I was running late for aerobics class, eyeing the needle on the gas gauge bouncing merrily on E. Enough to zip to class, I thought. As I turned onto the Marsh Road entrance to I-95, I was stopped by the line of cars backed up all the way to the foot of the ramp. It was too late to take a different route. The back end of my car was blocking traffic. As I inched my way up, I saw cars lined up for miles in both directions. The traffic report on the radio said two lanes were closed precisely where I was, but no explanation why. Now, instead of bouncing, the needle was lodged firmly on E, with that little orange oval growing unnervingly brighter and brighter. I felt equal parts stupid and petrified.
When I finally got off the ramp, I pulled onto the shoulder and hit the hazard lights. I calmly pulled out my cell phone to call my husband. I was greeted with the "Recharge Battery" message, followed by Cingular's fade-out graphic and "bye". Cute, in an evil kind of way. And so I prayed. Help me. Give me strength. Wondering if this was theologically correct, actually, since I didn't believe in asking for parking spaces and well anything like that. I considered driving down the shoulder until I saw someone else do it, a cop chasing quickly behind. I sat in my cold car, hoping that the traffic would clear soon and I could make it to a gas station. After half an hour, it didn't.
So I wrote a polite, girly note to the highway patrol explaining my situation, stuck it under a windshield wiper and started walking. Immediately, people started offering to help, though I couldn't see how, since we weren't moving. I took a woman up on her offer to lend me her cell phone, though. Robert was sympathetic with only a tiny note of reproval. But he was late for his own travel plans, and could I handle this? I said y-yes. I couldn't see how he could reach me, anyhow.
The woman took back her cell phone and said, "Hop in. My name is Steph, by the way. I'm not a weirdo." Steph had no qualms about driving down the shoulder with her blinkers on. "There's only about two cops up this way anyway, and I'm sure they're both busy," she said. I liked her. She kept a five-gallon can of gas in her garage because of her 24-year-old son who drives a '98 Cadillac and tends to call her, out of gas. She said that his dad is very nice and would probably do it, but she thought kids called their moms for things like this. Dads tended to ask questions, like "How did you let this happen?" and "What were you thinking?" She said she had done plenty of dumb things herself to say anything like that.
We got off 95, reached her house in two shakes, and were miraculously back at my blinking car. She poured gas in my tank and sped off, barely giving me time to thank her.
I don't know how prayer works. I doubt it's like the scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" and that sweet, goofy angel, Clarence getting a call from Dispatch to go help George Bailey. But I do think some things are true. We have to be open to receive. I got nothing until I actually got out of my car and looked like someone who needed help. We have to accept that we deserve help, even when we are in our sweatpants with no make-up and dirty hair and had planned to brush our teeth in the locker room. Even when we put off getting gas and forget to charge our cell phones, and should know better. God loves us like a mom that doesn't judge us, just comes to get us. And we have to be the mom sometimes, for it to work.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Bright Line
I am picturing someone in Mark's community, telling the story of the Gerasene demon-possessed man. The Jesus stories were told in worship, and so I picture people gathered on the Sabbath, reciting the sh'ema, Hear Israel, The Lord your God, the Lord is one... And then it would be time for stories of their rebbe. Someone might tell this one like a ghost story, terrifying the little group with images of a moonless night, tombs, and a ferocious, filthy man. He would talk about how everyone else wanted to run away, but Jesus, Jesus was not afraid. Found love within himself for even this man. He would talk about the 2,000 pigs "running violently" to the edge of the cliff and drowning themselves, so there could be no question of a healing. He would tell of how, after the healing, the man sat on a rock, fully clothed, and ate a piece of bread and fish, drank a cup of wine. This scared the people in his town more than the way he was before, the storyteller would say, which always brought a laugh. Perhaps he would end his tale, And I begged Jesus to let me come with him, but he wouldn't. He told me instead to tell you about it.
You could say this is one person's way of sharing the healing and compassion he experienced with the rabbi. But I don't want to zap the life out of the story with plausible explanations. Jesus probably believed in demons like everyone else of his time. We do too, or we act as if we do.
In a church in Minneapolis where I was a secretary, they held a monthly activities club for people who lived in group homes, people who suffered from mental illness. It was called simply "The Third Thursday Club." It was held in the church basement, a grubby room as church basements tend to offer, led by a man named John. John was a shy young man with matted, blonde hair and a degree in social work. The staff tended to give the Third Thursday people (and sometimes John by association) a fairly wide berth. As I came to know John, I noticed that he didn't think he was being especially brave or generous for working with them. I asked him one time why people (including me) were so afraid of the mentally ill. "They're unpredictable," he said. "They don't say or do what you expect them to."
We medicate this. People with severe manic-depression tell me that they feel flattened on their medications. They can function - do what is expected in terms of job, family, caring for themselves - but feel very little joy or pain. No ability to make art or write poems, say. And, hungry for even a moment of emotional, creative life, they stop taking their medications. Horrible things happen. One man I know went missing for days, and was found sitting sunburnt in a field, unaware of who he was, or where he was, let alone the reek of piss and sweat on his clothes. I visited him in the hospital, and had whole conversations with him that he cannot remember now. He knows what danger he was in. He cannot forget the steep climb back to sanity and the community of the world. And the pain of the flatness, the hunger for vividness and truth still call to him. I will not be surprised if he tries it again.
I like a bright line separating me from folks like the "Third Thursday Club" or the man sitting in alone in that field. But there really isn't. Many people are fine until their illness strikes, much to their families' broken-hearted surprise. Alzheimer's Disease certainly works that way. It's easy to tell the story of the demon-possessed man as if he were something wholly other than myself. He is certainly an extreme case. But perhaps the extremity is once again the point. You can't help noticing how Jesus goes out and claims the worst people - all the people who are on the other side of the bright line - unclean women, adulterers, lepers, the lame, the violent and mentally ill - and loves them as his own. The man once possessed by demons can testify that love healed him, and he is one of us.
You could say this is one person's way of sharing the healing and compassion he experienced with the rabbi. But I don't want to zap the life out of the story with plausible explanations. Jesus probably believed in demons like everyone else of his time. We do too, or we act as if we do.
In a church in Minneapolis where I was a secretary, they held a monthly activities club for people who lived in group homes, people who suffered from mental illness. It was called simply "The Third Thursday Club." It was held in the church basement, a grubby room as church basements tend to offer, led by a man named John. John was a shy young man with matted, blonde hair and a degree in social work. The staff tended to give the Third Thursday people (and sometimes John by association) a fairly wide berth. As I came to know John, I noticed that he didn't think he was being especially brave or generous for working with them. I asked him one time why people (including me) were so afraid of the mentally ill. "They're unpredictable," he said. "They don't say or do what you expect them to."
We medicate this. People with severe manic-depression tell me that they feel flattened on their medications. They can function - do what is expected in terms of job, family, caring for themselves - but feel very little joy or pain. No ability to make art or write poems, say. And, hungry for even a moment of emotional, creative life, they stop taking their medications. Horrible things happen. One man I know went missing for days, and was found sitting sunburnt in a field, unaware of who he was, or where he was, let alone the reek of piss and sweat on his clothes. I visited him in the hospital, and had whole conversations with him that he cannot remember now. He knows what danger he was in. He cannot forget the steep climb back to sanity and the community of the world. And the pain of the flatness, the hunger for vividness and truth still call to him. I will not be surprised if he tries it again.
I like a bright line separating me from folks like the "Third Thursday Club" or the man sitting in alone in that field. But there really isn't. Many people are fine until their illness strikes, much to their families' broken-hearted surprise. Alzheimer's Disease certainly works that way. It's easy to tell the story of the demon-possessed man as if he were something wholly other than myself. He is certainly an extreme case. But perhaps the extremity is once again the point. You can't help noticing how Jesus goes out and claims the worst people - all the people who are on the other side of the bright line - unclean women, adulterers, lepers, the lame, the violent and mentally ill - and loves them as his own. The man once possessed by demons can testify that love healed him, and he is one of us.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Demon-Possessed
"Bill" was a large man, tall with a great gut and dark, deeply shadowed, burning eyes. I had looked away instinctively as he stood in our copy room and stopped me for conversation. He was copying sheets of math problems, by the hundreds it seemed. The secretary told him he could, he explained. Your sermon was great, he said. I watched it over and over on video. He clearly had - he could quote whole lines. All with a stare that looked like I was his last meal.
People reassured me about him without being asked. He was harmless, they said. I heard that he had grown up in the church, that he was schizophrenic. Medicated. He was too anxious to sit through worship in the sanctuary and watched it on TV from the parlor with the moms and fussy babies. Some of the mothers cruelly dubbed this room "Bellevue" because of him and our other "misfits". There was John, who giggled nervously, interrupted conversation and killed half the coffee by continuously refilling a giant thermos, and Alan, a sweet young man with Downs Syndrome. John and Alan looked hurt by the rejection sometimes, and left for periods of time. Bill just stared the mothers down, and told them to keep their kids quiet.
Word was getting around that he had a crush on me. He was telling anyone who would listen. Bill tended to develop crushes on women in the church, pursuing them, watching for signs. If you didn't nip it in the bud, people said, it would intensify. I asked him to come in and told him in the presence of the senior minister that he had better cut it out. He left with great insult, complained about having had to take two buses for a special trip in here. And the romance stopped.
He next chose another woman on our staff. Either she was kinder than I was to him, or his ardor for her was stronger, because he courted her with all his being. He copied interesting articles for her from the newspaper. He left bags of day-old bread from the free food pantry in front of her office door. He telephoned her at home. He sent her letters calling her his soul mate, and the only one who understood him. She was afraid to come to work.
People who spoke to him, telling him to stop, simply didn't understand, the letters said. When she showed them to a psychologist in the congregation, he became alarmed for her. So she got a court order, banning him from church, her place of employment. All of us who had been swept up in the fear and the wondering what to do, exhaled for a moment.
A few days after he received the order, his father telephoned me. I was acting as senior minister for six months of sabbatical, and Bill's father clearly saw me as deciding between the staff member and his son. You've got to let him come back, he pleaded with me. He has no place else to go. I thought this was a church. I thought you cared about people. I felt horrible. I did not try to lift the ban.
A year later, the staff member quit her job. Someone had told Bill. He sought an audience with the senior minister, who had returned, and he agreed Bill could come back. He tells a few people that it was she who loved him. No one believes him, but he has not bothered anyone since.
Some feel that people possessed by demons in the gospels were mentally ill. What would Jesus have done with Bill? Would I do it? Would you?
People reassured me about him without being asked. He was harmless, they said. I heard that he had grown up in the church, that he was schizophrenic. Medicated. He was too anxious to sit through worship in the sanctuary and watched it on TV from the parlor with the moms and fussy babies. Some of the mothers cruelly dubbed this room "Bellevue" because of him and our other "misfits". There was John, who giggled nervously, interrupted conversation and killed half the coffee by continuously refilling a giant thermos, and Alan, a sweet young man with Downs Syndrome. John and Alan looked hurt by the rejection sometimes, and left for periods of time. Bill just stared the mothers down, and told them to keep their kids quiet.
Word was getting around that he had a crush on me. He was telling anyone who would listen. Bill tended to develop crushes on women in the church, pursuing them, watching for signs. If you didn't nip it in the bud, people said, it would intensify. I asked him to come in and told him in the presence of the senior minister that he had better cut it out. He left with great insult, complained about having had to take two buses for a special trip in here. And the romance stopped.
He next chose another woman on our staff. Either she was kinder than I was to him, or his ardor for her was stronger, because he courted her with all his being. He copied interesting articles for her from the newspaper. He left bags of day-old bread from the free food pantry in front of her office door. He telephoned her at home. He sent her letters calling her his soul mate, and the only one who understood him. She was afraid to come to work.
People who spoke to him, telling him to stop, simply didn't understand, the letters said. When she showed them to a psychologist in the congregation, he became alarmed for her. So she got a court order, banning him from church, her place of employment. All of us who had been swept up in the fear and the wondering what to do, exhaled for a moment.
A few days after he received the order, his father telephoned me. I was acting as senior minister for six months of sabbatical, and Bill's father clearly saw me as deciding between the staff member and his son. You've got to let him come back, he pleaded with me. He has no place else to go. I thought this was a church. I thought you cared about people. I felt horrible. I did not try to lift the ban.
A year later, the staff member quit her job. Someone had told Bill. He sought an audience with the senior minister, who had returned, and he agreed Bill could come back. He tells a few people that it was she who loved him. No one believes him, but he has not bothered anyone since.
Some feel that people possessed by demons in the gospels were mentally ill. What would Jesus have done with Bill? Would I do it? Would you?
Bay of Pigs
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” 10He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” 13So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
This story has so much going on! Demons, healing, scary tombs and spirits. And pigs, poor things. Jesus and his guys have just gotten off the boat, which they seem to do a lot. Jesus has stilled the storm, reminiscent of the Psalms where people praise God for stilling the storm for them. He rebukes it (or bukes it, as the old Gospel songs say), and the same word is used for the way he responds to the demons inside this man. Rebuke. Sure, it's easy to dismiss as propaganda. This seems to be about establishing Jesus as superhero, master of storms, demons and all manner of frights.
But it's also clearly a story about fear. William Barclay tells us how frightening this story would have been in ancient times. It has to happen at night, given the events before it, and going out at night is always a dangerous idea. They land where there are limestone burial caves, a place that would have been considered unclean for its association with the dead. They are also where demons were most likely to be. The ancient Jewish world believed that there were thousands of 'hurtful spirits' all around us, ready to strike. The air here would have hummed, buzzed, and swam with them. Then out comes this naked guy, right up to the boat! He seems to know Jesus. He comes to meet him - and then tells him to leave him alone. His mind is gone. Sometimes he speaks of himself in the plural, sometimes in the singular. He is full of cuts and gashes. A broken shackle trails from each wrist. Containing him has not worked. Nothing separates him from us.
If I were one of the disciples on that boat, I would have been lobbying for a different landing, or perhaps even thinking about a graceful exit. Jesus makes several attempts to heal this man, assuming that it is healing that he needs. Simply telling the demon to come out doesn't work. Getting the name of a supernatural being is supposed to give you an advantage, and this doesn't work, either. What if nothing works?
He tells Jesus his name - sort of - Legion, for there are so many of us. "Legion" is actually the term used for a Roman military unit, 6,000 men. Now the "ghost story" has some real world dangers in it. If Mark's audience wasn't scared of demons, they were certainly afraid of the Romans that swept through their land, raping and murdering. Some have suggested that the demon-possessed man named his affliction after them because of the horrors he had witnessed at their hands. Today he may have said 'Al-Qaeda'. The story works well on a purely political level. Jesus was a prophet, as well as a healer, and the early Christians as well as the Jews suffered mightily under the Romans. The image of pigs hurtling into the water would echo Pharoah's army drowning in the Red Sea; it would have carried a nice sense of "once and for all".
But suppose the man simply meant to convey the sheer force of these demons, so many he can't count them? I think of mental institutions and prisons where violent souls are locked away from us. They were horrific places until very recently; some still are. I think about what police and those working in prisons have said, that they 'deal with them' in our names, they allow the rest of us to have our good impression of humanity intact.
I don't know how much, if anything, in this story really happened. I believe that Jesus showed remarkable courage and healed all sorts of losers. Wasn't afraid to be around them, to suffer with them. I'm not stupid, though. I think people need protection. I don't think "a little love" will transform violent criminals. I'm just trying to stay in the boat, to still believe that it's right to try to heal - everyone - no exceptions, even and especially in the midst of fear.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Bread Temptation
Jesus is famished, and Satan offers a friendly suggestion. "Why don't you use your Super God Powers to make yourself a snack?" Jesus' answers to the Devil sound so lofty to me. Helpful quotations. Jesus says, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, ("but by the word of God", adds Matthew).'" And to the other temptations - to have power over whole cities if you worship Satan and to prove that you can do anything you want and God will protect you, he is equally prim: "You shall worship only God" and "Don't put God to the test." When I am hungry, or feeling powerless and afraid, and I have to think Jesus was, abstract principles do not help. Picking up my Bible and finding the appropriate passage wouldn't do it.
Every addict knows the temptation to make bread from stones, to think we can rule over cities, to risk ruin to our bodies and think that nothing can touch us. We can control everything in our path, and if there is nothing life-giving in sight, we can create it from booze. Or drugs. Or sex. (For some it may be logic, or ambition or another person, though these have the disadvantage of being slower cooking in their misery.) In my case it's food. I think I can find comfort, companionship, and freedom from feeling there, bread from stone if there ever was. And many of us have to feel the misery of saying yes to Satan and be desperate and ashamed enough to grab someone's offer for help. I have known the demon of compulsive eating for years, and am grateful every day for the fellowship of addicts who have been the voice of God's love to me. These humble people, the most spiritually mature people I've ever run into, know they need God. That we control nothing.
We all have something that calls to us, and tries to lure us into throwing ourselves away. God's countering word has to come through human beings, I think. Jesus must have had it so deeply infused in him - through his family, through his community with John the Baptist - that when he went into the desert it came with him.
Every addict knows the temptation to make bread from stones, to think we can rule over cities, to risk ruin to our bodies and think that nothing can touch us. We can control everything in our path, and if there is nothing life-giving in sight, we can create it from booze. Or drugs. Or sex. (For some it may be logic, or ambition or another person, though these have the disadvantage of being slower cooking in their misery.) In my case it's food. I think I can find comfort, companionship, and freedom from feeling there, bread from stone if there ever was. And many of us have to feel the misery of saying yes to Satan and be desperate and ashamed enough to grab someone's offer for help. I have known the demon of compulsive eating for years, and am grateful every day for the fellowship of addicts who have been the voice of God's love to me. These humble people, the most spiritually mature people I've ever run into, know they need God. That we control nothing.
We all have something that calls to us, and tries to lure us into throwing ourselves away. God's countering word has to come through human beings, I think. Jesus must have had it so deeply infused in him - through his family, through his community with John the Baptist - that when he went into the desert it came with him.
Prove It
The Devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Luke 4:3
If you are the Son of God... Saying you don't believe Jesus was/is the only Son of God will quickly land you in the Not Christian Club faster than just about anything. I have been asked to leave someone's home for admitting this. My rabbi friend Naomi defends me: If you don't believe Moses was divine, she argues, does that mean you're not Jewish? So there. I can think of all kinds of neat, smarty-pants arguments against Jesus' divinity. I am starting to think it's beside the point.
Believing too strongly that Jesus is the only Son of God also gets you in plenty of hot water. When I was a teenage fundamentalist (which I think would make a great movie title, by the way) I wanted a very real-time Jesus, a presence that I could sense all the time, like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I had something of a mystical bent even then, and odd things did happen. I believed that I spoke in tongues, and did so during prayer time at my junior youth group. I could start and stop it at will, though, which is a bit handy for an appearance of God. I actually don't know what was happening, but it felt like something I wasn't completely making up, either.
The problem was that I wanted more and more of this, these little miracles, these proofs that Jesus was the Son of God. The truth was, Jesus was becoming less real and my world was becoming more frightening. The twisted sort of comfort I felt in "blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake" was fading. I was a girl who carried her big, green Living Bible to school and witnessed for the Lord in English class. You can imagine how popular I was. Walking past other kids between classes felt like a blood sport. I needed the reassurance. Are you real? Are you really real? If you are the Son of God... I came to gradually realize that it wasn't enough. Jesus as a current, living presence left me altogether. And my heart broke. I gave up the whole thing.
And now I'm back. Little by little, he does start to live in me. I don't hear voices, I don't make strange utterances when I pray. He is more like the teacher that challenges and guides me, sometimes through other people, sometimes through the Gospels, sometimes through my own intuition. He holds up this daunting standard for loving everyone, even the people I can't stand. And then doing something about it. I don't ask if he is the Son of God, and I don't ask him to change stones into bread even when I'm as famished and taunted by demons. It's hard. And I feel him sometimes. Or I feel something of God happens when I pray and ask for help. It's enough.
If you are the Son of God... Saying you don't believe Jesus was/is the only Son of God will quickly land you in the Not Christian Club faster than just about anything. I have been asked to leave someone's home for admitting this. My rabbi friend Naomi defends me: If you don't believe Moses was divine, she argues, does that mean you're not Jewish? So there. I can think of all kinds of neat, smarty-pants arguments against Jesus' divinity. I am starting to think it's beside the point.
Believing too strongly that Jesus is the only Son of God also gets you in plenty of hot water. When I was a teenage fundamentalist (which I think would make a great movie title, by the way) I wanted a very real-time Jesus, a presence that I could sense all the time, like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I had something of a mystical bent even then, and odd things did happen. I believed that I spoke in tongues, and did so during prayer time at my junior youth group. I could start and stop it at will, though, which is a bit handy for an appearance of God. I actually don't know what was happening, but it felt like something I wasn't completely making up, either.
The problem was that I wanted more and more of this, these little miracles, these proofs that Jesus was the Son of God. The truth was, Jesus was becoming less real and my world was becoming more frightening. The twisted sort of comfort I felt in "blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake" was fading. I was a girl who carried her big, green Living Bible to school and witnessed for the Lord in English class. You can imagine how popular I was. Walking past other kids between classes felt like a blood sport. I needed the reassurance. Are you real? Are you really real? If you are the Son of God... I came to gradually realize that it wasn't enough. Jesus as a current, living presence left me altogether. And my heart broke. I gave up the whole thing.
And now I'm back. Little by little, he does start to live in me. I don't hear voices, I don't make strange utterances when I pray. He is more like the teacher that challenges and guides me, sometimes through other people, sometimes through the Gospels, sometimes through my own intuition. He holds up this daunting standard for loving everyone, even the people I can't stand. And then doing something about it. I don't ask if he is the Son of God, and I don't ask him to change stones into bread even when I'm as famished and taunted by demons. It's hard. And I feel him sometimes. Or I feel something of God happens when I pray and ask for help. It's enough.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Gym Spritual
Not from the Gospels today, but the morning. I am on the treadmill, trying to push the speed up to the point where I break a sweat. It's hard to do this and read my fabulous, favorite new book, The Wisdom Jesus, by Cynthia Bourgeault. She's an Episcopal priest and teacher of contemplative prayer. I think she's awesome, even if I have to work to get what she's talking about sometimes. She says Jesus is tricky because he's trying to get us past our "egoic operating system of dualistic perception". Most people won't bang their heads against such abstraction, and then what good does it do? How is that a Jesus for everybody?
Then I start to get it. Basically, it's the way we tend to see our world - good/bad, in/out, better or worse - and all in terms of ourselves. How do I stack up? Does he have more than I do? Am I going to get mine? Then she starts to dish about Paul's notion of kenosis - self-emptying love, based on God's abundance and extravagance. Those of you who are more experienced students of the New Testament are probably well-versed in this, but it's a new one on me. Especially coming from Paul, not my favorite person. Jesus says we can get to the divine within ourselves not by purifying it or protecting it (as taught by the ascetics, including John the Baptist and lots of uptight people of various religious persuasions) but by spending it recklessly, the way God does on us. Then God's love is present in the world. Suddenly I see this in all kinds of parables and teachings: The sower who throws seeds everywhere, including stupid places where it could never grow; the hidden treasure and pearl of great price, where the finder blows his whole budget for this one thing, the dad in the prodigal son story; the good shepherd who lets all his other sheep wander off to save the one. It's in the instruction to not hide your light under a bushel (oil was precious in those days, usually saved for emergencies by most) and especially to lose your life to find it.
And I am so grooving on this, seeing how it applies to people of all different beliefs and talents and personalities, not just Christians. It sounds so simple, and cliched to say that love is the most important thing, that this is the reason for anyone to pursue a spiritual path, to learn how to do this. We learn how to connect to the source of that love and to offer it to others, or as Bourgeault would say, we are connected to God when we do this extravagant practice of love.
Meanwhile, I am also plugged into the overhead TVs showing CNN. Between spiritual insights I am caught up in Michelle Obama's inaugural ball gown (gorgeous, and well, sure if you're tall and thin like her you can wear anything) and the Academy Award picks (so political, these things). Afterwards, I'm in Brew Ha-Ha! our local coffee shop - love this sabbatical - and annoyed as hell as a young mom talks loudly and continually to her friends about school uniforms and swim practice and some juicy gossip about someone they know who is preggers even though her husband had a vasectomy three years ago... and I can't tune her out. While I'm reading my spiritual book, thank you very much, and I wonder who it is?
Doing this Jesus stuff in the real world might be harder than it looks.
Then I start to get it. Basically, it's the way we tend to see our world - good/bad, in/out, better or worse - and all in terms of ourselves. How do I stack up? Does he have more than I do? Am I going to get mine? Then she starts to dish about Paul's notion of kenosis - self-emptying love, based on God's abundance and extravagance. Those of you who are more experienced students of the New Testament are probably well-versed in this, but it's a new one on me. Especially coming from Paul, not my favorite person. Jesus says we can get to the divine within ourselves not by purifying it or protecting it (as taught by the ascetics, including John the Baptist and lots of uptight people of various religious persuasions) but by spending it recklessly, the way God does on us. Then God's love is present in the world. Suddenly I see this in all kinds of parables and teachings: The sower who throws seeds everywhere, including stupid places where it could never grow; the hidden treasure and pearl of great price, where the finder blows his whole budget for this one thing, the dad in the prodigal son story; the good shepherd who lets all his other sheep wander off to save the one. It's in the instruction to not hide your light under a bushel (oil was precious in those days, usually saved for emergencies by most) and especially to lose your life to find it.
And I am so grooving on this, seeing how it applies to people of all different beliefs and talents and personalities, not just Christians. It sounds so simple, and cliched to say that love is the most important thing, that this is the reason for anyone to pursue a spiritual path, to learn how to do this. We learn how to connect to the source of that love and to offer it to others, or as Bourgeault would say, we are connected to God when we do this extravagant practice of love.
Meanwhile, I am also plugged into the overhead TVs showing CNN. Between spiritual insights I am caught up in Michelle Obama's inaugural ball gown (gorgeous, and well, sure if you're tall and thin like her you can wear anything) and the Academy Award picks (so political, these things). Afterwards, I'm in Brew Ha-Ha! our local coffee shop - love this sabbatical - and annoyed as hell as a young mom talks loudly and continually to her friends about school uniforms and swim practice and some juicy gossip about someone they know who is preggers even though her husband had a vasectomy three years ago... and I can't tune her out. While I'm reading my spiritual book, thank you very much, and I wonder who it is?
Doing this Jesus stuff in the real world might be harder than it looks.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Jesus in the Desert: Jewish Family Dynamics
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led (Mark says “driven”) by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.
I was in the awesome art studio at Pendle Hill, a Quaker Retreat Center, making a collage of desert, doves, sand, and burned bushes. I copied down the Greek words for “Spirit” and “drove” (literally, pushed him out) in charcoal. This interested Yakov, a young rabbinical student throwing pots. He asked me to tell the story.
“God said, ‘You are my beloved Son,’ and then pushed Jesus out into the desert.”
“Huh,” said Yakov. “Then what happened?”
“Well, he struggled and suffered as the devil tempted him for forty days.”
“’You are my beloved son, now suffer.’ That sounds familiar.” He smirked at his mother, throwing her own pot. They both agreed it sounded like a Jewish family.
You do wonder - Why would Spirit do that? It makes more sense to feel all inspired, officially blessed, and then sprint outside, do some miracles, dispense some wisdom. How could you suddenly get so lost and scared? (I picture Jesus being scared.) It makes more sense to pin the whole suffering and desolation thing on Satan, and keep the two in separate cages.
Maybe he needed to see that God was with him there, even in a place of suffering. I think of my favorite Psalm, 139: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” Maybe he needed to feel what his people might feel, in order to know how to heal them, what to teach them. Otherwise you might simply preach success and prosperity, and when they vanish, so does your God.
I don’t know. Every purpose I come up with sounds like God intends for us to suffer, that it’s somehow good for us. I don’t buy that. When it comes to suffering, I’m less at home with “why” than “is”. Perhaps suffering is simply part of the vast “is” that is God.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Pearl of Great Price
Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
- Matthew 13:45
The pearl of great price is the twin brother of the Hidden Treasure story. Same brain twist. Just what would you have if you did this? You'd have a really great pearl, and nothing else. Don't be thinking this merchant kept anything back, either - clearly it cost him everything. Today you would also have maxed out your credit cards. What could possibly be worth that?
Robert and I visited my parents in Phoenix a few weeks ago. My dad is 85 and his body is rigid and slow. He takes several tries at things like dialing phone numbers. He is tired most of the time; the bypass surgery didn't restore his energy as we had hoped. And he is the sole caregiver to my stepmother, Marilyn, who has Alzheimers disease. She seems to me like a frame with a very faded picture inside. She can't follow conversations very well, and she dozes a good part of the day. My father takes her to the bathroom and tells her when it's time to go to bed, guiding her by the hand in their slow shuffle step, because she cannot find the bedroom. He gets her ready. In the morning, he pours her cereal and juice. After a few bites and she's lost interest, he points to the bowl - You got cereal there, Kid. She falls infrequently, and he does her exercises with her to build strength. There was a note from the visiting nurse after she was in the hospital, saying she should have 24-hour care. So far he hasn't mentioned it.
We all say they'd be in much better shape if they were in "assisted living". Someone could track her pills with greater precision. They could have prepared meals. He might meet some other people who haven't heard his jokes. And it's not likely to happen.
One morning I go into the kitchen and hear them laughing. I touch her back, and she starts, greeting me by name (which I'm not always sure she knows). Her voice is bright and youthful, her face somehow released from its sleepy mask. I ask about a gingerbread-making kit on their counter, and my father tells me that Marilyn used to make the best gingerbread cookies. Now they're just a memory. She smiles and sings, Thanks for the memories... He says her granddaughter Betsy came to visit them awhile back, and asked Marilyn to make some; they were her favorite as a child. Remember that? he asks. Nope, she says cheerfully, as if she might, just not this time. Marilyn couldn't remember what she put in them, he continues. They were awful. With perfect comic timing she sings loudly, Thanks for the memories... We laugh so hard.
This must be his pearl, I think. These flashes of her as she once was. He gives everything he has for this - mind, heart, body, everything.
- Matthew 13:45
The pearl of great price is the twin brother of the Hidden Treasure story. Same brain twist. Just what would you have if you did this? You'd have a really great pearl, and nothing else. Don't be thinking this merchant kept anything back, either - clearly it cost him everything. Today you would also have maxed out your credit cards. What could possibly be worth that?
Robert and I visited my parents in Phoenix a few weeks ago. My dad is 85 and his body is rigid and slow. He takes several tries at things like dialing phone numbers. He is tired most of the time; the bypass surgery didn't restore his energy as we had hoped. And he is the sole caregiver to my stepmother, Marilyn, who has Alzheimers disease. She seems to me like a frame with a very faded picture inside. She can't follow conversations very well, and she dozes a good part of the day. My father takes her to the bathroom and tells her when it's time to go to bed, guiding her by the hand in their slow shuffle step, because she cannot find the bedroom. He gets her ready. In the morning, he pours her cereal and juice. After a few bites and she's lost interest, he points to the bowl - You got cereal there, Kid. She falls infrequently, and he does her exercises with her to build strength. There was a note from the visiting nurse after she was in the hospital, saying she should have 24-hour care. So far he hasn't mentioned it.
We all say they'd be in much better shape if they were in "assisted living". Someone could track her pills with greater precision. They could have prepared meals. He might meet some other people who haven't heard his jokes. And it's not likely to happen.
One morning I go into the kitchen and hear them laughing. I touch her back, and she starts, greeting me by name (which I'm not always sure she knows). Her voice is bright and youthful, her face somehow released from its sleepy mask. I ask about a gingerbread-making kit on their counter, and my father tells me that Marilyn used to make the best gingerbread cookies. Now they're just a memory. She smiles and sings, Thanks for the memories... He says her granddaughter Betsy came to visit them awhile back, and asked Marilyn to make some; they were her favorite as a child. Remember that? he asks. Nope, she says cheerfully, as if she might, just not this time. Marilyn couldn't remember what she put in them, he continues. They were awful. With perfect comic timing she sings loudly, Thanks for the memories... We laugh so hard.
This must be his pearl, I think. These flashes of her as she once was. He gives everything he has for this - mind, heart, body, everything.
Yet Another Woman at the Well
Here's another waking dream. (This and the "hidden treasure" meditation were actually from exercises I wrote from a lovely book called Opening to God by Carolyn Stahl Bohler. I highly recommend it for getting yourself right into the story.)
I open the door. He says the obvious – “It’s cold out here – could I come in and warm up?” He adds, “Hate to bother you, Ma’am,” though I know he’s being polite. It’s like he knows he’s asking for something anybody with a whole warm house to herself could give. Rapists and robbers. I let him in. He looks at my coffee cup and says, “Got any coffee?” It’s obvious I do, a whole pot, you can smell it brewing. Where are my manners? My people always offer coffee, even when it’s not made.
I ask him to sit at our kitchen table, embarrassed that it’s fake wood, dented where my brother threw a heavy can of pears. Low-rent ‘70s, everything here. And I look at him – clearly he doesn’t care.
“Why are you here?” I blurt out. I’m thinking, I mean I can’t stop thinking about this being a black guy. This town has changed since I’ve lived here, but he must know the deal. “We don’t usually, that is…”
“Look,” he says. “It was cold, I just told you. And if you knew who was asking, you’d ask me for shelter. You would find warmth that never left you. I saw you reading in your window. I thought you looked lonely.”
Okay, there it is, sex. I am so disappointed. At least we’re on familiar ground, though. I know how to handle this.
“I know you can barely stand to be here,” he continues. “I know you and your father spent years not speaking, and this house scares you to death. I know how hard it’s been since your mother died. Rotten thing for an 11-year-old girl. And it’s still your house. Your dreams all happen here, don’t they?”
I stare at him. “How do you…” But there doesn’t seem to be any point in asking how or why he knows this. He suddenly seems like a bonanza of information. I wonder what else he knows. I go for broke, ask the biggest question I have. “I want to serve God, and I don’t know how,” I say.
“You knew enough to open your door. Your manners need a little work, but you finally gave me some coffee. It’s pretty simple. If you were to offer me dinner and a bed for the night, I’d say you get an A+. You know how to do those things.”
“Why is it so hard, then?”
“You’re afraid. Everyone is. People who talk about serving God talk about sin, but that’s pretty simple, too. Sin is everything that keeps you from opening that door.”
I am sitting in my parents’ living room, on the frayed, gold couch that has been here since I was in high school. They’re in Phoenix for the winter, and my husband is out buying groceries. I have just made some coffee and am sitting down with my novel. I can’t stop looking out the bay window, the one update they’ve made to this room. There is truly nothing to look at. Same dull street I couldn’t wait to leave. Dirty snow. Bitter Minnesota winter day. Absolutely quiet.
I open the door. He says the obvious – “It’s cold out here – could I come in and warm up?” He adds, “Hate to bother you, Ma’am,” though I know he’s being polite. It’s like he knows he’s asking for something anybody with a whole warm house to herself could give. Rapists and robbers. I let him in. He looks at my coffee cup and says, “Got any coffee?” It’s obvious I do, a whole pot, you can smell it brewing. Where are my manners? My people always offer coffee, even when it’s not made.
I ask him to sit at our kitchen table, embarrassed that it’s fake wood, dented where my brother threw a heavy can of pears. Low-rent ‘70s, everything here. And I look at him – clearly he doesn’t care.
“Why are you here?” I blurt out. I’m thinking, I mean I can’t stop thinking about this being a black guy. This town has changed since I’ve lived here, but he must know the deal. “We don’t usually, that is…”
“Look,” he says. “It was cold, I just told you. And if you knew who was asking, you’d ask me for shelter. You would find warmth that never left you. I saw you reading in your window. I thought you looked lonely.”
Okay, there it is, sex. I am so disappointed. At least we’re on familiar ground, though. I know how to handle this.
“I know you can barely stand to be here,” he continues. “I know you and your father spent years not speaking, and this house scares you to death. I know how hard it’s been since your mother died. Rotten thing for an 11-year-old girl. And it’s still your house. Your dreams all happen here, don’t they?”
I stare at him. “How do you…” But there doesn’t seem to be any point in asking how or why he knows this. He suddenly seems like a bonanza of information. I wonder what else he knows. I go for broke, ask the biggest question I have. “I want to serve God, and I don’t know how,” I say.
“You knew enough to open your door. Your manners need a little work, but you finally gave me some coffee. It’s pretty simple. If you were to offer me dinner and a bed for the night, I’d say you get an A+. You know how to do those things.”
“Why is it so hard, then?”
“You’re afraid. Everyone is. People who talk about serving God talk about sin, but that’s pretty simple, too. Sin is everything that keeps you from opening that door.”
Hidden Treasure
The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. - Matthew 13:44
The Jews of Jesus’ time may well have been puzzled by this parable. Treasure in their stories came to the righteous, like Abba Judah who took care of the rabbis with all he had. Here, you have no idea if the finder is righteous or not. Probably not, given that he hides the thing. It also runs counter to another aspect of Jewish life, where treasure is something you bury and never recover, because your people are always fleeing from someone. They must have enjoyed imagining themselves as the finders.
Interpreters tend to focus on the joy of finding, the free gift of God's grace. You can't help but wonder, though, how the man would eat or where he would live, if he really sold everything. I see the treasure as the thing Joseph Campbell made famous when he urged us all to "follow our bliss." Gregg Levoy points out that if you follow your bliss, you'll have it, but it could indeed require you to sell everything, and make your life precarious. Here's a sort of waking dream I had about this:
I’m walking on the beach in Superior, Wisconsin, a town that has become poorer since my parents left it decades ago. Tourists don’t come here much. The beach is not kept well, gray and pebbly sand filled with debris. There is an old couple out there with me, a few families with kids. Even at the height of the summer sun, it is cool here. I take off my shoes anyway, cup my feet, ball to heel, bracing them against the rocks and cold water. Suddenly, my right heel hits a hard bump. It’s metal, the rounded corner of a box, dark green. I bend down to scrape away the sand, but it is packed in tightly. I feel crafty all of a sudden, possessive, and filled with desire.
I wait everybody out, pretending to read. I’m getting hungry, and it’s even colder with the sun dropping. I don’t care. I feel a strange joy filling me, and I can wait forever. Finally they start hauling coolers to their cars. I drive to K-Mart to get a cheap sweatshirt, flashlight, garden spade. The cashier wants to talk about my garden; fine, let her think that. When I return to the beach, it looks less friendly by dark. I’ve heard stories about drugs around here, after-hours. A strange feeling passes through me - as though I don't care what happens to me. I scrape and scrape, finding the contours of an old tackle box. It’s a deep green with scratches and pockmarks. I feel a panel with a tiny keyhole, the key long lost or kept somewhere by someone.
I carry the box back to my car, running the engine to get warm, and wrench it open with a large screwdriver. There is no fishing gear, but a tangle of gray-green muck. I pluck out an engagement ring, silver with several diamonds in an old setting, the largest cut square. It looks a lot like my mother’s. I gently untangle a silver chain with a pendant, a cut-out liberty dime with her birth date, 1921. Wedged in the side is a faded cloth purse that snaps at the top, and inside that, a thick curl of ones. There is a black and white photo from the 1940s, hand-colored, and I feel my heart inside my ears. My father and mother are slim, young, standing on a bridge looking away from the camera like models. She wears a smart pair of slacks and her hair whips across her face.
At the very bottom, are letters in a bold version of my dad’s handwriting. They are from Georgia where he was training for the Army, before they were married.
Dear Bev, they feed us well here – lots of it, even if it’s not great... Dear Bev, I hope you like the work, and they’re treating you well at the shop. Probably won’t get much pay from the Jew... Dear Bev, It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from you. You know this is not right. We’ll just forget about the whole thing, kid – just come back...
My mom fell in love with her boss at the studio where she worked, coloring black and white photographs. He was married, and a Jew. She told my father about it, hoping to shock him. I only heard this story last year; toward the end of his life, my dad is now loosening up around the family secrets.
These treasures have long disappeared. The ring went to my sister, who had it reset in a more modern style. The necklace was mine briefly – dropped somewhere during track practice in the seventh grade. I’m sure she spent the money on rent and groceries. Did he write her any letters during their separation? What did she do with them?
Like anyone who has lost their mother young, I have longed all my life to touch her again, to hear her tell the stories, or not tell them, more likely. I wrestle with my own decisions sometimes, staying or leaving. I would love to ask her: What should I do, Mom? Are you glad you came back? Her eyes fill with tears, with love, and she doesn’t say.Sunday, January 18, 2009
You Are My Beloved
Mark 1:9-13
When Robert and I were in Israel, we went to the Jordan River in Yardenit. It's quite a production they have there, one of the biggest attractions in "Jesus Land," which is what we started calling the tourist parks built around holy Christian sites. People know Jesus wasn't baptized here but probably a few miles away. That land is under Palestinian control, however, and the Israelis are better organized. There's a concession stand with changing rooms to don the cheap white garments they sell. Plastic bottles for collecting holy water, only a few sheckels, Jordan River postcards, placemats, dishtowels. It looks clean and attractive, with pretty stone walls and airport-style guide rails to help form proper lines. People stand in line patiently. Pastor Jim stands in the water to dunk you backwards, and Pastor Bob says the words. There is even a video camera trained on the spot, recording every baptism, available for purchase. Something sweet about it, anyway. People who are watching with their cameras break into "Amazing Grace" and "Shall We Gather at the River".
I wade in by myself. I ask my husband to stop talking to me. I want something from this place, cheesy as it is. I want to make some sign of commitment. I say words like, "I freely choose to follow you on your difficult path." I have no idea what I'm doing.
I think about Jesus coming here to ask John for baptism. Matthew gives them a friendly argument: "No man, really. You should baptize me." But it seems more likely that Jesus would come to his cousin John, searching out a teacher, guide, and witness to his difficult choice of ministry. It says that people come to John to repent of their sins. "Sin" was never a big part of my excitement as a Christian, but I understand the desire for a fresh start, a way to shed your mistakes, to commit anew. I could see how Jesus would want this.
In Mark and Matthew, it's clearly a vision Jesus has, perhaps not something everyone else could see or hear: the heavens opening up, the dove coming down, the voice that says, "You are my beloved son; with you I am well-pleased." The dove (my friend David calls him "a bird of prey") drives Jesus out to the wilderness. Luke and Matthew say "led", but I think Mark packs more punch. He is in the wilderness for 40 days, echoing the Israelites' stumble through the wilderness for 40 years after liberation from slavery.
There are moments when I feel I'm clearly on the right path. I understand who I am and how precious I am to God. And moments later, I'm driven out into the unknown. You get such clear signals in the beginning - the heavens open up, the Red Sea parts. You belong to God, you get your sign, go. And then you promptly get lost. You wish there had been a video camera trained on the spot, recording what happened. Maybe it would help.
When Robert and I were in Israel, we went to the Jordan River in Yardenit. It's quite a production they have there, one of the biggest attractions in "Jesus Land," which is what we started calling the tourist parks built around holy Christian sites. People know Jesus wasn't baptized here but probably a few miles away. That land is under Palestinian control, however, and the Israelis are better organized. There's a concession stand with changing rooms to don the cheap white garments they sell. Plastic bottles for collecting holy water, only a few sheckels, Jordan River postcards, placemats, dishtowels. It looks clean and attractive, with pretty stone walls and airport-style guide rails to help form proper lines. People stand in line patiently. Pastor Jim stands in the water to dunk you backwards, and Pastor Bob says the words. There is even a video camera trained on the spot, recording every baptism, available for purchase. Something sweet about it, anyway. People who are watching with their cameras break into "Amazing Grace" and "Shall We Gather at the River".
I wade in by myself. I ask my husband to stop talking to me. I want something from this place, cheesy as it is. I want to make some sign of commitment. I say words like, "I freely choose to follow you on your difficult path." I have no idea what I'm doing.
I think about Jesus coming here to ask John for baptism. Matthew gives them a friendly argument: "No man, really. You should baptize me." But it seems more likely that Jesus would come to his cousin John, searching out a teacher, guide, and witness to his difficult choice of ministry. It says that people come to John to repent of their sins. "Sin" was never a big part of my excitement as a Christian, but I understand the desire for a fresh start, a way to shed your mistakes, to commit anew. I could see how Jesus would want this.
In Mark and Matthew, it's clearly a vision Jesus has, perhaps not something everyone else could see or hear: the heavens opening up, the dove coming down, the voice that says, "You are my beloved son; with you I am well-pleased." The dove (my friend David calls him "a bird of prey") drives Jesus out to the wilderness. Luke and Matthew say "led", but I think Mark packs more punch. He is in the wilderness for 40 days, echoing the Israelites' stumble through the wilderness for 40 years after liberation from slavery.
There are moments when I feel I'm clearly on the right path. I understand who I am and how precious I am to God. And moments later, I'm driven out into the unknown. You get such clear signals in the beginning - the heavens open up, the Red Sea parts. You belong to God, you get your sign, go. And then you promptly get lost. You wish there had been a video camera trained on the spot, recording what happened. Maybe it would help.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Woman with the Flow of Blood
Mark 5:25-34, Matthew 9:20-22, Luke 8:42-48
On his way to a proper healing for someone important, someone sneaks up on our man from behind. "A certain woman", my KJV calls her. We know an amazing amount about her. She has been suffering for 12 years with a continuous flow of blood. Smart money says it's menstrual blood, and she, like the woman at the well, would have been persona non grata in her community. If she'd ever had a husband, he would have been within his rights to leave her, perpetually unclean and childless as she was. She certainly shouldn't have been out among a crowd like this. She had gone to numerous physicians, spent all she had and "endured much" under them - ineptitude, disappointment, and probably contempt. We even hear her thoughts, "If I touch but his clothes, I will be made well (whole, King James says)." She touches "the edge of his cloak" - and right away she feels the change in her body. The bleeding just stops. Just as quickly, Jesus feels power leave him, and demands to know who touched him. The disciples say, "Dude, there's a crowd. Everybody's touching on you." In the middle of the ruckus, she steps forward, shaking and terrified. She tells "the whole truth" like admitting to a crime. And he says, "Daughter," bringing her back into the family with one word, as Virginia Stem Owen says. "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your illness."
The first thing I'd like to know is, why do they tell this story? I am embarrassed to bring it to my adult Bible study which includes one or two men. Even in this day and age of TV commercials for all manner of "feminine products", it still doesn't make for a nice church discussion. For the early Christians, this topic must have been of unspeakable shame. No wonder she felt she had to steal her healing instead of asking outright. She would have made Jesus unclean by touching him - thus her rationalizing that she was just going to touch the very edge of his sleeve...
Exaggeration in the Bible works like big arrows pointing to something. So this isn't just a story about a woman. It's about a scheming, underhanded woman who sneaks up on you. It's about a woman who was unclean with her period. An unclean woman who has had her period for twelve years. And Jesus says "You are a daughter of God. Your faith is the real miracle." Thanks be to God.
On his way to a proper healing for someone important, someone sneaks up on our man from behind. "A certain woman", my KJV calls her. We know an amazing amount about her. She has been suffering for 12 years with a continuous flow of blood. Smart money says it's menstrual blood, and she, like the woman at the well, would have been persona non grata in her community. If she'd ever had a husband, he would have been within his rights to leave her, perpetually unclean and childless as she was. She certainly shouldn't have been out among a crowd like this. She had gone to numerous physicians, spent all she had and "endured much" under them - ineptitude, disappointment, and probably contempt. We even hear her thoughts, "If I touch but his clothes, I will be made well (whole, King James says)." She touches "the edge of his cloak" - and right away she feels the change in her body. The bleeding just stops. Just as quickly, Jesus feels power leave him, and demands to know who touched him. The disciples say, "Dude, there's a crowd. Everybody's touching on you." In the middle of the ruckus, she steps forward, shaking and terrified. She tells "the whole truth" like admitting to a crime. And he says, "Daughter," bringing her back into the family with one word, as Virginia Stem Owen says. "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your illness."
The first thing I'd like to know is, why do they tell this story? I am embarrassed to bring it to my adult Bible study which includes one or two men. Even in this day and age of TV commercials for all manner of "feminine products", it still doesn't make for a nice church discussion. For the early Christians, this topic must have been of unspeakable shame. No wonder she felt she had to steal her healing instead of asking outright. She would have made Jesus unclean by touching him - thus her rationalizing that she was just going to touch the very edge of his sleeve...
Exaggeration in the Bible works like big arrows pointing to something. So this isn't just a story about a woman. It's about a scheming, underhanded woman who sneaks up on you. It's about a woman who was unclean with her period. An unclean woman who has had her period for twelve years. And Jesus says "You are a daughter of God. Your faith is the real miracle." Thanks be to God.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Woman at the Well - Part 3
The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water..."
She asks a perfectly reasonable, even obvious question. In today's parlance, she "names the issue". Wouldn't you have wanted to know? His answer doesn't really allow for a serious conversation about it, nor does it make any sense. It's a magician's answer, designed to deflect attention away from the obvious. John puts the focus on Jesus' divinity when he emphasizes "who it is that is saying [this] to you." But I can't get past the first part of his answer - "If you knew the gift of God..."
Do I know the gift of God, the living water that is right in front of me? I think about my favorite scene from the play "Our Town", where Emily, who has died in childbirth, gets to come back to revisit one day of her life. She chooses her twelfth birthday. She is appalled by how oblivious everyone is, including her 12-year-old self, to the short, sweet day in which they are alive. She asks the stage manager, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?" He's skeptical: "Saints and poets some," he says.
This, of course, is the genius of Jesus, our saint and poet. He gets it. God, deliver me from my "serious issues" that keep me demanding answers and not tasting the water you give.
She asks a perfectly reasonable, even obvious question. In today's parlance, she "names the issue". Wouldn't you have wanted to know? His answer doesn't really allow for a serious conversation about it, nor does it make any sense. It's a magician's answer, designed to deflect attention away from the obvious. John puts the focus on Jesus' divinity when he emphasizes "who it is that is saying [this] to you." But I can't get past the first part of his answer - "If you knew the gift of God..."
Do I know the gift of God, the living water that is right in front of me? I think about my favorite scene from the play "Our Town", where Emily, who has died in childbirth, gets to come back to revisit one day of her life. She chooses her twelfth birthday. She is appalled by how oblivious everyone is, including her 12-year-old self, to the short, sweet day in which they are alive. She asks the stage manager, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?" He's skeptical: "Saints and poets some," he says.
This, of course, is the genius of Jesus, our saint and poet. He gets it. God, deliver me from my "serious issues" that keep me demanding answers and not tasting the water you give.
Woman at the Well - Part 2
Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water.
The gospel makes a point of saying the story takes place at noon. In those times, a woman coming to draw well alone at noon is suspicious. Most women collected water in the morning when it was cool, with other women for company. This well is also half a mile from Sychar where she lives - there had to be one closer. The message that she was not welcome at her own well is not in the text, but it doesn't have to be. We can imagine the open glares, the smothered laughter, the children hustled away. Under the law, she isn't just a bad example, she is contagion.
Jesus asks her for a drink of water, just flat-out asks her. Being spoken to by a strange man in a public place, in broad daylight, would have startled any woman. He doesn't have his own bucket, so he must drink from hers, probably made from animal skins. How sensuous that sounds to my modern sensibilities. Members of John's community hearing this story would also be primed for romance. Strangers meeting at the town well was the plot of many Jewish stories of romance and marriage - Rebecca and Isaac, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and, well, Mrs. Moses, I guess. This meeting would have scared the bejeebers out of people.
You can hear them asking, "Doesn't he know who she is?" In fact, he does, and tells her all about her five ex-husbands and current lover. The Gospel makes Jesus pull these facts out of the air. But William Barclay, in his classic series for home Bible study, suspects that we are getting an abbreviated version of this exchange, something like "minutes from a committee meeting". Barclay wonders if she doesn't see the piercing kindness in his eyes and pours out her heart to him.
I like this reading better, and not just because it's more plausible. It makes kindness the point, without the help of psychic powers. It asks more of me, in reaching out to people my culture teaches me to shun. Like the young man in my congregation arrested for sending child pornography to an undercover FBI agent. Having his house and car shown on the TV news makes him about as outcast as you can get. And hard for me to love. His mother is one of the kindest people in our church; she doesn't know what to make of this, but she loves her son. Because I love her, perhaps I can love him, too. I wonder if that's why Jesus is so lovable in the gospels.
The gospel makes a point of saying the story takes place at noon. In those times, a woman coming to draw well alone at noon is suspicious. Most women collected water in the morning when it was cool, with other women for company. This well is also half a mile from Sychar where she lives - there had to be one closer. The message that she was not welcome at her own well is not in the text, but it doesn't have to be. We can imagine the open glares, the smothered laughter, the children hustled away. Under the law, she isn't just a bad example, she is contagion.
Jesus asks her for a drink of water, just flat-out asks her. Being spoken to by a strange man in a public place, in broad daylight, would have startled any woman. He doesn't have his own bucket, so he must drink from hers, probably made from animal skins. How sensuous that sounds to my modern sensibilities. Members of John's community hearing this story would also be primed for romance. Strangers meeting at the town well was the plot of many Jewish stories of romance and marriage - Rebecca and Isaac, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and, well, Mrs. Moses, I guess. This meeting would have scared the bejeebers out of people.
You can hear them asking, "Doesn't he know who she is?" In fact, he does, and tells her all about her five ex-husbands and current lover. The Gospel makes Jesus pull these facts out of the air. But William Barclay, in his classic series for home Bible study, suspects that we are getting an abbreviated version of this exchange, something like "minutes from a committee meeting". Barclay wonders if she doesn't see the piercing kindness in his eyes and pours out her heart to him.
I like this reading better, and not just because it's more plausible. It makes kindness the point, without the help of psychic powers. It asks more of me, in reaching out to people my culture teaches me to shun. Like the young man in my congregation arrested for sending child pornography to an undercover FBI agent. Having his house and car shown on the TV news makes him about as outcast as you can get. And hard for me to love. His mother is one of the kindest people in our church; she doesn't know what to make of this, but she loves her son. Because I love her, perhaps I can love him, too. I wonder if that's why Jesus is so lovable in the gospels.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Woman at the Well - First Meditation
Read John 4:3-42. When I learn how to link, I'll hook you up with the NRSV. Until then, I trust you can find the ref.
Jesus meets this woman in a place outside a town called Sychar, which is in Samaria. The disciples probably tried to talk him out of going this way, even though it cut the trip to Galilee in half. They hated Samaritans. They were the offspring of Jewish-Assyrian marriages, and had formed their own hybrid community. (For the still-Jewish followers of Jesus in John's community who were being drummed out by the purists, this story would have special bite.)
Samaria was enemy territory, but it was holy ground. This is where Jacob lived, an ancestor they were horrified to hear the Samaritans claim as theirs, too. You say "Jacob" and a host of stories pop up - favorite sons and rejected daughters, trickery and wrestling with angels. He built his well here, his bones are here, and now the ground is holy. And not ours.
I traveled to Israel last spring. In looking for a tour, I learned to avoid the ones advertised with the words "Holy Land". It usually meant Pastor Bob's Walk in the Steps of Our Lord Tour and I was having none of that. When I heard Palestinians use the term, I changed my mind. It stood for the whole, suffering holy land that includes Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. How is the ground sacred, when more than one people wants it? Mosques were built over churches which were built over temples, layer upon layer, and at which layer do you stop and preserve? Stories of appearances by God are interspersed with historic battles and live threats. Your license plate is marked with a yellow tag if you are Israeli, lime green if you are Palestinian. Yellow could get a rock through your windshield, green could get you stopped by a teenage soldier with a semi-automatic weapon.
Traveling to the Holy Land showed me that I understood little of how hard tolerance is. How holy. It made my liberal ideals seem like the old Coca Cola commercial that showed photogenic young people of various ethnicities taking hands in a meadow and singing "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing". Here it meant people would be killed if they couldn't learn it. Going into unsafe territory changed me. As it did Jesus and his disciples.
Jesus meets this woman in a place outside a town called Sychar, which is in Samaria. The disciples probably tried to talk him out of going this way, even though it cut the trip to Galilee in half. They hated Samaritans. They were the offspring of Jewish-Assyrian marriages, and had formed their own hybrid community. (For the still-Jewish followers of Jesus in John's community who were being drummed out by the purists, this story would have special bite.)
Samaria was enemy territory, but it was holy ground. This is where Jacob lived, an ancestor they were horrified to hear the Samaritans claim as theirs, too. You say "Jacob" and a host of stories pop up - favorite sons and rejected daughters, trickery and wrestling with angels. He built his well here, his bones are here, and now the ground is holy. And not ours.
I traveled to Israel last spring. In looking for a tour, I learned to avoid the ones advertised with the words "Holy Land". It usually meant Pastor Bob's Walk in the Steps of Our Lord Tour and I was having none of that. When I heard Palestinians use the term, I changed my mind. It stood for the whole, suffering holy land that includes Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. How is the ground sacred, when more than one people wants it? Mosques were built over churches which were built over temples, layer upon layer, and at which layer do you stop and preserve? Stories of appearances by God are interspersed with historic battles and live threats. Your license plate is marked with a yellow tag if you are Israeli, lime green if you are Palestinian. Yellow could get a rock through your windshield, green could get you stopped by a teenage soldier with a semi-automatic weapon.
Traveling to the Holy Land showed me that I understood little of how hard tolerance is. How holy. It made my liberal ideals seem like the old Coca Cola commercial that showed photogenic young people of various ethnicities taking hands in a meadow and singing "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing". Here it meant people would be killed if they couldn't learn it. Going into unsafe territory changed me. As it did Jesus and his disciples.
A Year at the Well - Gospel Meditations
Gentle Readers:
I've been talking for years now about writing a book of meditations on the Gospels for religious liberals. It's the book I wanted to have when I became a Christian, and couldn't find. What was a friendly way to read the Gospels every day, I wondered, in tiny sips that might refresh but not intimidate with Long Workbook Questions or Repugnant Spins?
I'm now taking up the egregious privilege of a sabbatical, something that makes me feel a bit guilty (though not too guilty to take it!) I dearly wish there were sabbaticals for everyone doing every kind of work. This is what I've planned to do during my time away. Write. This. Book. And boy howdy it's harder than it looks to write something as grand as a book. I'm used to sermons, which have a nice, short deadline with very real consequences for goofing off - like the pain of looking stupid in front of my congregation with nothing to say.
So I thought perhaps writing entries as a blog would help; since I'm used to writing to someone, I shall now write to you. Thanks for the company.
I've been talking for years now about writing a book of meditations on the Gospels for religious liberals. It's the book I wanted to have when I became a Christian, and couldn't find. What was a friendly way to read the Gospels every day, I wondered, in tiny sips that might refresh but not intimidate with Long Workbook Questions or Repugnant Spins?
I'm now taking up the egregious privilege of a sabbatical, something that makes me feel a bit guilty (though not too guilty to take it!) I dearly wish there were sabbaticals for everyone doing every kind of work. This is what I've planned to do during my time away. Write. This. Book. And boy howdy it's harder than it looks to write something as grand as a book. I'm used to sermons, which have a nice, short deadline with very real consequences for goofing off - like the pain of looking stupid in front of my congregation with nothing to say.
So I thought perhaps writing entries as a blog would help; since I'm used to writing to someone, I shall now write to you. Thanks for the company.
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