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.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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