The first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John, known as the Prologue, have been near and dear to my heart for a long time. They were the first sentences I ever translated from Greek into English, way back in high school. They are so full of meaning, so mystical, that if I spend the rest of my life studying them I will still only have begun to plumb their depths.
They always show up on the first Sunday after Christmas, and fittingly so. Once the cultural frenzy of Christmas itself has passed, there is time for people of faith to stop and reflect on what it all means. That’s what John does for us. He places a particular birth in a particular time within the context of eternity, and so helps us place our own particular place and time within God’s unending time.
“In the beginning” – right back to the first words of the Bible, John takes us, before creation itself. “Was” – the Greek verb expresses ongoing time, continuing action. “The Word” – all of the multivalent meanings of “Logos” in Greek are brought to bear: thought, reason, what goes on inwardly as well as the outward expression of inner thought through speech. God’s thought is God’s speech is God’s action. That’s what the doctrine of the Trinity is all about. God the Father speaks through God the Son in the power of God the Holy Spirit. John gets all of that meaning in just the first few verses.
Because the Word arises from the heart of God, speaking what God thinks, I am used to saying that Jesus Christ is God’s most complete self-revelation to humanity. That’s part of what makes me a Christian. But the fourteenth-century mystic Johannes Tauler takes that concept even further. In uttering the Word, Tauler says, God also comprehends himself. The implication is that without begetting the eternal Word, God the Father would not be able to know himself.
Yet the Prologue doesn’t remain in the realm of the eternal. John soon switches to punctiliar verbs, ones that place an action at a particular point in time. John the Baptist is born (“happened” in the Greek). And remarkably enough, so was the eternal Word, born in the flesh.
Every time I get to the verse, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” my spine starts tingling. If I’m reading it out loud, I have to stop and collect myself. That’s the absolute center of our faith. God in all of God’s fullness, the eternal Word through whom all things came into being, emptied himself and became a finite human being. “God became human that humans might become God,” as St. Athanasius put it. The enormity of that, the utter grace of it, gets me every time.
Through Jesus Christ, who is the Word become flesh, we all receive grace upon grace, grace freely given to us out of the fullness of the eternal God. It is a grace that is totally unmerited. By many it is not even accepted, as John well knew. Yet God offers it nonetheless. How could God do anything else? For it is the very nature of God to speak the Word, to reveal God’s self, to enter the particularity of time and place so that we, too, might witness to that eternal conversation of love that is God.
Christmas 1: John 1:1-18. For those who keep track of such things, the actual quotation from Tauler is: “In this pure act of self-comprehension [the Father] utters Himself completely by a Word; and the Word is His Son. And the act whereby He knows Himself is the generation of the Son in eternity.” Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 36 (Paulist Press).
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Christmas Bird Count
This Saturday I will be going on my first Christmas Bird Count in many years. Except for the Christmas part, it’s just what it sounds like: a count of birds over a 24-hour period within a 15-mile-diameter area. The National Audubon Society has been sponsoring Christmas Bird Counts nationwide since 1900. In spite of the vagaries of weather and variation in observers, CBCs have actually provided useful long-term data about changes in bird populations.
I last participated in a count when I was in graduate school at Duke. For a while I was the compiler for the Durham CBC – organizing groups of birders, collecting the numbers, investigating unusual sightings, sending it all on to the Audubon Society. I was young enough to get up in the middle of the night to listen for owls and then wander around the North Carolina woods all day with my birding buddies. Fortunately for me (and for R, who still remembers the alarm clock going off at 3 a.m.), Saturday’s meeting time is a more civilized 7:00.
Do Christmas Bird Counts have any theological significance? Probably not. Yet I do enjoy spending hours outdoors in the midst of creation, searching distant shores for eagles perched in tall trees, listening for the high pitch of chickadees or cedar waxwings. Our first assignment upon gathering will be to find the peregrine falcon that frequents a Mississippi River bridge. Birding is like that: you look for things where you have seen them in the past while keeping your eyes and ears open for the unusual.
That kind of expectant anticipation makes birding a bit like Advent. Like Advent, we think we know what or who is coming. But do we really? Jesus never seemed to do what was expected, even before he was born. Joseph certainly didn’t know what he was getting into when he decided to quietly divorce his suddenly pregnant fiancée. The only assurance he had was from dreams, and how can one be sure that a dream has come from God? Righteous and faithful, Joseph did believe, and accepted this Child that was not really his, naming him as his own, naming him Jesus, for he would be one who saves.
Names are important. Even bird names. There’s actually an organization that gives birds their official English names, changing them from time to time for various reasons. I expect that I will show my birding rustiness by not calling something its new name – saying marsh hawk instead of northern harrier, for instance. I hope I am amused when I’m corrected. Now that I no longer teach, I don’t have to be right any more, at least about names. One thing I am still sure about, however. Thanks to that baby of Mary and Joseph, that Immanu-el, God is with us and will remain with us now and always. It doesn’t take a pair of binoculars to see that.
Advent 4: Matthew 1:18-25.
I last participated in a count when I was in graduate school at Duke. For a while I was the compiler for the Durham CBC – organizing groups of birders, collecting the numbers, investigating unusual sightings, sending it all on to the Audubon Society. I was young enough to get up in the middle of the night to listen for owls and then wander around the North Carolina woods all day with my birding buddies. Fortunately for me (and for R, who still remembers the alarm clock going off at 3 a.m.), Saturday’s meeting time is a more civilized 7:00.
Do Christmas Bird Counts have any theological significance? Probably not. Yet I do enjoy spending hours outdoors in the midst of creation, searching distant shores for eagles perched in tall trees, listening for the high pitch of chickadees or cedar waxwings. Our first assignment upon gathering will be to find the peregrine falcon that frequents a Mississippi River bridge. Birding is like that: you look for things where you have seen them in the past while keeping your eyes and ears open for the unusual.
That kind of expectant anticipation makes birding a bit like Advent. Like Advent, we think we know what or who is coming. But do we really? Jesus never seemed to do what was expected, even before he was born. Joseph certainly didn’t know what he was getting into when he decided to quietly divorce his suddenly pregnant fiancée. The only assurance he had was from dreams, and how can one be sure that a dream has come from God? Righteous and faithful, Joseph did believe, and accepted this Child that was not really his, naming him as his own, naming him Jesus, for he would be one who saves.
Names are important. Even bird names. There’s actually an organization that gives birds their official English names, changing them from time to time for various reasons. I expect that I will show my birding rustiness by not calling something its new name – saying marsh hawk instead of northern harrier, for instance. I hope I am amused when I’m corrected. Now that I no longer teach, I don’t have to be right any more, at least about names. One thing I am still sure about, however. Thanks to that baby of Mary and Joseph, that Immanu-el, God is with us and will remain with us now and always. It doesn’t take a pair of binoculars to see that.
Advent 4: Matthew 1:18-25.
Monday, December 6, 2010
The Desert Shall Rejoice and Blossom
When I first started teaching at St. Ambrose University, a colleague and I spent a term break at Big Bend National Park in southern Texas. It was my first experience in a desert, and I shall never forget it. Big Bend covers a huge area where the Rio Grande River makes a wide arc as it separates the U.S. and Mexico. The park is large enough to contain the entire Chisos Mountain range as well as a good deal of the Chihuahuan Desert.
Like most real deserts, Big Bend is stony, not sandy, and trackless. What look like paths are actually dry watercourses. If you follow one, you are likely to end up in a canyon with high walls – not the place to be if there’s a thunderstorm nearby. The water will come rushing down in a torrent, as large stones washed onto high ledges attest.
Deserts are usually dry places, of course. In some areas it may not rain for years. But when it does rain, really rain, the plants are ready. Some have waited as seeds; others as dry branches surviving under the scorching sun. When the rain finally comes, they burst into bloom. The seeds sprout, grow, flower, and create new seeds within a few weeks.
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,” Isaiah writes,” the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” To see a dry desert break forth into blossom is like watching a miracle unfold – as miraculous as the eyes of the blind being opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the lame leaping like a deer.
For millennia, people have gone to the desert to encounter God. John the Baptist was one of them. Yet the God John encountered was not the one he was expecting. He didn’t think that God’s chosen one would turn out to be his younger cousin, Jesus. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John asked through his disciples. In reply, Jesus told them, look at what I am doing. See what happens to the people who come to me. Then remember what the desert is like when the rains come, and you will know the finger of God when you see it.
It was a chilly January when I went to Big Bend, so I didn’t see any rain or flowers. But I did get to hear the remarkable silence, like the "sound of sheer silence" as one translator described God’s appearance to Elijah on Mount Horeb. It is a silence one can almost touch. Out of that desert silence, that midnight silence, God speaks. Out of that silence one winter’s night God spoke in the cry of a newborn baby, a baby who became a man that caused the desert to rejoice and the lame to leap for joy. Thanks be to God for the gift of that Child.
Like most real deserts, Big Bend is stony, not sandy, and trackless. What look like paths are actually dry watercourses. If you follow one, you are likely to end up in a canyon with high walls – not the place to be if there’s a thunderstorm nearby. The water will come rushing down in a torrent, as large stones washed onto high ledges attest.
Deserts are usually dry places, of course. In some areas it may not rain for years. But when it does rain, really rain, the plants are ready. Some have waited as seeds; others as dry branches surviving under the scorching sun. When the rain finally comes, they burst into bloom. The seeds sprout, grow, flower, and create new seeds within a few weeks.
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,” Isaiah writes,” the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” To see a dry desert break forth into blossom is like watching a miracle unfold – as miraculous as the eyes of the blind being opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the lame leaping like a deer.
For millennia, people have gone to the desert to encounter God. John the Baptist was one of them. Yet the God John encountered was not the one he was expecting. He didn’t think that God’s chosen one would turn out to be his younger cousin, Jesus. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John asked through his disciples. In reply, Jesus told them, look at what I am doing. See what happens to the people who come to me. Then remember what the desert is like when the rains come, and you will know the finger of God when you see it.
It was a chilly January when I went to Big Bend, so I didn’t see any rain or flowers. But I did get to hear the remarkable silence, like the "sound of sheer silence" as one translator described God’s appearance to Elijah on Mount Horeb. It is a silence one can almost touch. Out of that desert silence, that midnight silence, God speaks. Out of that silence one winter’s night God spoke in the cry of a newborn baby, a baby who became a man that caused the desert to rejoice and the lame to leap for joy. Thanks be to God for the gift of that Child.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
A Shoot Shall Come Forth
A shoot shall come forth out of Jesse,
And a bud shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of life shall be with him,
The spirit of wisdom and truth.
The prophet Isaiah was full of words of hope to a people who faced one crisis after another. Threatened by foreign invasion and weak leadership, they did not know which way to turn. Return to the Lord, Isaiah said, for he will raise up a new ruler for you from the descendants of King David, the son of Jesse. He will lead in wisdom and truth, and bring peace to the earth.
Then the lamb shall lie down with the leopard,
And the lion eat straw with the ox,
For the hand of a Child shall lead them,
To the peaceable kingdom of God.
Early Christians saw Isaiah’s prophecy of David’s descendant fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It was this Child who would usher in a new Eden, a place where animals would neither eat one another nor harm anyone. It’s like the painting of “The Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks, in which people and animals look out as though the viewer has disturbed their tranquility.
From out of the wells of salvation
Will he draw us the water of life;
His waist shall be girdled with justice,
The heart of his heart shall be Love.
My brother Richard Horn wrote these words many years ago and set them to music for a Christmas card. Words and music were subsequently published and have been sung during Advent ever since, especially on the second Sunday of Advent in liturgical Year A, when we hear the reading from Isaiah on which the text is based.
He’ll come from the end of his heaven,
And the earth shall be torn from its place;
Our lives shall be filled with his radiance
As floodwaters cover the sea.
In Advent we wait for the return of Christ, even as we prepare to celebrate that first appearance at Christmas. The Bible portrays the Second Coming in cosmic terms, as though the earth will be torn from its place. Our lives will be totally up-ended. And yet the One whose heart is Love will fill us with his radiance, with joy irresistibly flowing everywhere, like floodwaters covering the sea. God’s love will be all-encompassing.
Then the lamb shall lie down with the leopard,
And the lion eat straw with the ox,
For the hand of a Child shall lead them,
To the peaceable kingdom of God.
What wonderful yearning there is in Isaiah’s vision! This is not "pie in the sky by and by," but rather a hope and a promise that this life is not the end, that there is more than what we see now. A time will come when all things will be reconciled to God and to one another. That is the promise God gives us through Jesus Christ. Knowing that such a time will come, we can begin now, in all of our weak and broken humanity, to work for the coming of that peaceable kingdom. It will come in God's time, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. Wouldn't it better to work with God for the coming of the kingdom, rather than simply wait?
Advent 2: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12.
And a bud shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of life shall be with him,
The spirit of wisdom and truth.
The prophet Isaiah was full of words of hope to a people who faced one crisis after another. Threatened by foreign invasion and weak leadership, they did not know which way to turn. Return to the Lord, Isaiah said, for he will raise up a new ruler for you from the descendants of King David, the son of Jesse. He will lead in wisdom and truth, and bring peace to the earth.
Then the lamb shall lie down with the leopard,
And the lion eat straw with the ox,
For the hand of a Child shall lead them,
To the peaceable kingdom of God.
Early Christians saw Isaiah’s prophecy of David’s descendant fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It was this Child who would usher in a new Eden, a place where animals would neither eat one another nor harm anyone. It’s like the painting of “The Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks, in which people and animals look out as though the viewer has disturbed their tranquility.
From out of the wells of salvation
Will he draw us the water of life;
His waist shall be girdled with justice,
The heart of his heart shall be Love.
My brother Richard Horn wrote these words many years ago and set them to music for a Christmas card. Words and music were subsequently published and have been sung during Advent ever since, especially on the second Sunday of Advent in liturgical Year A, when we hear the reading from Isaiah on which the text is based.
He’ll come from the end of his heaven,
And the earth shall be torn from its place;
Our lives shall be filled with his radiance
As floodwaters cover the sea.
In Advent we wait for the return of Christ, even as we prepare to celebrate that first appearance at Christmas. The Bible portrays the Second Coming in cosmic terms, as though the earth will be torn from its place. Our lives will be totally up-ended. And yet the One whose heart is Love will fill us with his radiance, with joy irresistibly flowing everywhere, like floodwaters covering the sea. God’s love will be all-encompassing.
Then the lamb shall lie down with the leopard,
And the lion eat straw with the ox,
For the hand of a Child shall lead them,
To the peaceable kingdom of God.
What wonderful yearning there is in Isaiah’s vision! This is not "pie in the sky by and by," but rather a hope and a promise that this life is not the end, that there is more than what we see now. A time will come when all things will be reconciled to God and to one another. That is the promise God gives us through Jesus Christ. Knowing that such a time will come, we can begin now, in all of our weak and broken humanity, to work for the coming of that peaceable kingdom. It will come in God's time, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. Wouldn't it better to work with God for the coming of the kingdom, rather than simply wait?
Advent 2: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Yearning
This year I am not tempted to greet everyone on the first Sunday in Advent with “Happy New Year!” It was funny the first time, perhaps. At least it’s appropriate. Advent 1 marks the beginning of a new three-year lectionary cycle, when all Episcopal churches are supposed to follow the Revised Common Lectionary. But this year I am more aware of continuity than change.
Toward the end of Pentecost, the lessons focused on the end times, the second coming of Christ. Advent begins with the same. “You know what time it is,” Paul writes to the Romans, “how it is the moment for you to wake from sleep…the night is far gone, the day is near.” Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”
One introduction to the church year that I recently read acknowledged this focus on the unpredictability of the second coming, and then said that because of it, the church should work to bring about God’s reign of peace and justice today. There’s an implication that we can create the kingdom of God on earth. That’s debatable. Even so, I don’t think it goes deep enough.
What I sense this year is a tremendous amount of yearning. Some yearn for gainful employment. Some stop by the church looking for food or gas money to get to a job interview or an Iowa City hospital. A Quad City colleague sits in an interstate rest stop and sees young women desperately trying to get out of the human trafficking web in which they are enmeshed. All of these people yearn for very real physical needs, needs that must be met before spiritual growth can occur.
I see spiritual yearning, too. “Can we have some Wednesday evening sessions on prayer?” I am asked. That request was made last year; will I finally take it to heart this time? I think of the beginning of Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.” But do those who are thirsting and fainting always know that it is God that they seek? And how will they know unless there is someone to tell them, to walk with them?
Yes, “Happy New Year” is just a bit too glib this year. Yearning doesn’t need humor; it needs Good News. The news that God has already come in human flesh, in human frailty, in human poverty. The news that God came to us through a bewildered, poor, unmarried young woman. The news that God loved us so much that God was willing to die for us. The news that Christ overcame death and will indeed come again to make all things new. Does that end yearning? No. But at least then we know what it is we’re yearning for.
Advent 1: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44.
Toward the end of Pentecost, the lessons focused on the end times, the second coming of Christ. Advent begins with the same. “You know what time it is,” Paul writes to the Romans, “how it is the moment for you to wake from sleep…the night is far gone, the day is near.” Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”
One introduction to the church year that I recently read acknowledged this focus on the unpredictability of the second coming, and then said that because of it, the church should work to bring about God’s reign of peace and justice today. There’s an implication that we can create the kingdom of God on earth. That’s debatable. Even so, I don’t think it goes deep enough.
What I sense this year is a tremendous amount of yearning. Some yearn for gainful employment. Some stop by the church looking for food or gas money to get to a job interview or an Iowa City hospital. A Quad City colleague sits in an interstate rest stop and sees young women desperately trying to get out of the human trafficking web in which they are enmeshed. All of these people yearn for very real physical needs, needs that must be met before spiritual growth can occur.
I see spiritual yearning, too. “Can we have some Wednesday evening sessions on prayer?” I am asked. That request was made last year; will I finally take it to heart this time? I think of the beginning of Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.” But do those who are thirsting and fainting always know that it is God that they seek? And how will they know unless there is someone to tell them, to walk with them?
Yes, “Happy New Year” is just a bit too glib this year. Yearning doesn’t need humor; it needs Good News. The news that God has already come in human flesh, in human frailty, in human poverty. The news that God came to us through a bewildered, poor, unmarried young woman. The news that God loved us so much that God was willing to die for us. The news that Christ overcame death and will indeed come again to make all things new. Does that end yearning? No. But at least then we know what it is we’re yearning for.
Advent 1: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Making Peace Through the Blood of the Cross
Christ the King Sunday is something of a mystery to me. I don’t remember it growing up, so I don’t have a childhood context. We don’t have a monarchy in this country, so the concept of a king does not resonate, and such autocratic authority is inimical to an egalitarian, democratic spirit. And worst of all, this year’s Gospel reading suddenly propels us into the midst of Jesus on the cross. At least during Lent we have some preparation for the crucifixion, but it’s hardly what we expect in the midst of Thanksgiving plans.
“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” The soldiers mock Jesus as he hangs on the cross under an inscription that says, “This is the King of the Jews.” The two criminals on either side argue with one another. One derides Jesus because he didn’t save any of them, but the other rebukes the first and asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Finally, Jesus speaks. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The paradox of the day is clear. The one who is supposed to be king dies an ignominious death. He who is destined to save others cannot save himself. It just doesn’t make sense. No wonder some who want a more rational explanation argue that Jesus was a victim of Roman oppression and religious machinations and that this wasn’t really part of God’s plan. Those who espouse that idea also seem unwilling to entertain the thought that Jesus was in any way divine. He was just a good man with a special connection to God who ran afoul of the authorities.
The problem with that approach is that it doesn’t fit the witness of Scripture. It doesn’t fit the experience of faith, either. Faith is more comfortable with paradox than reason is. How else can one understand the reading from the letter to the Colossians? “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
Making peace through the blood of his cross! How outrageous is that? That someone should have to suffer so that reconciliation could occur – it offends all of our Western sensibilities. Yet that is the witness of the gospel. It is the witness – but not the end of the gospel. Yes, Jesus dies, but he also rises again on the third day. For me, resurrection is the key. If Christ has not been raised, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, then our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. It is only through the new life of Jesus Christ that we, too, have new life available to us. Only through Jesus can we be reconciled to God.
The image of Jesus as King reminds us that, although he was just like us in his humanity, he was wholly other than us in his divinity. The two have to be together for reconciliation to occur. Without the humanity of Jesus, we have no one who lived and was tempted like us. Without his divinity, we have no one who has the standing to approach God on our behalf. That’s the paradox of our faith – a paradox clearly captured by the image of the King of the Jews dying on a cross.
Last Pentecost: Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43; see also First Corinthians 15:17.
“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” The soldiers mock Jesus as he hangs on the cross under an inscription that says, “This is the King of the Jews.” The two criminals on either side argue with one another. One derides Jesus because he didn’t save any of them, but the other rebukes the first and asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Finally, Jesus speaks. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The paradox of the day is clear. The one who is supposed to be king dies an ignominious death. He who is destined to save others cannot save himself. It just doesn’t make sense. No wonder some who want a more rational explanation argue that Jesus was a victim of Roman oppression and religious machinations and that this wasn’t really part of God’s plan. Those who espouse that idea also seem unwilling to entertain the thought that Jesus was in any way divine. He was just a good man with a special connection to God who ran afoul of the authorities.
The problem with that approach is that it doesn’t fit the witness of Scripture. It doesn’t fit the experience of faith, either. Faith is more comfortable with paradox than reason is. How else can one understand the reading from the letter to the Colossians? “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
Making peace through the blood of his cross! How outrageous is that? That someone should have to suffer so that reconciliation could occur – it offends all of our Western sensibilities. Yet that is the witness of the gospel. It is the witness – but not the end of the gospel. Yes, Jesus dies, but he also rises again on the third day. For me, resurrection is the key. If Christ has not been raised, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, then our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. It is only through the new life of Jesus Christ that we, too, have new life available to us. Only through Jesus can we be reconciled to God.
The image of Jesus as King reminds us that, although he was just like us in his humanity, he was wholly other than us in his divinity. The two have to be together for reconciliation to occur. Without the humanity of Jesus, we have no one who lived and was tempted like us. Without his divinity, we have no one who has the standing to approach God on our behalf. That’s the paradox of our faith – a paradox clearly captured by the image of the King of the Jews dying on a cross.
Last Pentecost: Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43; see also First Corinthians 15:17.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Signs of the End?
Another election season has come and gone, setting new records for cost and nastiness. Winning an election appears to be the end for which all means are acceptable, and now that the U.S. Supreme Court has removed barriers to corporate contributions, more money is available to fund those means. It is an unusual race in which candidates stick to the issues and treat one another with respect. In our part of the prairie one state representative was elected that way, a small bit of relief in what was otherwise a slimy shouting match.
Two years ago Democrats rejoiced and the Republican Party seemed finished. Last week the Republicans surged back and the Democrats lost ground. Each time some people on the losing side view the results in almost cosmic terms: the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Considering how many of our problems need thoughtful solutions, and how likely gridlock will prevent anything happening over the next two years, perhaps the doomsayers have a point.
All of this tempts me to interpret Jesus’ comments on the end times politically. I resist that temptation, however, because his starting point is something never seen by the reigning culture in our country: total domination by a foreign power and the destruction of the central religious shrine (in Jesus’ case, the Jerusalem Temple). This is not Sudan or Pakistan; our lives are not in danger because we are Christians.
I also resist it because the end times are not really Jesus’ focus. What is most important, he says, is how you live when really bad things happen. Worried about persecution? That gives you an opportunity to witness to the faith. Rehearsing your answers? Don’t bother. I will give you a mouth (literally) and a wisdom that no one opposing you will be able to withstand. That’s exactly what we see happening in places where Christians really are persecuted. To apply this to U.S. politics is to trivialize it.
So what to do with this Gospel? Certainly it should not be used as a predictor, a claim that there are now wars and insurrections and great earthquakes, so the end is coming soon. Elsewhere Jesus makes it quite clear that his return will be unpredictable and unexpected. Yet the emphasis on how we live our lives is timeless. The baptismal covenant provides the blueprint: pray and worship, resist evil, proclaim the Good News by word and example, seek and serve Christ in all persons, strive for peace and justice, respect the dignity of all human beings. If those had been followed in this recent election, it would have been a very different process. We can only pray and hope that those who will now hold office will come to their senses after a bitter contest and govern in a more reasonable and faithful way.
Pentecost 25: Luke 21:5-19.
Two years ago Democrats rejoiced and the Republican Party seemed finished. Last week the Republicans surged back and the Democrats lost ground. Each time some people on the losing side view the results in almost cosmic terms: the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Considering how many of our problems need thoughtful solutions, and how likely gridlock will prevent anything happening over the next two years, perhaps the doomsayers have a point.
All of this tempts me to interpret Jesus’ comments on the end times politically. I resist that temptation, however, because his starting point is something never seen by the reigning culture in our country: total domination by a foreign power and the destruction of the central religious shrine (in Jesus’ case, the Jerusalem Temple). This is not Sudan or Pakistan; our lives are not in danger because we are Christians.
I also resist it because the end times are not really Jesus’ focus. What is most important, he says, is how you live when really bad things happen. Worried about persecution? That gives you an opportunity to witness to the faith. Rehearsing your answers? Don’t bother. I will give you a mouth (literally) and a wisdom that no one opposing you will be able to withstand. That’s exactly what we see happening in places where Christians really are persecuted. To apply this to U.S. politics is to trivialize it.
So what to do with this Gospel? Certainly it should not be used as a predictor, a claim that there are now wars and insurrections and great earthquakes, so the end is coming soon. Elsewhere Jesus makes it quite clear that his return will be unpredictable and unexpected. Yet the emphasis on how we live our lives is timeless. The baptismal covenant provides the blueprint: pray and worship, resist evil, proclaim the Good News by word and example, seek and serve Christ in all persons, strive for peace and justice, respect the dignity of all human beings. If those had been followed in this recent election, it would have been a very different process. We can only pray and hope that those who will now hold office will come to their senses after a bitter contest and govern in a more reasonable and faithful way.
Pentecost 25: Luke 21:5-19.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
