I dug this out of last month’s folder; N was going through a phase (it lasted an interrupted two nights before I insisted on her sleeping in her bed) of cozying up with her tape player on the floor for the night.
The New Testament Problem (Jesus)
Jesus’ teachings in the Bible about what I’ve called “life-giving living” merit constant attention.
Key to Christianity’s life-giving offering to the world is salvation. While this is often thought of as “God sent Jesus to die for our sins, so we are saved” (the sort of atonement theology I find incompatible with my image of God as loving and full of grace…not that religion is about God as much as it is about us), the story of Zaccheus suggests otherwise.
After Jesus eats with the un-admired and presumably heretofore unrepentant tax collector (that short man with curiosity and tree-climbing skills in his favor), Zaccheus pledges to share his wealth with the poor and to right his past wrongs (if, he says, he’s made any). That’s when Jesus, who hasn’t yet been put to death on the cross, says, “Today salvation has come to this household.”
In other words, Zaccheus’s salvation is his turning from corruption to sharing and treating everyone right.
Jesus presents some foundational ideas about life-giving living in the Sermon on the Mount, too. Note that the beatitudes seem to be meant for daily life manifestation:
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.How these tenets–and the salvation experienced by Zaccheus–play out in today’s everyday life is a bit majorly problematic, as Jesus seems to exact a steep price on the status quo.
3,000
This week I passed 3,000 bicycle commuting miles (in nearly two school years’ time).
That’s farther than from D.C. to San Francisco or Ottawa to Houston, and down and back from Bydgoszcz to Λεωφόρος Κηφισού.
Delicious
While the storms that crossed our region have cost much of many, for me they provided a surprise two-hour delay. I relished that email notification, especially since it arrived along with verification that our band’s new album is now for sale on iTunes and CDBaby.
I used the morning hours to update our website, read books with my daughter, enjoy the fresh smell of rained fields, and bicycle off to school at a more-than-sane hour.
Along my ride, who should putter onto my rear-view mirror but my brother-in-law J. I had a good lead on him, but knowing he would eventually pass me–he was in a truck, after all–I put the sneakers to the pedals and, with the wind behind me as it was (and the slope being downhill, all in all), enjoyed the glory of maintaining a noteworthy distance for quite a little distance.
“I bet he’s thinking, ‘Now I know why he eats so much!'” I thought to myself.
I called him later to find out just how fast I was going: 30mph.
“That was impressive,” he said. “Now I know why you eat so much!”
Fence Post
By spoken indications our neighborhood fence situation faces improvement. The owner of the land that the cattle owner rents has told me on the phone that he and the farmer are financially and otherwise responsible for the fence and for keeping in the cattle. Until the fence is fixed, he said, the cattle will be kept in another pasture.
Even louder than his talking, however, is the silence of inaction: the cattle are still there and the fence has not yet been fixed.
But hope springs eternal.Easter Lilacs
On the Road to Emmaus
(A retelling of Luke 24:13-32 based on The Message.)
Cleopas and Justin walk along the road.
Justin: I’m so blue, Cloppy. My mama said there’d be days like this. Well, mama tried.
Cleopas: Tell me about it.
Justin: You forget everything that happened already?
Cleopas: No! I just mean I know what you mean. I’m confused, too.
A stranger walks up to them.
Stranger: May I walk along with you?
Cleopas, looking sad: I’m sorry, did you say something? Can’t you see our long faces?
Stranger: If you’re going my way, I’ll walk with you. What do you guys look so sad about?
Justin (to Cleopas): What a schmuck. Cloppy, let’s just keep on walking. My mama always said, ‘Don’t talk to strangers.’
Cleopas: You don’t know about Jesus’ and his death and now disappearance?
Stranger: Just inklings. What about it?
Justin: The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death, and crucified him. Let’s keep walking.
Cleopas: And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel. And it is now the third day since it happened. But now some of our women have completely confused us. Early this morning they were at the tomb and couldn’t find his body. They came back with the story that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.
Justin: Some of our friends went off to the tomb to check and found it empty just as the women said, but they didn’t see Jesus. That’s why we’re sad.
Cleopas: We’re confused, too.
Stranger: So thick-headed! So slow-hearted!
Cleopas: What?
Justin: Did you just insult–? Doggone it, mister, we just laid bare our hearts and minds to you, and you’re calling us schmucks? WHERE is the love?
Stranger: Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?
Justin: I think you have some explaining to do, buddy.
Stranger: Sure looks like it. I think I’ll start at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and go on through all the Prophets, and point out everything in the Scriptures that’s relevant.
Cleopas: But gosh, I don’t know if we have that much time. We’re only going to some unnamed village–not even Emmaus.
Justin (groaning): Are we there yet?
Stranger: No, but when we do get there, I’ll stay for supper, if you invite me. I can’t get the vinegar taste out of my mouth. Whew! What a hangover.
Justin: Oh, look–here we are at the village. Come on in, Stranger. The day is dying in the west.
Cleopas: Here’s some bread–want some?
Stranger: Thank you. Now, let me bless it, and serve it to you.
Justin: This feels strangely familiar.
Cleopas: Yum, bread.
Justin: No, Cloppy–don’t you remember?
Cleopas: Remember? Remember wha–?
Stranger: Poof! (walks away)
Justin: Where’d he go?
Cleopas: I don’t know. But didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road, as he opened up the Scriptures for us?
Justin: On fire? I don’t know; maybe it was more like my mama’s chicken soup sensation.
Cleopas: We’d better get back to the others. Let’s go!
Problematics
Many of my doubts about some of the Old Testament’s versions of God could be further developed in the context of Easter week. Maybe readers can respond: How do you connect all these dots–especially with Jesus’ crucifixion?What’s most problematic about the Old Testament is that we Christians too easily don’t find it terribly problematic.
Even if we feel some level of discomfort with the idea of a God-led Joshua destroying an entire city down to every last donkey (less one prostitute and her family), we ameliorate the gore by allowing God to morph from vengeful in the Old Testament to loving in the New, or maybe we let God’s self-revelation to people develop from opaque war paint to a dim mirror.
In short, swallowing Biblical violence can appear to be quite nicely compatible with worship music and sharing “what God is doing in our lives.”
However, after reading Shirley Kurtz’s vividly critical Sticking Points and attending still another Sunday morning service dedicated to an Old Testament story, it dawned on me this week that it is a common element that troubles me about the Christian standard mode of talk, people who believe God tells them things, and Old Testament stories of God-directed violence.
Regular Christians frequently talk about Jesus as a friend and pray for guidance or healing. More pronounced versions of this sort of connection with God might raise a few eyebrows and squirm factors; the person who stands up to share that “the Lord ministered to me this week when I saw a cross on a big rig grill,” or the “I have it on authority that such-and-such is what God wants us to do,” come to my mind. More extreme religious scenarios such as Koran burnings, the Crusades, and Gideon slaying the Midionites reveal the evils of hatred and violence in our religion and heritage.
These scenarios spawn from the beliefs that the creator of the universe at least sometimes tells people what to do and, as in the case of our pleading for healing or perhaps Gideon’s successful insurgency, is ultimately in charge of the battles we face. At times these beliefs seem a natural response to things beyond our control (check out Paul Simon’s Wartime Prayers), and I acknowledge that I am not qualified to discount them. (I am likewise not qualified to confirm these beliefs as well founded, and I am certainly not qualified to decide if anyone else is or isn’t similarly qualified.)
However, lest we find ourselves practicing theological a-humility or even genocide, these beliefs merit healthy skepticism: Is associating ourselves with a buddy-system God an attempt to position ourselves over our fellow earthlings or deny the down-to-earth reality of the nitty gritty? Is our praying or spiritual commentary a manipulative attempt at controlling our uncertain surroundings and futures?
The Old Testament puts into sharp focus the problems with confidently held but misconstrued faith ideology. Land grabs, murder, and more are not infrequently described as having God’s oversight. That’s what those Old Testament people maybe believed, anyway; I certainly don’t think it was God who told Gideon to kill the Midionites, but apparently he felt it was.
If Christianity is–as I think it must be–rooted in Jesus’ earthly minded practices and teachings, then reading Old Testament stories must be less about figuring out who Joshua’s and Gideon’s heck-of-a-killer God was (whom I’m guessing they designed) and more about two things: understanding the danger of self-conflation with God, and evaluating our own lives so that we may actually experience life-giving living.
Which, might I add, may be even more problematic than a bunch of old stories.Woof
A couple nights last week as I dozed in the recliner by N’s bed listening to her music and waiting for her to fall asleep, she suddenly burst out along with the Raffi tape, “Bah, bah, black sheep, have you any woof? Yes sir, yes sir, free bags full.”
Neighborly Beef
On Friday I called the tenant farmer whose many cattle have visited our land from both of the farmland properties he rents adjacent to three sides of us, and that evening he stopped over. I pointed out the many tree saplings we’ve planted and staked along our property and again said that we are concerned about the cattle damaging our gardens.
Instead of offering any assurances of fence mending, apologizing, or asking about–let alone offering to compensate us for–past or future damages, he pointed out that the first problem to deal with is that our saplings (average height: 12 inches) are too close to the fence (maybe in about 30 years).
As for fixing the fences, he said, “That’s a long-term proposition, and I don’t know how long I’ll be renting here,” he said. “Let me ask you this: Would you be willing to share the costs? That’s how it’s done, for boundary fences.”
“But I don’t need the fence,” I said.
I let the two landowners know of the conversation, and consulted a man at church who seems to have experience with such nitty gritty details of life.
“Sometimes you just have to be nasty back,” he said. “We had a problem with cattle getting onto our land, once, and so we rounded up the escaped cattle and took them to the livestock sale. You might have to have a heart-to-heart with the farmer and tell him you’re going to shoot the cattle if they get in your garden. He’s responsible for keeping them contained.”
But I’m not so sure he is–both practically speaking and legally. From our state’s code: “When any fence which has been built and used by adjoining landowners as a division fence, or any fence which has been built by one, and the other afterwards required to pay half of the value, or expense thereof, under the provisions hereinbefore contained, and which has thereby become a division fence between such lands, shall become out of repair to the extent that it is no longer a lawful fence, either one of such adjoining landowners may give written notice to the other, or to his agent, of his desire and intention to repair such fence, and require him to come forward and repair his half thereof, and if he shall fail to do so within thirty days after being so notified, the one giving such notice may then repair the entire fence so as to make it a lawful fence, and the other shall be liable to him for one-half of the expense thereof.”
This is not at all promising; we may have to shell out in order to support our neighbor’s commercial cattle ventures even though we have no need for a fence…unless this following code provides us a loophole: “Adjoining landowners shall build and maintain, at their joint and equal expense, division fences between their lands, unless one of them shall choose to let his land lie open or unless they shall otherwise agree between themselves.”
And then there’s this, from our county’s code: “The boundary lines of each lot or tract of land or any stream in the country are hereby declared to constitute a lawful fence for the purposes of [the section of the state code cited above].”
Which part of the code applies? The farm extension agent I called yesterday assured me that it’s the farmer’s responsibility to keep his cattle in, and if his cattle damage our property we can sue for damages or even hold the cattle “for ransom,” but he added that there is “a legal expectation that both parties contribute” to the maintenance of an existing boundary fence.
We’re caught in a catch-22: Trust the neighbor’s sense of responsibility to keep in his cattle. That means that when they escape to our land and destroy our garden, we can demand damages in court (animal control won’t get involved; they say it’s a civil matter). But the suit will then be thrown out because we didn’t help maintain the fence.
Basically, we’re required to pay to support our neighbor’s business.
