Tag: Jesus

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.

Sally has six tangerines

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

(Sermon for August 3, 2008 || Proper 13, Year A RCL || Matthew 14:13-21)

“We have nothing here.”

This is the disciples response to Jesus’ preposterous notion that they might possibly find enough food to feed all these people—five thousand men plus countless women and children. They followed Jesus here to this desert to be near him, to feel his compassion and his healing touch. They followed Jesus here and now the evening has come and the crowd is restless, hungry, pressing in. The place is deserted: there’s no vendor anywhere. The hour is late: there’s no time to search. The crowd is massive: there’s no food anyway, not even for the disciples.

“We have nothing here.”

The disciples rummage in empty rucksacks, hoping that a further perfunctory exploration of their food stores will mollify Jesus. “They need not go away,” he had said. “You give them something to eat,” he had said. But they aren’t expecting us to feed them; we’re under no obligation. Furthermore, we can’t give what we don’t have! And…

“We have nothing here!”

To punctuate their point, they turn over the last rucksack and shake it… “Oh, except for a few loaves and a couple fish.” They count them: five squashed loaves, two dry fish. They trace figures in the air—so that’s one loaf per thousand men and two-fifths of a fish. They raise doubtful eyebrows when Jesus asks them to bring him these pitiful scrapings from the bottom of that last rucksack. They start chuckling, but their laughter dies when they look at Jesus’ face. They’ve seen that look before. They know what it means. They bring him the loaves. They bring him the fish. And they wait, incredulous but expectant.

“We have nothing here.” The world suffocates us with this lie so often that we forget we ever knew how to breathe. You will have no friends until you wear this catalogue. You will have no transportation until you drive this luxury car. You will have no romance until you purchase this diamond. You will have no beauty until after your gastric bypass.

“We have nothing here.” Suffocation leads to apathy and apathy leads to hopelessness. And hopelessness drives away from us any thought that we can participate in changing the world.

“We have nothing here.” These are hopeless words, empty words, words incapable of carrying promise or releasing imagination. These words stifle creativity and leave no space for the deep breath of blessing.

But Jesus invites us to take this deep breath with him when he says: “Bring them here to me.” The disciples take him the measly offering: five loaves and two fish. With no thought about how comically small an amount of food this meal is, Jesus looks up to heaven and blesses the offering. Then he breaks the bread and cuts up the fish. He hands the blessed food to his disciples, and they give it the crowds. And they keep giving away the food and giving it away and giving it away. All the people have their fill, and the disciples gather up quite a bit more than they began with.

This is, of course, not how math usually works. Math usually works like this: Sally has six tangerines. She gives Joe two of her tangerines. How many tangerines does Sally have? Four. Right. But the counterintuitive nature of Jesus’ blessing learned a different kind of math. Sally has six blessings. She gives Joe six of her blessings. How many blessings do Joe and Sally have? 12? 36? I’m unsure of the exact equation, but the mathematics of Jesus’ blessing always add and multiply; they never subtract or divide.

When Jesus offers blessing, say, in the form of bread broken and shared, Jesus offers himself. When we take him in, Jesus nourishes us with his blessing so we can bring that blessing to others. When we sing, we can lift our voices in one great song. When we tear down our walls, we can share our lives with one another. When we serve God in the world, we can demonstrate that every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. And blessing will spread and grow and multiply. When we share Jesus’ blessing in the form of our gifts and talents, we participate in Jesus’ divine math and discover that Jesus never exhausts his blessing.

The disciples fail this math lesson when they say, “We have nothing here,” because they do, in fact, have something! They have five loaves and two fish, which is seven more than nothing. In Jesus’ day, seven was a number of perfection, a number that signaled completion. So, the disciples miss another math class: 5+ 2 = Completion. They had the exact amount they needed, once Jesus’ blessing got hold of the food. But the disciples were too busy worrying about the nothing they thought they had to notice the something they had.

We have something here.

We have five loaves and two fish. Sure, they are a bit squashed and bit a dry. But we have them. Jesus, what can you do with them? You can bless them and break them and share them, and your nourishing sustenance can overflow through this deserted place.

We have something here.

We have a group of people who have come together to praise your name, O LORD, and to share in your blessing. They are fewer than, perhaps than there has been in years past, but they are here. Jesus, what can you do with them? Your blessing flows into and out of our hearts. Your gifts inspire us and your love moves us to serve in your name. And your nourishing sustenance overflows through this gathering.

We have something here.

We have all the good gifts Christ has given us. We have the grace and the energy to use those gifts to serve God in this world, this world that tries to suffocate us with the lie that we have nothing. But this lie vanishes when we take that deep breath of blessing, which comes from the Spirit of Christ. Christ blesses us in the breaking of the bread, and when we share that blessing it spreads and grows and multiplies. Thanks be to the God who blesses us to be blessings in the world.

We have something here.

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.

Eucharistic tachycardia

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment

I woke up this morning with my heart racing. I clutched my pillow (which sports faded images of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, C3PO, R2D2, and Darth Vader), took several ragged breaths, and waited for my heart to slow down. I had been sleeping. I wasn’t active at all. I don’t remember dreaming. I don’t have a heart condition. So why was my heart racing?

I had words going through my mind as I awoke: “On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said: ‘Take, eat: this is my Body which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.’ ”

These aren’t just any words. In the Episcopal Church, these are some of the “words of institution,” which are part of the Eucharistic prayer. This is the prayer we pray to remember our place in God’s story of salvation and grace, to fulfill Jesus’ wish at the Last Supper, and to ask Christ to indwell the bread and wine with his presence so that they become to us his Body and Blood. “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving”; therefore, when we participate in the Eucharistic prayer, we corporately thank God for all the gifts God has given us, most especially the gift of Jesus Christ our Lord. It’s no coincidence that the word “corporate” comes from the Latin word for “body.” We come together as the body of Christ to share the Body and Blood of Christ (Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians). This sharing of Christ opens our eyes and hearts to the presence of Christ already around and within us. We are nourished to renew our commitment to our Lord, to proclaim the love of God, and to do the work God has given us to do.

In the final chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, Cleopas and his companion meet a wayfarer on the road. They are leaving Jerusalem, defeated and despairing. But the wayfarer sees their predicament from another perspective. They have the story all wrong, he says. And he reframes the story they know into a new story in which violence doesn’t overcome peace, hate  can’t snuff out love, and life kicks death in the teeth. They reach their destination and ask the wayfarer to eat with them. When he breaks the bread, they realize Jesus has been with them all this time. They remember feeling like their hearts were on fire when he was speaking to them on the road. And they race back to Jerusalem to proclaim that they have seen the Lord!

Maybe that’s what happened to me this morning when I awoke with Jesus’ words in my head. My racing heart was burning within me as I thought about what I will do for the first time this Sunday. I am being ordained to the priesthood tomorrow, and I am overjoyed to be celebrating the Eucharist for the first time this weekend. If idly thinking the words of institution gets my heart racing, how will I feel in two days time? Nervous, I have no doubt (in all the gesturing, I’m convinced I’m going to knock over a chalice). Nervous, yes, but my joy is overriding my nerves. This joy springs from deep within me, from the place where Christ dwells, speaking words of love and grace into the very core of my being. Now I have the opportunity to preside at a celebration of this joy with other people. This fills me with awe–awe that God would use me to make known God’s love in the world, would ask me to serve God’s people as a priest.

One of the Eucharistic prayers prays these words: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”

Lord Jesus, please dwell in us so we can share your love in the world. Let us dwell in your presence, which infuses life with your nourishing grace and sets our racing hearts on fire.

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: