The Parable of the Co-Dependent Father Fourth Sunday of Lent March 10, 2013 Luke 15.1-3/11-14

            N. T. Wright crafts an intriguing analogy to explain his understanding of how to read the Bible: Scholars unearth eighty percent of a previously unknown Shakespearean play. The crucial fifth act – the last act – does not appear. Wright suggests that the only way to perform the work would be to draft skilled Shakespearean actors who would immerse themselves in Acts I-IV so deeply that Act V would flow naturally from them. The players could not make up whatever they liked but neither could anyone demand that subsequent performances be exactly the same. Disciplined interpretation would create living application. Innovation (to use Wright’s terms) would kiss consistency. Wright explains that the last act of the Bible – the one we live out – waits for us to write it by extending the part we already have into our own lives.

            Jesus’ famous parable of the dysfunctional family offers an example.  Jesus structures it in five carefully balanced acts set up in reverse-order. Act I: the father with the younger son, relationship broken. Act II: the younger son with no father. Act III: the father with the younger son, relationship restored. Act IV: the older son without the father. Act V: the father with the older son, relationship broken.

            It’s easy to see what Jesus leaves out – Act VI: the father with the older son, relationship restored (and by implication, perhaps an Act VII where we finally get the whole family in the same place.)

            When the Pharisees griped that Jesus hung out with the wrong crowd, he told a tale that took the action up to the present moment then left the story hanging. He leaves them like so many “Downton Abby” junkies desperate for the next season to begin. Does the older son relent? Does the family simply remain in tact in the uneasy détente that doubtless existed before hand, or break through to true community?

            Then Jesus strolls offstage and invites his listeners to write the final act.

            Of course, the Bible isn’t really unfinished: We have some mysterious hints about how it ends – images of street people partying at a rich man’s wedding and a multitude of mudbloods around the Father’s throne and glory’s gated community left open for all comers.

            How does the story end? You decide: Pick up a Bible, pick up a pen, then pick up a cross – and follow.

Action!

Doug

Galilee, Jerusalem, and Newtown Third Sunday of Lent March 3, 2013 Luke 13.1-9

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, offered that response to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December. It’s the same logic that sent American troops into Iraq and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Peace, the argument runs, is a matter of making sure the right people have the right weapons and have them in sufficient quantities.

The Zealots of Jesus’ day agreed. Had the Galileans been more numerous and better-armed when they attempted an uprising in the temple, Roman rather than Jewish blood would have stained those sacred stones.

Jesus takes the argument in another direction and dares to imply that more guns are not the way to reduce gun violence. His call for repentance does not deal with individuals re-ordering their private moral menus. “You will all likewise perish.” Jesus speaks to a communal response of meeting violence with violence that can have only one predictable result: more violence. To make sure no one reduces this to a red state/blue state issue (occupants of Jerusalem considered Galileans a bunch of Tea Party crazies), Jesus takes a local tragedy and likens it to what will happen when the Romans finally invade with a vengeance: the siege will end with flattened bodies pinned beneath the blocks of fallen forts.

If you don’t start to think differently (that’s what the verb “repent” really means) about the best way to bring about justice you’ll pull your whole world down around your ears. In other words, the only way to stop a bad guy with a cross is with a good guy willing to die on a cross.

Out-Gunned,

Doug

The Path of No Return Second Sunday of Lent February 24, 2013 Philippians 3:17-4:1

            Buzz Aldrin wants to send you to Mars. You’d better pack a change of clothes.

            The idea seems to be that we have the technology to send human beings to the Red Planet, but not to get them back again. Pioneers would use their spacecraft to build essential structures like housing and Starbucks coffee shops. Aldrin is not alone. “Mars One,” a non-profit outfit in the Netherlands, has begun recruiting prospective Martians for one-way missions. They’ll launch robotic cargo flights to begin with, then the first occupants, then additional settlers every couple of years.

            But nobody comes back: The idea is not to bring Martians to Earth, but to recreate Earth on Mars.

            The Philippian believers understood this kind of colonization. The majority population of the city consisted of Roman soldiers mustered out in a massive reduction in force following Octavian’s victorious civil war. Their wasn’t room for them in Rome so their job was to make room for Rome in the provinces. They weren’t waiting to return home; they were working to recreate home.

            For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul lets go with some loaded political language as he challenges the Philippians to forego Roman colonization for Christian colonization. Christ has already won the victory and now sends us into the world as outposts of the Kingdom. Notice the language carefully: We do not wait to depart “from” Earth “for” Heaven to see our Savior “in” Heaven; we live “in” Heaven and wait “for” a Savior who comes to us “from” Heaven.

We are colonists, not refugees.

Like the future Martians, we arrive to discover that God has sent ahead everything necessary to our mission: forgiveness of sins, spiritual gifts, moral guidelines, the works. Our job is not to craft these resources into a theological rocket to launch ourselves elsewhere, but to construct an environment where the Gospel can flourish and overwhelm the native culture.

Of course, we’re not ultimately up to the job. That’s why we’re so eager for the Savior to arrive and settle things once and for all. Some of us will die before that happens and wait in Paradise until that day. But none of that changes the fact that our real goal is transformation, not escape. If we forget that, Paul warns, the cross ceases to make much sense in the present world and earthly logic takes over.

How might we think differently about the church if we saw ourselves as one-way eternal-lifers instead of temporary spiritual squatters?

Three, Two, One. . .Blast Off!

Doug

            

The Wilderness Campaign First Sunday of Lent February 17, 2013 Luke 4.1-13

            In June of 1863 Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia turned aggressor and punched upwards into Maryland on their way to what would be the decisive battle of the conflict. Just after crossing the Potomac, Confederate General William “Extra Billy” Smith, leading the vanguard, shouted to a group of watching citizens, “My friends, how do you like this way of coming back into the Union?”

            There is all the difference in the world between a reunion and an invasion.

            What Jesus conducted in his own Wilderness Campaign was an invasion. This was not a prayer retreat; it was a spiritual attack. Ancient thinking associated the desert with the devil. When Aaron downloaded all viruses and spiritual malware of one year’s worth of Israelite sins onto the head of a single goat, he deleted it into the desert. (Lev 17.7-8, 21-22) The Revised Standard Version even translates the term  “scapegoat” as Aza’zel, a name for Satan. The symbolism speaks clearly: Stamp that sin “Return to Sender” and address it to the desert! Jesus, then, takes the fight to the enemy’s camp.

            Later Christian tradition would recognize this same idea. When St. Anthony set up shop in a reptile-ridden ruin in the Egyptian desert, the demons bellowed, “Get away from what is ours! What do you have to do with the desert?” Every rock of that blistered desolation glowed with spiritual graffiti that tagged it as the Devil’s turf. Anthony’s presence and prayer amounted to a police action.

            At the beginning of Lent we do well to remember that this forty days of fasting is about fighting, not fleeing. Lent launches us into the physical, social, and spiritual turf we have previously deeded over to the Devil. That territory may include bad neighborhoods, bad habits, bad attitudes and bad relationships. If we fast, it’s because we’re on field rations; we dig foxholes, not escape tunnels.

Lent is not a bad time for a little math, either: Jesus put in forty days of basic training before he fought a one-day, three-charge battle. There might be a lesson there as to the proper ratio of asceticism and action.

Forward!

Doug