Gospel reading: Luke 19.29-38
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
I want to start this post by saying how much I enjoy the interaction of blogging. Often there are several comments added to mine, and at other times I'll talk to someone at church and find that they've been reading as well. One parishioner simply flashed me the 'silent coyote' as he walked into church one Sunday, referencing a camp tradition that I mentioned in an earlier post. I love not only the particular insights of your reflections, but the notion that somehow we're all in this project together. So, thank you.
This week's chapter is short. It's really just a single story of a wedding gift. A South Dakota rancher had received a large family Bible from his grandfather when he married. He and his wife had delivered the obligatory 'thank yous', so they couldn't understand why this grandfather kept asking about the gift from time to time.
Eventually they pulled the Bible down from the closet where it had been stashed and found a twenty dollar bill at the beginning of every book - nearly $1300.
Kathleen Norris really doesn't elaborate much on the story, and initially I found it pleasing, but not terribly thought provoking. Then I read our gospel lesson from Sunday, and the strange combination of the two stories opened up something new.
On Sunday we read Luke's version of the 'triumphal entry' of Jesus into Jerusalem. I put triumphal entry in quotation marks because the scene has always struck me as almost comical. Maybe there were a 'multitude' of disciples there spreading their cloaks for this rabbi hobbling in on a colt. But I've never been able to imagine the scene as impressive enough to convert anybody present who didn't already believe that this Jesus was a kind of king.
Compared to the entry of an emperor, this little procession must have looked like a sad little small town homecoming parade. We locals are proud enough, and the homecoming queen is lovely, but we don't really expect the President's entourage to follow the floats.
This seems almost sac religious to suggest. But I think the comic element, the strangeness of the story is part of the good news. And it's not unlike those twenties tucked into the wedding Bible. We often find God's blessings in the most unlikely places.
Oddly enough, the triumphal entry loses some of its power if it really comes off as triumphal. Because it distracts us from something essential to our faith: this king didn't look anything like a king.
Some of the good news comes to us in the overwhelming inconspicuousness of this savior. And this news is good because when we stop looking for God in the parts of our world that seem to approach perfection, we might begin to see God in lives like our own.
I don't know about you, but my life usually feels like that small town parade at best. The local high school band might play, but I've gradually learned not to expect the Marine Band to show up. So the humbler beginnings of our faith, even the humble life of our Lord remind me that Christ still shows up at simple, clumsy, unimpressive affairs like my life.
And maybe I'll even be more likely to poke around in some unlikely places for God's presence. Maybe a blessing awaits me even in those more challenging relationships, in that stressful week at work, in that dusty old gift, lost in the back of a closet. Come to think of it, poking around for God in the world's most unlikely places is what Advent is all about.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Idolatry
Gospel reading: Luke 21.5-19
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
I had never associated Snidely Whiplash with idolatry until now. If you never watched the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, you might not know Mr. Whiplash. He was the show's villian. Clad in a black top hat, sporting a sinister handlebar mustache he always seemed to be lashing the heroine, Nell Fenwick, to the train tracks. Not to worry, though. Soon enough her bumbling paramour, Dudley Do-Right would make it onto the scene, and Nell would narrowly escape the charging train.
Snidely, Nell, and Dudley, of course were parodies of the classic melodramatic characters of the silent film era. And what made this genre delightful was its total lack of ambiguity about whom we should be rooting for. The characters were caricatures. Thoroughly good or thoroughly evil. We expected them to be one dimensional.
Kathleen Norris's reflections on idolatry suggested that our definition of an idol is probably too one dimensional if we limit it to golden calves or the carvings of what we might call 'primitive' religions. What's idolatrous about calves and carvings is their reduction of the mystery of God. What Kathleen Norris shows us is that we do the same thing to one another.
She makes the interesting comment that etymologically 'idol' and 'idea' are related. And this is where something clicked for me. Because sometimes it's a whole lot easier to deal with the idea of someone than the person in the flesh.
You know how this works. I have all kinds of 'principles'. I form my opinions in the abstract and my reasoning is always absolutely watertight. And then it happens to a friend. Whatever the principle, when we're considering a whole person my tidy little system starts to unravel. When someone I know falls into a category - be it cultural or political or moral or religious - that I have rejected or dismissed, then all the motives and biases that I had assumed on behalf of my caricatures are exposed. Somehow I realize that a (fill in the villianous political party or religious perspective of your choice) isn't a Snidely Whiplash. We can know quite well that a friend is a sinner, but we know that their sin isn't the whole story, too.
Today it's the implications for our relationship with God that I'd like to consider as well. It seems that the notion of Incarnation which Christians profess would have been a step toward idolatry in the older sense of a god in a tangible, concrete form. When Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth he was just as visible as a fertility goddess, just as tangible as a golden calf.
But, in fact, the Incarnation was the ultimate counter to our idolatrous instincts. For as long as we simply ponder the 'idea' of God, we're safe. We can construct the god we think we need, or the god who serves our purposes. And we all do this from time to time, I'm afraid.
Incarnation, however, suggests an encounter not just with an idea, but with a person. And it is that personal encounter that opens up the complexity or the mystery of God powerfully for us. My idea of God often ends up being something like a cosmic Dudley Do-Right with a much higher I.Q. Graven images have some obvious limitations, but so do imagined images. We do great damage when we reduce anyone, divine or human, to a single dimension.
It makes some sense, then, that the risen body of Christ is a community, not an individual. God still comes to us in the midst of all the rich and infuriating complexity of human relationships. Which means that to put aside our idols isn't really just about changing our ideas about who God is. It's about loving the people right in front of us as if they were Christ himself. We don't give up our idols alone.
Loving is harder work. It's messier work. And it might not be worth it if you're looking for an encounter with Dudley Do-Right. But for those of us who long for an encounter with God's redeeming love, we're stuck with the wonderful, healing work of loving one another. If anyone's told you there's another way, they were probably trying to sell you an idol.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
I had never associated Snidely Whiplash with idolatry until now. If you never watched the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, you might not know Mr. Whiplash. He was the show's villian. Clad in a black top hat, sporting a sinister handlebar mustache he always seemed to be lashing the heroine, Nell Fenwick, to the train tracks. Not to worry, though. Soon enough her bumbling paramour, Dudley Do-Right would make it onto the scene, and Nell would narrowly escape the charging train.
Snidely, Nell, and Dudley, of course were parodies of the classic melodramatic characters of the silent film era. And what made this genre delightful was its total lack of ambiguity about whom we should be rooting for. The characters were caricatures. Thoroughly good or thoroughly evil. We expected them to be one dimensional.
Kathleen Norris's reflections on idolatry suggested that our definition of an idol is probably too one dimensional if we limit it to golden calves or the carvings of what we might call 'primitive' religions. What's idolatrous about calves and carvings is their reduction of the mystery of God. What Kathleen Norris shows us is that we do the same thing to one another.
She makes the interesting comment that etymologically 'idol' and 'idea' are related. And this is where something clicked for me. Because sometimes it's a whole lot easier to deal with the idea of someone than the person in the flesh.
You know how this works. I have all kinds of 'principles'. I form my opinions in the abstract and my reasoning is always absolutely watertight. And then it happens to a friend. Whatever the principle, when we're considering a whole person my tidy little system starts to unravel. When someone I know falls into a category - be it cultural or political or moral or religious - that I have rejected or dismissed, then all the motives and biases that I had assumed on behalf of my caricatures are exposed. Somehow I realize that a (fill in the villianous political party or religious perspective of your choice) isn't a Snidely Whiplash. We can know quite well that a friend is a sinner, but we know that their sin isn't the whole story, too.
Today it's the implications for our relationship with God that I'd like to consider as well. It seems that the notion of Incarnation which Christians profess would have been a step toward idolatry in the older sense of a god in a tangible, concrete form. When Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth he was just as visible as a fertility goddess, just as tangible as a golden calf.
But, in fact, the Incarnation was the ultimate counter to our idolatrous instincts. For as long as we simply ponder the 'idea' of God, we're safe. We can construct the god we think we need, or the god who serves our purposes. And we all do this from time to time, I'm afraid.
Incarnation, however, suggests an encounter not just with an idea, but with a person. And it is that personal encounter that opens up the complexity or the mystery of God powerfully for us. My idea of God often ends up being something like a cosmic Dudley Do-Right with a much higher I.Q. Graven images have some obvious limitations, but so do imagined images. We do great damage when we reduce anyone, divine or human, to a single dimension.
It makes some sense, then, that the risen body of Christ is a community, not an individual. God still comes to us in the midst of all the rich and infuriating complexity of human relationships. Which means that to put aside our idols isn't really just about changing our ideas about who God is. It's about loving the people right in front of us as if they were Christ himself. We don't give up our idols alone.
Loving is harder work. It's messier work. And it might not be worth it if you're looking for an encounter with Dudley Do-Right. But for those of us who long for an encounter with God's redeeming love, we're stuck with the wonderful, healing work of loving one another. If anyone's told you there's another way, they were probably trying to sell you an idol.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Commandments
Gospel reading: Luke 20.27-38
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Grandpa Springfield let on to my brother and me that he was considering taking us to Kansas City to see our first major league baseball game. He seemed to be almost confiding in us when he told us this, because he said, "The game is on a Sunday. Does your daddy have scruples about that? Do you know what scruples are?"
I didn't know what a scruple was. But I could guess it had something to do with the obvious conflict. Sunday was church day.
But in that little exchange with Grandpa, I also sensed that two categories of people were beginning to form in my mind. Some let their religion get in the way. Others...not so much.
Besides the obvious thrill inherent in a big league baseball game, I was also secretly pleased to have access to the 'not so much' crowd in my very own grandfather. He was a Methodist. A tepid and convenient form of religion in the minds of more serious Christians. Or religion free of unnecessary scruples, as Grandpa might put it.
"Tobacco, banjo playing, and dominoes do not figure in the Decalogue as recorded in the Book of Exodus," says Kathleen Norris in our chapter for this week. This is her way of saying that the 10 Commandments are not a collection of scruples. But she also says that they are meant to get in our way. In the end, she may be saying that both my Grandpa's Methodism and the folks I knew who carried grave suspicions about denominational Christianity were partly right about commandments.
The problem with scruples is that their significance seems to lie in how they define us rather than how they form us. I sensed from a very early age that the real problem with tobacco use wasn't lung damage (although we inisted that it was). It was joining another category of people. The real tragedy wasn't smoking. It was becoming a "smoker".
When we use our religion simply to define ourselves over and against others it has become idolatrous. This holds true for people on the left, right, and center. But when we remember that our faith is about transformation and abundant life our scruples become practices that open up new life to us.
We live in a time in which our mere opinions about sins are enough to divide us deeply. When the Pharisees asked Jesus to speculate about a woman who marries seven brothers - in succession, of course, after each one dies - (click HERE to read Kate Alexander's insightful sermon on the passage) they want to know what Jesus will say about marriage after the resurrection. But what they really wanted was to make a division. The information they hoped to get from Jesus had no practical use in their lives other than to define Jesus as one of those strange people who think like that - whatever 'that' may be.
When I remember that even the 10 Commandments are about finding an abundant way of living, God can use them to shape me in life giving ways. God gives them for the purpose of restoring relationship with God and with one another. And so often God shapes us by opening us to God's work in other people. We may find that in keeping ourselves sequestered and safe from the strange lives of banjo players and smokers and people who go to ballgames on Sunday we are keeping ourselves safe from another unexpected encounter with the redeeming love of God.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Grandpa Springfield let on to my brother and me that he was considering taking us to Kansas City to see our first major league baseball game. He seemed to be almost confiding in us when he told us this, because he said, "The game is on a Sunday. Does your daddy have scruples about that? Do you know what scruples are?"
I didn't know what a scruple was. But I could guess it had something to do with the obvious conflict. Sunday was church day.
But in that little exchange with Grandpa, I also sensed that two categories of people were beginning to form in my mind. Some let their religion get in the way. Others...not so much.
Besides the obvious thrill inherent in a big league baseball game, I was also secretly pleased to have access to the 'not so much' crowd in my very own grandfather. He was a Methodist. A tepid and convenient form of religion in the minds of more serious Christians. Or religion free of unnecessary scruples, as Grandpa might put it.
"Tobacco, banjo playing, and dominoes do not figure in the Decalogue as recorded in the Book of Exodus," says Kathleen Norris in our chapter for this week. This is her way of saying that the 10 Commandments are not a collection of scruples. But she also says that they are meant to get in our way. In the end, she may be saying that both my Grandpa's Methodism and the folks I knew who carried grave suspicions about denominational Christianity were partly right about commandments.
The problem with scruples is that their significance seems to lie in how they define us rather than how they form us. I sensed from a very early age that the real problem with tobacco use wasn't lung damage (although we inisted that it was). It was joining another category of people. The real tragedy wasn't smoking. It was becoming a "smoker".
When we use our religion simply to define ourselves over and against others it has become idolatrous. This holds true for people on the left, right, and center. But when we remember that our faith is about transformation and abundant life our scruples become practices that open up new life to us.
We live in a time in which our mere opinions about sins are enough to divide us deeply. When the Pharisees asked Jesus to speculate about a woman who marries seven brothers - in succession, of course, after each one dies - (click HERE to read Kate Alexander's insightful sermon on the passage) they want to know what Jesus will say about marriage after the resurrection. But what they really wanted was to make a division. The information they hoped to get from Jesus had no practical use in their lives other than to define Jesus as one of those strange people who think like that - whatever 'that' may be.
When I remember that even the 10 Commandments are about finding an abundant way of living, God can use them to shape me in life giving ways. God gives them for the purpose of restoring relationship with God and with one another. And so often God shapes us by opening us to God's work in other people. We may find that in keeping ourselves sequestered and safe from the strange lives of banjo players and smokers and people who go to ballgames on Sunday we are keeping ourselves safe from another unexpected encounter with the redeeming love of God.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Inheritance: What Religion Were You Raised in and What Are You Now?
Gospel reading: Luke 19.1-10
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
My brother recently told me to Google the name of one of my college roomates. When I did, I was surprised to find a good deal of national press coverage of a fairly sordid extramarital affair he had been involved in. The national interest had to do with the company his mistress worked for and what favors his favors might have earned him.
Mercifully, I don't remember many of the details, but one line caught in my memory. "I can't believe you're from here," said the woman. By 'here' she meant Arkansas, of course. And her incredulity was meant as a high complement.
Now I'm not fiercely patriotic about my home state. But the line, which probably didn't mean much to the reporter, struck me as particularly telling. Sometimes we want nothing more than to have someone to tell us that we're somebody else.
Kathleen Norris says that religion might be an antidote to the banal assurance we receive each year from Miss America that we can be anything we want to be. "What we were raised in" has something to do with who we are.
Such a reminder sounds like bad news. Until we consider the alternatives. In one of his stories C.S. Lewis described hell not as the place where we don't get anything we want. Hell is where we get exactly what we want instantly. And from high above, hell doesn't look like a single blazing lake of fire, but thousands of lonely, individual houselights.
Lewis's imagined hell worked like this. Since everyone gets exactly what they want, when a neighbor or a family member becomes a nuisance or inconvenience people just move apart. Separation is easy and instant so the lights of the houses grow more and more isolated. He told of Napoleon rattling around in an empty castle, a sad image of the loneliness we could make in a world in which anything is possible.
Another word for limits is definition. Most of the world is made up of what you're not. Which helps me a great deal in recognizing you. We may wish that the end of our noses or our waists were there rather than here, but we need the particular and unique set of limits we call a body in order to be a person.
And so it is with faith. Delving into the faith tradition that formed us is an act of self definition. We might say the work has a way of limiting our options for the future. But that's also called focus. If there's no me to begin with, I'm sadly 'free' to choose from all the possible selves in the world and a few more that exist only in my imagination. Perfect freedom turns out to be perfect disorientation.
In our gospel reading from Sunday Jesus tells Zacchaeus that salvation has come to his house because he too is a son of Abraham. An interesting comment since Zacchaeus had just promised to pay back anyone he had defrauded and give of his ill gotten wealth to the poor. I think Jesus was telling Zacchaeus that his change of life was really about finding his truest self. He wasn't just anywhere. He was somewhere. A particular person in a particular religious tradition. And from this vantage point he could finally see the life giving choices that really were before him.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
My brother recently told me to Google the name of one of my college roomates. When I did, I was surprised to find a good deal of national press coverage of a fairly sordid extramarital affair he had been involved in. The national interest had to do with the company his mistress worked for and what favors his favors might have earned him.
Mercifully, I don't remember many of the details, but one line caught in my memory. "I can't believe you're from here," said the woman. By 'here' she meant Arkansas, of course. And her incredulity was meant as a high complement.
Now I'm not fiercely patriotic about my home state. But the line, which probably didn't mean much to the reporter, struck me as particularly telling. Sometimes we want nothing more than to have someone to tell us that we're somebody else.
Kathleen Norris says that religion might be an antidote to the banal assurance we receive each year from Miss America that we can be anything we want to be. "What we were raised in" has something to do with who we are.
Such a reminder sounds like bad news. Until we consider the alternatives. In one of his stories C.S. Lewis described hell not as the place where we don't get anything we want. Hell is where we get exactly what we want instantly. And from high above, hell doesn't look like a single blazing lake of fire, but thousands of lonely, individual houselights.
Lewis's imagined hell worked like this. Since everyone gets exactly what they want, when a neighbor or a family member becomes a nuisance or inconvenience people just move apart. Separation is easy and instant so the lights of the houses grow more and more isolated. He told of Napoleon rattling around in an empty castle, a sad image of the loneliness we could make in a world in which anything is possible.
Another word for limits is definition. Most of the world is made up of what you're not. Which helps me a great deal in recognizing you. We may wish that the end of our noses or our waists were there rather than here, but we need the particular and unique set of limits we call a body in order to be a person.
And so it is with faith. Delving into the faith tradition that formed us is an act of self definition. We might say the work has a way of limiting our options for the future. But that's also called focus. If there's no me to begin with, I'm sadly 'free' to choose from all the possible selves in the world and a few more that exist only in my imagination. Perfect freedom turns out to be perfect disorientation.
In our gospel reading from Sunday Jesus tells Zacchaeus that salvation has come to his house because he too is a son of Abraham. An interesting comment since Zacchaeus had just promised to pay back anyone he had defrauded and give of his ill gotten wealth to the poor. I think Jesus was telling Zacchaeus that his change of life was really about finding his truest self. He wasn't just anywhere. He was somewhere. A particular person in a particular religious tradition. And from this vantage point he could finally see the life giving choices that really were before him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
