The reader’s theater proclamation of the Passion of our Lord according to St Luke was going well; each of the readers ably bringing forth the various parts and voices, and the narrator, a young woman with a confident public voice added gravitas to the whole thing. And then we got to the portion where Jesus is abused by the authorities and mocked and flogged by the soldiers and then dragged off to be killed. Her voice broke and she began to sob, unable to continue for some moments.
The waiting readers began to weep and so did most of the congregation. I could tell by the hankies and tissues up patting at eyes. But what was this moment about? Pious emotion overflowing for a time, feeling bad for Jesus, experiencing a bit of heartbreak over what he suffered?
I wonder if, on a deep, mostly unconscious level, we were weeping for ourselves, because so to speak, God showed up. We were caught up in the deep truth of Luke’s passion narrative. The women who witnessed his lurching steps toward crucifixion were wailing for him, and Jesus shouted to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.”
This is about more than history or Jesus’ biography. The vignette needs to be honored as a vital part of what Alexander Shaia has called the annual church retreat. The examination of conscience, both individually and corporately, will reveal our entrapment in inescapable history and cultural milieu. Especially in this year of our Fourth Path call to service, such reality is difficult to face: not only do we hurt one another, but we are in turn hurt, abused, limited, enslaved to our pasts and mocked by the present. Why wouldn’t we weep?
Every experience of suffering and crucifixion and resurrection are apocalyptic, world-ending, rebirthing moments—truth be told, God moments, times when the reality of Christ as us is all too real. During this Lenten retreat, we have permission, even a mandate, to get so honest about ourselves personally and corporately, that we become able to let go and “weep for ourselves and our children.” Tears, like baptism, welcome us into both the death and the new life of the Christ.
Even Easter includes the startling, frightening presence of Christ, who announces: “Peace be with you.” In that moment, the universe lights up like a neon sign and we see: our journey is not about us, but about God and our neighbor and what happens when both show up in our lives—for real.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
God with Skin On
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Just as his first listeners had a hard time with what Jesus said, even today his words may seem difficult, if not gross. It will get yet more graphic next Sunday when you will hear Jesus declaring this: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” We know he is not advocating cannibalism, but still…Christ’s words give us pause. What was he talking about?
Here’s a story to get us started in our exploration of his words. A terrified four year old woke up in night convinced that in the darkness monsters were waiting to grab her. She ran to her parent’s bedroom, wailing in fear. Her mother calmed her down, and taking her hand, led her back to her room, and tried to comfort the child by saying, “You don’t need to be afraid, you’re not alone here. God is in the room with you.” And the child replied, “I know that God is here, but I need someone in this room who has some skin!”
Perhaps then, we could think of Jesus as God with skin on. John’s gospel insists that the Word (that is the Second Person of the Trinity by whom and through whom all things were made) became flesh (in Greek, the word is sarx). Sarx is more than a matter of, say, meat. Sarx is a word for the human condition, a plunge into and acceptance of humanity just as humanity was and still is: entering flesh and blood, to be sure, but beyond that taking on the glorious things humanity accomplishes with awesome intelligence and creativity, and the nastiness, cruelty, hypocrisy, immorality, and arrogance, we practice in utterly godlessness ways. The whole plateful—or the whole loaf—of the human condition, all wrapped up in Christ, deeply accepted by him: that is what we are also asked to accept--to stomach.
Jesus’ early critics could not swallow the concept of God in a real flesh and blood human being. They began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” In other words, “Hey, we know his family and his background. Sure, we see that he is a gifted speaker and leader—but come on, he is not a Messiah, not some kind of god. He is just like us.”
Unlike his first critics, we church folks find that we can believe that Jesus embodied the eternal Christ, the Word, the Second person of the Trinity, and we find in his life and teaching great hope and wisdom. What may be harder for us to swallow is that after Jesus suffered, died, was buried, rose again and ascended into heaven the Christ plunged into the human condition all the more. In giving up the body of one man, the resurrection life of the Christ is now extended and present through time and space in the church, which, as St. Paul so clearly taught, is the body of Christ. In other words, the actual church, the gatherings of the faithful everywhere, like here, right now, is God present with skin on. For many people then and now, that, too, is hard to swallow! Too much sarx!
The very, very incarnational “sarxy” quality of the church as the body of the resurrected Christ leads present day outsiders and sometimes even we insiders rather to conclude of any ordinary congregation: “Hey, I know what I’m like and I know what other members are like—not exactly very Christ-like most of the time! How can we be the skin of God, how can we literally be the body of Christ?” We put Christ on a pedestal, pure and above all ordinary human stuff. Yet the gospel says, Christ is in precisely the all too human stuff.
The gospel calls us to be honest. The actual human condition—both the faithfulness and the rebellious sarx motivated behaviors—is inescapably present in the very real church which, as Luther so brilliantly stated, is always and everywhere the gathering of people who are simultaneously saints and sinners. For that reason anyone who’s been with the church for any time at all knows that it simply a fantasy that if you join a congregation you are going to live happily ever after. To quote Luther, “This is most certainly true!”
The problem is, it’s the ordinary sins and failings of the church that draws too much of our attention, instead of the faithful ministries and mission and compassion God’s people practice everyday. Dwelling on the dark side may cloud our perception of that deeper life—which prompted one smart aleck, to say in a moment deep cynicism: “The church would be great if weren’t for the people!”
The truth is this: if we want God, want Christ, then we must not only join the church, but we must also come to accept it as it is and, especially when things get rough, what can sometimes be the hardest thing of all: stay in the church, when everything inside us cries out, “I’ve had enough! I just can’t stand this anymore!”
But the church is always something both incredibly glorious and incredibly damaged. There never has been and never will be on this earth a perfect church, a problem free church, a church with no hypocrites, a church where no one is ever mean or nasty or gets hurt.
Even so, if we’re here, it’s because God has drawn us here, and the Holy Spirit has made us parts of the body of Christ. We journey and serve together, both wonderfully and imperfectly. In this sarx, in this our altogether human condition, this common-union becomes a loaf of the bread of heaven, fragrant with Christ’s resurrection. In this church we are forever joined to Christ, and in him we die and rise to new life daily—broken again and again to be offered as nourishment, hope, and Life for the world.
If we can swallow that, if we accept as reality that Christ is truly present because we sinner-saints are present, then by God’s grace we truly taste the bread of life—this sarx of the Christ. Then during the communion, hearing the words, “This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you,” we may look around and see, feel, and know that beyond the signs of the bread and the wine, are the bodies, faces, hands, feet, and voices in which God dwells. God present with skin on. Here and now and always--until the last day.
Just as his first listeners had a hard time with what Jesus said, even today his words may seem difficult, if not gross. It will get yet more graphic next Sunday when you will hear Jesus declaring this: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” We know he is not advocating cannibalism, but still…Christ’s words give us pause. What was he talking about?
Here’s a story to get us started in our exploration of his words. A terrified four year old woke up in night convinced that in the darkness monsters were waiting to grab her. She ran to her parent’s bedroom, wailing in fear. Her mother calmed her down, and taking her hand, led her back to her room, and tried to comfort the child by saying, “You don’t need to be afraid, you’re not alone here. God is in the room with you.” And the child replied, “I know that God is here, but I need someone in this room who has some skin!”
Perhaps then, we could think of Jesus as God with skin on. John’s gospel insists that the Word (that is the Second Person of the Trinity by whom and through whom all things were made) became flesh (in Greek, the word is sarx). Sarx is more than a matter of, say, meat. Sarx is a word for the human condition, a plunge into and acceptance of humanity just as humanity was and still is: entering flesh and blood, to be sure, but beyond that taking on the glorious things humanity accomplishes with awesome intelligence and creativity, and the nastiness, cruelty, hypocrisy, immorality, and arrogance, we practice in utterly godlessness ways. The whole plateful—or the whole loaf—of the human condition, all wrapped up in Christ, deeply accepted by him: that is what we are also asked to accept--to stomach.
Jesus’ early critics could not swallow the concept of God in a real flesh and blood human being. They began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” In other words, “Hey, we know his family and his background. Sure, we see that he is a gifted speaker and leader—but come on, he is not a Messiah, not some kind of god. He is just like us.”
Unlike his first critics, we church folks find that we can believe that Jesus embodied the eternal Christ, the Word, the Second person of the Trinity, and we find in his life and teaching great hope and wisdom. What may be harder for us to swallow is that after Jesus suffered, died, was buried, rose again and ascended into heaven the Christ plunged into the human condition all the more. In giving up the body of one man, the resurrection life of the Christ is now extended and present through time and space in the church, which, as St. Paul so clearly taught, is the body of Christ. In other words, the actual church, the gatherings of the faithful everywhere, like here, right now, is God present with skin on. For many people then and now, that, too, is hard to swallow! Too much sarx!
The very, very incarnational “sarxy” quality of the church as the body of the resurrected Christ leads present day outsiders and sometimes even we insiders rather to conclude of any ordinary congregation: “Hey, I know what I’m like and I know what other members are like—not exactly very Christ-like most of the time! How can we be the skin of God, how can we literally be the body of Christ?” We put Christ on a pedestal, pure and above all ordinary human stuff. Yet the gospel says, Christ is in precisely the all too human stuff.
The gospel calls us to be honest. The actual human condition—both the faithfulness and the rebellious sarx motivated behaviors—is inescapably present in the very real church which, as Luther so brilliantly stated, is always and everywhere the gathering of people who are simultaneously saints and sinners. For that reason anyone who’s been with the church for any time at all knows that it simply a fantasy that if you join a congregation you are going to live happily ever after. To quote Luther, “This is most certainly true!”
The problem is, it’s the ordinary sins and failings of the church that draws too much of our attention, instead of the faithful ministries and mission and compassion God’s people practice everyday. Dwelling on the dark side may cloud our perception of that deeper life—which prompted one smart aleck, to say in a moment deep cynicism: “The church would be great if weren’t for the people!”
The truth is this: if we want God, want Christ, then we must not only join the church, but we must also come to accept it as it is and, especially when things get rough, what can sometimes be the hardest thing of all: stay in the church, when everything inside us cries out, “I’ve had enough! I just can’t stand this anymore!”
But the church is always something both incredibly glorious and incredibly damaged. There never has been and never will be on this earth a perfect church, a problem free church, a church with no hypocrites, a church where no one is ever mean or nasty or gets hurt.
Even so, if we’re here, it’s because God has drawn us here, and the Holy Spirit has made us parts of the body of Christ. We journey and serve together, both wonderfully and imperfectly. In this sarx, in this our altogether human condition, this common-union becomes a loaf of the bread of heaven, fragrant with Christ’s resurrection. In this church we are forever joined to Christ, and in him we die and rise to new life daily—broken again and again to be offered as nourishment, hope, and Life for the world.
If we can swallow that, if we accept as reality that Christ is truly present because we sinner-saints are present, then by God’s grace we truly taste the bread of life—this sarx of the Christ. Then during the communion, hearing the words, “This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you,” we may look around and see, feel, and know that beyond the signs of the bread and the wine, are the bodies, faces, hands, feet, and voices in which God dwells. God present with skin on. Here and now and always--until the last day.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Meditation on Christ’s words: whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.
Christ, why this cannibalism? Do I really have to eat you? Your words are offensive and disgusting: eating your flesh, drinking your blood.
I confess that my inclination is to spiritualize what you ask for. Let's make this about believing the right things about you, or about the pursuit of some sort of warm religious experience of union and bliss. Show me a pathway away from your flesh and blood. Show me an escape from the human condition you entered. Show me how to avoid the sweaty, stinky, bad-breathed, farting, hard-faced, arm-crossed chests of the people who are your body. Show me a way to escape from the homeless with their signs at the freeway exits; the gangsters driving their booming cars; this aging body; the moldering grave; the death of those I love and those I fear; the horror and brutality of the murderous human condition: from your tortured corpus on the Cross.
But, you say, "I am the bread of life." You call me to open the mouth of mind and heart wide, to take in and chew on the realities of the human condition you entered and loved and saved. Eat my flesh! Take all this in, swallow it, digest it, excrete that which is mere waste, and live on the rest.
Christ, if the only escape from you and all that you entered is soul death, then give me the grace and courage to eat--your flesh, the flesh of us all. Eating you, I chew on eternal life.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Truth Shall Make Us Free
We know that torture was done in the name of the United States of America.
But we don't know enough yet, not if we want to be set free from evil that, corporately, we did.
I am seeing the need for the very opposite of the usual politicized hunt for convenient scapegoats. I look for our president and other leaders, both political and religious, to find ways for the citizens of the United States of America to know who did what and when. We don't need to hear justifications or excuses. And though there probably need to be prosecutions (since we are under the rule of the law), pointing fingers of blame as though any of us are thereby exonerated, will not get us where we need to go.
We the people had hears but we didn't hear;
we had eyes, but we didn't see;
we had voices, and we were silent.
If that weren't the truth, the atrocities of the torture would not have been allowed. Now we must hear, see, and find our voices once again.
We the people must be led to face the truth head on, accept corporate responsibility for the evil done, and allow ourselves to be led to lament and I pray, humility. Only in this way will we as a people grow into maturity.
Mature people know: only the truth, the whole truth, the real truth, unadorned with pieties and excuses, can set us free.
But we don't know enough yet, not if we want to be set free from evil that, corporately, we did.
I am seeing the need for the very opposite of the usual politicized hunt for convenient scapegoats. I look for our president and other leaders, both political and religious, to find ways for the citizens of the United States of America to know who did what and when. We don't need to hear justifications or excuses. And though there probably need to be prosecutions (since we are under the rule of the law), pointing fingers of blame as though any of us are thereby exonerated, will not get us where we need to go.
We the people had hears but we didn't hear;
we had eyes, but we didn't see;
we had voices, and we were silent.
If that weren't the truth, the atrocities of the torture would not have been allowed. Now we must hear, see, and find our voices once again.
We the people must be led to face the truth head on, accept corporate responsibility for the evil done, and allow ourselves to be led to lament and I pray, humility. Only in this way will we as a people grow into maturity.
Mature people know: only the truth, the whole truth, the real truth, unadorned with pieties and excuses, can set us free.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Head and the Body are One
Taking direction from St. Paul, it is common to claim that Christ (crucified and risen) is the head of the church, his body--a very organic, biological metaphor.
Some theologians assert that as the body of Christ, the church is the presence of God on earth. Considering that the church is most definitely a slow-moving, often curmudgeonly, and frequently sinful and fractious entity, claiming it is the presence of God (or the risen Christ) can seem daring, if not blasphemous.
I think of the statement the New Testament character Nathanael (John 1) made when excited friends had announced to him that they had found the Messiah (the Christ), "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?!"
Often those in the first bloom of their welcome into the Church are thrilled. Later, disillusionment may set in, as the sorry reality of congregational life seems anything but the presence of God.
But the Apostle Paul, dealing with his troubled congregations kept seeing them as, and naming them as, the body of Christ. Most remarkable.
What if we look at things this way: the head is the seat of consciousness, of will, or intention, of setting direction. True, the head, that is the brain, is most definitely also body, but body with a special function, and a wise head will pay attention to body language.
The body (the church) in all its various parts and expressions will do well do recall, as best each part can, that the head is greater consciousness, knows more of what the realities are, knows what the overall plan is, and directs the body--not the other way around.
Mini versions of this metaphorical example can be pondered: parents and children share a common flesh and family structure, but parents always (one hopes) know more about the overall scope of the world and helpful and necessary responses to it. Another example: anyone who's ever held a key leadership position in an organization, especially a large organization is in some sense the "head" of the organization, and knows more about (has a greater conscious awareness of) the issues, policies, and politics inherent in that organization--and may be privy to some aspects of the organizational life that much be carrried quietly and not shared with everyone).
So with Christ as the head of the church. Our faith is not in our believing, but in the faithfulness, wisdom, and purposes of Christ, whose vision and consciousness of the whole picture (even the cosmos) so far exceeds ours that humility is our only wise option. Wise also to live trusting that the head, the Christ, pays constant attention to the pains, moods, dysfunctions, illnesses, efforts, sorrows and joys of the body, and leads it forward in helpful, healthful ways, even when it sometimes is a painful thing.
Nazareth is the incarnation of the Christ into real humanity in real time and in full reality, just as it is, with a future yet unseen.
Some theologians assert that as the body of Christ, the church is the presence of God on earth. Considering that the church is most definitely a slow-moving, often curmudgeonly, and frequently sinful and fractious entity, claiming it is the presence of God (or the risen Christ) can seem daring, if not blasphemous.
I think of the statement the New Testament character Nathanael (John 1) made when excited friends had announced to him that they had found the Messiah (the Christ), "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?!"
Often those in the first bloom of their welcome into the Church are thrilled. Later, disillusionment may set in, as the sorry reality of congregational life seems anything but the presence of God.
But the Apostle Paul, dealing with his troubled congregations kept seeing them as, and naming them as, the body of Christ. Most remarkable.
What if we look at things this way: the head is the seat of consciousness, of will, or intention, of setting direction. True, the head, that is the brain, is most definitely also body, but body with a special function, and a wise head will pay attention to body language.
The body (the church) in all its various parts and expressions will do well do recall, as best each part can, that the head is greater consciousness, knows more of what the realities are, knows what the overall plan is, and directs the body--not the other way around.
Mini versions of this metaphorical example can be pondered: parents and children share a common flesh and family structure, but parents always (one hopes) know more about the overall scope of the world and helpful and necessary responses to it. Another example: anyone who's ever held a key leadership position in an organization, especially a large organization is in some sense the "head" of the organization, and knows more about (has a greater conscious awareness of) the issues, policies, and politics inherent in that organization--and may be privy to some aspects of the organizational life that much be carrried quietly and not shared with everyone).
So with Christ as the head of the church. Our faith is not in our believing, but in the faithfulness, wisdom, and purposes of Christ, whose vision and consciousness of the whole picture (even the cosmos) so far exceeds ours that humility is our only wise option. Wise also to live trusting that the head, the Christ, pays constant attention to the pains, moods, dysfunctions, illnesses, efforts, sorrows and joys of the body, and leads it forward in helpful, healthful ways, even when it sometimes is a painful thing.
Nazareth is the incarnation of the Christ into real humanity in real time and in full reality, just as it is, with a future yet unseen.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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 21st 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…”
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