Onward

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.

John 6:44 (NIV)

If a wise person is asked, "Do we seek out grace or does grace find us first?", the answer may well be "yes".

May your new year be one of seeking and of being found. 

Peace on earth, and good will to all

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Luke 2:8-12 (NIV)

God pours Himself out to create, subjecting his might to the vagaries of Existence. It is precisely this outpouring that we know in and as the Christ: The Eternal, unmarred by the passage of time, entering the realm of dying and becoming. And it is in this outpouring that the Holy One makes Himself known as Love. The infinite, silent Mystery: revealed within Creation.

Becoming adopted

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 

Galatians 4:4-5

Sometimes, we who are frightened and weighed down upon by the inexorable truths of life--pain and death, greed and callousness--catch a glimpse of love that comes from beyond, from the very depths: and we discover the possibility of home.

"White lives matter!"

Did I get your attention with that headline? Good. For in the recent torrent of news on racially charged police violence, attention withers quickly, and weary spectators retreat to one side or another of the opinion divide, or of the racial chasm.

But this headline, the color inverse of the slogan used by Ferguson protesters, has the potential to cut across that divide. For it invites us ("us" as in: White people, the stock population of the mainline church) to imagine race relations were reversed, and to walk in other shoes for a little while.

What did you feel when you read the post title? Did you feel dismayed? Offended? Or maybe satisfied that someone turned the tables? Whichever it was, don't judge it. That's your state of affairs, your angle of view right now. But now, let's try something different.

One quality of Jesus that we talk too little about is his compassion. His ability to be moved beyond words by suffering, moved in his innermost being. He literally felt with (com-pati) others. We, curved in unto ourselves, must practice this ability. So let's practice.

If you are White like me, I ask you to do this. Go on a little imaginary journey. Imagine an American society where race relations are reversed. Where White people are in the minority, and Black police officers exert deadly force on them in larger proportions than on Black citizens. 

Put detail into your fantasy. Paint it in stark, graphic colors. Imagine a White teenager followed around, approached, and shot by a Black vigilante. Or a White father of six dying after being put in a chokehold by a Black officer. Try to imagine a world in which YOU had no meaningful choice but to take to the streets, with thousands of others, and to shout "White lives matter!"

What would a society look like that compelled you to use these words? How would you feel about your place in that society, about your worth as a White person? How would this world feel to you?

I can say for my part that even the attempt at imagining such a society made me feel scared, oppressed, suffocated. Wanting to scream.

Whatever the outcome of the judicial processes may be, whatever we may think or feel about the protests, we must never forget that there is a reality experienced by the people we see on the news that is quite different from the reality we experience. There is a reason, or rather a multitude of reasons, why people take to the streets.

Prayer: Lord, may our encounter with the suffering of those we view as "other" change our hearts. 

Advent: unveiling of the light

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this one was in the beginning with God; all things through him did happen, and without him happened not even one thing that hath happened. In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light in the darkness did shine, and the darkness did not perceive it.

John 1, Young's Literal Translation

As we have entered Advent season, let us remember that the coming of the Christ is not so much the entering of a new light into the world as it is the unveiling of a light that has always been with us. The darkness around us becomes transparent and its inner glow, eternally visible to the heart alone, endows us with the possibility of love.

I'm back, and listening

I've been away from this blog for too long now, and I have to accept the reality that I won't ever get to that promised third part of "Evolution and original sin"... I got too busy and there seems to be no end to that. In a nutshell, that third part would have been about the parallels between the idea that there is a brokenness inherent in the ways we live life, and the notion that we treat the earth as something to exploit. I leave that thought for you to explore...

In the meantime, I led worship again at our beloved little UCC community, and I took over webmastership of our site, so now I post my sermons on there, rather than here on the blog. Check out my most recent sermon here and have a look at the posts that I sprinkle the site with irregularly. 

I also attended an "Academy for Leaders" retreat run by the Center for Courage and Renewal, who base their work on the Quaker tradition. That was sort of my treat after finishing my PhD and reorienting myself. Part of what we did over there was deep listening to one another. And I realized that there is an affinity between listening to others and listening to the Eternal Silence we call God in prayer and meditation. That insight sparked a poem.

Listening

A new realm, brimming with sparks, with stars
Encircling our beings in the deep.

Us, but moving dots on lesser days
Now joining the Eternal.

Have you experienced listening as a sacred exercise? Maybe as you found yourself attending to God's voice in the silence, or as someone shared their deepest selves with you? You are invited to relate your experience below--I'm listening.

Sowing grace

...and another sermon, which I gave last Sunday. (The last installment of the "Evolution..." series will be coming. Sometime. Soon. I promise.) The lectionary passages were Isaiah 55:10-13, Psalm 65:9-13, Romans 8:1-11, and Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23.

If you live much of your life online, like I do, you have probably noticed that Texas Tech has made worldwide news these past few days. More precisely, one of our cheerleaders. She’s an avid hunter, and she has posted pictures on Facebook that show her with her quarry. Not bucks and deer, but lions, elephants, and even a rhinoceros. She has made many a trip to Africa to hunt those down.

These photos have caused worldwide outrage, and an immense outpouring of hatred. People all over the internet proclaim that she is heinous, that they are disgusted with her, and I have even seen a call to kill her. And I can’t help thinking, there is something wrong with this.

Not with the fact that there is an immense interest and compassion for these large animals. That is wonderful. We’ve come a long way from the times where animals were seen as objects. But if that compassion is turned into blind and misinformed hatred, something has gone awry.

For here is the thing: you could make the case that she has done nothing wrong. Yes, some of the animals she hunted are endangered. However, all her hunts were legal, organized by local agencies. She paid all due fees, she paid the people who worked for her. She gave the meat to villagers in the area, and she even gave toys and goodies to local children.

I’m not saying I’m condoning her actions. I do think there is something morally wrong with hunting animals just for the sake of hunting. Especially endangered or rare species.

But then, I am not exactly standing on moral high ground myself. I eat meat, I wear leather shoes, I consume products made from animals, and all those animals I consume probably had worse lives than the ones the cheerleader shot. And I am pretty sure the same is true for over 90% of the people who say they hate her.

And yet, everybody claims moral superiority over her, explicitly or implicitly. So what is going on here?

It’s precisely what Paul describes in today’s verses from Romans. We are following the law of sin and death. We live in the world of condemnation. We are dead in the flesh—not our bodies, mind you, but our inborn tendency to curve in to sin.

Usually, those words are taken to describe our relationship with God. But I have come to believe that they describe our relationship with life and one another. Here is what happens. We receive the law: a set of rules that tell us how to live. We try to follow the law, for it is good and makes sense. But then we realize we cannot live up to it. We will always fall short of perfection. 

Take the Sixth of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not kill”, so it is said. Many take this to mean murder, but I believe it actually talks about all killing. If all life is sacred, as I believe, then it would make sense to have a prohibition against taking life.

And we would love to live in a world without killing, wouldn’t we? Except when we try, we realize how difficult it is. Let’s not even talk about human life right now. Let’s just talk about animal life. Sure, we can go vegetarian or even vegan. We can avoid any products that use animals or are tested on them. 

But inevitably, we bump into the limits of our efforts. We are part of an industrial society that destroys the environment and kills life in the process. We pay taxes that are used, among other things, to subsidize farmers who practice factory farming. We don’t want roaches in our kitchen. And so on. Bottom line, we cannot claim innocence.

And we know that, deep down in our hearts. So deep down in our hearts, we condemn ourselves for being less than perfect. And this self-condemnation hurts: a burden of pain we carry around every day. And from this place of pain we lash out whenever we find someone who seems to be even more reprehensible morally than we find ourselves. That’s what Paul means when he says we are dead in the law. The law is made powerless by our pain.

This is why the law doesn’t work. All it does is invite sin. In fact, it creates two types of sinners: those who break it, and those who use it to put themselves above others. We know those two archetypes as sinners and Pharisees. But it is safe to say that both live within each of us.

The only thing that can free us from this suffering is grace. The forgiveness that tells us, “you are accepted, exactly the way you are, despite all you could have done better, despite the fact that you will never be perfect. You are accepted.” 

This is the message that Christ brought us: in the healing of the sick, in the embrace of the outcast. On the cross, he took our all our wrath, our self-loathing and our judgmental anger on himself to make us understand that we are redeemed to life. That in all our imperfection we have never been anything but forgiven.

If we realize that, then the word has accomplished its purpose. As the prophet puts it: The mountains and the hills burst into song, the brier turns into myrtle, and the pastures of the wilderness overflow.

As Pastor Kate told us last week, we don’t have to do anything to earn this grace. In fact, we can’t do anything. But of course, that’s not the way we roll. Inevitably, once we have experienced this renewal of our spirits, we ask ourselves, what is next? What am I going to do with this tremendous freedom? How can I share it with others?

Today’s Gospel passage tells us how. Spiritual progress, says Jesus, is akin to sowing seeds on rocky soil. We sow our seeds of love wherever we can, but some will be taken away or choked by those with ill will. Others will fail to take root. But the good news is, we don’t have to judge anyone for that. Not ourselves, not others. 

For we have been liberated from the demands of perfection. We are free to keep on sowing, quietly, confidently. And eventually, some of our efforts will take root. And we are promised that they will yield a hundredfold crop.

Unfortunately, no one seems to be paying attention to Jesus’ words these days. The cheerleader incident is just one example. Even true compassion can turn very ugly when we add judgment to it. The same is true on all levels, from our personal lives all the way up to politics and theology. The left and the right, progressives and conservatives are interlocked in a deadly battle of petty legalism and mutual condemnation. 

The days where political divisions created energy and progress are over. The nation is tearing itself apart. Christianity is tearing itself apart. We are going down in a spiraling dynamic of mistrust and judgment, and this dynamic has to stop. And the only place where we can put some brakes on is right here. We have to start with ourselves.

I have a dream for our little congregation. I would like us to be visible in our community, not as a stronghold of progressive opinion, but as sowers of love and of mutual respect. I would like us to work for understanding between the left and the right, Democrats and Republicans, conservative Christians and progressive Christians. 

I would like this beautiful, simple little church to be a sanctuary for people who are asking questions. Who don’t know where they’re going, who may be suspicious of any ready-made directions—including ours!—and who need a space where they can discover a path to call their own. I would like this to be a safe space where people can explore and disagree, in matters of ethics, of religion, of politics.

I believe this is the only way we can share the bounty we have been gifted.

Slaves to grace?

I know, I still haven't gotten around to post part III of "Evolution...". Had a lot of things going on in my life in the here and now--among others, filling in with a sermon at our beloved little congregation. Here it is; the lectionary passages were Jeremiah 28:5-9, Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18, Romans 6:12-23, and Matthew 10:40-42. My main focus was on Romans, where Paul uses the metaphor of slavery to describe our bondage to sin, but also, paradoxically, to the grace that frees us from sin.

Around the year 1200, there was a young man in Italy who lived the carefree life of a rich man's son. He worked in his father's business, attended parties, and eventually went to war. But all the while, he kept having spiritual experiences and visions of Christ. In 1205, on his way to another battle, he had another vision that made him turn around. He began a life of spiritual simplicity and care for the poor. His name was Giovanni di Pietro di Bernadone, but today we know him as St. Francis of Assisi.

In late 1934, a traveling businessman and hopeless alcoholic named Bill Wilson was admitted to a hospital to recover from a bout of drinking. Wilson had been drinking for nearly twenty years. He had ruined his reputation and career, and been told by his doctor that he would either end up dead, or permanently locked up. But during this stay, something happened. One night, after crying out for God in despair, Wilson experienced a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy and serenity. He never drank again, and he went on to become the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Both men, St. Francis and Bill Wilson, were slaves to sin and then became slaves to righteousness, as Paul puts it. So we can use their life stories to learn something. For the passage from Romans is difficult for us to understand in many ways. We're not really sure what sin means, what grace means, and we're uncomfortable with the metaphor of slavery. It's almost offensive to our ears as we're still struggling with the legacy of actual slavery. And what does Paul even mean by "enslaved to God"?

First, let's think about sin. What is sin? Of course, it's not a list of things we're not supposed to do. Our faith has to move beyond such childish notions, and I assume for most here it already has.

The best definition I've come across is this: life curving in on itself. Martin Luther used this definition, and he may have gotten it from St. Augustine. In this view, sin is the suffering we feel when we sever the natural ties we have to all of life. This is not a new-agey idea. Science tells us that there is a seamless continuation from the first living cells to ourselves. Science also tells us that empathy is built into our mammalian nature. We even have so-called mirror neurons in the brain whose sole function is to make us feel what someone else feels. And caring for one another is one of the things that propelled human evolution. You can't raise a human child in an environment as selfish as, say, a chimpanzee horde.

So, our natural state is to be intimately connected to life in multiple ways. We are a continuation of the biological genes and the cultural memes passed down to us through countless generations. We are part of a larger whole in joy and in pain. Wherever people suffer, it is suffering that could be ours. Whenever we suffer, we bear witness to the suffering of the world. So when we divvy life up into things we do and we don't care for, we effectively cut some of our ties with life. And that has consequences we see and feel daily: in the fissures in our society, in the exploitation of people and nature, in our own divided souls where we act as manipulative parents to ourselves, rejecting some aspects of who we are while cherishing others.

Sin, then, is an inner motion, a movement of the heart and mind by which we say we don't care about life as a whole, only about our own little territories. And we take those territories so seriously that we even expel parts of ourselves from them.

There's another thing we can learn from this. Sin is not moral failure. St. Francis didn't choose to be a rich man's son. He was born into a lifestyle that entailed luxury and a lust for adventure. Likewise, Bill Wilson didn't choose to become a miserable alcoholic. He started drinking to overcome his natural shyness and awkwardness in social situations. He might never have been a successful salesman without alcohol. He might have never had a reputation to ruin.

The same is true for all of us. We are all born into a situation we have to cope with, and we do so to the best of our ability. Sometimes we behave morally along the way, and sometimes we don't. Sin is an inevitable part of what it means to be human. We can't help curving in on ourselves, even when we earnestly wish not to do so. And paradoxically, when we try to be perfectly good, we actually commit yet another sin: the sin of the Pharisees, the sin of pretending we're above the human condition.

So it makes sense to say we are slaves to sin. What is slavery? You are taken from your rightful home, you are placed in captivity, no longer free to make your own decisions, and you toil away while you get nothing in return. Being subject to sin pretty much sums that up. Slavery is an apt metaphor for our spiritual condition.

This situation would be hopeless if it weren't for grace. Grace is the good news of forgiveness, of restoration to wholeness and communion. Sometimes grace seeps into our lives slowly, as it did with St. Francis. His spiritual maturity grew over years and years in which he had encounters with beggars, with death and imprisonment, with illness and visions. Eventually he devoted himself to the spiritual path. At other times, grace bursts into our lives unexpectedly and changes us radically. This was the case with Bill Wilson. In either case, grace came and freed them from their slavery to sin.

What happened next is fascinating. For both men, grace wasn't the endpoint of their journey. It was the beginning. Both went on to do great things, and hence they set themselves up for more failure. We don't know much about St. Francis' personal flaws. Back then, people didn't scrutinize spiritual leaders as we do today. But we can learn from the lives of a few more recent saints. It turns out that Mother Teresa had a temper. Gandhi, the great proponent of non-violence, beat his wife until he had a tearful moment of repentance when he realized he wasn't living up to his own values. And going back to Bill Wilson, he was sober for the rest of his life, but he was a heavy smoker, experimented with LSD, and some say he had an affair. Bottom line, when we talk about people as godly or even saintly, we're not saying they're perfect but rather that their light outshines their darkness. Both are part of the wholeness of their human condition.

And here lies the key in understanding Paul's word of enslavement to righteousness, or to God. Grace is a gift. But we have to take responsibility for that gift, for we are still human. We are still fallible. We can't let the gift sit outside our door. It will get eaten away by the weather. We have to make use of it, even if we stumble and fail some more along the way.

And the astounding thing about grace is that if we don't use it, we betray ourselves. Grace permeates us to the core of our beings. Some even say it comes from the core of our beings, from an inner truth deeper than our individual consciousness. St. Francis couldn't have gone back to being a rich young warrior. Bill Wilson couldn't have gone back to drinking. They would have betrayed their own, deepest selves.

It is in this sense that we are enslaved to grace once we have tasted it: we are bound to it with the chains of spiritual fulfillment. Just like sin took us from our homeland of primordial communion, grace takes us from the wasteland we have come to call our home. It brings us to new life in shackles and commands us to toil for it without regard for reward. The reward will come: but if we expect it or even demand it, we are back to sinning. We can build a new house, but we can't force ourselves to feel at home in it. The most important rewards in life are beyond our control.

It now becomes clear what the prophet Jeremiah meant when he said that of all the prophets, the one who talks about peace is the real prophet. Peace doesn't come true by being full of uptight righteousness. We find it whenever we are given the strength to bear witness to suffering. To work with imperfection instead of judging it. To care for one another despite the carelessness of the world. This reassurance is the glory of our strength and the shield of our covenant. The glimpse of home we catch is our reward.

Sacrifice

In today's Stillspeaking Devotional, Rev. Fitzgerald recounts the story of sixteenth-century Mennonite martyr Dirk Willems, who was incarcerated for his faith by the authorities. He managed to escape across a treacherously frozen river but turned around when the guard who pursued him broke through the ice. Willems saved the guard's life, was captured again and later executed. "It is a great story", comments Fitzgerald. "But it is a Christian story. Which is to say it has a cross in it."

Duly impressed with Willems' sacrifice, I continued my morning tour of the interwebs, only to stumble on this insightful little piece: a list of seven "habits of happy people". Most of those are common, wisdom-laden spiritual fare (embrace impermanence, don't crave approval, see rejection as guidance), but the first one got me thinking. "Happy people", the author boldly proclaims, "put themselves first". They take care of their own needs before they cater to anyone else's.

At face value, these two bits of writing seem to starkly contradict each other, and to sum up the range of options our culture provides re dealing with our own needs. On the one hand, there is the much-admired, but somewhat gloomy, Christian ideal of giving up our own needs for those of others. Which, as we all know, hasn't created spiritually mature people, but mostly suffocated, sour-faced killjoys and co-dependents. On the other hand, there is the sheer hedonism (or so it seems) of the me-first culture, which comes with materialism, selfishness, and a general lack of compassion and connection. 

Faced with these options, overall cynicism about the human condition would be the best response. But there is an alternative, namely, to realize that things aren't as simple as they look in superficial readings of both approaches. Let's go back to Willems' story. And let's imagine he had put his own wish to survive before the guard's. What would his life have looked like?

To answer this question, we must dig deep into the human condition and ask ourselves, "What is the deepest need we have?" Turns that out our deepest longing is not survival or even well-being, but meaning. As long as we can make sense of life, as long as it is meaningful to us, we can cope with almost any condition. And rarely do we encounter a suffering more agonizing than the absence of meaningfulness. All religion, philosophy, and much common sense as well as common nonsense, revolve around ascribing meaning to our existence.

Willems found his meaning in faith, and his faith was based on nonviolence, and radical love of God and neighbor. If he hadn't turned around to save the guard, odds are his life would have been meaningless from that point. He would have given up what was most important to him. He would have neglected his deepest need: the need for meaning.

His sacrifice, then, was not what we usually take that term to mean. He sacrificed his freedom and his life, yes: but not to suit some higher ideal or abstract faith statement. He sacrificed them for the sake of his own, deepest self. A self rooted in a reality more profound than the world in which we put survival and comfort above all else. We have to imagine that he was at peace with his decision: an all-encompassing peace, welling up from this deeper reality, which would have remained forever elusive had he chosen to run.

This is the true meaning of faith, and the true meaning of sacrifice. Any sacrifice that is not authentic, that is less than a completely truthful expression of who we are at our deepest level, is not an act of faith, it's an act of showing off. One of those Jesus warned against. 

And now it becomes clear that there is no fundamental contradiction between the Christian path of self-emptying love, and the contemporary insistence on pursuing our needs and wants. For in this day and age, meanings are no longer simply handed down to us. We have to find them for ourselves, and we have no place to start but ourselves. Therefore, our journey begins with taking even our sillier whims seriously. 

Craving pie, a burger, a trip to New Zealand? Don't dismiss those in the name of some misunderstood idea of spiritual discipline. Make them your discipline. Pursue them without mistaking them for absolute truth or final fulfillment. Look into them without judging them. Over time, they will reveal their fleeting, finite nature, and make way for deeper and deeper layers of longing: for they aren't your true goals, only signposts for the journey. They will evaporate,and you will become ever more authentic in the process. Eventually, you will encounter your own deepest meaning, and you will find that you'll have sacrificed your whims along the way. 

And no one can tell you what shape your particular sacrifice will take. Some of us who make the journey trade an all-too comfortable life for dramatic encounters with sheer existence. Others give up constant drama and impossible dreams for the peaceful routines of a life lived simply and humbly. Some experience both. Whichever form your path may take, one thing is true for all of us: ultimately, "sacrifice" is not giving up what is important to us, but living up to it. Thus, the true meaning of the term isn't to rid ourselves of who we are, but to let go of who we are not. To uncover the truth, the power and the glory which has been lying awake at the ground of our being since the beginning of time.

Evolution, awe and original sin (part II)

Apart from a rediscovery of awe, there are two other things we can learn from Marcelo's piece, and which I'll deal with in this post and the next one. First, we can use his little cosmological epic to inquire into the actual difference between science and religion. As you'll see, it's not about evolutionary timelines (or at least it shouldn't be), it's about how we think of our universe at the deepest of all levels. 

Notice how Gleiser presents his account in a language, not only of awe but of life. His word animate and endow with intention processes that are, strictly speaking, wholly material and non-intentional: "our father/mother the universe"; "the furious pace of hydrogen fusion"; "oxygen that protects life"; "animals struggling to preserve their genes". 

These aren't scientific statements. Which is obvious enough in the father/mother metaphor, but language can color our perceptions in even subtler ways. Stars don't feel fury. Oxygen has no intention to protect life, and animals don't know anything about their genes. Marcelo knows all that, of course, and if I asked him why he worded it that way, we would probably end up having a delightful conversation about the limits of language and imagination. We would talk about why humans have to resort to animistic metaphor to convey awe, and about our ultimate inability to escape our own anthropomorphic inclinations. Our paths would touch, or almost touch.

And we would only disagree about things when getting to their most profound. He would likely insist that these limits of our talking and thinking are by-products of our evolution as humans, and that there is nothing more we need to say about them. I would argue that the very fact that we are aware of these limits is a faint reflection of a reality which lies beyond both our scientific and religious concepts, and which I happen to call God. 

At which point he might ask me if I'm with the "intelligent design" crowd, and I would reply "of course not". And I would spend the better part of an afternoon explaining why: Because I think intelligent design is an injustice to the adventure and the uncertainty that is life. Because I've become convinced that God is much better thought of as the animating force behind all of evolution: omniscient and omnipotent insofar as He or She is uncreated, but groping and straining and pushing into the dark just as we are as regards Creation: with no guaranteed outcome and no predetermined goal, other than the distant assurance that everything will go back to Oneness eventually. 

And, no, I would reassure him (if he were to wonder): I'm not a New-Agey "heretic". Such lines of thought have a venerable history in Judeo-Christianity, from Eriugena to Cusanus, and all the way to Whitehead, Tillich, and Jonas. 

At which point Marcelo would probably excuse himself with a nervous glance at his watch. But the point would have been made: just because science and religion are different ways of knowing, they are not exclusive. It is only when we read their respective languages with exclusivist rigidity that they seem incompatible. In reality, they come together in our living, breathing, exploring existence, our constant being on the move in this world of cells and molecules, of awe and values. It is one world.

Evolution, awe, and original sin (part I)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

Now the earth was formless and empty,darkness was over the surface of the deep, 

and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” 

And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1 (NIV)

I have never understood the purported conflict between religion and science. Yes, on occasion there are clashes over divergent values--e.g. when scientists want to experiment on embryos and people of faith raise ethical concerns. But the same value clashes happen e.g. between scientists and secular animal rights activists, over the fate of lab animals. Or between religious people who have different life ethics such as "against abortion" vs. "against war".

So, apart from these very real issues that occasionally pop up, science and religion have been coexisting, for centuries, as complementary ways of knowing. And every now and then, their respective quest for truth leads them on paths that touch, or almost touch. This beautifully written piece by physicist Marcelo Gleiser is an example for that: a breathtaking vignette on the evolution of life. I'm quoting it at length here to convey some of its flavor.

Ours is an old story, starting some 13.8-billion years ago, when our collective father, the universe, came into being. (Maybe the cosmos should be a mother as well; it's up to you, dear reader.) (...) The first stars appeared some 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Recall that stars are balls of hydrogen, nuclear-fusion furnaces that make hydrogen into helium at a furious pace. That's where it all starts, with hydrogen, the simplest of all chemical elements, becoming all others, all the way to carbon to iron to uranium. (...) We carry in our bodies the products of this cosmic alchemy, forged in stars dead billions of years ago. We are the memory of this distant past, molecular conglomerates that assumed a form complex enough so that stars could remember.

In a choreography of cosmic proportions, gravity sculpts matter, making it flow here and there, spin around, take different shapes, spirals, elliptical, spherical swarms of millions to hundreds-of-billions of stars. (...) About one star per year is born in our galaxy; our sun and its planets appeared some 4.6-billion years ago.

Earth is a special planet. Just take a look at pictures of other worlds to see why. It's special because it's covered in water and it has an oxygen-rich atmosphere that protects the surface — and life thereon — from the constant hostility of outer space; in particular, from cosmic and solar radiation. We live in a blue womb, an oasis of life in a cosmos that is — at least as far as we know — lifeless, cold and hostile.

Earth's climate, warm and stable, allows for life to thrive, to explode into a bewildering diversity. A short stroll through a jungle or a coral reef and we are overcome by the ecological wealth, plants and animals that fight for survival, searching for food, struggling to preserve their genetic imprint (...). Life uses the present to create the future.

Wow. 

At this point, do yourself a favor. Go back to Genesis 1 and read it in its entirety.

Notice anything?

Exactly: this is the way Genesis was meant to be read. Not as a drab account of six literal weekdays but as a sacramental rendition of events of overwhelming magnitude in time and space. Of processes so completely out of our control, and yet so intimately woven into each of our lives, that we have to muster all our courage and all our capacity for awe to do them justice and read them the proper way. 

There is no fundamental conflict between religion and science unless we create one. Both are routes to insight and awe, each "according to their kind". It is our own hearts and minds that create problems from them: by succumbing to the temptation of seeking fault lines instead of surveying the landscape as a whole.

Owing nothing

"I am God, your God. (...)

I will not accept a bull from your house,

or goats from your folds.

For every wild animal of the forest is mine,

the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the air,

and all that moves in the field is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,

or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving

and pay your vows to the Most High.

Call on me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."

Psalm 50:7-15 (NRSV).

Mulling over her part hilarious, part depressing observations at church, a witness to the fumbling and clunky ways we humans attempt to pay tribute to God, writer Annie Dillard concludes:

God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity [i.e., immerse ourselves in clunky church experience], that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these things. (...)
You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things--unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on him.
You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

(from: Teaching a Stone to Talk)

God does care about us, of course. His healing power is woven into the very fabric of this world, always available to us as we heed its beckoning. On occasion, it even enters our lives, unbidden. But God doesn't require any particular ritual or faith practice. It is us who need those to know Him. 

Likewise, our gratefulness, our calls for help, our attempts to live a faithful life are not some spiritual tax we owe. Their purpose is to guide us into life abundant. Out of abundance, our songs of praise arise naturally.

Faith of experience, faith of practice

The other night, as I walked down the outside stairs of the building I work in, bathing in the red glow of the setting sun that reflected from the walls and illuminated the cityscape while blades of grass were shivering in the odd spring cold, I caught a glimpse of why I've (again) become discouraged with this blog.

What I've been doing here, mostly subconsciously, is try to share my experience of God in the hope of arriving at a way of thinking about God. Both has failed: for God cannot be captured or preempted in words. We have to experience Him in and through our lives: and experience constantly changes, it morphs, grows, and matures. On top of that, we all experience and think about God in different ways. What really matters is not so much what we say or think but that we integrate our experience, that we make it our home in Eternity.

In brief, what I've really been looking for was a way of practicing faith, and I may have found one. More on that later. In the meantime, may the Spirit be with you. He is there: in the splendor of morning's first rays, the darkening trek of clouds at dusk, the unrelenting heat of noon and the silence of midnight. All it takes to see is listening.

Onward into healing

The notion of an all-powerful God who gives up His power to create the world isn't new, of course. A recent version comes from Hans Jonas, Jewish-German philosopher, who wrestled with the question how an all-powerful, caring God could have let Auschwitz happen. He concluded that God didn't intervene because He couldn't. God creates the world, says Jonas, by completely handing Himself over to its unfolding. His power is what fuels and sustains the process of life, and He suffers with life as life runs its course. His only "plan" is to be with His creation as it staggers through the vagaries of evolution, of becoming and dying.

From a Christian perspective, this view is appealing, for it parallels the traditional teaching on Jesus as God giving up His power to take birth, and emptying Himself during his ministry and his death on the cross. (And Jesus did say: "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." We may not have taken that seriously enough.)

The problem with this view, as with all attempts at understanding God, is that it still doesn't quite capture all the experiences of God one can have. Sometimes people do feel that God actively intervenes in their life, restoring them to grace. Sometimes the splendor of a simple sunset or the vivid spiritedness of the sky speaks of more than notions like those above can hold. 

I am one of those people. I do believe that God works for healing in the world. I feel I am being healed and guided. I do not know how or where, but I can't deny the healing or the guidance.

I have to conclude that God's power isn't lost to the world, only that it works in different ways than we usually think of when we speak of power.

Maybe speaking, then, isn't the best way to find God.

We shall see.

A new Easter

If we believe that Jesus is indeed God in human form, then the God we pray to is not a powerful God in the sense the world conceives of power. He is a God whose absolute might consists precisely in relinquishing all power: to share our common lot, to let us know, once and for all times, that He is neither wrathful nor absent. He is present with us, weak and frightened as we are. He goes into the darkness as we do, not knowing what awaits beyond.

This was the meaning of Jesus' ministry. He sealed it with his blood on the shameful, glorious cross. The double miracle of his self-emptying sacrifice and resurrection affirms an even deeper miracle: the fallen, broken world is the Kingdom of God's love.

If Christ is God, we are allowed to be human.

Good Friday, indeed

The imagery of the crucifixion has made the Christian mind prone to dark fantasies and violent imagination. But what it really means is simply this: God, in human form, took the worst of human suffering upon Himself. 

The cross is liberation. No matter what we go through, our pain has been felt. 

Christ died to testify that God is suffering with us. He poured his life out for us to save us from our deepest fear: pain and death do not mean that we are being punished. We have always been safe. We have always been loved.

His blood is the living witness to this covenant.

To realize this is to be forgiven.

A cross, half seen
bread oozing blood

arrived

Love, crucified by righteousness

Our original sin is righteousness: the idea that our own notions of good and bad are more profound than God's unfaltering love. This week, we are reminded of the consequences: It was the righteous who crucified Jesus, not the sinners.

Nothing has changed: progressive or fundamentalist, liberal or conservative, we all continue to crucify one another on the Calvaries of our respective righteousness. Meanwhile, the sinners and the infirm continue to weep, longing for reprieve.

We need notions of good and bad to structure our daily life. But Jesus' challenge to Christians is to be aware of their limits. To constantly probe into what is beneath them.

Holy Week

As our Pastor aptly reminded us this morning, the great teaching of Holy Week is to walk into the Unknown, fully awake to our vulnerability and weakness. For our sake, Jesus gave up all power to show us who we really are: weak and frightened beings whose strength comes from loving alone--loving ourselves, loving one another, loving that which is beyond our willful grasp. Such love bears unpremeditated joy in its depths.

In giving up God, we find God
In giving up hope, we find hope
In giving up faith, we find faith
In living love, we find love.

Lord of all things beyond all things
May we meet you within all things.

Amen.

Present grace

Grace is the gift of touching the world, letting creation happen. 

Being created

We always try to create the moment, instead of being created by it.

Clarifying Stillness

In my previous post I wrote about stillness as a remedy for raging passions, political and otherwise. Just to clarify: Stillness is not about passions coming to a halt. It's the opening up of a space in which all passion can move and subside freely.

Holy Ground

Today I finally got around to leading worship again at our beloved little UCC community. This is the sermon. Lectionary readings came from Samuel, Psalm 23, the letter to the Ephesians, and the Gospel of John.

When I came to the States, my first impression was that this country is falling apart. It was really a shock. I came the year Obama was elected for the first time, and the frenzy was overwhelming. The left hailed him as a savior, the right braced for the coming of the Antichrist. And as we all know, that hasn't really changed.

And compared with Germany, the left and the right in this country are literally different cultures, different ways of life, completely different outlooks on how things should be done. Add to that the incredible religious and ethnic diversity, the differences between city and countryside, the wealth gap, and it is easy to think that our social fabric is coming apart.

And yes, there are worrisome trends. As progressive followers of Jesus, we are concerned about poverty, income disparity, and about the way conservative Christians read the Gospel. But today I want to talk about a trend that we tend to overlook. And that's the trend to split up society by drawing lines between ourselves and our neighbors. By rejecting those who are not like us.

We all do that. You don't think like me politically? I don't want to be around you. Your Christianity creeps me out? I'm not going to worship with you. And these natural human tendencies are now having consequences on all levels in society. The rich only socialize with the rich. Democrats and Republicans cluster in separate neighborhoods. You could almost say there's a new segregation. And in the depths of the internet, I have come across people who felt excluded from UCC congregations. For not being progressive enough.

There's nothing wrong with seeking out people who are like us. But when it gets to the point where community gets fragmented, that's when it gets problematic. And as Christians, I don't think our main task is to create groups of "true believers". As Pastor Kate repeatedly told us, being a Christian is about healing community. And sometimes, that doesn't only mean reaching out to those in need. It also means reaching out to those we disagree with.

The main reason I want to talk about this today is because I myself have the hardest time with doing that. We once had a discussion about acceptance that turned into a group rant about our local representative, Randy Neugebauer. And when someone asked me, so how do we accept Rep. Neugebauer, the best I could come up with was, “Well, tell him he's a #$%^—but in a nice way…”

That has been irking me ever since. For I don't think that's what Christ had in mind when he said to love our enemies.

So I've been thinking about it. What can we do to keep our circle of love open, even if someone comes dashing in and pushes our buttons?

And then I saw our Scripture readings for today. And I realized the remedy is right here. All the insights we need to soften up are in the Bible. We just need to put them to use, to take them as reminders when we're about to exclude someone from our hearts.

So the first reminder we're getting today is this: Only God knows it all. That's the message of our Old Testament passage. One by one, the supposed new kings were paraded past Samuel, and one by one, they got rejected by God. Nope—that's not him. You think this one is, but you're wrong. And so on. And it turned out to be the one that no one had thought of. They had to bring him from the fields because he was not on their list at all.

And the same is true for any area of life. Whatever we're talking about—the economy, inequality, justice, faith—the answer may not be what we think it is.

That point is driven home with force every time we vote. So many of us thought Obama was the answer. As it turned out, he's really a continuation of Bush in many ways, except for a somewhat crummy attempt at health care reform.

So we don't have all the answers. We have values, and I do believe we got those right, but we can't claim that we know the best ways to put them into practice. A look at the past can teach us that. You may know that there was a progressive era in American politics, about 100 years ago. It saw great achievements: Workers' rights, women's rights, child labor laws, workplace protection laws, and so on.

It also saw tremendous failures. Probably the biggest one was prohibition, pushed through, among others, by our own Congregationalist forebears. Not only did it fail, it actually gave rise to organized crime. It opened up huge markets for illegal activities. I'm sure those who worked for it couldn't imagine that might happen.

This brings us to our second reminder. The reminder is: We don't have all the answers. And that insight is a road to liberation. As Jesus puts it: if we admit that we're blind, we become seeing. If we claim that we see, we remain blind.

'Blindness' is a precise description of our human condition. We are limited in our knowledge. Our actions have unintended consequences. We can never be entirely sure that what we're doing is the right thing to do. And of course, that is true for everybody. And everybody clings to their answers the way we cling to our own.

This is why the world seems so dark to us. Just like the Pharisees, we all work very hard at being blind.

Now this is the point where you may ask, well, then how do we work for what is important? How do we bring about justice and peace if we don't have any answers?

This is where our third reminder comes in. It comes from the letter to the Ephesians, and it is this: Just let your light shine. No drawing of lines between "us" and "them". No self-righteous claim that we know it all. All we are asked to do is to let our light be seen. That's how we work for the Kingdom. 

The key sentence here is: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." At first, this looks like a call to judge others. But there’s more. We're not called to finger-pointing here. The text goes on: "For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light."

Savor this for a moment. It is shameful to mention others' transgressions. Of course, the passage talks about sexual morals, but there is a deeper wisdom there. If we are too quick to point our fingers, we're not bringing light into the world. We're just taking part in a ritual of shaming. Jesus has a remedy for that: he recommends finding the log in our own eye first. And the author of Ephesians seems to make a similar point.

Instead of finger-pointing, we are asked to shine the light of our love. This light by itself changes hearts.

Now that is probably the hardest thing to do. Usually, when we come across injustice, our emotions kick in, and we start perceiving the other side as a threat. We think that if we don't fight them, and win the fight, then everything is lost and so are we. In no time, the fight becomes a fight not for the cause, but for ourselves. But there is an alternative.

My wife told me this story about her Dad. He was a labor organizer all his life, and so he went to a lot of protests, and when she saw those as a kid, she was afraid: there was a lot of shouting of slogans, shaking of fists, there seemed to be a lot of anger. But then her Dad came home and he was not angry. And one day she asked him: how come you're not angry after all that? And he said, you know, all that shouting and fist-shaking, that's simply what we do.

He didn't get caught up in the emotional upheaval. He fought for the cause, not for himself. He knew that fights come with rituals, but he didn't take the rituals too seriously. He simply let his light shine.

The key is stillness. My wife's Dad was able to be still at heart even while shouting and shaking fists. Darkness is overcome when we let our light shine quietly. When we wield our light like a club to hit our enemies, all we get is flickering shadows that make us more afraid. But when we are still, fear does not arise. Our souls are restored, and we are led in the right path for God's sake.

This bring us to the fourth and last reminder. Be still and let God guide you. The green pastures, the still waters of the Psalm, the table prepared in the presence of the enemy—this talks about a state of mind in which we can work for a better world without getting caught up in our own emotions. A state of mind that arises when we stop wielding our ideas with fear and anger.

Jesus told us not to judge but to love our enemies. And I think that's not just because it's the right thing to do. It's actually a way to God. When we open up to the vulnerability of saying "yes, I may be wrong", we leave ordinary ground and start treading holy ground. That's when we taste communion. That's when we make baby steps into the Kingdom. And that's when God takes our hand and guides us to the still waters.

So these are the four reminders. Only God knows it all. We don't have all the answers. Let your light shine quietly and let God guide you.

That's what I would say now if you asked me how to deal with Rep. Neugebauer.

The house of the Lord is the house where all are welcome, and if we wish to enter it, we cannot try to keep others out. That includes fundamentalists. That includes Republicans. That includes anyone who disagrees with us. If we realize that none of us has ultimate answers, the ground we all stand on becomes holy: our rock and our redeemer. It is the same ground, after all.

Faithful confusion

So the US branch of World Vision, one of the planet's biggest charities, decides that they are going to hire gay people in a committed, legally recognized relationship, aka marriage. Two days later, they reverse that decision, caving in to the fury of those who rule airwaves and cash flow with their particular understanding of Scripture. Apparently, heterosexual marriage is now at the "core of the Christian faith" (Jesus might beg to differ on that one). In all the hubbub, I came across an argument that was new to me, namely, that the case rests on "Jesus' definition of marriage" as being between a man and a woman.

Except that Jesus never defined marriage.

The argument is based on a misunderstanding. The passage in question isn't about the definition of marriage at all. It's about divorce. It's about commitment. It's about severing human relations for frivolous reasons. Jesus gave an answer to a question, and neither question nor answer touched on a gender-based definition of marriage.

Let's look at the question first. The Pharisees come up to Jesus and ask him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" Note that this is not about who can marry whom. In fact, that bit is presupposed, i.e. understood: marriage, in the ancient world, was necessarily between a man and a woman, for it was a socioeconomic arrangement, not a romantic encounter of hearts. It was meant to provide economic security and offspring. Love may have been a welcome additive but wasn't a prerequisite. 

The question wasn't about gender issues in commitments born out of love. It was about breaching a contract. The idea of committed homosexual relationship didn't exist, just as the idea of love marriage didn't exist.

And just as the question isn't about who can marry whom, the answer isn't either. "At the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female'", Jesus says, quoting Genesis. "And [He] said, 'For this reason, a man will (...) be united to his wife (...)'. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate". In other words, the Pharisees ask a question about a contract, but Jesus makes a deeper point. He talks about taking marriage seriously. About living up to one’s promises. About the sanctity of commitment. And to drive that point home, he puts it into a faith perspective, using Scripture as he often does: to provide spiritual substance to his message. Marriage is sanctified by the Lord, and has been from the beginning of times, he says. Human relations are part of the holy, the natural order of things. Don’t break them up for frivolous reasons.

Today we know that homosexuality is also in the natural order of things, but I guess that was overlooked by those who wrote down Scripture. And the Lord in His mercy didn't press the point.

No argument regarding gay marriage can be crafted from this dialog, for Jesus is not talking about gender. He’s talking about the sacredness of human relations. In the process, he is expanding his culture's conventional notion of marriage so that the custodians of convention may see a profound, brilliant reality behind their fixed ideas. 

Sounds familiar?

And that's it. A question was asked, a point was made. A point that pushed cultural preconceptions aside. A point that had nothing to do with gender in marriage. Those who wish to use this passage to justify their dislike of gay marriage are missing that point. They react like someone who reads a passage about, say, the health benefits of dark chocolate, and concludes that a healthy diet consists of dark chocolate. But the passage wasn't about what constitutes a healthy diet. It was about dark chocolate. Sorry, your conclusion is off, because you missed the point.

We all use the Bible to find ourselves in it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we need to let each other know how we get to our conclusions. Otherwise, we come across as confused. For example, if you take Jesus' sayings about hell literally, but those about 'leaving your family' and 'giving away your riches' metaphorically, then it would be interesting to know why, for I would argue it's actually the other way round. If you believe that the Bible talks about gay love relationships at all, give me a reason why I should believe that.

If you think that Jesus was surreptitiously defining marriage as he was answering a question on divorce, that he was taking an implicit position on an issue that didn't exist in his time, then give me some pointers as to how that belief is justified. Otherwise, I have to conclude that your argument is based on a confusion of cultural with biblical values. At some point, both become unrecognizable.

A sigh, and a whiff

When did we turn our faith into the stifling idea that we know all there is to know, that all there is to do is to believe verbal statements and follow rules? The early Christians called their faith "The Way", expressing that they were onto something dynamic, something evolving. Jesus' disappearance after the resurrection points to the same idea.

But as it rose to power, Christianity succumbed to the temptation of doctrine, and doctrine became an idol. The fathers did not know that as we finalize our language and freeze our ideas in time, the boundaries of our world close in on us.

We are just beginning to shake off these burdens and breathe freely again by the Spirit.

Stumbling on Discipleship

In my previous post I outlined spiritual growth on the Christian path. Here is an example of falling and renewal that happened to me today.

One of the points I try making on this blog is that good and evil do not exist outside of our own deeds. The world is created in complete and utter wholeness, a seamless symphony of life. Good and evil arise from our actions alone, and can only be judged by the effects of our actions.

In this sense, “evil” is an appropriate word to describe some of what we say and do, such as these words of Evangelical leader Franklin Graham. They are evil because they condone the infliction of senseless pain.

Feeling righteous and justified in my anger, I wrote what I thought to be a witty, acrid, damning rebuttal. I was still working on it when I learned that Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist is dying. And I came across a piece of writing so beautiful and warm, so… Christian… that it brought a tear to my eye. It suggests "picketing" Phelps' funeral with lines of signs that proclaim forgiveness. This is the very heart of Christ’s teachings: To embrace evil with the spacious, quiet love that springs from a Deeper Source.

I realized that I was about to do evil myself: the evil of lashing out at my brother in anger. And I decided not to spit venom at Graham.

Instead, I made a wish. I wished that Graham would stop by our church one day. He could talk to our pastor and our other gay members, and after church, I could take him to lunch with some Muslim friends and introduce him to my Hindu wife.

I wished for him to learn that whenever we open our mouths to judge in retribution or justify harm, we inflict suffering on people no different from ourselves.