How We Arrive on Easter

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.

On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. Luke 23:55-24:3

I am thinking about how we arrive at church on Easter morning.

Some of us come on Easter with great faith and confidence in the resurrection.

Some of us come with more questions than faith, more perplexed than confident.

Some of us come because the only way to get to the big Easter meal is to go to church with family. (And we welcome you. That’s not a bad reason.)

Some of us come not believing at all but wanting to join the celebration.

While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. Luke 24:4-12

I don’t think that the first visitors to the tomb believed much of anything, or had any idea what to make of what they found. The women find the empty tomb and they stand there wondering. They go to tell the disciples what they have seen, and the disciples think that it’s nonsense. Peter alone goes to see for himself. And what does Peter do when he has seen the empty tomb with his own eyes? He goes home, just like us!

On Easter, instead of thinking that it’s time to get all of our questions about the resurrection answered, what if we did just the opposite? What if Easter is a time for getting our thinking knocked out of joint enough that we can see the world from new angles. Instead of questioning the truth of the resurrection, what if we allow the resurrection to question us?

Where are the places in life where you have given up hope too soon?

What gifts have you buried away out of fear or weariness or distraction?

When have you been surprised by goodness when you expected something worse?

Noah...the movie

It had seemed that the days of the great Biblical epic movies – films such as The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Story Ever Told - were long over.  But there I was in the movie theater, waiting for the show to begin, when Noah’s Ark appeared on screen, surrounded by Oscar winners Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, and Jennifer Connolly, plus Emma Watson (remember Hermione from the Harry Potter films?). Noah will be released later this month, but it is already provoking discussion and controversy. Personally, I think it is crazy to review a movie without first seeing it. But with the Noah story coming to theaters and on people’s minds, this is a good time for some preparation.

First – let’s be clear that this movie is, and I quote, “inspired by the Biblical story.” So it isn’t necessarily trying to be faithful to the text of Genesis or to any particular Jewish or Christian theology. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, a challenging and dark director who last made Black Swan, this movie is likely to take artistic liberties with the story and have its own message. In fact, the New Yorker quotes Aronofsky’s description of Noah as “the most unbiblical Biblical epic.” And I’m fine with that.

I value the Bible. It is central to the faith that I live and share. It is sacred. But I do not believe that it requires rigid defense. It’s strong enough to take care of itself, and people will still be reading it long after any movie is forgotten. I would much rather err on the side of having too much creative play with Biblical stories than being so rigid that we can barely re-tell them except in the most stilted, cautious way.

As long as we understand that the movie is not the same as the Bible, I think that the movie actually gives us an opportunity to hear a familiar story with fresh ears, even if we decide that we don’t like the movie or that it distorts the message of scripture. It’s a chance to remember what the story of Noah and the flood in Genesis is telling us.

The story of Noah and the flood is one of those Biblical stories that surprises us for exactly the opposite reason that it surprised the people who first heard it. We are used to thinking about God as caring and protective, and so it surprises us to think that God would cause a flood to deal with the presence of evil and violence among humankind. That doesn’t sound like the God we know. But in ancient Israel, the story of God causing a flood was absolutely normal and unsurprising. There are old Sumerian and Akkadian texts which tell of the Gods who cause the world to flood, and one person who builds an ark to save the animals and start anew. In the Akkadian version, the Gods are upset by all the noise and clamor that humans make, and there’s no telling when they’ll do it again. When people first heard the story of Noah, the idea of a God who causes a flood to destroy nearly all people is not surprising.

What would have been surprising at the time is the promise by God never to flood the world again. When the ark comes to rest on land, when Noah and his family and the animals step out onto the world again, God puts a rainbow in the sky like a hunter hanging up a bow. The rainbow is a reminder of the promise God makes. One may even think of the Noah story as a theological contradiction of those other stories. It is a way of saying that the God worshipped by the Hebrews, the One God, is not like Gods you have heard about before. The story of Noah is one of the reasons that we now take for granted the picture of God as one who loves and protects us.

Ash Wednesday and 'I'm Done With Snails'

A girl in the third grade begins a poem:

When my third snail died, I said,
'I'm through with snails.'

She was writing poetry because her class had been visited by the poet Kathleen Norris, who had moved to her grandparents home in South Dakota to write, to rediscover the Christian faith in small Protestant churches and a Benedictine monastery, and to help school children in those small Dakota towns to discover the arts.

Norris reflects on the way that death surrounds this girl who is writing the poem in class:

"She sits up to let me pass down the aisle, the visiting poet working with the third grade: in this dying school, this dying town, we are writing about our lives."  (Dakota, page 189)

This week, Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday we invite each other to look ahead to where Lent always leads. The cross. We make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, of all places, and we hear the words "from dust you were made, and to dust you will return." It is a reminder that we share in death that Jesus faced, or that Jesus shares in the death we all face.

Ash Wednesday is a powerful experience in our 2014 American culture, in which our tendency is to do everything we can to keep from thinking about death until the very last possible moment. And why not? Isn't it painful to be reminded of our mortality? Is it any wonder that the Ash Wednesday worship service draws so few of our regular worshipers in the Protestant tradition?

And yet, I find the reminder of our mortality, within the ritual safety and assurance of worship, to be just the opposite of grim. It doesn't make me morbid; it makes me more alive. It is a powerful reminder of the incredible gift that life is, and inspires me to re-focus, to re-connect with God, to repent of anything that keeps me apart from the deep life of following the way of Christ. Worship on Ash Wednesday is solemn, but it is not weighted by death.

Kathleen Norris writes "the little girl calls me, holding up her paper for me to read:
When my third snail died, I said,
'I'm through with snails.'
But I didn't mean it.

Evolution, Creation, Science, Theology, Truth

A spike of attention given recently to a evolution vs. creationism debate between Creation Museum president Ken Ham and Bill Nye “the science guy” made me thankful for my faith tradition, and for the memory of Ian Barbour. More about Barbour in a moment.

The debate, in case you haven’t heard about it, pitted Bill Nye, who advocated the scientific approach of critical thinking and hypothesis testing, against Ken Ham, who advocates finding “answers in Genesis.” Ken Ham believes that the Bible is literally true, without errors of any kind. To him, that means that the universe is around 6,000 years old, and that the earth and all living things (including humans) were created in the span of six days.

One of the issues that I have with “answers in Genesis” is that Ken Ham seems to be asking questions that Genesis was never intended to answer. (A second issue comes later.)

What was missing in the debate were the many voices of faithful Christians and faithful people of other religions who see no conflict between scientific and theological (choose your word…) truth, knowledge, understanding.  This is the tradition in which I was raised, in the United Church of Christ, although certainly not limited to our denomination.

Which brings be to Ian Barbour, professor of science and religion, and member of the United Church of Christ, who passed away last month at the age of 90. In a wonderful obituary from theNew York Times:

He was well known for describing four prevailing views of the relationship between science and religion: that they fundamentally conflict, that they are separate domains, that the complexity of science affirms divine guidance and finally — the approach he preferred — that science and religion should be viewed as being engaged in a constructive dialogue with each other.“This requires humility on both sides,” he wrote. “Scientists have to acknowledge that science does not have all the answers, and theologians have to recognize the changing historical contexts of theological reflection.”

My second issue with the approach that Ken Ham takes is that a focus on Genesis for accurate chronology about the origins of the universe and life actually distracts us from the intention of Genesis. The opening chapter of Genesis is a poetic, liturgical celebration of all that exists. It is meant to evoke wonder and praise, and to assure us of a theological truth, which is repeated at the end of each day of creation. The truth is this: everything that God has created is good. There is no inherent evil. There is no meaningless existence. There is only what has been created by God for good. 

Faith at the Movies in 2013

When we think about our lives – what we value, what is right and wrong, what gives us meaning – we can get very precise and analytical using the language of theology, ethics, and philosophical terms. There’s a place for that, but we what we really need are stories: parables, novels, fables, and, yes, movies. This is the movie award season, and my annual look at faith in the movies of the past year.

You may have missed Philomena . If you did, I urge you to find a way to see it. Based on a true story, Judi Dench plays Philomena, a woman who tries to reconnect with her child who was adopted from the judgmental convent in Ireland where she gave birth to him. Records have been destroyed, but a journalist helps her to rekindle her search. This movie shows the variety and complexity of Christian faith. Some of the nuns are very cruel in their vindictive judgment, but Philomena herself, despite the harm she suffered, has a mature faith that seeks to live with joy and mercy, even when it is hard.

In one of the best moments, the journalist is amazed by Philomena’s forgiveness for the people who did her harm. He doesn’t believe that they deserve her forgiveness, and he says to Philomena something like “Forgive? You’re going to do it just like that?!” 

Philomena snaps back “It’s not ‘just like that.’ That’s hard! That’s hard for me.”

What a wonderful window into the life of faith, so simple and yet so brave, so demanding of strength beyond our own.

 

In the movie 12 Years A Slave, we are reminded of the horror of American slavery, and reminded that the Christian faith was used to justify and maintain the institution of slavery. On more than one slave plantation, we see what passes for a Sunday morning Christian service which consists of the slave owner reading to the slaves

from the Bible, and always choosing the passages about obedience to the master. These are heartbreaking scenes. They are a powerful reminder that we need to be very careful and critical in our understanding of what scripture means. Just because someone says that this is what it means does not make that the final word.

Finally, Gravity was a beautiful and visually stunning movie about the danger and isolation of astronauts in space, orbiting our planet. It is also a story of the weight of grief, and a metaphor that reminds us that grief can feel like a death of our former life. It also reminds us that beyond death there is new life, a rebirth. It is not an overtly religious movie, but that is the good news of our faith.

Text and Subtext

I once found myself giving a long and detailed description to my twenty-year-old stepson about how to install a new toilet. I'd asked him to help me with it so that I could teach him, having only recently learned it myself. But the one I'd bought had a different way of mounting the tank and I soon found that my confident and knowledgeable lesson was breaking down into lots of thoughts along the lines of “now, let's see here...” and “let me just look at the diagram again....” It was not my finest parental lesson, and my son's interest was understandably lowering.

At some point, it was necessary for me to give up on the text of the lesson and get down to the subtext of the moment, which is what was really important in the first place. Text and subtext are terms I borrow from literary work. The text is the actual content of the words. In this case, the text had to do with the setting of screws in the base of the toilet. The subtext is the unspoken message which is being conveyed under and behind the text. Nine times out of ten, or maybe all ten times, the subtext is the more important part of the message. For me, the subtext of my bad plumbing lesson contained several messages.

1.      You're growing up and I want you to be prepared for adulthood.

2.      I wish I'd learned more about taking care of a house when I was growing up.

3.      I love you, and I want to teach you what I have to pass on.

That's a lot to pack into a lesson on installing a toilet, and when the lesson broke down, I decided I'd just tell him those things, in more or less the words I just used. These were not new messages to him, but they were worth saying out loud again.

I've been thinking about the subtext of some of the things we do at church.

Text: We have ministry programs for children and youth = Subtext: we want a safe and nurturing place for the young people we love.

Text: We have a writing group for elders = Subtext: we value our life stories, and we believe that if we listen closely and honestly to our stories, we will hear the story of God.

Text: We work with outreach partners locally and around the world = Subtext: all people are our neighbors. Even if they are strangers to us, they are relatives in the family of God.

Those are just a few, but you get the point. These are not new messages, but they are worth saying out loud as often as we can.