I have to do a theological reflection on my experience of being the emergency on-call chaplin at a hospital, and I've been struggling with just what to say. (The following will not be the finished product...). The events in question happened two weeks ago. We had two calls--the first I went with my supervisor, the second I was on my own. Graciously, though tragically too, both times were much the same. Late-middle aged man dead of a heart attack. We were there to greet their widows. Neither one had any church affiliation. But neither kicked us out.
It was strange being present at such a traumatic time, with people I had never seen before and likely won't see again. At times I felt voyeuristic. At times I wondered precisely what I thought I was doing there. And yet, had I/we not been there, it seems quite likely that no one would have offered these women prayer (which both accepted). Perhaps too, it showed them that someone cared about their pain beyond those who were expected by the ties of family and proximity. I hope that occured to them, because I continue to pray for them and wonder quietly how they're coping.
It's trite, but I wonder what carries people through such painful and life-altering times when they don't have faith and a faith community to fall back on. (Not to suggest that the lives of the faithful aren't often wrought with difficulties). Being in the room with a weeping widow to whom I had no communal ties gave me a sense of Jesus' obsessive compassion. His yearning for those like sheep without a shepherd--those mired in pain, made haggard by the uncertainties of the world, who long to have a reason to hope again. I have a hard time not crying with those women.

A scripture passage that's jumped out a lot at me as I learn to negotiate the different challenges of different clinical settings--hospital, nursing home, terminal care, group homes--is Matt 25:36, "...I was sick and you cared for me..." When I don't want to go to the hospital, or the nursing home, I try to repeat that over to myself. It's helped me to look people in the eye, to try to meet them on a level that transcends their physical pain, to see the child of God--sick as they might be. For the most part I've been shocked at the life left in people's eyes. Pity and discomfort can turn into actual care and a longing to restore dignity where it's often been stripped away.

Indeed that whole sheep and goats passage is one that rings loudly as often as I let it. I'll be preaching on it in two weeks and I'm pretty excited about that. It coincides nicely with the Bible study I've been offering on the epistle of James. It reminds us that while what we believe is important, the questions Christ will ask us when we find ourselves in front of him won't have much to do with our theological opinions. "But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder" (James 2:18-19).
The combination of the Matt 25 passage and that passage from James forces me to submit to the nagging of the Spirit, forces me to take the call of Jesus seriously. It forces me to recognize that the grace of God demands response--we can't truly even begin to understand what God's grace means for us, if we don't live as though we're changed by it. To truly "'believe [in the gospel]means to accept the situation that is created by [the decision of God in Jesus Christ]" (Karl Barth)--that is, to believe is to live as though the Kingdom of God has indeed come near; we are already being made new.

This may be one of those times when I need to take a breath, and ask for God's grace--so with those two needs in mind, I'm using this as an outlet.

In this month's United Church Observer, there were a series of articles about prayer--how we pray, its efficacy, how it changes us, etc etc. As per usual, Gretta Vosper has found a place to voice her thoughts. For some reason, people continue to ask Ms. Vosper's opinion regarding things theological, without recognizing her utter theological ineptitude. I don't get it, and I don't understand why so little is said about her absolute disregard for the United Church, let alone the Christian faith it supposedly represents. It's mind-boggling.
In her article about faith, she undermines and belittles those of us poor Christians who pray to a "theistic interventionist God," claiming that our continued prayer to such a God is simply indicative of our lack of inclusivity (another word she continues to abuse). She points to the lives of non-Christian people who's lives have been meaningful and purposeful as proof that we can't say that God is the basis for life-giving work.
Her principle problem is that she doesn't understand that God is not confined to the Christian church, nor does God require Christians to do his (or her or whatever) work--if that were the case, the world might well have been doomed from the get-go. This is not to say that Christians aren't called to live as examples of the full life God longs for every human being. We are indeed. That's what the Gospel is all about.
She also notes that praying to an interventionist God means that we are unable to live strong courageous lives, or to "find meaning in our lives without God's added effort."
The humanistic project has alread failed dramatically, and perhaps someone should point that out to Ms Vosper. The desire to live life that affirms whatever we claim is good is at the root of most of the world's problems. Setting up idealistic goals, or values, or ethics and assuming that people are able and indeed willing to meet them by their own power and sustained by their own sense of self-worth is as unfair as the Pharisees who loaded their listeners with heavy burdens and refused to lift a hand to help them carry them. To insist that the only way to do good works is by understanding your own self-worth and responding to it, is demand something that most people at best struggle with, and in many cases are completely unable to do.
She's exactly right that God's call to relationship--with God and with each other--is what gives my life meaning. Not the fact that God will do something for me, but that God sustains me, God calls me to love all of his creation, and God is the reason to do it. Though many people, including Ms Vosper, don't recognize that the thrust towards life is part of God's plan for all creation, that doesn't make it not so. Indeed it's true that many people are much closer to doing the work of Christ unbeknownst to them. Jesus even claims that many who don't think they know him, are in fact much closer to him than many who think they know him.
The final thing that bugs me in the article, is the claim of inclusivism, which is actually a denial of our differences and an insistence that we are all beige, vauge, life-lovers, and that that is a sufficient reason to do nice things. The "radical ethics" that she proposes are nothing more than the call of the Gospel without the inconveniences of discipleship and service to God. Unfortunately, the end result is that "I" become God. This masturbatory understanding of life ends consistently in a confused mess.

I think that this post is beginning to spiral out of control and may be nothing more than senseless rambling. Perhaps that's because it's in response to an article that says little, written by someone who understands less about the Gospel of Christ, and the faith to which we are called. Nevertheless, I'm sure Gretta wants to do good work. For this I can't fault her. And hopefully, despite the fact that she doesn't understand why she's doing it, she'll find herself with the sheep--as one who clothed and sated and visited and healed and did the work of the One who loves us all beyond measure, and by whose will our lives have meaning.
May God grant us all grace and wisdom.

Dancing Fools

The following is a reflection on Luke 5:17-26, "Jesus Heals a Paralytic."

I was struck when I read this passage by the phrase, "and the power of the Lord was with him to heal" (vs17). Less because of the possible implication that at times the power of the Lord to heal was not with him, but because of the strange image it conjured up of a televangelist-type character filled with the Holy Spirit, jumping up and down on stage, sweating in the most embarrassing places, knocking people out of their wheelchairs. Factor in verse 26 and we got ourselves a genuine revival! I wondered at this for a moment, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was more the image of Jesus dancing around, acting a fool in front of the Pharisees that struck me as particularly odd. This is not the Jesus from Sunday School pictures, not the Jesus flipping tables in a fiery rage, not the Jesus we generally invite into our comfortable, mainline churches.

I see him, dancing around the front of the room, maybe stuck in a circle, surrounded by as many people as could be crammed into one space, cheered on like a teenager in a dance-off at prom. He's on a roll--the sick, the lame, the blind, they're all being healed. He hears the raspy cough of a man with a cold that's been hanging on for weeks and in his excitement, reaches behind himself and touches the cougher's throat, adding some flare to the scene with an around the back healing. The room is pulsing with excitement, songs have risen spontaneously from various corners of the room, everyone outside the inner circle straining to see what's going to happen next.
All of a sudden a piece of roof hits Jesus in the shoulder. There's so much going on he pays it no attention. He's startled though, when a rather larger piece smashes at his feet. And suddenly, the brightness and warmth of the midday sun fills the room through a makeshift skylight. A shadow emerges through it. A silhouetted rectangle that descends, barely discernible for the light behind it. And as abruptly as the sun had filled the room, a deafening hush joins it and at Jesus' feet lies a paralyzed man. The songs have stopped with the harshness of a needle pulled across a record. All eyes waver between Jesus and this intruder.
Jesus' eyes though, are only on the man, not an intruder but a guest. And as he's reflected in the eyes of the newcomer, he sees the pain of one who has been told that all his problems are self-imposed, who has been abandoned by colleagues and family because of the shame of his affliction, cared for by a few low-life buddies who don't even have the manners to wait their turn, who have punched a hole in someone else's roof in an act of desperation. Jesus sees the need for acceptance and love before he sees the man's need of physical healing. He sees the faith of those who still love this man and hope beyond hope for him. And Jesus gives him the assurance he needs. "Friend, your sins are forgiven." In one phrase Jesus hits the man in the deepest part of his heart. He is called friend by a Rabbi, he is freed from his supposed shame.
As so regularly happens, Jesus' acts of love go unrecognized and all that is seen by the religious leaders is the disruption of the status quo. "Who is he to forgive sins?! Who does he think he is just ignoring this guy's obviously shameful state?" Jesus hears the grumblings and irritation screws up his face. They just don't get it. They still see the man lying on the ground, separated from society, ostracized from the temple, a disgusting embodiment of all that they are terrified of. So Jesus goes one step further and denies all those precious boundaries. If the simple assurance of humanity is insufficient, then we'll just have to dance the party-poopers out of here! The truly paralyzed need a lesson in movin' and shakin'! "Get up and go home." And as suddenly as the music had stopped, it starts again and a conga line of the formerly sick, lame, blind, coughing and paralyzed circles the room and leads the way out the door, dancing with everything they got.

Jesus, the dancing, foolishly loving Christ is the opposite of our paralyzed selves--we who are stuck in our ways, bound by decorum and social graces, rendered immobile by our selfish concern. And yet, he continues to call us to join the dance, to let go of our limited expectations, to thrash about, madly in love with our God and each other. Like Paul said, Jesus wants us to be fools for him, to be seized by amazement and filled with awe and the ridiculous joy of our own freedom.

A New Song

"O, sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth." (Psalm 96:1)

For the first time the other day, I was struck by the hope and power of this verse. Perhaps I had never really read the "new" part. Perhaps I've become so accustomed to the image of the earth singing praises to God, that its revolutionary sting has been numbed. The fact is though, that I think we sing the same old songs an awful lot. Even our most ardent attempts to sing something new tends to have a very familiar rhythm, beat, and melody.
This is one of the struggles we face when we hear the gospel, when we trust in the truth it offers, when we see ourselves and our neighbors in the fresh light that it casts. "How can we who died to sin, go on living in it?" Paul cries (Rom 6:2). How, once we've experienced the sweetness of new life in Christ, can we return to the now bitter taste of the past? How, once we've heard truth, can we return to what we now see as lies? Even Paul knew just how easily this happens: "for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Rom 7:19).
Those old familiar songs provide us with the temporary comfort we seek to get us through a difficult day; they allow us to sing words that we know we can live out (if for no other reason than the fact that we have to try desperately not to); our old songs welcome us back with open arms, enveloping us like a warm blanket.
But we soon recognize that that blanket is full of fleas. It's once soft fibers turn sharp as barbed wire. The tune we once loved is dissonant and painful. It's comfort indeed, is temporary.

My grandmother was a piano teacher. Somehow it always seemed, that when she was at our house, it was time for me to practice. Rather than practice though, I preferred to display my mastery of "Chopsticks," that most familiar tune that everyone who can't play piano knows at least part of. Few tunes are more irritating to piano teachers. Every ten-year-old child who walks through their doors sits on the bench and promptly begins to bang it out. It nearly sent my poor grandmother through the roof. With the first notes, she would be at the piano-room door rebuking me. Comparatively, my butchery of Chopin was transcendent next to my mastery of Chopsticks.
My grandmother knew that even the most preliminary muddling through something new, something more challenging, something inevitably more beautiful was of greater value than the familiar, the simplistic, the ultimately irritating. I've started to see her point.

Something important lies within the seemingly duplicitous points that Paul makes. Once we can play--even once we have heard--Chopin, how can we go back to Chopsticks? But isn't it fun to bang that old song out once more? I often waiver between these two places . The Psalmist reminds us however, that we are called not to return to the easy comfort of old songs, but to strive to belt out a new one. We are called to stop going back to the songs that keep us mired in apathy, keep us bound by self-imposed limitations, the songs that hurt the ears of those around us and stop their feet from dancing. Instead, learn the new song. Play and sing the song that expands possibilities. Join the song that inspires instead of limits. Let the earth sing the song that frees all people to dance, to leap, to love. Let the earth sing the song that Jesus sings, a song of radical newness, of abundant life.

Who's In?

Recently, I have been talking with a friend at my church about salvation (broadly speaking). Sometimes I find it difficult to address this issue and its salient points in ways that don't reveal the esoteric language and insulated nature of life as a seminarian. Tonight, we're watching a movie at church called "The Fourth Wise Man," which I have not seen, but which I have been told questions the stringent boundaries which the church has often put on salvation. (Essentially, a Zoroastrian lives out the life that Jesus calls all people to in the gospels--in particular Matthew, I believe--and thus the question is raised as to his salvation, given that his faith is not specifically in Christ, but he lives a Christlike life, so far as is possible. Again, I haven't seen this movie yet, so I apologize for any inaccuracies in my synopsis).

I have been asked to speak briefly after the movie. I think that the following is what I intend to say. It's surely incomplete, but hopefully it will entice conversation. Beforehand, I will read I John 1:1-4.

Many people have found reason to argue that faith in Christ, according to Christian doctrine, is the only way to get to Heaven, the only way to be saved, based on Scripture. But such a claim is a rather risky one for Christians to make. And it’s risky not because it is necessarily untrue, but because such a claim can allow us to separate ourselves from those who are not “saved,” from those who by our measures, won’t get into Heaven. It is easy to get Jesus’ claim that he is “the way, the truth and the life” confused with “Christianity (or the Church) is the way, the truth and the life.” Rarely, I think, are out thoughts and actions subtle enough to make this distinction and live within it’s light.

Regardless, we must remember that the Church, whose responsibility it is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, is not evidence of our salvation, but a response to the grace through which we understand, experience and know our salvation. When we recognize this, we recognize first, that God reveals Godself to us, that God seeks and finds us, that God desires a relationship with us before we even begin to understand this—let alone how it is possible. In turn we can come to understand that we are not, as Christians, somehow moving towards God, or closer to God than others, or have a greater claim to God, but that God has come eternally to us. In God’s freedom, God has chosen to bind himself in loving relationship to all of creation, in and through the Cross event, the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this is the joy we proclaim.

In the light of this good news, as it is revealed to us in Scripture we recognize our freedom from the things that separate us from God, that keep us living as though we are not saved, as though the incarnation of the living God whom we know, love and worship, does not matter. We recognize the worthiness of Christ as the focus and foundation of our faith. What we do not find in Scripture is our right to decide who’s in and who’s out—only that Christ came because all creation is loved beyond our capacity to understand and we are called to live lives that reflect this radical truth.

The Crosses We Wear

I've recently started wearing a cross, more as a reminder to myself of what I want to live for, than any attempt to outwardly display my faith. It's a simple cross: stainless steel, small, and I like it. I always thought that Protestants were more inclined towards empty crosses as symbols, because we want to point more directly to the resurrection than to the crucifixion of Christ (not that you can have one without the other, but it seems somehow more hopeful to celebrate an empty cross). I assumed that this was equally the case for the crosses some of us wear around our necks.
I heard recently though, that--at least in terms of the crosses we wear--I'm at least partly wrong. Though I think I'll still hold on to my original assumption, it has certainly been expanded. What I've learned (from a professor who was talking to another professor, who specializes in religious symbols and iconography at Trinity College, Toronto School of Theology), is that when we wear empty crosses, we become the body on the cross. That's pretty heavy.
It's heavy, but helpful. Helpful, because it reminds me that we have been, through faith, "united in a death like his, [and] will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is free from sin." (Rom. 6:5-7) Though I try often to live as though Christ didn't die to offer me this freedom, that I haven't died to sin, though I often look longingly to that old master, the cross around my neck reminds me that I am freed from the slavery that keeps me from being free for God.
However, while this has been an expanding revelation for me, it has made me awfully sad for those who wear a cross simply as jewelry, as a fashion statement, as an ironic or passing glance at a faith they don't profess. I wonder at the crosses onto which they are climbing--presumably without recognizing it. I wonder if in fact, they are simply clinging to, climbing onto, the slavery and death of this world. It strikes me as a painful possibility.
Or perhaps, even the most ironic sporting of a cross, even the most flagrant abuse of the central symbol of Christian faith, is at least an accidental recognition of the power and promise of the Cross. Regardless, I have started to see such distasteful appropriation as a reminder that Christ died for all--not just for those of us who know, who have experienced and tasted the freedom that God longs for us. The sick--which we all are, to one degree or another--are the ones who need the doctor. So, if in the pain and horror of crucifixion, the humiliation and cruelty of death on a cross, God shows us, or rather becomes for us, the way to freedom, to truth, to life, it may be possible that in the unwitting--or otherwise--misuse of crosses can stand as a significant symbol for all sin, which was destroyed at the Cross and replaced by the grace we all need.

In Christ Alone

I wonder what that would be like. Soren Kiekegaard wrote about the risk of getting too close to the Bible, the risk of actually living according to the new testament: "'My God,' you will say,'If I do that my whole life will be ruined! How would I ever get on in the world.'" He suggests that this is the danger of Biblical (and probably theological) study. We sit and talk an awful lot. The difficulty for most of us is that the paradigm of the gospel and the paradigm that we consist in have very little overlap. So it becomes virtually impossible sometimes to do much more than speculate--though we (I) occasionally proclaim some righteous indignation at the state of things.
In a worship service we offered yesterday we sang the song 'In Christ Alone.' It's a beautiful song and falls nicely in my vocal range, but I wonder if we don't take a pretty significant risk in singing it. Kind of like praying for God's kingdom to come--we'd better be careful what we ask for. "In Christ alone, my hope is found" sounds great (it's nice to have hope taken care of), but what would we look like if that were true? I don't think I need to list here all the ways in which I fail to hope in Christ alone. But, suffice it to say, I have some backup plans!

Nevertheless, as I move towards the possibility of surrendering to my God, I have begun to wonder what I am so uptight about. Although from the outside allowing God to be God, seems a bit crazy, the freedom of knowing that worth and purpose are not tied up in the things we do, but in the things God has done is a strangely and wonderfully disorienting thing. The world is suddenly not so complicated--not simple mind you, and definitely not easy, but not so concerned about the silliness that we put ourselves through, for the sake of our security, for the sake of our sense of value, for the chance to individuate. That I don't have to overcome you, or look out for number one, is a freedom from violence, anger, jealousy, hatred etc. etc. It is the freedom to love, to live life to its fullest, to engage the world instead of trying to hoard it up in a special box that only I have the key to.

I'm not there yet, but I'm pretty sure it's just over that hill. Fortunately, my God walks with me, so we'll find out together. (Luke 24:13-35).

I once was lost...

The timeless words of 'Amazing Grace' are rattling around my head this morning as I reflect on yesterday's Easter celebrations. The Easter story--indeed the whole Gospel--reminds us that we have been found, that God has sought us out in an unimaginable way, in a way that we could never have anticipated. I think this is often lost on most of us. Especially at Easter, we might have the tendency to congratulate ourselves on recognizing the truth of the salvific event, on seeing in the Cross, the "right way". But this draws us no closer to the reality of Christ than those who seek to eliminate him from the Christian experience.
This past week a Jesuit friend of mine sent me a newspaper article that featured an interview with Gretta Vosper, a United Church minister and "trailblazer" in the progressive Christianity movement in Canada. At Gretta's church this week, the words of hymns about the resurrection that featured Christ, or Jesus, or God, were changed and the offending words substituted for something innocuous like "Glorious Hope"...Needless to say, even non-Christians might be left scratching their heads at the theological ineptness required to pull off such a self-aggrandizing maneuver.
Nevertheless, I fear that often those of us who would consider ourselves more theologically orthodox also run the risk of turning Jesus into what we want him to be, and assuming that when we force him into our self-specific molds we have suddenly "found Jesus" as the saying goes. One thing Easter teaches us, is that if we had looked for the God that washes our feet, cries out in agony, sacrifices himself on a cross and dies that death would be overcome in his resurrection, we never would have "found God". This event is so remarkable, so unapologetically other than what we expect from God, and yet this, and not any other idea we have, holds the truth of God, that God has chosen to reveal to us in a brazen act of Love. The god that appeases us, or who waits to slap our wrists when we're bad or bullies us into submission, is a god of our own creation. The God who loves, who challenges us, and who fills our lives with meaning is the One who reveals Godself to us.
The event of the Cross--the life, death and resurrection of Jesus--is not the divisive point that separates those of us who are right about God from those of us who aren't, but rather the point at which all people are gathered in equality--equally in need of love, meaning and renewal, and equally amazed by and in need of Grace. The Cross is not a reason for Christians to claim God, to accuse others, not even to debate theology; it is God's choice to seek out creation, to enter into our lives and to free us from all that holds us back from abundant love for God, neighbour and ourselves.

It's all been said...

Today seemed an appropriate day to begin. It's Good Friday, 2008 and it occurs to me that all that is worth saying exists in the light of what has been said, and done, today. This is the beginning of a new year. This is the new beginning of new beginnings. It is where the mystery of our lives finds its meaning. I want this blog to be a venue to for considering what it means, what it might mean, what it will mean to live within this meaning; to think about what it is to live as though what was celebrated today, in the shadow of the Cross, matters, as I (we) seek to learn and understand what living in a new light will look like.

We gathered at Kingsway-Lambton UC this morning to meet at the foot of the Cross, to ponder the sacrifice, to acknowledge the love of God. It was a tenebrae (shadows) service. It was appropriately solemn. It's good to know the next part of the story, as it turns our solemnity to anticipation--our quiet, awed submission into dancing for joy at the awesome love of God--love that passes all understanding.

Now we look towards Easter morning, as we once more approach the open tomb, amazed, and leave everything to run like Mary to tell the world. I want to tell the world about the wonder of servant love--I might even use words.