutionary history, and so from a Christian’s point of view, that means that Jesus Christ also, being fully man AND fully God, did not ‘begin’ at Bethlehem, but rather the whole of natural and human history is the story of Him becoming incarnate. Nor did that story end with His death. The Church is Christ existing still, and that story of incarnation continues with us. We, too, are a part of that cosmic and divine story.

This realization has had grand results in my own life. I have learned to see the entire cosmic process as a system of divine promise. No longer is Christ some far-flung deity in another world. Rather I have learned to truly see Christ within the dance of nature and my own life. The little things I do become filled with significance even as my own self-centered way of looking at the world shrinks, as it is no longer simply me, or mankind, but the entire cosmos that is the arena of divine grace and salvation. The incarnation from this view has clear relevance to every human life, because every human life is a part of the process of incarnation, and every action becomes a part of the Christian message, because as Alfred North Whitehead said, "Every act leaves the world with a deeper or a fainter impress of God." However, since this God is a truly cosmic Divinity, no act is the final word in the story, and there is always a larger context in which one is acting. The relationship between grace and responsibility is clearly enlightened.

I don’t know about you, but I feel constantly bombarded by two worldviews: one the dualistic other-worldliness of much of modern Christianity, the other the materialistic monism of scientism. In both cases, one gets the feeling that the true meaningfulness of life in this world is lost, the complexities of human experience ignored, and the full breadth of the Biblical message is forgotten. The more nuanced, cosmic view of many modern theologians is the Christianity I was, thankfully, introduced to when I finally sought a religious faith as an adult, but I’ve been saddened to find that among most people it is unknown or ignored. In my experience, no worldview has more to offer us in the way of enlightening our world, and making the Bible something that is truly relevant to the life we live today.