The Spirit of Tradition: The Role of Scripture in Our Lives

A rich man eats a feast while a poor man starves.

It’s a familiar story.

It was a familiar story when Jesus told it two millennia ago, and it’s still a familiar story now.

It’s what comes after that story that makes Jesus’s telling of it remarkable. Jesus uses that everyday story as a background to launch into the story about the conversation he imagines the rich man having with Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith, the one through whom “all the nations on the earth will be blessed.”

And Jesus imagines them having a conversation about the role of scripture in our lives.

The rich man cries out, “Father Abraham, send Lazarus with some water, I’m in agony.”

And Abraham reasons with him, “Remember that in your lifetime you received many good things,” and then goes on to point out, “there’s this chasm between us,” like, I can’t really do anything for you here.

The rich man seems to accept that — he doesn’t argue.

But he does make another request (well, more like a demand) of Abraham, on behalf of his family. “Send Lazarus to my house so that he might warn them.”

And Abraham replies, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”

“Moses and the prophets” is a longhand way of saying scripture, but it’s also more evocative than that.

According to rabbinic tradition, Moses wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. To say “They have Moses” conjures the histories and laws contained in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

To say “They have Moses” would evoke the entirety of the laws, which covers many aspects of life — what you do and don’t do on a Sunday, the clothes you wear, how you grow your food, which food you eat, and who you eat with.

More deeply, more centrally than the law, to say “They have Moses” evokes the central narrative of Jewish identity found in the Exodus story.

The Exodus story is about Abraham’s descendents, a few generations on. They are enslaved, exploited, oppressed by the world superpower of the day. They had nothing. And God calls Moses to lead them to freedom, to search for a home, to restore them to their original purpose as God’s people — to bless all the nations of the earth.

To say “Moses” encompasses both story and law, together, because of course they’re intimately connected. It’s been suggested that many of the laws found in Torah would have been for better health of a nomadic people at that time. The law came from and was designed to fit their circumstances. And when those laws first came, they were new ways of living.

Abraham says to the rich man, “They have Moses and the prophets.”

The books of the prophets make up much of the rest of Hebrew scripture.

Each prophet has different emphases, various points they want to highlight, but they all share the task of calling God’s people back to their identity as God’s people. They all call God’s people back to being a blessing to all nations of the earth.

The prophets called people to live into that identity in ways that matched their new context, even when that context was horrific, even when it felt unbearable.

Some prophets spoke when the Jewish people were oppressed or exiled, offering hope or reminding them to continue to be a blessing to others — even their oppressors.

Some prophets, like Amos (whose words the lectionary places alongside the story of the rich man and Lazarus), wrote at a time of relative peace and prosperity, but noted the neglect of God’s laws. Amos says, “Alas for those who lounge on their couches, and eat lambs and calves.” It seems that luxurious opulence and neglect go hand in hand.

Psalm 146 (again, chosen to go along with these texts from the lectionary), succinctly encompasses many of the themes from Moses and the prophets.

The psalm begins and ends with “Praise the Lord.”

The middle verses expand on what it looks like to praise the lord: “Do not put your trust in the political powers, in mortals, in whom there is no help; happy are those whose hope is in the Lord their God.”

It goes on to describe the character of this God by listing the people that God shows concern for: the oppressed, the hungry, prisoners, the blind, those who are bowed down, the righteous, the strangers, the orphans, and the widow.

This is not Time Magazine’s list of the most influential people.

These are not the kind of people you want to aligning yourself with if you want wealth or political influence or military power.

Yet they’re the ones that God has chosen to be God’s people, to go and bless all the nations of the earth. People who are on the bottom of the power chain. People with massive amounts of debt. People who had broken laws or rebelled against the empire. People burdened by disability and disease. People without even the most fundamental markers of social status of family or nation: immigrants, refugees, foster kids.

Abraham tells the rich man, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”

And the rich man — who quietly accepted his fate of flames without a drop of water — the rich man says, “No, father Abraham.”

The rich man says that this wealth of scripture isn’t enough.

And you know, he kind of has a point.

Perhaps the rich man followed the law, did everything by the book. He wore the right clothes, he ate the right things, he didn’t work on the sabbath, he gave 10% of his income to his religious institution — perhaps he did everything “right.” He followed the law to the letter.

And then he ends up in the flames of Hades.

The laws of “Moses and the prophets” weren’t enough.

Perhaps what he was missing isn’t obedience to law. Perhaps his error wasn’t a failure to follow the law.

Perhaps what he was missing is the spirit of those laws.

His error was in misunderstanding the purpose of the law.

The law is not a checklist to get to heaven; it’s an aid to help guide us into loving God and neighbor.

Abraham, notably, didn’t have Moses and the prophets; he didn’t have law to follow at all.

All he had was a God who called him to unbelievable tasks. He followed God’s call in ways that were new for his time. For instance, God told Abraham to circumcise himself and all the men in his household. This was a new idea that Abraham followed — and it became a central marker of Jewish tradition.

And Abraham mentions his descendent Moses, who also had no law.

He, too, did his best to follow the demands of a foolish God — a God who sent him into the center of world power with nothing but a long stick. Moses didn’t have a law to follow. He wrote the law, wrote the best practices for living as they travelled through the desert. And those laws became central markers of Jewish tradition.

And the prophets took those laws and applied them to new contexts, in new ways. The prophets followed the spirit, and utilized the law as a way to help a people follow the spirit.

Because, as C Wess Daniels writes, the point of a faith community, “the point of the church is not to be faithful to tradition at all costs. The point of the church is to be faithful to the eternal spirit within the tradition, which is also at work in the world.”

In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus confronts the idea that following the law is enough.

Jesus invites us to live into the spirit of the law.

He heals on the sabbath. He eats with the most despised people in town. He tells stories and performs miracles in ways that reframe the law as not just a set of rules to follow, but as a way of living that recognizes and loves the ones that the empire has forgotten, ignored, or oppressed.

And in doing so, he again changed the tradition.

Each Sunday, we share bread and cup at Jesus’s table. We do this not because Jesus commands it, not as a checklist on the way to Abraham’s side in heaven. We come to the table to be fed. We come to remember that Jesus feeds everyone. We come to remember that spirit is with us and spirit is for us.

May our traditions guide us in our understanding and experience of the eternal, and push us out into the world — where spirit can meet us, and transform us, yet again.

Originally preached at St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, WA, on Sept 25, 2016.

In the comments…

What rhythms or rituals do you observe out of habit that no longer have meaningful significance?

Where do you hear invitations to participate with the spirit in the world?

August 23, 2016August 22, 2016

Flash Mob Kingdom: Reflections on the Division Jesus Promises

“I came not to bring peace to the earth, but rather division,” Jesus tells his disciples. “Mother against daughter and father against son.”

I struggle with his words. I struggle with the fact that Jesus said these words.

These words have been used to isolate and distance.

The thinking seems to be that Christians are supposed to be divisive. We’re supposed to be countercultural, even — if necessary — counter-familial.

Sometimes a person makes a decision or is a way that his or her family doesn’t like. Perhaps he’s in a relationship with someone of a different race, or she’s in a relationship with someone of the same sex. Perhaps he’s abandoning the family business to pursue his dreams. Perhaps she’s casting her vote for the other party.

“A household will be divided,” hisses one party, ending the conversation — and, at times, the relationship.

My struggle, I guess, isn’t with Jesus’s words so much as it is with the way the rest of us interpret and apply those words.

Because I don’t think that Jesus meant his words to tell us what we’re supposed to do in response to the signs of the times.

Indeed, the passage is actually about what Jesus does in the world, not what we are to do. “I came to bring fire; I came to bring division.”

It is Jesus, by his very presence, who is divisive.

Angels announced his birth with the song “peace to God’s people on Earth” and the promise that he would guide our feet in the way in peace.

The peace he brought in his birth disrupted what the Romans called Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. The Peace of Rome was about assimilation to the Roman Empire and obedience to Caesar. The Peace of Rome was a peace that meant, simply, the absence of war, the absence of resistance to the empire.

Jesus disrupted the Peace of Rome, bringing the Peace of God, which is much more than an absence of war. The peace Christ brings is the active presence of God with Us.

And division followed.

Division, then, is not the primary goal of Jesus’s behavior. His words here are perhaps best read as an honest description of what will naturally occur as he continues his work of bringing about the Kingdom of God.

Peace and division are both the work of Jesus, not a command to his followers. We don’t need to have divided homes in order to love God. We are not called to judge our families or vehemently defend our beliefs and views.

Jesus is the one who brings the fire, not us.

That said, Jesus’s work of peace and division will certainly have implications for his followers.

Just as living under the Roman Empire came with a certain way of doing things — roads built and traveled a certain way, a rhythm of life and taxes, a pattern of social etiquette and customs — we, too, have a certain way of producing and acquiring items, a certain rhythm of life and taxes, a set pattern of traditions and customs. Some of these are huge systems: our voting schedule, the way we invest money, the way we celebrate Christmas. Others are small: that we have eggs for breakfast, that we walk on the right.

But Jesus tells us that just because our world has a certain order to it, does not mean that the order is God’s.

And as we follow Jesus in his bringing of the Kingdom, the order of our world may be disrupted.

Which part of us loves.

I think our desire to see our world disrupted is why we love the flash mob phenomenon of the last decade so much.

The world has a certain way of doing things, a certain rhythm, a certain pattern. And flash mobs — they know that we have certain expectations for what happens in public places. There are ways the world works. Flash mobs play with our expectations.

My favorite are the flash mobs at malls right before Christmas, bursting into Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. I love the disruption of normalcy, the call to beauty and joy and the holy right in the midst of an everyday place, the call to HALLELUJAH in the midst of our errands.

During the Chorus, there are always a few grumpy people.

And I love them, because they’re just like me. They’ve got their list, they’ve got errands, they’re not about to stop their very productive shopping trip. In the videos, you see them in the background, nudging the makeup artist to continue her work or hurriedly checking out so they can go on about their day.

They are so caught up in what they have to do — so caught up in the workings of the world — that they cannot stop to notice the holy. They cannot hear the call to a holy moment even as they shout over the HALLELUJAHs ringing in their ears.

And it’s disruptive, it’s disrupting what they’re doing, disrupting their entire day. The mall is for certain activities, for commerce, and everyone was doing that, and now there are two things going on: the normal commerce of the world and the outbursting chorus of Hallelujah.

I especially love the Hallelujah Chorus flash mobs most because people join in.

It’s such a well-known piece. You can see, in the videos, people caught off guard, then finding the rhythm, remembering the words and their part, and, with increasing confidence, joining in. They sometimes stumble, they sometimes miss a queue our fall out of step with the timing — but they’re in it.

In a span of seconds, they hear the call to live in a way that is different from the way of the world, stop to pay attention, and then become active participants in this new reality.

And I think that’s exactly what the choristers hope for: that everyone join them, that everyone recognize this is a good and worthwhile activity — at least for the next five minutes.

The choir isn’t there setting out to be divisive. But not everyone is able to hear their action as an invitation. Some stick to the status quo, stick to the way things are — and so there’s division.

Division is not the goal, but occurs as a natural outcome of pursuing the holy.

I think that’s what Jesus is on about.

We’re invited to follow him into a Kingdom way of life, a way that loves of God and neighbor — and that living be divisive as a natural outcome.

There will be others who are so committed to the way the world is that they can’t hear the invitation to the way the world could be.

There was a group of Christians who took seriously God’s command to care for the planet.

They approached their neighbors, in their suburban setting, asking them to begin recycling and found that their neighbors were totally uninterested.

This group didn’t have quite the glamour of a flash mob, but they had read the signs of the times — and they decided to act on it. They started going through the public trash cans on the street to remove any recyclable cans and bottles. They started going through their neighbors’ trash bins, removing what could be recycled.

The neighbors were furious. These Christians were ruining their neighborhood. They told them to stop; they wouldn’t.

It was divisive.

Eventually, the neighbors found a way to get these Christians to stop digging through their garbage: They started recycling.

At St Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ballard, where I serve, there’s group of Christians who took seriously God’s command to feed the hungry and care for the poor.

And so they did, and they do. They cook meals that they serve for free, five days a week, for any and all who care to come.

The neighbors don’t understand; some of them are quite angry. These Christians are ruining the neighborhood.

Jesus’s experience of division might bring us some consolation. The pursuit of the Peace of God is rarely without division.

Jesus invites us to read our times.

To read the movements and rhythms of our culture, our city, and our homes. He invites us to consider: What would it look like to love God and neighbor in this place? How might I pursue the Kingdom in this moment?

And, yes, he warns us that when he shows up it will bring division, disunity — not the division of warfare or indifference, but a division rooted in the singing of the holy in a song that some just won’t be able to hear.

Do you hear the holy song?

Do you hear the Hallelujahs?

Will you join in singing?

In the comments…

Where do you see glimpses of the kingdom in your own life?

Where do you see the kingdom show up in your neighborhood?

What might you do to “join in the singing”? How could you love God and neighbor?

What fears hold you back from joining?

March 15, 2016March 24, 2016

Mad Max: Fury Road: Witness Nux

Witness Nux in Mad Max Fury Road - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

SPOILER ALERT – In this post we witness Nux in the most significant 24 hours of his life. It pretty much opens with spoilers. So seriously, go watch the movie already! Then come back. I’ll be here.

Transformation

Nux may be the most drastically transformed character over the course of Mad Max: Fury Road.

We meet him as a happily indoctrinated war boy, but hours later he fully commits himself to the destruction of Immortan Joe’s empire and the overthrowing of the Citadel.

At the start of the film, his body is “battle fodder” (as the Splendid put it) in the service of the empire, but in the end he sacrifices his body in order to destroy the empirical forces.

And he’s the one character the audience sees progress through all the types of hope.

Kamakrazee War Boy

When we first meet Nux, he’s resting and connected to his “blood bag” — death is imminent. And yet, hearing of betrayal, he’s energized, determined to die for the purposes of the empire and to please Immortan Joe. He refuses to stay at the Citadel and “die soft.” “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die historic on the Fury Road.”

We see him cheer as a pierced war boy shouts “Witness!” and jumps to his death, taking out an enemy vehicle. When a war boy dies for the purposes of the Cult of the V8 (the religion of the empire), there seems to be a tradition of witnessing. Part of what makes the death worthwhile is the memory of the way in which the death occurred, the way it benefited the empire.

When Nux goes on his own kamakrazee drive, dumping gallons of gasoline into the car and riding into the apocalyptic desert storm, he shouts to Max, “Witness me, Blood Bag!” He’s thoroughly committed to the Cult, determined to “ride eternal on the highways of Valhalla” with Immortan Joe.

Nicholas Hoult, the actor who plays Nux, says, “He’s very hyped up and running on this enthusiasm and belief that he’s destined for something great.”

Despair to Hope

That enthusiasm dissipates when he fails to kill Furiosa on behalf of Joe.

Capable finds him at the back of the War Rig, hitting his head in punishment, “He [Joe] saw it all. My own blood bag driving the rig that killed her [Angharad the Splendid].” He laments that he “should be walking with the Immorta.” “I thought I was being spared for something great.”

At that point, he aligns himself with Furiosa and the wives — not because he thinks what they’re doing is right, but because he believes himself to be exiled from the empire and faith of Immortan Joe. His very survival is dependent on getting somewhere livable with the traitors.

It’s not until Max reveals the plan to take the Citadel that Nux fully recovers from his despair, acknowledging the opposite of despair: “Feels like hope.”

Eyes to See

When we first meet Nux, he’s in standard war boy makeup: blackened eyes and powder-whitened body.

By the time he claims hope, this layer has begun to fall away. The white powder has been sand-blown off; we can see that he is living flesh. The blackness around his eyes gradually clears; Nux develops clear-sightedness.

Which reminds me of another man dedicated to his religion and transformed through a shift in sight — the Apostle Paul. Saul (as he was then called) was on his own Fury Road in pursuit of traitors. The opening sentence of Acts 9 tells us that Saul was seeking permission to capture those who betrayed the religious establishment of his day. Perhaps Saul even understood himself to be anointed, shiny and chrome, for exactly the task of recovering the traitorous souls.

But Jesus appeared to Saul and struck him blind. Days later, he regains his sight, is renamed Paul, and begins championing the Christian cause. His mission began when he regained true sight.

Nux, like Paul, is an image of conversion — and, also like Paul, a martyr for the coming of the Kingdom.

Witness

They’re on the road back to the Citadel when Immortan Joe is finally defeated. Cheedo shouts back to those in the War Rig: “He’s dead! He’s dead.” For just a moment, the camera lingers in a closeup on Nux’s face. The last scales fall from his eyes.

If Immortan Joe has died, then Nux is not in exile from the true faith of the Cult of the V8. Joe will not carry him into Valhalla. Joe was not an Immorta; perhaps there are no Immorta; perhaps there is no Valhalla. The entirety of that faith is proven false, even foolish, in light of Joe’s death.

Nux is free from his religious and empirical ties, free to choose his commitments, free to act for the interest of goodness for the world rather than simply for the best interests of Joe.

Nux is free to love.

And he loves greatly. Jesus claims that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Earlier, Nux had told Capable that he thought he was being spared for “something great,” and in this moment perhaps he realizes that he was, and that the moment of greatness has arrived, greatness for a cause he could never have imagined the day before.

Nux points to Capable, his beloved, and whispers (not shouts — no, there is no need to shout for glory when the very act contains all the glory of God) “Witness me.”

When Nux finally dies, he dies historic on the Fury Road. He was right from the very beginning. He dies historic — dies in such a way that a barrier is provided to protect his friends and to protect the hope that they will carry to the Citadel.

A day earlier, he was willing to die in hope of personal gain — glory in Valhalla, feasting with the heroes, perhaps being honored as a hero himself. Here, he dies for a hope in this world, hope for an abundance of green things and clean water for many. He dies for a hope that he knows he won’t get to participate in.

I can’t help but think that the entire film is a witness to Nux’s conversion and to his great love.

Saint Nux, who gave his life so that the world might be saved.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

For discussion: What other saints and martyrs do you notice in Mad Max: Fury Road? What do you think it means to witness to the life and death of another? What might need to die so that you are more free to love greatly? What are you willing to risk your life for, or to die for?

Respond in the comments below!

March 1, 2016March 24, 2016

Mad Max: Fury Road & Competing Hopes

Mad Max: Competing Hopes - read on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Mad Max: Fury Road offers a post-apocalyptic image of the future in order to push audiences to ask questions about our present. The film seems to center around hope and its role in these character’s lives. The various factions offer a couple different ways of understanding hope, highlighting the problems of each, before providing an ultimate resolution through offering a framework for a healthy way to hope.

Tunnels and Directions

Eschatology is the aspect of theology that concerns the “four last things:” death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The eschaton is shorthand for the place where we hope all this — all our prayers, policies, and parenting — the place that we hope everything is headed.

Sometimes when talking about eschatology, theologians use the metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel. In the tunnel metaphor, the eschaton is the light towards which we move. In Mad Max language, we could say the eschaton is the Green Place.

The metaphor we use matters — deeply — to the way we understand the world. The metaphor we us shapes our actions in the world.

The tunnel metaphor is an enclosed line, and the confines of the tunnel mean that it’s impossible to get off track. As long as we keep moving, we’ll end up at the destination. There are only two options: (1) going back to where we first came from; in scriptural language we’d say “back to Eden,” to the garden in Genesis 2, or (2) going forward to the light at the other end of the tunnel; we might say heaven or the city described in the Book of Revelations.

What’s problematic is that the tunnel metaphor allows us to believe that absolutely anything that happens — fossil fuel consumption, nuclear weaponry, murder — is all part of a linear history that God has laid down. It’s all part of the tunnel line that will eventually bring us to the light.

The metaphor offered in Mad Max: Fury Road for the eschaton is the Green Place, and they get there by “a long night’s run, headed east.” The image retains the darkness/light metaphor of the tunnel (the Green Place will be on the other side of darkness; it is associated with the coming light of dawn), and adds greenness — the color associated with vibrant life, from vegetation.

This driving metaphor solves the issue of the linear history of the tunnel metaphor. On the drive, it’s possible to get off track — they could begin to head too far north or south and miss the Green Place. They could find themselves going the wrong direction entirely, a direction that’s neither “back to Eden” nor “ahead to the City.” The driving metaphor preserves potential for missing the mark, the potential of human error.

Where is Hope Located?

The film asks us to consider where we place our hope by juxtaposing two eschatons, two places that hope can reside.

Hoping for Death

The first form of hope we see epitomized in the War Boys, especially Nux. For the first portion of the movie, Nux represents disembodied hope, meaning that arriving at this eschaton requires the loss of one’s body. The eschaton, called Valhalla (sometimes written Walhalla), is reached only through death. Early in the film, we see Nux screaming “I live. I die. I live again!” Death is the gateway to the paradisiacal afterlife.

In this theology, the individual’s arrival will be more honorable if the death happens in combat that furthers the cause of the empire. Immortan Joe tells the war boy Nux, “Return my treasures to me and I myself will carry you to the gates of Valhalla.” He anoints Nux with chrome spray and the blessing that he will “ride eternal, shiny, and chrome.”

I’ve read some commentators who were quick to interpret Nux’s disembodied hope as a parallel for Islamic extremists. Which, sure, and those similarities don’t need yet another summary. What I haven’t read much of is the parallel that Nux also represents the disembodied hope found in many religions, including some forms of Christianity.

The belief that death is more honorable if done to further the religious cause is as much a Christian belief as an Islamic one. Many early Christians died to uphold the Christian cause; we refer to them as the martyrs. And when we tell the story of martyrs, we witness to the importance of their lives and deaths.

Both religions (the Cult of the V8 and some forms of Christianity) are headed by men believed to be immortal (Immortan Joe; Jesus) who will deliver their followers to a paradisiacal afterlife (Valhalla; Heaven). Death for the sake of the leader’s teachings will lead to glory and honor after death — it is this glorious death that Nux desperately seeks.

So what’s the alternative to hoping for life after death?

Hoping for Life

The Green Place — spoilers abound from here on

We see the alternative to the War Boys’ disembodied hope in the located hope of the protagonists, and especially of the escaped breeders/wives. The wives’ eschaton is the Green Place — a located place that they can physically access in this life.

The wives have never been to the Green Place. Their hope rests on what they have been told about the place, presumably from Furiosa. Furiosa believes on the faith of a distant memory; the wives believe without seeing. And the belief is a great comfort to them; it’s in the moments they are most stressed and uncertain that one of them will repeat, “We are going to the Green Place.”

They are willing to risk everything to reach this place — even death. They are willing to die as a result of their hope, but their hope does not necessitate their death. When we locate the eschaton in this world, it instills us with a hope so compelling that we are willing to die to get there, yet death is not required to get there. That relationship between hope and death is a far cry from the War Boys, who are willing to die because they must die in order to reach their eschaton.

This is why the War Boys cheer when they watch one of their own go to his death — early in the chase, an injured man anoints himself with chrome spray, shouts “Witness me!” and jumps to his death while taking out an enemy vehicle. The War Boys shout victoriously.

But when Angharad the Splendid falls, those present are tearful. It’s not only because they were close to her — the War Boys have also lived together; they’ve probably grown up together; they are close. Their grief is a result of their hope. They know the Green Place, no matter how good it will be, will be somehow lacking without Angharad present. They grieve because she will never get to arrive at the place she had put her hope.

What the seekers of the Green Place share with other forms of Christianity is that they follow a real, flesh-and-blood person: Furiosa for the wives; Jesus for the disciples, who had no idea, when they started following him, that he would resurrect. They both look for the already existing presence of the eschaton, with their own vocabularies: the Green Place; the Kingdom of God that is within us or among us.

Repentance

When the group discovers that the Green Place has become a swamp of poisoned water, we would expect their hope to die or to shift to hope in an afterlife. And for a moment, that despairing moment when Furiosa takes off her metal hand — hands are a symbol of agency; perhaps she feels she is nothing left to be done — and she kneels in the expanse of the barren desert and she silently wails her lament — for that moment the audience and Furiosa alike are swallowed by despair. All hope is deferred.

Max tells Furiosa that “hope is a mistake.” But I think what he’s actually saying is that the headstrong hoping for something out there is a mistake. To hope that someone else has solved what their society wasn’t able to solve is a mistake.

It seems that they gather themselves in a hope-against-hope, rouse themselves to keep going east, continuing to do what they’ve been doing for the last day. Max rides after them and calls them to repent — a word that literally means to turn back.

When Max had claimed that “hope is a mistake” he added: “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.” Which actually points the audience to a new sort of hope.

Hope that is not somewhere out there; that is the kind of hope that is a mistake. True hope relies on “fixing what’s broken,” mending what is fractured, fighting to restore goodness with what we have. Hope is in redeeming (“regaining possession”) of what has been used for evil. Hope must be found within us and among us.

When Max calls them to repentance, the response to the plan is clear: “Feels like hope.”

It’s Nux, newly converted, who names it so.

(Post concludes after image)

True Hope: The Green Place is Within You

This is the turning point of their journey and of the film’s eschatology. In this moment, Nux — previously a subscriber to disembodied hope — converts to hope in a real place. And the women — subscribers to a hope located outside of themselves — find a resilient hope that exists in and among their own selves.

Far from the despairing lament, this type of hope is stronger than any hope they had experienced before.

This is the hope that Jesus tried to instill in his followers. Jesus repeatedly proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a present reality. Jesus proclaimed that this Kingdom is “within us” and “among us.” Hope exists within an individual and among a community. Hope likely requires real work to effect changes in the way a community structures itself — fixing what’s broken will not be easy. But we must have this resilient internal hope that the broken can be mended in order to act faithfully and step into the Kingdom of God that is both already present and not yet fully manifest.

The Green Place still exists; they carry it within them. They carry it in their imaginations and their desires. They carry it into reality in the Citadel.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

Questions: How do you speak about your hope? Where do you locate hope? How do you tap into the Green Place within your own self?

November 5, 2015January 9, 2016

Living in the Tomb

Reflections on John 11:32-44, delivered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Episcopal Church.

*******

I would have stayed in the tomb.

In the Middle East, it’s hot. Which means decomposition sets in quick, and the stench of that rotting process is heavy in the air. So if I had been four days in a tomb, in the heat — essentially the tomb becomes a warmed oven — I think I would have been too ashamed to come out.

And on top of that, there’s the problem of the bindings. The text describes how “his hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.” In the burial customs of the time, strips of cloth were tightly wound around the body — they bound the jaw closed, the feet together, and the hands to the side of the body. Which means that even after the shock of finding himself alive in his tomb, Lazarus is faced with the problem of exiting the tomb. He cannot walk with his feet bound together. He cannot even crawl with his hands tied to his side. The text doesn’t describe what must have been Lazarus’s struggling exit from the tomb; we can only imagine the movements of rolling and shuffling and squirming that must have taken him from the darkness to the light.

I would have stayed in the tomb. It would be less painful to stay dead than to suffer the humiliation of exiting on my belly and the shame of exposing the community to the stench of my death.

And that’s not to mention life after the tomb. In a culture where the dead are considered unclean, untouchable — where does an undead person go? what does he do? who will be near him, eat with him, care for him?

In commanding “Lazarus, come out!” — rather than going in, gathering up Lazarus in his arms, and carrying him out like a fireman making a rescue — in commanding Lazarus to come out, Jesus is asking a lot of his beloved friend. Jesus asks for Lazarus’s struggle and his exposure. Jesus asks for him to risk living with social stigma. Jesus asks for his full participation.

I would have stayed in the tomb.

Unless, perhaps, it becomes too painful to stay in the tomb any longer. I think we all reach this point, in different ways, at various moments of our life.

Perhaps it’s physical — our body is in pain or we suffer an addiction, and we know we can no longer keep living the way we have been, that our lifestyle habits have become a kind of tomb that we must leave in order to have real life.

Perhaps it’s relational — something about the person I become when I’m with this other person has turned my home into a kind of tomb, has bound me up in some way that I no longer feel like I have agency, and I need to crawl to someone who can unbind me.

Perhaps it’s societal, living in a system that bends toward injustice and it even though it will be really difficult to get out, staying in the tomb, staying with the way things are, is just no longer an option.

Jesus did not prevent his friend from dying. Mary and the Jews have a point: If Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died. So it seems that Jesus did not come to rescue us from going through difficulties.

And on the other side of death, at the tomb, at this scene: Jesus does does not rush into the tomb to deliver Lazarus out like a fireman rushing into a building burning. Rather, Jesus invites Lazarus to participate in his own salvation. Having done what he could do in raising Lazarus to life, Jesus expects Lazarus to do what he could do by making his way out of the tomb.

It’s when each of us is in a place of death — of pain and suffering and stench and shame — it’s when we feel trapped and bound and unable to act — it’s in death that Jesus offers the possibility of new life. Jesus calls to us. He calls to us: Come out! He invites us: Come out! He offers us hope that there is new life waiting to be had. Come out!

Jesus looks at something dead and see it as full of potential for life. Jesus looks at a corpse in a dark tomb and invites a living body into the light. Jesus looks at his beloved one and shows that death does not have to be the end of the story.

Having done what he can do in inviting us to new life, Jesus expects us to do what we can do to in our own movement and struggle out of our tombs.

Come out! Come out!

Lazarus, Come Forth by Salvador Dali (1964)

October 6, 2015June 8, 2019

Imago

A young girl rolls in the cool fountain water some distance from where our feet dabble. She calls over to us: “What does God look like?”

Her mom smiles and whispers to me, “She likes the light and easy questions lately.”

“Mom! What does God look like?” the daughter insists.

“I don’t know, honey.”

“Do you know?” her sincere eyes turn to me.

Well… God looks a little bit like your mom. And God looks a little bit like those ballerinas practicing in the grass. And a little bit like that man playing the saxophone. And a little bit like each person walking by and driving by. God looks a little bit like me. God looks a little bit like you.

I want to say that, but I hesitate, attempting to gauge what the mother’s reaction might be, and before I can resolve to risk it, the mother answers her again: “No one knows. God can’t be seen.”

The mother and I look to the girl, the girl looks down into the rippling water, and the moment is gone — but for the whisper in my head: Everyone who has eyes to see knows just what God looks like.

June 17, 2015

Mustard Seeds (and Other Weeds)

This sermon was written for St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, Washington. The lectionary texts included Ezekiel 17:22-24 and Mark 4:26-34.

Perhaps you’ve seen photos of people standing beneath mustard shrubs that are twenty, sometimes thirty, feet high. The shrubs are larger than some trees, looming over the people standing beneath, who smile in its shade. Sometimes the people beneath hold a single mustard seed between two fingers as they stand in the shade, grin at the camera, their smile saying: This tree started with a tiny seed like this one! The contrast is remarkable — the seed so small, and the plant it produces so exceptionally large! Offering rest and respite for the birds is nothing — these trees offer shelter to entire families of picnicking people.

The kingdom of God can perhaps be said to be like that type of growth. Perhaps the kingdom of God is like the movement from something small to something towering, a movement that is ever-upward into strength.

The photographed mustard trees, the way their power and might is glorified — we can liken the way we see them to the way the prophets of Israel viewed the cedars. Cedars are massive trees; they can easily grow up to 120 feet tall, some as high as 180 feet. They are symbols of nobility, power, and strength.

The prophet Ezekiel, whose words we heard this morning, whose words Jesus likely memorized as a boy, Ezekiel spoke of cedars as a metaphor for the kingdom of God; the people of Israel are birds who rest among its branches. From Ezekiel we heard:

Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord.

The kingdom, in this text, is a cedar that God’s own self has planted, and under it the birds of the air will make their nests, the people of Israel will live comfortably.

+ + +

A few weeks ago, I went to the West Seattle nursery to pick out bushes for my front yard. While pawing and searching through the various adolescent fruit shrubs available for purchase, I came upon, for sale, a young blackberry bush.

I was bewildered. Blackberries are an invasive species in Seattle — a delectable invasive species, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, I love a good blackberry pie or blackberry crumble or blackberries in my morning yogurt, or blackberry jam…. I mean, I love them, but they’re essentially a very delicious weed.

They’re everywhere in this city. Right now, they’re in bloom — you’ve seen them, those thorny branches with the little white flowers. You see them in parks and by the highway and around parking lots and pretty much anywhere that has some spare soil. You probably passed some this morning on your way here, they’re that pervasive.

To use my own home as an example, if I’m looking to grab a fresh snack, I can walk ten feet west or twenty feet east and have a heaping bowl of blackberries. Not even like a personal size soup bowl, but like a mixing bowl, the biggest one I have. They’re abundant.

And those are just the ones I can reach without personal harm to my skin — there are even more on the inner parts of the shrub, places that only birds of the air can reach.

And yet there I was, in the confines of a nursery, I round the corner and here’s a potted, adolescent blackberry bush. Yours to own for $19.99 + tax. Who in their right mind would pay for a blackberry bush when they’re so abundant? And what’s more — who would plant something that’s essentially a delicious weed that will take over every corner of your yard?

+ + +

With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what metaphor can we use for it? The kingdom of God is like a blackberry seed that becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

+ + +

We don’t hear this as a majestic image, not compared to the 30-foot mustard plant. And yet… I’ve also seen photos of blackberry bushes that loom over people; like their mustard counterparts, these blackberry trees are exceptional. But hear that I mean that literally — the giant mustard plants and blackberry plants are exceptional; they are the exception. They are the tenacious seeds met with the perfect conditions of the proper amount of sun, the proper amount of shade, the proper amount of water, good growing temperatures and seasonal conditions, the appropriate type of soil. A lack of natural disasters. The vast, vast majority of mustard plants grow about 3 to 6 feet high.

Jesus used the same image as Ezekiel of nesting birds, the image of birds nesting in the shade of a plant that represents God’s kingdom. I suspect he knew what he was doing. I doubt it was a slip of the tongue that made him say “mustard seed” instead of “cedar sprig.”

So I don’t think he was going for an image of greatness. I don’t know that Jesus understands the kingdom of God to be about imposing displays of power or appearing impressive. I don’t know that he’s interested in the most powerful systems — the skyscrapers of big banking, the multi-billion dollar cosmetics industries, the most impressive job titles, the biggest weapons, the best stuff.

I’m not at all sure that Jesus is interested in a kingdom like a cedar. I’m not sure he’s interested in securing a nest for himself in a high-up bough. I’m not sure Jesus is interested in simply appearing impressive.

No, Jesus doesn’t use the image of the cedar tree. He uses the image of a mustard seed the unexceptional mustard seed. If Jesus were a Seattleite, I imagine he might use the image of the unexceptional blackberry seed. A common seed that will grow into a common plant, the type that grows waist-high and itself produces more seeds that produce other plants that grow waist-high and produce seeds that eventually take over a garden, and some time later they take over the city, and surrounding fields, and a generation after that, they’ve filled every bit of available soil from the Olympics to the Cascades. Without our having to do anything, these plants grow and spread and can’t be stopped.

The greatness of a cedar is in its height; yet a cedar can easily be cut down. The greatness of blackberry bushes is in their explosive, horizontal growth. As anyone who has ever tried to keep blackberries from their yard can tell you, they aren’t easily defeated. Blackberry bushes only appear less powerful than a cedar; precisely because they are low to the ground and their power is decentralized, they’re just about unbeatable.

+ + +

The Kingdom of God is among you. Will you fight back the invasive vines, cutting yourself on thorns in a losing battle? Or will you taste the delectable berries, taste the goodness being offered to you freely, feast on the fruit that came about by no work of your own doing — and build your nest in its shade?

June 2, 2015March 7, 2016

Mad Max Christ

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

In the opening scenes of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), we see Max (Tom Hardy) captured by War Boys of the Citadel. A prisoner of this empire, his body is under their control. The empire enlists him into service, finding use in him as an unwilling blood donor. An IV runs directly from his vein into the arm of Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the many ailing War Boys. When the call comes for the boys to fight, Nux orders that his “blood bag,” Max, be chained to him so that he can drive into the battle.

And so it is that we find Max, our title hero, chained to the front of a speeding car as though he were a wooden figurehead on the prow of a Roman ship.

For most military ornamentation, the purpose is to demonstrate the wealth and power of the empire. An empire that has resources to put into unnecessary embellishment and decoration is certainly an empire with abundance, with surplus — an empire that rules enough land and manpower to produce such extravagance.

But here, in a land with few natural resources (Immortan Joe controls the people through controlling the water supply), there is no gold to be mined nor trees to be cut down for a figurehead. But what they do have is this prisoner; the Citadel shows its power through controlling Max’s body. It is impractical to do so; he’d be a much safer resource tucked behind the driver’s seat. But he’s up front, sand in his eyes, his weight a nuisance to the movement of the vehicle, so that this empire can show their might.

The empire controls the level of danger into which his body is placed. The empire controls his level of discomfort. The empire controls the pace at which his life-blood is drained from him.

In this sense, Max the Figurehead may be one of the best images our contemporary culture has of Jesus the Crucified One.

Jesus, like Max, was a prisoner of the empire. His body was used to demonstrate the empire’s control. The Roman empire used crosses the way naval ships and Nux use figureheads, as a symbol to say: We are strong enough to not only kill, but to control. We are strong enough to kill slowly, strong enough to control the blood’s slow draining.

As a culture, we have lost our disgust in response to the cross. The cross, today, is an decoration on the wall of our home, an ornamental tattoo on our shoulder, a bejeweled trinket that hangs on our necklace. We talk about finding comfort in the cross. We don’t feel any of the guttural responses the cross evoked in first century peoples living in fear of the empire. We don’t feel, in our guts, the repulsion, the deprivation, the dehumanizing cruelty that must occur in order to hang a body on a plank in the desert.

Max, the Mad One, the Holy One is here to show us: there is no comfort in the cross. This image of a man cruelly and unnecessarily hanging from the front of a speeding car, this man whose lifeblood is dripping from him, helps shape our understanding of what we are no longer able to see in the cross. This image in culture helps inform the image in religion. This image helps us to re-find–in our guts, in our disgust–the scandal of the crucifixion.

For just imagine, for a moment, that that man being used as a hood ornament is the Child of God, the Word made flesh, the hope and salvation of the world, the promised Holy One.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

May 18, 2015

Correcting Our Spectral Overlap

This sermon was written for St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, Washington for the Seventh Sunday in Easter. The gospel text was John 17:6-19.

There are glasses available now that correct color blindness. People with green-red color deficiency– the most common form of colorblindness– experience the world in relatively muted tones because of what is called spectral overlap. For these people, the light spectrum that gives us green and the light spectrum that gives us red overlap, and as a result green and red overlap — have you ever blended red and green watercolors? It turns into a kind of dull, dusty gray-brown. For color blind people, to varying extents…that’s their world.

So the problem here, for the person with color deficiency, is not with the eye — the eye and optic neuron is essentially healthy, the systems function normally. The problem is the way the light is received.

So these glasses — these entirely normal-looking sunglasses — the lenses essentially put a space between the spectrums, they pull apart the overlapping spectrums, helping the eye to see that green and red are distinct colors. And by sorting out red and green as distinct colors, that dusty grayness is removed; reds are more red, greens are more green, blues are more blue — the entire color spectrum opens up once these two spectrums are seen as distinct. All by putting on a pair of glasses.

A close friend of mine, a woman who was like a mother to me, had a gift of turning a gray world into a colorful world. She was able to pull apart the aspects of a given situation that were the result of the world’s powers being at work–a result of hateful beliefs and attitudes, the ways systems privilege certain people, the ways despair and depression take hold, creepingly. She had the insight to be able to sort out those powers of the world’s system in my life from what God was doing in my life.

Through our conversations, it is as though she gifted me with color-correcting glasses. When the world feels too gray, I hear her voice and I can adopt her frames to sort out the world’s narratives and God’s narrative, both at play in my life.

I imagine the disciples felt as I feel when I heard that this friend was dying, when Jesus started speaking openly, bluntly, about his impending death. I imagine their fear of having to navigate the world’s ways and see God’s action in the midst of their situations. Their disorientation, like we’re losing a navigational point that told us who we are. I imagine them wondering: Who will name the world’s powers for what they are? Who will help us see God’s movements? Does the death of Jesus mean that the world’s powers will win out in the end? And under all of this, tied to all of these questions, is the Big Question: how can the world continue on without his love to hold it all together?

It is into this situation, this fear, that Jesus prays. “Father, the world’s systems and powers, the dominant culture of the world has hated my followers because they do not fit in the ways of the world, just as I do not fit in the ways of the world.” He reminds us that he has given us God’s care and protection as he pursue God’s truth.

He continues, “Sanctify them in your truth.” Sanctify means “to separate for purposes of God,” separate the purposes of God from the powers of the world, of the dominant culture. Our sight has the tendency to conflate the two spectrums, the world’s ways and God’s ways, Jesus reminds us that we are to be sanctified, to be able to see the two ways at work, as separate things. Jesus reminds us that he has given us new eyes to see. He reminds us that he has been the space that separates the spectrum of the world’s ways and the spectrum of God’s ways, he has pulled apart the world’s images of success/the world’s systems and ways —- from God’s movements and workings. Jesus prays that we remain able to see them, that we be sanctified.

And he continues: “Sanctify them … as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Jesus sends us, as he was sent. He sends us in the same manner and for the same purposes that he was sent. Our work in the world must look to Christ as the model. We read, earlier in this same gospel, about God’s sending Jesus in the oft-quoted John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” And the next verse continues the thought: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved.”

Jesus was sent into the world because of love, for the purpose of loving. In this prayer, Jesus sends his followers as he was sent — because of love, for the purpose of love. Love alone is the church’s reason for being in the world. When Jesus dies and the disciples feel so uprooted that they wonder, how can the world continue to exist without his love?, the answer is: we put on Jesus’s sight to correct our sight toward love. We adopt the way of seeing the world’s ways and God’s ways compassionately in a way that leads us to love.

He sends us as he was sent — not to condemn the world, but to lovingly interact with it, in order that the world’s ways might be saved.

A thai poet wrote that “paradise is not another world. Paradise is the ruins of this world gazed upon compassionately.” St Teresa of Avila wrote that “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world; yours are the hands with which God is to bless people now.” Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion looks out to the ruins of this world and sees it as paradise.

I saw a video of a man putting on these glasses for the first time. It’s his birthday; the glasses are his birthday gift, wrapped in bright red tissue paper. His wife has put out a container holding variety of colorful flowers in the front yard; she’s narrating from behind the camera. Their kids are in bright winter coats. Other than that, it’s really quite a bleak day. The sky is entirely overcast; they live in an apartment park filled with gray-brown townhomes. There is no grass; they’re stand on light gray sidewalk between dark gray pavement and their own gray-brown home.

The man, head-to-toe black denim, hair slicked back — he’s remarkably nonchalant, like he doesn’t want to appear uncool for a minute. Or maybe like he doesn’t want to hope too much. He unwraps the gift, pushing the tissue paper into the hands of his school-age daughter. Opens the box. Coolly, skeptically, he examines the seemingly ordinary shades.

When he finally puts them on, the moment that follows is …. Well, the kids are kind of oblivious that anything significant is happening. They’re playing with the tissue paper, running around.

But their father, the man in the glasses — the moment he puts them on, he stops talking. He stops smiling. He doesn’t know which direction to look. His wife says to him: look at your kids eyes. He glances down at his daughter in front of him, stares for just a second, and turns away, needs to go sit down.

And a minute later, composed, he gets up, smooths out his hair, paces, and then he comes to the flowers his wife set out, and this man just crumples in the parking lot. His new sight fills him with such love for the world — the same world that he had nonchalantly moved through before, but now rightly perceived — he’s filled with such love that he is overwhelmed and seems to become, at least for a few moments, an entirely different man. His tough exterior is undone as he weeps at the beauty of a gray day in a gray parking lot surrounded by gray homes.

The world hasn’t changed, but his perception of it has been corrected; the spectrums with which he sees have been pulled apart, and he can see the world as it is, and he is changed.

Jesus sends us into the world — not to condemn it, but to lovingly interact with it in order to save it. He sends us to see it with eyes so new and grateful that the color of another’s eyes brings tears to our own, that the brightness of a flower against gray sky brings us to our knees.

(For those interested, here is more information on the glasses, how they work; and the video of the man’s first time with the glasses.)

September 23, 2014June 30, 2016

Justice & Compassion

When my sister got to ride in the front seat twice in a row, or swiped my Halloween candy, or stayed out later than I without punishment, I would go to the Powers that Be — that is, a parent– and lament: “It’s not fair!”

And the response, predictably, repeatedly: Life isn’t fair.

In the face of this “Life isn’t fair” mantra, we often speak of the God of justice. The God who will set all things right. The God who punishes the wicked and restores — even rewards — the righteous.

In the lectionary, we read the end of the Jonah story and the parable of the workers in the vineyard together. What these readings share is this question of justice: reward and punishment; good and evil. The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard is to answer Peter’s question of how good deeds will be rewarded — specifically, of how his good deed of having “left everything” to become a disciple of Jesus, will be rewarded.

Perhaps a bit of context is helpful here. Peter is a Jew living in the Roman empire, where shrines to Roman gods could often be found with three words inscribed above them: Do ut des, which translates to something like, “I give in order that you will give.” The concept of an exchange was inherent in the act of a Roman sacrifice. People were accustomed to bargaining with God. Their prayers might begin, “O God, I’ll offer you this sacrifice if you please make me rich and powerful” or “Lord, save me from this situation and I’ll dedicate my life to you,” or perhaps, “I will worship You, God, and in exchange you take all my problems away.”

So when Peter asks how his sacrifices will be rewarded, he is entering into a bargain, rooted in a familiar mindset. Jesus gives Peter a very satisfying answer, a promise of eternal life and image of glory. To which you can see Peter nodding, yes, of course, this is the answer he expects. … But then Jesus says that the same promise stands for all who follow him. I imagine a sour moment for one who had left everything. Surely his sacrifice of family and home, surely his intimate closeness to Jesus must mean something extra is in store for him?

The teacher chooses this moment to tell the parable of the workers in the vineyard, of the landowner who hires more workers throughout the day but pays them equally at the end of the day. The parable ends with provocative questions: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

The questions offend us. The parable offends us. It offends our sense of justice, order, and fairness. This is not the way a just God should operate.

There is no good answer to the question, of course. Is the landowner allowed to do what he chooses with what belongs to him, or are we envious because he is generous? Peter’s options are either to admit his envious heart and lack of compassion, or he says no, the landowner does not get to choose what to do with his belongings — which, of course, means that Peter then forfeits his own right to do what he chooses with his belongings; and such a confession would mean that Peter forfeits his right to feel “better than” for having left everything.

The vineyard owner is allowed to do what he chooses with his wealth, and he claims the right to pay his workers not on the basis of their merits but on the basis of his own compassion. Compassion overrules justice. Compassion, indeed, looks unjust. It is not fair.

Because justice has never been the thing. Even Jonah — after Nineveh repents and turns to God — Jonah laments that God is not a God of justice. The Ninevites do not get what they deserve, but compassion overrules justice. And Jonah laments: I knew you would do this, I knew you were a God of mercy and compassion and that you wouldn’t smite them, and that’s why I ran away from prophesying to them.

The texts confront me. Who are the ones I begrudge, who are the people from whom I withhold generosity?

What would it take for me to stop being like Jonah–a person who would die for his own righteous anger–and become a person who would die to imitate a God of compassion, generosity, and mercy?

Where have I allowed justice to overrule compassion?