Give it Up this Season

Readings: First Sunday in Lent

In our readings we go from God's covenant to Noah and all living creatures that survived the Great Flood, to the Jesus being baptized by John. The images are of a purification by water: first as a punishment/trial and then as a cleansing immersion. The first letter of Peter comments on both. There is much to talk about in these short texts, but I want to focus on the tradition of Lent itself.

Lent commemorates the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and being tempted by Satan. Not coincidentally, the Hebrew Bible tells of the Great Flood occurring some thousand year earlier, during which it rained 40 days and 40 nights while Noah rescued his family and various creatures by taking them into the ark he had built at the LORD's bidding. Lent has become a 40 day period to commemorate Jesus' ordeal, and as a way of preparing to honor the sorrowful mysteries of Holy Week, which includes remembering Jesus' death by crucifixion on Good Friday.

Lent is a period of "pre-mourning." It used to be a period of actual fasting, at least by forgoing red meat. Now many Christians "fast" by abstaining from something, or giving something up, for Lent. A person might give up eating chocolate during Lent, or driving, for examples. We could abstain from things we like to eat, or to drink, or to do.

But those are essentially our amusements or innocent enjoyments. What about our Sins? What about identifying some way you habitually sin, and refraining from that for the 40 days of Lent?

In case you need a reminder, the four basic Sins are that we are estranged from God, the world, each other, and ourselves. We exhibit these estrangements in Capital Sins like Pride, Avarice, Envy, Anger, Lust, Gluttony and Sloth. We can oppose these Capital Sins in ourselves by practicing Capital Virtues like Humility, Liberality, Fraternity, Meekness, Chastity, Temperance, and Diligence.

If these words are too big for you, then look them up. If you're too lazy to do that, then just think about the ways in which you're an asshole. Then, try not to be such an asshole until Easter.

May God forgive you for the times you fail, may God bless you for those times you realize that you failed, and may God make his face to particularly shine on you for those times when you succeed. Amen.

Leia Mais…

Transfiguration, Anyone?

Readings: Transfiguration Sunday

In our Gospel reading we are treated to a remarkable incident reported by Mark. Mark has fewer lines of dialog for Jesus than any other Gospel. Mark is about action. Jesus did this, Jesus did that. Prophetic action that both foretold and made real the imminent coming of God's Kingdom.

This time it's the Transfiguration. Jesus' clothing becomes dazzling white, perhaps luminous, and he talks with Elijah and Moses. Then a cloud overshadows them and a voice says that Jesus is God's Son, the Beloved, listen to him. All of which serves to establish Jesus' bona fides as someone so special as to be unique.

It also foreshadows Jesus' transfiguration into a resurrected being after his crucifixion. Remember that people had trouble recognizing him after his Resurrection. Perhaps we are all to be so transfigured after our resurrections that, as perfected beings, rather than as the masses of contradiction that we now are, we would hardly know ourselves.

Something to look forward to, something to put these troubled times into perspective. Ultimately, our destinies are good. Ultimately it will all work out. There may be some bumps along the way, but ultimately it will all be very fine indeed.

Leia Mais…

On Embodiment

Readings: Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

So Naaman is healed by Elisha, who doesn't even do him the customary honor of coming out to see him. From within his house, Elisha sends his servant to tell Naaman to wash in the Jordan seven times and he will be cleansed of his leprosy. Not an encounter, just a message of good news: do this simple thing and you will be fine.

Elisha and Naaman are two prominent personages. Elisha is the protege of Elijah who by this time had departed the world in chariots of fire, and Naaman serves a king of a neighboring land. Who goes to see whom and how they are treated are matters of political posturing. Naaman, the LORD is so much greater than you that his messenger will not meet you. He will only send you a message, and that will suffice. Naaman is healed, but he has also been put in his place by the ultimate power-play.

Jesus, on the other hand, has no social status, and neither does the leper who begs him for healing. There is no room for political posturing. Indeed, politics is excluded from this encounter. Jesus does not send him a message. He touches him and says, "Be made clean." It is at once a command, and the power to accomplish the command. By himself, the leper cannot make himself clean. But the touch and the word cleanse him. He is not passive - he is given power to become clean, told to be clean, and he becomes clean in response to the command.

The body is central to both narratives. What is healed is a visible bodily infirmity, and how it is healed involves what people do with their bodies - sending a message, or having a personal encounter involving sight, voice, and touch. Which brings us to the Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Corinth. Paul knows that embodiment is central to the human condition. He knows that God has made us, body and soul, and given us to ourselves. Seeking after the necessities and pleasures of the body, we give ourselves over to Evil.

But God has re-purchased us through the price paid by Jesus in his death and resurrection. So the converts in Corinth believe, as Paul reminds them. And that purchase involves both soul and body. Thus Paul admonishes the Corinthians, as he admonishes us to exercise self-control in what we do with our bodies. That neither we nor others exist solely for our own pleasure, but for the pleasure of God.

Through the ages this passage has often been considered in the light of sexual morality, which has undergone changes from place to place and time to time. I would like to enlarge it to all of our behavior, everywhere, all the time. I will restate it as this: Live your life so that more good things happen around you than bad.

That may sound easy, but it isn't. It takes more discernment of the difference between good and evil than we actually have. I don't know what you may want to do about that, but for myself, I pray for guidance and wisdom, and a bit of help now and then.

Leia Mais…

Haven't You Heard?

Readings: Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Have you not heard? The LORD brings princes to naught.

Let's count a few of the recent ones, shall we? Number 1, Hitler. Oh, wait, he shot himself after millions of soldiers and thousands of pilots and seamen kicked the asses of his army, navy, air force, and civilian population, and leveled most of the buildings in most of the cities of his country. Number two, Stalin. Well, he seemed to die of something like old age after killing millions of Soviet citizens and initiating the Cold War by bringing the Iron Curtain down on Eastern Europe. Mao Zedong? Old age again. Pol Pot? Old age. Robert Mugabe? Getting older, still pending.

There are many forms of prayer, and one of them is lament. My lament is that we can take 20th and 21st century history as license to be skeptical about Isaiah 40:21-31. But I also notice that the Soviet Union, the old "Evil Empire," is no more, and that Communism as a secular religion no longer holds many hearts in thrall. Maybe the LORD lays the princes low after all.

Laurence Gonzales notes in his book, Deep Survival that most people who survive catastrophes pray, even the ones who are agnostic or atheists. The form of prayer called supplication, asking for help with our real needs, helps us face and focus on them, which helps us to survive.

So is it real or all in our heads? Does prayer work, or does it just help us work?

There is a story about the man sitting on his roof in a flood who prays to the LORD. Eventually, a boat comes by to rescue him. "No thanks," he says. I trust in the LORD to save me. Another boat motors by, and he again declines their offer, saying, "I trust in the LORD." A helicopter hovers over him, and again he refuses rescue, declaring his faith in the LORD. Eventually the flood waters cover his house and he drowns. When he gets to Heaven, he complains to the LORD that the LORD ignored his prayers and let him die. "No I didn't," says the LORD. I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

Maybe it's a matter of failing to see what is, because we are too focussed on what we want to be. We expect to be saved in some spectacular, supernatural way, rather than noticing that we are being saved in a ordinary, natural way. Maybe it's a matter of looking beyond our immediate rescue to see the bigger picture.

In Mark 1:29-39 Jesus heals people. The next day, there are still more people to be healed, but he moves on to the next town, because he is not about healing people. He is about getting his message out. Healing people establishes credibility and gets attention for the message. But the message is the main thing, and healing is a side issue. What matters is the message.

The message is the Good News that the Apostle Paul proclaims in 1 Corinthians 9:16-23. To proclaim it, he does whatever is necessary, becoming one with all to whom he preaches. To the Jews he is a Jew, to the Gentiles he is a Gentile. He acts like he is rich or poor, as needed.

And what is the message? That the LORD takes pleasure in those who attend to him, who hope in his steadfast love. That those who have done evil will repay. That would be Justice, but then we would all be in trouble, because we have all done evil things, large and small. Someone else - Jesus - has stepped in and paid the price we would otherwise have had to pay ourselves. We are forgiven, but forgiveness did not come cheap.

Now Paul thought that you had to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior in order to be raised to Eternal Life. As if there are lots of doors in the afterlife, and that you have to go through the right one - the one that Jesus is hiding behind - in order to get to Heaven. On the other hand, it could be that Jesus is behind all the doors, and that Hell is refusing or fearing to go through any door at all. Or it could be that Jesus doesn't hide behind the doors - he comes out to you and guides you through.

I don't know. I do know that the early Christians, like Paul and the other Apostles would not have willingly committed themselves to martyrdom for any but the first alternative. But were they right, or is some other alternative right? Or is the question itself beside the point? One fine day, usually before we are ready, we each of us will find out.

Leia Mais…

Prophets, Priests, Kings and Law

Readings: Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Islam has the audacity to claim all the Jewish prophets as Muslim prophets, from Moses to Jesus. So in the interest of inter-faith clarity, I would like to use today's readings to consider how prophethood was and is viewed in Judaism and Christianity.

To begin, note that the archetypal prophet, Moses, was not a priest. His brother Aaron was the priest of the Exodus. This means many things, of which we can immediately extract one. A prophet is not beholden to any religious institution. No institution has the ability to appoint, select, approve or disapprove prophets. The prophet him or herself had better get that straight:

But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak--that prophet shall die.

Moreover, the religious institutions and the people in them are also warned:

Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable.

The prophet has only one job: to speak or to do what the LORD commands - to be the LORD's messenger. And nothing else. In Judaism and Christianity, the prophet is not a general, not a head of state, not a priest, not any culturally sanctioned authority figure. The prophet is independent of culture and cultural institutions. In ancient Israel, the prophet came from among the people, and criticized the King, the Priests, and the people themselves.

These institutions were kept separate from the beginning, as commanded by the LORD. Kings were not Priests, and Priests were not Kings. The wielders of temporal power were kept separate and distinct from the wielders of religious authority. And both were kept in check by the prophets, who were kept separate from both.

If this same separation were observed in Islam, the Caliph or Sultan (political ruler), the Imams (leader of prayer), and the prophets would always be separate people. The combination of any two of them in one person would not occur, much less the combination of all three. But this is the innovation of Islam: all three were combined in the Prophet Muhammad. A careless reading of the Qur'an will retroject this combination onto the Jewish prophets. This is an error.

Prophets could innovate, because they taught with authority from the LORD. But they could do more than that. In our Gospel reading, Jesus commands an unclean spirits to leave an unnamed man. In our day, we might say he was a faith healer, who could cure psychosomatic disorders. Or we might say a lot more. While it is impossible to independently authenticate any particular miracle attributed to Jesus, it is quite clear that Jesus, his followers, his competitors, and even his enemies all agreed that he was a worker of astonishing deeds that included healing.

This was an innovation of Jesus: before him, it was common to associate the gift of healing with prophets, but it didn't seem to be such a large part of their activities.

Following Jesus, the Apostle Paul extends Jesus' innovation regarding the relaxation of purity laws about food. Yet, he does not force his innovation regarding food sacrificed to idols on those for whom it would become an obstacle to their faith.

And so, over our readings God goes from severe to lenient. It all depends on the context. There are 613 rules commanded by God in the Old Testament, many of which are now impossible to obey in modern times. It must be that many are set aside or modified, and many are simply forgiven us. Because we are not the same polytheistic rabble that Moses led out of Egypt. We are followers of Jesus, who summed up what it means to obey the LORD's commandments as:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. - Matthew 22:37-40

We might add, as did Micah, "And what does the LORD require of the but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

The Law is the Good Guide, a compass pointing in the direction of true faith. It is not to be used as a straitjacket, or as blinders, or as a cross upon which to crucify those who interpret it differently from ourselves.

Leia Mais…

Refusing the Call

Readings: Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

To really understand the context of our Old Testament reading, you have to read the first four short chapters of the Book of Jonah. Jonah is the comic prophet. The LORD tells him to give a dire warning to Nineveh, a large Assyrian city that was a worship center for the goddess Ishtar.

At first, Jonah was having none of it. He knew what fate awaited prophets who told large populations what they didn't want to hear. A holy martyrdom was not one of his desires. So he took off in another direction, buying passage on a ship to Tarshish.

The LORD, however, calls up a storm that frightens the sailors until they figure out that Jonah is a prophet refusing his mission and throw him overboard. This is when "ol' Jonah got et by a whale." This threatens to be the end of Jonah, but it turns out he dies only metaphorically.

When Jonah gives in and sings to the LORD, the whale pukes him onto the shore, a metaphorical, if smelly, rebirth. I should point out that whale puke, also called ambergris, is so good at holding onto a smell that it is refined and used as a base for expensive perfumes. The Bible is silent on whether Jonah takes time to bathe on the way to Nineveh. When he arrives there with his warning, the people, much to his surprise, actually repent and call on the LORD.

Jonah is upset. That was too easy. He wanted to see some fireworks come down on the place. The LORD disabuses him of that notion, too.

In contrast to Jonah, Simon (later called Peter, which means "The Rock"), Andrew, and James all respond to Jesus's call "immediately," which seems to be the favorite word of the Gospel attributed to Mark. If they had thought about it, like Jonah, they might have talked themselves out of it. Following Jesus would be a rough road for them, forsaking family and tribe - the two things by which you live in honor/shame societies, to follow this itinerant preacher and faith-healer.

On the other hand, could they really have refused the call? Sometimes the LORD gives you no choice. Tag, you're it. It's the corollary to Isaac Bashevis Singer's statement that, "We have to believe in Free Will, we have no choice."

So what else is there to do but sing the LORD's praises like today's Psalm and go for it with gusto. After all, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, the time may be shorter than we think. It's always a good time to get our priorities straight.

Leia Mais…

The Call of the LORD

Readings: Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

"Hey, you!"

"Here I am."

The call of the LORD and the response of the whole person, simple and immediate. "Here I am," was the way you declared that you were not only present, but accountable and responsible. You declared that you were ready to do your superior's bidding.

But in the case of the young Samuel, "Here I am," was not enough. Samuel thought that Eli had called him. Eli instructed him to be more specific. The next time Samuel hears the still, small voice of the Lord, he answers, "Speak, for your servant is listening."

Then the channel of communication opens, and the Word of God changes his life, and the lives of the people around him. The LORD calls Samuel to his calling, the mission in life he was always supposed to have, the mission that will truly make him all he is meant to be and to become. He is not called to be a reasonably respectable temple priest who never appears on the stage of history. No, he is called to be Samuel, the bearer of the LORD's news, both good and bad, the king-maker, the anointer of King Saul.

Sometimes being called out of your present life and into your new life is a fantastic experience for you and all those around you. Consider the case of Paul Potts, the shy, fat, young mobile phone sales clerk, who has the gall to appear on a tryout for a television talent show and declare that he is about to sing opera. The three judges look at each other as if to say, "Oh, God, I hope this won't be unbearably bad. And then the guy gives this performance:



By the time he's done, some members of the audience are giving him a standing ovation, some are in tears, and the judges are in slack-jawed wonder. His life and ours are changed from this day forward. He wasn't meant to be a sales clerk after all. He was meant to be an opera singer.

Sometimes being called out of your present life can lead through the doorway of death. Pat Tillman felt called to leave his career as a professional football player and become a Corporal with the United States Army Rangers. It was his way of responding to the challenge of Islamofascism to Civilization after the 9/11 attacks. He was killed by "friendly fire" in an ambush on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who dared to criticize the Nazis after they had taken control of Germany. Although he had escaped Germany, he felt called to return, to put his body on the line against genuine moral evil in his native land. He was eventually sent to a concentration camp, and when the camp was about to be liberated by the Allied invasion of Europe, he was executed. Some years before that, Bonhoeffer had written a book called The Cost of Discipleship, in which he said that when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Sometimes physical death is the risk we are called to take, sometimes not. But we are always called to die to our previous way of life, to our previous notions of what is important, to our previous values. For all people of all cultures in all times and places one universal truth is that our values are not God's values.

The call to be all that we can be is the call to step outside ourselves, to enlarge our values, to risk who we are so that through us God may affirm who God is.

So Jesus says to Philip, "Follow me."

Into what adventure, into what peril? Into what glory? Philip has no idea, but he has a strong feeling that whatever the cost, this is the man, and this is the moment. He gets his body up and follows Jesus.

Simple, in a way, for Philip. All he has to do is get up and go. For us, following Jesus is not so obvious and so immediate. The nature of our call can sometimes be obscure.

But there are things we are called to avoid. Since we take God with us in whatever we do, we are called to avoid doing things we prefer not to drag God into. We are to avoid obsession with minor points of religious law and observance, to the exclusion of our awareness of God's presence. It was that obsession that got Christ crucified.

We are also to avoid the abuse of our own and other people's bodies, including the abuse of our sexuality. As the Apostle Paul says in his first (surviving) letter to the Corinthians, we are not our own. We were bought with a price - the price Jesus paid on the cross. And he paid that price because, God has known you better than you know yourself from before the foundation of the world.

This is effectively a commandment to be caring and respectful toward ourselves and each other. For that is how we are to be recognized by the world, that we have love one toward another.

Now you are called to follow your God. Where the adventure leads, I can't tell, except that ultimately we are promised Heaven. But the point is that if we shrink from the call, we will shrink spiritually, we will be less than we were meant to be. We will die inside. If we say, "Yes, here I am," and follow our call, we will have abundant life, even if it is in the midst of outward deprivation and suffering. For we will all surely die. The only question is whether we will truly live before we do so.

Leia Mais…