Tag: Christianity

The county fair

Published on by Adam Thomas7 Comments

The smells of sweat and fried dough hung in the air, mixing with the burned oil of the tractor pull. He was sitting with hands clasped, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a challenge on his deeply lined, leathery face. She was standing, looking all the world like a Grant Wood painting, and thrusting matchbook-sized pamphlets into the hands of passersby. I walked by out of reach, but I couldn’t help looking at the booth, one of many at the county fair. “How sure are you of going to heaven? Are you 50% 75% 100% sure?” read the banner. My friend wondered aloud about how one arrives at a 75% surety of heaven. I chuckled, but I was unable to keep walking by the booth. On the table, a wooden contraption with three small doors read: “Do you know the three things God CANNOT do?”

I stopped. The Grant Wood painting saw my furrowed brow and handed me a pamphlet. It looked like a doll’s magazine. A smiley face decorated the cover along with the words: “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” I closed my hand around the pamphlet and pointed to the three doors. I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice, but I failed miserably: “So, what are the three things God can’t do?” I said.

She opened the first door: “God CANNOT lie.” She opened the second door: “God CANNOT change.” She opened the third door: “God CANNOT let people into heaven who have not been born again.”

We talked for fifteen minutes. I told them I did not disagree with the first door, but that I preferred to state the sentiment in positive terms: “God always tell the truth” or “God is trustworthy and faithful.” I said that a “lie” is the absence of the “truth,” and that I’d rather talk about God’s goodness shown in God’s truthfulness than to try to hook people with the trappings of sensationalism. After five minutes, the man commented that I was very intelligent. I took that as a compliment, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was not meant as such.

As our conversation continued, I realized we weren’t conversing. We were sparring. I’ve never had a taste for theological pugilism, but I was already three rounds deep, so I kept jabbing and blocking. I’ve had this same conversation with county fair proselytizers, but never as an ordained person. After the man commented on my intelligence, he asked me what I did. I said, “I’m a priest.” Without another word, he thrust another pamphlet in my hand. It was about how Roman Catholics aren’t real Christians and are going to hell.The same thought kept jumping to the front of my mind: “People like these, no matter how pure and ardent their intentions, make my job harder.”

It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a Roman Catholic. It didn’t matter that I agreed with the man and woman several times during our bout. The only thing that mattered was that I didn’t buy into the way they framed the Christian faith–as a bottom-line venture whose only goal is to “save souls” by following the instructions in the smiley-face doll-sized magazine. Surely, there’s more than that. Surely, the abundance of what God has done and is doing is more important than a “what’s behind door number 3” marketing scheme concerned with what God CANNOT do.

As I walked away, I wondered what had been accomplished during our boxing match. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus says that when two or three are gathered in his name, he will be in the midst of them. Were we gathered “in his name” or in our own names, intent on KOing the other’s theological stance? Was Jesus there? Was I 50% 75% 100% sure of his presence? Looking back, Jesus was there, but he was not in my corner and he was not in their corner. He was there trying to get us to leave the ring.

For the sake of ten (part 3 of 3)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

This relationship which God has extravagantly blessed us with challenges the understanding of God’s immutability. Indeed, in the story, it seems (at first glance at least) that Abraham is swaying God’s mind. Many, if not most, ancient and medieval Christian thinkers assert that a facet of the divine is changelessness. This makes sense because the perfect cannot be changed; if it could, it would not be perfect. However, I think that assigning platonic categories of perfection to God is a silly exercise because God is beyond our concept of perfection.* God is more than perfect because God subsumes the category of perfection into God’s being. That is why God can send a son to earth against all the rules of fashionable Greek philosophical discourse of the time. God is other, but God is present at the same time. What we call Providence, as theologian Paul Tillich says, is the intermingling of our actions and inactions with God’s directing creativity. Part of this directing creativity is responsiveness to prayer. Tillich says that “every serious prayer contains power, not because of the intensity of desire expressed in it, but because of the faith the person has in God’s directing activity—a faith which transforms the existential situation”  When Abraham says “Far be it from you to do such a thing” (which might more expressively be translated: “How dare you!”), he is engaging in this kind of prayer. The relationship he has with God, more than the words, is the important factor in the exchange.

While it might seem that Abraham is using his close connection with God to sway God’s mind, God seems to let the exercise go on to expand Abraham’s mind concerning justice, righteousness, and sin. Abraham’s thought experiment is flawed to begin with because there is no way to separate the righteous and sinful.  Even in generations to come when it was possible to be “righteous under the law,” people kept the temple in business by sacrificing to restore their righteousness. Later, Paul reflects this reality when he says, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). But Abraham’s seems to say, “For argument’s sake, let’s say there’s a clear distinction between the righteous and the sinful.” God humors him thus far.

Next, Abraham makes an outrageous claim that would make any level-headed person cry foul. He says, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” Abraham is outraged that the righteous would be swept away with the wicked. However, he is perfectly content with the wicked remaining unpunished if even ten righteous people are found in the city. Surely, this is not justice—the wicked go unpunished for the sake of the righteous, the wicked don’t get what they deserve! Now, we all know the end of the story—Sodom gets utterly destroyed. But leaving that aside for a moment, let us pause and reflect on God’s mercy as this story elucidates it. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. It seems that as Abraham lessens the number of righteous needed to save the city, the mercy (rather than the justice) of God expands to greater and greater levels. If only ten are found, you won’t destroy the city? Heck, what about one? We never get that far, but it is not unimaginable. By the end of the story, it seems that the ten righteous are on vacation, and the city is destroyed anyway. But the extravagant claim about God’s mercy still stands, though Abraham can’t see it because of his preoccupation with justice.

This story is finally about two things that relate to each other. The first is the human inability to comprehend God and God’s action in the world. The second is the realization that humans are always in the presence of God, participating in that same action. C.S. Lewis says: “The freedom of God consists of the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them—that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower”  Our incomprehension stems from the actions of God having God’s freedom as their basis and warrant. We are in God’s presence because of God’s goodness. We participate in God’s freedom even when (or especially when) we question God as Abraham does. We participate in God’s goodness when our actions bring about the justice, mercy, and grace of God. And we participate in God’s omnipotence when we are blessed with those briefest of glimpses of God’s directing creativity, which spur us to greater action and greater love.

Footnotes

* A fair number of 20th century theologians say something similar, though I doubt they use the word “silly.”

For the sake of ten (part 2 of 3)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Thinking we understand the ways of the world, and of God, for that matter, is a major cause of all kinds of unrest. I have been a student for nineteen years and one piece of learning that has quietly crept up on me as the years rolled by is this: there sure is a heck of a lot I don’t know. Most of my personal failings come from me thinking I know things that I don’t know. Recognizing that I do not know something is, I believe, one of God’s repetitious lessons in humility. I know so little about the world that I can see and feel and touch. If I know so little about what is actually knowable, how could I ever presume to know anything about God? About why God does what God does? And for that matter, whether or not why is even an appropriate question when God is involved?

These musings stray into the territory of an apophatic* understanding of God, but I assure you, I will not quite get there. One needs only to look at the story this reflection concerns to know that God, while supremely unknowable from our end, makes God known to us in both ordinary and mysterious ways. Indeed, Abraham talks to God!  The simple fact that there are two characters in the scene—Abraham and God—illustrates the immanence of God in our midst. It is when we turn this around and realize that it is really we who are in God’s midst that the transcendence of God smacks us square in the forehead. God is beyond our knowledge, but because of God’s grace we are not beyond glimpses of the recognition that we think, move, act, love, live in the presence of God. This is revelation, of which Jesus Christ is the most perfect example.

We live in the presence of God whether we recognize it or not. However, as our eyes adjust to the holiness around us, the injustice of the world becomes more apparent and more intolerable. Questions such as why do we suffer? and why are the good punished and the evil rewarded? and why does the world seem to be in inexorable decline socially and environmentally? abound when we link our experience of our Creator with our moral compasses. C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, begins with a discussion of religion in general. He says that the roots of religion are two-fold: the universal, uncanny, dreadful, unexplainable something that he calls experiencing the “numinous”; and the emergence of morality. The Jewish people, he continues, were the first to combine these two things when they discerned that their God both prompted them to live a life of good morals and helped them along the way. As the understanding of God as a necessarily “good” being grew, the aforementioned questions became more prevalent. Indeed, if we were without our understanding of God as a beneficent Creator, then there would be no problem associated with injustice or pain. They would simply be neutral facts, as indistinguishable from their natural counterparts as colors in the dark. However, we are blessed with the revelation that our God is good. This is both a comforting and a vexing thought. Abraham takes the vexation head on. In doing so, he accuses God of premeditated capriciousness and also shows just how poorly he, Abraham, understands the concept of justice.

“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” says Abraham. Here Abraham wrestles with what might be termed “Divine inscrutability.”** What looks like capriciousness to humans, goes one interpretation, is God fulfilling God’s inscrutable plan. This quickly becomes the “It’s God’s will” argument. However, this progression is inherently flawed. There is obviously a paradox happening somewhere when inscrutability and knowledge of God’s will are mentioned in the same breath. These two approaches seek to answer the “why” question (why did God let this happen? etc). Inscrutability says, “I don’t know why.” The God’s will argument says just that—“It’s God’s will,” no matter what happens. The latter is a very limited understanding of our relationship with God. While the “will” of God certainly exists, it is not the organizing principle by which we live. That is, instead, reserved for the “Word” of God, which is both the foundation of existence and the incarnate being of Jesus Christ. Affirming this premise does not answer the “why” question, but supersedes it with the person of Christ, who is present with us in our pain and suffering. The inscrutability of God is maintained because we can never fully know God, but our questions are answered by a relationship with Jesus Christ (rather than an explanation).

…to be concluded.

Footnotes

* This is a five dollar seminary word that means something like: “You can never know anything about God, so quit asking.”

** Inscrutability is a funny word. You can be inscrutable, but can you just be scrutable? In think you can in Europe.

For the sake of ten (part 1 of 3)

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

Abraham stares after them as they make their dusty way down into the valley. They are men to his eyes, and yet, in the shadow-stretched twilight they appear indistinct, almost shadows themselves. But not shadows; for these beings shine. They shine with the borrowed light of the one who remains with Abraham on the hilltop overlooking the candlelit city of Sodom. Abraham watches them until their shadows mingle with those of the scrub and gorse bushes. He stands there, mystified—for they have just predicted that Sarah (his Sarah!) would get pregnant. Ha. She’s far too old, her joints too arthritic, her bones too brittle to stand the strains of pregnancy. And yet. And yet they had seemed so certain. She had laughed, but it was no joke. I thought I understood the ways of the world, ponders Abraham, as the shining beings melt into the candlelight of the city.

I thought I understood the ways of the world. Perhaps not, if it is true that Sarah can still bear children. Confusion. Abraham shakes his head, as if this act would jostle loose such a silly, irrational thought as Sarah becoming pregnant. He looks down at Sodom again. And here’s another example of irrationality, he thinks. Anger kindles in his chest as he remembers the abuses that have reached his ears, the abuses committed by the people of that city. But yet—how could God destroy that place if there were righteous people there. Surely God could not be that unjust.

Abraham shakes his head again, this time with suppressed incredulity, and lifts his eyes from the twinkling lights below. He turns and approaches the third being, the one who has remained with him on the hill when the others ventured down to the city. Seen peripherally, the being is generally man-shaped. But as Abraham moves near, he perceives how inadequate a container the man-shaped body is for such an abundance of light, harmony, and awe. Abraham suppresses a shudder. He opens his mouth, but closes it again, unsure whether he wants to question or accuse. The being knows the confusion in Abraham’s mind, knows that such cognitive dissonance is the birthplace of revelation.

All at once, Abraham finds his words: question and accusation combine into indictment tinged with desperate plea for understanding. “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” He presses on, not waiting for the LORD (for, of course, this is who the luminous being on the hilltop is) to respond. “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked!” Abraham points a quivering, accusatory finger, and his pitch rises as the cause of his mental distress tumbles from him: “Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” Tears form at the corners of his eyes; he slumps over, chest heaving with the exertion of voicing the thoughts that have been building ever since the three men approached his tent.

The LORD waits for Abraham to recover and then responds quietly, certainly: “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham hears these words and is mollified—almost. What about 45? 40? 30? 20? What about—and here Abraham raises both hands, fingers splayed—ten? “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it,” says the LORD. And then the LORD leaves Abraham with his thoughts. Abraham returns to his place to find Sarah, her deep eyes reflecting dancing firelight, lost in the same thought: I thought I understood the ways of the world.*

…to be continued.

Footnotes

* This and the upcoming two posts are pieces of a reflection on Genesis 18.

Alphabet soup (Bible study #3)

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

Well, I never thought I’d say this, but Google has failed me. I just gave up on a massive search to find how many English words the translators of the New International Version (NIV) used to translate the Bible.* Although I did not meet my main objective, I did discover a few helpful things:

  • There are some really nutty people on the Interwebs writing about biblical translations (especially ones who think the King James Version–which was translated 397 years ago–is still the cutting edge in biblical scholarship and modern translations are leading us along the path to destruction).
  • It’s difficult to find reputable biblical scholarship on the Series of Tubes.
  • Some Christians are just plain mean.

So, with full knowledge that I am continuing to add my voice to the wacky/sad/puzzling/repellent world of Internet biblical scholarship, I will offer my two cents on which translation to use when studying the Bible.

Cent #1: Use them all.

Cent #2: Get an Interlinear Bible.

While the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is the primary version I read (because my church uses it during worship), I consult multiple other translations to see how they render the Hebrew and Greek texts.**  Every translation is an interpretation because the biblical languages do not fit nicely and cozily into our grammatical system.

The ancient Hebrew language exists in another universe from modern English. Ancient Hebrew thrives on ambiguity and nuance and feeling. There are often assumed words left out. There is no standard word order. There are no vowels, for that matter. Translating ancient Hebrew is like painting a picture, not solving a math problem. So different translators will come up with different translations.

While Greek is both more exact than Hebrew and more closely related to English, translators still face challenges. Some of the writers of the New Testament nearly flunked Greek 101, so their sentence structure is often confusing. Other writers aced their Greek classes and like to show off, writing compound-complex (oh, so complex!) sentences with so many nouns, adjectives, and verbs that sorting out which goes with which is troublesome. Ironically enough, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has the best Greek in the New Testament.

So, with the biblical languages proving to wiggle and squirm while we try to smoosh them into English,*** and with the biases of unbiased translators sneaking into their translations, reading a range of English translations is the way to go. Use the NIV for a Protestant outlook and the New Jerusalem Bible for a Catholic one. Use the NRSV for a mainline Protestant view and the New Living Version for a conservative Protestant one. Always read the King James for its poetry–they really knew how to write English in Shakespeare’s day. There are books you can buy called “Parallel Bibles” that line up several translations next to one another. There are also several good websites that put passages in parallel for you. Check out Bible Gateway for all your conservative Protestant versions and The Unbound Bible for mainline ones.

Okay, that cent turned into about a buck fifty, but my other cent will be short. Interlinear Bibles have text in the original languages with English translations under each word. Even if you don’t know the original languages, you can use this resource to compare words. Often the same Greek word will be translated with three or four different English words. Your Interlinear will show you this. On the other hand, several Greek words will be translated into the same English word. Your Interlinear will show you this, also. I’ve had sermon ideas light up and be snuffed out when I return to the original text. It’s always enlightening and even fun to piece together your own translation using an Interlinear and several English translations.

So, there’s my take on the alphabet soup of biblical translations. Remember that studying the Bible is about encountering God through the text. When you combine several different resources, these encounters can become more fruitful and they can further deepen your relationship with God.

Footnotes

* The reason I couldn’t find how many words the NIV uses is that (when I first conceived this post) I mixed up the NIV with Today’s English Version (or Good News Bible) which limited the number or English words in the translation. Originally, this version was produced for non-native English speakers. So, Google didn’t fail me…Adam = epic phail.

** A few chapters of Daniel are written in Aramaic, but for clarity’s sake, I will more often than not refer to Hebrew and Greek as the languages of the Bible.

*** I’m pretty sure “smoosh” is a technical term.

Pick your periscope (Bible study #2)

Published on by Adam Thomas6 Comments

Biblical scholars have an especially silly sounding word they use for “passage from the Bible.” It is pericope, and if you type this into Microsoft Word, Bill Gates will try to change the word into periscope, because (apparently) the latter is much more frequently used. ‘Pericope’ may look like a three-syllable word (like periscope without the ‘s’), but it has four syllables and rhymes with calliope.* If you are at a Bible study and drop the word ‘pericope’ your companions will probably stare at you and wonder how you got your hands on the Anchor Bible Commentary.

Pericopes are important because they define the amount of text you are going to study. The word is a mash-up of two Greek words meaning “to cut around,” so when you pick a pericope you are figuring out how much text you want to swallow at one go. If you pick too little, you may be in danger of ignoring the context of the bit you pericopized.** If you pick too much, getting your head around it all may be a difficult task. (SPORTS ANALOGY ALERT) Think of it like this: American football games (and for that matter real football games) are time-constrained. The viewer knows just how long a regulation-length game will be. This makes the last few minutes exciting.*** Conversely, cricket (a sport only comprehensible if you were born in a Commonwealth country) can go on for three or four days–though I’m convinced most of that time is spent making crumpets and talking about the weather.

Okay, so how do you choose a pericope? First, I wouldn’t take more than about twenty verses. The fewer the verses, the more in-depth you can go, though I’d probably put a minimum at around four or five. If you’re Bernard of Clairvaux you can write a treatise on a single instance of a word in the Bible, but you’re not, so don’t. If the story you are reading is longer than twenty verses, focus on a particular section of the story each session until you’ve covered the whole thing. It is amazing what you can discover about God in just a few verses of the Bible; if you bite off more than you can chew, you’re likely to miss something exciting and revelatory.

Second, don’t be swayed by chapter breaks or section headings. The chapters were added in the late middle ages and the headers by the publisher of your particular edition of the Bible. Needless to say, neither is original to the text. Now, the chapters usually do a pretty good job breaking up the text, but they aren’t batting a thousand.**** For example, most scholars identify a large pericope from John 15:1 to 16:4a, so the chapter break is misleading. As for the headers, if it were up to me, I’d tell you just to go out and buy a Bible without them (like this one). While they are handy if you are looking for a passage, they often serve to sway a reader’s interpretation before she even gets to the text.

Third, look for transitional words like “immediately” or “the next day.” Mark uses the word immediately about 579 times, and it often serves to signal a new section. Actually, he uses it 41 times, but that’s still 2.5 times a chapter, which is a lot.

Fourth (and this can be a bit tricky when reading in translation) look for any literary structures the writer is employing in a particular section. For example, if the writer uses the same three words to begin three consecutive sentences, they are more than likely related. (This is call anaphora).  We’ll talk about some of these structures in later posts, but for now, if you see one in action, you’ve identified a pericope!

Honestly, though this is an important step in biblical study, choosing pericopes is usually really easy because the biblical writers are really good at what they do. And modern scholars spend way too much energy and way too many pages in their commentaries quibbling over whether this verse goes with this or that pericope. If you take one thing away from this post, remember that choosing a pericope is like eating a healthy serving size. Too little and you’ll still be hungry. Too much and you will have gorged yourself to the point of not remembering everything you ate. Choose a portion you can chew and digest. Let the passage of the Bible fill you. Let the words of the Bible nourish you. And let God encounter you every time you pick up the book for study.

Footnotes

* (1) That strange little organ-like instrument they use in the circus or (2) the Greek muse of epic poetry, who is probably a bit miffed that we now use her name to identify a strange little organ-like instrument they use in the circus.

** I just made up this word, so please don’t use it if you are writing anything a professor will see. Remember, professors think they are the only ones allowed to make up words.

*** You may be quick to point out that the last 2 minutes of American football games take a half hour to play. Good point. My mother makes the same one when she calls my father and me up for dinner and we say there’s two minutes left in the game.

**** Sorry, I forgot to warn you about that sports metaphor.

Competing for spots in my imagination

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

The day before I returned to VTS for my senior year, I went searching for something in the cupboard under the stairs. The light flickered and hiccupped, casting faint shadows on the cramped, box-strewn floor. The winter coats and old military uniforms brushed me heavily like a gas station carwash. I pulled and pushed boxes of books and elementary school projects out of the way. With a dozen or so boxes disgorged from the closet, I found what I was looking for. Three plastic tubs. Three dusty plastic tubs, each nearly two decades old. I carried them into the living room and lined them up. I slit the packing tape off the first one, opened it, and was met with piles of my childhood.

I began sifting through the legos, pulling out flat black and grey pieces and every human figurine I could lay my hands on. After several hours of collecting, lego pieces littered my living room floor like an abstract mosaic. I fitted the black and grey pieces into a grid and sorted the figurines into groups—knights and pirates, naval personnel and more knights. Another hour and my creation was finished: a lego chess set, complete with knights on horseback and kings in mail and helm.

I spent every rainy day of my childhood and some of the sunny ones building with legos. For many years, I followed the instructions meticulously: each piece went in its place, and when I was finished, I had duplicated the image on the box in three dimensions. At some unidentified point after I had hit double-digits in age, I began straying from the directions. Eventually, the sets I kept prison-like in their own boxes began to mingle. Soon, I had three plastic tubs (they were neither old nor dusty yet) piled high with anachronistic castle legos and futuristic space legos and realistic city legos, all together, all competing for spots in my imagination. I put the directions away and just began to build, to create.

Until the day before returning to seminary, I had not created anything with legos in nearly a decade. But the act of creating infused me with joy. I created videos in high school. I created music in college. And as I began to contemplate God’s movement in my life, I accepted God’s invitation to enter more fully into God’s creation.

Thinking about the call to serve God might prompt one to ask the question: why was I created? But I think this is a faulty question. To reach a better understanding of call, the question should be asked in the present tense: for what am I being created? God’s call in my life is a continuously present reality, always pushing my self-defined limits of possibility. The very act of calling assumes an act of creation, for accepting a call is simply the acknowledgment that God is already at work molding me into a better servant, a better giver, a better lover. I think this is why Paul says that whoever is in Christ is a new creation—new creations that are ever new because of constant and continual creating.

I believe that God has barely begun to create me. This thought comforts me when I realize how much I still have to learn and chastens me when I think I have everything figured out. I have perceived enough of the edge of the expanse that is the life with which God has challenged and blessed me to know that only with God’s help can I respond to God’s call. This call in me is nascent; I am still being formed, still being created. But God has known me since I was in my mother’s womb. Christ is with me until the end of the age. And the Holy Spirit moves my life, always pushing those limits of possibility. I hope that through God’s love and grace, the work God has begun in me is a good one. I hope I can respond to God with a reflection of that love and grace. I hope I continue to catch glimpses of God’s creating movement in my life.

God has invited me to participate in God’s creation. I can comprehend nothing so joyful, nothing so humbling as this. Those three old dusty plastic tubs are back in the cupboard under the stairs. The flickering light is off and the winter coats hang undisturbed. But I am still creating because God is creating me.

(This post originally appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of “The Call” newsletter of the Society for the Increase of the Ministry (SIM), a not-for-profit group that supports Episcopal Seminarians as they move from lay to ordained leadership in the Church. I thank God for this organization, and I thank SIM for generously supporting me, both in prayer and scholarships. Check out SIM’s website.)

Laugh tracking

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

I’ve noticed in my sermons that I always get a laugh when I make oblique references to my age. I remember people chuckling when I’ve said: “A decade ago, when I was a sophomore in high school,” or “Back in 1993 when I was 10 years old” or “I was born during Reagan’s first term.” Now, I’ve never thought that the congregation was laughing at me; they weren’t laughing because someone half or even one-third their age was preaching to them. They laughed because they remembered themselves at 25, remembered how young or naïve or wide-eyed they were. They laughed because their thoughts of themselves in decades past were pretty darn funny. I wonder if their quarter-century selves laughed back then thinking of 25 or 50 years down the road. Laughter marks our journeys. Laughter, in all its tones, for all its reasons, tells us where we are and how we are experiencing life. And laughter is one of God’s most effective means of communicating God’s plan to us.

You see, there’s not just one kind of laughter. You can chuckle or guffaw or cackle or giggle or chortle or snicker or double over and slap your knee or, if you are the Queen of England, “express amusement.” Different kinds of laughter fit different situations. You might not realize it, but God speaks to us in laughter. When we discover why we are laughing, God’s movement in our lives becomes much clearer. Here’s four kinds of laughter to illustrate what I mean.

In our story from Genesis today, the LORD appears to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre and makes a startling, even comical, announcement: “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah will have a son.” The narrator explains why this is so funny: “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in years.” The King James Version puts it a bit more colorfully—the couple was “well stricken in age.” Now, whether she is advanced in years or well stricken, Sarah is most definitely post-menopausal. So Sarah laughs the incredulous laughter of impossibility. This laugh usually consists of one loud sound, almost a bark. There’s no way she can have a baby! God is really selling something this time.

How often does God ask us to do the seemingly impossible: from loving those who hate us to holding the hand of a dying friend to working for justice in a world where disparity is the overarching reality. Sometimes, all we can do is laugh at the hopelessness around us. Thinking God is changing our world is incredible—incredible, as in, “not credible.” This is the incredulous laughter of impossibility. Sarah and Abraham (in the previous chapter) both laugh at the possibility that God can do the impossible.

But as a recent Adidas ad campaign reminds us: “Impossible is nothing.” I think Adidas’s marketing department has been reading Genesis. God hears Sarah laugh and says, “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” This may sound like a question, but there’s only one answer. “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” No. In another story we all know about a woman (who shouldn’t be able to have a baby) having a baby, the angel Gabriel says: “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Believing that impossible is nothing can spur us to laugh the zealous laughter of confidence. This laugh comes from the belly and usually generates a hair toss or the placement of hands on the hips. This is the fresh, unrefined zeal that accompanies a mountaintop experience or a revelatory conversion. Of course nothing is too wonderful for God! How could I ever have doubted?

But fresh, unrefined zeal has a short shelf life. Don’t misunderstand: there aren’t too many better feelings than riding a spiritual high. But there is a danger when these mountaintops, these highs points become the focus of a life of faith. Too often, spiritual high seekers becomes self-centered, always looking for another buzz, never stopping to realize that God has already filled them with every good thing.

When fresh, unrefined zeal deepens past the surface, past the level where the erosion of daily life always threatens to wash away our confidence in God, another kind of laughter emerges. The narrator of Sarah’s story says, “The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised.” Believing God’s promise to fulfill all of God’s promises leads to the thankful laughter of surrender. This laugh of relief usually begins with a long exhale and ends with a small, almost inaudible chuckle. This isn’t surrender in the sense of “giving up,” but in the sense of “giving over.” When we give over to God all of our insecurities and anxieties and fears and limitations, we realize that God has already given us the ability to rest in God’s promises. And we thank God for the willingness to embrace us, love us, and transform our lives.

Sarah’s life changes when she conceives and bears her son Isaac. Nine months before, she was laughing incredulously at the thought that she could have a child. But here he is. And Sarah says, “God has brought laughter for me.” In saying this, she’s having a little joke of her own—in Hebrew, Isaac means “laughter.” I imagine Sarah holding him in her arms, a small swaddled gift from God. I imagine his little fist clutching her old, leathery finger. I imagine her throwing her head back and laughing the sparkling laughter of joy. This laugh is unrestrained and spontaneous and unique for every one of God’s children. This laugh connects us to the God who is the source of our joy. When sparkling laughter wells up within us and spills from our lips, we proclaim that God has made our joy complete, as Jesus says in John’s Gospel.

Sarah says, “God has brought laughter for me,” and then she continues, “Everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Our laughter is a testimony, a witness to the movement of God in our lives and in the world. In the story of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie echoes this witness: “When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” When God’s movement in our lives causes us to laugh—incredulously, zealously, thankfully, sparklingly—our laughs break, like our bread, and skip across a world in dire need of something to laugh about.

So laugh for the joy that God is calling us to love and serve God and each other. Laugh for the thankfulness that God equips us for this loving service. Laugh for the faith that nothing is impossible and nothing is too wonderful for the LORD.

(Sermon for June 15, 2008 || Proper 6, Year A RCL || Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7)

What size straightjacket?

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

I have had quite a bit of downtime in this month between graduation from seminary and ordination to the priesthood. While this has been a happy occasion to catch up on sleep and Law & Order:SVU, it has also produced a surplus of mental energy that is no longer being poured into my thesis and papers. Any of my friends could tell you that I think too much, especially about relationships. And when I have the time to think too much, my mind develops every choice, every scenario, every possible combination of what could go right and will go wrong to every logical and illogical conclusion.

In the last two years of seminary, I had few opportunities and even less time for my brain to engage in such frivolous and ultimately useless exercises. But now that formal studies have concluded, my mind wondered what to do with the extra horsepower. Without a relationship with a woman to examine, deconstruct, extrapolate, and fret about, my mind turned to my relationship with God.

As such, in the last month, I have had a few minor anxiety attacks, a couple small bouts of existential dread, and even a dark afternoon of the soul.* Am I ready? Is this really what I want to devote my life to? What about all the other things I could do? How huge is this commitment? Am I committed? Should I be committed? I wonder what size straightjacket I’d wear? My mind climbed the ladders to these lofty questions, and then it found a chute and jumped headfirst. The lofty questions mingled with the old set of relationship questions, and my mind ventured down all the well worn paths it has trod before, all the parallel universes in which I didn’t say this or did recognize that warning sign or missed an opportunity or or or…

Then I realized that all my dread and neuroses were misplaced. When did my relationship with God start mirroring my relationships with women? Now, this is nothing new: the great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures often compared God’s relationship with Israel to a marriage, sometimes favorably, sometimes not so much. But, in those comparisons, God was always faithful–it was the people of Israel who broke the covenant and went after false gods. My dread came from confusing mine and God’s parts in the story. In my neurotic imaginings, God played the part of the leaver in the relationship. I was the faithful one, the stalwart. But that’s not how it is. The only thing that keeps me going in a world that seems full of leavings, full of broken relationships, is the faith that God will never leave, will never break a relationship. What a revelation.

My ordination is in five days. You might think it strange that someone about to be ordained to the priesthood seems just to be figuring out that God is here to stay. Well, it’s not the first time I’ve realized it, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I need to. But faith is about remembering to remember. It’s easy to lose sight of God’s promises because life is built on those promises. Over time, they blend into the landscape. Small bouts of existential dread and dark afternoons of the soul jar me into remembering to remember those promises.

At the end of the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus says, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Lord, help me remember that you are in this relationship for good. Help me remember that my neuroses aren’t going to scare you away. Help me be in this relationship with you.

Who’s to say where the wind will take you?

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

Adam, a follower of Christ,

to all those who find this blog through the Series of Tubes.

Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

The Apostle Paul really nailed the beginnings of his letters, so I thought I’d borrow his intro formula to begin my blog. Paul journeyed all over the Mediterranean following the little dotted purple and blue and red lines you see on the maps in the back of your study Bible. I’m afraid I can’t afford the airfares to Thessalonica or Ephesus, so I will have to rely on the Interwebs to make a new set of dotted lines from my MacBook to your computer. Since you’re probably in modern day Scranton or Lubbock rather than ancient Greece, I think the Internet is the way to go.

Pop over to the “About” page for an introduction to the blog. I look forward to your comments on future posts. I took the title of this blog from U2’s song, “Kite.” In the midst of the grief that spurred the song to be written, I hear the hope that wind will continue to carry us on. I don’t know U2’s source material for this song, but I can’t get Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus out of my head when I hear the chorus. Jesus says, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In Greek, wind and spirit are the same word (pneuma). Who’s to say where the wind will take me? Who’s to say where the Spirit is leading me? In this blog, I will reflect on the movement of God in my life, the movement that dances on the wind of the Spirit. I invite you to follow my reflections and discern how God is moving in your own life.

Here’s that U2 song in case you’ve never heard it. It’s on their album All That You Can’t Leave Behind: