vitalwholeness

At our Sunday evening alternative service, the CORE, the community has been wrestling with the place of doubt in our faith. All of that culminated with our Easter celebration in which resurrection hope lived along side the doubts we carry. As we reflected on Mark’s account of the the women running away, silent, after encountering the empty tomb, we wrestled with how we are charged to finish that unfinished mystery. As one in our community put it later, “We are the sequel to the story.” Indeed we are.

Molly Vrbicek penned a litany for the evening, one worth reflecting on:

We have spent the past weeks diving deep into our doubts, exploring them, and finding peace with them. We have been honest and vulnerable with ourselves and each other, sometimes painfully so, boldly expressing our questions about God, who He is, what that means for us, and even how lost we sometimes feel in the vastness of it all.

We have found that these unanswerable doubts, uncertainties, and questions do not contradict our faith. Rather, they are steps in our dance with God. They are part of the complicated process of learning to follow and trust someone greater than ourselves.

Through these dark tunnels we have come out on the other side. Many uncertainties still remain, but we have hope. That hope is ultimately found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Christ was crucified, his disciples must have been in drowning in doubts. But imagine their joy three days later, seeing Him once again walking among them, fully alive! This is truly a cause for celebration!

So today on Easter Sunday, let’s celebrate the risen Lord! Let’s throw confetti, shoot off party poppers, and shout Hallelujah!

He is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!

After our Good Friday service I sat at home, reflecting. In recent years The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson) has become standard fare on Good Friday television. So I tuned in, trying to look at it with new eyes. It has been a while since its opening.

Ok, forget Hollywood and what it has to do to sell its product. Of course it’s going to be over the top. I understand. But I can’t, I won’t gloss over the implicit theology and Christology of this movie. Even to raise modest protest about the point of view of the movie is to call into question the veracity of one’s faith. Today, in certain Christian circles, one is easily branded heretical if this movie is negatively critiqued, challenged, or questioned. It’s become doctrine, dogma, holy writ. It’s shown to youth groups. Entire congregations watch it.

As I watched it again a haunting question appeared: How can I be fair to your story, Jesus?

The second was close on its heels: How will this theology speak to church and culture today?

Problem 1: The portrayal of the Jewish crowd as ravenous beasts is an outrage. We know Jesus was in conflict with Jewish leaders. We also know that the High Priest was appointed by Rome to keep order. The Roman reach was absolute. If it consulted Jewish leaders it was in private, never publicly bowing to any other authority. The specter of Pilate running a survey of the crowd to find the consensus, even in the Barabbas narrative, is dubious, as scholars know. The reality of the time was that a peasant like Jesus would have been dealt with in a summary way, dispatched quickly and without much fanfare. Which means that the movie was making a theological statement about Jesus. The movie portrayed him as a somebody being crucified rather than a nobody being crucified. The crucifixion of Jesus would have been much more routine, like thousands of others. That’s why it’s important; not because it was carried out in a unique way, but rather because it was like all others.

Problem 2: The movie appeals to one theory of atonement in the substitutionary track. This means that Jesus is portrayed as a vicarious victim whose blood is appeasing God. Mel Gibson’s Jesus knows he is the sacrifice, something Christians meditated on at a much later time. People like the apostle Paul and the early church fathers asked the question: What is the meaning of the death of the messiah? Their answers were several but Gibson gives us one. That’s why the emphasis on inordinate quantities of blood; the more blood, the more pleasing the sacrifice.

Problem 3: Evil is personified as a comic book character. The devil floats around in human form like Harry Potter’s Voldemort, the one whose name shall not be spoken. The evil impulse resides in all of us, a power that seizes collectives as well as individuals. This portrayal simplifies evil to the level of the ridiculous.

Problem 4: The location of the crucifixion was portrayed on the top of Golgotha, the place of the skull. That former rock quarry was a landmark outside the gates of the city. But crucifixions didn’t take place on top. Rather, Golgotha overshadowed the road below outside the city gates. There numerous crosses that lined the road out of the city, an ever present warning to anyone who would disturb the Pax Romana. Jesus was placed in one of these long lines of crosses, among the newly crucified and the bodies that had been rotting for some time. Again, the point is not to be the most unique cross, positioned like no other on top the hill, but rather identifying with the rest of suffering humanity on the road.

Problem 5: No film maker does resurrection well. The best one can do is hint at something that cannot be portrayed. But Gibson has the stone rolled away only to reveal a newly constituted Jesus, all cleaned up except for the marks of the nails. They fall right back into the old distortion: Resurrection as the resuscitation of a corpse. The resurrection has nothing to do with reanimating the old body of Jesus. He really is dead. And his life in God has really transcended death, sin and suffering. But Gibson leaves us with something else, the implicit message: He did his hard work, knowing everything would turn out alright.

To be fair, Gibson lapses into Biblical confusion like scores of other attempts before him. They take scenes and sayings that would have derived from the historical Jesus – like the sermon on the mount – and combine them with long treatises from the Gospel of John, which were really much later statements about Jesus by the church placed on his lips.  It’s part of the problem we all face when we try to harmonize various Gospel accounts. It happens in Good Friday services in our churches all the time.

How to conclude this rant? Gibson presents one version of the story filled with historical distortions and one theological position among several. And whenever you attempt to do a Passion, a clip of the entire story, it is easy to disconnect it from the life that preceded it. The Passion of the Christ admirably tries to overcome this with flashbacks to the public ministry of Jesus. But we are still left with the gnawing suspicion that the life was somehow beside the point, as long as the bloody transaction took place, which was the real thing. But the followers of Jesus would have experienced exactly the opposite: It was his  life, his proclamation of the realm of God, speaking truth to power, and his willingness to give all for what he valued most that led to this passion, and in the end, overcame it.

Over the years I have fasted on two of the traditional days for fasting within the Christian year – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.  These are not meant as a way to facilitate weight control, another relevant issue for another day.

Fasting is a spiritual practice known to most of the major world religions. Some, like me, practice it as a part of a larger religious story. Others fast as they feel it is needed, or schedule spiritual retreats where fasting plays a part. In many traditions fasting is connected with repentance or to make a non-violent moral statement.

Why? What’s it about?

My daughter has asked me about it through the years, usually as my periodic fasting has interrupted some dinner plans. “You’re not eating? Well that’s a fine how do you do!” I’ve tried to explain the purposes of fasting and I thought she wasn’t listening. I just assumed that when I talked about the way that turning attention away from bodily needs may redirect us to other levels of consciousness she wasn’t paying attention. I was wrong.

This year, a couple of days in advance of Good Friday, she said, “So, you’re fasting on Friday?” I answered that I was. “Well then, I’ll join you.” That shut me up. She’s going to join me. “That would be wonderful,” said I. She obviously had been thinking about it already. “I’ve got my water supply ready. I’ll be drinking most of the day.” That’s good, so will I.

My Good Friday fast was spent mostly at home, in the quiet, electronic devises rationed as well. Certainly no TV. I read scripture, some spiritual writers, worked on my Easter sermon and wrote some Wednesday Wonders. What I noticed was a certain alertness I usually lacked, and maybe a quietude. It works, especially when one accepts it and expects something from it. Redirecting hunger is a good thing. Some things can be sublimated for very good purposes.

Daughter calls: “How’s your fast going?” Fine, thank you, and yours? “I’m not even wanting food. No problem, I’ll break it in the morning.”

After the Good Friday service she corners me. “It’s strange, I’m not hungry and I’m sitting quiet more. I put the Bible by my computer, the one I received for my baptism. I’ve been reading Psalms. They are awesome.” This I’ve never heard from her, though she’s an every Sunday worshiper. Was it the fast? Or an intention that made the fast important? Or a connection with doing spiritual things?

Tomorrow, in the early hours of Holy Saturday, I will break the fast. I will take into myself the good things of the earth that we need to exist. I will enjoy their flavors and be more aware of each bite and the thanksgiving I have for it.

Don’t ask me if I lost a few pounds because I don’t know, I didn’t weigh. But do ask me if a practice this ancient is still relevant today. No, ask my daughter. She’ll be more fun.

There is something about remembering the last time you shared a social gathering with what seemed to be friends who later  became your nightmare. It appeared to be one way, but in reality  it was quite another. Today, all chummy, fake smiles with pats on the back. Tomorrow carrying out the schemes that had already been cooking for a long time, like the meal they shared.

Judas showed up and made an appearance. He had been a busy boy. By the end of the supper, after dipping in the same bowl with him, Jesus looked into eyes that could not look back and said that he might as well get on with it.

It’s a terrible thing to suddenly be known for who you are or what you are doing. It’s a terrible thing to know that one you trusted has never been as trustworthy as you thought.

I’ve always felt for Judas, so contrite later that he gave the money back, so tortured that he ended it all. If it all was predestined, as some say, then he was simply playing his part very well. Who could blame him? If not, if he was acting out of his freedom to choose, then he is a tragic figure that reminds me of, well, me, of us, of the world. How often we have it wrong. And how often we take the liberty to destroy out of all that wrongness.

Though Judas ended up hanging at the end of the rope what I know is that all our lives hang on slender threads. And deep down I lean on the very same grace that upheld Judas, though he obviously didn’t know it. At least then.

I hope we meet, Judas and me, in some other life, some other existence, in the mystery of God’s time and place. I’ll want to catch up, find out how he’s doing, now that we all see the big picture. It may be that the indignities of the past are long forgotten, irrelevant to the moment. When you’re existing in awe and wonder the dark stains of the past somehow evaporate. I hope so, for him. But not just for him. I just hope.

Today

I have been counting

or maybe listing

compiling a list

in a very unsystematic way

the trillion breakouts of the spirit

most of which I missed

as they whizzed by me

without notice

there are mostly faces

but also words

and happenings I could never

explain

I will run out of time

before I have finished

counting them all

Genevieve Howard has a new book of poetry that is on the edge of being published. It will be entitled Take, and one of those sixteen poems received a third-place award at the recent CORE arts expo. Take Heart is good for anytime, but especially this week, as we contemplate the mystery of God pouring out for the creation through Christ and a graced reciprocal motion by which we may pour ourselves out the same.

take heart

a day since i felt you.

a day of drizzle and no umbrella,

a day of roads and no destination.

i hunger for your bread then

scold myself for being hungry.

i listen for you but hear

only wind dividing wheat fields,

rain pattering on rooftop.

i look for signs but see

only grain, oven, bread,

mouth.

it rains. i descend into the river.

am i floating or sinking?

oh! i am dissolving

into you, my beloved.

i am the song, the salt and the stone.

you are the wind, the water and

the way.

He shared that he would be coming alone with the children from now on because  the wife and mother had left.

One family asked if they could join us, even if their children were not like other children.

She  stood alone, holding faith in one hand and a different way of loving in the other. Am I accepted here, she asked.

And the ones who now have to sleep in their van brought the children in to worship anyway.

I am a witness to these things. To such belong the kingdom of heaven.

Hats off to a controversy story that has been poorly interpreted, exploited and wrongly used for centuries: Mark 12:13-7 (parallel Matthew 22:15-22 and Luke 20:20-26). It is the story of Pharisees and Herodians attempting to trap Jesus.

“Is it lawful (in the religious sense) to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

People have used this question and its answer as a way to reinforce being a good taxpayer. Some have used it to talk about a separation of church and state. They all miss the mark.

Background to the text: Palestine is a Roman occupied territory and the Emperor levies taxes through his appointed vassals to fund the reach of the empire and reinforce submission. And so the 90% of the population that is peasantry funds the 10% that is empire and local aristocracy. And, no small thing, Caesar is seen as divinely appointed and endowed.

Do you pay the tax of Caesar – fund the occupying forces? If you say yes, you’re sleeping with the enemy. If you say no, well, we know what the powerful do with insurgents. Hence, the trap.

But the response of Jesus takes us way beyond the outlines of the trap. He directs people to a Roman coin and asks whose visage is found there. It is the Caesar. Well then, give to the Caesar what belongs to him. Now what would that be? What does rightfully belong to the Caesar? First hard question. But wait, he’s saved the punch line for last.

But give to God the things that belong to God. And what would those be? What rightfully belongs to God? And what’s more, in a world in which the Caesar is seen to be the divine benefactor, to whom a tribute is fitting, Jesus draws a distinction: The Emperor and God are two different things. There is an empire of this world, its powers and principalities, and then there is the empire of God. Our loyalty to each is distinct. And one always trumps the other. Our citizenship to one always serves as the measure of the other. Can you imagine which?

After that, his detractors  shut up. No wonder.

The taxes I pay as a part of my responsibility of being a citizen are never spent in exactly the way I would like them to be. Neither are yours. In a representative democracy spending priorities and practices result from a wild combination of political decision making on multiple levels. The only way to move toward different spending priorities is by participation in the political process. And I can’t whine about it unless I do.

Likewise, in any religious community, the body never places its spending priorities in such a way that all people are pleased by them or all of them. Even as a pastor, I’m never totally in agreement with the way the church spends its money – and I, as a leader of the community, more often than not end up defending the ways in which the church spends its money. I’m still never completely satisfied. But I still make an offering to God, even without total happiness, because I know that it’s about more than what I happen to think is important at the moment. There are other voices, perspectives and values at work. Maturity helps us accept this … to a degree.

There are those times when spending by government, church or our silly nephew, Arnold, who squanders the money we gave him, becomes so egregious, that we must protest. That’s understandable and at times necessary. But so is our willingness to live in community and accept the differences that exist among diverse people and perspectives.

God bless us as we figure it out. I’m still trying to.