Apophatica

Ah, the American Dream.  The good life.  It’s something that so many aspire to.  Who doesn’t want to amass so much wealth that they can just relax and do whatever they want?  Seven years of nothing but golf and recreation anybody?  I sure can’t say that there’s anything inherently wrong with that.  Nobody can fault another for wanting to be financially fit and fiscally responsible.  We all want to make sure that we have plenty stashed away so that we don’t, as my dear buddy Scott says, have to live on cat food.

In Luke 12, Jesus is approached by a man who wants Jesus to tell his brother to let him have his share of the family inheritance.  Jesus basically says, “Are you kidding me?  Is this what you think I’m here for?  Am I a judge or arbitrator that I should go around settling such matters?”  Jesus takes this opportunity for a teaching moment and tells the inquirer a parable about a man who decides to tear down his old barns and build new, bigger ones to store up his plentiful harvest.  He then decides that he doesn’t have to work for a long time and can just cruise through life.  Then God says to the man that his number is up and it’s time to die.  What a kick in the shorts!  The guy just gets to thinking that he can finally take a break and God says, “Ok, hot shot, time to go.”  Amazingly, this is the only time where God talks directly to someone in Jesus’s parables.

I didn’t write this parable (in case you didn’t know), but I’m guessing that the man’s crime wasn’t that he did well or that he amassed such wealth, but that he didn’t even consider sharing with those in need.  The man stored up more produce than any one person could ever possibly consume with no regard for the fact that they would eventually rot and go to waste.  What would have been wrong with the man doing a little math and figuring out how much he would need to live on and then sharing the rest so it didn’t go to waste? He apparently had no interest in the actual value of the produce because if he did, he would want to extend the absolute value – the amount of use that could be had.  Instead, he was only interested in utilizing that part that he could consume himself.

As if it weren’t enough that he isn’t sharing, the man seems to take the credit for his bounty.  Those who work hard and invest wisely certainly deserve a pat on the back, but who of us can say that luck/blessing doesn’t play a factor?  Think of all of the circumstances that had to be in place for someone to do so well?  Instead of thanking God and sharing his blessings, he hoards them and is at ease with the fact that food will rot while people starve.  A friend of mine who runs a football camp each year has t-shirts made up for each camp.  The one from last year said Luck, Where Training Meets Opportunity.  This seems to sum it up pretty well.  Yes, we work hard for what we have, but the opportunity also has to be there.  We can’t forget that part of the equation and take all the credit for what we have.

Ok, so what?  The man was selfish, but he wasn’t actually hurting anyone, was he?  Imagine this man representing the church.  Imagine the church as a whole having been blessed with numerous tools.  I am not just talking about money.  I mean the sheer volume of people who can serve as volunteers, the wealth of knowledge that exists in the individuals, the financial wealth of both the individuals and the congregations, and the endless ideas that exist within the church.  What if all of these were employed for the good of human beings in the communities where these churches exist?  How many people are being left to suffer when churches store up their riches – in whatever form it may be – and do nothing with it?

At the end of the parable after the man is told that he will die, Jesus says, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”  I find it intriguing that being rich toward God equals providing for those in need around us.  As the church, we call ourselves the body of Christ.  We know a body has many parts and I can’t help but recall what Joseph Bracken said in a recent Homebrewed Chrisianity interview.  He said “Society is the result of intersubjectivity which becomes a form of objectivity.”  In other words, society is comprised of intersecting parts and circumstances that affect one another which are manifest as a whole object.  Take, for example, the human body.  We have a circulatory system, an endocrine system, a reproductive system, etc.  Each system is comprised of separate organs that have specific functions that have some relation to the whole.  All of these systems form the body.  Although each organ is only a small part of the body in terms of mass, each is vital to the life of the body.  If someone has a bad heart, do we say that the body is healthy?  Of course not!  I believe it is the same way with society and churches are just one part of that society.

With so many churches closing their doors, but the churches who do community service and social justice thriving – it makes me wonder if there is a message here for all of us who call ourselves “the body of Christ” . . . .

I don’t believe in God.  There, I said it.  Now let me unpack that a bit.  When I am working in the hospital, I encounter people almost every day that feel like God is punishing them somehow for their sins.  There are many who express how much they have been blessed, but many are like Job and trying to make an account before God of their sins.  Those who have lived noble lives are all the more frustrated because they feel that they have been unjustly tested or tortured by God.  This is an easy mindset to get in for sure.  It is especially difficult to deal with because it appears that the Bible tells us that God is a God of vengeance who sometimes punishes people on the spot for their sins, sometimes lets them build up before he drops the bomb, and sometimes picks on people at random.  And then come the clichés.  A patient looking me in the eye and saying matter-of-factly, but their eyes betray them saying that they don’t believe what they’re saying or are at least confirming it with me: “God helps those who help themselves.” “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”  “God works in mysterious ways.”  Or my personal favorite – “God has a purpose for everyone, I guess my suffering is part of his will.”

Unfortunately, we have been repeating these clichés and clergy have not done a very good job of dispelling them.  We tend to breed bad theology in the church and then nurture it and let it grow until our view of God is so distorted that God seems far away at best and nonexistent at worst.

One particular patient, who we’ll call Susan, who happened to be a nurse at the hospital and was used to taking care of people rather than being taken care of told me: “I know it’s wrong for me to say this, but I want to give up.  I don’t want to go on any more.  I have always been devoutly religious and done what I am supposed to, but I feel that God has gone so far away from me.  I have never felt this lonely before.”  And then she wept.  I told her that I didn’t know if it was helpful or not, but I explained my view of God.  A view that does not have God pulling strings like a puppet master, but instead constantly present to give us strength and peace during the turmoil.  I told her about meditation and centering prayer to help her be aware of the presence of God.

The Bible can often be a great source of this angst because of how we interpret it.  Sometimes we need someone to blame.  Sometimes we need a way to deal with things.  This passage in 2 Samuel 11 and 12 has David making a lot of mistakes.  He is king of Israel, he has everything that he could possibly want – money, food, women, whatever.  But he can’t resist going for one who is already taken.  He starts his progression down the slippery slope and cause and effect starts to happen.  He sleeps with her and she becomes pregnant.  A baby is evidence.  If they are found out, they will both have their names greatly tarnished and she will likely be put to death.  So, David uses military means to kill Uriah and sets in motion a series of violence that will haunt his entire family for generations to come.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.  It isn’t too difficult to see how things snowball out of control, one event causing the other.  This continues well beyond the point when Nathan tells David about these events and David not even being able to see that he is the one being spoken of, tells Nathan that such a man must die.  Such a man is committing acts that are reprehensible and David even says that such a man deserves whatever he gets.  Except – that man is David.  None of this is hard to wrap our minds around though in terms of simple cause and effect relationship, until – we come to the last verse of this passage:  “The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill” (2 Sam. 12:15).  The baby dies soon thereafter.

Wow.  So the Bible tells us that we serve and were created in the image of a God who kills babies for the sins of the parents.  That is troubling.  These are the kinds of verses that make us want to say that we do not believe in God or at least don’t want anything to do with God.  But there is something very important that we have to keep in mind: scriptures were written backward, not forward.  That is, they were written after, sometimes hundreds of years after the events transpired and when recorded, they were written through the cultural lens of the time.  No matter where you go in the world, or even in the U.S., you will find different views of God or gods and how they affect life and events in this world.  The Ancient Near Eastern view in Israel was that one God affected everything that happened.  There was not one thing that could transpire that God did not do.  We frequently make the mistake of reading a passage in the Bible and apply directly to our current context and situation without considering who and when it was written for.

Today is Father’s Day and my own father hasn’t taught me much other than what not to do.  My father-in-law, however, has taught me a few things.  Back when my father-in-law went regularly to his Buddhist Temple and I was fresh out of undergrad with my minor in Biblical Studies, we used to have conversations about how the universe worked.  He would always say, Subete wa inga kankei, meaning “Everything is cause and effect.”  I would then tell him that he was wrong and that everything happened according to God’s will.  The problem was, however, I couldn’t wrap my own head around how God could ever will that children could die or human beings could hate each other enough to kill one another, or that God would intentionally cause earthquakes to wipe people out by the tens of thousands.

Ten years later, I can see how this statement about cause and effect makes sense.  It isn’t necessarily just a Buddhist concept, but a universal one.  This reality is always around us and we can see it every day.  If you drink ten shots of whiskey and then get in the car and try to drive, you are going to get a DUI or worse, end up killing someone.  If you live a life that stirs up strife and consternation among others, it is not likely that you will be liked and those people will shun you. We can somehow wrap our heads around these things, but what about the things that don’t make as much sense?  When tectonic plates move and push up the ground, earthquakes happen.  When a cold front and a warm front collide and the cold air pours downward as the warm air rises and they begin to swirl, you get a tornado.  Tornadoes leave destruction.  When our cells are exposed to free radicals and start to mutate, we end up with cancer.  This is not because God willed it, but because it is cause and effect.

When we assume that everything that happens is God’s will, we end up with a lot of problems.  We end up having to thank God for our blessings and then curse God for our woes.  If we say that God does not cause everything, then we are left to say, “Ok, that’s good that God does not cause the bad in the world, but I guess I don’t have to be thankful for the good either.”  Not really.  To me, God is like a river that flows in one direction – toward good.  God only moves toward that which is good for creation, including us.  So, if God didn’t cause the tornadoes in Moore, OK, then where was God?  In the people who came to help.  God was not merely in those people or working through those people.  For all of them to come from all over the country to help people whom they didn’t even know,  to pick up the wounded and weary and carry them toward hope once again was to stare into the very face of God.  The same was for the tsunami in Tohoku and any where else we have seen disaster answered with hope and love.

So what about Susan?  On Thursday, Susan asked another chaplain if I was there and if I could visit her.  By this point, Susan had been in the hospital for over 40 days.  The last time I saw her she was in the ICU, but this time she was in a regular hospital room.  When I entered the room, she smiled and said “I want you to know that you’re the reason I am here.  I wanted to give up and didn’t want to live knowing that God had turned his back on me.  But now I know God is with me.  I do the meditations you taught me whenever things get bleak and I can always feel the presence of God.  I just wanted to let you know what a difference you made.”  I had to do everything I could to keep from tearing up in front of her.  I don’t tell you this story because I did something heroic or that I even did something at all.  I merely gave her a nudge toward seeing God a little bit differently.  She did the rest.

The God that is present in the hands and feet of those who bring hope to the devastated.  The God that is present with a woman whose organs are shutting down giving her strength and peace in a time of great need.  Do I believe in God?  Yes.  I believe in that God.

About 10 years ago, there was a movie starring Nicole Kidman called The Others.  In this movie, Kidman lived with her small children in a large house in the English countryside.  It was World War II era and the family was waiting for the husband to return from the war.  As they are awaiting his return, however, there were numerous troubling experiences such as things moving by themselves and ghosts appearing in the house that led them to believe that the house was haunted.  These “others” were, for some reason, coming in to their home and scaring them.  Toward the end of the movie, however, we realize that the “ghosts” that Kidman and her kids keep seeing are really not ghosts, but are the people who are coming into the home for seances to contact Kidman and the kids.  In other words, it was Kidman and the kids that were dead, but did not realize it.  It was only through convincing Kidman’s spirit to remember what had happened (she apparently went stir crazy in seclusion waiting for her husband and killed her kids and then herself) that they were able to let that family finally be at rest.  Kidman thought that these people were the “others” the abnormal outliers that didn’t belong, but it turned out that SHE was the one of the others and just was not aware enough to admit it.

This idea of being other or having some that are in the norm and some who are outliers came into my mind last Monday at the Memorial Day service at Montrose Cemetery.  It was a very nice service and it was neat to see the different religions perform their rituals, but as I stood there in the cool mist I couldn’t shake the thought of what we were memorializing.  It is well and good and quite appropriate that we memorialized those whose lives had been list in military service, but I was keenly aware that we were missing something.  There was something that we weren’t grasping that I thought we should.  That is, we did not mourn the loss of peace and civility.  We did not mourn the loss of tranquility during those times when we could bring ourselves – fellow humans – to see each other as so “other” from us that they were worth killing.  I fully think that Memorial Day should be a day to remember those who died in war, but I think it should also be a time to mourn that we even have war so that me might learn how to have peace.

Wars do not just happen.  There are a lot of intentional decisions that are made before a war can take place.  Take Hitler for example, he killed something like six million Jews and Armenians, right?  Wrong!  I don’t think Hitler probably killed anybody personally.  Many, many, people had to become complicit in carrying out the killings because they somehow bought in to what was being said about the Jews.  These were no longer fellow human beings, these were the others and they had to be exterminated.  These were people that had to be dehumanized and any link to our common humanity erased from memory so they could be deemed as “the others”.  It was this same type of thinking that made it “ok” to round up Japanese-Americans and place them in internment camps all across the country.

Such systematic dehumanizing did not only happen with the Jews.  It happened in every propaganda machine that war-time governments produced.  The Americans did it to the Germans and the Japanese and they did it with the Americans.  I will never forget a trip we made with my wife’s family.  We would go to Okinawa about once a year when I was living in Japan and we visited a place where there used to stand a school house.  It was made into a memorial.  The Japanese people were told by the government that the Americans were barbarians and would rape and kill women and children if they ever invaded.  So, as the American forces got closer and closer to Okinawa, the men would practice fighting drills and the women and children would practice suicide drills so that they would not be captured and defiled by those who would take away their dignity and honor.  In 1945 an announcement was made that the Americans had arrived and were landing on the other side of the island and every teacher and child, over 100 of them, took their life that day.  They died needlessly because they believed that these “others” were going to harm them – people that they knew nothing about but had been told about  – and so they made great and inaccurate assumptions.

In Luke 7 we find a very different situation taking place between others.  A centurion who works for the Roman Empire, an employee of the one who is deemed to be the living God – Tiberius Caesar – goes to another “living God” for help.  A man who has been employed to enforce the laws of the empire goes to those whom he is supposed to keep an eye on.  He has a need and he goes to the others to have it met.  This is not his son who is ill.  This is not his father or his brother who is ill, this is his slave!  Somebody who is so below him whose sole reason for existence is to serve him, but the centurion does not see the slave as the subhuman that some do, he does not see him as a mere servant, he does not see him as an “other”, he sees him as a brother and a friend.  So he goes to the Jews (who in case you forgot are not necessarily friends of Jesus) and requests that they go to Jesus on his behalf.  This centurion had heard of this renegade Jew who was going around healing people and stirring up trouble within the empire.  He made his job more difficult than it had to be.  As long as people sat still and did what the centurion told them to, Pilate would be happy with him and so would Caesar.  But this Jesus guy would not just let things be the way they were.  He had heard, though, that this Jesus was a healer.  Jesus was one of the others, perhaps the ultimate other.  The Jews were others to this centurion, but he cared for his servant and wanted him to be healed.

So now the Jews have to go to Jesus (undoubtedly gritting their teeth the whole way) because they had need.  The centurion who had paid for their synagogue had a sick slave.  When he came to them and asked them to talk to Jesus, how could they tell him no?  He had done so much for them so they had to go to Jesus with their hat in their hands and tell him that he had been requested at the home of the centurion.  It would not have been outside of Jesus’ typical antics to say, “Gee, let me think, ummm, nope.”  But instead, he listened to the Jews tell of this centurion who had built a synagogue for his people (because we can’t forget that Jesus was a Jew) and he started to follow the Jews to the centurion’s home.  As he gets closer, however, the centurion who had shown ultimate humility toward these “others” bows his head even lower.  Not only did he have compassion for on he who was completely beneath him, not only did he build a place of worship for his subjects who had a religion that was not his own, not only did he request the services of a revolutionary who made his job more difficult, but he sends friends out to meet Jesus and say “I am not even worthy that you should bless my house with your presence.  I have servants that go out and do what I tell them to, but I know you have the power to merely say the word and make great and miraculous things happen.”  It was not easy to shock Jesus.  But he turned to the crowd who had gathered and said, “Not even in all of Israel have I seen faith like this.”  The pinnacle of faith was exhibited by an “other”!  He didn’t have the same ethnicity, he wasn’t from the same region, he didn’t have the same religion but he is the ONE that Jesus said exhibited the most faith of anyone he had ever seen.  And so Jesus said the word and the slave was healed.

What kind of world would we live in if we didn’t see those unlike us as “others”?  How would things be if we were able to appreciate and love and respect one another?  What could we accomplish if we celebrated each other’s differences instead of condemning them?  It’s already happening in some places.  In the West Bank there are numerous stories of Jews and Palestinians working together not only because they need each other, but because they want to be in communion with each other.  When Salim’s house was bulldozed by the Israeli forces to create a settlement for Israeli’s, Jeff was there to help him rebuild it.  Salim’s house was on land that had been in the family for centuries.  When Israeli forces came and destroyed it again, it was Jeff who joined Salim in building an apartment building where such displaced Palestinians could live.  Salim is Palestinian.  Jeff is a Jew.

There is an association of midwives comprised of Palestinian and Jewish women who work together sharing information and technology to reduce infant mortality in the Middle East.  Palestinians and Jews working together to save those who are still too young and innocent to know how to hate.

When 12 year old Ahmed al-Khatib was killed by Israeli Defense Forces, his parents would not have it that their son should have died in vain.  So, they decided to donate his organs to save others.  There were no stipulations.  In fact, they wanted some of the organs to save Jews also to send the message that we are all humans and should help one another.  Ahmed’s organs saved the lives of five people – three of which were Jews – two five year olds and a four year old.

Such stories of people working together for the good of human kind regardless of their differences abound.  What if, when we see someone approaching from afar who doesn’t look like us, we didn’t see a stranger or a potential enemy, but instead a brother, a sister, a friend, a fellow human being with same needs and yearnings that we have?  What if instead of reaching down for a stick or a rock or turning the other way, we ran toward them and embraced them?  I would love to see what could happen if humans could only find it within themselves to do it.  What a wonderful world this could be.

My grandfather was a mysterious person.  He was a high priest in the Mormon church and my grandmother always thought I would take over his post in what they call the Quorum of the Apostles.  I apparently reminded her of him and said that she knew I had a call.  I never knew my dad’s dad, but there were always stories about him that I had to confirm with my grandma.  One account was how, when he was 18 years old, he climbed a tree to retrieve a kite for some kids when he touched an electrical wire and was shot out of the tree.  According to the doctors, he was clinically dead from the time he was electrocuted to the time he hit the ground.  The force of the impact from falling to the ground started his heart beating again, but he was still unconscious and would have been brain dead had it not suddenly started raining which woke him up.

There were other stories about amazing feats of strength and the ways in which he helped people.  The most baffling story, though, is the one that allowed my sister to still be here today.  My dad was just over 20, when he took his four year-old daughter, Tanya, to the ER with what turned out to be spinal meningitis.  This was almost 50 years ago, so the prognosis was not good and the doctor said as much.  He told my dad that she would die.  When my grandfather arrived, he asked my dad what was going on and my dad told him that the doctor had said that she wouldn’t make it.  My grandfather got angry at the doctor and asked him why he was telling my dad that his daughter was going to die.  The doctor replied that it was his duty to inform him of what was medically factual.  Grandpa then went into Tanya’s room, laid hands on her, and prayed for her healing.  She woke up shortly after and said she was hungry.  She was discharged the next morning.

Hearing a story like this makes us suspicious, uneasy, and joyful all at the same time.  After all, such healing doesn’t occur – especially not at the hands of a Mormon.  It’s ok.  We can admit it.  There is an inner battle within us over mystery where one half embraces it and relishes it and the other half would rather not deal with it.  A devout Mormon bringing his granddaughter back from the brink of death.  A devout Jew persecuting and contributing to the death of Christians suddenly has a mystical experience that leads him to be the largest proponent of The Way.  Which is harder to wrap our heads around?  Which is more uncomfortable?

Such experiences as these just go to show that God can be manifest in the most unexpected places.  Because God is spirit, God has to use something or someone that is tangible and recognizable to us.  It intrigues me that every time Jesus appears to the disciples after the resurrection in the John passages, he is unrecognizable.  The text doesn’t say that he intentionally disguised himself and then returned to his original form so that they would know who he was.  Maybe he stayed in whatever form he appeared in, but they recognized him not because of his face, but because of his actions.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”  “When I was hungry, you gave me food.”  “When I thirsted, you gave me drink.”  “What you do for the least of these you do to me.”  Do we see a pattern here?  Is it any wonder that Jesus is always recognized when he is offering food or help?  Every time the disciples recognize Jesus, he is breaking bread and offering it to them.  We are most aware of God’s presence when we are serving.  The beginning of this passage says, “and he showed himself in this way.”  The mystical presence of Jesus is made real when an act of hospitality is done.  John is the most theological of the gospel writers so look at this reference to the presence of God in the Garden of Eden: “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked”.

God is present in both the miraculous and the mundane.  The healing touch of a Mormon man, the miraculous conversion of a hateful persecutor, the simple act of serving someone in need.  The veil between the sacred and the simple is more transparent than we could ever imagine and the ability of God to work in the most ordinary of circumstances creates thin places wherever we go.

Resurrection.  What a difficult concept to grasp.  It’s as confusing as can be and we can never really be sure if it is literal or metaphorical in Jesus’s case.  Peter, John, and Mary saw the empty tomb, but they didn’t understand.  It says that John saw and believed, but it doesn’t say what he believed.  We assume that it meant he believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, but in the very next clause it says that neither John nor Peter yet understood.  Mary finds angels sitting in the tomb and turns around to see Jesus himself, but she thinks he’s the gardener.  She finally figures out that this stranger was Jesus, but it still doesn’t tell us that she understood what it all meant.  It’s no different for us.  Somehow, though, we see resurrection as a positive thing for us somewhere down the road, but we’re not completely sure what.

The writer and scholar Peter Rollins, in his book Orthodox Heretic, wrote of a people who were present at the crucifixion and feeling hopeless and dejected left Jerusalem and headed out to the desert.  They were not there when the talk of resurrection began.  About 100 years later, two missionaries showed up and told the people about the Good News of Jesus’s resurrection and the forgiveness of sins and eternal life that was available as a result.  As everyone was celebrating that night, the leader of the group was nowhere to be found.  Finally, one of the missionaries found the old leader in his tent weeping silently.  The missionary asked him how he could be sad having heard such wonderful news.  The old man replied, “Yes, it may indeed be good news, but my people have had compassion for one another and showed genuine love because it is the right thing to do.  Now I am afraid that my children and my children’s children will believe and do good, not simply because they are humane, but selfishly because they await the eternal life that is promised them.”

What did Jesus’s resurrection mean then and what does it mean for us now?  So what if God raised Jesus from the dead?  What’s different?  Is the world any better for it?  We’re told that Jesus’s resurrection defeated sin and death, but Newtown still happened.  Columbine still happened.  Tohoku still happened.  So is all of this talk about resurrection just a bunch of hopeful nonsense?  I don’t think so.  I think it is something so real, in fact, that it happens every day.

I sometimes work as a chaplain at a hospital near me and on one particular shift about a year ago things were going pretty smoothly as I met with my last patients for the day – until I got to the last patient.  The patient, whom I’ll call Diane, was charted as being there for substance abuse.  Little did I know going in to the room that this little phrase meant that she had tried to take her life with pills three times.  I had no idea what I was in for, but started to get the idea when the orderly in the room would not leave.  It didn’t take her long to tell me that she didn’t want to live because her son, Joey, had taken his own life the year before.  He had only been 33 when he hanged himself and for whatever reason she had a voice mail of his last dying gasps.  She told me how she was tormented by dreams about Joey tipping off of the ladder as she reached for it but could only get within a hair’s breadth of touching it.  I asked her if she had other family and she said that she had a husband and four other children.  “What about them?” I asked.  Didn’t she think that they would suffer the same way that she did if she were to take her own life?  She said that they had their own lives and would get over it.  The same way that she had gotten over Joey’s death?  She nodded.  She seemed to get it.

Every time she thought about Joey, Diane would say how it just made no sense and how parents weren’t supposed to bury their kids.  She kept saying how she just wanted him to come back or else she didn’t want to be here.  It was around Easter when this all took place and as somewhat of a surprise to even myself, I said, “What do you think about resurrection?”  She looked up at me and after a moment said something like, “Well, it’s when Jesus came back.”  “How?” I asked her.  “Was it like a physical resuscitation or what was it?”  She said she didn’t think so.  She said she thought it was a type of spiritual presence.

I wasn’t sure that I should be pushing her in her condition, but I did it anyway and it paid off in the end.  I asked her if I might give her another picture of resurrection.  I asked her if she didn’t think that it was cruel if Jesus came back from the dead to defeat sin and evil and death, but just left again for some later date before it actually takes and we are just left to suffer in the meantime.  She said she had no doubt that it was cruel.  I asked her if Joey had any causes that he felt passionately about or if there was some sort of legacy that could be carried on.  I challenged her to imagine if, after she was healthy, she were to volunteer in support groups for parents who had lost their kids or even for those who felt like committing suicide.  Wouldn’t Joey be resurrected then, in a sense?  After all, nobody could know the suffering both of losing a child and of wanting so badly to die like she could.  I could only have sympathy for her and try to imagine what she and others like her were going through, but I could never fully comprehend like she could.  We talked for a little more and then after praying with her I left the room to do my charting.

In his gospel, John writes something that we often easily overlook.  We see resurrection as happening in the sunlight when everything is ok and the clouds have given away to the comforting light of day.  But this isn’t what John writes.  He says that “while it was still dark” Mary came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away.  Mary panicked.  So did the two disciples when they came to the tomb.  The resurrection had already happened, but it was still night and everything was not alright.  At least not for them, it wasn’t, because they couldn’t understand in the darkness that which the light of day would reveal.

Life is difficult.  That’s not news to any of us.  The amazing thing though, is that we have a lot more power than we realize to bring about resurrection – our own resurrection and that of those around us.  When we become aware of this power, we realize that resurrection is about doing.  I can just imagine how the disciples felt when their very hope was nailed to a cross and died.  I get excited, though, when I think of what it must have been like in that upper room when the disciples first realized that Jesus had been preparing them all along to do something themselves to live out his legacy and make the world around them a better place.  In that moment Jesus was resurrected through them.  I don’t want to blow it for Pentecost, so I’ll leave that alone for now.

Sometimes, like Diane, we look up for some ray of hope but all we can see is darkness.  Little do we know, though, that even in the darkest moments, God is already working toward restoration.  After all, when we are surrounded by nothing but the dark of night, it is hard for us to see that the tomb is empty and that maybe even just a little bit, everything is going to be alright.  Oh yeah, and speaking of Diane.  I saw her recently.  She searched me out at the hospital to tell me Happy Easter and to let me know that it was in fact a happy Easter.  She came to tell me that I was right.  I don’t hear this too often, so it was kind of nice.  She said that Joey had been resurrected, because every time she saw the light of hope begin to shine in the eyes of someone she touched through her support group, she felt Joey right there with her.  See?  We do not have to wait with our heads turned to the sky waiting for some glimmer of hope, because the beginning stirrings of hope and resurrection begin within our very hearts and become a reality with our own two hands.

My dad is an interesting character.  He likes to tell fish stories with the big fish getting exponentially bigger each time he tells them.  He would tell me stories of guys at work who would comment on his strength and hard work and how men half his age couldn’t do a tenth of the work that he does.  One form these stories usually take is of young men trying to move a pallet or perform some function that requires strength (interestingly enough they never require wit) such as a young guy in his 20s couldn’t lift up a pallet to get the forks under it, but he was able to do so.  The more he tells the story, the more guys there were trying to lift the pallet together where he was able to do so by himself.

I have often enjoyed writing short stories and one such story that I wrote a number of years ago was called Death of a King.  I got the idea to write this because of a story my dad often tells about how our family has inheritance rights to a lot of property in England because it has gone unclaimed by our other family members.  In this first-person oriented story my father has recently died.  He claimed many times that our family was descended from royalty and was in fact heirs to the throne of some country or another.  As the story progresses and the funeral begins, there is imagery of two funerals happening simultaneously.  In one funeral, a king’s coffin draped with purple cloth is being processed very slowly through masses of people up a rainy road and into a large cathedral.  The king’s wife and young son fight to keep their composure as the casket slowly approaches and the royal orchestra plays Kyrie Eleison  from Mozart’s Requiem.  This is the funeral that would have been if my father were telling the truth.  In reality, another funeral took place with an old feeble minister whose shaky hands took frequent sips from a glass of water as he delivered a eulogy to the eight or nine people sitting in the sultry country chapel on hard wooden pews.

This is the kind of irony and juxtaposition that we find Jesus in as he approaches Jerusalem on a young donkey on Palm Sunday.  He approaches the gates to Jerusalem from the east while a rag tag bunch waves palm branches and throws their cloaks on the ground as he processes.  They hail him as a king and as the son of God, but he looked like anything but with his modest crowd and pathetic animal.  From the west, another king approached the gates of Jerusalem.  Pontius Pilate, appointed governor of Jerusalem rode in to the city on a large magnificent war horse led by royal banners and followed by well-armed soldiers.  Pilate would enter the city to ensure his brand of peace as the Jews celebrated their annual events.  This one was particularly important to watch over because it was the day they celebrated being freed from another oppressor almost 1500 years before.  Pilate had to make sure that nobody got any foolish ideas of revolt if the celebration got out of hand. This man also represented the son of God as the Emperor Tiberius was believed to be.  One man represented peace as a matter of submission and love, the other represented peace because it was enforced militarily.  Pax Christi vs Pax Romana.  Son of YHWH vs Son of Apollo.

Jesus is fully aware of the procession that is taking place on the other side of the city as he enters the East gate.  I get a kick out of the way he sends the two disciples to get a donkey for him and to tell them “The Lord needs it” if they ask any questions.  The disciples get the donkey and say as they were told when asked what they are doing.  The funny thing is that we read this and think how amazing it is that the owner of the donkey knew who Jesus was and perhaps the disciples were thinking the same thing.  This is funny because (Jesus wasn’t stealing because he was only borrowing) he knew that when the owners were told the Lord needs it, they were thinking about Pilate, not Jesus.  There is no way that they would argue when the Roman government says it needs something.  This was a great example of Jesus’s great wisdom.  Jesus knew that he would ride in like a “king” while the real king was coming in the other side who would crucify him like a criminal.

Jesus embodied the wisdom of God while Pilate embodied common wisdom.  Jesus carried within himself a wisdom that pointed to peace and to God in a way that the common culture could not comprehend.  Pilate made a lot more sense.  If you want peace and order, show your might and kill anyone who threatens that order.  Jesus’s brand of wisdom made no sense.  It was an image of God that was not judgmental or coercive, but rather loving and compassionate.  It is a wisdom that is so ingrained in and at the core of all of creation and even within our selves that Jesus said if we do not proclaim it, if we do not live it, “even the rocks will cry out.”

The amazing and somewhat frightening thing is that we embody both.  We carry around with us every day the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God.  Because the wisdom of the world makes more sense to us, we often submit to it.  We just tell ourselves that “that’s just the way things are done.”  But we also suffer because something at the very core of our being tells us that it doesn’t have to be that way.  We make choices and carry on in a way that makes sense to us because its what we see all around us, all the while something gnaws at us from the inside as even the rocks cry out as if to say “there is another way!”  Jesus spoke of that way.  Jesus pointed to that way.  Jesus sat on a lowly donkey and followed that way himself.

When we embrace the wisdom of God, we make the decision to follow the road less traveled by.  This is the road of Godly wisdom instead of conventional wisdom knowing that it leads to a kind of death – a death of our old selves.  But we also rejoice knowing that after death comes resurrection in some mysterious way that we cannot quite comprehend.  As Easter and the celebration of our own resurrections approaches, let us come to the point when we can say proudly like the old poem that ends, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

If anyone in the Bible gets a bad rap, it’s Judas Iscariot.  We have been taught since we were little that Judas was the great betrayer who, as the devil incarnate, turned Jesus over to the authorities to be crucified.  Judas went to the high priests and offered to hand Jesus over to them.  He got a nice sum of money for it, too.  In his gospel, John makes it quite clear that Judas was a good-for-nothing.  He inserts commentary everywhere he can to say that Judas was stealing money from the community purse, that he didn’t care about the poor, and that he was that bad dude who would stab Jesus in the back.  Dare we, however, take another look at the story?

During the end of Jesus’ ministry he told his disciples that he must suffer and die.  He even went so far as to call Peter Satan when Peter said it couldn’t be so.  As Jesus and his disciples made their way to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, Jesus tells them that the time is drawing near.  The disciples, however, act like they don’t believe it or don’t care and carry on like nothing is wrong.  They are greatly surprised, then, when Jesus actually is captured at Jerusalem and killed.  All except for Judas.

There are numerous theories about what Judas did and who made him do it.  Some accounts say that it was Jesus who told Judas to go talk to the high priests, because he knew he must be captured and wanted it as peaceful as possible.  This is perhaps why Jesus looked at Judas at the Last Supper and told him to go do what he must.  Another account from the Gospel of Barnabas says that it was actually Judas who died on the cross and not Jesus.  This story says that Jesus had already ascended to heaven when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus and so Judas was transformed to look like Jesus and was taken in his place.  The Gospel of Judas says that Judas was Jesus’s closest disciple to whom he revealed the mysteries of the universe.  Jesus then had Judas turn him in so that he could be freed from his body and returned to his eternal form, but the other disciples couldn’t comprehend this so they stoned Judas.  The most popular version, of course, is that Judas was possessed by Satan and betrayed Jesus for money.  Regardless of which is actually correct, let’s look at a more simple possibility.

Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, grew up in Kerioth in Judea.  Simon did the best he could for his family, but he was by no means a rich man.  Judas grew up always telling himself that he would not let his kids be poor as he was.  He was going to make a better life for his family than the one that he had been given.  After Judas was called by Jesus, he was commissioned with the task of keeping the community purse.  As such, he was the one who would have to go to pay the temple tax when it came due.  Judas may have dipped in to the pot to make ends meet on occasion, and maybe not.  If he did, was he any worse of a sinner than anyone else?  After all, he had mouths to feed and no way to provide because he had decided to follow this carpenter’s son.  Sure, it was a tough decision to leave his family behind, but although Judas wasn’t really sure who this guy was, he knew that there was something about him and that he just might be the one to lead the revolt against the Romans that oppressed them so much.  So, Judas followed Jesus, listened to his teachings, and did what he was told.

As he and the rest of the disciples made their way to Jerusalem, Jesus kept talking about how he was going to be captured and killed.  This worried Judas.  If this happened, then there was no way that Jesus could help them conquer their occupiers.  When they arrived in Jerusalem, Judas went out to deliver the temple tax like he did every year at Passover.  The high priests see him and said, “Hey Judas.  Come over here a minute.  We realize that you travel with Jesus and we have been hearing about all of the amazing things that he has been doing.  We were especially amazed when we heard that he had raised a man named Lazarus from the dead.  We realize that it is in all of our best interests to ally with Jesus because it does nobody any good if we are against each other.  Clearly with so much power, God’s favor rests upon this man.  We would like to talk to Jesus about this, but it is important that we keep this hush-hush so as not to insight any trouble from the Romans.  Can you help us get a meeting with him?  In fact, here, this is really important to us and for all of Israel, so we want to offer you payment for doing this.  We realize it isn’t easy, so here you go.”

And there it was.  Judas was being given today’s equivalent of $100,000 to do what was right!  Finally, he wouldn’t have to worry about feeding his wife and children.  He was being asked to be a liaison between Jesus and the high priests.  What a huge role!  Finally, Jesus could partner with someone in power to overthrow the Romans AND he was getting paid to make the arrangements.  God truly does bless!

And so, we know the rest of the story.  Judas goes and tells Jesus about the arrangement.  He will kiss him so that the authorities know which one he is and they will take him in and they can talk in private.  Jesus agrees and when it is time, Jesus tells him to go and do what he needs to do.  Later that night, he returns, but something is wrong.  He notices that the high priests are accompanied by Roman soldiers.  Judas starts to panic, but then he thinks, “Maybe the Romans won’t let the high priests do anything on their own, so they had to come with.  Then, when the priests are alone with Jesus and the soldiers are gone, they can have their talk.  Ok, stay cool.”  But we all know it didn’t work out that way.  Jesus ends up on the cross and Judas realized that he had been duped.  He feels so bad, so guilty for not only causing the death of his teacher and friend, but also for letting down the people of Israel and destroying their chance at a good future, that he gives the money back to the priests and then hangs himself.

Poor Judas.  He probably didn’t do anything wrong, but because people have their agendas, he was painted as the ultimate of bad guys.  Regardless of what really happened, there was something that Judas was missing.  It is something that I, too, have overlooked or mistaken at times.  When I work out I like to listen to podcasts.  I usually listen to a particular podcast where a couple of theology nerds called Trip and Bo sip craft brews and host a program called Homebrewed Christianity.  On this program they host a number of theologians and scholars of the church.  A few weeks ago I was listening to one with Diana Butler Bass.  As they went to a Q&A session, the first question that was asked of Diana was one that stumped me, too.  The person asked, “If we are telling people that they need to come to church so that they can help the poor and the oppressed, then what do we do when those people respond that they already do these things through a non-profit?  What, then, are we to tell people is the reason to come to church.”  I had to think about this for a good while.  I eventually realized, that I, like Judas, had something to learn from Mary Magdalene.

Jesus was at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha to celebrate the resurrection of Lazarus.  Jesus had just told them all again that he would be killed soon.  Sure enough, when the authorities heard that Jesus had raised Lazarus they got very worried that this powerful of a person could cause some real trouble.  So, as the text says, they plotted to kill him.  Mary knew a thing or two about burials.  After all, she had just done her brother’s.  Mary anointed Jesus not as a king from the head first, but as a corpse, from the feet first.  She realized the importance of ritual in difficult times.  She knew that in times of great sadness and great joy like birth, death, and the journey to death that we need friends, support, rituals, and meaning to help carry us through these times.  This, you see, is what both Judas and I were not seeing.  This is why the Jews begin preparation for death with rituals and stories while the person is still alive.  This, is why we gather together every Sunday morning to support one another, uplift each other, and to celebrate through ritual, our births, our deaths, and the many resurrections we experience throughout our lives.

My brother has always been the type who could get away with pretty much anything.  Being the younger of the two of us, he would just get a “Now Trent, don’t do that” from my mom, where I would get a pretty stern talk or a kind pat on the rear for doing the same thing.  I remember that I would always take a sort of joy in the rare occasions when he actually got what he deserved like when my grandma chased him through the department store trying to wallop him with her purse for darting around inside the clothes racks.  One time I actually set him up.  He was just learning to write his name, so after getting his handwriting down I took my mom’s lipstick and wrote his name on the wall.  I put the lipstick back in the bathroom drawer and then ran to mom saying, “Mom!  Look what Trent did!”  He got it pretty good for that.  I kind of felt bad.  Kind of.  It felt pretty good to see him get what he deserved for a change – even if he didn’t actually deserve it that time.

Last week we talked about people getting what they don’t deserve.  This week we talk about the same thing in a different way or maybe about people not getting what they deserve – depending on how you look at it.  The Pharisees are chiding Jesus for eating with “those people” when he in essence tells them three stories rolled in to one.

First, he tells of a father who had two sons.  The oldest son is the good son and does everything that he is supposed to.  The youngest son took his inheritance and left town.  It was tough for the father because he realized what his son was saying when he asked for his inheritance.  In essence, he was telling his father that he wished he was dead.  Even so, the father bucked the customs and sold the family land so that he could pay out the inheritance.  You see, Jews would NEVER sell their land because along with a king, the Torah, and their temple, the land was something that God gave them as a special gift.  He knew that when he did this his name would be mud and he would be ridiculed by the town folk, but wanting his son to be happy, he went through with it anyway.  As much as it pained him, he sold the land and let his son go.

After a long time of wondering if he had made the right decision and being concerned that perhaps he should have exerted a little more control of his son for his own good, he was sitting as he did most days, staring down the road.  Then, suddenly, he saw a figure approaching.  It was a figure that rippled because of the heat rising up off of the desert floor.  Today wasn’t a delivery day.  There were no buyers or sellers scheduled for today that he knew of.  He squashed any glimmer of hope that his son was alive and well and finally returning for fear that he would be disappointed just like he was every time he saw an unexpected visitor make his way up the road.  But today would be different for his heart leapt when he saw his son approaching and he yelled out to the servants to prepare a party because his long-lost son had finally returned.  In anticipation that this day may come, he kept a robe, a ring, and some sandals in a small box next to his chair and so he picked it up and took off running down the road.  It was highly uncustomary for a man of his age and stature to be running as it was not perceived as being stately, but he could care less.  He had to run because he needed to get to his son as fast as he could.  Not only did his heart ache to embrace his son, but he also knew that the neighbors would want to stone his son for causing the Levitical laws to be broken.  He looked around frantically to make sure that nobody had noticed his son and was poised with rocks to hurl, and caught up with his son engulfing him in his arms, ready to take any stone that was thrown.  His son started to say something, but he couldn’t hear it through his own sobs of joy and after placing his finger on his son’s lips to silence him, he bent over and picked up the box that he had dropped at his feet and pulled out the robe and placed it lovingly over the shoulders of his beloved son.

You see, though, this wasn’t just a story about a father who got his son back and loved him unconditionally.  Within this narrative there was also the story of an older brother who did everything “by the book” just as he was supposed to.  He stood to automatically inherit two thirds of his father’s estate, but he still did all of the things that were required of him.  Even when his bratty younger brother caused strife in the family and community by talking his easy-going father into selling part of their land, he kept on following the rules because he knew those who did what they were supposed to got the good things in life.

Sure, he loved his younger brother, but he really didn’t care either way if he came back.  He had already caused enough trouble and had chosen his path, so he figured he could just stick with it.  The last thing he needed was the spoiled kid coming back and ruining things for him again.  He had already done enough damage.  So, when he heard that his brother had returned and that his father was having a party for him, he was furious!  His father never did anything for him!  His brother chose to go out and throw his life away on booze and whores!  And now, he had come back to mooch off of him because all that was left belonged to the brother for his inheritance.  Besides, he should have to live with the decisions he made and pay the price for his actions.

Then, finally, there is the son whom we call the prodigal. We’ll call him Jesse for today.  Jesse was always bored on the farm.  He heard about others who got to see the world and about how much more exciting it was out there.  His father was kind of a dunce and did an ok job of raising him after his mother died, but he didn’t feel that close to his father.  Sure, dad tried to be close, but Jesse just wasn’t feeling it.  And his brother – well, his brother was quite a bit older than him and they didn’t talk much.  Whenever they did talk, it was mostly his brother telling him how he was doing something wrong.  He didn’t hate his father, but in some guilty secret way, he did wish that his father would die so that he could get his inheritance.  Life would be so much better when he could have his one third of the estate and get out of there.  Sure, it was unheard of and against tradition that he should leave, but to heck with tradition.  He would let his self-righteous brother deal with keeping tradition since he was so good at it.

He felt so out of place there and the urge to get out overwhelmed him to the point that he mustered up the courage and went and did what he had thought of so many times.  Yes, he realized that what he was about to do would be the same as telling his father to his face that he was dead, but he didn’t care anymore.  His brother raised a stink just as he knew he would, but his father acceded and made the wrath-inviting announcement that he would be selling the back 40.  He realized that he wouldn’t get top dollar for it, but he knew that his son wanted to get his money as soon as possible.  The townsfolk were shocked, but many jumped at the opportunity to get his land at such a cheap price.  Once the money was in hand, he took his donkey and headed out for his new and exciting life.

Well, as we all know, it didn’t turn out to be as exciting as he wished.  You see, Jesse thought his money would last forever.  It never occurred to him that someday he would have to work get a job and learn how to support himself.  He realized that the money was going fast and unlike in the beginning when he was spending it on whatever pleasured him at the moment, he became a little more frugal.  It wasn’t enough, however, and he eventually found himself destitute.  This is when he realized that because he had been living off of his father, he had really never acquired any skills beyond the simple tasks that he performed on the farm.  Had he been in his own land, people would have known who is father is and given him a decent job, but out here he was just another snot-nosed rich kid who blew all his money and was left to beg for work.  Eventually, he found a job doing the most demeaning thing a Jew could imagine – slopping out pig stalls.  He knew his father’s servants even had it better than he did.  He supposed that he could try going back home, but he wasn’t about to listen to his whiny brother say, “I told you so.  You got what you deserve and now you have nothing!”  After heat and the stench and the hard physical labor became too much to bear, he started rehearsing a speech in his head.  “Father, I’m sorry.”  No, not good enough.  “Father, please forgive me.”  Better, but not formal enough.  “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you . . . .” Yep, that would work!  And so, he threw down his shovel, grabbed his satchel with what little he had left, and started for home.

I wonder which one I am.  I wonder which one Jesus wanted his listeners to identify with.  Maybe he’s telling me that I should be unconditionally loving and forgiving like the father.  Maybe he’s telling me that God is like this and when I stray, and like the prodigal son, choose to turn back and go home, God will be waiting to embrace me.  Perhaps, Jesus is warning me not to be self-righteously indignant like the older brother.  And just maybe – Jesus is saying that depending on the day, the hour, or even the minute, I am all three of these people.  Maybe Jesus is telling me, telling you, telling all of us, that we are indeed any of these people at any given moment, but most importantly, that we are all prodigals and that we are all invited to the banquet regardless of our differences or idiosyncrasies.

Almost two years ago now I was in bed sleeping when my wife came up and woke me at about one in the morning.  She said that her brother had just called and said there had been a large earthquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of Japan.  Her grandparents live in that region, so I sprang up wondering if they were ok.  They only sustained a little bit of damage, but when I turned on CNN, I could see this massive wall of water traveling at over 500 miles per hour and destroying everything in its path.  15,880 people died in that natural disaster including my friend’s cousin and his family.  He was at work when the earthquake hit and being concerned about his wife and three month old baby he left the office which was up in the hills and, as you might have guessed, was taken along with his family when the tsunami reached their home.  His dad – my friend’s uncle – who was a very happy person who liked to tell jokes, was left with the task weeks later of walking through rows and rows of bodies looking for his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.  When he returned home after finding them and after seeing so much death and destruction he locked himself in his room and still does not talk very much to this day.

When such tragedy strikes, we can’t help but ask ourselves why such things happen.  I guess when we think about it this disaster makes sense in a way.  After all, only about one percent of Japan’s population is Christian.  So, it only makes sense that God would want to punish such a heathen nation and give them a wake up call to turn to Christianity.  Even the text in Luke 13 talks of God’s wrath.  Repent or perish!  Just to prove the point even further, Jesus tells a parable about a tree that just takes up space.  This obviously is talking about humans who do not obey God and God’s desire to wipe them out, but Jesus the gardener becomes our intercessor and pleads our case for us.  Oh well, there’s nothing much that we can do about it other than start evangelizing as much as we can so that God does not become too angry.  God is God and God can do whatever God wants, we will just have to learn to live with it.

Or will we? Maybe this isn’t what this passage says at all.  The word repent in the  original Greek actually means to change one’s mind and as a result change one’s actions.  When Jesus is asked if those who died did so because of the degree of their sins, Jesus says “No!”  That’s not how God works.  He warns them, however, that if they do not change their minds and therefore their actions, then they too will meet a horrible end.  Jesus is not talking about divine retribution, he’s talking about natural cause and effect.  If you go around ticking off the ruling powers and go do things that you are not supposed to, you will eventually be crushed.  Jesus knew this.  He knew the end that he would fall to as a result of his challenge of Roman authority.

And the fig tree?  Jesus was a first century Jew.  He understood the Levitical laws that forebode harvesting before the fourth year.  A fig tree, once planted, was supposed to give off its first fruits on the fourth year!  So, if God is anywhere in this parable, it is not as the mean illogical master, but in the gardner who reassures us by saying, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”  This passage is teaching us that God does not expect the impossible from us, but loves us and supports us to be the best that we can be.

We learn a certain way of seeing things we start to build frames and walls around ideas.  Eventually, these frames become so solid and unchanging that they become absolute truths.  Reading this text is proof of that.  We read this and we hear God saying something that God NEVER says to us.  But, because we were taught a certain way, we are afraid to chance seeing things anew.  We are afraid to repent, that is, change our minds, because it’s scary territory and what if we’re wrong?

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only text that we misinterpret.  I think the Church – the universal church – can stand to do some repenting.  In the 5th century, one of the church fathers named Cyprian declared that there was no salvation beyond the church.  It made sense that he would say this because it was not long before that Constantine declared that the Roman Empire would be Christian.  The Roman occupiers were tired of contending with those hard-headed Christians who weren’t afraid to die for their faith, so they decided if they couldn’t beat them, they could own them.  The church and the government became one and in order to ensure that the people listened, church leaders who were controlled by the government such as Cyprian said, in essence, you need Jesus for salvation, you can only find Jesus through the church, and we hold the keys to the church.  So you better listen to and obey what the church says!  Such thinking of the church as a rule-making body in the name of God has almost made the church disappear in North America.

I think that the Church needs to start changing its mind and actions about long-held beliefs.  Many who are leading the transformation in the worldwide church have said that it’s time to rethink what church means.  Many people outside of these walls see churches and think – “There’s another judgmental institution that wants to tell me how to believe and has sunken into the abyss of irrelevance.”  We have an amazing opportunity here at Tri-C.  We have the opportunity to be a beacon of light to the community around us and start asking ourselves, what does it mean to be the church anyway? We have the chance to show them that they’re wrong and the church still is relevant today.  It just may not be as a bastion of legislating God’s laws and enforcing them, but it may be some amazing expression of love that we never could have imagined.  WE have the opportunity to say we are willing to set a new standard, to say that we are willing to change our minds and start seeing things the way that God sees them.  NOT necessarily the way that we were taught growing up.  Who knows, the ONA discussion may just be the place to start.  We have been blessed with this calling to show that we realize that the God who made creation and loves creation and who is constantly flowing toward the greater good still has some wonderful things to do – through us.