In these trying times, try Psalm 73

Outrage and anger toward the smart guys at the top.

Worry and anxiety in the loss of job, home.

Rage, rage, rage.

But is that the best we can do?

Read Psalm 73 for a profoundly helpful piece of spiritual direction.

For a real hoot, read it in Eugene Peterson's The Message.

Ponder.

What if there were no malls?

I am thinking of something that I believe Harvey Cox suggested sometime ago: the real religion of at least the western world (and now, perhaps more globally) is money.

If that is the case, then malls, especially the newer ones, are the cathedrals to the great god money. Jesus warned us about “mammon”, asserting that one cannot worship both the real God and mammon (projected as a god with the inherent powers and blessing of money, wealth, shadowed by greed and avarice and dedication to piling up ever more).

Consider then our existence in 21^st century if there were no malls. What would people do? What would we do if we lacked the pilgrimages of shopping? How would we spend our time on Sunday afternoons—or mornings for that matter?

Our lives are so intertwined with the economic system—including the ever-present hype of advertising—that we would have a hard time figuring how to live without it. Our purpose and self-image are produced and given purpose by it; or, if our circumstances are not affluent, we may rage against the weight of oppression and marginalization we experience.

Whether well-off or poor, the warning in this scenario is the great danger of becoming utterly lost in a wilderness of human invention, slyly encouraged by the "god" mammon: the system of this world. We become lost in the sense of having lost our way, and our true life and true community, because even though some of us still show up for "church", in daily life we've forsaken the mystery of the Divine One who is the heart of everything.

We can turn around and head back home! In this time of economic convulsion, of mammon's shock and awe, there is the possibility for more than outrage and hand-wringing and despair:

“Return to the Lord your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…”

Quadrinity?!

In his work on Quadratos (a made up word, signifying something fourfold) Alexander Shaia brings to our attention that it is no accident of history that the canon of the Scriptures includes four gospels. He notes that from ancient times the fourfoldness of creation and of the work of God was self-evident. Indeed, Irenaeus insisted that there must be four gospels, exactly, because this is how God works: the divine pattern is always fourfold.

Pondering this the other day I was thinking, how odd then, that Christians developed the doctrine of the Trinity! Why not a "quadrinity"? But no, the long tradition of the church insists on the one-in-threeness of the divine mystery.

Then I thought about Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity. Many have commented on how the figures in the icon are clearly in communication with one another, and yet the figures are arranged in a way that faces outward toward the viewer--an openness, an invitation, a sense of welcome. Thus the pray-ers of the icon are invited into communion with the Holy Three. The deep koinonia of the Trinity becomes a gift to us all.

If so, then those who pray the icon, i.e., the church, complete the Trinity. And thus the Trinity becomes "quadrinity", now and forever. Amen.

Prayer, Psalms, Openness to the mystery of God

Prayer is many things:asking, begging, pleading, lamenting, cursing, praising, thanking, murmured or shouted into the great mystery called God.

The Psalms model the diversity of prayer, and, it occurred to me today, something more. For all their variety of expression, the Psalms share not only a sense of divine reality, they also share an evident openness to God. Their honesty (so very human) is shocking to some of our pious notions about what prayer should or should not be. But such is their openness. It is as though praying like a psalmist is a matter of a no-secrets radical openness. After all, God already is well aware of everything anyway, so why not let your guard down and get real!

Such (radical) prayer is less about requesting this or that of God, and more a matter of baring one's soul with a sense of God's mysteriously reliable and merciful presence, and that presence in and of itself is worth everything, is what fills the "hole in the soul."

"As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Ps. 42)

The Cross and Jesus' Other Friends

The Christ asks his church to take up its cross and follow--him.

The Cross is his inevitable way. Not a pretty picture. Not prosperity gospel. Not good times all around always.

One cross is already visible, and we are tempted to drop it: a disenfranchised religion, struggling along into the post-modern world where most everyone is suspicious of any one who too strongly holds on to anything. Triumphalism is futile and foolish. A good worship service alone, as the prophets made clear long ago, is not necessarily pleasing to God.

The issue: to let go of our "life" in order to find it, that is, to actually receive the life of the Christ. Our illusions and delusions about our churchly life, our piety, our righteousness, our being better than "those others"--all this must go, because of course the worst kept secret in the world is that no one in the church--any church--is better than "those others."

Here is a hint for us. Christ is not captive to the church buts gazes upon us through the eyes of the panhandler, the homeless kids, the shy visitor to our congregations, the old person mostly forgotten in the nursing home, the stranger, the immigrants, the employee in the next cubicle over whose life, one overhears too many times, is clearly a living hell.

Those who would follow Christ must risk taking up the cross of non-judgment, welcome and mercy, and stumble after him right into the messy unfamiliar existences of his other beloved friends--our neighbors.

That's the issue for the church--Jesus' other friends. Seek, invite, and gather a community like that, and having our lost our life, we've found it.

Look what happens to God's Beloved

The First Sunday Lent tells the story: Jesus is baptized. The "beloved" one is then driven into the wilderness to meet Satan and the wild beasts.

This is Jesus as the scapegoat, the sinner-bearer. The rest of the gospel is perhaps an unfolding narrative of temptation at every juncture of Jesus' mission and ministry. Lauded by the common folk, Jesus met the "wild beasts": hated by the authorities who steadfastly opposed both his methods and his teaching of the Kingdom of God. Finally comes Holy Week and the Cross. Mocked, whipped, spit upon, jeered, and duly executed. The beasts of power and authority licked their chops, and then, satiated, padded off to their dens, believing themselves secure in their positions and rectitude.

Jesus suffering is what happens to God's "beloved." I doubt that most of us are really ready for this. And only the insane among us will consider themselves Christ. But it is not insane to believe in the church as the body of Christ. And if the body of Christ, then the church as community can and should expect to suffer as Jesus suffered--but that God-born suffering will happen only when and where the church is intent on living its corporate life as Jesus lived his: steadfastly on the side of the poor, the outcast, the marginalized. Criticizing the powers that rule us. Naming oppression for what it is for the sake of announcing and living into the coming reign of God.

The beloved of God--the body of Christ--will do such things. And perhaps more. Quietude in the church is not necessary a virtue. It is often the greatest of sins, when, for fear of losing face, position, or experiencing conflict, the church remains silent at precisely those points where it ought to speak--and act.