Criminal Conjunction

Found this guy on the net a few months back when I googled my name. Hope he doesn't get hold of my ID number too...

Revealed

"In what way are we to take seriously the authority of Scripture? When read within the perspective of a Scripture that speaks everywhere of a God disclosing Godself through human experience, our stories become the medium of God’s very revelation."

- Luke Timothy Johnson

Damn - have to do something about that stash of porn.

Christ the King

Read Luke 23:32-38

My fiftieth year had come and gone
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded coffee shop,
An open book, and an empty cup
On the marble table top.

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body for a moment blazed,
And twenty minutes, more or less,
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed, and could bless.

- Yeats

Have you ever had a moment of brightness like the one Yeats describes where you felt surrounded by peace and beauty? They are infrequent, precious moments. Perhaps it’s been a while… perhaps you long for another…

Jesus had a moment of Light on the mountain of his transfiguration. Just as for anyone who isn’t a movie character, Jesus’ moment was followed by descent to the mundane; work to be done. His moment was not a climax but an anti-climax. The climax of his story – the crescendo of his life – is his enthronement: his crucifixion.

Luke’s ironic portrayal of Christ is honoured in the lectionary by using this reading for Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the year. Pilate, the ostensible but illegitimate ruler of Israel, presides over the treason trial of the legitimate King but cannot make the charge stick, giving way eventually to political expediency in order to get rid of the sticky problem Jesus presents.

Leonard Sweet points out the most acute irony: it is Pilate who preaches the first sermon of Christianity. He writes the notice displayed above Jesus’ crucified head: “The King of the Jews”. It is a sign that hangs in every sacred Christian space for thousands of years to come.

Christianity however has had an ambivalent relationship with that irony ever since. Many times Christians have tried to soften it or tailor it to their own expediency. In so doing the irony takes yet another twist as Christ the King is dethroned in a coup of the Christian heart!

I want to look at the challenge that the Christ the King presents to us as disciples as well as the coterminous temptation we sometimes choose to hear in each challenge.

Firstly, Christ is King of our lives. We speak of the goal of spiritual maturity as Christ enthroned in our hearts; ordering our lives’ priorities according to the values of the Kingdom. This relationship is one of forgiveness for personal sin and the redemption of our estranged relationship with God. In our story today we hear these themes as the criminal crucified with Christ asks to be with Jesus in paradise and Jesus grants him this grace.

The temptation here is to leave Jesus as the centre of our personal lives, restricting Jesus reign to personal morality and the “vertical” relationship between individuals and God.

Secondly, Christ is King of heaven. This is an idea we readily assent to for we affirm that Jesus is God. The transfiguration confirms this. In our story Pilate is unable to find a charge worth prosecuting against Jesus. Here was a man that was like any other of a long list of messiahs all claiming to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. None of them was a threat to the might of Rome. The Essenes were like that; they believed in a messiah who would one day come and usher in the end of the world so they hived off on their own to the dessert to await his coming. The Romans couldn’t have cared less.

The temptation here is like that which the Essenes succumbed to: regarding this world as insignificant compared to the coming Kingdom. This world becomes so insignificant that one eventually doesn’t do anything about changing it.

So we need to be reminded of the third realm of the Christ the King: Christ is King of this earth, here and now. Christ is more than King of our hearts, limited to the personal. Christ is more than King of an idealised world to come. Christ is King right now of this planet, despite evidence to the contrary.

Robert Bly, in his book Iron John, deals with similar themes in his exploration of masculinity in mythology and fairy tales. All three realms are important for developing a healthy imaginative spirituality: the sacred King, the inner King and the earthly King.

The sacred King is the idealisation of power decisively exercised for good – a force larger than us that demands and deserves our allegiance; the experience of transcendence that lifts us up to a glowing perspective beyond the limitations of our circumstances.

The earthly King is represented variously in the political heroes of our own time. For some generations this King is absent as no heroes are available. Given the succession battle in the ANC, one wonders what future generations of South African’s will have as role models of the earthly King…

Surely for Christians, the model of the earthly King is always available for here is one who encapsulates in person and imagination both the sacred and the earthly King in one person: Christ the King.

The inner King is our innate human desire, so alive and present when we are born yet diminished and stunted in adults. Babies are very clear about there own desires – they feel them acutely and express them immediately without inhibition. But the stunted and broken Kings of the adults in their world consume a much larger and more powerful space. Through deliberate and circumstantial neglect adults can frustrate the infant King which has no protection. Eventually the baby learns to ignore or suppress the King inside. But the King cannot be killed and comes back eventually in some distorted form or rallies a cry for help later in life.

It seems to me that the first step in the spiritual journey must be to take that infant King seriously. The season of the infant King’s birth is upon us; a time to reflect on the King within. Bly encourages people to start with small steps, small desires to simply listen to them, let them be without judgement.

When we are able to run our tongue over the rough and sharp edges of the teeth of our hunger we begin a journey that not only can heal us of our own juvenile wounds but also deepens our empathy for others and makes us less prone to judge others.

The birth of the infant / inner King invites us on a journey through which we may reach transcendence, a moment of light. The infant and sacred King contained in the person of Jesus calls us to relate our human desires and our most sacred values to the enrichment and betterment of this earth.

Married to the past

Read Luke 20:27-38

And check out what Sarah and Bill have to say about this passage before you read my stuff.


Little Suzie comes home one day and tells her mom about Snow White: how Prince Charming saved her from death with his kiss. “You know what happened then?” asked Suzie. “Yes,” replied her mom, “They lived happily ever after.”

“No,” said Suzie, “They got married.”

We think of marriage as this static institution – something we think all people should aspire to. Most societies see marriage as the foundation of their respective cultures. So important is this institution that many will defend its integrity with all their might accusing those who question it of being heretics, terrorists or even devils.

Yet it is interesting that marriage is by no means a static institution and, furthermore, Jesus himself joins the ranks of those who questioned his culture’s assumptions about marriage and family.

Looking at today’s passage we see just how much marriage has changed and just how much Jesus undermined its importance.

Looking at the enmity between Sadducees and Pharisees I am reminded of the divide between conservative and liberal Christians today. At the risk of being overly simple in drawing the parallels, it seems to me that much of what passes for popular Christianity today bears a great deal of resemblance to the Sadduceean emphases of Jesus’ time.

The Sadducees had a more limited view of scripture than their Pharisaic cousins. For them only the Pentateuch was scripture. The Pharisees enlarged their scripture by including the prophets and other bits and pieces. This allowed the Pharisees a great deal more freedom in innovation: particularly in making the Jewish faith accessible to the commoners by wresting control of the faith from the Temple elite and putting it firmly in the hands (or hearts in point of fact) of ordinary people.

The resurrection was one such innovation designed to help people deal with the apparent contradiction between what they might read in Proverbs and their own lives. Proverbs often counsels its readers that the wise and faithful will prosper when in fact most people experienced the very opposite - and still do. For the Pharisees, resurrection offered the hope that in the life to come, justice would be served.

The Sadducees, finding no justification for this belief in their Bible, attacked this Pharisaic innovation. Hence their clever question to Jesus. Jesus comes back at them on their terms, using the portion of the Bible they held in common (remember that Jesus was a Pharisee). He points out the conversation between God and Moses where God is referred to as the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” These are dead dudes, so the implication is that they must still be living in some sense.

Jesus is very naughty here. Instead of respecting the text, looking for its inherent meaning, trying to discern the intention of the author, he instead overlays it with his own meaning, reading into the text a meaning that surely was not part of the original author’s intention! At university this would have meant an F in an exegesis exam. But Jesus gets away with it because how can you argue with this logic… The Sadducees can’t very well assert that in fact Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are definitely dead and buried.

Furthermore, Jesus does not get caught in the logic trap of the Sadducee’s argument about resurrection. Instead he simply undermines the importance of marriage. This is revolutionary stuff. He suggests that marriage and consequently, family, are of no ultimate concern. Marriage was even more important in Jesus’ society than it is in western culture today so this suggestion must have sounded shocking even to Jesus’ fellow Pharisees.

Two things strike me as important arising out of this:
God speaks new meaning into new times, innovating the Gospel for each new age.
God sees each person as much more than merely their family heritage.

I have referred before to NT Wrights idea of the Bible being like a 4 act play in which the fourth act is being written in the present. While the first acts already written are important for background and formation of the plot and values of the play, it is the present act that is of greatest significance. So too with the Bible which can be said to be the basis upon which the current story of God’s Kindom unfolds but cannot be held as more important than the unfolding drama of God’s action in the present.

Like the Pharisees, and indeed Jesus, we are called to understand the scriptures in their context, but to innovate the values and message we find there for a new age so that the Gospel remains alive to new situations.

It is telling that the Sadduceean movement died shortly after the first century AD. The Pharisaic movement by contrast continues in both the modern Jewish and Christian faiths - both of which have proved highly adaptive to new times, despite those who have tried to hold them back.

Just as the faith is larger than its heritage, so too are the people who hold to it more significant than their heritage. While people then and now see themselves as a product of their family heritage, God sees us as much more. I can see my family as an excuse for my lack of imagination, my stunted ability. I can see my family as the reason for my existence, an investment in the future, my one basket holding all my eggs.

Or I can see myself as God sees me: a father, brother, friend and son to a thousand more people than can ever be my blood relations. I can see the scope of my family, the range of those who I care for and who care for me as far beyond the boundaries of my limitations. I can enlarge my horizons to the full breadth and length, height and depth of God’s love…

Back to Suzie and Snow White: perhaps the fundamental problem with marriage is that every age has tried to attach sexuality to its limited perspective on the truth. So a previous generation may have made marriage all about cementing family birthrights and political ties or of ensuring control over procreation. Our current age, with its infatuation with romantic individualism has attached marriage to the values of romantic comedy – with tragic consequences. Religiously our “family values” entrench the idea of the heterosexual, often patriarchal nuclear family. While this seems very attractive it ignores the fact that most families do not conform to these standards yet often function more healthfully than this ideal.

Jesus’ idea of marriage and family seems to have been more prosaic. Marriage and family were seen by Jesus and the early Christians as temporary states of being that would soon be terminated by death or the second coming of Jesus. So marriage had no ultimate significance as an institution through which society may be transformed or even preserved.

However, marriage could be seen as a good place to practice Kindom values. Paul calls women to submit to their husbands but calls husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church – i.e. mutual submission with the man (the dominant member) called to become a servant – sacrificing self for the beloved. Thus, the fundamental construct of procreative control in a patriarchal society becomes the principle means by which the early Christians practice their discipleship by inverting power relations!

Similarly the Christian view of family becomes radically expanded to include all God’s children, such that one cares for the stranger as if that person were one’s own brother or sister.

What might such a radical notion mean in a supposedly Christian dominated country like South Africa? Surely if the Christians took this seriously the state would not have to worry about the flood of orphans everyone predicts… Alas, the Sadducees may not be so extinct after all. I hear calls for “family values” and “back to the Bible” and all about the world slowly descends into hell for want of the care of the sleeping Body of Christ.

Let those who hear the Good News in new ways rise up and take their sisters and brothers in.

Ghosts and Saints

Ghosts and Saints

Can you remember a scary movie from your childhood? I remember watching Dracula and being so scared I couldn’t face the TV screen. I had to watch it in the reflection off the dark windowpane at the opposite end of the living room. Occasionally I would block my ears so I wouldn’t hear the terrible scary music.

When the movie was over I was all alone, my family having gone to bed before the movie. I crept through a dark house trying not to step on the creaky floorboards. When I got to my bedroom I remembered the boogie man under the bed and paused at the bedroom door, wondering if I could leap from there to my bed and get under the covers before the boogie man grabbed my leg. I took a few paces back and ran with all my might, launched off at the door, landed in the bed and swept under the covers.

As I lay there quivering I heard a voice – Yvette, my wife – saying: “What on earth is wrong with you, Greg!?”

Scary movies can still get me…

With more and more South Africans celebrating Halloween, and more and more South Africans complaining about Halloween not being a South African holiday I wondered what all the fuss was about and read up a little. Thanks to Jim Harnish I learnt something really interesting about Halloween…

Halloween used to be an ancient Celtic festival celebrating the god of death, Samhein. Celts would gather around fires all night scarring one another with all things ghostly and ghoulish.

When St. Patrick (or at least the legend of St Patrick!), the first missionary to the Celts in Ireland, arrived he took it upon himself to do what few missionaries have ever done as successfully as him: allow the Gospel to infect the culture of his new home. Instead of seeking to convert the Celts to Christianity by giving up their culture, he sought to find aspects of Celtic culture that already had elements of Christianity in them so as to celebrate Christ’s already present nature in their midst.

The Celtic cross, a cross with a circle drawn around the centre, had its pre-cursor in the design in the side bar of this blog where a tiny cross is visible at the very centre.

Where the Celts prayed to the sprits of trees and animals and the sea in order to placate them, St. Patrick encouraged the Celts to worship the creator of nature who needed no placating. The Celts retained a deep connection with nature and many of their prayers reflect a deep devotion to the God of nature.

Legend has it that St. Patrick repeatedly helped the Celts move from fear to celebration and this was certainly his contribution to the festival of Samhein. Christian Celts celebrated All Saints day on November 1, the day after Samhein’s Festival. Slowly but surely the festival of death was transformed into “Halloween” or “Hallowed Eve” – the eve of All Saints Day. From the fear of death to the celebration of the saints of old, St Patrick helped liberate people from the Ghosts of the past in order that they might celebrate the Saints in eternity.

I think of my own ghosts. I think of the ghosts I meet in the lives of those who come to me haunted by their past regrets, failures, shame and traumas. I think of the ghosts in my congregations: habits, prejudices that keep us stuck in old ways. What will it take to be free from these ghosts?

I am reminded of the idea of the “wounded healer”: that the very thing that imprisons us can become the gift we offer to the world. A woman abused as a child finds healing for her past and becomes in turn a healer for other abused people.

This requires a lot of soul searching, talking with a trusted counsellor or friend but we affirm that eventually it is possible to be free, and more than that, to offer our wounds as healing gifts to the world.

Think of someone who in your life has been a saint – someone who helped you understand your faith in a new and powerful way. Make no mistake, at some point they probably struggled to make sense of their own past, their own pain. They would have had to confront old ghosts. It is probably because of this struggle that they were able to be a saint for you.

Halloween and All Saints Day is a celebration of the power of transformation: that the very same ghosts of our past can make us saints. Go, confront and befriend those ghosts…