The Digital Story of the Nativity

If you haven't seen this, you should. It is very cute... Merry Christmas!

Bottom Line Non-Negotiables

They come out of the woodwork this time of year even more than they do at Easter-time. They come challenging me to change their minds about the “magical” (their word, not mine) things, or the “superstitious” (again, their word, not mine) things about Christianity. As modern or post-modern people, they simply cannot reconcile their knowledge of how the universe works with what they think are the “bottom-line, non negotiable” about all sorts of things – the inerrancy of the bible, the virgin birth, how the bible says one thing one place and a completely contrary and other thing in another, and all the rest. It’s as if they are yearning to be convinced that they have it all wrong, that the bible really should be read literally, that the virgin birth can be reconciled with everything else we know about higher mammals reproducing, and how the bible is, as a piece of literature, a difficult but interesting cohesive and consistent whole. And they are disappointed when I am not smart enough to do that.

Mostly, I cannot do that because these things that they think are non-negotiables are very negotiable to me. Now, if they would only ask me what my bottom line about all this religious stuff is, what my non-negotiables were, they would likely be surprised by my answers, because they have little or nothing to do with miracles or biblical inerrancy or any of the other stuff that we get into arguments about.

I can think of 4 “non-negotiables,” and none of them have anything to do with:

-this or that style of worship,

-this or that style of study programs,

-this or that style of architecture, organizational schemes, dress codes, political affinity tradition, custom, culture, denomination,

-old hymns, new hymns, hi-tech, low-tech, intellectual distance, touchy-feely intimacy

Rather, at least today, for me those 4 “bottom line” things are:

1) Jesus is an embodiment of God. Somehow, through Jesus, God comes from beyond time and space to show us how it’s done. I have no idea how that happens, and it doesn’t really matter to me.

2) To be Christian is to be open and willing to be an embodiment of God like Jesus. To be like Jesus doesn’t mean dressing like him, eating like him, wandering from town to town like him; it doesn’t mean not listening to hard rock music and not dancing and not standing up for what you think. To be like Jesus means to try to be an embodiment of God, and that means to care for others with integrity, honesty, and true compassion.

3) To be a Christian, I have to know intimately the story of Jesus, because the beginning place for every interaction is the goal to be like Jesus. And that means that I need to know more about the story than Christmas, Easter, and the occasional platitude that excuses my non-Christian behavior while condemning yours.

4) To be a Christian is to embrace the notion that God loves me unconditionally, just as I am. God loves you unconditionally, just as you are. I am, and you are, therefore, freed from having to prove myself to me to you, or to anyone, and am liberated to love even those who seem most unlovable to me and you.

Much of the time, the stuff we pick fights about (miracles, the suspensions of the laws of physics, the often prejudicial ways very pious people often behave, literal or figurative reading of the bible and tradition, etc.) help us avoid the things that matter most. And today, 4 days before Christmas, these 4 things are at the heart of what matters for me.

A

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11: 6-9)

"A." A little child shall lead them. A little child. Not Jesus, supposed son of Joseph, son of Mary, son of God. Not the Messiah. A little child shall lead them. The realm of God's shalom, God's wholeness, justice and peace is to be ushered in by a little child. At least here, the poetry points not to a specific little one in the Davidic line; it simply hints at a little child. And one more thing: the Hebrew word Isaiah uses for child, năh'-ar, just like the English word "child", is genderless. The poetry doesn't say, "the little male child;" it says, "a little child."

Now you might think that I'm making a very big deal about a very little word. But I think the simple truth is that you and I have been conditioned by a lifetime of Advents and Christmases to read the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures as God-sanctioned, Nostradamus-like prognostications of Jesus. The problem is that while understanding Jesus in the light of these prophecies helps us get a full picture of how Jesus' contemporaries understood him, to understand the poetry as beginning and ending in Jesus misses the point.

The point is that the poetry says "a little child," and that while Jesus is everything that we say he is, and more, Jesus is not God's only chosen one. God has not finished acting in history, and God is not finished with chosen ones and promised ones, little boy and little girl chosen ones, little boy and little girl promised ones. A little child.

The prophet's poetry is not about predestination, where in some corner of God's heaven there's a book with a script for every child's life in it. The prophet's poetry does suggest something about our self-disciplined predisposition toward the little ones who at every level people our lives. What if our predisposition toward every child – regardless of wealth or lack of it or beauty or lack of it or parentage or circumstance or Wexler scale scores – included the notion that each child begins life as a little child imagined by the prophet. What if we decided that we would see and embrace each little child –

Ä the babies we baptize with some regularity,

Ä the well-scrubbed little faces lit up with their holiday programs,

Ä the hollow little hungry faces that stare at us from the site of the famine du jour,

Ä the babies whose births we await with both joyful anticipation and great fear and trembling –

as if that child were a promised one and chosen one of God?

What if you and I took seriously the notion that we were to be stewards of God's gifts to us, and that God's highest priority were the compassionate, impassioned care of God's promised and chosen little ones? What if you and I behaved as if each child we encountered – again, regardless of wealth, or lack of it, or beauty, or lack of it, or parentage, or circumstance, or Wexler scale scores – was one of God's highest priorities? Even when they won't stop crying. Even when they are stubborn. Even when they remind us of us at our very worst. What if we determined that we would be in relationship with each child we encounter as if she or he were a chosen, promised one from God?

If we did, the day would certainly come when no longer would one American child die every 53 minutes from the effects of poverty. If we did, the day would certainly come when no longer would 14 million American children live below the poverty line. ( see the latest report from the Children's Defense Fund on "The State of America's Children" at http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-of-americas-children-2010-report.html) If we did, the day would certainly come when we realize that taking only adequate care of the children among us is less expensive than taking care of their broken adult lives to be.

God's little boy and little girl chosen and promised ones don't decide when or where to be born. They don't decide where to call home. They don't choose their family's religion. They do not chose their parents' irresponsibility. The greatest temptation is to assume that all I'm called to do is take care of my own. The greatest truth is that all of God's little boy and little girl chosen and promised ones are my own. And your own.

U2 "Yahweh"

Our reading material for our next Faith Journey gathering (Tuesday January 18th, 6:30 PM at First Church of Lombard) mentions U2's song Yahweh. Here's a video of U2 performing the song at a 2007 concert in Chicago. Lyrics below...

Take these shoes, click clacking down some dead end street

Take these shoes and make them fit.

Take this shirt, polyester white trask made in nowhere

Take this shirt and make it clean, clean

Take this soul, stranded in some skin and bones

Take this soul and make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh always pain before a child is born

Yahweh, Yahweh still I'm waiting for the dawn.

Take these hands, teach them what to carry

Take these hands, don't make a fist, no

Take this mouth, so quick to criticize

Take this mouth, give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh always pain before a child is born

Yahweh, Yahweh, still I'm waiting for the dawn.

Still waiathing for the dawn, the sun is coming up

The sun is coming up on the ocean

His love is like a drop in the ocean

His love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh always pain before a child is born

Yahweh, Yahweh why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city, a city should be shining on a hill

Take this city, if it be your will

What no man can own, no man can take

Take this heart

Take this heart

Take this heart

And make it brave.

God's Reign/Realm/Kingdom... and Frederick Buechner

You wouldn't really expect any other 1,900 year old literary collection to reflect the cultural sensitivities of a completely foreign contemporary setting, but that's exactly what many of us do with the Bible. We are surprised and sometimes taken aback when we expect the Bible to express itself one way, and what it really says is something strikingly different.

Case in point. Many contemporary thinkers and church people are uncomfortable with the phrase "kingdom of God." Some are uncomfortable with the "male-ness," the "assumed patriarchy" of something called a "king-dom." Those who pay attention to these kinds of concerns have attempted to alleviate that tension by translating male terms for monarchs and monarchies with non-gender-specific words (eg. "Sovereign" for "King," "realm" or "reign" for "kingdom" and the like. That makes some old favorite hymns a little difficult to sing ("Lead on, eternal sovereign" doesn't roll off the tongue for many as does "lead on, o king eternal), but it kind of lets folks at least talk about what the Bible means when it mentions it.

Another way to approach the whole "kingdom of God" discussion is the way author Frederick Buechner does in his remarkable little book Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, published the year I graduated from college. In Wishful Thinking Buechner offers brief essays on a number of very common but often misunderstood and confusing personalities and ideas in a way that makes them accessible. Here's what he writes about "The Kingdom of God:"

"It's not a place, of course, but a condition. Kingship might be a better word. 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' Jesus prayed. The two are in apposition.

"Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God's kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even as this moment, the kingdom has already come.

"Insofar as all the odd ways we do God's will at this moment are at best half-baked and half-hearted. the kingdom is still a long way off, to be more precise and theological.

"As a poet, Jesus is maybe at his best in describing the feeling you get when you glimpse the Thing Itself -- the kingship of the king official at last and all the world his coronation. It's like finding a million dollars in a field, he says, or a jewel worth a king's ransom. It's like finding something you hated to lose and though you'd never find again -- an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the kingdom really comes, it's as if the thing you thought you'd never find again is you."

Notes from Marcus Borg

When Marcus Borg wrote The Heart of Christianity, he was interviewed by Deborah Caldwell for Beliefnet. In addition to recommending that website to you (www.beliefnet.com), I found this interview fascinating, and very relevant to our conversation in a couple of weeks (Tuesday, October 19, 6:30 PM at First Church).

Why Be Christian? (from www.beliefnet.com)

Interview by Deborah Caldwell

In renowned Jesus scholar Marcus Borg's latest book, The Heart of Christianity, he responds to an audience of readers who, over the years, have asked him about the essence of their faith. How, they ask, can Christianity be relevant in a time of ever-expanding historical and scientific knowledge? In a conversation with Deborah Caldwell, Borg answers that question, touching on the afterlife, living in a multi-cultural society, the meaning of salvation, and being born again.

You say that Christianity in North America and Europe is going through a paradigm change-that a new vision of how to be Christian is emerging. What is it and why is it happening?

Broadly speaking, there are two different visions of Christianity in North America today. The earlier vision is the product of the last few hundred years, especially the last 150 years. This earlier vision of Christianity is literalistic in its understanding of the Bible, absolutist in its understanding of the ethical teachings of the Bible, and exclusivist--meaning Christianity is the only way.

That's the vision of Christianity that the majority of us grew up with, whether we are mainline Protestant, Catholic, or conservative Protestant. But that way of seeing Christianity has become unpersuasive to millions of people--who can't be literalists or absolutists or exclusivists. But now there is an emerging vision, an emerging paradigm.

The conflict between these two paradigms can be seen in many different places. In the second half of the 19th Century and early in the 20th Century we saw conflict over evolution. Thirty years ago the conflict was over ordination of women in mainline denominations, and of course today we see the conflict about gays and lesbians in the church. For Protestants, the two visions have everything to do with biblical authority. The earlier vision sees the Bible as divine product with a divine guarantee to be true. The emerging vision sees the Bible as a human historical product, the product of two ancient communities [Judaism and Christianity]. It tells us what they thought, not what God thinks.

My book has almost an evangelistic purpose--to show that Christianity makes persuasive and compelling sense, that the intellectual stumbling blocks that many people experience with Christianity are unnecessary and artificial and largely the creation of the last few hundred years. I'm persuaded that Christianity, rightly understood, makes sense--and so do Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And they make very much the same kind of sense.

You say the original way of seeing Christianity has become untenable for a lot of people. How do you know this?

Mainline denominations have seen a membership decline of roughly 40% over the last 35 years. But most of the people leaving mainline denominations have not joined more conservative churches. They've simply dropped out. Presumably, a major reason many of them dropped out is that the form of Christianity they learned growing up ceased to make compelling sense to them. If it had made sense, they still would be in the church.

Another example: The vast majority of Americans, according to polls taken in 2002, cannot be religious exclusivists. Only 18% of people surveyed in two different polls taken in 2002 said yes to "My religion is the only true religion." Another example: In a Gallup poll taken in 1963, 65% of the sample were biblical literalists. By 2001 that figure had gone down to 21%.

But hasn't this issue of the paradigm shift, how to make Christianity relevant, been going on for at least 35 years? What is different now?

The shift has been going on in seminaries for over a century. It actually began a couple hundred years ago, but then it was a tiny circle of theological elites. Maybe in the last 10-15 years it's become a major grassroots movement among the laity. If you look at the number of religious bestsellers on the New York Times list, all of them reflect the emerging paradigm, with the exception of the Left Behind series.

No Faith Journey meeting September 28

We're having a little trouble getting our gatherings scheduled, so we're wondering if either the 3rd Monday or 3rd Tuesdays would work better for folks. Could you e-mail me at rhatfield@firstchurchoflombard.org and let me know, and then, hopefully, we'll get things rolling again in October.

Thanks for your patience.

Martin Marty

For decades, one of historian Martin Marty’s greatest gifts is his ability to drill down through the cultural foolishness of the day and get down to brass tacks about what’s going on around us. I’ve mentioned his weekly e-newsletter Sightings before. This is what arrived in my inbox yesterday. It speaks for itself.

Sightings 9/13/2010

Franklin Graham on Islam and Violence

-- Martin E. Marty

Aestas horribilis, Queen Elizabeth might call the summer just past, or those who care about civility in religious discourse and interfaith relations might judge it to have been. While Sightings took August off, forces, agencies, and voices of prejudice and, frankly, hate-mongering, did not. “Protest mosques,” “Restore America,” “Burn Qur’ans” and many more are keywords in our internet memory. One set of these keywords is so illuminating and nearly normative that it merits comment before we enter a new but not necessarily more promising season. I refer to the pronouncements of evangelist Franklin Graham on Muslim genetics, competition for souls, Islam as killer, and scriptures.

Genetics first: There is no need to repeat Graham’s bizarre charge that Islam is passed through the genes of a father to a son. Scholars of Islam find that idea nowhere in its teachings. Conversion-expert Graham should understand that one becomes a Muslim the way the born-again in Graham’s tradition become Christian: by making a profession of faith and a commitment through word and action. We won’t go into the political dimension of this issue with reference to Graham’s subject, the President of the United States, because, as long-time readers know, Sightings does not “do” Presidents.

Competition for souls, second: Graham’s work is often positioned along lines crossed in Africa, where Muslims kill Christians and Christians kill Muslims. There is little point in going into “Who fired first?” or “Who killed most?” In religion-based warfare, there is never really a first and a second; there are only debates about first and second. Graham has chosen to attempt conversion in the second most tense area known to the two faith communities. Without doubt, there is ugliness and murder, but we picture militant Muslims speaking of Christians the way Graham speaks of Muslims. Call it a draw. (By the way, “the undersigned” is a Christian who sees a place for evangelism.)

Islam as killer of Christians, third: Graham has repeatedly charged this year that Islam, which he frequently calls “a very wicked and evil religion” is mandated to kill, and that it kills. He does not qualify his remarks, as the word “very” suggests and even though he is often cautioned about the possible lethal consequences for Christians and Muslims if things get more heated. Historians have no difficulty finding Muslims in killing modes. The problem is that historians also find Christians in killing modes, from most years of Christendom, when the sword advanced Christianity, down into our own time. Think of the Christian justifications in World War I. Think Christian killing Christian in Rwanda, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

Fourth, scriptures: It is easy to find passages in the Qur’an and other classic Muslim texts in which Allah’s people may or should kill to advance God’s cause. Isolating these chunks of the Qur’an which are by now most familiar to Americans calls for overlooking Islam’s many peace-promoting texts. And it also means overlooking parallel biblical texts. There are far more pictures in the biblical texts of a warrior God licensing and, yes, commanding “omnicide,” the killing of men and women and children who stand in the path of God’s people. Yes, all that was long ago. Now, you will never (at least I never) find Jews or Christians who think that killing people of another faith is a scriptured mandate for them.

Let’s hope and work for a less horrifying autumn.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Submissions policy

Sightings welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to illuminate and interpret the intersections of religion and politics, art, science, business and education. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. The editor also encourages new approaches to current issues.

Attribution

Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Contact information

Please send all inquiries, comments, and submissions to Shatha Almutawa, managing editor of Sightings, at DivSightings@gmail.com. Subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription at the Sightings subscription page. Too many emails? Receive Sightings as an RSS feed. Sign up at http://divinity.uchicago.edu/rss/sightings.xml.

As If

Last week a friend reminded me of a commencement address delivered 5 years ago by David Foster Wallace in which he talks about the most valuable gift of a good education is the ability to make responsible and reasoned choices about what to think about. To introduce his point, he tells two goofy little stories.

The first: "There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the !@#$ is water?"

The second: "There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: 'Look, it's not like I don't have actual reaons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out, "O God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me."' And now in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. 'Well then, you must believe now,' he says, 'After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. 'No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.'"

After which, Wallace says:

"Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere...do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Ples there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogamatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a cloase-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

35 years ago...

35 years ago today was a very hot Saturday, at least in Metamora, Illinois. My childhood friend, Dan, and I found some locals (including Peggy's kid sister, Becky, who was already at her tender age the best athlete among all those gathering that day) and played softball for a couple of hours, during which one of us unleashed a wild throw and dented the aluminum siding on Peggy's Mom and Dad's house (to this day, Becky insists it was my wild throw, but she threw so much harder than I). We got mildly sunburned, went back to the hotel to clean up and get ready for the evening's activities. Peggy had picked out brown tuxedos (brown was fashionable in August of 1975 - or so she said), so best man Dan and 4 friends from Eden Seminary - Gregg, Jim, Dave, and Greg - and I put them on and headed to the Christian Union Church in beautiful downtown Metamora.

I spent a lot of energy that late afternoon and early evening trying to appear unflustered, and the only person I was fooling, I'm sure, was me. Another friend started singing, Henry Nieschlag began playing the processional, and I spent the longest 2 minutes of my life trying not to pass out and wondering if Peggy was going to pull a runaway bride thing while a parade of sisters and women friends cascaded in ahead of her.

I knew it even then when I was young and kind of cocky - I knew I was "marrying up," and that Peggy was totally out of my league, and that I was so nuts about her that I would have simply been vaporized had she decided to not be with me. Convincing her to marry me, given what I felt was a calling and she called my "chosen profession" was no simple task. To this day I'm not completely sure whether I finally convinced her or if I just wore her down, but she didn't run (though she kind of tried to at the last minute -- seriously, Mr. Nieschlag was in the middle of the processional when she told her dad she couldn't go through with it and he said, "oh yes you will" and the rest is, as they say, history).

I am not making any of that up - even the brown tuxes! That Saturday 35 years ago, I was the luckiest guy on the planet. Still am today.

A Little Research Project

Here's a little research project for anyone who wants a head start on what we're talking about in church this Sunday, or who has nothing better to do with the last week before Labor Day.

For this project, you will need a copy of the Gospel of Luke (doesn't matter which version), a piece of paper, a pencil, and, if you're lousy at math, a calculator, slide rule, abacus or really smart young person to help you with the numbers.

The basic premise of the project is that thing we've talked about over and over again about reading the bible that requires no great knowledge of ancient languages and cultures, but only a grasp of simple arithmetic. That premise: if a piece of biblical literature repeats itself over and over again, or it the characters in that piece of biblical literature do the same things over and over again, we can be certain that the writer is not trying to bore us to tears, but rather trying to make sure that we understand how important something is.

To begin, sit down and read the Gospel of Luke in one sitting (it will take you no longer than 20 minutes if you choose to not be distracted.) Then, answer these questions (correct answers are below... read Luke, and don't cheat!)

1) How many chapters are there in the Gospel of Luke?

2) How many of those chapters deal with the trial and crucifixion of Jesus?

3) How many of them deal with the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus?

4) How many of them deal with Jesus' family tree?

5) Take the answer to #1, and subtract the answer to #2, #3, and #4. What do you get?

6) What very common human activity appears in the Gospel of Luke the same number of times as the answer to # 5?

7) What do you suppose the Gospel writer is trying to tell us?

Don't Peek!!
S
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o
l
l

D
o
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f
o
r

a
n
s
w
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1) 24
2) 3
3) 2
4) 1
5) 24 - 3 - 2 -1 = 18
6) Eating, feasting, sharing a meal, being fed. 18 times in 18 chapters; if you count all 24 chapters, that's 75% of the Gospel of Luke that include something about being at someone's house for dinner, or eating together or observing a feast, or feeding hungry people.
7) What do you think?

Required Reading

Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, has written a book entitled War, about his time as an embedded reporter with soldiers in Afghanistan. In War, Junger turns his attention to the reality of combat—the fear, the honor and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. War is an on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15 month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Junger does not have a political axe to grind; he simply, and I think stunningly, reports what combat is really like, and how it really affects those in harm’s way.

Junger and his colleague Tim Hetherington have also made a full-length documentary entitled Restrepo; it is shot completely on site at an outpost in the Korengal Valley named for a platoon medic who was killed in action.

Warning: the language is often (usually?) pretty rough, but I’m guessing it has to be to be accurate. I think War should be required reading (and, perhaps Restrepo should be required viewing) for anyone in public office, and for anyone who wants to have a serious conversation about the personal and communal dynamics of armed conflict and for anyone who is sick and tired of empty political posturing on all sides.

If you want a flavor of this material, go to Junger’s website: www.sebastianjunger.org.

Obedience or Discipleship?

When you come north off the Lewis and Clark Bridges over the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers and turn toward what’s left of downtown Alton, Illinois, before you get to the square where one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was held in 1858, if you look up the hill near where my brother-in-law’s furniture store used to be, you’ll see a huge, 93 foot high white granite column, topped by a 17 feet tall bronze statue of “Winged Victory,” a structure called “The Lovejoy Monument.” It marks the burial place of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the son of a minister in our United Church of Christ predecessor family, the Congregationalists, who was born in 1802 in Albion, Maine. As an adult Lovejoy served the College Avenue Presbyterian Church in Alton, which he helped establish as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and where, much less significantly, I, 140 years later, served my first ever seminary internship.

Lovejoy was more widely known, and reviled, as the editor and publisher of first The St. Louis Observer and then The Alton Observer, abolitionist newspapers calling for an immediate end to the institution of slavery and even more immediate emancipation of all current slaves. On November 7^th, 1837, a mob unhappy with Lovejoy’s abolitionist newspaper, broke into his house, destroyed his 4^th printing press (three other presses had already been destroyed and thrown into the Mississippi by the same or similar mobs) and shot Lovejoy 5 times, killing him, and earning him the title of “the first casualty of the Civil War,” though that conflict wouldn’t start until 14 years later, and making my home town a symbol of the backwater ignorance and mob violence that was typical of the pro slavery mentality outside of the deep, deep South.

When word of Lovejoy’s murder reached the east, followers of firebrand abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, one of Lovejoy’s influences and mentors, were grief stricken and enraged. One of them, Wendell Phillips, a 26 year-old, born-to-privilege Harvard educated lawyer, launched a remarkable career that included tireless advocacy for abolition and emancipation, and, after the Civil War, an even less mainstream advocacy for the rights of Native Americans that continued until his death in 1864.

When responding to Lovejoy’s death, Phillips said something that I think informs not only that old and still resolving conflict, but also the whole nature of how discipleship is something far beyond obedience:

To be as good as, as faithful as our [forebears], we must be better. We must do

more. Imitation, obedience, are not discipleship.

Some think that the way to be a faithful person is to obey God, to follow a list of rules and regs and rituals that others before us of have used, thinking that the best way, or perhaps the easiest way to get things right is to things exactly the way they have always been done.

We in the church have a long record of requesting and settling for obedience, developing lists of minimum requirements for all sorts of things ranging from attendance and participation and financial support to determine whether or not people can worship with us or have communion with us or share our life with us. So the church has promised from time to time heaven and eternity of bliss for those who keep the rules, and eternal damnation for those who break the rules, while at the same time singing Amazing Grace and saying that all those decisions belong to God.

But what if Jesus does not call us to obedience? What if Jesus calls us instead to discipleship?

“Aren’t they the same thing?” you may ask.

Well, though they often, maybe even usually result in the same behavior, obedience and discipleship are not the same thing.

Obedience is easy.

Discipleship is hard.

Obedience is observable, measurable, and it’s easy to tell when you’re being obedient and when you’re not.

Discipleship is tougher, more demanding, requiring both energy and thought.

Obedience may be nothing more than a response to a suggestion or an accommodation that would be easier to just do than to think about.

Discipleship requires constant examination of motives, constant communication,

Obedience does not even require a relationship with the one being obeyed. Someone makes a suggestion, request, or demand, and you do it, and then “poof!” you are done, whether or not you know the one being obeyed.

Discipleship implies, no, discipleship requires a relationship that needs on-going commitment, intention, and attention.

Obedience is easy.

Discipleship is hard.

No Faith Journey Meeting on July 27th

Schedule conflicts abound for Tuesday evening, so we are going to postpone our next gathering until Tuesday, August 24th. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The More Things Change...

When I was 5, if you asked me who Jesus was, I’d tell you that he was the spooky guy in two places in my great grandmother’s living room. On one side of the room was a painting of the last judgment, with people standing next to their 1938 Plymouth on top of Hoover Dam, watching all the dead bodies flying up out of the cemetery to meet Jesus up in the clouds. On the other side of the room was Jesus’ face in a weird concave piece of china or pottery or something; this Jesus had a face with eerie eyes that would follow you wherever you were.

When I was 5, that’s who Jesus was. When I was 5, God was a close personal friend of Pastor Todd at the Evangelical and Reformed Church, someone my Gramps and my Daddy would call upon in times of upset and disaster, like losing a fish or hammering a thumb, and the “great and good” guy we intoned at mealtime, and the one we asked our “soul to keep” at bedtime, even though I hadn’t a clue about what that meant and I had absolutely no desire “die before I wake.”

When I was 5, good little boys didn’t talk like Gramps and Daddy did when they lost a fish or hammered their hand. And when I was 5, the whole point of church seemed to be to learn how to live so that if I died (which I had no intention of doing) that God wouldn’t let me burn in hell, but would take me to heaven to live with him and the guy whose eyes wouldn’t stop watching me in my great-grandmother’s living room. When I was 5, Mrs. Kramer, my Sunday School teacher, said that the most important thing was “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

When I was 19, if you asked me who Jesus was, I’d tell you that he lived a long time ago, and that he was like a cross between a medicine man and a flower child who did marvelous things that no one understood, who always made the people in authority uncomfortable, and who was killed by the people in authority just to keep his mouth shut and their thumb on the people. When I was 19, Jesus was the peacenik revolutionary who was misunderstood and oppressed and who did great things in spite of it, and who ended up getting killed for it, just like all the really good people, like Medgar Evers and Dr. King and RFK and all the rest.

When I was 19, that’s who Jesus was. When I was 19, God was remote, distant, OK but irrelevant, someone I more than occasionally enjoined like my Gramps and my father before me. A “watchmaker” God was the way Thomas Jefferson and John Locke talked about it, and, rational college man that I was, that seemed to be the only thing that held up under critical examination.

When I was 19, all people with lots of money were evil and all people who were poor were victims of oppression. And when I was 19, the whole point of church seemed to be to work for a day the oppressed got their chance to be in charge, and that the church was remarkably backwards in catching on to that. When I was 19, the most important thing, it seemed to me was to “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now nearly four decades since I was 19, if you ask me who Jesus is, I’ll tell you that Jesus is the model for faithful living, that his way of making himself available and his way of giving himself away is what John’s gospel means when it says that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” I’ll tell you that God is the creative, loving energy behind and in and beyond everything that is, that God is in the “seeking and finding” business, that God makes God known to us in so many ways, but mostly in glimpses—of a child whose life we can touch, of a person on the “edges” of life struggling with what comes next, of a celebration of new life and new hope, of a person who needs help. I’ll tell you that, while God doesn’t revel in some of the petty ways we hurt each other, God doesn’t give up on us, either, and I’ll tell you that if you want to know God, you ought to pay close attention to Jesus. I’ll tell you that that’s what I think it means to understand that Jesus lived and died so that we might have life. I’ll tell you that I don’t think it’s all as mystical and mysterious or as rigid and unyielding as some of us have been told. And I’ll tell you that I don’t think Jesus or God have any ego problems that need constant stroking by people purporting to be faithful, and that the biggest deal is not whether or not we make an intellectual and verbal declaration of how Jesus is our Lord and Savior and then go on and do any fool thing we want with our lives, but that we take Jesus seriously enough to live and love the way he showed us.

Because, you see, whether at 5, or 19, or 119, the heart of the whole matter is what Mrs. Kramer, my Sunday School teacher, said that Jesus said that the most important thing was “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Regina Spektor and Foxhole Theology

The old saying that “there are no atheists in a foxhole” is echoed cleverly in Regina Spektor’s song “Laughing with God.” Click on the screen to see her perform the piece, the lyrics of which are written below.

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God when it's gotten real late and their kid's not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one's laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they're mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say "We've got some bad news, sir,"
No one's laughing at God when there's a famine, fire or flood

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they've lost all they got and they don't know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one's laughing at God when they're saying their goodbyes

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God in a hospital
No one's laughing at God in a war

No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
We're all laughing with God

Peggy's Dad

Most of you know we lost Peggy’s Dad late last month. The most accurate description of Walter Laitas is that he was a good and decent man, committed to his family and his students (he was a history teacher and coach) and his community. He was 88, did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it up until the last couple of weeks of his life, and died at home with people he loved with him when he passed. He asked that I say something at his memorial service, and what follows is what I wrote…

He never talked about it much except to those who were really close to him, and then, until recent times, he only talked about it when those closest to him dragged it out of him. But it is safe to say that it’s pretty remarkable that Walt Laitas even made it through his childhood, let alone lived the full life of his 4 score and 8 years. In those days when Warren Harding was president before Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (I tell you this because Walter the history teacher would have told you this), and when Eastern European immigrants flooded Central Illinois to work the fields and the mines, life was very tough, tougher than most of us could imagine, and no one would have been surprised really when Walt reached adulthood had he been angry, narrow-minded, bitter, defensive and resentful. The very quiet, understated miracle at the beginning of this big, old boy’s life is that he lived through those nearly unspeakably difficult young years and was exactly none of those things.

When Walt was 14 years old, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a piece called The Crack Up, wrote this: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

Anyone who ever had him as a teacher knows that Walt was the poster-child for Fitzgerald’s notion of that kind of first-rate intelligence. When he wasn’t busy pranking his students and colleagues, Walt would often strut into his classroom arguing a fine point of history or government from a point of view diametrically opposed to the point of view he had presented just the day before. Walter could hold forth on almost anything from the stoic Seneca to Howard Stern, from the uniqueness of Lincoln to the muddled reality of the Middle East, and, when he was at his sharpest, he could argue the value or the danger of their ideas and approaches, pretty much reveling in advocating for whatever was the opposite of whatever you were advocating.

So after a childhood filled with enough tragedy to destroy the sturdiest of souls, through a stint in an orphanage and some time working the camps and in college, Walt did what so many committed young men did in those days and went off to war. When Sgt. Laitas came home from the war, he married his best girl, became an Illinois State Redbird football legend, finished school, looked around for a teaching gig where he could remain a Redbird (I made that part up!), came to Metamora, and went about the business of raising his family and directly and indirectly shaping this town’s young people for more than 40 years, of course as a teacher and coach, but even more as a good and determined and decent man. His first rate intelligence, able to function while holding two or three or ten opposing ideas in his head at the same time, paled in comparison to the good and determined and decent man that he was.

For whatever this is worth, I think that in the last analysis God doesn’t really care all that much how we talk about life, about how we shape our verbal expressions of the most meaningful and important stuff. I think Scripture and tradition suggest that God really does care about what we do with the lives we are given. So it is no little thing to remember and celebrate a good man and his good life that by all arguments could have been, maybe should have been, something other than that. And it is no little thing the marvel at the legion of good people who are the good people they are precisely because they had the good fortune to know him and be shaped by him. When it is all said and done, when the great debates of the age are matters for the history books, when the trauma of present movements and moments are little more than arcane data deep in a Google search, when the critical turning points in our lives are little more than turned pages, what really matters is whether or not we embrace and share the love God gives us to share with each other. And, of course in his own key, embrace and share that love he did.

You and I know that there are as many Walt stories out there as there are stars in the sky, and it will be a long time before those stories fade out of our memories. And whether the story is about his affection for birds, or leading an entire classroom of students – another teacher’s students – out of their classroom so that their teacher would enter a completely empty room, or about photographs strategically placed on classroom maps, or about Walt suggesting a more aggressive passing attack not to Coach Ryan but to Coach Ryan’s parents, or – I guess it’s safe to tell now – about how Walt secretly shot the raccoon that died the next day in the Peterson’s yard, what all the stories reflect is our genuine love for Walt, and our inability to really imagine a world without him. But the best Walt story of all is the one that continues to unfold in those legions of people whose lives he touched and shaped, in the lives of the Laitas girls and we tiny band of mildly overwhelmed brothers who tag along with them, the stories that unfold in the lives of Elisa and Jason and Keith and Sarah and Matt and Jenell and Scott and Kelsey and Katelyn and Michael and Teri, and in their little ones already and one day soon to be among us.

In his own way, and of course in his own key, Walt was a hero to those of us lucky to get close enough to him. A hero proved, as Katherine Bates wrote in America the Beautiful, in liberating strife, but more than that; a hero proved in a good, determined, and decent life that even death cannot take from us.

Social Justice

Marty E Marty is an emeritus professor of church history at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Among the many and varied things he continues to do, Dr. Marty writes a weekly column called Sightings. It is a commentary on the interaction between church and culture, and Marty’s articles appear in my e-mail every Monday morning. This week’s column was his response to the latest nonsense from Glenn Beck about “social justice.” If you find it interesting, and would like to take advantage of the free subscription, use this link https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/sightings

Social Justice

— Martin E. Marty

Are 68.1 million Americans connected with a Communist front movement? Yes, if they are Roman Catholic. Are another 20 million citizens listening to “coded” Nazi messages? Yes, if they are mainline Protestant. Are tens of millions more in danger of being part of a similarly coded Fascist front? Yes, if they are in a growing wing of Evangelicalism; and yes, if they keep hearing social justice messages in thousands of African-American congregations. Those four “yeses” pick up on oft-repeated accusations by Fox News host Glenn Beck. They provoked the least underreported public religion news of the week, which appeared in the March 12th New York Times as well as “all over the internet.”

The fact that Mr. Beck charms millions of devotees tells more about the sad state of truth-telling and the high state of lie-receiving than civil citizens should want to hear. The broadcaster has picked up an ally in folk like Jerry Falwell, Jr. and a few other fundamentalists on the right who have been at least as condemnatory as he. Their most cited biblical passage is from the gospels, where Jesus announces that his kingdom is not of his world; therefore they conclude that Christians should avoid political life. A test of ironies: Quick, now, can you think of any element in American religion which has been more publicly engaged in recent politicking than these “not-of-this-world” dwellers in glass houses?

Where should they direct the stones they must throw? And how should they follow through? Mr. Beck knows: Leave any church which talks about, supports, or “does” works of justice beyond what an individual or a church charity can do. “Leave!” “Run!” Do it fast, he says, because of the way things are going. He might as well be wearing a beard, a robe, and a sign: “THE END IS NEAR.” Before that end, these “social justice” churches might at least fling some pebbles back while they seek consistency. Ask: Would all the Christians and the churches which accept any benefits of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, tax exemption and other such programs cut them off tomorrow? They all involve the government and all were backed by “social and economics minded” leaders and followers in churches, often against the odds raised and symbolized by the Glenn Becks of their past.

Sightings likes to be fair and to see more than one side of things as it does its observing and commenting. So let it be noted that some sane and serious Christians also think that believers should pay no attention to public order, structures, circumstances, and possibilities. “Don’t talk justice! Just be just!” “Don’t support programs which support widows and orphans, just share your bread and coat and cold water with your innocently needy neighbor.” Thereafter do the math: It will become obvious that the limits on the individual responses to need at their highest won’t meet needs if reckoned at their lowest.

Biblical verses wisely do remind readers, “Put not your trust in princes.” That usually means governments; “princes” in the media, banking, punditry, universities, and, yes, churches demand scrutiny, and their programs deserve careful evaluation, as well. But those who say that you have taken care of biblical injunctions if you simply keep government out of everything face biblical reminders with which they have to contend: The Hebrew prophets all dealt with “nations,” and the apostle Paul, writing to people suffering under Nero, also said that civil “authority…is God’s servant for your good (Romans 13:4). Paul even goes so far in 13:6 to urge believers to “pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants.” Come on, Paul, don’t press your luck in Beck’s world!

For a Limited Time...

Just came across this today. It may too “new age” to be of interest, but I thought I’d throw it out there just in case.

John Shelby Spong is participating in a free teleseminar series called “Sacred Awakenings.” There is a different presenter every day during Lent (yes it is ok to jump in in the middle) from all sorts of different religious and spiritual traditions. If you’re interested in exploring this, go to this link, http://sacredawakeningseries.com/BishopSpong , and follow the instructions.

That's What God Is Like

I’m hoping we all know about the United Church of Christ’s “StillSpeaking Daily Devotional” that can be delivered to our e-mail inbox every morning. Each day a United Church of Christ writer offers a brief reflection and prayer, in much the same pattern used by popular daily devotional booklets. Their pieces are thoughtful and provocative and, I think, quite useful. You can subscribe for free by going to http://www.ucc.org/. The daily piece is also available on Facebook and Twitter.

Here is today’s piece, written by Ron Buford, who, among other things, was team leader for the StillSpeaking campaign when it began.

That's What God is Like

Excerpt from Luke 13:18-2

"Jesus said therefore, 'What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it?'"

Reflection by Ron Buford

In Luke 13 (read entire chapter), Jesus mocks human superstition and proneness to conspiracy theories about God when Pilate kills a couple of Galileans in the temple, or when a tower falls in Jerusalem, killing eighteen people. Jesus asks, "Did these things happen because these people were greater sinners than others?"

Jesus aims to un-twist our primitive God-mischaracterization in which God avenges, bending laws of the universe just to "get us" for some secret choice we now regret or about which we have doubts. Mistakes may have natural consequences, but God has nothing to do with them. This teaching we learned is false. Sickness, accidents, natural disasters, and Murphy's Law come with randomness despite anything we may have done . . . and they always feel unfair.

Jesus invites us to think of God's city as our dwelling place with God, where all God's children have yeast to make life's dough rise, double and triple . . . and, after waiting a while, produce enough to share. Imagine the smell and taste of fresh daily bread, kneaded by our hands, infused with the yeast of God's grace, shared among many. That's what God is like.

Transforming the barren places of God's city, with vision and patience, God's children plant God's seeds. And those seeds, after waiting a while, become mighty shade trees -- sheltering people, nesting birds singing . . . because that's what God is like.

Prayer

Gracious God, thank you for your Good News and grace, made known to us in the life and teaching of Jesus, freeing us from doubt, guilt, and condemnation about the past. Please grant us the daily bread of your mercy -- bread to share with all who love us as well as those who sin against us, and others who just make our lives yucky sometimes . . . because that's what our Divine Parent God is like. Amen.

Stars

If you were in worship at First Church this morning, you got all this already… some “star data” and a true story…

On the clearest of nights, if you’re at least 10 miles away from any source of light like streetlights and cars and lit up houses, and if your vision is relatively good, and depending on the time of the year, you can see anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 stars in the sky. The closest one to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away, which means that the light we’d see tonight from that star was generated by that star about Thanksgiving, 2005. The brightest star in the night sky, the North Star, or Polaris, is 2,527,808,910,468,952 (2 quadrillion, 527 trillion, 808 billion, 910 million, 468 thousand, 952) miles, or 430 light years away, which means the light we’d see tonight from that North Star was generated about the time Sir Francis Drake was wrapping up his circumnavigation of the globe. The farthest star we’d see on our really clear night isn’t really a star at all, but a galaxy, Andromeda, and it looks like a star because it is so far away, all of its stars look as if they are all one star. It’s 2.5 million light years away, Andromeda is, or something like 14,696,563, 432,959,020,000 (14 quintillion, 696 quadrillion, 563 trillion, 432 billion, 959 million, 20 thousand) miles, which means the light we’d see tonight from the Andromeda galaxy was generated about the beginning of the Proterozoic Era, when the continents became stable and oxygen started to saturate the atmosphere. The star that is farthest from us but still in our own Milky Way Galaxy that we’d see tonight is only about 23.5 quadrillion miles, or 4,000 light years away, which means the light we’d see tonight was generated a couple of centuries before Father Abraham’s vision in Genesis 15.

About the time the 12^th brightest star in tonight’s sky, Altair, was generating the light we'd see in tonight’s perfectly clear night sky (that’s about 17 years ago), we had a group of youth community young people staying at the Powder Horn Ski Resort on the western slopes of the Rockies. The last night we were at Powder Horn was a gloriously clear night, and after our worship time several of us sat outside as far away from any earth light as we could and just looked up. Several of the young people with us said they had never seen as many stars. Shooting stars darted across the night sky like fireworks, and one of them said something about how the light we were seeing at that moment was generated long in the past. Then one of the boys, one of the rowdy, always-hard-to-keep-down-on-the-farm-always-knows-much-much-more-than-anyone-else boys who we loved to be around but whom we always had to keep kind of a tight leash on, got up and started to wander off into the dark. Somebody called his name, and he just kept walking, so I went off after him. When I caught up with him, he was sobbing. Shoulders heaving, struggling to catch his breath sobbing.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“The stars,” he said, ‘the stars. The stars might not even be there, and we’re still seeing them. That’s how it’s gonna be for us, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

And then I heard one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard, from the mouth of that frightened, distraught boy…

“You’re always telling us, Rob that we have a lot of life to live. Well, we don’t! We don’t have very long, maybe 90 years if we’re lucky. I’m already 16. I only have like 70 some years left. It’s like the stars! When I’m dead, people will still see me. Well, maybe they won’t see me, but they will still be affected by me, by the person I am. They won’t know me, they won’t love me, but they will still see me. And I want them to see me at my best, not as the jerk I am most of the time. I don’t want them to think I’m a jerk. I want them to see me how I really am.”

“I don’t want them to think I’m a jerk! I don’t want to be a jerk anymore.”

More on "Fearing Not"

Jim Collins is a leadership and organizational leader who wrote among other things the leadership development books Good to Great and Built to Last. Though a huge proponent of changing processes (he calls them "mechanisms") and being responsive and embracing new technologies, he argues that the whole "change or die" emphasis prevalent in so many organizations is wrong-headed in at least two ways. In addition to not wanting to change for the sake of change, Collins argues that fear can set things in morion, can get people moving, but almost never results in healthy change. In short, fear is a lousy motivator.

In an article in Inc. a dozen years ago, Collins used this story as an example:

Picture the great composer Beethoven struggling to write a perfect Fifth Symphony that will stand the test of time. He starts with a simple theme. Discards it. Starts again. Revises it. Finally settles upon the famous "fate motive" (Da Da Da Dommmmm!). Inverts it. Extends it. Rends, amends, and dissects it. All in the context of a primal thematic struggle: that of light versus dark, hope versus despair, major versus minor. With great discipline he holds back the trombones, the piccolo, and the contrabassoon until their triumphal entry on the downbeat of movement four, when the forces of life and hope blast forth to obliterate the forces of angst and despair once and for all...

Now imagine asking Beethoven during his toil to perfect the Fifth Symphony, "Ludwig, why are you working so hard? Your First Symphony has established you as one of the most popular and successful composers of the day. Your Third Symphony, Eroica, will stand as one of the great cutting-edge creations of all time, having shattered the constraints of the classical style. You've already earned your place in the history books. Why do you continue to push yourself?"

Can you picture Beethoven responding, "Why push myself? Because if I don't write a better symphony, then someone else will. The competition is fierce, and if I don't improve, I'll be pummeled by those feisty foreign upstarts. Change or die. Innovate or self-destruct. Eat lunch or be lunch. It's not that I really want to reinvent and perfect my work; it's just that in this world, only the paranoid survive..."

The next time you encounter..."Change or die,"... remember the words of Royal Robbins, the great rock climber who pioneered ascents of Yosemite's big walls: "The point is not to avoid death - if you want to do that, simply stay on the ground. The point is to reach the top, and then to keep on climbing."

God is...

Paul Tillich talked about the limitations of language and the transcendence of the holy when he wrote about "the God above the God of theism." That is to say, whatever God is, God is more than our best description of God. For centuries we have argued some (a lot?!) about which image is better, what symbol set makes most sense rather than seeing what we can learn from images and symbol sets that don't necessarily make sense to us.

In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola encouraged his young Jesuit novices to begin their search for spiritual truth to begin with this exercise. Prompted by one's spiritual director, the novice was instructed to complete as many "God is..." statements as could be corroborated by "scripture or experience." The novice would then create the "God is..." list --

God is love.
God is peace.
God is justice.
God is light.
God is ruler.
God is truth.--
God is... --

and then proceed to the mentor for direction. The spiritual director would listen warmly, intently, patiently as the novice would read one by one the "God is..." list and explain each individual statement. The mentor would press the novice through each rationale to the place where the novice would say "God is not only love, or peace, or light," or whatever.

"What then, my son, is God?" Almost invariable the novice would revisit his list, and his "not only list" and then move to a place of great exasperation and blurt out "God is...God!"

"Precisely," the mentor would reply. "God is God."

Notes on Trusting and Not Being Afraid

Imagine that you cannot swim. You are one of three people in a canoe that capsizes in the deep water, and you are the only one of the three that cannot swim. In the literal and figurative swirl of things, you see the two swimmers moving in on you, trying to rescue you. Can you in your wildest imagination picture yourself lying quietly in the water, all the while reassuring yourself by saying to yourself, "This, too, shall pass. I'll stay still and quiet and my friends will rescue me." Not likely.

Or, can you imagine your non-swimming self, in the midst of groping and gasping frantically for air and aid, coldly calculating, "Now, let me think; if I can get into position so I can push my friends' heads under water, I'll be able to keep my head up." I don't think so.

But anyone who has survived a life-saving class will tell you, you could very well, all pumped-up with adrenaline and with your life in the balance, automatically, instinctively try to compensate for your impending drowning by "oppressing" those who are only trying to save you.

In Psychoanalysis and Religion Erich Fromm tried to explain the dilemma of being human:

"Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the harmony which characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has made humanity into the freak of the universe. People are part of nature, subject to nature's laws and unable to change them, yet people transcend the rest of nature. People are set apart while being part of; we are homeless, yet chained to the home we share with all creatures. We are driven to overcome this inner split, for another kind of harmony which can life the curse by which we are separated from nature, from other people, from ourselves and from God. The human capacity for self-transcendence is both our glory and our agony. We are guilty not so much of trying to play God as we are guilty of not knowing how to be human. Simply hubris (arrogance) is the mask that fear wears."

I think we have missed the point for centuries, at least since the early Middle Ages. Classical theology argues that at the heart of our sinful brokenness is that we all strive too much, and that striving is ultimately our effort to try to dismiss God and be in charge of our own universe, and that that the ultimate idolatry to which you and I are inevitable predisposed. But all that misses the real human drama.

I think it's more like this: we have a sense that things aren't as they should be, and we try, like the non-swimmer adrift in the threatening waters, to use anything and anyone to compensate for whatever is wrong, and that at the source of all our idolatries is our inability to trust. And because we do not trust, we puff up with hubris and vainly attempt to mask our fears.

What if we are not so much bad or sinful or wanton or reckless or damned or doomed as we are crippled by our lack of trust. We are the non-swimmer in the deep water; we can see the shore, but we fear we will never be able to reach it. It is as if we have been cast into the deep, and we are afraid -- of drowning, of dying, of the possibility that our lives mean nothing and that we are all alone. And, even worse, we are easily convinced that we deserve to be that way.

Remember the woman who, having been caught in adultery, was brought to Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees? There, in the presence of the a mob who viewed themselves as legally and morally bound to stone this woman to death, Jesus invites any among them who have not sinned to take the first shot at her. And by doing so, Jesus shows love and mercy not only to the woman who was a stone's throw away from her last breath; he showed love and mercy to those lining up to pelt her as well. Jesus knew that they, and we, are not so much crooked as we are crippled, and that we need to be freed of our fear in order to trust the promises of God.