Now is the Time!

As I look over the Christian church across the world, I join God as He "sits in His heaven and laughs".  What strikes me as humorous is the determination of so many to make some past insights meaningful despite their terrible deficiencies.   Catholics are intent on ushering Thomas and Augustine into the 21st century.  Lutherans try to make Luther a theological hero. Presbyterians still try to solve Calvin's predestination.  Evangelicals pursue the 20th century insistence on the Five Fundamentals.  All of them are applying some outworn idea to a new world.

I think of the seventeenth century as the beginning of the modern era.  That century saw the urgency of the people replacing the power of the monarchy.

That century saw Galileo challenge the authority of tradition and dogma. That century brought the Pilgrims insisting that God's revelation does not depend on kings and councils. A new age was being born.

Call it the age of science - or of democracy - it upended the the formation of truth by crediting the experience of investigative people, researchers or scientists.  One curious event demonstrates the big change: Fra Lippo Lippi was dismissed from his monastery because he drew a picture of a tree with the green leaves he saw instead of the brown leaves required by medieval artistic standards.

We have lived in the midst of this learning community for several centuries.  And we are still reluctant to let of our nostalgic dependence on the past.  This week's news has focused on pageantry with the Queen of England and an obsession with the Pope.  They reflect our reluctance to move away from ancient authority to modern discovery. 

How can the church speak to people today when its language and ideas and information are rooted in a different language?  How can people schooled in evolution and space travel and computers and relativity and ego analysis subdue their intelligence and their culture to embrace that outworn past?

God must be laughing!

Triple Threat

Our minds like to deal with certainties, facts that can be certified. But certainties are rare, and we are required to live on beliefs, convictions, and dreams.

A close view of this situation can be seen in Prospero's clear statement at the climax of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST. Prospero looks over the stage which has just been filled with actors and scenery, and he points at the insubstantial nature of the scene:

First, the actors have "vanished into thin air". Second, the cloud-capped towers and solemn temples of the stage prove to be formed of "baseless fabric which is soon dissolved". Finally, our lives are depicted as "the stuff dreams are made of". But Prosperous is not proposing that the drama just staged is meaningless.

What is suggested here about the real world we inhabit?  I think he is saying that human life is brief and meaningless without those dreams. Human concerns like beauty, honor, love, justice and truth are without substance. They are creations of the human mind which give us what little "stuff" is available to us. 

We don't need to despair over our lack of certainty or substance. We have the capacity to be nourished by music, encouraged by poetry, strengthened by drama, satisfied with scientific progress, affirmed by our faith, fulfilled with our belief in family. These are compelling realities that give us meaning despite their insubstantial nature. Rejoice in them!

Religion Without Miracles

By the time that the young Christian church was ready to challenge the Roman empire, it had augmented its origins with astounding miracles. The Galilean peasant- become- evangelist Jesus was heralded as being born of a virgin in a sainted village as angels sang in heaven and a star moved across the sky.  His career was filled with miracles and his death affected all mankind. 

These miracles surely impressed the worldly Romans with the cosmic nature of Jesus' ministry.  But without the miracles, would Christianity have held them as a valid revelation of God?  Would we become Christians without those miracles?

Surely those miracles awake our slumbering imaginations.  They arouse our awareness of the unsolved mystery of human existence and beg for any kind of alternative explanation of our being. They argue that if Jesus was to be the savior of mankind, then the usual order of heaven and earth should rightly be altered. Roman civilization was not as skeptical as modern minds are, so it was open to reports of such amazing events.

How about us today?  With our scientific mind-set and our investigative archaeological research, our tendency is to treat these miracles as literary exaggerations. There may be  reasoned explanations for each one, as thousands of sermons attest. But the substance remains questionable: would Christianity be a viable religion without the miracles?

My answer is YES.  The scientific mind-set pays no homage to such naturalistic miracles.  It is intent with miracles on a different scale.  Human existence, the evolutionary urge, the nature of light, the circulation of blood, the convolutions of the ego -  these are among the miracles that beg for some accountability.  The more subtle miracles surround issues of love and forgiveness, grace and faith, and these remain as challenges for every generation.  Poetic and dramatic creations make vivid explanations in every new age.

We have, then, in the biblical record an account of the evangelist Jesus attracting crowds of people to hear his message.  That message had its unique influence.  But it was the charismatic nature of Jesus that caused people to open their passions to him and find  themselves with God.  That experience, augmented with miracle stories, was the Christian message.  Without the miracles, we can still thrive as Christians.

Better and Wetter at the Family Y!

Vacation time!  So now's the time to travel far and wide

Spring rains are gone, the country's high and dry.

You'll find it hot and dusty everywhere you ride:

It's better and wetter at the Family Y.

I'd like to see the Alamo out on the Texas plain

Where far too many soldiers had to die.

But now that's oil country that's always wanting rain:

It's better and wetter at the Family Y

I'd like to try the stratosphere, just to look down from

The towers of Manhattan or Dubai.

The air is like a vacuum there, it makes you want to come where

It's better and wetter at the Family Y.

I'd like to be in Egypt; I'd like to pet the sphinx,

To see those pyramids reaching to the sky

But it's drier and it's dustier there than anybody thinks.

It's better and wetter at the Family Y

And, oh, to be in Athens to see the Parthenon

With its pillars and its portals standing high.

Now the place is filled with boulders and the roof has fallen in,

It's better and wetter at the Family Y

And then there is old London town, always a lively place The Olympic games are coming in July With sprints and leaps and hurdles clouding up the pace It's better and wetter at the Family Y.

Well, yes, it is vacation time, it's time to make a choice.

With lots of new experiences to try

For the prospect of this summer, everybody raise your voice:

IT'S BETTER AND WETTER AT THE FAMILY Y.

BY NO ONE BUT ME!

Jesus' baffling statement  "No one comes to the Father but by me" comes in John's gospel.  John puts these words forward in a desperate attempt to establish Jesus' uniqueness against the claims of other evangelists.  But the fallout of that assertion is the rejection of every person who does not bow to Jesus as the only savior of all mankind.  Could Jesus have limited everyone's  access to God to only His followers?

The Old testament abounds with required means to approach God.There are over six hundred laws to be obeyed; circumcision; the temple; the rituals; Jerusalem itself; Justice; Israel; the Scrolls.  Is John suggesting that Jesus replaces all of these as a means of coming before God?

.It was John, writing sixty  years after Jesus died, who makes this claim.  John is  intent on singling Jesus as sole means to God as a replacement of all the Hebrew arsenal as well as other evangelists of his time.  This colossal claim is a building block for the growing Christian church, John asserts. How could Jesus outflank his competitors
if their preaching and teaching were regarded as authentic?

John's statement of Jesus' uniqueness here also demolishes the claims  of every other religion in their enterprise of approaching God.  In effect, John is claiming a single
Religion for mankind, one centered in Jesus. Is that possible? Is that conceivable?

I regard John's statement as an overblown fantasy as he is caught up in the stressful action of promoting the Christian church in the midst of Roman power.  Jesus was unique, but he was one of many representatives of God. That is my understanding.  What is yours?

Creative Creation

The most haunting question about human life is answered in the first pages of the  Bible: How and why did it all  begin?   The answer came in the form of a hybrid poem, a product of combined Hebrew and Babylonian poetry.

In the 7th century BC, Babylonians captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and moved the mass of Judah's  people to the Ninevah area.  There, the Hebrews largely refused to accommodate to their newfound culture.  But without a central Temple to worship in, they settled on writing poetic and historic records of their past.l

Their memory of heroic exploits was easy to record.  But when it came to imagining human or cosmic origins, their poets struggled mightily.  It must have come with desperation that they turned to the insights of their captors whose creation account credited God with an eight-day week.

The Hebrew poets insisted  on retaining their sacred six-day tradition, so they squeezed the extra two days into their account, retaining the sequence of the action.  And other oddities broke in, such as Light flooding the earth  before the Sun and Moon were created.

Here was "revealed" the Purpose beyond the tangible world.  Now there came that major shift in loyalty: from Temple to Sacred Scroll.  The Scroll was portable, so it could be copied and carried home as the new center for family worship.

The hunger for the central Temple did not vanish, however.  So a new Temple was built in Jerusalem when the Hebrews returned to their homeland.  But by this time the Sacred Scrolls and family service were so ingrained that they became the focal points of their religious observance.

This hybrid poem, then, has stood the analyses, the tests of over twenty-five centuries. It attempts to unravel millions of years back to a self-evident Creator. Speculation about that Creator will go on forever.  But that Mystery is at the heart of our faith. It is a poem, after all, and its purpose is to challenge and lift our spirits, not to propose a scientific answer to a theological idea.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE THE A MAKES!

Yes, the change of a single letter in a key word can make a world of difference.  This became clear to me when I read a 600-year old story, an account from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  That single letter change puts a frame around all our morality.

In Chaucer's bawdy story of the Wife Of Bath, he has the wife defending her love life thus: "The Apostle Paul did not COMMAND virginity before marriage - he COMMENDED it!" So she regards Paul's words as a suggestion, not a moral demand.

The consequences of that distinction are enormous.  For if you act obediently to some authority, you are not responsible for your action.  If you are a soldier commanded to burn a village and shoot any escapees, you cannot be held guilty.  If you act on a suggestion, a commendation, you are responsible! 

Jesus was clearly aware of this difference.  When Peter asked Jesus "Who are you?", Jesus asked "Whom do you say that I am?". And when Pilate asked him if He was king of the Jews, He  replied, "You have said so.". He did not say "You must be a peacemaker" but "Blessed are the peacemakers.". He did not define the Kingdom of Heaven but rather opened the way: "Seek first the kingdom of God and these things shall be added to you."

Jesus made it clear again and again: we are led, beckoned, challenged, advised -- but never ordered!  Commended but not commanded. We are personally responsible for our moral choices. Jesus shed light on what He considered Godly, but He left the decisions to us.

It Stays in Vegas

The popular saying goes like this: "What's said in Vegas stays in Vegas!". And there is wisdom there. Words of greed, judgment, jeers, accusations, threats, taunts - let them out if you must, but let those words die there.

We are capable of a whole different level of words, including empathy, grace, love, forgiveness, hope - these need to be in our daily vocabulary.....Go tell them on the mountain!

The world is hungering for these words. Go tell them on the mountain, over the hills and far away. Let them sing out! Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low and all flesh shall see it together!

A Flaw in the Familiar

The best-known passage in the entire Bible is the 23rd Psalm ....." The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...." It portrays our relationship with God as similar to sheep dependent on their shepherd.

The shepherd finds still water, green pastures, paths of righteousness. Then suddenly the shepherd is setting a table in the midst of enemies, an incongruous conclusion. Does that table come from, and what enemies?

While a few depictions show a table in the wilderness, most readers skip that detail, ignoring the oddity. The problem arises from the difficulties of translating, with languages and cultures involved. The practical matter is that when a shepherd opens up a new field for his sheep, he goes with his rod and staff to rid the field of enemies: snakes and jackals, coyotes and noxious weeds.

 The shepherd is preparing pastureland (table-land?) by ridding it of enemies. A simple way of saying it would go like this: " You go ahead of me, clearing the way by overcoming my enemies."