Diving Deep Second Sunday of Epiphany January 13, 2013 Luke 3.21-22

“I was wishing,” says C. S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian, upon learning that he is a descendant of pirates, “that I came of a more honorable lineage.”

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” Aslan the Lion replies. “And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

It comes as no surprise that right after narrating Jesus’ baptism, Luke launches into Our Lord’s genealogy, which he traces right back to the Original Orchard Thief himself. The entire ritual shouts the Savior’s willingness to wallow base-over-apex in the muddy end of our troubled gene pool.

Jesus dives into the Jordan as deep as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah: “Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him.” (Isa 42.1) He plunges deeper down to the prophesied king of the ancient psalmist: “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” (Ps 2.7) He touches bottom by identifying with Isaac, the chosen child marked out for sacrifice:  “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering.” (Gn 22.2) Then as he resurfaces in a burst of bubbles, the vehicle of life that has weathered sin’s flood, he goes all the way back to Noah: “And the dove came to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.” (Gn 8.11) That is the same deep dive in which we follow Jesus in our own baptism.

In this light, it is worth noting that all this happened while Jesus prayed. Jesus prays a lot in Luke’s Gospel, when calling disciples and getting transfigured and facing the cross and forgiving his enemies. (Lk 3.21, 6.12, 9.18-22, 9.28-29, 11.1, 22.32,41, 23.34,46) It is almost as if his identity with his human family was more than an act, as if he heard from God the same way you and I can – and must; almost as if he was content to be a Son of Adam along with the rest of us.

During Epiphany we celebrate the bursting forth of the light of Christ into our darkness. Maybe it is a good idea to remember that this light did not chase away the reality of who we are, but instead illuminated it. We are sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, whose lineage Christ both bore and redeemed, and that is “both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.”

Come On In, The Water’s Fine!

Doug

Two Halves That Make Us Whole, Sunday January 6 2013, Epiphany Sunday Year C, Matthew 2.1-12

It was a weird business. Herod already sat the throne like a cowboy on a rodeo bull: He'd fadged up a Jewish pedigree, won a war against the Gentiles and went Extreme Makeover on the temple - all signs that should have cemented his claim to be messiah. And he killed anybody who seemed to need it. Still, he worried.
What he didn't need - what nobody really needed - was a bunch of hippies drifting in from out of state to jab a cattle prod into the delicate underbelly of the whole fragile situation.
They came from the East - like maybe New York; probably talked funny, too. And they spouted a bunch of New Age mysticism about Saturn in retrograde and the winter solstice. Didn't know the Bible, though. Herod called in his tame preachers who'd all done AWANAS as kids and didn't hesitate to cite chapter and verse on the twenty of the coming king. "Bethlehem," they chirped in unison. The fastest among them stepped forward, his finger pointing to the passage as he announced, "Micah 5:2!" But even as the winner collected his prize - a laminated book mark imprinted with the Ten Commandments - he knew he'd stay away from the City of David. Nothing good could come of this.
Matthew wrote to reassure - and to challenge - a Jewish church that found itself suddenly flooded with Gentiles, half-trained foreigners who had figured out that nature only started a sentence which only Scripture could finish. They had enough sense to see that "the world is charged with the grandeur of God" but not enough education to know what to do about it. The Evangelist drops a couple of hints to his fellow-Israelites: First, these newcomers need your Bible knowledge if they're to complete the journey, and second, your Bible knowledge is no good to you if it doesn't reinterpret your own world and send you on the same trip.
Epiphany - literally "the shining" - reminds us that the star of Bethlehem was essentially a reading lamp meant to shed enough light on Scripture to help us find the Lord. We can go blind by staring at the light and we can go blind by reading in the dark. The only safe course is to let both books - life and sacred text - send us off on a journey to Jesus.

Wise Up!

Doug

"Love" December 23, 2012 Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C Luke 1.39-56

            When Dancer and Prancer and company froze Rudolph out of their reindeer games, the North Pole got a little bit colder. Fortunately, the very freak feature that earned him the cold shoulder might also have warmed him back up. Science says so.

            Research recently published in the scientific journal “Acta Psychologica” reports that the skin temperature of lab subjects actually drops .378 degrees when they are excluded from a game of catch. Touching something warm – like a steaming cup of coffee or, say, a glowing red nose – reverses the effect.

            Mary lets loose with the Magnificat only after her kinswoman Elizabeth extends an embrace. Perhaps the Virgin required sufficient geographical and emotional distance from the gossiping tongues of Nazareth before her own tongue could call out in praise to God. Perhaps John’s gestational gymnastics warmed her to just that degree that praise became possible. She fled the cold of exclusion for the healing embrace of love.

            But what about those we would rather not embrace? There are times when justice seems to demand that we crush rather than hug. Some behavior deserves to be left out in the cold.

In his book “Exclusion and Embrace,” Miroslav Volf recounts how, in the winter of 1993, he delivered a lecture on forgiveness. As he concluded, the formidable Jurgen Moltmann rose to put the first question: “But can you embrace a cetnik?” At that moment the cetniki – Serbian terrorists – were marauding through Volf’s native Yugoslavia looting and raping Volf’s own people. “No, I cannot,” replied the theologian with integrity. “But as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”

The birth of Christ is all about an embrace that brings warmth to those excluded by the cold of sin. As we rejoice in this truth, however, we must also remember that if Christ’s arms are flung wide to receive us, it is because they are pinned in place to the wood of the cross. Sometimes it is only through the crucifixion of self that we open to others the warmth that gives them life.

Come On In!

Doug

            

Joy December 16, 2012 Third Sunday of Advent, Year C Philippians 4.4-7

Joy

December 16, 2012

Third Sunday of Advent, Year C

Philippians 4.4-7

            N. T. Wright asserts that the key term of first century Judaism was “hope”: The Jewish people looked forward to something that God would do. The key term for Christianity, Wright says, was “joy”: Christians looked back to something God had done.

Devout Jews hoped in a coming Messiah; Devout Christians rejoiced in a risen one.

            That joy pervades Paul’s pen in the little thank-you note of Philippians. The apostle peppers his prose with terms for joy: He “joy” in some form fifteen times and even throws in a synonym on two more occasions for a whopping total of seventeen references in a letter of 104. On average, Paul stops to rejoice about once every six verses!

            Two things about this festivity: It is public, and it is secure. Paul calls for a public rejoicing. While we usually hear his mandate for mirth as a call to private joy, his world would have heard it in terms of public celebration. Paul calls for public parties of praise where all can see the church’s victory in Christ. Paul offers a secure rejoicing: The word for “guard” in verse seven conjures the image of a squadron of soldiers standing sentry duty over a treasure chest. Christian joy is not some sloppy self-hypnosis: Steady prayer imparts a peace that makes rejoicing real.

            But don’t miss verse five, with its whispered reminder about a gentle spirit. Chauvinistic celebration often steamrolls those left silent by grief. In the spirit of the Christ who never broke a bruised reed and who nurtured the guttering flame of even the smokiest wick, let us deal out our joy in doses appropriate to the patient.

I Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart,

Doug

           

"Peace" December 9, 2012 Second Sunday of Advent, Year C Luke 3.1-9

            “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish,” writes C. S. Lewis in the preface to The Great Divorce, “but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.”

            That was John’s essential message to Israel. He came “preaching a baptism of repentance,” a loaded theological word, a real eraser of a noun. Israel, he declared, had put two and two together and gotten eleven and only a good soaking in the muddy Jordan could expunge the miscalculation and offer a fresh start. That involved going back a long way, because John’s baptism essentially re-enacted the nation’s original amphibious invasion of the Promised Land under her ancient hero Joshua. (Joshua 3)

He tosses in a construction metaphor from the prophet Isaiah to say that shoveling a little hot-mix into the potholes won’t suffice; Israel must completely rebuild the road. Washing the car, he warns the crowds, won’t fix this engine; it has to be completely rebuilt.

Start over! Only this way, John argues, can Israel open a superhighway for her new ruler and find true peace.

            Luke sets this message in the context of a rival method: He names five political leaders in descending order of power, then a couple of local religious rulers. All of this seeming order in fact speaks of impermanence and turmoil: Herod and Philip had snatched scraps of their father’s turf and now quarreled over control. Ananias and Caiaphas couldn’t both be high priest at the same time since the Law said the high priest served for life; but the Romans didn’t like anyone holding power for too long so they instituted a rota. If the key to peace was more government, Israel should have been the most peaceful place on the planet. Instead the people groaned under ruinous taxes, Tea Party patriots hid weapons caches in the hills, and Roman crosses dotted the skyline. John’s message says that more human effort amounts to an exponential multiplication of the wrong number.

Sometimes peace comes only through the messy business of tearing everything up and starting over. Sometimes “peace” comes at the expense of “quiet.” Reworking the sum is troublesome and time-consuming, but wrong calculations count when the answer is eternal.

Peace Out!

Doug

"Hope" December 2, 2012 First Sunday of Advent, Year C Jeremiah 33:14-16

            On Friday, November 15, air raid sirens sliced through the skies above Jerusalem and sent residents scrambling for cover. At least two rockets thumped home in the sacred soil. Palestinian forces in Gaza claimed credit. Even Saddam Hussein avoided training missiles on ground held holy by Muslims as well as Jews. Abu Obeida of Hamas declared, “We are sending a short and simple message: There is no security for any Zionist or any single inch of Palestine.”

            Sometimes when we encounter the unthinkable, our only choice is to hope the unhopeable.

            Jeremiah lived to see Jerusalem’s homes razed so the repurposed stones could plug gaps in her ramparts (v.4), and the city’s streets strewn with unburied battlefield casualties (v.5). The temple that could not fall fell and the royal line that would rule forever ruled no longer. In the face of the unthinkable he hoped the unhopeable: The stump-sawn tree of David would put forth a branch strong enough to shade all the earth with justice. All the earth – because only when justice reigns everywhere can there be peace anywhere.

            Sometimes when we encounter the unthinkable, our only choice is to hope the unhopeable.

            As we enter the season of Advent, the newsreels remind us that our world yet yearns for the full coming of Christ’s rule. In the face of unthinkable devastation, intractable hostilities, and unforgiveable atrocities, Christians face again the challenge to hope the unhopeable: that the actual obedience to Christ which calls us to our crosses will result in the actual Kingdom of Heaven coming to reign among us.

            “In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell in safety.” Once again our world is unthinkable; once again our hope seems unhopeable; once again, we hope.

Shalom,

Doug

            

Back Where I Come From. . . November 25, 2012 Christ the King Sunday, Year B John 18.33-37

            “Back where I come from. . . .”

            We’ve all heard the phrase. We’ve probably even used it. It is a cultural meme that introduces controversy. The words imply that the speaker is about to question the prevailing patterns of behavior by setting them against an outside standard.

            Southerners use it on yankees who fail to offer a woman a seat on the subway. Yankees use it on southerners who end sentences in prepositions.

            Rednecks use it on city-slickers who think verbal badinage won’t result in a butt-kicking. City-slickers use it on rednecks whose fingernails aren’t clean.

            Anglos use it on Hispanics who don’t respect their privacy. Hispanics use it on Anglos who don’t understand community.

            And Jesus uses it on Pilate, who doesn’t understand. . .well, hardly anything.

            “My kingdom is not of this world.” All the standard translations render it so, understanding Jesus to say that his reign takes place elsewhere – in Heaven, maybe, or Oz or Narnia.  But the preposition is tricky and can show origin as well as nature. “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world's order of things,” reads the Complete Jewish Bible. And Jesus proves his claim by the fact that he told his troops to stand down: No good using a hammer to write a symphony; no good using a sword to bring in a kingdom that holds no territory.

            “Back where I come from,” Jesus smiles slyly at Pilate, “we don’t win wars that way.” But Pilate misses the smile, because they’d busted Jesus’ mouth up until the swelling hid his teeth.

            And this world continues to miss the Lord’s subtle grin because our trusty weapons have marred his countenance. We have bruised him in the person of the poor or the other or the enemy and vandalized our only hope of seeing the truth. We relegate the Kingdom of Heaven to the ether, and fail to realize that it is, in fact, the Kingdom FROM Heaven: not something we go to but something that comes to us.

            “Back where I come from,” Jesus lisps through a split lip and two missing teeth, “we love our enemies. Back where I come from, we turn the other cheek, and then the other, until we whiplash ourselves into genuine forgiveness. Back where I come from, those who die on crosses, not those who crucify others, are the winners.” And he leaves unspoken the obvious conclusion: “And the Kingdom of Back Where I Come From is coming here.”

And That’s the Truth,

Doug

           

The End is Near November 18, 2012 Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 13.1-8

            The end of the world went O-for-two in 2011 and 2012 isn’t looking good either.

            Radio preacher Harold Camping made a considerable splash when he scheduled the rapture for May 21, 2011, to be followed five months later to the day by the destruction of the world. You may have noticed it didn’t happen. Now warming up in the apocalyptic bull pen is December 21, 2012, the sell-by date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.

            I don’t blame people for their fascination with this kind of things. Jesus’ disciples shared the same itch. When their rabbi started talking about a Hurricane Sandy-sized hurt hitting the most majestic building in their world, they asked a natural question: “When will these things be?” Our Lord’s answer is a little unsatisfying. Jesus reaches deep down in his prophetic grab-bag of apocalyptic imagery and lets loose with a lot of rhetoric about natural child birth and zodiacal indigestion and stories about fig trees and CEO’s on business trips.

            What does all this mean? An earthquake hit Dallas a while back; should I be worried?

            Look for a moment at what’s happening: Jesus is a prophet, arguably The Prophet, the Messiah. He turns his back on the control panel of the ultimate piece of religious technology that his own faith and history recognize, hikes across the Kidron, enthrones himself on the Mount of Olives, takes in the view of that very structure, and predicts its destruction. (And, unlike Harold Camping, history proves Jesus right: the Romans leveled the place some three decades later.) Ezekiel saw the Shekinah cloud of God’s glory depart from a corrupt temple taking pretty much the same route. (Ezekiel 10-11) Jesus warns the disciples that God won’t honor godly architecture or activity when God ceases to be its center.

            Of course, this makes it tough on a would-be redeemer. Jesus already knows that a few days later the Romans will execute him; he plans to let the temple of his body take the heat that the temple building deserves. And he warns his followers that we have the same job: He calls us to embrace the unjust suffering that comes from living the Jesus-life in a God-rejecting world.

            When will the world end?

            Well, my world might have to end today when the gospel requires me to put self aside and bear the well-deserved sufferings of another in order to demonstrate God’s love. And personally, that Mayan thing sounds a lot easier.

Save the Date!

Doug

           

Pomp and Recompense November 11, 2012 Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 12.38-44

            Tony Celelli, our president here at the South Texas School of Christian Studies, recently received his doctoral regalia. It is stunning: a sort of steel-blue gown with cobalt blue chevrons picked out in gold piping, off the shoulder with a slit up one side. (All right, I made that last part up, but it would add some dash.) He has declared that henceforth we will wear gowns and hoods to our weekly faculty meetings.

            I don’t blame him!  I myself have never managed to develop the professional disdain one is supposed to display for the full regimentals of religious scholarship. I have owned my academic trappings for six years now and still look for opportunities to tog up, even to wear the hat – an oversized octagonal tam that looks like some sort of monstrous velvet sombrero. I worked hard for the right to wear this get-up and I feel smarter just hearing it swish around me as I walk. And I still get a charge every time someone refers to me as “Dr. Jackson.”

            All of that is harmless enough, I suppose, but Jesus took a dim view of such sartorial distinctions, and he wasn’t much for titles. The problem is that flowing robes have plenty of room for deep pockets and can cover up a lot in the way of ill-gotten gains. The position of seminary professor implies a certain holiness that I may not in fact possess, and can lead me to forget that an unnoticed widow may outdo me in her love for God.

            At the final moment of his conversion, St. Francis of Assisi shucked the silken finery he had always worn as a rich man’s son. No one is quite clear on how he then came by the battered brown tunic that the turned into a friar’s habit – some say he traded for it with a beggar; G. K. Chesterton speculates that he may have stolen it from a scarecrow. However he obtained his outfit, Francis was the man who made the clothes. “Ten years later,” records Chesterton, “that make-shift costume was the uniform of five thousand men, and a hundred years later in that, for a pontifical panoply, they laid great Dante in his grave.”

            Jesus warns against the deeply fallen assumption that what we wear tells the world who we are. Instead, Our Lord insists, who we are should transform what we wear. All the world’s wealth and all the world’s honors will not buy one thread of the white robe of Jesus’ exchanged righteousness, but two mites’ worth of self-sacrifice can purchase the Christ-given distinction of being great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Suit Up!

Doug

Ruthless Spirituality: November 3, 2012, All Saints Day, Year B - Ruth 1.1-18

 

            Maybe a saint is just someone who refuses to go away. Maybe saintliness has more to do with stubbornness than with sanctity. Perhaps a saint is not someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer, but who stands fast when the drum beats retreat.

            What seems nobility on the part of Naomi may be no more than enlightened self-interest. When your husband bails on his clan to live with the enemy, you don’t score points back home. When you come back a widow with two dead sons, you don’t help your case. Toss a couple of gentile daughters-in-law into the mix and you can forget about joining the Junior League.

            Ruth is a saint because she resolves to be a blessing even where she is an embarrassment. “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee.” I’ll stay where I’m not wanted because I know it is where I’m needed. Naomi sends her off-brand relation to work among the bottom of the ninety-nine percent in a job with no sexual harassment policy, then pimps her out to the boss. As a result, we get Jesus.

            St. Mary of Egypt was one of the desert mothers. A twelve-year-old runaway, she became prostitute in Alexandria. She grew curious about Jerusalem and worked her passage to the Holy City by offering her favors to the sailors. While there she had a vision that sent her to the desert, where she lived for almost a half-century and guided many to faith. A pilgrimage paid for by prostitution resulted in sainthood: Sometimes I think Our Lord Jesus has no scruples at all.

Saints Alive!

Doug

           

           

Daring to be Happy October 28, 2012 Twenty Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Job 42:1-6, 10-17

            The real miracle may not be that God gave Job more children, but that Job chose to have them.

            The pockmarked patriarch has just come through a rough stretch in which he learned, among other things, that good behavior is no guarantee of a good life. God, much like T. S. Eliot’s willful feline the Rum-Tum Tugger, “will do/As he do do/And there's no doing anything about it!” Job had come to the place of honesty that C. S. Lewis found in his grief over the death of his wife: “Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’”

            Oh, the Almighty coughs up at the end. Like a thief caught with his hand in the potsherd (Ex 22.4), the Lord doubles-down on Job’s undeserved losses. But first God forces the old sheik to sign a pre-nup that indemnifies the Sovereign against any future mishaps: “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Job is no longer an energetic and idealistic young man who dreams of watching his offspring score winning touchdowns and graduate summa cum laude. Bouncing infants on your knee irritates the infantigo scars, and past failures can poison future fantasies.

            Still, Job embraces God’s offer of another go-round on the barebacked bucking bronc of an uncertain life in the redemption rodeo. Perhaps the most significant feature of the story is the handles he gives his daughters. Roughly translated, he calls them Dove, Cinnamon, and Dark Eyes, Hebrew stripper-names that celebrate sensuality, beauty, and the joy of life.

            Sometimes the real question of faith is not whether we can praise God in the face of a grief that seems endless, but whether we can do so in the teeth of a happiness that seems only too likely to end. At such times we do well to remember that the heavenly Father who sent angels to celebrate His Son’s birth also sent angels to celebrate that Son’s resurrection. That Lord pitched parties on either side of the grave should challenge us that having the nerve to be happy may be a more daredevilish act of faith than having the resolve to grieve.

            C. S. Lewis took a trip to Whipsnade in late September. When he wrote about the experience later, he recalled blooming bluebells, though they could not actually have been there that late in the season. His contemporary T. S. Eliot took a trip to Little Gidding in May. When he wrote about the experience later, he remembered it as a snowscape. Sometimes faith means daring to see the bluebells that don’t yet exist, rather than the snow that eventually might.

Faith is the Victory,

Doug

Crossing A Line October 21, 2012 Twenty Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 10.35-45

            I don’t like the title “senior pastor.” Rather, I do, but only if we give it to the right person. The New Testament only uses the term once, in 1 Peter 5.4 where “chief Shepherd” translates a Greek word that is almost literally “senior pastor.” It refers to Jesus. The rest of us are just helpers, a sort of sheep-shepherd hybrid on our best days.

            We do our best leading from amongst of our followers – even from beneath them.

            Every good Texan knows the story of how William Barrett Travis assembled the outgunned garrison of the Alamo and warned them that General Sam Houston could send no help. He told the men they had fought bravely and were free to depart with honor or stay and buy every hour they could for the young Texian army. Then, with his saber, Colonel Travis scratched a line in the dust of the courtyard and invited those willing to remain – and die – to step across.

            In the crowd that day was the legendary Jim Bowie. Unlike the arriviste Travis, he was a tested leader whom the men knew and respected. Pneumonia had left him bedridden and the story goes that, as the soldiers hesitated, Bowie, coughing blood, gasped, “Boys, I’m too weak to walk across, but if some of you would carry me, I’d be obliged.” The four who bore him stayed with him. The stampede was on: all the complement but one man crossed to Travis’ side.

            Sometimes leadership simply means being the first follower.

            Paul gave pastors a different title in 1 Corinthians 4.1: servants. The word literally means “under-rowers” and described the poor schleps on the bottom tier of a three-banked Roman battleship. Nearest to the water and farthest from the deck, they pulled harder and drowned sooner than anyone on board.

            The cross of Christ etches a line across the Via Dolorosa and invites believers to come and die. Most of us don’t know Jesus well enough to be sure we dare take that deal. At that moment we don’t need a “senior pastor” to give us orders; we need an under-rower to give us an example. We need a follower who can show us how to follow.

            James and John thought leadership determined where you sat. Jesus said it determined where you knelt, and even how you died. In the Kingdom of Heaven the best leader is not always the strongest or the smartest or the one with the fanciest title; instead, the best leader is the one who puts her weakness at the disposal of God’s call.

Remember the Alamo!

Doug

St. Patrick and St. Job October 14, 2012 Twenty Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Job 23.1-9

           St. Patrick had a rough go of it in fifth century Ireland. The snakes were the least of it.

Details remain sketchy but it appears that he lived without legal or cultural protection because he refused to accept gifts from local kings, the only way to gain patronage. He writes of being beaten, robbed, and shackled. If the pagans were hard on him, the Christians may have been worse. In what appears to be a court brief he denies charges of taking bribes for baptisms and ordinations or accepting money from wealthy female converts.

Small wonder then that in his famous “Breastplate” prayer he cries out for for a full-on roll cage of the Lord’s protecting presence:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

            Job had a tough time of things as well, managing to draw the unwelcome attention of the devil, who persecuted him, and of the saints, who threatened to theologize him to death. Like Patrick, Job prayed a prayer concerning the presence of the Lord in time of struggle, but his poem seldom gets stitched into samplers:

            Behold, I go forward but He is not there,

And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;

When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him;

He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.

Like an NFL replacement referee, Job senses the action all around him but can make sense of none of it. He hunkers armorless on the ash heap and gropes and grasps for a God who has gone AWOL.

But God is right there all along. God’s voice chuckles in the lightest winds of that Cat-Five hurricane building just off the coast. Those winds will shout the Almighty’s words in just a few more chapters. If Job can’t find God, he doesn’t despair: God can always find him. “But He knows the way I take. . . .My foot has kept His way and not turned aside.”

In the depth of the soul’s dark night the saint sometimes cries a desperate “Marco!” to a Deus absconditus who refuses to respond with a single “Polo.” We hear the enemy’s arrows whine through the gloom and it seems our hearts have no protection. When we don’t know where to find God, the best strategy is to sit down in the middle of the Almighty’s will and refuse to budge. If we feel like abandoned baggage, let us at least remember that we bear a label which reads, “To be left until called for.”

In the Middle of Nowhere,

Doug

Out-of-Date, Up-to-Date or Timeless? October 7, 2012 Twenty Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 10.2-16

            Howard Gardner of Harvard wants to scrap the Ten Commandments. He’s not nuts about the Golden Rule, either. And he’s an equal opportunity iconoclast: he’d also trash the code of Hammurabi and Confucius’ Analects. The modern world, Professor Gardner argues, is just too darn complicated a place for simplistic morality. (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/reinventing-ethics/?ref=global )

            Jesus readily goes old-school on two important issues of his day: divorce and care for children. In this the Master stands with all great moral codes. “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.” The Volospa, an ancient Norse creed, puts adulterers in Hell. The Babylonian “List of Sins” includes one who “has approached his neighbor’s wife.”

            “Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” “Children,” says a Hindu text, “should be considered as lords of the atmosphere.” Juvenal decreed that, “great reverence is owed to a child.”

            Now, Dr. Gardner may be right, but he would have to be very, very right indeed. And probably he’s not.

            The ancient rabbis realized that changing times call for new applications of changeless truth. That’s why they hammered out the Talmud, a massive commentary on the specific implications of the Torah. Christian theologians recognized the same reality and have continued to produce theological works that explore the specific impact of Scripture’s general revelation.

            Great moral teaching defines boundaries. Then we have to figure out how to act within them. A society that bats .500 at sustaining marriages and destroys well over one million babies a year probably would not benefit from laws against divorce and abortion. Probably what we need is a better understanding of the value of marriage and of life, and a deeper intention to support one another in both.

            When a thief explains to G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown that right and wrong vary with time and space the old priest replies that even the fantastic landscapes of undiscovered worlds would make no difference. “On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’” Or kill. Or commit adultery.

Rules Rule,

Doug