Apophatica

In the beginning.  This is where we always start, but not necessarily where we return to.  According to most Christians, it was in the beginning that God created the universe ex nihilo (from nothing).  Interestingly enough, the text actually says that there was a void and that “the spirit hovered over the waters.”  This connotes that there was something already in existence and God spoke it into some semblance of order, thereby creating order where there was chaos – something where there was nothing.

Many Christians get caught up on the first three chapters of Genesis and base the roots of their theology on it.  In the process, many things tend to get ignored.  First of all, there are two separate creation accounts here.  One is Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a and the other is Genesis 2:4b – 3:24.  Scholars today realize that these two separate accounts are from two separate sources writing hundreds of years from each other.  In the first account, for example, “Adam and Eve” are created at the same time, “male and female he created them.”  In this account, the animals are created first and the creation of all things on a cosmological scale occurs in chronological order.  In the second account, Eve is created after Adam and animals in between with a focus on the earthly and not so much the cosmological. 

Reading the texts in English (as if we had any other choice) leads to some confusion.   Adam is the word used for humankind and is not a proper noun.  Unfortunately, many people will defend the notion that an actual man named Adam was created first and followed by a woman named Eve, but this is not what the text says.  A BIG point of controversy is the original language used for God in the two accounts which we can see even reflected in the English.  In the first account it says “Let us make man (adam) in our image, in our likeness.”  Many Christians point to the plural language as proof of the existence of the trinity.  This erroneous assumption is to overlook the original language. This reference in the plural to God is seen again later in Genesis 11 when God (plural, Elohim) says “Let us confuse their language . . . .”

The first creation account uses the the word Elohim for God.  This is a term meaning god(s) and not a proper name.  Putting im at the end of a Hebrew word makes it plural such as in the case of seraphim or cherubim – both different kinds of angels – plural.  In the second account, God is referred to as Yahweh.  Yahweh was a proper name for God used after Moses adopted the tribal religion of his father-in-law Jethro for the people of Israel when bringing them out of Egypt.  This begs the question then: Where does the plural expression for God come from?

The Sumerian people were the first to record a written history in the land of Mesopotamia (lit., the land between the rivers).  Their religion told them that the goddess Nammu created the god An (heavens) and the goddess Ki (earth) and therefore, the word an-ki means “cosmos.”  An and Ki had a son named Enlil who was the god of the air and there is an account similar to that in Genesis of Enlil sweeping over the face of the waters and separating them from the sky.  Later, Enlil had a wife named Ninlil and they gave birth to celestial gods such as the moon and the sun.  There was a paradise in an unknown location in the east called Dilmun much like the biblical place called Eden.  Eventually, the gods Enki (god of sweet water) and Ninhursag (another name for earth) were at a banquet of the gods and while drunk, were complaining about how difficult farming fields and digging canals was.  So, they created six flawed humans out of clay to do the work.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should.  It says in Genesis that Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) came from Ur (the last capital of Sumer) to Canaan (later, Israel).  Not the least of these familiar stories is that of Ziusudra who was the lone survivor of a flood and would gain god-like attributes.  Around 2050 BCE, the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians in what would be the final of many conquests over them and would begin to adopt and change the myths of Sumerian religion.  The religion became much more misogynistic and male-dominated.  One of the sons of the Sumerian god Enki had a minor son named Marduk who became a major figure as a warrior and chief hero of the gods.  The rather peaceful creation account of Sumerian religion gave way to the violent battle in Babylonian mythology of Marduk competing with his mother, Tiamat (Babylonian dragon and goddess of the sea) to create the cosmos.  Marduk killed his mother and cut her in half using the halves to create the heavens and the earth.

Seeing that the male-dominated creation account in Genesis was likely written in the late 500s BCE when the southern (Israeli) kingdom of Judah was in exile in Babylon leads one to a better understanding of the influence on this account.  Eventually, the Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539 BCE and a new religious influence came on the scene – Zoroastrianism.  Zoroastrianism held that there was one god (verses an entire council) and that this God created everything and was in a constant battle with an evil one who was near to being a deity.  There was a three-tiered cosmology with heaven above, the earth in the middle, and hell below.  Eventually, a great battle would lead to the defeat of evil and a return to the original paradise that had been created by the one god, Ahura Mazda.  It’s no wonder then, that such apocalyptic language starts to show up in the book of Daniel which was written after the Persian defeat of Babylon.  

Now that it’s a little easier (I hope) to understand the evolution of thought in the Jewish writings (Old Testament), what about our understanding of creation today – specifically among Christians?  We agree for the most part that we were created in the imago Dei (image of God) and that we were given dominion over the creation.  What we fail to grasp from the creation accounts in Genesis – especially the first one – is that God created something out of chaos.  If we do not look like God in terms of physical attributes, then what is it about us that makes us be in the image of God?  I would opine that it is our ability to create – especially out of chaos!  God uses us as we are in relation to one another to continue to create even today.  When is the last time we thought about the power that we have in relationship to join together as a group and affect great and positive change around us?   

During the evolution of religious thought, it appears that something went terribly awry.  We went from being created “just a little lower than the angels” with the ability to do amazing, almost god-like things to thinking of ourselves as sinful, worthless creatures who can do nothing right until Jesus comes back to make everything better.  Where did the wheels come off the bus!?  It seems to me that it’s time that we go back to taking some responsibility for creation – both the care and preservation of the physical creation that preceded us and the task of continuing to create in relationship with one another.  In a world with plenty of chaos to spare, who are we – the ones who have been made in the image of God – to sit idle when we know that together we can do amazing things?  How dare we wait for someone else to come and do what we were told from the beginning was our responsibility?  To create something out of nothing doesn’t necessarily have to mean that there is nothing physically in existence at the outset.  Rather, it could be that there are endless possibilities that merely haven’t become reality because nobody has taken the necessary actions to speak and act them into existence.  I wonder if that might not be a lot of what Jesus was trying to tell us in the first place . . . .

Two men are on vacation in the Emerald Isle.  It’s Sunday evening and they decide to find a local pub in Dublin and grab a pint.  When they walk in, they find a dark rustic space with wooden exposed rafters, lit candles all around, and a screen with an icon projected on it.  There is folky, yet soothing music playing and people are sitting down on an assortment of different couches and chairs in a semicircle.  A 40-something man with wild curly hair comes up to the men and invites them to grab a pint and have a seat.  A sudden calm passes over them as they enter this contemplative space and they realize that they have just stumbled upon church.

It’s Saturday afternoon.  A young husband and wife in downtown Philly are jogging when they see about 40 people working in a garden on an abandoned city block.  They stop and watch as the people laugh and pick weeds out of the garden occasionally throwing clumps of dirt at each other.  A young man with a pony tail and a bandana on his head walks up to the couple with hand extended and asks if they want to help.  They do.  The couple realizes that they have happened upon something special.  Something sacred.  Something like worship with hands and feet.  They have discovered church.

It’s Sunday morning.  Two women – neighborhood friends – walk into a church building.  Perhaps it has a high steeple and a cathedral-like interior.  Maybe it has nice carpeting and looks more like a mall with a little coffee shop in the entry area.  A band is playing praise and worship music as people wave their hands in the air and sway.  Perhaps a Bach organ tune is flowing from the pipe organ. The women find their way to a couple of comfortable chairs toward the back of the sanctuary and sit down.  Nobody greets them.  Nobody says hello.  The women realize that this place looks like a church, but doesn’t feel like one.

All three of these churches exist.  The first is Peter Rollins’s church in Ireland.  The second is Shane Claiborne’s church in Philadelphia.  The last, well, we’ve all seen that church somewhere or another.  There are a lot of churches these days that don’t look like what we imagine when we think of church, but they sure feel like it.  We know the opposite is also true.  I often wonder if Jesus were to come upon a modern church if he would even recognize it.

I think it’s worth considering that Jesus did not even invent the concept of church.  In his day, he had synagogues and he attended them.  It was likely earlier, but certainly by the time of Constantine that Christianity even became a separate religion from Judaism.  We know that Jesus had no intention of starting a religion and that his focus was not so much on belief as on action.  If I am looking for a church to attend, certainly doctrine is important, but I’m more interested in what they do than what they believe.

Jesus preached about the “kin-dom” or Kingdom of God.  He showed the disciples how they were to bring such a place into existence and entrusted them with doing so after his death.  Jesus was content with the synagogues for worship, but he wanted his disciples to teach that we are to go out and do what God has put on our hearts.  Looking at the New Testament, we can see that the disciples failed time and time again both before and after Jesus’ death.  When Jesus was alive he told the disciples that they still didn’t grasp what he was trying to teach them.  How many times did he rebuke them for not doing something that he taught them to do?  I can’t say that I recall any times when he got upset with them for not teaching the right doctrine . . . .  Nonetheless, James and Paul, Paul and Peter, Thomas and the rest of the disciples, so on and so on, we find them at odds with one another over doctrine completely missing the point of the message and being paralyzed by their inability to look beyond their beliefs.

Two disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus.  Emmaus was a safe place to return to and try to regroup.  They had a hard time making sense of what happened.  When a stranger comes along and asks what they’re all worked up about they act like the stranger has been living under a rock.  “Haven’t you heard!?  The one they called the messiah was killed and we were hoping that he would redeem Israel.  Now we don’t know what we’re supposed to do!”  The stranger tells them that they are fools for interpreting the prophets in such a way as to understand that the messiah would do everything for them.  He launches into a discourse about the prophets and teaches them a new understanding of scripture.  Despite the teachings the disciples still do not recognize him.

The stranger is about to move on when the disciples invite him to stay with them because it is getting late.  He sits with them and without a word breaks the bread and hands it to them.  Suddenly they understand that this is Jesus.  It wasn’t because of his speech.  It wasn’t because of anything that he said.  In doing the disciples’ eyes were opened and they were able to see the stranger for who he was.

How is it that through such a simple act the disciples came to realize something that they hadn’t through words?  What was so significant about such a mundane task as breaking bread?  I look at breaking bread as something sacred – when we make it that way.  The act of gathering with people from different backgrounds, different understandings of how the cosmos works, different races and socioeconomic statuses – all of these people are unique.  Yet, when gathered together focused on the simple act of sharing a table and food together being fed in the same way regardless of creed or color, gender or orientation, something miraculous happens.  Ideologies are transcended and our eyes are opened to the realization that we have gathered to fulfill common needs that we all can relate to – the need for sustenance, the need for community, the need to belong to something greater than ourselves.

When the disciples realized who Jesus was and he was satisfied that they understood, or well enough at least, Jesus disappeared.  Just like at the tomb when he told Mary to let go of him, he just vanished.  His action spoke louder than any sermon or discourse could have – you have work to do, now get to it.

Regardless of what shape a church is or what kind of space we “do” church in, I’m hopeful that we can create something through the power that God has given us that will look like what Jesus envisioned.  I’m optimistic that we can create a church that does and is more concerned about our actions than our beliefs.  I am confident that somehow we can create a space, no matter where it is, that Jesus could happen upon and say, “This is what I was talking about.  Now you see that I never left.”  Am I against belief?  Nope.  Because I believe that such a thing is possible and to me, that’s what faith is all about.

Jesus is alive!  He is risen!  He’s been raised from the dead after three days in the grave!  Hallelujah!  So what!?  I must admit that the whole resurrection thing just doesn’t mean a whole lot to me.  I mean, what’s the point?  Jesus went into a tomb dead and came out alive.  Big deal.  What did that do for the rest of us?  He went to heaven and left us here to fend for ourselves so I can’t say that I see too much reason for rejoicing.  Unless, that is, there really is some meaning to all this that we haven’t grasped thus far. 

Take James, for example.  James was a religious man.  He had great faith.  So much, in fact, that he believed that healing only came from God.  He belonged to a fundamentalist church that said sickness was the work of the devil and going to the doctor for healing showed a lack of faith.  So, when he started to feel ill, he went to the doctor for a diagnosis – not healing.  He wanted to find out what was wrong so that he knew what to ask the church to pray for.  The doctor came back with the diagnosis – liver cancer.  The good news was that the cancer was still in it’s early stages and they had caught it in time to remove the affected area and begin treatment.  He had a great chance of survival.  But, James wasn’t going to let the devil have the last word.  He was going to put it in God’s hands and let God do the healing.  

And so the congregation gathered around him regularly and prayed for him, laying hands on him, fasting, crying out to God.   Day after day, week after week, the congregation prayed for him and their pastor encouraged them to keep praying.  When he started to lose a lot of weight and became bedridden, the pastor said keep praying, God works in his own time. They kept praying until the day that James died.  That next Sunday, the pastor got up to the pulpit and said “Well, God works in mysterious ways.  We can’t fully understand his purpose.”  There was a noticeable tension in the air as many people glared at the pastor in anger.  Finally, one elderly lady in the back stood up and said, “Yeah, and God gave us doctors and we don’t even have the sense to use them!”  Sometimes our version of faith gets in the way of the deeper meaning.

There are four different accounts of the resurrection event.  Marks is the shortest and Jesus doesn’t even make an appearance.  In some accounts there are two angels, in some, one.  In some, the angels say go to Galilee and in others Jesus says to go to Jerusalem if the disciples want to find him.  The details are all over the place in these accounts and they don’t match up factually.  So I guess we should just toss them and assume that it never happened.  UNLESS, there is a unique meaning to each of these texts that supersedes the facticity.  Meaning doesn’t take away from the facticity, it just gives it meaning and truth.  

Now Jesus has been placed in a tomb and the Roman authorities think that they have shut him up once and for all.  His followers are dejected and hopeless.  We keep this story going in our mind that we celebrate every year that tells us that Jesus was rose on the third day and then went to be with God after appearing to the disciples.  Who said it was the third day?  We assume this because he was buried on a Friday and rose on a Sunday, but how do we know it was the Sunday right after the burial?  How do we know it wasn’t weeks or months later?  It would have made sense for Mary and the disciples to visit his grave on a regular basis.  Then, one day, the stone has been moved and he’s not there.  

Now comes the good stuff.  What does it mean that he’s not there?  He’s been resurrected.  Ok, so what does that mean?  Because we don’t have to look far to realize that this world is still severely messed up.  What meaning can we take from these accounts?  The women are told to go tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee.  What’s that about?  That, my friends, is where everything started.  Jesus began his ministry when he stood up and read from the scroll of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  THIS was the meaning of Jesus’ ministry and it all started in Galilee.  

Likewise, when they are told to find Jesus in Jerusalem, that is because that’s where the story ended.  Jesus accepted what he always knew would happen if he opposed the Roman authorities.  He knew that he would get crucified for stirring up the pot and when that came to fruition, he went willingly as an example to the disciples.  In a way, it showed them that, if you love someone enough, you will be willing to die for what is right.  This is the ultimate detachment – letting go of your own life so that others might find a way to live.  

Then, one of my favorite lines from all of the accounts is found in John when Jesus tells Mary, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  All of the sudden, everything that Jesus said and did in his ministry starts to flash through her mind and it all starts to make sense.  In Galilee he told the world what his ministry was about.  Then he went and did it.  He taught the disciples exactly what to do and say.  He showed them the way.  The way of love, compassion, respect, and hope.  At the transfiguration, he gave them all a test and they failed.  When the disciples fail to heal the boy with the demon, Jesus says, “How long must I be with you and put up with you?”  There it is!  Suddenly his statement to Mary makes all the sense in the world.  I showed you how to do it, now GO DO IT!  Why do you always want me to do it for you?  I have always showed you and then told you to go and do likewise and you still are holding on to me in hopes that I will do it for you.  If you still don’t get it, go back to Galilee where it all started and take a walk down memory lane.  Retrace the steps.  

Just like the scared and dejected disciples who were hunkering down in an upper room, 2000 years later we are still waiting for Jesus to make it all better.  Just like when God told Moses, “Why are you crying out to me?  YOU do something!” as the Israelites were traversing the Red Sea, those who knew Jesus were told, “You have to let go of me and do this yourselves. Just look.  God is in front of you and behind you all the way.  You are not alone, but you have to take the initiative to actually DO what I taught you for the kin-dom of God to become real on earth.  Pilate and the Sanhedrin thought they were shutting me up forever and ending this movement.  If you don’t do anything, that’s exactly what will happen.  I’ll stay here in this grave and that will be it.   

The gospels are four different accounts for four different audiences from four different perspectives.  It would do us well not to lose the forest for the trees.  The resurrection story is the last story in these gospels.  Why?  Because that’s where it all ends?  Nope.  It’s just the beginning.  It’s up to us to write the rest.  

When I was 12, my grandpa died.  He was my father figure, my hero.  He was the one who saved me when I got myself into a bind as I often did back then.  One day, my grandma and I were going to my aunt and uncle’s beauty shop where we were meeting my other aunt so everyone could get their hair done as we did about once a month.  When we arrived, I thought it was strange that my uncle was there, too.  I remember them all chatting off by themselves while I sat there seething because they wouldn’t tell me what was going on.  Finally, they said that my grandpa had a heart attack and was in the hospital, so they were going to send me off with my uncle’s sister to wait at her house.  I was upset that they treated me like a child and wouldn’t let me go with them to the hospital.  I was infinitely more upset, though, when my mom came home and told me the news that he had already been dead when his brother found him slumped over the kitchen table.  I flew into a fury and felt like my family, God, and even my grandfather had betrayed me.  My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

My grandpa died on Good Friday.  A savior already died on this day, why did God have to take my savior?  For Easter, my mom gave me a Michael Bolton CD and one of the songs was “How am I Supposed to Live Without You?”  I bawled my eyes out listening to that song over and over again.  I still tear up when I hear that and “Wind Beneath My Wings” which my cousin sang at his funeral.

I can still see his good friend Norm coming up to me at the visitation.  Norm was a biker who customized Harleys in his machine shop across the street from where we lived.  He drank a bottle of Red Eye every day and had a mouth that made a sailor look like a saint.  I’ll never forget the shock that I felt when he came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Well, you’re going to have to grow up now.”  I couldn’t believe it.  What a jerk!  How could he be saying something so rude to me at a time like this?  I wanted to hit him.  It wasn’t until days or weeks later when I realized that he was right.  Although I would never have wished for my grandfather to die, it occurred to me that nobody would bail me out when I got myself in trouble.  I had to start doing for myself and stop being a knucklehead.  And so I changed.  It was as simple as that.  My old self had to die.  It was crucified on Good Friday and it was time to start looking to Easter for the birth of a new me.

I chose the Mark text instead of the Matthew text in the lectionary because it is closer to a historical account.  It’s NOT an historical account, because we know that Mark was not with Jesus at the crucifixion.  His gospel was written over 20 years after Jesus died.  Matthew and Luke used Mark as their source to write their gospels another 20-30 years after Mark.  So it makes me wonder who this character Simon is.  Who does he represent?  I suppose he represents all of us.  The ones who want to stand on the sideline and just watch from the periphery and then are thrust into the experience against our will.  When you stand so close to the action you can’t help but get a little blood on your hands and be greatly transformed by the experience.

I can recall my time in Japan when I would take part in the matsuri each year.  We carried the omikoshi that weighed hundreds if not over a thousand pounds.  I was one of the tallest ones and so a good portion of the weight was on my shoulder, digging in, pushing me down, hurting my back, my neck.  So I can sort of relate to Simon, but at least I had 20 other people helping to share the weight.  He had this huge, solid piece of wood laid on his shoulder and was made to drag it.  Here’s your boulder Sisyphus – go.  The top of the hill must have seemed like miles away and the closer he got, the farther away it seemed.  I can see him as he finally dropped the cross where the centurion told him to.  Jesus and the cross hit the ground at the same time and dust flies up in Simon’s eyes as he looks on at this broken and battered man lying there wondering if he was still alive.  I imagine the tears in his eyes were not all from the dust that was stinging them, but from a deeper understanding of what was happening to this man, but yet never really comprehending why it had to happen.  Who was this man that would challenge the common wisdom, the authority of the day knowing what would happen to him if he did?  And then they stretched the man out, secured his arms with ropes to the cross beams, centered the spikes and began pounding.  Thump.  Thump.  Thump.  Each lowering of the hammer brought a deeper sob from Simon who had front row seats.

Crucifixion hurts.  So does rebirth.  Neither of these things are easy.  Just ask anyone who has had spikes driven through their wrists and feet.  Ask anyone who has given birth to a child.  There is great darkness before the morning, before the rebirth happens and we are born anew.  It’s not something that happens quickly.  Three days is a metaphorical image for a really long time that is required for completeness.  Even then, for us, it’s really not complete.  We have to keep doing it again and again.

Today I still find myself in situations where things don’t go as well as they ought to.  Sometimes relationships don’t click the way they seem they should.  Sometimes somebody will suggest that I do things a little differently.  My first reaction is to get my hackles up and wonder what their problem is.  Why can’t they see things my way – the right way?  Eventually, usually later than sooner, I remember that 12 year old boy on Good Friday and I recall that I am the common denominator in every situation.  I become acutely aware that Good Friday and Easter are not once-and-for-all-time events.  They are events that have to happen annually, daily in fact so that I can remember who I am and who God has called me, indeed created me to be.

Oh, Lazarus.  You never even existed, but yet you are so real.  You are merely a figment of the Jews’ collective imagination, but yet you are an archetype for all of us.  Dives couldn’t convince Abraham to send you out to him to give him a drop of water for the chasm was too wide.  He couldn’t convince the old patriarch to send you to his family to warn them of their impending doom and so you rested peacefully in the bosom of he whose descendants were as numerous as the stars in the sky.  So quiet and comfortable without a worry in the world.  No concern over where your next meal would come from.  No care about how the townspeople would treat you.  No more to fret over your sisters’ drama.  And then it happened.  The Nazarene looked toward where your body lie at rest in the cool dark tomb and with with a breath that carried into your lifeless ears called you back to this world.

What was it like for you?  Were you one minute listening to Dives beg for mercy and the next gasping for air under your burial mask?  Were you resting contently in the old man’s bosom one moment in perfect comfort and the next could feel your stiff back aching and pressed against the cold stone?  He called you and you came.  How the light must have hurt as it struck your dilated pupils like an insolent child when you walked out into the sun at noonday.  

You stumbled out, your funeral bands still clinging to your reeking flesh.  Four days in a damp tomb will do that to you.  Were you glad when sensation came back, though painfully to your body?  Did your lungs burn when air was thrust back into them expanding them like old wine sacks dry and cracked from disuse? Were you elated to be able to feel again or were you mad at the intruder who yanked you unwillingly from your slumber?  Did you despise this prophet for bringing you back from sheol?  Did you count it as selfishness that this man wanted you back by his side when he could have prevented you from dying in the first place?  What killed you anyway?  Was it despair or just ennui at being alive? 

I wonder what happened to you after that.  I wonder if you went on to do great things and make the world better for those around you.  Or was it that you crawled back into the tomb and curled into the fetal position in your bed of complacency?  It was your choice, after all.  Had you rotted so much as to preclude you from living with any semblance of normalcy?  Did it seem like an undue curse that was imprinted on you forcing you to carry it every where you went?  Or did you  have a new hope that made your heart soar as you were able to see and appreciate beauty for the first time?  Well?  

Why did that prophet weep for you?  Why did he feel like you had to be brought back, even it if was kicking and screaming?  Maybe he did it just to show the rest of us that we have that kind of power – the power to call the dead back to life with a single utterance of hope.  Maybe he wanted us to realize that such a force lived within us, too – a force that could propel even us out of the grave and into the light when it seemed that darkness was the only choice.  I don’t know either, but I guess it’s up to me to find out.   

Today is Ash Wednesday.  Many of us will go and get ashes placed on our forehead as a mark of something we perhaps haven’t given much thought to.  It marks the beginning of Lent, the season where we give something up, but aren’t really sure why.  Over the past couple of years I have given Lent a lot of thought.  Why do we give things up?  What’s with the ashes?  Why 40 days?  It is important to note that the word “Lent” is found nowhere in the Bible.  There are models for it, however, in Jesus’ temptation and 40 days in the desert, Moses and the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering in the desert waiting to enter the promised land, and Elijah’s 40 days of wondering and worrying about what Jezebel is going to do with him while he is attended by angels and finally meets God on the mountain.  It’s no wonder then that the passage about Jesus’ temptation appears in Mark after Jesus is on the mountain with Elijah and Moses – two guys who wandered and met God on a mountain.  Starting to see a pattern?

Jesus is in the desert when Satan comes to him and tempts him with meeting his own needs by turning rocks into bread.  He is offered a kingdom of his own and to use his special abilities to test his mortality.  THIS, I think, is the essence of Lent: to embrace our humanity and relish everything that it includes – even our own mortality.  I would guess that Jesus did not spend a literal 40 day period of time in a literal desert with a malevolent personage who was constantly tempting him.  I don’t think this is the point.  It seems to me that the point is that we are most tempted in our loneliness.  It is the idle time alone when we can work up the most mischief, but it can also be the best time.  The desert fathers and mothers intentionally sought solace in the farthest reaches of the desert so as to shed distractions and get closer to God and to themselves.

The biggest mark of our humanity is our mortality.  From ashes we have come and to ashes we will return.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  The ashes we have imposed on our foreheads is a symbol and a reminder that sometimes we need to just be.  We don’t need to be this or be that.  We simply need to be mindful of our existence and embrace our humanity and every single breath that reminds us we are alive.  We are also reminded that the breath will not always be there and a time will come when we will return to the dust from which we came.  We have to be able to embrace that, too, because it is an essential part of being human.  We give things up, then, so that we can get rid of our attachments – even for just 40 days – and concentrate on being.  The things that we think will make us happy are usually a barrier to our peace and mindfulness.  After all, Jesus didn’t turn rocks into bread, instead he embraced the hunger as it reminded him of his humanity.

So, what am I giving up for Lent?  I think I’ll give up laziness and complacency.  Hopefully this will mean that I’ll get up a little earlier each day and get a little more done.  Hopefully it means that I will do more writing and embrace those things that make me human a little more deeply.

Time magazine said it in the interrogatory.  In his Thus Spoke Zarathustra and in an article in The Gay Science, Nietzsche said it in the affirmative – God is dead.  Period.  Here is a quote from his article:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Nietzsche is accused by many who have never actually read him as being a nihilist.  Quite to the contrary, he did not gloat about the human act of deicide, rather he lamented it.  He did not believe that humans had literally murdered God, but he felt that they were replacing God with less important things and, in the process, making God inconsequential in their lives.  In fact, Nietzsche warned against nihilism and said that it was a dangerous thing to not have a supreme being as a moral guide.

To the question, Is God Dead? I say – we can only hope so.  Much as Nietzsche has been misunderstood, I could easily be hung upside down from the church rafters for making such a statement too loudly.  So, lest the doctrinal SWAT team show up at my door with Bibles drawn and my excommunication papers in hand, let me clarify that statement.

Since humans have been capable of cognition and certainly since the advent of Roman systematic theology, we have been seeking, hoping for even a mere glimpse of who and or what God is.  In our search, we walk away with more questions than answers.  “If God is in control, then how can evil exist?”  “If God is omnipotent, then how can bad things happen or does God just not care?”  “If God created everything and God is good, then how is it possible for Satan to exist?”  “If God has a plan for everything, where is the good in suffering?”  “If we are ultimately responsible for the evil in the world, what about natural disasters?  We couldn’t possibly cause earthquakes and tsunamis.”  “If God is capable of anything, then why did he have to kill his son so that we can be ‘saved’?”

Such questions are quite valid within the framework in which this God exists, yet lead only to more questions and even worse answers.  How about some of these: “God gave us free will, so we are ultimately responsible for evil.  Our evil acts caused God to curse the world and that is why the earth is imperfect and sometimes has natural disasters.”  “God allows Satan to exist to test us and see if we truly will obey him.”  “God allows suffering so that we can be molded by it.”  “God  has a plan and sometimes works in ways so mysterious that we cannot comprehend them, therefore we should not even try.”

Ok, you get the point.  I could go on forever, but such thinking can only lead to circular reasoning.  So what’s our problem?  Personally, I think it is that we have created one version of God who is imperfect and irrational and therefore requires much explanation and futile attempts at logic so as to reconcile the complete inanity of it all.  Ironically, we call this God perfect and blame our own feeble minds for their inability to comprehend such a being when it is those feeble minds that created this deity in the first place.  If we are going to ever make any existential progress, I think we would do well by letting this God die the same slow and painful death that “He” purportedly lets others withstand.  On second thought, it’s probably best that we “kill” this senseless deity as quickly as possible so that we can get on with our lives.

I can recall as a young boy even into high school I would spend the night with my great-grandmother at her home.  We would go through the same routine of watching Murder, She Wrote, Empty Nest, The Golden Girls, and Wheel of Fortune.  When it was time for bed, I would say the prayers that she taught me: The Lord’s Prayer and The Serenity Prayer.  I would also say a prayer that, as much as I tried to mix it up, always came out about the same – “Dear God, please let grandma be alive and well in the morning.”  I always felt that if I did not pray with just the exact words that God would find a loophole and I would wake up to find her having died in her sleep.  In order to close up these loopholes lest a certain wily deity sneak one through, I would pray the same thing in as many ways as I could think to verbalize it.  It doesn’t take a PhD in theology to realize that this is not a healthy view of God, but nonetheless it’s the one that we usually pray to in the dead of night.  I killed this God long ago, but in the darkest hours when the lightning is flashing outside and finger-like branches are tapping on the window, I sometimes catch myself resurrecting him.

I realize that this all sounds rather cynical and perhaps it is.  Rest assured, though, that my intention is not to be sacrilegious, but rather just the opposite.  I would love nothing more than to have folks encounter God for the first time because they were finally willing to let go of the God they created.  The God that Nietzsche claimed that humans had killed was imagined at a particular time for a particular reason.  “He” no longer serves a purpose, so how about a discussion about what God might be if we let God be God?  To be continued . . . .

It’s pretty sad.  You may have already heard the news that lobbyist Jack Burkman is drafting legislation that, if passed, will ban gays from the NFL.  We all know that there is no way that it will pass, but it is still disconcerting that someone would use his or her intellect (if there is any) and other resources to get involved in something that is frankly none of their business.

According to Burkman, “We are losing our decency as a nation.”  I couldn’t agree more.  How much indecency does it take to take it upon one’s self to legislate the sexuality or any other facet of a person’s private life?  Burkman says that it is an unthinkable horror to mothers across the nation to have to imagine their sons being forced to shower with gays.  Nice.  How about putting your mouth to better use and teach people to be more accepting of one another.  Then again, you wouldn’t know anything about that – would you?  I’m not generally one to get cynical, but this guy represents exactly what he’s talking about – the loss of our decency as a country.  Let’s start worrying about ourselves before we go out attacking others.

During this time of year when we want to escape the cold midwestern winter it only makes sense to go where it is warmer.  Unfortunately, I’m not that bright and went up north to spend a weekend with my “brothers-from-another-mother” up in Wisconsin.  As always tends to happen around the breakfast, lunch, or dinner table, political “discussions” break out usually in the form of one person espousing what are no more than his own opinions, but are presented as though they are the only option a sane person with an IQ higher than his shoe size could arrive at.  It is later in the evening after dinner and some wine that the religious discussions begin.

I always go away and do the dishes when the political rhetoric is heating up, but I will usually stay and banter for a short while during the religious ones.   Ultimately, though, people will try to razz me by saying that they are atheists and are thrown off when I tell them that I have no agenda to prove them wrong.  I have no need to convince folks of a particular faith system or even to believe that there is a God – however one defines this term.  Rather, I will say that absolute truth is a hard thing to come by and those who have it really don’t have it.  I don’t opine that we should be relativists, but I certainly don’t think that we can stand for very long on absolutes when it comes to defining God.

It is extremely difficult, likely impossible in fact, to “prove” that one is right in either of these discussions.  This is why I don’t waste my breath on political discussions.  When it comes to theology, however, I have to ask myself what we are really studying in this academic subject.  Are we studying God?  I would opine that we are not.  To “do” theology is to explore the various ideas that humankind has developed over the years about the Divine.  But, they are just these – our own ideas.  Theology is not the study of God-self.  I don’t think that God can be known outside of experience, but regardless, it troubles me when self-professed theologians purport that they own absolute truth and have evidence to back it.  It’s even worse when folks base their ideologies on these truths “because the Bible says so.”  More often than not such truth claims are based upon biblical texts taken egregiously out of context and used in a way that the original authors likely never intended.

Despite my reticence to embrace absolute truth claims, I do not propose that we all become relativists.  I think what we run a risk of losing the opportunity to experience the Divine if we merely say that all religions are the same  because they are clearly not.  Each religion grows out of a particular cultural context and history for specific reasons and it would be irresponsible to push those reasons aside.  To say that they are all the same is to come to a conclusion and I would say that, when it comes to God, there are no conclusions.  It is as Catherine Keller said in her book, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process: “When we think we’ve finally got it, have we already lost it?”  I would say yes.

Our search for God is just that – a search.  It is a journey that takes us places that we could have never imagined and could never have seen were we to have our minds hardened by the pretty little bow we have placed around our own version of absolute truth – forever dooming it from being transformed by God.  Keller says that, “Abstracted from it’s living relationships, even a proposition about divine love can be cited ‘in bad faith.’  It can be turned into a terrorizing absolute.  Such abstraction from text and context, whereby a proposition can then be reinserted unilaterally into any life situation, is the temptation of all forms of truth-language, but above all of theology.  It is the fertilizer of every atheism.” (emphasis mine)  

When people are busy creating their own form of God and imposing it upon others “for their own good,” it has the same effect as the framing that happens on either side of the political aisle.  People define things in their own chosen words leaving others to agree or disagree with no middle ground.  When we describe God and “think we’ve finally got it” we force a necessary atheism for those who have not experienced that God.  If what you describe is God and I cannot bring myself to believe in this God, then I do not believe in God and am therefore an atheist.  Instead of trying to make sense of the Divine, why can’t we just embrace the mystery that God is and enjoy the journey of new and breath-taking experiences?  Why do we have to hold the keys to the truth?  Perhaps we would be better served by NOT giving up on thinking, or on the search for God, but instead embracing that which we discover rather than setting it aside because it doesn’t match our pre-defined notions.  This would be to allow a very large God in process remain in process with the ability to work wherever that God may be found.

I wouldn’t say that I agree with Augustine on everything or even remotely so, but I think he was dead on when he said, Si comprehendis, non est Deus – “If you have understood it, then that what you have understood is not God.”  When it comes to God, let’s stop worrying about being right and start being real.

I was recently listening to an interview on On Being with Marilynne Robinson (fiction writer) and Marcelo Gleiser (astrophysicist) when it occurred to me that, while we keep science and faith at opposite poles and often in great tension with one another, there are a lot of similarities.  In fact, religion could stand to learn a few things from science and visa versa.  Indeed, contrary to the beliefs of those like Dawkins and Hawking, science and religion need not be antithetically at odds with one another.

We have heard of the God of the gaps – the idea that those things which are explicable remain within the realm of science and logic while those things that we cannot explain are attributed to God.  For example, Newton realized that the Earth and the other planets in the solar system were revolving around the sun in an elliptical pattern due to a force called gravity.  This was pure science.  However, neither he nor anyone else could explain what force started the planets in motion in the first place.  This was believed to be the work of a divine being because nobody could come up with a viable reason.  Humans are on a search to find God in a way that doesn’t merely fill the gaps of the unknown, but to grasp that which is incomprehensible.

In science, there is a search for what Dr. Gleiser calls “beautiful perfection.”  That is, the way in which bodies act upon one another is a result of forces that exist between them and within those forces there is a symmetry that explains the effects of those forces upon the objects.  I’m not a scientist and I won’t pretend to be one, but the basic gist is that there is a symmetry that lies at the core of existence that wraps science up with a nice bow and “explains it all.”  This is called Unified Theory and its discovery is the quest of many scientists.

It always intrigues me, that such ideas as this within the scientific world are called “theories,” which by their very nature mean that there is significant evidence via the proof and disproof of hypotheses and null hypotheses as to their being correct, but they are not proven per se which would make them a “law.”  In religion, however, (especially Christianity) we have “absolute truth.”   Void of any data or evidence we who adhere to a particular religion believe that there is something that is absolute and true without a willingness to budge despite the lack of benefit or tangible proof.  In science, however, if a theory is disproven, there is great rejoicing amidst the scientific community because it means that advances have been made in that particular field.  The feelings of the scientist(s) (if still alive) who introduced the existing theory may be hurt temporarily, but over all they will be pleased because their goal was likely not for self-notoriety, but rather for the advancement of knowledge in their field.  In religion, it seems, we are more concerned about being right.

Believers attribute the inexplicable to a Divine being who has all the answers where our own run out.  Scientists search for a grand design to the structure of the universe all the way down to subatomic particles to make sense of how it all works.  In the end, we’re not all that different.  We’re all on a search for something that we can’t quite get our minds wrapped around.  The difference is, when believers discover something that potentially advances our relationship with the “mysterious Other,” even when it means needing to let go of old dogma, it is deemed as heresy and disallowed because it doesn’t match up against the “absolute truths that we hold to be self-evident.”  I think it would be nice if we could get over ourselves (because after all, it’s really just our own egotistical need to be right and fear of being wrong that keeps us holding on) and rejoice when we make advances in connecting with God.  Yep, we’ve got a lot to learn from each other, those scientists and us who own the truth.