Words Less Spoken

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. ~ Luke 23:42

For all of our religious observances to remember Jesus, perhaps it is our greatest desire to be remembered, hoping that in this life through all of our trials and suffering that we will not be forgotten.. praying that when life comes to a close we will not be lost.

When we step outside the religious worldview we were raised with, we discover that there are very deep, very primitive motivations at work in us even without our knowing. We want to be accepted, to be desired, to be safe, to have significance. Religion offers all of those but at a price. Do this, don’t do that, and you will be saved.

Personally, I’ve always related more to the thief on the cross than the saints on the ground. His prayer is our prayer. His hope, our hope. Jesus stands at odds with much of the religion devoted to his remembrance. He says that you are accepted. You are loved. You have worth and meaning not because of anything you have done but because you are. Your life alone is so rare and precious a gift that no other acts of devotion could make God love you more. If we understood that, if we believed that, we would value others just as much, even do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

“Jesus, remember me”from Taize community (.mp3)

In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me. ~ John 16:16

Today is a day of last things. No matter what you believe about the resurrection or deity of Jesus, it is indisputable that there was a last meal, a last message, a last embrace… a last breath. All of us will also experience last things. Although the certainties of my faith have given way to questions and mystery, these days are still holy for me. They are days of reflection and remembrance.

Too often the humanity of Jesus is swallowed up in reflections on his deity. I don’t believe Jesus had a death wish, but he knowingly challenged the powers that be in a time when it was dangerous to do so. He could have easily incited people to violence as a revolutionary. He could have caved to religious authority as a coward, but he chose the middle way, the hard way, to die for what he lived for.

I love Patty Griffin. She is a brilliant song writer and passionate performer. “Mary” is one of my favorite songs of hers. I invite you to listen to it and look at the passion of Christ through the eyes of one whose heart it touched most deeply.

Mary you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ashes
You’re covered in rain
You’re covered in babies, you’re covered in slashes
You’re covered in wilderness, you’re covered in stains
You cast aside the sheet, you cast aside the shroud
Of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
On some sunny day and always you stay, Mary

Jesus says, ‘Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer’
He flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin’ his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Oh Mary she moves behind me
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere
Everytime the snow drifts, every way the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts, she’s always there

Jesus said, ‘Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer’
He flys right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin’ his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Mary you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ruins
you’re covered in secrets
Your’e covered in treetops, you’re covered in birds
who can sing a million songs without any words
You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud
of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
on some sunny day and always you stay
Mary, Mary, Mary

~ “Mary” by Patty Griffin

Set your DVR’s now. “To Hell and Back”will re-air on MSNBC this Saturday, Sept. 29, @ 6:00pm and Sunday, Sept. 30, @ 2:00am. This is “Must See TV.” Originally aired as a Dateline segment this summer, a one hour expanded special dubbed “To Hell and Back” tells the story of Bishop Carlton Pearson’s rise as a pentecostal mega-star and protege of Oral Roberts and fall from grace when his epiphany led him to embrace a “gospel of inclusion.” Here are just a few quotes that resonated with me:

“It made me question the term that the Bible is ‘innerrant and infallible.’ To say that the Bible is not the Word of God but is the word of man about God, as best as man had perceived God, is troubling, even for me to say it.”

“If you fear God the way we’re taught to fear Him, you’ll serve Him, you’ll believe in Him, you’ll worship Him, but you will probably never really love Him.”

“‘God, I don’t know how you’re going to call yourself a loving God and allow these people to suffer so much and then just suck them into hell… God, I can’t save this whole world.’ That’s when I heard that voice say, ‘Precisely. That’s what we did, and if you’d tell them that they are redeemed, you wouldn’t create those kinds of problems.’”

“If the cross and Christ and all that stuff really happened and is really spiritual, which I believe it is, then if He came to save the world, the world is saved, unless He is a failure.”

“The Bible is like an idol. It’s certainly like an icon, but that’s the Greek word for idol. We swear on it. We keep it in our cars, and we lay it under our pillow when we’re afraid… I respect the Bible. I take it very seriously. I just don’t take it literally.”

“I think Christianity has distorted itself into a very impure cult-following of Jesus. I think Jesus would be appalled at what we’ve become.”

Personally I admire his courage and boldness to be honest about his own struggles with the faith we’ve been asked to embrace, especially while still in the pulpit, because the largest shift in my personal theology came after I left full-time pastoral ministry. So much of what he talks about sounds so familiar to thoughts I’ve had and shared in past posts. I wrote about my disillusion with the concept of hell back in March in this post The Church is Pro-Hell. If you’re unable to catch the encore presentation this weekend, the two shorter Dateline segments are available online: Segment One and Segment Two.

For further info: New Dimensions Worship Center

I’ve been thinking a lot about sin lately. No, I don’t have a guilty conscience. Quite the opposite. My conscience has never been clearer, although I think my fundy friends would say that it’s been “seared with a hot iron.” I consider it liberated from guilt theology. The big question of the day: is it even possible to sin? My short answer: no.

At a recent Interfaith Dialogue I was struck by how Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are so dominated by sin consciousness. The primary thrust of each religion appeared to be an attempt to find atonement for sin and be reconciled to God. My favorite college professor delievered the guest sermon at church yesterday. His teaching, along with Brennan Manning’s books, helped me to overcome the narcissistic guilt I inherited in the church growing up. True to form he preached about God’s forgiveness and willful forgetfulness of our sins. That is a very necessary message to help people come out of the trap that is fundamentalism. It’s like opening the prison doors and setting people free. I don’t want to play off the Matrix too much, but at this stage of the journey I’ve come to realize that there is no prison to begin with. We are imprisoned only by the smallness of our minds.

To tell guilt-ridden believers that there is no sin would probably do more harm than good. If they didn’t write you off as blasphemous but actually considered the possibility, it might well throw them into a theological tailspin. I read yesterday in Deepak Chopra’s book Quantum Healing that researchers proved that if newborn kittens are blindfolded within the first few days before their eyes are opened that they will be blind for life. Although they have perfectly healthy eyes, something gets crosswired in their brains permanently blinding them. Conditioning, especially in our formative years, is so powerful that it can cripple a person for life.

One of the statements that resonated with me so strongly months ago regarding the reality of sinfulness was made by Micael Ledwith in What the Bleep Do We Know!?:

The single greatest obstacle to our evolution is the way our culture often views God - as a God sitting up somewhere “registering the scores on his laptop as to whether we perform according to his designs or whether we’re offending him, as it’s put, an absolutely outrageous idea. How could we offend God? How could it matter so much to him? How could it, above all, matter that he would find it so serious a situation that he could conform us to an eternity of suffering? These are bizarre ideas.And they are bizarre ideas: that in this vast universe, where there are more galaxies than grains of sand in all the oceans, that in that vastness, a group of people - well, men actually - on a small planet got the exclusive franchise for the pearly gate arches of heaven. And every other being in the universe will spend an eternity of suffering in hell. It’s hard to imagine a more bizarre idea. And if that’s the sort of God you believe in, you just have to wonder: How does that affect your view of the world?

The more you think about it sin appears to be nothing more than a means of control. We’ve seen repeatedly in history how the dangers of hellfire can be a useful tool for the church to keep even Kings in line. It was just such a mockery that prompted Martin Luther to nail the 95 Thesis to the Wittenburg door, “As the coin in the coffer rings, another soul from pergatory springs.”

Is sin real? Is it possible to sin? Does our sinfulness really offend God? You couldn’t tell by looking around. If God is offended by our sinfulness or brokenhearted over our suffering, He doesn’t seem to do a hell of a lot about it. Does He? You cannot convince me that God or the Supreme Being or the Unified Field or the Force is offended by you lusting after a girl, failing to pay your tithes, or skipping out on church. So what is sin?

I think the word “sin” is damaged goods and loaded with baggage. I don’t think you can sin against God, but you can “sin” against your neighbor. As humans we have enormous potential for cruelty, as well as for good. Our pain and anger over the imbalance of justice in the world feeds the need for religions of atonement and damnation. We have this innate need to have our consciences cleared and believe that those who do evil will be punished in the next life to make the scales balance out again. When injury is done to another, the real consequence is that the whole of life is somehow diminished and robbed of joy, not that someone will burn in hellfire for all time.

It is a cold hard fact to grasp that the rich and poor, the kind and the cruel alike, will all die and turn to dust. There is evil and suffering in the world, and much of it has never been made right. I’ve learned that it is a common misconception that many people believe that one of the basic tenets of Buddhism is that “life is suffering.” That is not true. Apparently the appropriate translation reads that “life contains suffering.” No amount of labeling and fear-mongering is going to change that. It’s been tried for the last few thousand years and look where it’s gotten us. Why not try a radically different approach? Instead of telling people how worthless, how no good, and how sinful they are, why don’t we try showing people the incredible potential they have as persons and as a collective whole? Now there’s a novel idea.

Maybe enlightenment is as elusive as chasing after the wind, but if we spent our energies pursuing nobler ideals, we would not waste so much time hurting each other and seeking to have control over anyone or anything else. Just my opinion.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
Luke 14:25-33

Just when you think you’ve found a way to read the Bible that doesn’t make you pull your hair out or throw it out the window, your journey comes to an abrupt halt in front of a monolithic roadblock like this one. Where is Brian McClaren when you need him? Will somebody from the “kinder, gentler Christianity” movement please stand up and do something with this thing? Anybody from the Jesus Seminar around? Dear God! This thing is heavy! What the bleep?

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”

“anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

“any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”

Ok, before everyone rushes out to get their hammer and chisel and start rounding off the edges of this thing, let me tell you that it won’t help. Save your energy. Everyone makes a mad dash to point out that Jesus didn’t really mean you have to hate your momma. It was just a figure of speech, sort of a theological “shock and awe.” This is obvious from Matthew’s version, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,” but ‘hello!’ this is not any easier to swallow.

Jesus is saying that if we’re going to follow Him we have to love Him more than our parents, our family, even our own lives. So before we all get too comfortable with this Jesus we’ve been touting on our blogs, you had better get in the Gospels and find out just which Jesus we’re talking about. Sure, it’s an easy thing to be in love with the Mr. Rogers version of Jesus, the flannel board version, the Santa Claus version, the social activist version, the Dr. Phil version, but what about the real version? Will the real Jesus please stand up?

That’s really what studying the Bible is about isn’t it? Trying to discover the authentic Jesus to enable us to live an authentic faith. The problem with a passage like this is that it demands a response. You cannot ignore it. You cannot move it. What do you do with it? You cannot explain it away. This isn’t a story about walking on water, raising the dead, or healing the blind. By all measures of scholarship this is the historical Jesus, raising the stakes for all of us in this merry band of “Christians” on the journey with Him to Jerusalem.

Some people apparently got the idea that hanging with Jesus was all about dinner parties, free hillside buffets, magic shows, witty debates, and adventure. No doubt many of those traveling with Him nearer to Jerusalem had the mentality of those that waved the palm branches and shouted “Hosanna!” when He walked into town. They thought He was launching a revolution to overthrow the Romans. Not quite.

Jesus would have been a lousy pastor today. We spend all our time trying to draw a crowd and keep it. He spent more of His time sending them away. Maybe this is like in Batman Returns when Bruce Wayne disperses his dinner party by faking a drunken rant in order to save them from the bad guys there to kill him. No, not hardly. This is an invitation to follow Him but at your own risk.

Often times in history the most devout fall into the extremism of belief, which almost always ends in “kill or be killed.” In the movie Syriana George Clooney’s character noted, “you can’t bomb this out of them.” We’ve seen modern reinterpretations of calls to arms, which usually entail fund-raising, letter writing, screaming from the top of your lungs wearing a plywood plackard, and in some cases guns, but when Jesus launched a revolution he went on neither offense nor defense. He went to Jerusalem as a lamb to the slaughter, silent before his shearers. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” It’s a revolution alright, but you don’t pick up your sword. You lay it down.

Less we get too comfortable with Jesus and rank Him among the other great spiritual teachers of history, He makes these outrageous claims, and we struggle to rationalize them. Just who does this guy think He is? Are we really prepared to follow Him? Do we have what it takes? Evangelicals spend all their energy telling people how easy it is to be “saved.” Then once you’re in, they spend the rest of your life telling you how many hoops you have to jump through to be a Christian. I’ve said for years that we’ve got to rewrite the brochures and the infomercials, because the church has no concept of “truth in advertising.”

I’m driving down the expressway and see the latest sermon series plastered on a billboard with cute graphics and catchy slogans, and I’ve got to shake my head. Is this what the gospel has become… a marketing campaign? Watered down, politically correct, culturally compatible, spoon fed mush? It may build big churches and big egos, but it’s a half gospel from a false Messiah. It’s an easy thing to be a “Christian” in America. Try doing it in Iran or China or Sudan. It’s not just about persecution. It’s about living an authentic faith in poverty. The prosperity gospel doesn’t go down so easy on an empty stomach.

I don’t know what to do with a passage like this. I don’t know what to do with a man like this. Sometimes I feel like turning around and walking off like the rich young ruler who went away sad. Other times I think myself committed, then we get to Jerusalem and before the day’s over I’ve denied Him three times. Geez.

All I know to do is in every small decision, every word, every action to choose to act on the side of love, to try to be selfless, to refuse to be owned by things and be swayed by the fickle winds of the culture. Maybe in some small way I can be subversive. Maybe, just maybe, for a moment I can follow Jesus.