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.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
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.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Annunciation
Gospel reading: Luke 18.9-14
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
There's a world of difference between "How will I know this is true?" and "How can this be?" Both questions are reasonable responses to an angel's annunciation of an unexpected pregnancy. But one seeks to close off a mystery. The other seeks to open one up.
The first question is Zechariah's after he is told that his wife will bear a child. The second is Mary's when she is told that she is pregnant as well.
"How will I know this is true?" has served humanity well in many ways. Disproving what is false in the realm of science or theology is important enough. But sometimes we're lulled into thinking that if something can't be proven, it can't be important.
Robert Capon has said just the opposite. He says that the provable things in our faith are those that matter least. Philosophers and theologians like Thomas Aquinas have offered some fairly elegant proofs of the existence of God. But learning what God is like and why God might matter to the likes of us is a subtler affair.
Human analogies are useful here. There is no single, definitive proof of one person's love for another. Every action, or word, or gesture is open to suspicion. Asked to prove our love for another, we never get to don a white lab coat and offer up DNA evidence in our defense. No, love always depends on the trust of the beloved for its proof. Love is never received by one asking "How will I know?" It needs at least the space of "How can this be?"
An appreciation of mystery is essential to love. And banishing space for mystery in our lives shuts us off from too much of the world. Kathleen Norris points out that Zechariah went mute after his response. Mary delivered the Magnificat.
For much of my life I thought faith should not be spared the hard, "How will I know?" questions. I thought conversion was about being convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by a preponderance of evidence for things like annunciations and resurrections and transfigurations. But I've come to believe that true faith asks "How can this be?" Faith is that humble delight in the possibility of grace. Nothing has been proven. But perhaps we move only from a fearful "What if it's false?" to a hopeful "What if it's true?" And everything shifts. Energy dissipates around the fearful first quesiton. Life and energy gather around the second.
In our gospel lesson from Sunday we can assume that we're meant to feel sorry for the poor tax collector whose world seems to have crumbled thoroughly enough for him to cry to God for mercy. But the Pharisee's world makes sense and is all the sadder for it. He can comprehend quite easily why God might be pleased with him. But a comprehensible world is too small. Jesus seems to be telling us that something crucial opens up in the tax collector's plea for mercy, and maybe he leaves asking "How can this be?"
When we think the Christian faith makes perfect sense we should beware. Not because its truths are absurd or patently false. But because we're probably not asking the questions it is meant to address. We're not changed by the fact of God or the fact of redemption. We're changed by our encounters with God. We're changed by our experiences of redemption. We're changed in ways mostly small, ways we mostly don't understand. And maybe we only see these changes looking back. But when we do, we're likely to ask, "How can this be?"
We won't get an answer. But we'll know we're in good company. Which may be all we ever really get to know anyway. And somehow it's enough.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
There's a world of difference between "How will I know this is true?" and "How can this be?" Both questions are reasonable responses to an angel's annunciation of an unexpected pregnancy. But one seeks to close off a mystery. The other seeks to open one up.
The first question is Zechariah's after he is told that his wife will bear a child. The second is Mary's when she is told that she is pregnant as well.
"How will I know this is true?" has served humanity well in many ways. Disproving what is false in the realm of science or theology is important enough. But sometimes we're lulled into thinking that if something can't be proven, it can't be important.
Robert Capon has said just the opposite. He says that the provable things in our faith are those that matter least. Philosophers and theologians like Thomas Aquinas have offered some fairly elegant proofs of the existence of God. But learning what God is like and why God might matter to the likes of us is a subtler affair.
Human analogies are useful here. There is no single, definitive proof of one person's love for another. Every action, or word, or gesture is open to suspicion. Asked to prove our love for another, we never get to don a white lab coat and offer up DNA evidence in our defense. No, love always depends on the trust of the beloved for its proof. Love is never received by one asking "How will I know?" It needs at least the space of "How can this be?"
An appreciation of mystery is essential to love. And banishing space for mystery in our lives shuts us off from too much of the world. Kathleen Norris points out that Zechariah went mute after his response. Mary delivered the Magnificat.
For much of my life I thought faith should not be spared the hard, "How will I know?" questions. I thought conversion was about being convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by a preponderance of evidence for things like annunciations and resurrections and transfigurations. But I've come to believe that true faith asks "How can this be?" Faith is that humble delight in the possibility of grace. Nothing has been proven. But perhaps we move only from a fearful "What if it's false?" to a hopeful "What if it's true?" And everything shifts. Energy dissipates around the fearful first quesiton. Life and energy gather around the second.
In our gospel lesson from Sunday we can assume that we're meant to feel sorry for the poor tax collector whose world seems to have crumbled thoroughly enough for him to cry to God for mercy. But the Pharisee's world makes sense and is all the sadder for it. He can comprehend quite easily why God might be pleased with him. But a comprehensible world is too small. Jesus seems to be telling us that something crucial opens up in the tax collector's plea for mercy, and maybe he leaves asking "How can this be?"
When we think the Christian faith makes perfect sense we should beware. Not because its truths are absurd or patently false. But because we're probably not asking the questions it is meant to address. We're not changed by the fact of God or the fact of redemption. We're changed by our encounters with God. We're changed by our experiences of redemption. We're changed in ways mostly small, ways we mostly don't understand. And maybe we only see these changes looking back. But when we do, we're likely to ask, "How can this be?"
We won't get an answer. But we'll know we're in good company. Which may be all we ever really get to know anyway. And somehow it's enough.
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