Tied to the Dirt

On this first Sunday of Lent, the text for my sermon was Luke’s version of the Parable of the Great Banquet. It is part of a three beat narrative in chapter 14 in which Jesus, a guest for dinner at the house of a Pharisee, takes advantage of the opportunity to provide some lessons in Kingdom etiquette. In Lesson One, having noticed the jockeying for position and witnessing the embarrassment of those who apparently thought too highly of themselves being ushered to less advantageous seating, Jesus suggests they begin by taking the lowest seats – those belonging to those of least honor. That way, when the host notices, he might move them up, as appropriate. The advantage is clear – they get the benefit of being thought humble and get seated where they properly belong without shame! Win – Win!

Jesus then moves on with advice to his host; rather than inviting only people who can reciprocate with invitations of their own, employ a strategy which welcomes those who have no capacity for repayment! That way, in the resurrection of the righteous, he will receive an appropriate reward. This suggestion meets with decidedly less entusiasm – after all, in the category of competitive dinner parties, who ever would invite anyone who couldn’t reciprocate? Exactly no one!

Some awkward guest tries to cover the faux pas by reciting a beatitude – “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the Kingdom of God.” He says this as if the Kingdom of God were still distant and hoped for, rather than sitting at table with them in the person of Jesus – who had announced open access to the Kingdom was now available.

In response, Jesus tells a story of a generous host who did just what none of them would do – put on a banquet of such extravagance that no one could possibly reciprocate.  When, however, the notice went out that the banquet was ready – the excuses began to pile up. None of the invited could find their way clear to come. They could not consider attending a banquet that would result in such obligation. The result? None of the invited would taste the dinner – but the dinner would not go to waste because the host and his servants had rounded up those who could never repay.

Jesus uses this parable to describe what is happening – in His coming, the banquet is spread and the invitations gone out. But they, the invited, were distracted to the point of excuse. They were too anchored to the earth to respond to an impossible invitation to the Kingdom of God.

And this is where my Lenten reflection on the day of my death meets the story. I, too, am easily distracted by the busy-ness of avoidance, the business of obligation, the tasks at hand. I barely hear the invitation to the Kingdom. And the simple consideration of the day of my death quiets the background noises – the distractions of the earth – enough to hear the music in the distance. Time to dress for dinner.

Death :: Sharpened Heart Focus

The discipline that I have embarked upon for this Lenten season is the consideration of the day of my death. You can read the previous blog post for context, if you’d care to – but the gist of it is that the gift of Resurrection comes only to those whose hands have been emptied by Crucifixion.

The North American culture I grew up in seems to do all it can to conceal from us the fact that we are all going to die. Other cultures prepare their children more realistically. In some tribal initiation rites, the child is taken from his family by the elders of the community and, as part of the rite of passage, must spend a night in a hole he has dug in the ground. His grave. He comes out of the grave the next morning to join the company of adults – the company of those who know they will die.

And it is not death as a general idea – it is one’s specific death that is considered. By denying the certain knowledge of death, our culture seeks to protect life, but can not deliver on its promise. Only those who have reckoned well with death are ready to live.

That is what makes this Lenten journey so important. Those who are close followers of Jesus know that the awareness of His death was never far from His mind. In the last few months, there would come over Him a certain wistfulness, a certain anguish, a certain joyful melancholy – a longing for home accompanied by a dread of the passage ­– marked by a look in His eyes, staring off into the unseeable distance. It was unnerving for the disciples – so they did what we do. They resisted the idea of death. Specifically, His death. Their vision of the future did not have room for death – that was not how a Kingdom comes. But still, as the day drew near, He focused more intently on them – the few who had become family by obedience, friends by love. And on those who would yet believe as a result of their witness.

In trying to follow Jesus as He is marked by this awareness, I notice a distant, but parallel track in my own contemplation over the past couple of days. The very first thoughts that bubble to mind when considering the day of my death are of those I would leave behind – loved ones, all. My wife and sons most of all. And, strangely, little ones not yet born. Awareness of the day of death carries a challenge to keep short accounts, to not let love go unspoken, to give grace and forgiveness before being asked. Perhaps that is the kind of Kingdom that comes with the awareness of death.

Considering The Day of My Death

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the start of the slowing walk leading to Easter Weekend. The Lenten season seeks to reduce distractions that would otherwise blind us to the dark and difficult and glorious wonders lying ahead. We are invited to slow down, to come gently to that Good Friday death, to pause there at the foot of the cross ­­– and to not be carried too quickly past it by the momentum of our rush to Resurrection. The desire for new life is so strong that I often forget that the only way to that Sunday is through that Friday. And it is not true just for Jesus.

Lent invites us to embrace a bit of suffering, a bit of pain, a bit of dying to self as a way of preparation. It is often a time of fasting, making use of the shaking up of our systems of comfort to consider our capacity for life through death. As Advent sets the table for Christmas, Lent clears the table for Good Friday. Many followers of Jesus use it as a time of self-denial to push back against the relentless accommodation to any and all means of resisting discomfort. It seeks to train our gaze towards the cross, gently bringing us back to focus when we’d as soon turn away.

As a way of entry this year, I have decided that each day of Lent I will take a few minutes and consider the day of my death.

Last year a colleague introduced me to the Eastern Church’s prayers of memento mori – a Latin phrase which means “remember you will die.” Rather than a morbid fascination, the remembrance of death invites the full living of life. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, “the knowledge of one’s death concentrates the mind wonderfully!” We are forced to focus on the day – this day – the Lord has made, and invited to rejoice, knowing that we won’t have it for long.

Distractions abound when there is endless time; editing occurs with awareness of limits. If it is true with the budgeting of financial resources, it is no less true with the budgeting of temporal resources. Scripture reminds us – often – that our life’s span is but a mist, a vapor – we are here today and gone… We do ourselves harm if we forget that reality. The Psalmist gives us the words to pray, “Teach us to number our days, O Lord, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” And again, “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.”

Most of my days seem to be consumed with trying to do two or three things at once – with the result that I am barely able to do one thing at once! In Resurrection, we are made capable of life forever. But, as it turns out, preparation to live forever, involves remembering that I won’t live forever.

Worship as Work – and Response

A preaching assignment a couple of weeks ago drew me back into the text of the Old Testament to reflect on worship. There, with the help of friends, I re-discovered a foundational reality. In the Old Testament, there are basically two words, each of which are echoed in the New Testament, that coalesce the understanding of what worship is.

The first word captures the deep, visceral, heart-felt response to encounter with God. This is soul shaking awe, overwhelmed with the wonder of God’s presence – in the sanctuary, in creation, in meditation on the Way of the Lord. More than just experience, but experienced none the less, this moment of encounter pushes us to the limit of our capacity to respond – and then, beyond. It draws us out of ourselves into self-forgetfulness and invites a wide-range of actions – clapping, singing, shouting, dancing, silence, hands raising, bowing down – all arising out of awareness of being in the Presence of an awesome God, who has shown Himself good and great, Whose majesty overwhelms senses and language, with whole being worship being the only possible response.

The second word is a bit more mundane – but prepares for the response described by the first. The second concept gathers together the soul shaping work and discipline of worship – the mechanics of preparation – setting up the equipment, learning and leading the rituals, writing and singing the songs, weaving the textiles, making the tapestries, building and playing the instruments, and so on. It is often translated “serve” and regularly links to the work of the Levites – the tribe of Israel set apart to facilitate and teach worship and the ways of God to the rest of Israel. So important was their work that God instructed His people to set aside a tithe of their income to give to the Levites in support of them and their task. God apparently knew how easily we get knocked out of alignment in our day to day lives – so He set up a system by which to regularly re-align our hearts in worship to Who He is. And that, in turn, helps us remember who we are, and why we are here!

Worship is more than just the emotional and physical response to feeling the Presence of God. It is also the disciplined work of setting the table for such an encounter – because God is worthy. It is a valuable training of the soul in the disciplines of orientation by faith, without succumbing to the tyranny of feelings.

So – come! Let us worship. And bow down.

Ordinary Repentance (Luke 3:3-14)

 I grew up thinking that repentance was mostly rooted in feeling bad, maybe even guilty, about some thing I had done. I had plenty of practice! Often the threat of eternal damnation spurred the appropriate feelings for which repentance was the response and solution – and that usually meant ‘going forward’ at the end of a Sunday night sermon and spending enough time at the altar to alleviate the bad feelings.

In the last few years that I have realized that my understanding of repentance had more to do with not feeling bad any more – than with with any necessary change in behavior. It was possible for me to get good at feeling bad. And that was good enough. In fact, sometimes feeling bad produced an emotional reaction that I mistook for the assurance that God had forgiven me. So the strategy was to feel bad enough for long enough for whatever it was that I had done. And that was repentance. Implicit was the idea that, perhaps, I shouldn’t keep doing bad things – but changed behavior was less the content and more the occasional outcome of repentance.

It was a bit of a shock to discover that repentance, as it is used in the Bible, has to do with a change of behavior arising from a change of mind – and that any feelings are more about the desire for the new than they are about shame over the old. Repentance is about living a new way in the light of a new reality. Jesus called his listeners to repent – to live a new way – as an appropriate and necessary response to the fact that the Kingdom of God was now within their grasp. When John challenges his audience to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” it is interesting to notice how he responds to questions from the crowd concerning what that fruit might look like.

He begins by suggesting that radical generosity is the first demonstration of authentic repentance. “If you have two cloaks, and another has none… do the math! And the same with food…”  A repentant tax collector should only collect the amount they are authorized – and not use their position to become wealthy. The soldier under force of repentance should be content with their salary – and not use their cover of authority either to extort money from people, or to make false accusations. Nothing very revolutionary! Or is it?

Imagine what a community shaped by this ordinary repentance – a community made up of people simply doing their jobs, and not taking whatever advantage their position afforded them to get ahead at cost to others.

John thinks that is repentance – living a new way in the light of the Kingdom’s coming. I think he might be on to something.