Gospel reading: Matthew 3.1-12
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
"...She also needed conversion in another sense, a long, slow dialogue with the scriptures to enlarge her as a person."
-Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace
My spiritual director in seminary was a remarkable man named Roger Ferlo. Before going to seminary himself he taught Shakespeare and Dante. And I think his long, slow dialogue with literature had a great deal to do with his affection for scripture. (Some of you have read his lovely book, Sensing God: Reading Scripture With All Our Senses.)
I met with him after chapel one day where we had just read one of the stranger passages from Revelation. One with beasts and swords and blood. My early encounters with Revelation were pretty harsh. And I think I had replaced the sheer terror certain passages once inspired with a mild embarrassment. Among more broad minded Christians it was acceptable to roll one's eyes at John of Patmos, or Paul, or even the bewildering character of Yahweh in the Old Testament - as thought they were all some offensive relative we feel compelled to distance ourselves from and apologize for.
We met in Roger's office. And as I sat down, he eased into a chair opposite mine and said, "What were those people going through?"
It took me a few moments to realize what he was referring to. I had evicted the images from Revelation almost immediately from my imagination. They were still expanding in Roger's. Knowing that all stories emerge from real lives he wondered what must have been going on in the lives of the community that produced a book like Revelation. What were they suffering to write of such things? Where do such terrible and glorious imaginings come from?
I think that Roger's lovely openness and trust of the scriptures must be the fruit of that long, slow dialogue Kathleen Norris speaks of. And in Roger I can see clearly how a person is enlarged in the process.
In some ways our relationship with scripture is not so different from other human relationships. We learn how to take things from people over time. What once offended us about an old friend we now take with a grain of salt. Or when someone we love and trust lashes out at us, we don't wonder suddenly if we were wrong about them all along. We don't wonder whether this person is really a monster who's pulled the wool over our eyes. We wonder what else is going on. We wonder what's wrong. We wonder how they've been hurt.
Before our relationship 'enlarges', while we're still feeling things out we don't know quite what to make of the strange gestures, the blunt way of speaking, or the saccharine sweetness of this new acquaintance. With an old friend whatever is said, no matter how offensive or bizarre, is just one more phrase in a long, slow dialogue. Old trusts aren't so fragile.
A simple comment by someone I trust changed my experience of scripture forever, I think. The strange parts of the Bible don't frighten me so much anymore. And I no longer want to purge the Bible of its strangeness. It's often the strangeness that entices me now.
So when I read from the last chapter of the Bible's last book - yes, dear old Revelation - among images of a city with gates like pearls and walls of jasper and gold and precious gems, among all this wonder I read, "These words are trustworthy and true." And in spite of myself, in spite of my incomprehension, in spite of my too small imagination, I somehow respond, "Amen."
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Righteous
Gospel reading: Matthew 24.36-44
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Righteous is a good case study for the way meaning accumulates in a word over time. As a child I used to enjoy saying a word over and over again until the meaning drained from it completely. The sounds of the word became as strange and arbitrary as those of another language. I'm not sure why it pleased me to unlearn a word for a moment. But it did.
There is a scene in a William Faulkner novel (As I Lay Dying, I think) in which a character talks about a similar experience with a name. As I recall, he imagined himself gradually filling or taking the shape of his name. And his name was sort of a formless void until he did.
The sheer repetition of speaking the word 'self' before the word 'righteous' may have worked in much the same way in our lives. Words take on meaning for us as we speak them. They conjure up emotions and images for us based on what went on in us and around us when the word was spoken in our past. Somewhere along the way 'righteous' got buried in the phrase 'self righteous' and became associated in our minds only with prigs...and worse.
But much of Kathleen Norris's project in Amazing Grace was to reclaim a language or a vocabulary. Reclaim might not be the best word, actually. Reimagine might be better.
My first real carpentry job was as an apprentice on a framing crew in Eatonville, Washington. And James, my boss, was a former surfer from southern California. (Before you let the word 'surfer' conjure up too many associations you should know that he worked on a doctorate at UCLA for a time and read a lot of Tolstoy.) But on the job site 'righteous' was usually preceded not by 'self' but by 'totally', as in "The fit of that hip rafter was totally righteous".
This was helpful to my relationship to the word, even if the phrase was rarely spoken without a little affectation and irony. Righteousness gradually became associated with what's good and lovely in the world again.
Righteousness is so essential to biblical faith that I hope we can speak some goodness back into the word. I hope there is a way we can want to be righteous again. Maybe I'll need to type "I want to be righteous" 100 times in a blog before the word is fully redeemed for me. But shouldn't we want to be righteous? In fact, shouldn't our Christian faith be about formation as righteous people?
I wonder sometimes if my own embarrassment with the notion hasn't arisen with the persistent association of 'self' with 'righteous'. The same thing can happen with 'goodness'. Say 'do-gooder' or 'goody two shoes' enough and we'll be free of that word's uncomfortable challenges to our lives as well.
But the truth is we do want to be righteous. We want to be people who live justly. People who treat the vulnerable ones in our world with the love and respect that our scriptures and our faith demands. We want to be people whose aim is true. If we didn't, why in the world would we be reading this line in this blog together?
I believe that God is making us righteous. Little by little, our lives can accumulate meaning just like the words we use. It doesn't happen all at once. But over time, perhaps as we "continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers" (in the prayer book's words) we are changed. Our lives take on a new meaning and a new direction gradually as we learn together, eat together, and pray together. Maybe even as we blog together.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Righteous is a good case study for the way meaning accumulates in a word over time. As a child I used to enjoy saying a word over and over again until the meaning drained from it completely. The sounds of the word became as strange and arbitrary as those of another language. I'm not sure why it pleased me to unlearn a word for a moment. But it did.
There is a scene in a William Faulkner novel (As I Lay Dying, I think) in which a character talks about a similar experience with a name. As I recall, he imagined himself gradually filling or taking the shape of his name. And his name was sort of a formless void until he did.
The sheer repetition of speaking the word 'self' before the word 'righteous' may have worked in much the same way in our lives. Words take on meaning for us as we speak them. They conjure up emotions and images for us based on what went on in us and around us when the word was spoken in our past. Somewhere along the way 'righteous' got buried in the phrase 'self righteous' and became associated in our minds only with prigs...and worse.
But much of Kathleen Norris's project in Amazing Grace was to reclaim a language or a vocabulary. Reclaim might not be the best word, actually. Reimagine might be better.
My first real carpentry job was as an apprentice on a framing crew in Eatonville, Washington. And James, my boss, was a former surfer from southern California. (Before you let the word 'surfer' conjure up too many associations you should know that he worked on a doctorate at UCLA for a time and read a lot of Tolstoy.) But on the job site 'righteous' was usually preceded not by 'self' but by 'totally', as in "The fit of that hip rafter was totally righteous".
This was helpful to my relationship to the word, even if the phrase was rarely spoken without a little affectation and irony. Righteousness gradually became associated with what's good and lovely in the world again.
Righteousness is so essential to biblical faith that I hope we can speak some goodness back into the word. I hope there is a way we can want to be righteous again. Maybe I'll need to type "I want to be righteous" 100 times in a blog before the word is fully redeemed for me. But shouldn't we want to be righteous? In fact, shouldn't our Christian faith be about formation as righteous people?
I wonder sometimes if my own embarrassment with the notion hasn't arisen with the persistent association of 'self' with 'righteous'. The same thing can happen with 'goodness'. Say 'do-gooder' or 'goody two shoes' enough and we'll be free of that word's uncomfortable challenges to our lives as well.
But the truth is we do want to be righteous. We want to be people who live justly. People who treat the vulnerable ones in our world with the love and respect that our scriptures and our faith demands. We want to be people whose aim is true. If we didn't, why in the world would we be reading this line in this blog together?
I believe that God is making us righteous. Little by little, our lives can accumulate meaning just like the words we use. It doesn't happen all at once. But over time, perhaps as we "continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers" (in the prayer book's words) we are changed. Our lives take on a new meaning and a new direction gradually as we learn together, eat together, and pray together. Maybe even as we blog together.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Bible
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.
(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.
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