I know that many are thinking about Ash Wednesday, or even preaching on it. Here are 1 or 2 scattered thoughts:
1. I am not in a Lenten mood. I find myself less excited about 40 days of fasting and whatnot than I usually am. Normally, Lent is right up my alley.
But what do we do for those of us for whom the liturgical year is not matching up to the realities of our life? I often wonder this, even as a big fan of the liturgical year. Where does Lent find us when we are excited about life, when we have had plenty of Lenten experiences over the last six or nine months? What happens if we've fasted for months, only to approach a feast-time in our hearts in Lent?
Perhaps there is such a thing as a happy Lent. The word itself comes from the same root word as 'lengthen,' as in, the days are getting longer, and so we have Lent in springtime. Lent is a celebration of spring. Should we march through it facing only the cross, pretending (because it would be pretend) that we don't know about the resurrection on the other side? Should we marching facing the resurrection, trying to ignore the unpleasantness that happens on the way?
Perhaps the hymn is right: "To bow the head in sackcloth and in ashes/ or rend the soul, such grief is not Lent's goal/ But to be led/ to where God's glory flashes his beauty to come near." What if Lent is a beautiful time?
2. I loathe praying in public restaurants, not to mention at home, and I proof-text the gospel lesson as my example. Don't pray in public indeed--go home and shut your door people. So I'm fond of this lesson.
But that does stand in interesting contrast to the Isaiah lesson--what is fasting and making humble but justice for the poor, the orphan, the widow, it asks. But if our fast is to be justice for these, we cannot very well do it in the quiet of our rooms. If all is not okay with the orphan and widow, should we put oil on our head and go about our business?
It's a tough contrast. I'm not sure how to resolve it.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Jesus the Clear
Last Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
2nd Corinthians 4:3-6
I want to talk this time around about 2nd Corinthians. And if I'm going to do that, we're going to have to talk about Paul, whose letters are likely anthologized and edited into the form that we have in 2nd Corinthians. So let's get this out of the way. Paul's an asshole. He's also very likely one of the best pastors, successful missionaries, and accidental theologians our Christian community has ever known.
So much debate on the popular level of Christianity these days, carried on in the front seats of cars and at brief Bible studies, hangs on whether the participants "like" Paul or not. In general, conservatives 'love' Paul; liberals, not so much. While I relate to desire to have that debate, I'm not sure the answer to that question does as much as we want.
For example, if Paul were here in the flesh, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like him. In his letters, he's often pompous, frequently angry, and insufferably self-righteous. Over the course of his life, it's pretty clear that he runs off a number of his friends, and he often undermines the very people who try to defend him. It would be interesting to compare Paul's character to Jesus'. It's hard to imagine two people who would have been less alike--although Jesus was hardly likable in his own way.
But even if I don't like Paul, or wouldn't have liked Paul in flesh, I'd have to admit that his writings are really pretty good--and more than pretty good, many of them are pretty amazing in spite of themselves. Sure, they have problems that very much reflect the man. It is very interesting to wonder if, as a member of the communion of saints, he regrets his hasty comments about sexuality and women. I have long suspected that were we to ask him, he would blame other people--somehow, that seems like his modus operandi to me, and I suspect that spiritual bodies change us only so much.
But anyone who has ever seriously heard his words at a funeral knows that the Holy Spirit speaks directly through them. "Neither height, nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities" and "putting on new bodies" indeed. For all that it is true that Paul was and may well still be an ass, that didn't prevent him from also being the accidental source for most of the New Testament. So profound were his thoughts and cares, and so deep his faith, that they still manage to come through even some of his worst moments.
And to anyone who struggles with Paul, I'll share one last thought. A very helpful mentor in my life once told me that the distance between me and someone I don't like is really only the distance between two different parts of myself. If Paul is a jerk, maybe how much that bothers us tells us more about us than about Paul. Our faith asks us neither to agree with Paul nor to like him. Our faith asks us to recognize God speaking in his writings and claim him as a member of our family.
So, as we look at this lesson 2nd Corinthians, it's helpful to note that Paul doesn't start it simply. "Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing." The god of this world has blinded the minds of those who are unbelievers, says Paul.
This passage alone is enormously difficult and could easily be controversial. It's one of those things we often let sail in church, and no one really listens to it, so no one really complains, and we all go about our business without dealing with the fact that it was just read in our midst. But deep down, I find that this phraseology bothers folks. It makes it sound like we live in clear-cut world, at least at a quick read, made worse when we don't acknowledge it. It makes it sound like: believer=life, unbeliever=perishing.
Perhaps the first quesiton is: Are, in fact, unbelievers perishing--that is, are people who aren't Christian dying? And Paul doesn't seem to mean this in some purely eschatological, end-of-the-world sense. He also doesn't seem to mean it in a strictly biological sense, as all of us, believing and otherwise, are still dying biologically. Instead, he seems to mean that right now, the 'perishing' are leaking life and becoming like the dead. Is that true?
That's a hard question. Most of us are friends with a great number of people who are not Christians, and either our fear or defensiveness immediately asserts itself to make us deny that unbelievers are perishing--that seems like a nasty thought about our friends. But the truth, at least in my experience, is quite a bit more complicated. I have known 'unbelievers' who were most definitely not perishing, but instead were gaining life. And I have known believers who were most definitely perishing, dying right there on the vine.
So let's do something unusual--let's cut Paul some slack, and let's assume that he is as bright as we are. Perhaps Paul, too, has had just this experience--that the relationship between perishing and belief is not so straightforward. And this certainly is true of Paul--after all, Jews, who were nonbelievers, do not seem to be perishing in Paul's view. And Paul has all kinds of writings about the believers who are be perishing.
So what, then, is Paul talking about? Perhaps, instead, he's making a general point, not intended to apply in every case. Just like I make general points like: going to the DMV sucks. Does it literally always suck? No--sometimes, it's quite painless. But nonetheless, I would assert without fear that going to the DMV sucks. Or going to the emergency room. That sucks, too--unless, of course, my heart has stopped, or I've broken a leg. Then, there's nowhere else I'd rather be--officially, being there does not suck in those situations. We, too, make general statements that are true, even if they have a number of perfectly good exceptions. So perhaps holding Paul to the letter of this sentence reveals not that Paul was childish, but that we're being childish.
Paul, therefore, on a the simplest level, seems to be noting the fact that not everyone believes this nutty business about Jesus. This is pretty obvious, something we all see as clearly in our own era as Paul had seen it in Corinth (which, I think we should try to remember, was the Branson, Missouri of the Roman Empire, if Branson were a primary seaport full of diverse ethnic groups, and if Branson specialized not in washed-up celebrities but in finest cheap hookers and easily obtained drugs. Las Vegas is much classier than Corinth was, so I think Branson captures it better).
So why don't other people 'get it'? That's the natural question, when we have gained so much life from our faith and other people role their eyes at us. Why doesn't everyone embrace new life? Paul says: well, it's like the god of this world has blinded their minds. It's like greed, the desire to live without pain, and the cruel happiness of the torturer have all occluded the mind's eye, like a cataract, or near-sightedness, or blindness. Paul isn't trying to say what all nonbelievers are like--he's trying to say what some of them are like, some of them that we encounter more often than we'd care to.
And then Paul moves forward with this analogy. What characterizes us, the Christians, is not that we proclaim ourselves 'Christians.' What characterizes us is not a proclamation about us. It is that we proclaim Jesus as Lord--and don't lose the power of that image and analogy. Jesus is the individual who owns us body and soul, the person who lets us lease his land so that we can grow our vegetables and livestock, the person who protects when neighboring countries attack. Jesus, an odd and short-lived individual from Nazareth and Galilee--that's our Lord. Not only this, but what further characterizes us is that, if we watch the grammar closely, we have declared that we are slaves to one another, out of respect for Jesus.
And then Paul adds this business about the same God who spoke light into being has spoken into being the knowledge in our heads about God in the light of Jesus' life. That's a really extended image, so let's unpack it for a moment. Here it is briefly:
God speaks. Heart opens. Sees Jesus in new way. Seeing Jesus is seeing God. We see a new thing about God.
So, let's put it all together. The passage seems not to be much about 'unbelievers.' It is, instead, reflecting how those who have been believing for a while might understand their own faith. Perhaps a worldly god has blocked the eyesight of others, says Paul, but whatever the case, this need not interfere with the truths we have seen. Instead, the passage is mostly about God has opened a new light in us, showing us to look at Jesus, and there we have seen the truth about God.
Whew. Reading Paul can be rather complex.
But what does this mean? A few things, I think, as we read these last lessons and then plunge on into Lent. First, there's just the raw theology that Paul is doing there, and we as Christians have done a bad job teaching and speaking this theology to one another. Jesus is the clearest picture of God. In him, we see God's glory--that is to say, God's love. From his care for the sick, from his challenging of his friends, from his willingness to die--we see what that kind of love looks like, the kind of love God holds for us.
Nowhere here do we hear that Jesus is our friend, or about holding a moral standard on abortion, or do we sing about holding his hand. There may be other parts of scripture that lend themselves to that kind of conversation--fine. But we ignore this part. We look at Jesus because there we see what is true about God--we don't see everything true about God, but there we see something that we can know that is true about God. God loves us, and this inspires us to take Jesus as our Lord, giving up our lives to each other like slaves do.
Second, let's develop some of the imagery here. If Jesus is the clearest picture of what is true about God, a vision so inspiring that it changes us, this does not mean that there are no other pictures of God that can be, to varying degrees, true. Jesus may be the clearest picture, the most truthful, even the best, but this does not preclude God being evident in other ways. As Christians, we may well say that, for example, our Buddhist friends certainly seem to have some picture of the truth that is God. In that sense, those who seem to have seen part of the picture that we have seen are most certainly not perishing--maybe not life in the same way or to the same degree, but certainly not perishing.
It may sound condescending to say: well, I see this perfectly, and those poor benighted not-like-mes see imperfectly. But we can also say it in ways that are not condescending. I do believe Jesus is the clearest picture of God. My Buddhist friends disagree with me. But I see something admirable in the picture they see of God, even if they don't use that word or language--and they, perhaps, see something admirable in the picture I see.
This is, best as I can tell, the basis of all interfaith conversations that happens. We don't expect each other to agree, but we can find admirable things in one another, and we can work together on some things.
However, I am constantly surprised how many apparently faith Christians speak to me about whether they could ever be truly Christian since that would mean that they would therefore believe everyone else went to some kind of hell. Somehow, what good interfaith groups do has in no way touched the hearts of most of us--mostly, our hearts are still shaken by the judgmental among us.
But this is based on the false belief that in order for me to be right, all others who disagree must be wrong. Paul clearly doesn't believe this. If Jesus is the clearest vision of God, this suggests that other visions of various qualities exist. Paul strongly defends what he believes, and believe it he does--other visions are flawed, and Paul will go to great lengths to explain why. But that does not make them wrong, not the sense that our popular culture seems to understand Christian faith.
In other words: just because I think I'm right, doesn't mean I have to think everyone else is wrong. That's a false dichotomy--it's capitalist, actually, assuming a zero sum game around the 'commodity' of truth.
Because the question of truth, as Paul is describing it, is not a black/white issue. It's a relational issue, or a visual issue, and visions can be blurry, partially blocked, or clear, and all still be visions.
I can't help but think we should send sing fewer songs about Jesus becoming my boyfriend, and more songs about how through Jesus, we have all seen with clarity.
2nd Corinthians 4:3-6
I want to talk this time around about 2nd Corinthians. And if I'm going to do that, we're going to have to talk about Paul, whose letters are likely anthologized and edited into the form that we have in 2nd Corinthians. So let's get this out of the way. Paul's an asshole. He's also very likely one of the best pastors, successful missionaries, and accidental theologians our Christian community has ever known.
So much debate on the popular level of Christianity these days, carried on in the front seats of cars and at brief Bible studies, hangs on whether the participants "like" Paul or not. In general, conservatives 'love' Paul; liberals, not so much. While I relate to desire to have that debate, I'm not sure the answer to that question does as much as we want.
For example, if Paul were here in the flesh, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like him. In his letters, he's often pompous, frequently angry, and insufferably self-righteous. Over the course of his life, it's pretty clear that he runs off a number of his friends, and he often undermines the very people who try to defend him. It would be interesting to compare Paul's character to Jesus'. It's hard to imagine two people who would have been less alike--although Jesus was hardly likable in his own way.
But even if I don't like Paul, or wouldn't have liked Paul in flesh, I'd have to admit that his writings are really pretty good--and more than pretty good, many of them are pretty amazing in spite of themselves. Sure, they have problems that very much reflect the man. It is very interesting to wonder if, as a member of the communion of saints, he regrets his hasty comments about sexuality and women. I have long suspected that were we to ask him, he would blame other people--somehow, that seems like his modus operandi to me, and I suspect that spiritual bodies change us only so much.
But anyone who has ever seriously heard his words at a funeral knows that the Holy Spirit speaks directly through them. "Neither height, nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities" and "putting on new bodies" indeed. For all that it is true that Paul was and may well still be an ass, that didn't prevent him from also being the accidental source for most of the New Testament. So profound were his thoughts and cares, and so deep his faith, that they still manage to come through even some of his worst moments.
And to anyone who struggles with Paul, I'll share one last thought. A very helpful mentor in my life once told me that the distance between me and someone I don't like is really only the distance between two different parts of myself. If Paul is a jerk, maybe how much that bothers us tells us more about us than about Paul. Our faith asks us neither to agree with Paul nor to like him. Our faith asks us to recognize God speaking in his writings and claim him as a member of our family.
So, as we look at this lesson 2nd Corinthians, it's helpful to note that Paul doesn't start it simply. "Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing." The god of this world has blinded the minds of those who are unbelievers, says Paul.
This passage alone is enormously difficult and could easily be controversial. It's one of those things we often let sail in church, and no one really listens to it, so no one really complains, and we all go about our business without dealing with the fact that it was just read in our midst. But deep down, I find that this phraseology bothers folks. It makes it sound like we live in clear-cut world, at least at a quick read, made worse when we don't acknowledge it. It makes it sound like: believer=life, unbeliever=perishing.
Perhaps the first quesiton is: Are, in fact, unbelievers perishing--that is, are people who aren't Christian dying? And Paul doesn't seem to mean this in some purely eschatological, end-of-the-world sense. He also doesn't seem to mean it in a strictly biological sense, as all of us, believing and otherwise, are still dying biologically. Instead, he seems to mean that right now, the 'perishing' are leaking life and becoming like the dead. Is that true?
That's a hard question. Most of us are friends with a great number of people who are not Christians, and either our fear or defensiveness immediately asserts itself to make us deny that unbelievers are perishing--that seems like a nasty thought about our friends. But the truth, at least in my experience, is quite a bit more complicated. I have known 'unbelievers' who were most definitely not perishing, but instead were gaining life. And I have known believers who were most definitely perishing, dying right there on the vine.
So let's do something unusual--let's cut Paul some slack, and let's assume that he is as bright as we are. Perhaps Paul, too, has had just this experience--that the relationship between perishing and belief is not so straightforward. And this certainly is true of Paul--after all, Jews, who were nonbelievers, do not seem to be perishing in Paul's view. And Paul has all kinds of writings about the believers who are be perishing.
So what, then, is Paul talking about? Perhaps, instead, he's making a general point, not intended to apply in every case. Just like I make general points like: going to the DMV sucks. Does it literally always suck? No--sometimes, it's quite painless. But nonetheless, I would assert without fear that going to the DMV sucks. Or going to the emergency room. That sucks, too--unless, of course, my heart has stopped, or I've broken a leg. Then, there's nowhere else I'd rather be--officially, being there does not suck in those situations. We, too, make general statements that are true, even if they have a number of perfectly good exceptions. So perhaps holding Paul to the letter of this sentence reveals not that Paul was childish, but that we're being childish.
Paul, therefore, on a the simplest level, seems to be noting the fact that not everyone believes this nutty business about Jesus. This is pretty obvious, something we all see as clearly in our own era as Paul had seen it in Corinth (which, I think we should try to remember, was the Branson, Missouri of the Roman Empire, if Branson were a primary seaport full of diverse ethnic groups, and if Branson specialized not in washed-up celebrities but in finest cheap hookers and easily obtained drugs. Las Vegas is much classier than Corinth was, so I think Branson captures it better).
So why don't other people 'get it'? That's the natural question, when we have gained so much life from our faith and other people role their eyes at us. Why doesn't everyone embrace new life? Paul says: well, it's like the god of this world has blinded their minds. It's like greed, the desire to live without pain, and the cruel happiness of the torturer have all occluded the mind's eye, like a cataract, or near-sightedness, or blindness. Paul isn't trying to say what all nonbelievers are like--he's trying to say what some of them are like, some of them that we encounter more often than we'd care to.
And then Paul moves forward with this analogy. What characterizes us, the Christians, is not that we proclaim ourselves 'Christians.' What characterizes us is not a proclamation about us. It is that we proclaim Jesus as Lord--and don't lose the power of that image and analogy. Jesus is the individual who owns us body and soul, the person who lets us lease his land so that we can grow our vegetables and livestock, the person who protects when neighboring countries attack. Jesus, an odd and short-lived individual from Nazareth and Galilee--that's our Lord. Not only this, but what further characterizes us is that, if we watch the grammar closely, we have declared that we are slaves to one another, out of respect for Jesus.
And then Paul adds this business about the same God who spoke light into being has spoken into being the knowledge in our heads about God in the light of Jesus' life. That's a really extended image, so let's unpack it for a moment. Here it is briefly:
God speaks. Heart opens. Sees Jesus in new way. Seeing Jesus is seeing God. We see a new thing about God.
So, let's put it all together. The passage seems not to be much about 'unbelievers.' It is, instead, reflecting how those who have been believing for a while might understand their own faith. Perhaps a worldly god has blocked the eyesight of others, says Paul, but whatever the case, this need not interfere with the truths we have seen. Instead, the passage is mostly about God has opened a new light in us, showing us to look at Jesus, and there we have seen the truth about God.
Whew. Reading Paul can be rather complex.
But what does this mean? A few things, I think, as we read these last lessons and then plunge on into Lent. First, there's just the raw theology that Paul is doing there, and we as Christians have done a bad job teaching and speaking this theology to one another. Jesus is the clearest picture of God. In him, we see God's glory--that is to say, God's love. From his care for the sick, from his challenging of his friends, from his willingness to die--we see what that kind of love looks like, the kind of love God holds for us.
Nowhere here do we hear that Jesus is our friend, or about holding a moral standard on abortion, or do we sing about holding his hand. There may be other parts of scripture that lend themselves to that kind of conversation--fine. But we ignore this part. We look at Jesus because there we see what is true about God--we don't see everything true about God, but there we see something that we can know that is true about God. God loves us, and this inspires us to take Jesus as our Lord, giving up our lives to each other like slaves do.
Second, let's develop some of the imagery here. If Jesus is the clearest picture of what is true about God, a vision so inspiring that it changes us, this does not mean that there are no other pictures of God that can be, to varying degrees, true. Jesus may be the clearest picture, the most truthful, even the best, but this does not preclude God being evident in other ways. As Christians, we may well say that, for example, our Buddhist friends certainly seem to have some picture of the truth that is God. In that sense, those who seem to have seen part of the picture that we have seen are most certainly not perishing--maybe not life in the same way or to the same degree, but certainly not perishing.
It may sound condescending to say: well, I see this perfectly, and those poor benighted not-like-mes see imperfectly. But we can also say it in ways that are not condescending. I do believe Jesus is the clearest picture of God. My Buddhist friends disagree with me. But I see something admirable in the picture they see of God, even if they don't use that word or language--and they, perhaps, see something admirable in the picture I see.
This is, best as I can tell, the basis of all interfaith conversations that happens. We don't expect each other to agree, but we can find admirable things in one another, and we can work together on some things.
However, I am constantly surprised how many apparently faith Christians speak to me about whether they could ever be truly Christian since that would mean that they would therefore believe everyone else went to some kind of hell. Somehow, what good interfaith groups do has in no way touched the hearts of most of us--mostly, our hearts are still shaken by the judgmental among us.
But this is based on the false belief that in order for me to be right, all others who disagree must be wrong. Paul clearly doesn't believe this. If Jesus is the clearest vision of God, this suggests that other visions of various qualities exist. Paul strongly defends what he believes, and believe it he does--other visions are flawed, and Paul will go to great lengths to explain why. But that does not make them wrong, not the sense that our popular culture seems to understand Christian faith.
In other words: just because I think I'm right, doesn't mean I have to think everyone else is wrong. That's a false dichotomy--it's capitalist, actually, assuming a zero sum game around the 'commodity' of truth.
Because the question of truth, as Paul is describing it, is not a black/white issue. It's a relational issue, or a visual issue, and visions can be blurry, partially blocked, or clear, and all still be visions.
I can't help but think we should send sing fewer songs about Jesus becoming my boyfriend, and more songs about how through Jesus, we have all seen with clarity.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Star Wars, the subject of all sermons
Sorry for my month long absence. I have often thought about sermons for this spot, but my life has been somewhat tumultuous with a change in my employment status. Nonetheless, I'm back, and glad to be writing again. I enjoy what folks have to say in the comments, and I hope you enjoy my meandering around less common ways of approaching more common texts. As always, if you think someone would enjoy what they see here, I hope you'll pass it along.
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
2 Kings 5:1-14
I would have been a great Luke Skywalker. Not, as in, I would have been better than Mark Hamill in the movie. I mean the actual Luke Skywalker. I would have been an awesome Jedi. Standing up against the evil Empire, discovering the the horrific truths about my family, saving the world from darkness with fancy bright sword work. It's hard to watch Star Wars without thinking: oh, that should've been me!
Or king. I would've made a great king of the world. I would have been benevolent and just, appropriately dutiful. I would have worked hard for the common people, not becoming too bogged down in the fancy material life of the court. I could have been a great king.
I don't know whether this is a sickness relevant to only some part of the population, or maybe even just to me (although I don't think so--surely all those people lining up for the new Stars Wars movies did not do so because they wanted to imagine that someone else was a Jedi). But I'm pretty sure I would have been a great *fill in the blank*, as long as the position were grand, heroic, and appropriate to my age. I have longed to be a fighter pilot, veterinarian, folk healer, shaman, Jedi, king, and wise old wizard with equal longing, because I'm pretty sure I could have done all those things not only well, but damn well. Not to mention the acclaim these things would bring me. If God would simply ask it of me, or will it to be, I'm ready. Jedi, here I come.
At least a little, this desire is subject to the old folk wisdom about the grass always looking greener on the other side of the fence, when in fact that grass probably tastes much like the stuff over here. It's fun to imagine being someone else, and there's even a certain fun in the ache we feel over how much better the whole world would be if I were a phenomenal jazz guitar player.
I'll even go so far as to say that this kind of imagining has some strong positives. Imagination is one of the key organs of both spirituality and ethics. The things that I imagine myself as, Jedi or guitar phenom, make visible to myself the kind of person I'm striving to be. I can see where I'm growing, and by changing who I want to be, I can slowly change who I'm becoming. It is entirely true that we become what and who we love.
But, having wandered this far, stick with me a moment longer. There is a difference between the positive ways we imagine becoming our role models, and the desire, certainty, or thought that we would have been better off if God had simply made us a *fill in the blank*. When we grow toward something, that can be helpful--when we huff up, as my mother would say, and say: I would have done that so much better, something different is happening. When we reject where we are, our life, and say: if only God had made me a Jedi! something different, something bad happens.
I think this is why I find Naaman's story so compelling. Naaman already was a Jedi, or close, at least. An important and successful general, a man of tremendous wealth and station, but in the end, also a leper. He wanted health--he wanted to be 'clean', to use the old term.
So, having heard about a great God and a prophet, he went to seek them. The snotty, self-centered king of Israel takes this as an invented slight that could lead to war, but the mention of that Israelite king seems to be almost another brief, biting judgment on the inherent egocentricity of the whole king-thing by the author of Kings--it seems odd to me we call a book by the thing it hopes to undermine. Anyway. Back to Naaman.
Then the prophet, refusing to meet Naaman in person, tells him to go wash, and that will heal him. And this infuriates Naaman. Why? What is that feeling he has?
It is this: if Elisha had asked for two thousand dead, that would have been fine. Naaman could imagine that God would make him yet again a great hero of an army. If Elisha had asked for Naaman to stay awake for seven days straight, Naaman could have pushed his body beyond the limits of its endurance, becoming a great ascetic--he could imagine that God could call him to this work. If Elisha had asked Naaman to woo the heart of a dozen Israelite princesses, he could easily imagine becoming a lover for God.
But wash? Are you kidding?
Naaman may have already been a Jedi in Aram, or whatever the more colloquial title for 'Jedi' would have been, but as is often the case, even this did not stop him from wanting to be a bigger hero. Slayer, womanizer, politicker, ascetic? Naaman would have embraced any of these titles to get in good with God.
But God asked only for a wash, and this almost killed Naaman. Wash? Is God insinuating that Naaman smells bad? That the water back home is inferior to the water in Israel? That Naaman could have fixed his problems by doing what everybody else does? Is God suggesting that Naaman is merely a mortal?
Of course he's angry--and in a great moment that speaks for the value of friendship, the cooler heads of his servants and companions prevail and he does as he's told, finding health.
Naaman's difficulty is does not want to accept his life as it is. He imagines that if God is going to speak to him, it must be in this grandiose way. A fighter pilot, off of aircraft carriers, surely that's what God wants of him. Certainly not the person who puts new snacks in the snack machines on the aircraft carrier.
But God gives him the harder challenge: accept who he is, mortal and human, and he can be healed.
That is the fundamental challenge of the spiritual life, for Naaman and for us. We are charged with accepting who we are, accepting this particular place where we have ended up, and seeing God here. "Even among these rocks" is how T.S. Eliot, the poet, describes the experience. Of course, we grow and change, and our contexts change, and we move, and we do new things. But none of those things happens magically--they grow organically out of where we have been. We do not magically become Jedi.
And what's more, we do injury to ourselves when we sit around and fantasize about how much better we'd live life if God had made us as Julia Roberts or Vladimir Putin. When we think about how much better life would be if we were superheroes, we slowly cloud the world around us until we can pretend we aren't here. And once reality is gone, truth is gone, and once truth has left, God has a great deal more trouble getting our attention.
It is the difference between working to become Gandhi and imagining that I am already Gandhi. It is the difference between Elisha asking for a double portion of Elijah's spirit, and Naaman imagining his heroic acceptance by God. In the first case, we focus and grow. In the second, we build an illusion that prevents light from coming in or going out.
Practically, this has some obvious possibilities for us. It suggests the truth of some folk wisdom I'm rather fond of: you can shit in one hand, and wish in the other, and wait to see which is filled first. Wishing is different from visioning. Would that new presidential administrations, churches looking for clergy and vice versa, people looking for a church, and all of us could earn the truth of that. Sometimes, we wish we were good at confrontation, but that really just gets in the way of envisioning what it would be like to be good at conflict and working to it. We wish there were a perfect place to meet God--some place without all these terribly boring people, like a church--and that interferes with our envisioning building a spiritual relationship with God and building on it.
God's call to us is not to wish we spent more time in prayer. God's call is to work at it. God's call to us is not to pretend we have become prophets for justice. God's call is to work at becoming those prophets. And, of course, God's call to us is not to imagine that we have become Jedi. God's call to us is to work toward becoming Jedi, a whole order of people devoted to protecting the life of those around them.
Our wishing only calls to mind the lightsabers of being a Jedi, the false piety and posture of prayer, and the self-righteousness of prophetic justice. Call and vision look, well, a good bit more real--annoyed at dogs that interrupt our prayers, struggles to find money and time to donate to public health, and giving up our lives for others.
But hey, Naaman came around-- a little wetter, a little wiser. Here's hoping for the same health for all of us.
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
2 Kings 5:1-14
I would have been a great Luke Skywalker. Not, as in, I would have been better than Mark Hamill in the movie. I mean the actual Luke Skywalker. I would have been an awesome Jedi. Standing up against the evil Empire, discovering the the horrific truths about my family, saving the world from darkness with fancy bright sword work. It's hard to watch Star Wars without thinking: oh, that should've been me!
Or king. I would've made a great king of the world. I would have been benevolent and just, appropriately dutiful. I would have worked hard for the common people, not becoming too bogged down in the fancy material life of the court. I could have been a great king.
I don't know whether this is a sickness relevant to only some part of the population, or maybe even just to me (although I don't think so--surely all those people lining up for the new Stars Wars movies did not do so because they wanted to imagine that someone else was a Jedi). But I'm pretty sure I would have been a great *fill in the blank*, as long as the position were grand, heroic, and appropriate to my age. I have longed to be a fighter pilot, veterinarian, folk healer, shaman, Jedi, king, and wise old wizard with equal longing, because I'm pretty sure I could have done all those things not only well, but damn well. Not to mention the acclaim these things would bring me. If God would simply ask it of me, or will it to be, I'm ready. Jedi, here I come.
At least a little, this desire is subject to the old folk wisdom about the grass always looking greener on the other side of the fence, when in fact that grass probably tastes much like the stuff over here. It's fun to imagine being someone else, and there's even a certain fun in the ache we feel over how much better the whole world would be if I were a phenomenal jazz guitar player.
I'll even go so far as to say that this kind of imagining has some strong positives. Imagination is one of the key organs of both spirituality and ethics. The things that I imagine myself as, Jedi or guitar phenom, make visible to myself the kind of person I'm striving to be. I can see where I'm growing, and by changing who I want to be, I can slowly change who I'm becoming. It is entirely true that we become what and who we love.
But, having wandered this far, stick with me a moment longer. There is a difference between the positive ways we imagine becoming our role models, and the desire, certainty, or thought that we would have been better off if God had simply made us a *fill in the blank*. When we grow toward something, that can be helpful--when we huff up, as my mother would say, and say: I would have done that so much better, something different is happening. When we reject where we are, our life, and say: if only God had made me a Jedi! something different, something bad happens.
I think this is why I find Naaman's story so compelling. Naaman already was a Jedi, or close, at least. An important and successful general, a man of tremendous wealth and station, but in the end, also a leper. He wanted health--he wanted to be 'clean', to use the old term.
So, having heard about a great God and a prophet, he went to seek them. The snotty, self-centered king of Israel takes this as an invented slight that could lead to war, but the mention of that Israelite king seems to be almost another brief, biting judgment on the inherent egocentricity of the whole king-thing by the author of Kings--it seems odd to me we call a book by the thing it hopes to undermine. Anyway. Back to Naaman.
Then the prophet, refusing to meet Naaman in person, tells him to go wash, and that will heal him. And this infuriates Naaman. Why? What is that feeling he has?
It is this: if Elisha had asked for two thousand dead, that would have been fine. Naaman could imagine that God would make him yet again a great hero of an army. If Elisha had asked for Naaman to stay awake for seven days straight, Naaman could have pushed his body beyond the limits of its endurance, becoming a great ascetic--he could imagine that God could call him to this work. If Elisha had asked Naaman to woo the heart of a dozen Israelite princesses, he could easily imagine becoming a lover for God.
But wash? Are you kidding?
Naaman may have already been a Jedi in Aram, or whatever the more colloquial title for 'Jedi' would have been, but as is often the case, even this did not stop him from wanting to be a bigger hero. Slayer, womanizer, politicker, ascetic? Naaman would have embraced any of these titles to get in good with God.
But God asked only for a wash, and this almost killed Naaman. Wash? Is God insinuating that Naaman smells bad? That the water back home is inferior to the water in Israel? That Naaman could have fixed his problems by doing what everybody else does? Is God suggesting that Naaman is merely a mortal?
Of course he's angry--and in a great moment that speaks for the value of friendship, the cooler heads of his servants and companions prevail and he does as he's told, finding health.
Naaman's difficulty is does not want to accept his life as it is. He imagines that if God is going to speak to him, it must be in this grandiose way. A fighter pilot, off of aircraft carriers, surely that's what God wants of him. Certainly not the person who puts new snacks in the snack machines on the aircraft carrier.
But God gives him the harder challenge: accept who he is, mortal and human, and he can be healed.
That is the fundamental challenge of the spiritual life, for Naaman and for us. We are charged with accepting who we are, accepting this particular place where we have ended up, and seeing God here. "Even among these rocks" is how T.S. Eliot, the poet, describes the experience. Of course, we grow and change, and our contexts change, and we move, and we do new things. But none of those things happens magically--they grow organically out of where we have been. We do not magically become Jedi.
And what's more, we do injury to ourselves when we sit around and fantasize about how much better we'd live life if God had made us as Julia Roberts or Vladimir Putin. When we think about how much better life would be if we were superheroes, we slowly cloud the world around us until we can pretend we aren't here. And once reality is gone, truth is gone, and once truth has left, God has a great deal more trouble getting our attention.
It is the difference between working to become Gandhi and imagining that I am already Gandhi. It is the difference between Elisha asking for a double portion of Elijah's spirit, and Naaman imagining his heroic acceptance by God. In the first case, we focus and grow. In the second, we build an illusion that prevents light from coming in or going out.
Practically, this has some obvious possibilities for us. It suggests the truth of some folk wisdom I'm rather fond of: you can shit in one hand, and wish in the other, and wait to see which is filled first. Wishing is different from visioning. Would that new presidential administrations, churches looking for clergy and vice versa, people looking for a church, and all of us could earn the truth of that. Sometimes, we wish we were good at confrontation, but that really just gets in the way of envisioning what it would be like to be good at conflict and working to it. We wish there were a perfect place to meet God--some place without all these terribly boring people, like a church--and that interferes with our envisioning building a spiritual relationship with God and building on it.
God's call to us is not to wish we spent more time in prayer. God's call is to work at it. God's call to us is not to pretend we have become prophets for justice. God's call is to work at becoming those prophets. And, of course, God's call to us is not to imagine that we have become Jedi. God's call to us is to work toward becoming Jedi, a whole order of people devoted to protecting the life of those around them.
Our wishing only calls to mind the lightsabers of being a Jedi, the false piety and posture of prayer, and the self-righteousness of prophetic justice. Call and vision look, well, a good bit more real--annoyed at dogs that interrupt our prayers, struggles to find money and time to donate to public health, and giving up our lives for others.
But hey, Naaman came around-- a little wetter, a little wiser. Here's hoping for the same health for all of us.
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