7.26.20

For the longest time I used to think there was only one answer to a Koan. You all know about Koans, right? The Eastern tradition? Go meditate on the sound of one hand clapping is a famous one. I honestly thought all the Buddhist monks had to come up with the same answer. As if once they reached enlightenment, they all thought the same. But then I learned an interesting fact. Buddhism has 650 years on Christianity for different theologies to from splinter groups. If you think the number of denominations in Christianity is overwhelming…

Honestly though, I’d now guess that every person comes up with their own enlightened answer to these Koans. Sure a lot of them come up with similar answers based on the baggage they carry, but I’m convinced that enlightenment is NOT a one size fits all kind of thing.

And so with parables. I think Matthew does us a disservice by explaining not one but two of the parables in this chapter. Or two and a half, really. As tonight’s Gospel repeats an interpretation of Angels throwing Evil into the fire. And even that interpretation is interpreted in translation. One translation from last week’s Gospel has the Angels burning the causes of Evil while others translate it as the ones who cause Evil.

And if any translation of that scenario troubles you, I’ll remind you that it’s going to happen at the end of all time, not when you die.

I’d take Matthew’s interpretations with a grain of salt, or maybe even three measures of salt. Because honestly I think the Kingdom of god is ineffable. What would this world look like if it were ruled by the unnamable, indescribable one Jesus calls Father? You’d think the way some people talk it already is. Everything is part of God’s plan. Everything happens for a reason. I don’t think for a nano-second that what we have now is the Kingdom of God already manifest.

And then we have pre-destination. One of the most god-awful ideas any human has conceived of. Apologies to Paul, who says many great things in tonight’s excerpt from Romans, but predestination is a fucked-up way to think. And I honestly can’t imagine why people who believe in predestination do anything. Heaven or Hell, it’s already been decided before you were born; nothing you do makes any difference. What a bleak existence. And that mindset gives no motivation to meditate on a parable. If you’re predestined to enlightenment, it’s just going to happen, right?

Seeking is hard. Call what you’re seeking enlightenment, to know the mind of Jesus, the beatific vision, or whatever else fits for you; it’s a long road with a lot of contemplative practice. A lot of people seem to think of mediation as relaxation, but it’s a lot of damn hard work.  If you think hearing cats is hard, try taming the monkey mind. In our over rationalized culture, we don’t pay too much attention to the ways the mind and thinking betray us. I don’t think parables are to be figured out. They are decidedly not rational. Once you have some kind of historical cultural context for these parables, you realize how irrational they are. Three measures of flower is a shocking amount – a bushel one footnote said. Also comparing the Kingdom to yeast, when yeast is forbidden during Passover, might cause a ruffle or two.

So I want to make plain that contemplating on a parable isn’t about reasoning it out. It’s something to hold in your mind as you take quiet time with God. There have been times when I’ve sat with something in my quiet time, not even thinking about it exactly just having it as an intention, and then sometime in the coming days or weeks, something completely unrelated will spark a thought and make what I was holding clearer to me. The still quiet voice has been for me overhearing a snippet of conversation. Some lyrics in a song on the radio. A leaf catching the sunlight as it falls to a busy city avenue.   All these things have resolved issues I was wrestling with or made decisions crystal clear. And all the same issues and decisions were not helped by a lot of rational thinking. Rational thinking just spun me in circles.

So might I suggest you pick a parable from this weeks reading and sit with it, not expecting an answer to come as you sit with it. See what happens. Believe me even if not flash of enlightenment comes, it will be time well spent.

 

Jesus had compassion for the crowds

 

Jesus had compassion for the crowds, because they were harassed and helpless. I can relate.

I don’t really know the context, but an acquaintance of mine criticized someone who publicly said, “At the heart of non-violence is love.” She said that this person was missing the point. I didn’t know them well enough to prod for further details, but I can’t disagree with the sentiment by itself. I’ll go further to say that at the heart of violence is love.

When Jesus warned that brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, it is because of love shown to those outside the family, or love shown to those who the family doesn’t identify with. My violent brother, who won’t even speak to me anymore, has countless times called me a “bleeding heart liberal” for exactly this reason.

A recent conversation about the shit that’s going down was getting a bit too theoretical for my tastes, far too often ideology gets in the way of reality. So I decided to offer a truth at the risk of sounding like I was saying, “some of my best friends are black.” A woman I love dearly is an African-American mother of a teenage son with autism. Her son does not pick up on social cues. Any encounter he has with cops is bound to go badly, to say the least. Anytime he leaves the house she is TERRIFIED he will be killed by the police. If this truly were the land of the free, no mother would have that fear.

And the fact that I was hesitant to tell this story of someone I love, was not because of fear of accusations from African Americans, or condemnation of conservatives like my brother, but because of my friends in what passes for the left in this country. For many of them if you’re not in lock-step with everything they think, or even how they say it, you’re summarily dismissed. This brings us back to restrictions on who you can legitimately love. Jesus told us Love our enemies. This does not mean you need to be polite or kind or respect their property. It means in extreme terms there should be no limits on our love.

And this may be cynical of me, but I sincerely wonder if the recent protests would have been as large as they were if we hadn’t been under a stay at home order for months. It’s been a long time since the most powerful politicians actually cared for what the people think in the least. We’ll see how many of the promises in response are empty. My compassion for the harassed and helpless crowds extends to concern about all the folks who will get sick because of protests during a pandemic.

Yet I firmly believe that these protests going all the way back to Ferguson is the work of the spirit, the spirit of the love of God who has heard the cries of the oppressed. And it is for love of the oppressed that you should be angry and outraged and take action. For: there are wolves with no love in their hearts within as well as without. They will put restrictions on who you should love. Be wary of them and love anyway, or to put it another way, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

 

 

5 Easter 2020

I’ve brought up a story I have about the story of Stephen’s stoning many times. Read the passage in a reflection group and someone said, “I don’t see this as a story of love at all.” I responded by pointing out that he saw his beloved Jesus as he died. The part of the story I don’t usually say is that she wasn’t convinced by my argument.

In order to explain my point of view deeper, I want to talk about the difference between a fixer and a companion.  A priest I knew often said, “Why do we find it so hard to believe that God loves us?” One reason is that many people don’t want a loving companion; they want someone to fix things. And there are many people ready and willing to get in there and try to fix people. In the long run though, trying to fix things doesn’t work.

An obvious example is when someone is dying, say of a terminal illness. A hospice chaplain knows they’re not going to prevent the death. If they’re a fixer they might be tempted to spin some story about the afterlife. I say mythical because Jesus was a lot vaguer about what eternal life is than many people think. If they follow their training, they will simply be a comforting presence, a companion.

Alanon is a 12 step group for friends and families of an alcoholic. A lot of fixers end up in Alanon, where they are often called enablers – enablers don’t just aid in an alcoholic’s drinking, enablers often work to prevent or mitigate the consequences the Alcaholic would otherwise face. “The only way out is through” is a phase in 12 step, acknowledging that whatever pain is behind your drinking, you’ll never get sober if you avoid it. In Alanon enablers learn they have no control over someone else’s drinking. The only thing they can control is their own actions. Fixing just doesn’t work in that situation.  

Many folks want God to be a fixer. They pray for God to come down and grant some miracle that will make their problems go away – or someone else’s problems that they’ve taken on. They are looking for relief and comfort.  The problem is that growth – especially spiritual growth – happens through conflict or challenges. Who feels the need to grow when they’re in their comfort zone?

God of course knows this. I don’t believe God brings misfortune on us to test us. But neither does God spare us. God didn’t spare Stephen – nor did God spare Her Son. And I’ve been realizing that is where the most damaging theologies of the cross come from. Theologies of a cruel God who will torture us for eternity for any time we fail - failure often born out of our own suffering.

God allowed God’s self to suffer through Jesus in solidary of our suffering. God still bears the wounds in Christ. And the risen, still wounded, Jesus promised to always be with us. Jesus promised to be our companion, and asked us to love in the same way. I don’t believe fixing is primarily about love. It’s primarily about easing pressure. To sit with and hold the hand of someone who is suffering is uncomfortable – there is pressure involved – it may even bring up suffering in yourself. And that is love that Jesus modeled for us. 

Jesus also promised us the Spirit. The passage we read in John has been used to increase the suffering of others to an unimaginable degree. Because people are told that if you don’t get what you prayed for it must be YOUR fault.  This is why Luke’s version of this promise is a much better one.

What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? And the Holy Spirit is our companion in our suffering and can and does give us the strength to be a companion – to find the words to say or to help us not say anything when silence is needed.

This is the promise of the companion God; The God who wants you to be your best self; The God who suffered in solidarity with us. God has heard the suffering of Her people. God became one of us not to increase our suffering but to be with us in it. 

 

Why Americans Don't Get the Samaritan Parable.

If the Samaritan was an American he would have told the half-dead man that he would get justice for the wounded person and the rest of the story would be about hunting down and killing the bandits. There was a recent People magazine cover featuring a woman and how she escaped from her would be kidnapper and murderer. And all I could think of was how you never hear the story of the ones that don’t escape – because we have no admiration for them, nor frankly, does our culture have any compassion for them.  This is why, I think, you can go into a church and not a single cross will have Jesus’ body on it.

When we say Jesus triumphed over death, we’re being inaccurate. It was God in the first person, commonly called father though mother would suit just as well, it was that person of god who raised Jesus. This marked the victim as favored of God. Jesus’ story is not one of a potential victim that escaped. It was a story of God hearing the cries of the suffering and honoring them above all others.  All kingdoms of all the world will bow to the victim king.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not a story of “everyone is your neighbor,” it’s not about being nice to everyone, it’s an instruction to be neighbor to those in need. It’s also, given the poison of the Protestant work ethic, a call to accept help. A lot of the resentment folks have for the people who use social services is that they themselves are too proud to ask for help. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking poverty is weakness of character.

How people miss that Jesus was champion of the unclean, the stranger, the least of these who he identifies with, is beyond me. In my Bible study when I told the “American” version of the story, someone responded by saying how they were not raised in a church with a “Social Justice” point of view. I let it go but I wanted to scream, “This is not social justice, this IS THE GOSPEL!”

Now certainly, social justice done right is about helping the suffering, however there are also people of the oppressing class that suffer at the hands of their own. Are there degrees of suffering? Yes of course, but I hesitate to limit the term victim to only the oppressed. What’s been really bothering me lately is how victims who find the courage to talk about their sexual abuse are inundated with death threats and other further abuse, while the accused get slaps on the wrist or appointed to high office. 

Now there will be those who say this has always gone on and it’s good that it’s coming out into the light, and in fact, yes this has always gone on, but frankly to me it just seems that the perpetrators are emboldened. In the wake of 2016, there are at least six convicted sex offenders openly running for public office. While I admit we treat sex offenders who have done their time more harshly than other former prisoners, I still think running for office is a sign of emboldening the victimizer.

This is partly why I won’t use the Good Samaritan story as a story about loving your enemies. I mean it is in there given what a Samaritan was to the Israelites listening, but I believe focusing on that obscures the emphasis on the suffering. Christ on the cross is not suffering because we’ve sinned, but rather is suffering in solidarity with all who suffer.

And for those who say a crucifix with a corpus is too morbid, I say Christianity is morbid. It’s uncomfortable; it’s not easy, because it centers the suffering. Our Lord suffered. Not so that we may bring suffering on ourselves in imitation, but rather that we recognize Him in the suffering and don’t cross to the other side of the road.