The Name Game March 4, 2012 Second Sunday of Lent, Year B Genesis 17.1-16

            Names matter. “What's in a name?” Shakespeare’s heroine Juliet famously asks, musing that,  “that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” It wouldn’t, however, cause you to wind up dead in a tomb next to your suicidal boyfriend. Indeed, at about the same time Shakespeare was writing his history cycle on the Wars of the Roses, proving that whether a flower is red or white, and whether a name is York or Lancaster, can matter a great deal.

            Names matter. “What’s my name?” Muhammad Ali repeatedly shouted while pounding Ernie Terrell, an opponent who had refused to recognize Ali’s conversion to the Nation of Islam and insisted on using the boxer’s “slave name,” Cassius Clay.

            Names matter. The New York Times reports that expectant parents almost immediately Google prospective monikers to make sure they don’t dub their babies anything too common, too weird, or too redolent of a stripper, a loser, or a serial killer. An iPhone app called “kick to pick” lets mom and dad narrow it down to the top two, then hold the phone over the womb as each name alternates on the screen. The device locks in whichever title is up when the infant kicks.

            Names matter. God claims the right to change “Abram” to “Abraham” and “Sarai” to “Sarah.” There’s not a lot of difference there. The family didn’t even have to get new monograms on its hand towels. It boils down to going from Will to William or Brittney to Britney. The point is not the name but the Namer: God asserts relationship and enacts a new era. Abraham and Sarah both crack up, and their fit of the giggles indicates their amusement at the notion that a switch in titles could reverse the march of time: That which we call a geriatric couple/By any other name would still be way past this sort of thing.

            But names matter. Our words describe, but God’s words create. When fully owned by the Almighty, Abraham and Sarah become conduits for the Lord’s truth. “He that hath an ear,” declares the Lord in Revelation 2.17, “let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”

            The new name Christ offers means that our Lenten sojourn never lasts past our spiritual prime, and that the promise of Easter means we can laugh our heads off at the absurdity of the truth: That our God makes all things new.

Be Named and Claimed,

Doug

Of Water Rats and Redemption February 26, 2012 First Sunday of Lent, Year B Genesis 9.8-17, 1 Peter 3.18-22, Mark 1.9-15

O my, how cold the water was, and O, how VERY wet it felt. How it sang in his ears as he went down, down, down! How bright and welcome the sun looked as he rose to the surface coughing and spluttering!

            Thus Kenneth Grahame, in The Wind and the Willows, describes the Mole’s dunking when he tumbles from an overturned boat. In Noah’s case it was the world that keeled over and the boat that sailed upright. Either way, the experience disoriented those involved.

            After forty days as flotsam, Noah’s menagerie gets grounded once again and God signs on the refracted line of reliable sunlight. The rainbow remains as a fixed promise in a fickle world.

            When the hands of John plunged Jesus below Jordan, how cold the water was, and how very wet it felt as it sang in his ears of the sin of those he had come to save. How bright the sun looked as he rose to the surface.

            When the current of death rolled over Christ at Calvary, how cold the grave was, and how very damp it felt as it sang in his ears of centuries of defeat. Yet he dove to the lowest depth and harrowed Hell itself, and how very bright the light blazed from the Arimathean’s tomb as he rose shouting in triumph!

            Peter welds all three experiences into one as he makes the death of Christ retroactive to the worst sinners on record, and the resurrection of Christ an ark sufficiently large to save even those who remained outside. The parallels are inexact: Noah’s “baptism” took forty disorienting days; Jesus’ baptism initiated them. Noah stayed dry while the world got wet; Jesus got wet to keep the world afloat. The parallels are inexact but the poetry is impeccable: Jesus saves; in baptism we join Jesus; the cold, wet water sings in our ears for the forty days of Lent as we await the brightness of Easter’s light.

            Just when the Mole felt that all was lost, Grahame tells us that,

Then a firm paw gripped him by the back of his neck. It was the Rat, and he was evidently laughing – the Mole could FEEL him laughing, right down his arm and through his paw, and so into his – the Mole's – neck.

            Take some time to enter the water this year, getting in touch with the tragic fact that the wages of sin is death. Do not be afraid to dive deep. At your lowest point the rainbow promises that a wounded hand will grip the scruff of your neck and you will feel the Lord laughing right down his arm and through his hand and so into your very soul as he hauls you up to life and light.

In Lenten Joy,

Doug

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iraq? February 19, 2012 Last Sunday After Epiphany, Year B 2 Kings 2.1-12

            We need a bigger bomb.

            The Pentagon recently explained to U. S. officials that our Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a thirty thousand pound bunker-busting behemoth, will not dig deep enough to kill the scientists making nuclear weapons in the Iranian desert. The thing is over twenty feet long, carries an explosive payload in excess of 5K pounds and can burrow two hundred feet before detonation – and it’s too small. The upgrade would run a cool eighty-two million bucks.

            But some generals say no conventional bomb can get the job done; we’ll have to nuke ‘em.

            History abounds in irony: The only way to stop our enemies from bombing us is to build bigger bombs. We can deter their nuclear weapons only by deploying our nuclear weapons. A bomb for a bomb, a nuke for a nuke.

            As God’s holiness whipped Elijah to Heaven, his bewildered apprentice sounded a bizarre battle cry: “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” The new senior prophet of the nation’s ministerial staff acknowledges that Israel cannot compete with her foes by conventional tactics. Elisha falls back instead on the command of God and the promise it contains: Deuteronomy 17.16 forbids amassing cavalry; Deuteronomy 20.1 guarantees that the Lord will fill the gap.

            This might seem a little crazy to anyone who hadn’t just seen the divine fire devour repeated platoons. (2 K 1) For Elisha, however, such a confession was history, not mystery; poetry, not prose; strategy, not spirituality.

            Several centuries later a Nazarene prophet came along and told his followers to fight the Romans by submitting, to outmarch their enslaving legions by doing double-duty as pack mules for the conquerors. He even said he would strike the coup de grace himself by letting the enemy kill him.

            This might’ve seemed a little crazy to anyone who hadn’t stood on a high mountain apart and watched God’s blazing glory burst forth from this very prophet, and seen Elijah himself do homage to the Messiah. For the disciples, however, their Master’s teaching became history, not mystery; prose, not poetry; strategy, not spirituality.

            When presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested that America deploy the Golden Rule as a basis for foreign policy, the audience in a state where sixty-five percent of the electorate self-identifies as “born again,” booed him. Actually, they booed Jesus.

            Maybe the way to stop chariots isn’t to build chariots. Maybe the way to have a world with less bombs is not to build more bombs. Maybe if we stay in lonely places long enough to see the fire fall, we will believe faith is good for something on this side of the grave.

Bombs Away!

Doug

           

A Funny Way to Win a War February 12, 2012 Sixth Sunday After Epiphany, Year B 2 Kings 5.1-14

. . . a little girl from the land of Israel . . . . like the flesh of a little child.

The story begins and ends with a child. It begins with the childlike faith of a child, a thing entirely natural, and ends with childlike faith of an adult, a thing entirely miraculous. It begins with a child made a slave by a general, a commonplace occurrence in that day, and ends with a general made a slave by a child, an uncommon occurrence in any day.

Israel compiled the stories of her kings after Babylon had conquered her. When she had no king but still had prophets she preserved the story of an incompetent king and a powerful prophet. Herded into ghettos on the banks of the Euphrates she told stories of the healing powers of the Jordan. Exiled from her homeland she told the story of a silly convert who thought God needed native dirt for a landing strip. Forced to worship God in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, she wrestled with the ethics of serving two masters. Perhaps most importantly, tempted to hate her conquerors she told the story of the victory of compassion.

Jesus liked this story so much that he put it in the sermon that roughed out the shape of his kingdom. (Lk 4.27) Scripture records that the congregation didn’t care much for it. But maybe the Master included the story to warn us that the Kingdom of Heaven has no monarchs on home turf, only enslaved exiles; and that love to our enemies wins where revenge fails; and that governments are bumbling, bureaucratic things never designed to serve the delicate dance of faith. And maybe a story that begins with a faithful child and ends with a childlike faith makes a good opening salvo for the One who will ultimately declare, “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” (Lk 18.17)

Children and Gentiles First,

Doug