Creatio Ex Nihilo

Saving Private Jesus

Imagine an ordinary day in your life. You come home and you’re just hanging out on the couch watching TV.  Nothing dramatic is happening.  You’re not anxious about anything.  Everything seems fine.

Suddenly, your front door bursts open.  You hear yelling and the sound of police radios.  It’s a team of EMT workers breaking into your home.  They see you sitting on the couch.  They toss your Pringles and beer aside and throw you to the ground.  One of them starts pounding on your chest, giving you CPR and like Jack Bauer screams, “Stay with me!  Stay with me!”  He gives up and starts mouth to mouth resuscitation, even though you fight back, trying to explain there’s nothing wrong with you.  Eventually he grabs a defibrillator, yells “Clear!” and begins delivering electric shocks to your chest.

 Finally, you can get the words out, “There’s nothing wrong with me.  I’m not dying!”

But they insist you are.  You are in great danger, they tell you, and on the verge of death.  Which seems odd because after all, those TV series about women who didn’t know they were pregnant are bad enough, but being almost dead seems like something you would know about yourself.  Most of us assume we would be aware if we were in mortal danger.  We all would know if we needed a rescuer, right?

Sometimes, Jesus strikes me as that unwelcome EMT worker who bursts into our seemingly safe lives and shouts, “I’m here to rescue you!”  To which we respond, “From what?  I didn’t even know I needed rescuing.”

As he entered the city of Jerusalem, during the last week of his life, Jesus was met by a crowd of admirers.  They threw their cloaks on the ground and waved palm branches at him.  They shouted, “Hosanna!” which literally means, “Save us!”  The whole scene was reminiscent of the ancient Jewish texts of Isaiah and Zechariah. In fact, the author of the Gospel of Matthew even draws attention to that fact.  Those texts spoke of a King that God would send one day, a Messiah, an Anointed One, a healer, a rescuer.  Whether one views Jesus’ entry into the city as a prophecy fulfilled, an enacted parable or Matthew’s literary observation, the message is clear, Jesus is that King.  Jesus is the one who comes in God’s name and is coming to our rescue.

Do we really need to be rescued?  For some people the answer is absolutely, “Yes!”  Usually when EMT’s break down the door of a home, it’s because someone’s life is really in danger.  Someone is really dying.

Mirroring Jesus

Have you ever wondered what Jesus looked like?  When any of us picture Jesus, usually a particular image comes to mind.  For some of us, it’s that classical fair-skinned European Jesus that hangs on the wall in many church fellowship halls.  For others, he looks like the painting in Grandma’s living room, the one that when if it ever fell off the wall, foretold doom.  Still others will always picture Jesus with the face of whatever crucifix hung in the church of their youth.

 What Jesus looked like has been the subject of some controversy in recent years.  Tired of Jesus being portrayed as a blue-eyed Northern European, many African Americans have sought to portray Jesus as a Black man.  In fact, across the globe many people create art depicting Jesus to look like them or their own people.

A few years ago, some archeologists used the forensic science techniques we all know from CSI, to reconstruct a more historically accurate image of Jesus.  Using a skull from a typical Judean man from the first century, they came up with a sculpture of at least the type of man that Jesus would resemble.  Many people were deeply offended to discover that most likely, Jesus was a shorter than they imagined.  If he were like his contemporaries, he would only have been a little over five feet tall, not towering over his disciples as he does in many Sunday School illustrations. 

Overall, when reading the works of reputable archeologists or biblical scholars, one hears that we have no idea what Jesus looked like, a least in the physical sense.  No Gospel writer, in fact, no New Testament writer, describes Jesus’ physical appearance.  So the consensus is that we do not know what Jesus looked like.

Yet that statement can be misleading.  In reality, the whole New Testament, and two thousand years of church history, emphatically proclaim what Jesus looked like.    We declare it in our texts, our creeds, our songs and our lives.

Jesus looked like God.

Right Now, In A Land Close Close By

This Sunday, Pam and I preached together:

Pam: Once there was a prince, and he wanted a princess, but then she must be a real Princess. He traveled right around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were plenty of princesses, but whether they were real princesses he had great difficulty in discovering; there was always something that was not quite right about them. So at last he had come home again, and he

was very sad because he wanted a real princess so badly.was very sad because he wanted a real princess so badly.

 Don: One of the joys of having children is telling them stories.  While that conjures up images of reading aloud from Alice In Wonderland, our storytelling extends beyond fairy tales.  We tell our children stories about their family, a grandparent who fought in WWII, the Christmas dinner when their older brother laughed so hard that milk came out of his nose, or Mom and Dad’s first date (which is sometimes a tricky one).  Being part of a family or community, means sharing stories.

Pam: Are you wondering why when you burn a candle like this one their seems to be less and less wax as it burns. If the wax is just melting, where does it go? Why does it not all just melt when you burn it and harden back up again so we can see it? Well, Here’s the answer.  As the candle burns, its wax melts into a liquid, that liquid "wicks" up the wick (like water flowing up into a paper towel), and then the extreme heat of the flame vaporizes the wax (it is become gaseous wax). Once the wax is a gas, it burns in much the same way that natural gas burns — it reacts with oxygen in the air to become water and carbon dioxide.

Don: Another joy of parenting, is explaining to children how things work.  Children are full of questions about the world.  Sometimes they ask things we don’t even know like, how does the refrigerator work?  How does my body work?  As parents, we’ll go out and get a book about that subject and read it together with our kids.  Sometimes we take a shortcut and secretly go to a website like howstuffworks and then explain it to our kids so we can look like the expert.

At first, those two activities, telling stories and explaining how things work, may seem unrelated.  Yet they are one and the same thing.  When we tell our children stories, we are really telling them how something works.  The fairy tales we read to them can explain how morality works.  Their heroes and villains explain how the world is supposed to work. Even on a subconscious level, they instill expectations of what it means to be heroic, courageous or loyal. Sometimes they implant unintentional ideas, such as that girls must wait for a boy to come along and rescue them.

Our family stories can explain how our family works and who we are.  Through what is said or left unsaid, a child discovers what kind of person they are supposed to be, and what role they will play in the family.  What is possible and what is impossible.

From all these stories told to us, we form a story that we tell ourselves, a story of how the world works.From all these stories told to us, we form a story that we tell ourselves, a story of how the world works.

Bad People: A Bad Idea

When we encounter a concept that doesn’t fit in to our belief system or preconceptions, why are we more prone to attack the person, rather than engage their idea?  Recently, I was reading an online discussion about a church denomination’s position statement on a particular issue.  The statement took a middle ground of saying that some authors who wrote on this topic had had useful ideas, while others’ writing contained ideas that were not historically orthodox.  Nothing new there.  Denominations are infamous for vague statements.

What intrigued me, however, were the response of the commenters. In pressing for more specificity about unorthodoxy, rather than ask  “Which ideas?” most commenters asked “Which authors?”  No one assumed an author might have some good ideas, as well as some bad ones.  One disagreeable concept in an author’s writings made him a heretic, and therefore rightfully and easily dismissible. It was as if such a categorization would provide one with a convenient blacklist that  could save one from the trouble of actually having to read the author and wrestle with their concepts.

This scenario is common outside of religious circles as well.  Whether the debate is about religion, politics, or even a topic as seemingly innocuous as entertainment, we humans find heretics in all fields.  We tend to pledge allegiance people rather than ideas.  We often then buy into their whole package, with little critical thought.  In conversations, we will willingly defend our favorite author, talk show host, or politician.  

Conversely, when we are told that another person is on the wrong side of an issue, unorthodox, or heretical, our eyes skip over anything in quotation marks after their name and we reach for the remote whenever they appear on television.  Sometimes, we go further and dismiss other people who associate with them, endorse their books, or who mention them in the footnotes of their own books.

I understand that ideas do not spring out of the ether. I’m as postmodern as the next guy, so I appreciate understanding the context and source of ideas.  I also value character and realize that an idea can be rightfully criticized if its proponent doesn’t actually practice it.  Yet, I also know that I am a blend of both good and bad ideas.  My positions are often a mix of orthodoxy and heresy, be it in religion, politics or musical taste.  Often my in-ness or out-ness is determined by which one people discover first.

I am reminded of the saying, “Great people talk about ideas.  Average people talk about things.  Most people just talk about people.”

We have much to learn from everyone.  Have you ever learned something important from someone who was “on the other side”?  Conversely, have you ever regretted not engaging with the ideas or having a relationship with someone whom your like-minded friends labeled as a “heretic”?

If this gets you thinking – great.  If not, well ... just add me to your “do not read” list.

The Revolutionary Revolution

When I was in seminary, I had a professor who told us stories about the wild days of the Sixties on the campus of Drew Theological School.   Once, he recounted an incident that occurred during all the protests against the Vietnam War.  At one point, a group of students from the university attracted a lot of publicity by announcing that, to protest the war, they were going to burn a Bible on campus.  Of course, their plans sparked outrage and anger in the community.   In response, the Dean enlisted my professor to go and have a talk with this group of so-called revolutionaries. 

The first thing my professor told them was, “Listen, before you burn that Bible, you may want to read it because you’ll discover it has a lot to say in support of your cause.”  The protesting students were shocked to hear that.  For them, the Bible was merely a symbol of the Establishment, of “The Man,” and was a target for indiscriminate attack.  They assumed that the religious establishment always endorsed violence and war.  They had not stopped to consider the parts of the Bible that speak about peace, Jesus’ call to love our enemies, or to turn the other cheek.  In their headlong rush to be revolutionary and shocking, they almost destroyed a powerful ally in their cause.

 Think about that word “revolutionary.”  What comes to mind?  Those Bible-burning rebels without a cause at a college protest? An angry wild-eyed fighter holding an AK-47?  Our Founding Fathers? A socialist or communist? An iconoclast?  Someone with completely new and never-before-heard ideas?  The leader of a cause who fights an enemy?  A cause with distinct insiders and outsiders?  

When we hear Jesus described as a revolutionary, some of us may recoil a bit because of those kinds of associations.  Yet, we must face the historical fact that Jesus was considered a revolutionary in his day.  In fact, he was executed by the Roman government for being one.  In Jesus’ time there were plenty of revolutionaries who fit my previous description.  But Jesus was not like the other revolutionaries.  That’s what made him so…well, revolutionary.

Nowhere is this as clear as when Jesus begins his public ministry in his hometown synagogue. The first thing we notice is that the Jesus Revolution comes out of his roots, not out of the blue.  Jesus’ message and ministry were not some novel new idea, but emerged out his Jewish tradition and history.  

Over the years, some specious books have been published claiming Jesus got his ideas by spending his mystery-shrouded young adulthood in India studying Buddhism or some other Eastern religion.  I don’t believe those theories.  It’s not that I think there is anything inherently evil about Buddhism, it’s just that there is neither the evidence nor need for such a theory.  There is as little evidence or need to suggest the source of the Jesus Revolution was an Eastern religion as there is to suggest it was aliens.  Such suggestions miss the point and context of who Jesus was.  All of the components of the Jesus Revolution can be found within Judaism.

Embracing Conflict - by Pam Heatley

I have a confession to make.  I hate conflict.  I wish I had personal relationships with no conflict, wouldn’t that be nice?  I wish everything went exactly how I thought it should go, and the people I am closest to just instinctively knew what I needed.  I wish the communities we lived in, our neighborhoods, school systems and churches could be places with no conflict.  I wish everyone behaved nicely and we were all on the same page all the time.   I wish I lived in that world.  Do you know why? It’s because it would be easier.   Dealing with conflict is hard and uncomfortable.  When faced with it I always find myself thinking, “Why?  Why is this happening?  I don’t want to fight.  Why can’t we just all get along?”  The most uncomfortable reality of it all is “Now I have to do something about this or say something.  Oh, I hate that.”

Let’s be real about this, the world I would like to live in doesn’t exist.  Just look at all of us here at church.  We are a community of people devoted to following Christ and I think we try our best to be loving and kind, but can we say we live conflict free lives? None of us, no matter how much we want it, have lives of complete harmony and love. If we know we live among conflict that we should expect it and even learn to embrace it. Conflicts come up in the best of relationships, the most loving of families and the closest of communities.

 Then why are so many of us afraid of it?   When I say “many” I don’t just mean us wimpy types that run away from any situation that looks like things aren’t going to go smoothly. I mean MANY, A LOT. 

The story of Amnon and Tamar illustrates  how widespread this problem is.  It touches everyone, even the people we see as strong. In this story King David is afraid of conflict.  Can you imagine? Conflict avoiders take heed for we are in good company. Even the strongest, most charismatic and most successful among us avoids conflict. 

I would never characterize  David as a conflict avoider.  David is amazing. He is a shepherd anointed at an early age to be successor of the throne of the King of Israel, as a child he defeats a giant named Goliath, he is bestowed a promise by God and he is a great warrior.  David is credited with writing 73 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible and yet he fails to confront his son about something that he definitely should have done something about.