Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out to Get You

In response to working on this apocalypse in Luke 21 I decided to reread Cormac McCarthy's “The Road.” His bleak novel is a walk through an unnamed and undefined but dreadful apocalypse.

As with “The Road”, being on the road with the Christ will take us into bleak and terrifying landscapes and events not well-defined, and not given a date on the calendar. And then, the kicker: after rumors of wars and insurrections—which I take to mean the socio/politico/religious systems stressed and collapsing—what comes next is the persecution of Christians. And then what follows that is cosmic apocalypse, which I do not take to be literal, but rather archetypal and much deeper than typical “end of the world” speculation.

Ready for all this? Luke's Jesus expects us to be. On this road, the Christ asks us to open our hearts to the agonies and sorrows of the world. This is not easy. It will give us broken hearts, wounds, and sorrows not originally our own. In fact, the more I work my way in Luke, the more I sense how severe is the call in the fourth path of maturing service. In Luke, the only creative response to a future yet unknown, but loaded with the stealthy shadows of war, evil, and persecutions, is to live faithfully in the present, serving those in need along the way. To serve like that we need see, hear, and feel the pain right in front us, and then seek to do something about it, one way or another.

But every step brings risk. We may trip over a “roadside bomb”, or encounter the shadowy lurking “they” whom Jesus references several times (“they will arrest you and persecute you, they will hand you over, they will put some of you to death...”). Even betrayal by family and friends is a feature of the this fourth path, this “Way”.

Luke's community lived all that stuff. Opposition to the Way is real because the Way is real and runs counter to the systems that ruin life and the world.

Therefore we are asked to continue down this road, this Way of maturing, difficult service, knowing that what may be around the next bend in the road is trouble greater than we've imagined: apocalypse now.

But knit together in a community of faith and service, we are given the wisdom and comfort of the Holy Spirit. Our answer is God, not timetables or doctrines about eschatology. In Christ we endure, and doing so, we gain more than mere physical survival. We gain our souls, a transcendent gift of the grace of God.

Pray Always and Do Not Lose Heart

Luke18:1-8
1Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” 6And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
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Christ is the model of praying always and not losing heart.

His life was (and is) a continuous day and night cry, a consciousness of and witness to the injustice and suffering everywhere present in humanity. And not just in humanity, but in all creation, which, St Paul states, groans like a woman in childbirth–so great is the longing of all beings for the ultimate revelation of divine justice, consolation, peace, and deep communion. The four chapters of the great gospel also are such a form of prayer, bearing witness to the sins of the world and the hope of God. For the pattern of the way of the Christ gives voice to the passion of God’s great dream of shalom and becomes a sign of it.

Since this is a lot to understand, Luke writes in a very pointed manner to his fledgling church and to us: “And the Lord (Jesus!) said: “Listen to what the unjust judge says”—the judge who finally announces he will grant the widow her justice. I wonder how this resonated in the ears and the heart of Luke’s community, as they experienced the “great divorce” of Judaism and the fledgling Christian movement. Ostracized, shunned, and persecuted, they may have seen themselves as very much in the same fix as the basically powerless widow. And the ever present temptation surely must have to been to give into the ways things were and give up on God.
Listen to what the judge says and remember the widow! She “won her case”, finally, yet what power did the widow have? Most likely none but the power of persistence, the deep courage of never giving up until justice is done.

What does this mean for us? In the post-modern age, when Christianity and (real) faith are largely passe, we may also experience now what many others have endured: marginalization and a feeling of powerlessness. Longing for the past triumphalism of Christendom is neither prayer nor faith, but rather seeking to have power that is not from God.

Therefore, the sign of faith on earth are the “chosen ones”, who in their weakness are finally attentive to the primary call: unceasing prayer for people in every circumstance, friends and enemies alike, and for all creation. Such prayer gives voice to the cry of the Christ, day and night, by both words and actions. This difficult enterprise of unceasing prayer brings into ever growing consciousness the sins of the world and the hope of God.

Thus we affirm the inescapable mission of those who would follow The Way: pray always and never lose heart. That is the sign of faith on earth

The Spirit of Truth

Parents know they cannot leave their little children home alone. And Jesus knew his church could not be abandoned, left all on its own. An Advocate was necessary, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. Why? Being a human organization as well as body of Christ, the church is flawed, and from time to time congregations and members of them lose their way. As the Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete keeps calling us back to clarity about the way of the Christ, for the sake of the well-being of our life and mission. Pentecost: many languages, yes, but the bottom line was truth telling.

During my term as bishop of the synod, I spent a lot of time dealing with the significant level of congregational discontent around the synod. At first this really offended me. What on earth is going on in this synod? I anguished over it, became discouraged. Then, after about a year and half in office, the Advocate whacked me alongside the head, so to speak, with the amazing insight that when trouble breaks out in a congregation, in spite of all the meanness and nastiness around that trouble, the trouble itself is a good thing! The Spirit is bringing forth truth!

Does this sound crazy? Well, since the Spirit, the Advocate, is the Spirit of Truth, then in times of congregational trouble, there is cause for rejoicing, because now the reality about their actual situation is beginning surface after perhaps years of secret power moves, weakened mission, and general failure to be the lively, compassionate community Christ’s body is called to be. Naturally when I shared this perspective with congregational leaders in the midst of the storming chaos, it was not exactly greeted with rejoicing, since in times of trouble, we just want someone come and make the trouble go away.

Facing reality, in depth, is tremendously difficult work Whether in our personal lives or in congregations, we never initially welcome the truth with open arms. Indeed, we resist it. Yet the Advocate stays with us, not to abuse us, but to bring us to life and health and purposeful well-being. We are neither abandoned nor are we just coddled in our denial, but rather helped to accept responsibility for ourselves, face reality, and endure the suffering truth-telling brings. When that happens, over time we discover we’ve been born into a new life! This is the joy and well-being the Advocate brings us to: the other side of truth, the common-union, burden-bearing, forgiving, welcoming, and rejoicing in Christ that spirituality that healthy congregations are about!

Pentecost continues! The Holy Spirit, the Advocate walks us through change, suffering, joy, and service to the gospel cause, in order to align us with God’s work, and to deepen our commit to the church’s mission, following the way of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom we live, and move and have our being. And that’s the truth! Amen.

The Passion of our Lord according to St Luke

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.

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.

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.

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.