Gospel Reading: Luke 11.1-13 (click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
For almost all my life I've been farsighted. The condition is more annoying than debilitating in my case. Still, it's more difficult to focus on things close up than on things at a comfortable distance - antichrists included.
The distance between the antichrist and me was once very comfortable. Fortunately I had heard that there was to be only one Antichrist, an evil world ruler who would come near the end of time. So even if he were to be living, the chances that I was the Antichrist were one in several billion. My task then was simply to keep the distance between us comfortable. But that distance has been closing ever since.
I was first surprised to find that antichrist is never mentioned in the apocalyptic book of Revelation. It only appears in the epistles of John. And there it says that "...even now many antichrists have appeared." So there's not just one. And they were already showing up in the first century. Maybe I am still in the running...which, of course, is the point. I'm always still in the running for antichrist.
We all must share (I hope it's not just me) a tendency to locate the world's problems and even our own problems out there somewhere. A huge industry depends upon this inclination. How many talk shows - on radio or television - depend on parading one form of dysfunction or another before us so that we might be reassured that our problems are the fault of people like that. Advertisers know well enough that we'll tune in.
How startling, then, are the closing words in this week's chapter in Amazing Grace. "Each of us acts as an Antichrist...whenever we hear the gospel and do not do it." The distance between the Antichrist and me didn't just get uncomfortable. It disappeared.
Jesus taught the disciples how to pray in the gospel reading on Sunday. And even in Luke's shorter version of the prayer, Jesus includes these familiar and impossible words: "...forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us." When we really consider the life and words of the Christ, becomming an antichrist doesn't just seem possible. It seems inevitable.
But the Lord's prayer gives us a clear, simple way to start acting like the Christ, even acting on behalf of the Christ. In ways we probably can never fully comprehend, our forgiving is bound up in or flows out of the forgiveness of God. Jesus did not teach us to pray, "Make us indignant towards those wicked people, as you are indignant towards them." He taught us to forgive, so that we might stop being antichrists. We need nearsighted vision for this, but the impact will be out of sight.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Eschatology
Gospel Reading: Luke 10.48-32 (click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Clearly The Sound of Music isn't going to provide the organizing principle for Ms. Norris's book. You remember how the song goes, "We'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..." Then again, anyone who was reading Kierkegaard at sixteen might not look next to Julie Andrews for insight.
The first chapter of Amazing Grace is about last things: eschatology. T.S. Eliot might have approved of Norris's strange decision to begin her book with a chapter on endings. The third of Eliot's Four Quartets is a poem titled "East Coker" which begins, "In my beginning is my end..." and ends, "In my end is my beginning." Both writers seem to believe that our endings have a great deal to do with our present lives.
I need to confess a little baggage of my own with regard to eschatology and the notion that last things should impact my present life. At summer camp as a child we would 'play' the persecution game. It was a form of capture the flag, but with a dark, Cold War twist. To be captured in enemy territory was to fall into the hands of the KGB. Prisoners were then interrogated by agents who tried to get us to renounce our faith.
As you might expect, with associations like these eschatology is a word I would be glad to let slip from my own religious vocabulary. Yes, we learned that our beliefs about the 'end times' should impact our present lives. But that impact mostly took the form of fear as we wondered whether our faith would be found wanting on Judgment Day. But, thanks to people like Kathleen Norris and T.S. Eliot, I am finding that 'eschatology' might not be the life sapping term I thought it was. In fact eschatology might help me live more fully rather than more fearfully.
I'll try not to do too much violence to the gospel readings when I bring them into the conversation each week, but one moment in the reading seems relevant. We are told that Martha was 'distracted by her many tasks.' There seems to be a certain kind of attention to the present that the story of Mary and Martha is asking us to pay. Mary's attention is contrasted to Martha's distraction. And Mary chose the better part.
Kathleen Norris's story of how the life of a friend opened up after an encounter with cancer might be making a similar point. Considering what's eternal, or considering our mortal limits can be a way of focusing ourselves on the miracle of life that is right in front of us - a turning from our distractions, we might say. And in the process we get glimpses of what's eternal in the here and now. 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand' is the way Jesus put it.
Near the end of the Four Quartets Eliot returns to the theme:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning...
There is a way of considering ultimate things and the end of things that can make us only more attentive to the life that is before us. Not fearful attention, wondering what horror might await us on the other side of the grave if we haven't got our religious acts together, but a powerful engagement with the life God has given us. The Christian faith is about not ceasing from this exploration. And maybe arriving back where we started, but knowing the place or knowing ourselves for the first time. Maybe eschatology can be life-giving after all.
Clearly The Sound of Music isn't going to provide the organizing principle for Ms. Norris's book. You remember how the song goes, "We'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..." Then again, anyone who was reading Kierkegaard at sixteen might not look next to Julie Andrews for insight.
The first chapter of Amazing Grace is about last things: eschatology. T.S. Eliot might have approved of Norris's strange decision to begin her book with a chapter on endings. The third of Eliot's Four Quartets is a poem titled "East Coker" which begins, "In my beginning is my end..." and ends, "In my end is my beginning." Both writers seem to believe that our endings have a great deal to do with our present lives.
I need to confess a little baggage of my own with regard to eschatology and the notion that last things should impact my present life. At summer camp as a child we would 'play' the persecution game. It was a form of capture the flag, but with a dark, Cold War twist. To be captured in enemy territory was to fall into the hands of the KGB. Prisoners were then interrogated by agents who tried to get us to renounce our faith.
As you might expect, with associations like these eschatology is a word I would be glad to let slip from my own religious vocabulary. Yes, we learned that our beliefs about the 'end times' should impact our present lives. But that impact mostly took the form of fear as we wondered whether our faith would be found wanting on Judgment Day. But, thanks to people like Kathleen Norris and T.S. Eliot, I am finding that 'eschatology' might not be the life sapping term I thought it was. In fact eschatology might help me live more fully rather than more fearfully.
I'll try not to do too much violence to the gospel readings when I bring them into the conversation each week, but one moment in the reading seems relevant. We are told that Martha was 'distracted by her many tasks.' There seems to be a certain kind of attention to the present that the story of Mary and Martha is asking us to pay. Mary's attention is contrasted to Martha's distraction. And Mary chose the better part.
Kathleen Norris's story of how the life of a friend opened up after an encounter with cancer might be making a similar point. Considering what's eternal, or considering our mortal limits can be a way of focusing ourselves on the miracle of life that is right in front of us - a turning from our distractions, we might say. And in the process we get glimpses of what's eternal in the here and now. 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand' is the way Jesus put it.
Near the end of the Four Quartets Eliot returns to the theme:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning...
There is a way of considering ultimate things and the end of things that can make us only more attentive to the life that is before us. Not fearful attention, wondering what horror might await us on the other side of the grave if we haven't got our religious acts together, but a powerful engagement with the life God has given us. The Christian faith is about not ceasing from this exploration. And maybe arriving back where we started, but knowing the place or knowing ourselves for the first time. Maybe eschatology can be life-giving after all.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Preface
These are the first words I've ever blogged. My plan is to write each Tuesday, reflecting both on a chapter of Amazing Grace, by Kathleen Norris, and the previous Sunday's gospel reading. So here goes...
Gospel reading from Sunday: Luke 10.25-37
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
And here is a quote from the preface of Amazing Grace
to kick things off:
I drifted away from religion when catechism came to the fore, and the well-meaning adults who taught Sunday school and confirmation class seemed intent on putting the vastness of "God" into small boxes of their own devising. Theirs was a scary vocabulary, not an inviting one. And religion came to seem just one more childhood folly that I had to set aside as an adult. In my mid-thirties, however, it became necessary to begin to reclaim my faith, scary vocabulary and all.
We're probably all familiar enough with the tendency to reduce the mystery of God to a manageable size, or maybe a recognizable shape. Before we dismiss the instinct to do so, we ought to remind ourselves that incarnation might be one word for this. And incarnation isn't a term Christians should dismiss too flippantly from their vocabulary.
But language itself is a box. And I think that what makes Kathleen Norris's perspective compelling is that she is honest enough to admit that in reclaiming her faith, she had to reclaim the little boxes - the words of the Christian faith. Even the scary ones. She reminds us that we need the boxes. We just need to remember that the boxes will never be up to the task of describing God.
In the parable of the good Samaritan a lawyer is apparently on the right track with regard to eternal life. He answers with the right words that the key is in love of God and love of neighbor. But those words need to be fleshed out a bit. So Jesus tells a story.
Once again, the lawyer finds that he knows what a neighbor is just as surely as he knows how to gain eternal life. Hearing the words in a story seems to make their meaning more concrete and relevant, but the story also reminds us that the words aren't adequate in themselves. They need to point us toward the larger mystery to do their work. Words like 'love' and 'God' and 'neighbor' are fine old words. But until they point us toward the messier reality of human interactions, they are not just boxes. They're empty boxes.
I hope that the coming weeks and months of reflection on Amazing Grace and on the gospel stories will point us toward God's vastness using the battered boxes that are the vocabulary of the Christian faith. And along the way I hope to explore with you whether they are still sturdy enough to speak towards or maybe even to the ineffable.
Gospel reading from Sunday: Luke 10.25-37
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
And here is a quote from the preface of Amazing Grace
to kick things off:
I drifted away from religion when catechism came to the fore, and the well-meaning adults who taught Sunday school and confirmation class seemed intent on putting the vastness of "God" into small boxes of their own devising. Theirs was a scary vocabulary, not an inviting one. And religion came to seem just one more childhood folly that I had to set aside as an adult. In my mid-thirties, however, it became necessary to begin to reclaim my faith, scary vocabulary and all.
We're probably all familiar enough with the tendency to reduce the mystery of God to a manageable size, or maybe a recognizable shape. Before we dismiss the instinct to do so, we ought to remind ourselves that incarnation might be one word for this. And incarnation isn't a term Christians should dismiss too flippantly from their vocabulary.
But language itself is a box. And I think that what makes Kathleen Norris's perspective compelling is that she is honest enough to admit that in reclaiming her faith, she had to reclaim the little boxes - the words of the Christian faith. Even the scary ones. She reminds us that we need the boxes. We just need to remember that the boxes will never be up to the task of describing God.
In the parable of the good Samaritan a lawyer is apparently on the right track with regard to eternal life. He answers with the right words that the key is in love of God and love of neighbor. But those words need to be fleshed out a bit. So Jesus tells a story.
Once again, the lawyer finds that he knows what a neighbor is just as surely as he knows how to gain eternal life. Hearing the words in a story seems to make their meaning more concrete and relevant, but the story also reminds us that the words aren't adequate in themselves. They need to point us toward the larger mystery to do their work. Words like 'love' and 'God' and 'neighbor' are fine old words. But until they point us toward the messier reality of human interactions, they are not just boxes. They're empty boxes.
I hope that the coming weeks and months of reflection on Amazing Grace and on the gospel stories will point us toward God's vastness using the battered boxes that are the vocabulary of the Christian faith. And along the way I hope to explore with you whether they are still sturdy enough to speak towards or maybe even to the ineffable.
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