1/26/2014

HEARD AT CHURCH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I attended church today after a six week hiatus. 

Life sends those special little pop ups that cannot be disabled by checking a box.  They get in the way.  They distract.  Sometimes they annoy.  Other times they cannot be helped.

It’s funny how I did not miss going to church when I exiled myself for over two decades.  Now that I’ve found a church I really like, I do not want to miss a service.

I told everyone I could how much I missed everybody.  I told someone that missing church was like not taking a bath for a week.

So what did I hear? 

In Sunday school we discussed Mark’s the feeding of the five thousand.  It’s interesting to listen to others discuss about how such and such might have happened in the Bible.

Did Jesus personally break bread and feed every man there that day?  Five thousand is a lot of men.  Mark mentions only men.  Luke adds women and children. 

Mark says Jesus told his disciples to feed them.  Jesus blessed the bread and broke it.  He gave it to the disciples to pass out to the crowd.

They passed out the bread.  Jesus passed out the fish.  What do we make of that?

In any event, there’s a lot of bread breaking, fish cutting, and sharing going on.  Even if Jesus and his followers proceeded like churches do during the Lord’s Supper, that is quietly and expeditiously, it would take a long time to feed everyone.  Right?

Our regular teacher had a cold today.  She wondered aloud and with a raspy voice how long it would have taken Jesus to feed that many men. 

Remember that Mark only mentions the men.  Luke says there were women and children present.  Good grief!

The thing I love about academic Biblical studies, as opposed to dogmatic Biblical studies, is that modern scholars have better explanations for what happens in the Bible.

If we make this story a biographical event, it seems silly.  If we understand it as a parable about Jesus, then it has a lot to say to us.

Well, even if you think it is biographical, it still has a lot to say, but you waste time trying to figure out how something impossible happened.

Consider the following:  Mark writes in the present tense.  He writes of a Jesus who is now.  He is writing to us and all the Christians who follow us for the next one thousand years.

He writes parables about a Jesus who is with us right now.  That is a bit more profound, don’t you think?  A parable speaks to more than the just the intellect.

I think it is interesting that the story begins with five loaves and two fishes, but ends up with twelve baskets of both.  Since Jesus is Jewish, and the writer is Jewish, and the earliest Christians were Jewish is it possible that the writer is telling us that Jesus has given nourishment sufficient for all Israel?

Are the numbers “five” and “two” important in the Hebrew Bible anywhere?  How about the Christian Bible?  I need to look that up.

Now, I’m no numerologist, but other writers certainly can be.  Surely, it is not farfetched to think that Mark deliberately chose the number twelve because of what it meant to his readers.

Let me share a technical term from academic Biblical scholarship.   It is the term kerygma which means “message.”

 We can talk until we are rigidly crossed up about whether Jesus really did this or how Jesus did that, but at some point we must address the meaning of the text.  That is what good preaching and teaching are all about.

What is this anonymous gospel writer we call Mark saying about Jesus now in this passage?

He’s saying, “Feed hungry people.” 

Don’t make excuses why it can’t be done.  Don’t make it about money.  Don’t ask if those who are hungry deserve to be fed.  Just feed them.

And do it together, as a group of followers in a community that is bringing about a kingdom of justice, love, and peace.

Blessings…

I’m Just a Baptist Who Cannot Not Say, “No!”

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I pray you are well.  I hope the following entry makes you smile and gives a thought to carry you throughout your day. 

Sometimes it is fun to write about Baptists. 

We are a funny denomination with a funny name.  We began well, but lately, with few exceptions, we have looked pretty foolish. 

Many of us are still mired in superstitions like young earth creationism.  Many of us rely on lousy hermeneutics that ignores the modern academic Biblical studies that have been going on in universities for over a century, now.  Many of us obstinately cling to an un-Baptist-like devotion to the conventional wisdom of the 19^th century.

There has been some times when Baptists stood apart from other denominations.  I am thinking when we said, “No,” and it was a brave thing to do. 

“Is the Sermon on the Mount symbolic and too impossible attempt?”

“No.”

 “Should I go to war?

“No.”

“Should I kill?”

“No.”

“Should I coerce anyone to believe what I believe or should anyone coerce me?”

“No.”

“Can an association of churches tell my church what to do?”

“No.”

“Can any government ever force me to pray their prayer, read their scripture, or worship according to their church?”

“Hell no!”

I remain a Baptist because by saying “no” to intolerance and repression, I am saying “yes” to religious liberty.  I believe in the separation of church and state, the freedom of conscience, and the competency of the soul.  Ours is a rich history of defying civil authorities who are killing us.   And you thought the puritans were persecuted?

  

It is troubling today to see Baptists argue against the separation of church and state.  They claim that the phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Bill of Rights. 

That phrase comes to us from Thomas Jefferson who used it when he replied to the letter he received from the Danbury Baptists in Connecticut.  The congregation had expressed their fear to Jefferson that the federal government might grow into a religious tyrant.  

President Kennedy was speaking to a group of Southern Baptists in 1960 when he said that he believed in the absolute separation of church and state.  Back then, Southern Baptists feared the Pope would be ruling the United States. 

Now that the SBC has so much political influence, I doubt they would want to hear our current president avow absolute separation of church and state.

Ironically, these Baptists today who believe that the separation of church and state is a myth do believe in “separation of powers.”  This phrase is not found in the U.S. Constitution. 

Imagine if our president suddenly declared every American has the right to make his or her own moonshine.  Imagine if he gave an executive order declaring all Americans must learn the art of distilling in federally funded schools.

Lord have mercy!  My Baptist brothers and sisters would gnash their teeth over his egregious violation of the separation of powers.  They would hate hearing that the phrase is not in the U.S. Constitution so it is not constitutional.

Incidentally, we Baptists traditionally believe in the trinity, a word not found in the Bible.

            Blessings…

Ten Things You Can't Say While Following Jesus

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. I liked these "Ten Things You Can't Say While Following Jesus" by Mark Sandlin so much I decided to share.  

You can find this article on the Sojourners web site at the link below:

http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/01/21/10-things-you-cant-say-while-following-jesus

It's nice to see evangelicals who are willing to criticize common cliches that others serve up in automaton fashion as if they are our God of love's own pearls of wisdom.

Enjoy!


10) Everything happens for a reason.

Implied in this is a very specific understanding of how God interacts with the world. Specifically, it says God directs all things. So, mass murders? God had a reason for that senseless act of violence. Stubbing your toe on the door frame? I guess God wanted to smite your toe.

This way of seeing God turns us all into puppets — God's little play things who really have no freewill. Do you truly think a god needs toys? If so, do you really think we're the best toys God could make to play with?

9) God needed another angel.

God loves you. God loves your loved ones. God is coming for your loved ones.

You think it hurt when God smote your toe? Just wait 'til God rips out your heart. But it's OK. They needed another angel in heaven.

See? All better!

Really? No, of course not. Now that you understand what you are saying, can we just stop it?

8) God never gives us more than we can handle.

Ever tried saying this to a person contemplating suicide? No? Well, of course not.

Why? Because it is just wrong.

It's wrong for the reason that #10 is wrong and it's wrong because factual circumstances of living prove that sometimes this life does bring with it more than we can handle.

7) But for the grace of God, there go I.

Think about that for just a minute.

How about walking in the shoes you're grateful not to be in for just a minute? Are they where they are because they lack the grace of God that others receive?

Does God pick and choose whom grace lands upon, intentionally withholding it from some people?

I know that people who say this don't mean it that way, but that is what they are saying – even if indirectly. Feel free to be thankful for where you are but let's stop heaping coals on other people's shoulders – even if unintentionally.

6) I must be living right.

Have you ever been riding in a car when the driver pulls into a parking space right in front of the store and proclaims, “I must be living right!”?

Sure, they are half joking but keep in mind it's only half joking. Statements like this have their roots in that nasty “everything happens for a reason” thinking.

These are the same folks who ask God to help them win sporting events. I hate to burst the bubble, but God doesn't care which team wins or how close to the store entrance you get to park your car.

Plus, go back to #7. When you say things like this, what are you saying about the folks who had to park in that very last spot next to the shopping cart return where the car doors get all dinged up? And for that matter, if you are “living right,” why didn't you take that spot and leave the one up front for someone else?

5) Love the sinner, hate the sin.

The problem I have with this one is the comma. It should be a period.

After further thought, I have a problem with the comma, everything that comes after it and “the sinner.”

Who am I (and who are you) to be deciding for someone else what is getting between them and God? I'm all for doing it in regard to our own lives but in someone else's life? Hands off. Who do we think we are? God?

Now that I think about it, the problem I have with this one is that there's not a period after love.

Love. Period.

4) It's okay to judge.

Recently, there has been a rash of Christian bloggers defending their right to judge. I guess it's a thing. All the cool bloggers are doing it.

I love being cool. And apparently it's cool to judge others. So, let me judge them for trying to justify judging others. Don't worry though – I'm loving the sinner, hating the sin when I do it. So, it's OK. Right?

Oh, give me just a minute though. It turns out I've got a log in my eye. I'll need to take care of that first.

3) Because the Bible tells me so (or “it’s in the Bible”).

The King James Bible tells me there are unicorns – 9 times.

I'm sorry, I got distracted. What was it you were telling me about using the Bible to prove a fact?

2) Have you heard about Jesus?

Seriously?
1) There are no atheists in a foxhole.

Really? There are atheists in church and you honestly think there are no atheists in foxholes?

Look, I get that the point is supposed to be that when faced with death we all turn to God. However, not only is that simply not true for everyone when faced with death, it is really bad logic.

Let me demonstrate.

When faced with death in a foxhole – grenade flying overhead and limbs being blown off the person next to me –I am likely to soil my britches. It does not follow that I should always soil my britches.

In foxholes there are a whole bunch of people trying to stay alive and they pretty much don't care what the other person believes about God. They just want to stay alive ... and possibly a clean pair of britches. (See what I did there?)

Read other pieces in this series:

Blessings...

Providence of the Strange and Ordinary

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I’ve been thinking about providence lately.  For many of us it is so easy to feel that we are one paycheck away from oblivion and one tragedy away from losing our hope, or worse, our sanity.

Life does not come at me that way.  I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been blessed with a joyful disposition or because I am a person of faith.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not feel providence watching over me.  Even though I have lost dear ones, and I know my own demise draws closer each day, I have cultivated a lifelong trust that life will work out okay.

This is providence.  It is a way life is experienced.  We trust that our God of love economizes infinity with everything our faith requires to know joy and never lose hope.

Think about how life works out in the creation of family.  A lot of planning goes into making a family, and making a bridge, but then life comes along like a flood and makes us start all over. 

The American Dream family is recognizable by all of us who watch television.  A boy and a girl court for a long time.  He proposes.  She accepts.  A wedding is dialed up.  Rings and vows are exchanged.  A honeymoon happens. A marriage moves into the future.

After a while, the couple plans to have children.  The children grow up, go to college, repeat the process all over again, and then there are grandchildren falling out of the sky.

 

That’s the American Dream family revised to perfection with a lot of what life does to people left on the cutting floor.  For most of us, that family never existed.  In fact, for many of us family is more of a struggle with how to cope with all the cruel ways we were treated by those who should love us.

For those of us who were cruel, how do we cope? 

Many of us move on and make family happen nonetheless though our hearts are conflicted and torn.

Is that not then how we persevere...by living?  I say it is because there is a providence underlying existence that makes our faith to go on possible.

Life is ineffable.  Life makes its own plans, does its own thing.  Life folds and unfolds as if it were blanketing all space and time. 

Roads less traveled are not that much different than congested streets.  Our journey through life leads us to who we become.

Sometimes all Life needs to find its ineffable way is a moment.  Sometimes that moment can be something simple like a kiss. 

The first time I kissed my wife, I was oblivious to what was coursing through her mind. For one thing, I was surprised that she wanted to kiss me on our first date.  I learned later something I never suspected.

That one kiss would be everything to her.  If I slopped it up, she would have stopped answering my phone calls.  If my kiss felt dry and hard like sandstone, we would have gone our separate ways forever.  She was at a stage in her life when she did not want to waste her time on a crappy kisser.

I had no idea that one kiss would change my life forever.  The kiss we kissed lingers still. 

We dated for three years before we married.  We started a family with her daughters and cats, and my cats, and the family we brought with us. 

Even though our experiences of family were less than ideal, we have managed with persistence and patience to craft a family in a unit that resembles abstract art.  We have become an accidental family, an unlikely family, not nuclear but still radiating.

    

I say unlikely because the constellation of events that led to that kiss and to this now, this family, is as mysterious as God.  It might never have happened. 

If I had paused a moment longer at a traffic light, or decided I was too tired to go shopping at the Paper and Supply store, or postponed shopping until after supper, then that kiss would have never happened.

That kiss ended our first date, yet began our journey together.  It is a metaphor for a metaphor.  It shows that things can just work out if we do not despair.  That is providence.

Life unfolds.  We must wait for it, snuggle within it, and love those times we were warmed by it during those times it feels yanked away.

Blessings…

HONEST ABOUT RACE AND SINKING SHIPS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.

In honor of Dr. King's dream and Attorney General Eric Holder’s admonition that we be honest about race, I submit the following thoughts.

A lot of leaks can sink a big ship. Imagine racism as a huge, unwieldy, unstable behemoth of a ship—bigger than Titanic and thought to be just as unsinkable.

I like to think that Dr. King kicked in some huge holes, but there were also a lot of little leaks that are causing it to founder, still.

There have been many unseen and un-recounted daily interactions that have sprung unnumbered leaks of hope. These leaks have occurred among Americans of all colors: red, yellow, black, and white. Some are surprising even amazing. Some begin badly, but end in a kingdom of God kind of way.

Dr. King always said it was the good people who were silent who did the most harm. I know he was speaking to white folks when he said that. I want to share some occasions that I know when good people spoke up.

When I was a kid, I saw the water hoses and the dogs on television, and heard the name Bull Connor for the first time, but that kind of hatred happened in Alabama, not where I lived. My encounters with race arose in the hinterland of race relations, not the hotbed.

Around the dinner table, my parents talked about Dr. King. They feared he was stirring up trouble. However, we were church people who were taught to love everybody and hate nobody. I never grew up believing Dr. King was a bad man.

When he died in 1968, I did not hear anything like what Pat Conroy describes that he heard in the South Carolina high school where he taught. He wrote of it in his book The Water is Wide.

Read it and weep.

I never heard anyone cheer. I was eleven, and Dr. King's death was a tragedy that I have always bundled up into my memory with President Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.

Now, here are my stories.

I have done some things I wish I had never done. For instance, when I was twelve years old, I spent a week at Camp Joy. It was brought to us by Highland Park Baptist and their right arm of righteousness, Tennessee Temple. They were, respectively, the most fundamentalist church and college in the world.

I was the shortstop on my camp baseball team when the only black kid in the whole camp stepped up to the plate. I shouted, “Strike that nigger out!”

One of the camp counselors, who was the umpire, called time out immediately and told me to sit on the bench. I played no more baseball that day.

My face must have turned the color of a catcher’s chest protector, which back then was ketchup red.

I have been a clown all of my life. At the time, I thought everyone would laugh. I felt no malice toward that kid, but I was embarrassed when I sat on that bench and began to think how mean it sounded to him.

Before I sat down, I had to apologize and promise to never say that to him again. I did not get angry like kids do today. I apologized gladly and sincerely because I knew I was wrong for saying it.

My point here is that these kinds of things change the way people think. I'm surprised this happened at a Highland Park Baptist camp. Until recently, interracial dating has never been allowed at their college.

My mother did not tolerate racist language. Once my father was watching a Tennessee football game, and he said, “That’s just like a nigger,” after a Tennessee player fumbled a punt.

My mother heard him from the kitchen. She yelled his name and began banging pots and pans. She fed him Gravy Train that night for supper while the rest of us dined on fish sticks.

I never heard my father say “nigger” around my mother after that, but I did hear him say it when she was not around.

My mother learned her attitudes about race from her mother. Grandmother felt no ill will towards anyone. She was too much of a saint to feel otherwise.

My mother did not learn racial attitudes from her father. My grandfather was a fundamentalist Baptist preacher from Sand Mountain, Alabama.

He once owned a black cat, whom he called Nigger, until my grandmother and my mother made him stop. After that, he called the kitty Colored.

Granddad believed in segregation. He thought miscegenation was unnatural. To his credit, however, he changed as the times around him changed.

The truth was that my grandfather was ambivalent about race. He told me that he knew some fine colored pastors whom he would be proud to let preach in his church. Like so many white people, he could never hear the condescension in his words.

Yet, here is a story about him that has always amazed me and makes me proud every time I recall it.

When my grandfather was a pastor at First Baptist Church in Dunlap, Tennessee, he was dining at one of the three restaurants in the town. It was on the corner of the two main stretches of state highway that went North-South and East-West.

Three black men wearing army uniforms came into the restaurant for lunch. The manager told them that he would send a waitress out to their car to take their order, but they could not eat inside his restaurant.

My grandfather, who had served in the Philippines during World War II, told the manager that if he did not let those men in uniform eat in his restaurant, he would tell everyone in his congregation to never eat there again.

Just about everybody in Dunlap was Baptist. A few were Church of Christ and Seventh Day Adventist. You bet an exception was allowed at least on that day.

This is my favorite story about my grandfather. I have no idea when this happened. My guess is the late 1950s or the early 1960s. Segregation was legal back then. In Dunlap, segregation did not go away until the turn of the century.

I love to tell the story about the day my grandfather sprung a leak.

Blessings…

OUR AMERICAN HOLIDAY

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I love American holidays.  With the exception of Easter, Passover,  and Christmas all of our holidays are so special if for no other reason than there is nothing supernatural about them.

Below is a rundown of what we  celebrate.

1.  It's Dr. King's holiday.  We celebrate justice and a powerful life that showed the world how to make it happen without bombs, guns and hate.

2.  Valentine' s Day celebrates love.

3.  Presidents' Day celebrates two great presidents and the rest.

4.  April Fools Day celebrates comedy.

5.  Easter celebrates freedom from slavery and death.

6.  Memorial Day remembers our honored dead.

7.  Mother 'a Day and Father's Day celebrates our mommies and daddies .

8.  July 4 celebrates the birth of our nation.

9.  Labor Day celebrates our workers and fair labor practices .

10.  Halloween celebrates things that go bump in the mind.

11.  Veterans Day celebrates the end of World War One and our living soldiers.

12.  Thanksgiving celebrates blessings and being grateful for them.

12.  Christmas celebrates our son of God who preached that God is love, peace, and justice.

13.  New Year's Day celebrates moving beyond the old and being the new.


Well,  two holidays are supernatural, but taken symbolically they are rich in meaning and as sublime as all the other holidays.

But this weekend is most special for it signifies that our nation can change when we are wrong.  It, like Christmas and Easter, celebrates a life and death.  May it ever be so.

Blessings.,.

LIVING A FAITH THAT LIVES

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  The Sabbath is over, or Shabbat as our Jewish family members call it.  Shabbat has ended since sun down. 

As you read this, please do not think that I disdain the church.  I love everyone, and all congregations are worthy of my admiration and respect.

I do, however, disdain stupid ideas and dead doctrines.  Much of what is called orthodoxy is based on a faulty view of the world.  It is based on an ancient view that Yahweh lives in the sky with his heavenly host.  This cosmology preaches that the earth is flat.  The sun and planets go around the earth.  Women are the reason why there is sin in the world.  God wants us to murder infidels.  The world will end with a sword fight on a small battlefield outside of Jerusalem.  

Since Yahweh is not so far away, he (and Yahweh is definitely a male deity) had no problem sending his son down to earth.  Jesus came to earth to symbolize the Jewish ritual of sacrifice. 

The earth, after all, was not too far away, so Yahweh did not have to travel very far to impregnate Mary.  In fact, heaven was so close that the residents who lived there got a little twitchy when humans tried to build a tower so they could live among them.

It could not be helped.  The writers of the Bible, after all, were Jewish people who lived in a flat cosmos.  They conceived of Jesus as being a lamb that had to be sacrificed so God could redeem the world.  It would have been more extraordinary if they had proposed a heliocentric solar system, millions of galaxies, and an infinite universe.  

According to the ancient view, Jesus came down to establish Old Testament piety as God’s will. 

But those of us who read the Bible know that Jesus preached something more beautiful, liberating, and loving than piety.  Jesus lived something more profound than human sacrifice.

He preached a new way of being kosher.  His way of being kosher was to live God’s love in our lives.  Being clean would be revealed in the loving and kind way we treat other people. Being defiled would be revealed in the way we hurt other people.

Mysticism is great.  Doctrine is interesting.  However, the love of our God of love is the ground of mysticism and it transcends doctrine. 

Men and women can believe the world is flat if they want, but they are not Christians unless they love.  Men and women can believe in the Trinity if they want, but they are not Christians unless they love.

We know now that our world orbits a star just as we know that faith orbits love.   The great truth that God is love can thrive for centuries past the time when people stop believing the Virgin Birth as an actual historical event and start appreciating it as a symbol of God's love in a human life.  

Only a world view that conceives of a universe powered by hate would be anti-Christ to God’s love.  This love is God and Jesus.  If a Muslim loves, then he or she is Christian without acknowledging it.  If an atheist loves, then he or she is a sacrament without knowing it.  It is time for Christians to return to the God who loves and hold onto that God as steadfastly as we have held on to strife and hate.  

Jesus lived love beneath an atmosphere that is full of elements, not angels.  He lived without knowing that such an atmosphere existed.  

Jesus preached love to sentient organisms who had taken millions of years to evolve.  He preached without knowing that evolution worked in the world. 

Jesus showed love to these same organisms so that they might transcend their animal natures.  He showed this without knowing that all men and women are human primates.  

God's love is the gospel.  Everything else is conversation.

Blessings…

A SIMILITUDE OF UNLIKE CONGREGATIONS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I want to share a reflection I wrote some time ago.  I wrote it for fun. 

It’s about bar people and church people. 

Bar people are just like everyone else.  They want to have a good time.  They want to be respected.  They want others to consider what they have to say.  They want to vote…for the best shooter du jour… and get it for free.

Bar people share a common convivial essence of humanity.  Most of them are drunks.  I mean that in a nice way, and in a funny way, because the word “drunks” sounds funny, like the word “pickles.”

Drunks are individuals.  They are like Kinsey’s gall wasps.  Sit a million drunks around one bar the size of Atlanta, and you will not find two who are identical in any way, except that they are all are drunk.

We tend to think of drunks being the same in the way prunes are the same, yet rarely is sameness more interesting than uniqueness unless the sameness of one group is compared with the sameness of another.  Indeed, to really appreciate a jar of prunes, it helps to compare them to a bowl raisins and vice versa.  

I have been a bartender and a pastor, so naturally I see a similarity between these two unlike congregations. 

Both require donations to stay in business.  In bars, these donations are called tips or gratuities.  Do not kid yourself.  If there were no tips, there would be few bartenders, and bars would go the way of opium dens.

In churches a donation is called an offering, but it works itself out as some kind of gratuity.  A lot of customers support bars, and a lot of parishioners support churches.  Disappoint them severely enough, they will give their donations elsewhere.

I worked in a Georgia Tech sports bar in Atlanta called The Beer Mug from 1987 until 1993.  A brass spittoon served as our offering plate.  We did not pass this plate around.  Our customers brought their donations to us and left them on the bar or on a waitress’s table. 

If people were happy, if they had a good time, if they were seized by the spirits, then they were very generous.  Sometimes, if they had too much fun, they left jewelry and expensive jackets with matching gloves. 

Bars and churches depend on a consistent crowd.  Bars call them the regulars.  Churches call them the faithful.  A bar and a church must work to keep their regulars coming.  Often this means making them feel welcome. 

Bars and churches preach hell to their congregations.  Bars tell regulars they can run a tab, and it will be hell if they don’t pay it.  Churches tell the faithful that they, their relatives, and their friends are sinners going to hell and running will do them no good.  

A lot of people who go to bars love to keep their tabs paid as much as the faithful love to hear that other people are going to hell.

Thanks for reading.  Next time: other ways that drunks and church people are alike.

         

Blessings…

How a Myth Starts

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth. 

Welcome back. I would like to share the four extraordinary things I saw today that inspired me to write about how to write myths and legends.

To write a legend, you must have a worthy subject, that is, someone so remarkable that the legend transmits a transcendent meaning about them.

Someone like Jesus of Nazareth.

Conceivably, any one of us could write a parable about Jesus in the way the early anonymous Christians wrote about him when they composed the canonical and non-canonical gospels.

You would also need a concern in your heart or in your community that you would imagine Christ addressing in your story.

The imagery you put into your story would be something that you see on any given day.

For instance, today, I saw four remarkable sights (five if I count my wife who startles me every time she graces my eyes).

As I walked this morning, I saw a fire hydrant almost entirely buried underground. I thought I might snap off to one of my students, "You're as useless as an underground fire hydrant," if one of them cussed me out (again) after refusing to do their work (again).

Later in the day, as I drove home over the Wilmington Island Bridge I looked to my right and saw the sky on fire. Rarely, does a sunset imbue clouds with so much color. When my eyes dropped to see the Bull River, the water was truly as red as blood.

I thought how ancient prophets, who were actually poets, would have incorporated such a natural sight into their poetry. We are the dummies if we literally believe the water really turned to blood, not the prophets. We miss the loveliness and power transmitted to us from the prophet's sight through his words.

Okay, back on the bridge where, seconds later, I turned to my left and saw a sight I cannot recall ever having seen before. The moon shone in all its fullness behind such thin clouds that it appeared to be peering through blinds. How stunning.

So, taking all that and putting it into a story: give it a shake here, a stir there, and then let it marinate in its own dynamics and Voila! here’s a parable about Jesus:

There came a time when Jesus went to Wilmington Island to visit a friend.

His friend, named James, proclaimed the word of Jesus in a place where many other followers gathered on a Sunday. James, so it was said, had been hobbled recently by the gout.

James was happy to see Jesus. He welcomed him into his home. When his wife, Rachel, saw that it was Jesus visiting her home, she invited him into their kitchen and offered him some wine. As James and Rachel prepared dinner, Jesus asked James if the gout was very painful.

"Lord," James said, "You need not have bothered to come on my account. I have medicine."

Jesus said, "The medicine you received, you shall take comfort in it, and it shall serve you well. The medicine I bring cures much more than disease."

"Yes," James said. "Your medicine cures death."

Suddenly, Jesus looked very sad. "Alas, he said, "In these evil days the medicine I bring is like thinning the blood of a dead man with aspirin."

"No," James said, "Don't say that, Lord. You are the bringer of life and joy and peace."

"I tell you there can be no healing in a land where the wickedness of violent men defiles your rivers and marshes with such a great outpouring of blood. It spills out to defile your streets and splashes up to stain your skies. Behold, even the jittery moon peeks through cloudy blinds and fears to wander.”

“We need your kingdom, now, more than ever,” Rachel said. “How do we bring love and peace into the world?”

“How do you put out a conflagration with a fire hydrant drowning in dirt?” he replied.

Jesus tarried with them until the time for him to depart had come. 

After he went on his way, James and Rachel puzzled over the meaning of what he said for many days.

All right. That’s how it can be done. If I lived in the first century, I would have included images that my eyes would have seen back then.

I have this theory that we all know Jesus. We recognize him in Pope Francis, Dr. King, Gandhi, Jimmy Carter, and others. 

Even atheists admire Pope Francis.  Is it Jesus they admire?

I believe there is a longing in all of us for Jesus of Nazareth to be real and present. I wonder how many of us who do not believe nonetheless wish his stories were true.

For those of us who read stories about him, or write them, it will be ever so that we want to keep him alive.

Blessings…

The Gospel According to Jesus in Charles Dickens

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. 

I continue with my post-Christmas reflection.  I have been writing about “Christian” Christianity, and where it appears in writers like Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. 

Christian Christianity?  Is there a “Non-Christian” Christianity?  Am I kidding me?

Of course, I am being silly, but these distinctions must be made when some believers recast Jesus as a hardcore American Tea Party conservative, and then re-crucify him on mammon's cross of gold.

We must hold steadfastly the Jesus we see in the gospels.  What the earliest gospel writers tell us: what he actually does and says. These are more important than the doctrinal noise that has swelled crescendo over the centuries.

Let us return to Charles Dickens.  In my last post I shared some background that lies beneath his fiction.

Recall how Charles Dickens despised the poverty he saw in London. I’ll let Dickens speak for himself in “A Christmas Carol.” 

As we read, do we not see the heart of Jesus in his words?

For example, after Scrooge tells Marley’s ghost that he was always a good man of business, he gets the following reply:

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again.  “Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

When Marley’s Ghost departs Scrooge, he sees what he later calls one of many “wandering spirits” who is trying to help a, “wretched woman with an infant…” 

Then he goes on to explain a serious problem that existed in the immaterial world:

“The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”

The Ghost of Christmas Present sprinkled magic from his torch, often just to make merry those whose moods had suddenly become bad. 

Read the following discussion and hear the heart of how Jesus lived beat within it.

“Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.

“There is.  My own.”

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.

“To any kindly given.  To a poor one most.”

“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.

“Because it needs it most.”

One of my favorite exchanges occurred when Scrooge asked the Ghost of Christmas Present about poor people being turned away from dining.

“You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge.  “Wouldn’t you?”

          “I!” cried the Spirit.

          “You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said Scrooge.  “And it comes to the same thing.”

          “I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.

          “Forgive me if I am wrong.  It has been done in your name, or at least in the name of your family.”

          The following reply from the Ghost of Christmas Present is priceless:

          “There are some upon this earth of yours, returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.  Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

Indeed, there are so many of our brothers and sisters who, woefully misguided, continue to attend church, sing hymns, propound their doctrines of self righteousness, and despise Pope Francis for being a socialist. 

They are blind to how our government’s war on poverty has triumphed in ways that early Christians could only dream. They lived in an unjust society that exploited workers by making them slaves and destroyed dissenters by making them lion meat.

Our government had fed more poor people than churches can individually.  Our government has clothed more poor people, given more medical aid to poor people, and through legislation increased minimum wages.

The only reason the war on poverty is deemed a failure is because it never ends.  There will never be a day, a year, or a decade when this war will not be fought.  Let us not quit it ever. 

The ability and will to mount that kind of justice exists as a dream buried in the stories and preaching of all the churches in the world.

          How can we be more Christian than that?

Blessings…

What Lies Beneath: Ghosts of Christmas

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

In "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens there are so many statements that run counter to today's conservative fad, and yet run side by side with the love we seek to emulate.

First, we must contrast that love with the disregard for humanity that hearts mired in mammon manifest everlastingly.  We must peer where hard waters flow down and down and down.

I give you Ebenezer Scrooge, the man from Mammontown.

He ridicules his nephew for wishing him a merry Christmas.  I suspect if his nephew had said, "Happy Holidays!" Scrooge would not have been less rude.

We all know how he mistreats his lone employee.  He's a pure capitalist, a man of business, this coveting old sinner Scrooge who sees Bob Cratchit as a number. 

And what is the number of this beast of burden?  It is the lowest amount he must pay to avoid being accused of being a slaver.  

That amount is recorded in his accounting ledger under "labor expense."

However, it is when Scrooge tells two solicitors asking for a contribution to help the poor that we see where his politics lie.  He says he supports prisons, union workhouses, the Treadmill, and the Poor Law.

We Americans love to put poor people into prison and think nothing of the expense.  But give a man a food stamp, well, that's breaking a law of the god mammon.

All that sound we hear of squalling children is not the sound of want and ignorance ringing in our ears,  but the sound that Lord Mammon hears, that ripping sound of the very Kleenex of society shredding itself when the "undeserving" get fed from taxes that all of us good, hard working people pay.

In all fairness, Scrooge preferred a conservative solution to poverty.  He supported those institutions mentioned above.  It was not compassionate conservatism, but when has it ever been?

Indeed, prisons we know, but the Treadmill we know not today.  

That was a device whereby prisoners could generate power for mills by climbing onto a large paddle wheel.  While holding a bar, they stepped onto the blades and turned the wheel.    

Oscar Wilde wrote of it when he was imprisoned for being a homosexual in 1895 (the good old days for a lot of people in 2013...one of my hometowns celebrates a 1890s Day...imagine that...I never went).  

This is from Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol."

We banged the tins and bawled the hymns

And sweated on the mill

But in the heart of every man

Terror was lying still

The Poor Law was devised by a prime minister, who was himself a rather cold hearted tea named Earl Grey.  It stated:

(a) no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the Poor Law authorities except in a workhouse;

(b) conditions in workhouses were to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to receive help;

(c) workhouses were to be built in every parish or, if parishes were too small, in unions of parishes;

(d) ratepayers in each parish or union had to elect a Board of Guardians to supervise the workhouse, to collect the Poor Rate and to send reports to the Central Poor Law Commission;

(e) the three man Central Poor Law Commission would be appointed by the government and would be responsible for supervising the Amendment Act throughout the country.

This is the antipode of welfare as we know it.  Food stamps would be decades away in our nation.

Next time, ghosts more humane than humans.

Blessings...