HAPPY PASSOVER/EASTER HOLIDAY

May the Lord bless you all this Passover/Easter holiday.  I will return after this special time has passed.

Blessings...

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about the world.

There are two views about our relationship to the world. One is terribly wrong and could very well make Christianity irrelevant and absurd in the coming decades. The other is right in line with Jesus’ teaching and could very well spur our faith on for centuries to come.

Before I proceed, I would like to make an introduction by reminding everyone of President Jimmy Carter.

President Carter was avowedly the first born again Christian in the oval office. He taught Sunday school in a Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. The Southern Baptist Denomination numbered him among its members.

Now, Harry Truman was a Southern Baptist, but he dropped the bomb on two Japanese cities.  He never elevated his faith to the level of consideration that President Carter did.

Strangely, President Carter was never popular among the fundamentalists. Whatever political capital he raises in the beginning of the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979 was squandered as the months dragged on.  After a failed rescue attempt, called Desert One, ended in tragedy, President Carter’s presidential life began to sputter.

His own wife, Rosalyn Carter, said to him once, “Why don’t you do something?”

He said, “What would you have me do?”

She said, “Mine the harbors.”

He said, “Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take out one hostage everyday and kill him?  What am I going to do then?”

As we all know, not a hostage was killed. No Iranians were killed. The only Americans who died during that terrible time were the casualties of Desert One. Eight servicemen were killed and three were wounded when a helicopter crashed into a transport plane. The humiliation kicked us all in the heart as the Iranian media showed images of the burned aircraft and the jubilant faces of Iranians cheering the disaster.

I have never spoken to President Carter, but that day must have been the worst of his life. As a praying man, he would have struggled with the silence from God amidst the noise of his critics.

The world wanted a show of American power. President Carter wanted a show of liberated, safe Americans. He possessed the power to shock and awe Iran out of existence, but he chose another way. He chose a peaceful way that remains incomprehensible to our mammon imbued and power enthralled culture today.

Because of President Carter’s foreign policy, the United States turned the other cheek, more than once, and waited for God’s providence to unfold. Has this ever happened in America’s past? 

I recall the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania, the Maine, Custer’s Last Stand, Fort Sumter, British impressment of American sailors, and the shot heard round the world.

My answer would have to be, “No. Never. Not once. Only during the Carter Administration.”

President Carter had no other choice short of murdering thousands of people in that fine American tradition of being the most macho nation on earth.

The result remains etched in history. President Carter lost his reelection, but the hostages were released minutes after President Reagan’s inauguration. Peace worked.

It felt like hell, but it worked.

I mentioned above that there are two views about the world and our relation to it. President Carter, the born again, Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher represents one view.

Since President Carter, we had another president, also avowedly born again--a fundamentalist evangelical whose foreign policy represented another view of how we are related to the world.

So I want to think about these two views.  One view is very Jesusy, very Christlike, and very unpopular. The other view is very popular, intrinsically absurd, and murderous.

Indeed, both views are consistent if we accept their underlying presuppositions about our relationship as Jesus people to the world.  It’s the presuppositions that are full of worms or grace.

Blessings…   

LONELY NEVER ALONE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about lonely. 

One of the people I love most in the world called my wife last Saturday night.  She is young and vivacious, lovely and regal, luminous and adorable---just like her sister.

Puppy dogs and children are caressed by her presence.  Clowns drop all their bowling pins when she walks past.  Mimes stop miming their own business to compliment her sense of fashion.  Old people ask her the same questions over and over just to hear the sound of her voice saying the same answers. 

She is both complex and simple.  Like her mother and sister she loves science, art, but she also like Bioshock and creating a stylish room.  Her simplicity reveals itself when she says, "Roll Tide!" and "Mommy, hold me."

She is intrinsically fascinating--just like her sister and her mother.  My wife and I cannot see enough of her and her sister. 

How can such a one ever feel loneliness?

The night she called found her not in her accustomed place, which is the center of a social universe in everlasting orbit around her.  She called from her home.  The blues had arrived for conversation or maybe just to cuddle.  She felt lonely. 

At the time I was trying to write the great American phrase while listening to my wife’s side of the conversation and inferring that an old friend of youth had paid this person I love a visit. 

I shouted, “It’s good to be alone.  Take a break from the world.”

I’ve known her pain.  It’s a stab of restlessness, a hole of emptiness, an indefinable yearning.  Sometimes it does not matter how many people we surround ourselves with, we find ourselves turned back into ourselves.  Lonely happens.

I’ve always cherished those times.  I miss the authenticity of being thrown back onto myself.  Most of my life, I am lost in what I do, whom I accompany. 

I sense no remedy.  No drink, drug, or visitation can assuage the vastitude of inner space I feel expanding inside my chest. 

During those times, it never matters what I do.  I depart the normal rumble and tumble of my life as one cast suddenly back into Eden.  The strangeness of it I forlornly feel since I have been mythically wayward for eons.

Loneliness is a keen awareness of being alive and aloof.  Of course, for me, during those times, my thoughts invariably turn to God.  The underlying power of being itself is in the house! 

I know many people have no sense of being enveloped and embraced by a loving presence.  Truly, I have relied on faith, not sensation, during those times I felt utterly alone.  I know that for myself, as well as for others, there really is no such thing as utterly alone, but reason can be easily shrouded. 

Nonetheless, I pray, aloud or in my head, “How you doing?  I love you.  Thanks for all these breaths.  Keep them coming!”  And then pray a conversation about the day, the world, the universe, the past, present and future, people, whatever and whatsoever until I move past language to presence.

That I am not alone becomes real; loneliness transforms into make believe.

I have friends in my life with whom I easily converse for hours.  They come bearing gifts and good times.  We talk and talk, but we also sit in the wordless communication of presence. 

In my solitude I find rest and peace in such presence who never comes or departs, and who brings Eden--that still can be so strange and wondrous within me.

Blessings…

HEARD AT CHURCH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about public relations.

Today is Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, and the sermon I heard my pastor preach was about Jesus’s "triumphant entrance" into Jerusalem.

This triumph was largely symbolic.  The gospel writer makes it so by connecting Jesus’s arrival to Jerusalem with Zechariah 9:9.  

Look, your king, comes to you, 

Triumphant and victorious,

Humble and riding on an ass, 

On a colt, the foal of an ass.

Mark also alludes to Psalm 118: 25-26 in the exclamations for salvation resounding in the meaning of the word "Hosanna."

From the standpoint of Roman standards of victory, there was nothing triumphant about Jesus.  The Romans would have considered him an ass riding an ass.   What spoils had he brought to Rome?  What triumphs could he proclaim? 

This Jew offered nothing compared to Caesar Augustus, victor of the civil war after Julius Caesar's death; victor of a wide swath of territory encircling the Mediterranean Sea, and victor of the Pax Romana that lasted two centuries.  

In the minds of most Romans, a Jew from Nowheresburg in Judah riding on a donkey to signify some symbolic victory would have been laughable.

Furthermore, Rome wrecked a ton of havoc against Jesus.  Rome crucified him.  Rome also killed most of the first generation of Christians living in Judah.  Rome killed Paul, Peter, and Jesus' brother, James.  

It amazes me how nearly invisible the Roman Empire is in the Christian Bible.  I imagine writers were terrified of and wrote about the Romans in code or by implication. 

In our American empire, we blow up a country that has not attacked us, and then we are so kind to help them rebuild.  I have not heard if we have invented a way to replace the loved ones who suffered the peril of collateral damage.  However, we live in an age when people can burn our flag and our president in effigy.

There was no such fearlessness expressed in the Christian Bible.  In fact, Luke seems to want to persuade the empire that God just loves the heck out of them...which God does, actually...but in a noncritical way of not requiring repentance for their atrocities.

Ephesians 6:12 speaks of the "world rulers of this present darkness," which would be a criticism of Rome without saying it directly.  With empire comes darkness and light.  

It took a while for Christianity to appeal to the Roman masses.  Three centuries passed before Constantine and the Edict of Milan made it legal throughout the Roman Empire.

The perception of Jesus also transformed in three hundred years.  At least, his public relations changed. We have John of Patmos to thank for that.  

He wrote an apocalypse around 95 to 100 A.D. with three intentions: to persuade churches to remain faithful despite persecution, to slaughter Rome symbolically, and to cast Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ on a colt, as Augustus Jesus, the Christ on a white horse. 

Thus, the Prince of Peace transformed into a world conqueror, victor of God's dominion over Rome, code named Babylon, victor of Jews assuming their rightful place in Jerusalem over Gentiles, and victor of the Pax Christiana that would last a thousand years.

Augustus Jesus was a Christ for the hoi polloi.  Augustus Jesus appeals strongly to many Christians today.  The messiah riding into Jerusalem on a donkey glitters about as much as...well...any old ordinary ass.

Not to me.  That donkey stubbornly resists the world’s definition of triumph.  My love compels me to settle for nothing less than the Prince of Peace.  On this day, and for the rest of my life, I shall continue to join the noisy throng who shouted, "Hosanna!"  

Blessings...

A SABBATH BLESSING

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about rest.

At sundown today, the weekly day of rest that Jesus enjoyed began.  Now, I'm no kind of Adventist, although I deeply admire those good brothers and sisters, but I do like to remind myself from time to time that Jesus was Jewish and not a Christian.

Therefore, I acknowledge this time of the week.  I love a tradition of rest.  Only the kindest God would make rest a commandment.  

Like everyone else in this country, I work my tail off more hours of the day and week than I do anything else.  I appreciate rest and have no doubts about its sacredness.

With all that in mind, let me say:

May the Lord bless you and keep you this Sabbath Day.  May the Lord grant you a profound rest.  May you begin your new week with a mind that may not dwell on God consciously throughout the distractions of a week of days, yet it belongs to God.  May your heart be forever in God.  May your well being find succor in God's love.  Amen.

Blessings...

NOAH AND JESUS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about possible how to discuss Aronofsky's movie Noah in Sunday School.

In the movie, Noah hears his wife admit that she would kill to protect her sons from violence.  He had already confessed that he would do the same.  Because of this, he decides that the descendants of Seth are no different than Cain's. 

Noah concludes that all men and women should perish.  He explains to his family how that will go down.  

Shem and Ila will bury him and Naameh.  Ham will bury them.  Japheth will bury Ham.  Japheth will die alone.  The animals only shall live...presumably without evolving.

Only the innocent and the good should survive in Noah's theology, and that does not include people. 

I have thought a lot about this since I viewed the movie. What is it that makes Christians truly different from the rest of the world?

My pious, fundamentalist grandfather, spawn of the fundamentalist homunculus who dwells within me, would say that Christians don't drink, don't do drugs, don't smoke, don't cuss, don't fuck, don't don't don't, and they believe every word in the Bible is true without error.

How is that different from any other pious person in the world?  How numereous are the pious ones in all religions?

When we study the life of Jesus as the Christ, we see him making two statements that are impossible:  turn the other cheek and forgive seventy times seventy.  

I do not believe Jesus intended this to be the way men and women would live once the kingdom has arrived.  This is the way we are all supposed to be towards one another now and always.

Followers of Jesus are the ones who do not fight back.  We turn the other cheek.  We are the ones who forgive until the cows come home, that is, until every cow that has ever lived lows peaceably in its own place.  Disciples of Jesus are the ones who reveal the face of God's love to this godforsaken nuclear waste dump of a world.

The creation carries so much of its orginal goodness proclaimed in the priestly account in Genesis, but it is not good enough. Our species stains it daily with bloodshed and hate.

Thank God there are more good people in the world than bad.  However, that is not good enough either.  Even good people are violent when their complacency is threatened.

Jesus people must create more good in the world or our species may well perish ignorantly, shamefully, and violently.  
Someone has to refuse violence.  They have to do it with enough love to persuade others that it can be done and must be done.  Asking any human to turn the other cheek and forgive seventy times seven seems naive.

I know.  I am like Captain Kirk when he was disguised as an Organian named Berona.  A part of his disguise was to show kindness to an invading force of Klingons, but the Klingon leader recognized immediately that Berona did not like to be pushed around.

I do not like to be pushed around.  I hate it.  Every fiber in my being wants to strike back, and I do strike back more than I should with sarcasm and ridicule.  I sin when I do that, for my intention is to hurt people who are hurting me.  

I would like to see Jesus work in the school where I work.  I would love to see what seventy times seventy gazillion occasions for forgiveness would look like among thirty juvenile delinquents.  

Forgiving anyone more than three times might as well be seven, seventy, four hundred and ninety, or seventy gazillion because it never gets easier.  Often, I do not know if I am able to show patience and love because I love or because I hate.

I certainly do hate.  I hate it that the world is so mean.  I hate myself when I want to be mean back.  I hate having a choice.  I hate choosing to show the same weakness as the world shows by losing my temper and knocking the crap out of someone who surely deserves it.  I hate that almost as much as I hate it the world's doctrine that fighting back is strength.  

It is not strength.  It is violence.  Violence is the worst kind of weakness.  It is the kind of weakness that causes buildings to fall, boats to sink, and millions to perish.  Violence is stupid and disgusting.  

We humans crave violence.  I know a venue where it is harmless and can be experienced in all of its glory.

Violence expressed in art can be very appealing whether on a canvas, a stage, or a screen.  In the imagination--that is where violence should be.  Alas, we see it in all the world, the countries, the cities, towns, and homes ever embedding the human stain on Being itself.  

Jesus put this "turn the other cheek" nonsense into my head.  It is truly the foolishness that runs counter to the world's love of power.

I'm not very happy about it sometimes, but I know that the world should not be the way it is.  As Danny Glover says in Grand Canyon, a person should be able to do their job without a bunch of assholes menacing him with guns and knives.  Children should be able to go to school without being shot or stabbed.  Syrians should be able to live in nice homes with plenty to eat. People who disagree with one another should be able to live together peaceably.  

I should be able to teach English without being threatened, deliberately antagonized, ignored, willfully disobeyed, and constantly cussed out with withering hostility just for doing my job.  A job, by the way, that seeks to better all students.

I should be able to teach English without having to endure the worst educational practices that the nabobs of the company I work for make into policy upon pain of termination.

I yearn to tell them what fools and amateurs they are to me. I know that the true aim of the Company is economic, not educational.  Therefore, I imagine scenarios, rehearse scathing exchanges where I deliver various retaliatory strikes to let them know the depth of my revulsion for the way they run a school.

That lasts about as long as it takes me to drive to work. When I arrive, I am nice.  Always nice.  I forgive just out of sheer will.  I love, but like Berona, I am not pleased to be so gentle.

And like anyone who would follow the Christ, I seek justice and love.  How else will this world be transformed into God's kingdom?

Blessings... 

FUNDAMENTAL COMPLAINTS OF A HOMUNCULUS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about the fundamentalist homunculus that dwells within all of us who have ever worshipped Jesus in the Southern United States.

Some people are impossible to please.  I believe a lot of people who do not like Noah do not appreciate make believe.  In some cases, they do not acknowledge their own participation in make believe.  Their make believe is factual, not fanciful.

That describes perfectly the little fundamentalist guy who lives inside my head.  For almost two decades of my life, I was very conservative.  

Science changed me.  Reading changed me.  Indeed, reading the Bible changed me more than anything.  When I actually read the Bible, instead of just reading Bible verses, the hardened membrane of my narrow mind softened and expanded.

Despite the freethinking that has been my lot for most of my life, the critical voice of my inner Falwell fusses from time to time.  I call him my fundamentalist homunculus.

He was not happy about the presence of oral tradition in Noah. He refuses to acknowledge that the stories in the Bible were shared orally for centuries before they were written down.  He believes the Bible came full blown in King James English via God's inspiration with no evolutionary process such as we find occurring normally in other cultures.  

In the scene where Noah says to his family, "Let me tell you a story that my father told me," we hear a voice-over of Genesis, Chapter One.  It is the Priestly Source of the creation story.  The voice-over reads a text that has been modernized.  Written tradition is nicely performed as oral tradition.

Something new and excited is added.  The 21^st Century’s digital narrative is commingled with oral and written tradition.  While Noah narrates his story, we see the formation of the universe much like we would see it during an episode of Cosmos.  

My fundamentalist homunculus saw no hint of Jesus in Noah.  This is very distressing for one who finds Jesus under every rock, in every cloud, splinter, and blade of grass in the Jewish Bible.  Indeed, in just about every noun present in the Jewish Bible my fundamentalist homunculus can make believe Jesus is there. It's like seeing faces on Mars or cheese pizzas.  I know that Jesus is simply not there or at least the Jewish writers were not thinking about Jesus when they wrote, but my fundamentalist homunculus will have none of it.

My fundamentalist homunculus saw hints of paganism in the movie.  The ritual of the snake skin smacks of magic.  Once upon a time, I was blind to the reality in religious studies that just about anything can be a vehicle for the divine.  I was blind, that is, until I started to read.

Sadly, and I wish I did not think this, but my fundamentalist homunculus was not happy at all with how important women turned out to be in the salvation of humanity. God's will could neither be done nor revealed without the miracle of a lost girl.  

Finally, my fundamentalist homunculus was very unhappy that God was rarely mentioned.  I thought it was downright clever and inspired to refer to God as The Creator, but my fundamentalist homunculus is all about saying everything just right.

Not saying the word "God" is tantamount to confessing atheistic faith.  Of course, I know that the word "god" is found nowhere in the Jewish or Christian Bibles.  It is an English word.

I'm glad I do not have to explain how that is possible to my fundamentalist homunculus.  I do all the thinking in this head.  He is too self righteous to think.  He merely measures and complains.

Blessings...