Apophatica

I hereby excommunicate you, Owen Strachan, from the universal church of Jesus Christ.  There will be no surrender on progress and spreading the extravagant love of Jesus.  We will not give an inch to those who would look their fellow human beings in the eye and be haughty enough to assume that they can tell them that they are not good enough or somehow more of a sinner than themselves.  You have misrepresented what the gospel stands for and impeded the liberation that Jesus spoke of.  Instead of freeing the oppressed, you have proven only to add to the weight of their shackles.  Instead of giving sight, you have managed to continue blinding the masses from your pulpit of judgment.  Therefore, by the power vested in me by the church, your license to preach the gospel and membership in the church universal is hereby revoked.

What!?  What do you mean I don’t have the authority to tell you that you can no longer share your opinionated message within the church?  Is this not what you did to Rob Bell?  You speak for yourself Rev. Dr. Strachan.  You may very well represent the majority of your denomination within the Southern Baptist Conference, but you do not represent the entire church, so please do not speak as if you do.  There are many issues that you and I will never agree on.  Yet, we are both (as is Rob Bell) ordained to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is indeed troubling when we are claiming to preach the gospel, but are preaching different messages.  Is it an unsettling truth, but true nonetheless.

Neither you nor I can claim to represent the hundreds of thousands of congregations and millions of Christians here in the U.S. alone.  As much as we both have strong convictions that we wish everyone else would open their eyes and see, in the end we can only speak for ourselves.  The church is big, diverse, beautiful, and very broken just like the people that it is comprised of.  We serve the same God from different perspectives.  As much as I disagree with your position, I respect you as a human being who is fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of a very big and very loving God.  May we all serve that God well from our different positions and despite those differences, may God redeem the simple words that come from our human mouths and use them as God wishes.  When all is said and done, may our words edify and encourage those whom God has called us to serve and not make them any more broken than they already are.  After all, it is God’s church and may God’s will be done – not ours.

My grandparents’ house was only about 200 yards from the house I grew up in.  Our house wasn’t much to look at so I would hang out at grandpa and grandma’s more often than my own place.   At 16, when my girlfriend wanted to come over and watch movies, going to grandma’s house (grandpa had died four years previous) with her big screen TV was a much better option than our place.  So, I rented some VHS tapes and went to her house to wait for my girlfriend to arrive.

Grandma was out on a date and so I let myself in from the garage.  The entry from the garage opened in to the family room with a set of steps going down immediately to the right of the entry.  I had many nightmares as a child about being dragged by some unseen force down those steps so I was quick to turn on every light I could and get away from the steps.  After I turned on the light, the steps were soon out of sight and out of mind as my focus went down through the kitchen and into the dining room beyond.  The phone had not rung, but the answering machine came on and my grandpa’s voice was saying, “Hello?  Hello?  Anybody home?”  If such a thing is possible, I was both scared and at ease at the same time.  I felt like there was something watching me from the dark dining room and so I swallowed hard and said “Grandpa?”  Of course I received no answer, but the answering machine then went off and there was dead silence.  Remembering that I was standing next to the dreaded basement steps, I darted over by the couch to turn on the lamp.

I am neither a believer in ghosts nor an unbeliever.  I simply do not know.  The scientific part of my mind says that energy cannot be destroyed and only dissipates and since our thoughts and bodies and minds are all made up of energy, it is perfectly reasonable that we should live on in some way beyond our physical death.  On the other hand, things that go bump in the night are intriguing, I guess, but somehow implausible.  But there is more than one way that the dead can haunt us.

Chief Seattle spoke these famous words as his people were being killed and scattered from their homeland because the “White Chief” wanted them for his own people.  These are words that, regardless of what happens after we die, should always haunt us:

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon our fathers for centuries untold. . . . The son of the White Chief says his father sends us greetings of friendship and good will.  This is kind of him, for we know he has little need of our friendship in return because his people are many.  They are like the grass that covers the vast prairies, while my people are few: they resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. . . . There was a time when our people covered the whole land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea covers its shell-paved floor, but that time has long since passed away with the greatness of tribes almost forgotten. . . . When the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the white man, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your childrens’ children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. . . . The White Men will never be alone.  Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless— Dead— I say? There is no death.  Only a change of worlds.   – Chief Seattle

I do not know what happens to us after we die, but I do know that we leave a legacy that will either haunt or bless those who come after us.  We tend to run from the things that we do not know and act as if they wil hurt us.  Perhaps they will.  But how can we appreciate the light if we never sit in the dark?  If you are ever in the Cascade Range overlooking a dark valley with the wind whistling through the trees and you feel someone looking at you from behind one, instead of running scared, perhaps try asking for wisdom.  We can benefit from our fears by embracing them and letting them teach us.

God has made it clear that he does not tolerate homosexuality.  God has made it clear that he does not tolerate Muslims.   God has made it clear that he does not tolerate transgendered people, liberals, people with tattoos, etc, etc.  Any Bible-believing decent Christian knows this and therefore will also be intolerant in the name of the Living God in whom we live and breathe and have our being.

The problem is, God is unseen.  Nobody has ever heard the audible voice of God and been able to know exactly what God does or does not will.  God has so many unknowable facets within a cloud of mystery that can only be embraced, but never fully understood.  Despite the fact that we cannot fully know God nor God’s will, we are quick to give attributes to our incomprehensible creator that typically put us at odds with those who we can see and feel and be in relationship with.

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren shunned his son for being gay and stuck to his guns to save face within a congregation to whom he had preached intolerance of homosexuality.  Warren defended God’s rules even until his son committed suicide.  Leelah Alcorn was told by her mother that being a male feeling like a female was strange and unacceptable in God’s eyes and a mere anomaly that would eventually pass.  And so it did, along with Leelah when she took her life in hopes of liberating others with the same predicament.  Deah, Yusor, and Razan were gunned down by a neighbor who couldn’t accept that Muslims would take the parking spot that he wanted.  All of these are obviously simplifications to very sad and very serious relational breeches, but in the end the point is the same: Many people would rather defend the honor of an invisible God who is mostly created in their own image than to simply love those who are right in front of their eyes.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/31/us/ohio-transgender-teen-suicide/

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/guns-chapel-hill-myth-american-vigilante

So?  Where do we start?  I always spout my ideas, now it’s your turn.  How do we get people to let God be God and stop creating a God that was never meant to exist?  How to we get people to quit alienating the very people they are supposed to be protecting in the name of untenable arguments supposedly decreed by an embellished anthropomorph?  How do we convince people to love the seen and embrace the unseen? Perhaps we can learn from the dying and their regrets to learn what not to do before the damage is irreversible.

http://www.aarp.org/relationships/grief-loss/info-02-2012/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying.2.html

I am the world’s worst swimmer.  I can’t even tread water.  I sink like a rock and it’s utterly pitiful to watch me flail.  Sometimes there are people that they say aren’t savable if they’re drowning because they flap their arms around too much – that’s me.  Don’t get me wrong, I can swim from A to B, assuming that the distance from A to B is less than 100 feet or so.  But my motion is so inefficient that I’m tired after only a short distance. 

I can remember a time when I went with friends to Oak Street Beach and as everyone was jumping in to the water, I got a running start and then hit the brakes at the edge.  I peered over the edge into the water having no idea how deep it was.  Despite much derision and laughter, I took the later down.  So, if God ever decided to be a jerk and flood the earth again I’d be SOL. 

Yes, I said jerk.  That’s exactly what God was in the eyes of the one who wrote this text.  When we talk or think about God we usually have such a reverence (read “fear”) that we are terrified of saying anything bad about God or calling God out.  Well, it’s ok.  People used to do it all the time.  That’s why it’s so important to understand these stories as what they are: stories.  The flood account that we find in Genesis is taken, just like the creation account, from Babylonian and other Ancient Near Eastern flood myths.  The council of gods became upset with all of the noise and raucous that humans were making and decided to wipe them out except for one man, his family, and some animals.  Humans didn’t think it was very nice at all and said as much because back then, humans and the gods had it out all the time.  This is the context in which we find our first testament flood story.  For a good picture of direct and candid conversation with God, check out Bernstein’s Kaddish.  It’s long, but it’s well worth the read.  http://www.milkenarchive.org/works/lyrics/511

So is that it?  Is this just some ancient lore that should be dismissed as the fiction that it is?  Not so fast.  All of the stories in the Bible and especially in the Old Testament have significant meaning for the life and plight of humankind.  This particular story tells us that the gods we create, i.e. our version of God, will always let us down and we will always let “him” down.  We have to form an intentional covenant with the real and mysterious God to let God be God and let us be transformed by the pursuit of the divine and the embracing of the mystery.  When we do this, we will eventually come out of the waters of the great flood and see the promise of life once again.

Water can be purifying.  Water can be cleansing.  This symbolism is no greater than in that of baptism.  But we know that water can also be detrimental and destroying.  Just ask those who experienced the tsunamis of Japan and Thailand, just to name a couple.  Jesus was baptized and God affirmed his baptism by telling him how pleased he was with him.  The beauty wasn’t in going into the water though.  It’s the fact that Jesus came out of the water and what he did afterward that makes it all beautiful. 

Baptism and Lent are about transformation.  But this transformation goes well beyond the individual.  Everything wasn’t perfect when Jesus came out of the water.  Just as soon as he had been affirmed by God and community, he had to wander in the wilderness for 40 days.  This wasn’t a trial or a test.  Rather it was a formative part of his journey and ours.  We commit, but we also have to wander and let the transformation take hold as we become who we are called to be.  But it doesn’t stop there.  As Jesus showed so well, when we are transformed along the journey, those who are around us become transformed and then they have an impact on the wider circle that they are in relationship with and before you know it, the entire world is transformed.  Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is anything less than a revolution and that we are capable of anything less than changing the world.  We are powerful beyond measure with the ability to turn a world of me and I and my into a world of we and us and ours.

But we don’t.  Even though we know that we’ll drown if we stay in the water too long, we refuse to come up for air because we’re afraid of the wilderness that lies ahead.  We’re afraid to try because we just might fail, or better yet, succeed at finding ways that life doesn’t work for us.  These instances of holding our breath for longer than we should humanly be capable are all around us.  There are so many ways in which we hold on to that which is with the complete knowledge that it isn’t good enough because we are afraid of the mystery and darkness that awaits in the wilderness, even though we have a promise to be made into our realized selves if we only but choose to take the journey.

I have been attending a number of conferences lately about church revitalization, preaching, church in the 21st century, theology, self-improvement, etc and I think this is good and healthy.  I will continue to attend such events to better myself both for my own well-being and that of the people whom God has called me to serve.  But while that quest for knowledge must always continue, I realized something else.  I should be writing books and I should be giving lectures.  Not because I am wiser than those I have heard or read, but because I have different and valuable knowledge to share with them and the wider audience.  This isn’t a pride issue.  It’s a matter of realizing that we all have areas that we hold a lot of wisdom and knowledge in and need to share it while we’re in the process of gaining new wisdom and knowledge.

Even though we know that there are skills and talents that we possess that can change the world if only we would share them, we stay under the water and wait while we drown.  It could only be fear that keeps us there.  But why are we afraid?  What are we afraid of?  Is it really our failures that keep us under water?  Marianne Williamson said it beautifully when she said

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Being in the water will transform us one way or the other, it will either kill us or make us whole, but it’s our choice.  The water can purify us, but the real transformation comes from getting out of the water and taking that first step toward the wilderness.  When God said “I am well pleased,” God was talking to all of us.  Don’t be afraid of being amazing, because you were made for nothing less than greatness.

Let me start off by saying that this is not a rant against evangelicals, conservatives, the Christian right, fundies, whatever.  When I first saw this pin I was admittedly furious.  Yes, it’s a fake story that never happened for a feel-good Jesus-is-my-buddy effect, but it wasn’t so bad.  In some ways it was a cute little story.  But when I got to the end and the “God is watching you so you better share this little work of fiction” admonition I wanted to hurl.  Instead of a rant, let’s call this encouragement.

“66% of you won’t post this.”  Of course not.  That’s rather encouraging, actually.  66% see it for the act of coercion that it is.  66% chose to use their God-given intellect instead of riding a wave of emotion to social media.  66% were turned off by the threat that the indignant temper-tantrum throwing deity in the clouds would send them to eternal torture if they didn’t share something that we all know isn’t true.  Nice.  The sad thing is that the 66% is much more silent than the 34% and that’s a problem.

So, now for the encouragement.  My friends – whomever would post such a thing as this – I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.  I want to assume that you are trying to share the fact that Jesus is radically loving and that his way is a comforting and compassionate one.  I am going to venture that you want to show that God goes with us to get through even the most difficult of times and that no matter what troubles we find ourselves afflicted with that God will never leave us nor forsake us.  Great!  Then please say that.

I have a proposal.  Those of us in the 66% (with all of the various beliefs and ideologies that exist even within this group) want to partner with you to show the world the same things that you want to show them.  Let’s do it via another way, though.  Let’s show the world that God’s love is amazing and that we don’t have to make up feel-good stories to experience it, but that we can instead experience it in the love we receive from one another.  Let’s do for “the least of these” and invite everyone into communion at the table that God set for us.  Let’s do what Jesus did and live the example that he lived instead of putting words in his mouth that he never uttered.  Can we do this together?

To the 66%: Let’s stop being so damn quiet.  Let’s start writing our own feel-good stories, but let’s make ours true accounts of great works and deeds that we have done in the name of the one who taught us to do them.  Let’s write more books for the mainstream reader.  Let’s have more theological discussions.  Let’s get on the radio and on the TV and out on the street corners and invite people to get their hands dirty and their eyes wet as we work together to free a world that is weighed down by systemic oppression and extremist ideologies.  Let’s partner with our brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle and agree to disagree on theology, but never compromise the mission.  Let’s show the world that the church isn’t a sinking ship that is merely trying to bring the passengers down with it, but that we are a living, vibrant, Spirit-filled base camp for mission that still has the power to change the world should we choose to do it.  Are you in?

Norm Smith was not a cuddly, warm-fuzzy kind of guy.  He had a long braided pony tail down to his waist, wore a bandana, smoked a few packs of cigarettes a day, and drank a bottle of Red Eye every day starting at the crack of dawn.  He cussed like a sailor and customized Harleys in his machine shop across the street from our house.  He was one of my grandfather’s best friends.

My grandfather played the role of father to me and when I would find myself in the principal’s office at school (which was a weekly ritual at the least), more fear-inducing that being yelled at by a muscle-bound principal was the threat that he would tell my grandpa about my latest bone-headed feat.  Grandpa died when I was 12 and as tough as Norm was it was all the more surprising when he came up to me at the visitation with tears in his eyes and said, “Boy, you’re going to have to grow up now.”  I wanted to kick him for such a seemingly insensitive comment while my grandpa lay in a box behind me, but today it makes more sense.

When Elijah was preparing to be taken away in 2 Kings 2, Elisha keeps getting reminded that his master will be taken from him that day.  Elisha told the people that he already knew that and told them to be quiet.  Numerous times Elijah told Elisha that he could wait behind while Elijah went on ahead of him to do the work that needed to be done.  In his wisdom, Elisha refused to stay behind and said that he would stay with his master.  Finally, apparently satisfied by his mentee’s dedication, Elijah asked Elisha what he could leave with him.  Elisha requested a double portion of his master’s spirit.  In essence, he said, “I want to be twice the man that you have been.”  Elijah told him that if he was watching when Elijah was taken up into the clouds, he would receive what he asked for – but ONLY if he paid attention.  When the moment came, Elisha was there and watched his master being taken away by chariots of fire into a whirlwind.  All of the people kept reminding Elisha that he would have a lot of responsibility when his teacher left this earth, much like Norm reminded me that I would have to shoulder a lot of responsibility because nobody was left to do things for me or to save me from my childish ways.

Elijah didn’t completely disappear from the scene, however.  Elisha lived out his legacy, for one, and Elijah and Moses appeared to Peter, James, and John on the mountain top at the Transfiguration.  Peter wanted to build shelters to keep the three great prophets around and to commemorate the moment.  Once again, though, Peter proved that he was completely missing the point.  Jesus warned them not to tell anyone of this event until he was resurrected and this, I think, sheds light on what would happen next.  Jesus seems to keep them quiet until they are able to comprehend what had just happened, but such a thing was not possible until after the resurrection.

When Jesus and the disciples came back down from the mountain, a man was waiting to ask Jesus to heal his son because the disciples who had been left behind were incapable of doing it.  Jesus got upset with them and basically asked how long he would have to stay around and wipe their butts for them.  They apparently didn’t understand that Jesus had already taught them how to do for themselves.  When Jesus died the disciples finally realized that they had work to do.  They realized they had been standing on holy ground every time Jesus taught them by example what they were supposed to do for one another.  This is one way to experience resurrection – when the legacy of the one who has gone is lived on by those left behind.

Another way to experience resurrection is to make the decision to live.  Being alive is one thing, but making the intentional decision to actually live is wholly another.  Just ask Nikki.  So many times before I go to into a hospital room to see a patient, I will look at their chart and see what their diagnosis is.  39 year old female.  Breast cancer metastasized to other parts of the body.  Not good.  This poor gal will probably be a wreck – fearful, sad, despondent.  Not Nikki though.  When I entered her room, I found a lively, smiling, vivacious woman who was anything but despondent.  She explained that, after the diagnosis, she made the decision to get the most out of life.  She decided to do comedy of all things.  She wrote a funny article to Latina Magazine and soon thereafter was getting booked solid with stand-up comedy shows.  She started her own radio show on Intellectual Radio and hasn’t looked back since.  She understands her own mortality, but refuses to dwell on it.  I was supposed to cheer her up, but she cracked me up.  I knew in that room that I was standing on holy ground.

ISIS in all of its tyranny has claimed the lives of many good people.  Kayla Mueller is merely one of a number of folks whose lives were snuffed out way too soon.  10 days before her 25th birthday in 2013 Kayla was captured by ISIS while coming out of a Spanish hospital in Syria that was staffed by Doctors Without Borders.  Two weeks ago she was killed by her captors.  Anybody would have been scared and felt hopeless in her situation, but Kayla refused to let her situation make her life any less meaningful.  Some letters that she wrote home to her parents reflect the amazing heart that this young lady had:

‘I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.’ ‘I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine. If this is how you are revealed to me, this is how I will forever seek you.’”
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/femmevangelical/2015/02/kayla-meullers-vision-of-god/#ixzz3RxBS5gZU

“If you could say I have ‘suffered’ at all throughout this whole experience it is only in knowing how much suffering I have put you all through.”

“I have a lot of fight left inside of me. I am not breaking down + I will not give in no matter how long it takes.  I know you would want me to remain strong. That is exactly what I am doing. Do not fear for me, continue to pray as will I + by God’s will we will be together soon.”…

“I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator b/c literally there was no else…. + by God + by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall.

I have been shown in darkness, light + have learned that even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it. I pray each each day that if nothing else, you have felt a certain closeness + surrender to God as well + have formed a bond of love + support amongst one another…”

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christophers/2015/02/i-find-god-in-suffering-the-fate-and-faith-of-isis-captive-kayla-mueller/#ixzz3RxBy4lI1

We do not need to go to the mountaintop to have a sacred experience.  We do not have to seek out the big bright-light-in-the-sky moments to feel the presence of God.  We see resurrection every time somebody makes the conscious decision to live life to the best of their ability and teaches others how to live in the process.  When we are in the presence of such a person, when we make this decision ourselves, we are standing on holy ground.  Thank you Nikki, thank you Kayla, thank you Jesus for showing us the way.

Relationships are strange.  People come and go from our lives.  Loves grow cold and cease because of a lack of intentional kindling of the fire and sometimes simply because the partners are incompatible.  On occasion, the purpose of the relationship comes to its fruition and the need passes.   Other times, one of the partners becomes ill and dies much to the dismay of the other.  The surviving partner mourns (healthily, we hope) and carries on the legacy and hopes of the deceased.  And so it is with you, my friend, as I watch you in your hospice while you gently and quietly fade away.  It pains me to see you go, but isn’t this what resurrection requires after all?  That one go to the tomb so that a new beginning may be had?

We have had a long history, yours extending back much farther than my own.  Your beginnings were noble and the intentions of those who shouldered you were admirable.  As with most people, though, you sought power and prestige and your goodness began to be covered with the dust of fallen empires and the shards of broken dreams.  Your lust for greatness grew deeper than your desire to help the least of these and your heart became dark and emotionless.  You defended dogma over the rights of the community and your raison d’etre became clouded.  Now I watch you as you lie there, mostly motionless, occasionally twitching in your memories of days when goodness and mercy were your quest.  Irrelevance has overtaken you and your monitor sings with only the faintest of a pulse.

Some will judge you harshly and will say that you did more harm than good.  But I will remember your beginnings when your hands and feet moved to feed the hungry and give drink to those who thirsted.  I will recall a time when your words were spoken in the poetic beauty of a liturgy that freed the oppressed from the shackles of injustice.  I will remember you well, oh friend, and I will work with those whom you have hurt and those whom you have healed – not to resuscitate you, but to resurrect you.  Because I still have faith in the ideals upon which you were born so many years ago and in the godly prophet who summoned you from the hearts of humans.  Your ways may be of a past long since faded into the twilight, but rest assured your successor will do even greater things for your brothers and sisters – those who shunned you and those who loved you.

Your time is coming to an end, but I can still see the glimmer of hope in your eyes.  You can no longer speak, but I feel you going quietly into the night as I hold your hand in mine.  Fear not the vastness of the unknown for there are greater things to come.  We will hope together in this moment.

Requiescat in pace, ecclesia.

Farewell . . . . church.  Rest in peace.