Asking Why and Causal Connection Precision

3 Lent      Cycle C       March 3, 2013      

Ex.3:1-17          Ps. 103:1-11           

1 Cor. 10:1-13     Luke 13:1-9       

 Lectionary Link

   One of the most common questions in the world is “Why?”    An adult can be driven to distraction when a curious child is following and always asking the question “why?”   And the question “why” is a good question. In our naïve realism and commonsense lives it is very important to discern visual and obvious cause and effects relationships.  Young drivers need to know that cars can’t be the same place at the same time.   There is nothing wrong with the question “why?”  And there is nothing wrong with studying the observable relationship between cause and effect.

  There is observable cause and effect and speculative and even prejudicial explanation given for  cause and effect.  How many televangelists have blamed hurricanes and other natural disasters on certain groups of people?   Religious leaders for a long time built their reputations on presuming to know precise causal connection between weather events and other natural disasters and the behaviors of their target groups of disgust.  They literally proclaim them to be acts of God to punish some people, failing to realize that such disasters are not really precise “smart bombs” and they do general collateral damage to everyone.  To presume such precise cause and effect knowledge about the unknowable gives them a sense of religious insight to the suckers who are willing to believe them.   

   We also ask the question “why” about positive or benign events, events of good fortune.  And we can be silly sometimes in our giddy success.  The same God that helped my team win a football game is the same God who let my opponent lose and they were praying to win too.  So why do we get excited and make it seem as though God was picking sides?  To be consistent with this view, one has to make God into Fate and whatever is then, is God’s will.

    Moses ran away from Egypt for 40 years, got married and was working as a shepherd for his father-in-law, a Midian priest.  He encountered a burning bushing that would not be consumed by this strange fire.  And so he must have been seeing things.   And he heard this strange voice speaking to him and asking him to return to the people of Israel whom he had run from 40 years ago.  And Moses was perhaps thinking "Why me?”  And why would anyone believe me and the words of “God?”  How could I convince people that God had spoken to me?

    So Moses was thinking about this unusual call from God, “Why me, God?”

  Some people were speculating to Jesus about some disastrous occurrences.   Some Galileans had been killed by Pilate and he used their blood in the very sacrifice that they themselves had offered.  Also a tower had fallen on some people and they had died.  And so the fatalistic speculation arose: Why did these misfortunes happen to them?  And the common wisdom on the street was that, bad things happen to people because they must have been bad or they had done something wrong.  And Jesus rebuked them for pretending to suggest such a thing.  He suggested that to say that things happen to such people because they were bad, may be simply another away of making twice victims out of people who had suffered the loss of their lives.

   Lent is a good of time as any to look at the state of our lives in how we are asking and answering the question “why?”  Why did this happen to me in this way at this time?  Why am I not meeting the right people, the right friends?  Why did this happen on my job, or in my family or to my health?  But not only the bad stuff;   the good stuff too.  Why did I receive this new insight, this new sense of direction, the discovery of this new friendship or relationship, or why did I get some good news in the very same area where someone else received bad news?

   And what is the wrong answer to the question of why?  The wrong answer is to assume that God is more or less God at anytime in our lives…to assume that God is not constant and ebbs and flows in the divine relationship with us like the whims of a fickle lover.  God remains the same all of the time. 

  God’s creation and people are like the fig tree of the parable.  We as people don’t always achieve the level of performance that is expected of us.  We may be like my tomato plants that get over watered, lots of beautiful green plant but not many tomatoes. The good nature, the hybrid was not enough; the fig tree needs some nurture too…a whole lot of fertilizer or manure was needed to provide the conditions to produce good fruit.

  God is the cosmic gardener who is patient always to give us more time and more nurture so that our natures may come to bear fruit.  The nurture of human experience can some time be as smelly as manure; but it does not mean that God is any more or less present to us.  Our nurturing events are many; sometimes as fascinating as a burning bushes that totally baffle and surprise us; at other times smelly and partaking of some things we’d rather avoid.  And we cannot really know the “answer” to the why a smelly test or why a wonderful surprise or both.

  But the wrong conclusion is to doubt God’s presence and involvement and care in our lives.  And if we can uphold our belief in God’s presence, involvement and care in our lives, we too will become God’s presence and involvement and care in the lives of people who surely need some reassurance.  If we can affirm the constancy of God in the midst of all of the “whys” of life, then we will be less likely to victimize people when bad things happen to them and more willing to help them to know God’s love and care.

  Why did the tower fall on those people?  Why did Pilate use the blood of those Galileans in their sacrifices?  Wrong questions.  These terrible things happened; what can we do to help the families of the victims?  If the question of “why” delays charity in our actions, then it is the wrong question.  Asking and answering the question “why” can help us prevent future mishaps, but we cannot change the past; we can only live and minister in the present.

  I think that the call of God tells us what God told Moses: that God is who God Is and the Divine Being remains no matter what happens in this world in the fullness of real freedom of events.

   And what we need to learn during this Lenten season is that no matter what happens to us, the divine presence and call and care is still towards us, even now and at the hour of our death and in the time of our afterlife.  God  is the Holy Being who Moses was called to obey; this is the Holy Being who promises to be with us.  This is the God of Jesus Christ who does not change amid the ebb and flow of the circumstances of our lives.  Amen.

A Fox and a Mother Hen

2  Lent C        February 24, 2013             

Gen.15:1-12,17-18   Ps. 27

Phil.3:17-4:1   Luke 13:22-35 

 Lectionary Link

  When someone who has the power to exploit is given a position of power over the vulnerable and the helpless, we have an expression:  We say, “The fox is guarding the henhouse.”  It’s really means that the fox is plundering at will the ones whom he is supposed to be protecting.

  In our appointed Gospel today, we have a juxtaposition of the fox and the hen in the saying of Jesus.

  Jesus called Herod a fox.  And Jesus wished to gather up the vulnerable people of Jerusalem like a mother hens does her chicks.

  This imagery strikes me as images of resignation in the face of the inevitable.  Why, did not Jesus use the image of an eagle or some other bird of prey?  Surely a bird of prey would convey an image of strength and resistance.  Even if he had used the image of a rooster, at least a rooster would fight back and offer resistance to a fox.

  But Jesus chose the image of a mother hen, a feminine image.  And this is the image he associated himself with.  A mother hen in the dark of the chicken coop will hide her baby chicks under her wings and when the fox comes, she will not flee.   She will bare her breast and neck to the oncoming foe.  It is an unfair fight.  But the fox will find more than enough to eat in taking the mother hen, and so the little chicks are left alive but scattered after the attack.

  This imagery became the imagery for the early Christian community.  Jesus was the mother hen, who sacrificed his life so that those who followed him might live.

  Jesus, was a country boy from Nazareth in Galilee and his message and mission was at odds with the city of Jerusalem.  Herod was the foxy representative of the Roman authorities who wanted to manipulate the politics of Jerusalem to his advantage in power and wealth.  The Pharisees and Sadducees, too, wanted to manipulate the religious politics to their advantage and to their survival.  It was imperative that wise and foxy politics prevail to negotiate most favorable terms to the residents of Jerusalem who were trying to make the best of it in the midst of Roman occupation.

  Jerusalem, such as it was, had no time or place for a prophet with a message that they did not want to hear.  And for the most part, people who had political and religious power were not the ones who were won by the message of Christ.  The hearts that he won came from the people of the countryside and from the neglected and the powerless.  Those people were the “baby chicks of the mother hen Jesus.”

  The historical irony is that Christianity went from the countryside Jesus movement to a city religion in the Roman Empire, and finally to become a religion of the empire and of the many great cities in the empire.  So those who practiced Christianity learned also to be skilled practitioners of the foxy political arts.

  We know that even with the advance of Christianity the killing of the prophets did not subside.  We have a long history of the persecution and killing of heretics or reformers.  And it is not distant history either. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by forces that did not want his message to continue and succeed.  We know in Anglican history rivalry between reform and Roman Catholic power bases created martyrs.  The person who wrote the first Book of Common Prayer, Archbishop Cranmer was burnt at the stake.

  It may be that Jerusalem and every city will always kill the prophets and the reformers who challenge the justice of those who hold power.  Because, it just so happens that justice works best on behalf of those who have money and power.

  The United States as a system of government tried to establish its form of governance to do away with the “killing of the prophets” mentality.  By separating church and state, no one is allowed legally to kill a prophet.  Any prophet has the freedom to gain their own followers and practice their own faith beliefs as long as they don’t impinge on the rights of others and do not break the law.  Our nation’s founders were filled with Enlightenment thinking and they were embarrassed by all of the religious wars that had plagued the continent for so many years.  They wanted America to be a new promised land where “no prophets” would be killed.   The America philosophy has been, it’s better that there be a thousand religions than any one religion be allowed to kill prophets.

  We, as Americans, should be proud about perhaps our greatest contribution to the world.  And yet we should not be so proud as to not keep up our vigilance when our laws and practices do not protect and promote the care of the vulnerable people in our society.

  If, we, in America have committed ourselves to the prevention of the killing of any prophets, how can these words of Christ have relevance for us today?

  First I think that there is a natural conservatism in everyone and every system that resists reform.  So the first impulse is to get silence the voice of the one who presents the need for reform.  Even on a personal basis, there are insight that each of us receive to change the direction of our lives.  And while we don’t actual kill a personal prophet, we may actually squelch the voice of reform in our consciences that is telling us to change the direction of our lives so that we can have more successful living outcomes.

  Also, I believe that there was a bigger fox than Herod that Jesus was addressing.  What was it that made Herod the fox?  Herod had the power to take the lives of those whom he wanted to get rid of.  In a sense, the fox that was bigger than Herod or even the Roman Empire was the fox of death itself.

  Just as the mother hen is easy prey to fox; so we too know that we and everyone are easy prey to death, because it is certain to come.  As pastors, friends and family we know the threats of that fox death in its many forms of disease and accidents.  We feel vulnerable and we know its power and we want to protect our friends and loved ones from its power.  And yet in our time we will have to offer up our breast and neck to that fox, death itself.  But we can do so in hope, because all that is good in our life that has been protected in the covering of our wings will live on forever.

  Jesus, as mother hen for his brood, offered his breast and neck up to that great fox, death, and yet his life continued strong in those who scattered yet who were drawn back together by knowing the continuing presence of Christ in his resurrection.

  The words of Jesus for us today, are sadly realistic, because unlike other religions that only allow positive thinking, we don’t try to whitewash the dark side of life out of the picture.  But in our sad realism, we know the great fox death does not win in the end; resurrection is around the corner.  Our sad realism is because our lives are such wonderful times to cherish that loss is poignantly felt.  And if loss is poignantly felt, how much greater will the gain of resurrection life be.

  And so today, we lament with Jesus, the sad realism of the apparent power of the foxes of this live to exploit and plunder those who are vulnerable.  May we, even like the vulnerable, mother hen, Christ himself, be ready to stand against the foxes in this life, so that what is good and right might continue and multiply.  Amen.

Daily Quiz, February 20, 2013

Daily Quiz

According to canon law King Henry VIII had how many wives?

a.four, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Howard
b. six, four above and Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr
c. two, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr
d. Henry VIII, had six weddings and two marriages
e. c and d

Daily Quiz, February 19, 2013

Daily Quiz

Venite and Beneditus es are

a. titles of canticles
b. opening words of canticles in Latin
c. titles retained from the Latin of chanted songs in Morning prayer
d. all of the above

Daily Quiz, February 18, 2013

Daily Quiz

Martin Luther, whose feast day is today, belonged to what religious order?

a. Franciscan
b. Dominican
c. Jesuit
d. Augustinian

Temptation: Acting on Misinterpretation

1 Lent C    February 17, 2013

Deut.26:1-11    Ps. 91

Rom.10:5-13     Luke 4:1-13

Lectionary Link 

Text:

  We begin the season of Lent with the famous show down between Jesus and Satan.  One wonders how this private temptation of Jesus ever came to textual form but it has and it ties in with numerology of the Hebrew Scripture.  The number 40 is the symbolic number for test and ordeal and wandering before arriving at an appointed place.  40 years in the wilderness for the people of Israel.  It rained 40 days and night in the big Flood.   

  The wilderness is also a symbolic place of making the lonely vision quest to test one’s calling.  Are you really sure you’re supposed to do this?  A vision of vocation and ministry is tested.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have left the previous familiar place.  Maybe I did not have any choice as circumstances forced me in the liminal state of betwixt and between, a rite of passage.  Maybe I’ve launch out into the new vision and I’m getting nowhere so in disappointment, maybe I should quit.”  The showdown between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness happened after his baptism by John the Baptist, when Jesus was to begin his ministry.  In his vision quest in the wilderness one can find revisited the place of human defeat, namely the current state of the Garden of Eden..  First Adam failed in his temptation with the serpent-Satan, the trickster, and as a result the entire creation was plagued with weeds.  The Garden of Eden was locked off; Shangri-la now but an ancient myth.  Now the dis-harmony with the plant world was expressed in the weeds that want to grow in our garden of wheat and fruits and choke off our labor.  The Garden of Eden as a friendly menagerie of animals with Adam being like a Dr. Doolittle talking with animals and giving them their names, had become the wilderness where the beasts were predators and humanity is a prey unless human beings can outsmart the animals who were originally created for eco-harmony and friendship.

  “God, we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” This was a visionary impulse long before Joni Mitchell wrote a song about the Woodstock hippie quest for a return to Eden.  The entrance of Israel into the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey was another attempt to get back to the Garden as are all human attempts at utopia for more perfect societies. 

   Adam and Christ stand as the totemic personalities for trying to understand human direction and in the story of Adam, we find a story that gives us insight about our moral failure.  First man and first woman, Adam and Eve are naively innocent creatures, who succumb to the superior stealthy cunning of the serpent, and the naïve pair went from being vegetarians to misbehaving fruitarians and as they say, the rest is history.  In the Biblical epic, there was one needed to progress beyond the state of naiveté and go again to a site of the original misdirection and that once Garden site has now become the wilderness haunted by wild beasts.  And a second Adam, a hero had to go in to confront the great trickster. 

  We in our biblical religion are so used to “externalizing” all things biblical as having happened out there in the external world.  The Greeks use a word, “Topos” to refer to both physical sites but also literary textual topics.  When we read the Bible we are reading about those “topoi,” those great human topics or literary topographical inner space sites of human angst and triumph.

   Perhaps the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness highlights most poignantly the notion of word, text and topic.  The temptation showdown was essentially an interior verbal sparring between Jesus and his interior trickster Accuser.  They exchanged words and so we had a debate or forensic discourse, verbal jousting.  And what were they jousting about?  They were essentially jousting about the great text of their known world, the words of their Bible, the words of the Hebrew Scripture.  The temptation of Christ shows us that Satan knew how to use the Bible.  The words of the Bible as written could be interpreted in a hundred ways and so Satan was using the words of the Hebrew Scripture to tempt Jesus to make the word flesh in coming to an actual deed.  The fullness of word being made flesh occurs when it animates an actual deed.  Just as the serpent trickster of old used flattering words to motivate Eve and Adam to the deed of eating the forbidden fruit, so too the trickster and eloquent devil tried to appeal to the good holy book to influence an action by Jesus.

  The temptations of life most often are about interpretation and timing?  Is eating an apple from the tree bad?  Of course not, it is timing of when the apple can be eaten.  A parent does the same thing with one’s child.  Are cookies bad for children, yes and no, it depends upon the timing of eating for good nutrition.  Is bread bad for Jesus or us?  Of course not, it has to do with the timing of throwing Jesus off his schedule of how he understood his relationship with God his father.

   The idolatrous form of self-esteem is the megalomaniac quest for the kind of fame when a person is dominated to define their very worth as a person by the number of people who can express devotion or adoration towards them.  Our media society certainly feeds this distorted view of fame as famous people complain about invasive paparazzi even while they use all of the distorted fame to get wealthy.  Worship and adore me in exactly the way that I want you to.  And you see how fame and the events that lead to fame often get labeled as a Faustian bargain.  “Jesus, you are clever enough to use your wisdom and your charisma and your ability to manipulate people and become as powerful and as famous as the Caesar, so why don’t you use your ability to get this kind of fame.”  The plan of God had Jesus becoming famous in the path of counter-logic; by getting crucified and then returning to countless numbers of people in resurrection manifestations. 

  And then there is the temptation trick of trying to get Jesus to be a fundamentalist literalist.  “Throw yourself off the building Jesus because the Bible says the angels will catch you.”  There was a time and a place for Jesus to die but not by being led into acting because of a faulty reading of the Bible.  Lots of people are led to hurtful prejudice and acts of injustice because of the way in which they read the Bible.  Our world is full of incredible cruel actions done because of the way that religious people of all religions have been tempted to read their Holy Books in distorted ways.  The temptation of Christ is a witness to us to be careful in how we seek to understand our Holy Book in our time and if our interpretation of the Bible does not pass the non-exploitative, love and justice and common sense smell test, then we need to be careful in the kinds of interpretation of the Bible that we are acting upon.

  The greater point that I would like for us to understand is that you and I are word constituted in a sea of words.  By this I mean our world and self-knowledge is constructed by the way in which we see or perceive through the word structures of our life.  We use Holy Books and “higher education” to inform the language lenses through which we see all of life outside of us and all of who we are inside of us.  So we have taken on lots of word usage that already result in automatic body language acts in our life.  Our body language follows the code of how we have taken on word use in our lives.

  So this temptation event of Jesus as a clash of competing interpretations is crucial in understanding that you and I live on a sea of words in how we are interpreting the meaning of our lives in each word and deed.  The parts of our life deeds that are already on automatic in our body rituals sometimes are hard to interdict and change.

  The reason we try to educate and bring into our lives new word events and new possibility of new interpretations is that we hope to cure in progressive ways the ignorance that our speech and body habits have taken on through being informed by less than ideal sources of information.

  This is why we are always within a textual temptation, a word battle for excellence in future speech and action.  Jesus won the battle of words against the one who wanted him to misinterpret and take the wrong actions in his life.

  We live the drama of this temptation too, every moment of our lives.  That is why the “ I.T. phrase “garbage in, garbage out” is relevant to our life of temptation.  What we take in as we live on this sea of words in some ways become flesh in the actions of our lives and so we need to be ever mindful of what we are taking in so as to influence what we will be expressing in the words and deeds of our lives.

  Friends, we highlight the temptation of Jesus today as we have begun Lent, but trust me, you and I are living this dramatic temptation in our word lives all of the time.  Let us ponder today how we are interpreting and acting out the highest ideals of our lives today, and let us follow Jesus in finding strategies against the temptation to “mistime” the words and deeds of our lives.  Amen.

Daily Quiz, February 17, 2013

Daily Quiz

Which Gospel does not mention the temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness?

a. Matthew
b. Mark
c. Luke
d. John