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.

Present :: Luke 2:22-37

Peripheral people fascinate me. Those who stand just on the edge of moment – who play a small part in wonder – who witness or ask or point. And because they show up, we see and know in new ways. Peripheral people are not the center; they are supporting, sometimes minor, characters. They help us with transitions, with gaps, with course corrections, with just enough light at just the right moment. And then, duty done, they are gone.

Maybe its because I am increasingly partial to old people who still show up for work – but among my favorite peripheral people are Simeon and Anna. They appear in a few scant verses in Luke’s introduction to the story of Jesus. Then, part played, they are gone, their whole life focused into one single moment, one flash of revelatory lightning.

He shuffled towards them, an old man all but dancing with excitement, sandals softly slapping the ancient temple stone floor, rheumy eyes, black as charcoal but alive with the fire burning inside, riveted on the boy. Decades of waiting might have dulled the vision of other watchers, but not his. His was sharpened by hope, by expectancy. Every day since hearing the voice closer to him than his own breath whisper promise of life until Life, he had been alert to wonder. And this day, drawn to temple by that same voice, he finds himself watching as wonder is carried towards him ­– a six week old baby boy.

Eyes sharpened by the Spirit, he sees past their disqualifying poverty, and rejoices in promise kept, in duty done, in journey now ended with one prophetic rush of celebration… and warning. Promise comes – but with pain.

Then comes Anna, her voice no less important for its brevity,  no less needed for its gender. Every day and, often, as night turned to day, she was found here. Single hearted, focused hope; 84 years of looking forward collapse into this one moment of looking present. Here… now… Hope. 6 weeks old.

This is the One. Their duet soars through the ages. Hope has been born! We have seen Him.

Amazing to think what might happen one day when you show up, day after day, and mind your own business. And Who might be missed if you don’t.

Taking Christ Out of Christmas

 I think I understand the concern some folks have about substituting generic holiday greetings for Christmas greetings or replacing Christ in Christmas with an X. The latter is now more often understood as the unknown of algebra than the ancient Christian symbol using the Greek letter with which the name “Christ” begins. And the former symbolizes the apparent move to complete the secularization – for purposes of ostensibly non-offensive marketing – of a primarily religious holiday. Frankly, though, I am not sure that responding to a clerk’s, “Happy Holidays” with a snarling, snapping, “Merry Christmas!!” is the best way to redeem the season. That aside, is it possible to think about this whole thing another way?

Maybe the big problem with Christmas is not so much in the words we speak or the symbols we use as it is in way we isolate and enshrine it. The story of the Incarnation – the Word made flesh and dwelling among us – the coming of God to be with us and for us – can often get lost in the holiday-zation of a holy-day. No less for Christians than for others. The point of holy days is not the creation of a shrine in time, which we regularly visit with appropriate seasonal wonder, but the redeeming of all time. Perhaps we make the manger and its cast of characters the centerpiece – and miss the point.

It is appealing, in many ways, to simply leave Jesus safe in the manger where we might come and visit – or where we might even come and adore and bow down and worship – but which we may then leave to go about our business. No fear – we’ll be back for another sentimental visit next year. Of course none of us does that. At least not on purpose. But I wonder if we do that accidently. We become more enthralled in the wrappings than awed by the wonder of Christmas. And we forget to take Christ out of Christmas to be Immanuel – to be God with us – to be Word made flesh and tenting in our back yard.

So, a suggestion. Enjoy the Day – the Holy Day – for all its worth. Sing, laugh, eat, drink, enter into the wonder made real in family and friends. Give and receive gifts. Wear festive clothing. Welcome the stranger.

But then, the next day, take Christ out of Christmas to walk you in your ordinary, everyday, walking around life. Invite Him to be, truly, God with You.

The Weakness of Outrage

The week started with an explosion of somewhat disingenuous outrage over the final fade of Hannah Montana as Miley proved once again that the harder child stars try to prove themselves adults, the less likely they are to be anything but caricatures thereof, regardless of their talent. The disingenuity arose out of failure to similar outrage at the spectacle of her married dance partner “blurring the lines”. A word which, heretofore, most of us seemed able to get along without, made its way like a brain worm into the common consciousness.

The back and forth in the blogosphere and the parasitic entertainment media guaranteed a level of notariety which was clearly the point all along. Who would have imagined that Miley could out-Gaga, Gaga – as Gaga out-Madonna’d Madonna? Publicity, positive or negative, is the only goal. It was a take no prisoners approach. Well played, Miley. Sadly so. Once again, we have done this to you with our incessant demands for more shock as entertainment. And, we have done this to ourselves.

The gears of outrage continued to grind throughout the week but shifted, slowly and somewhat reluctantly, to a new cause by week’s end. Estimates vary, but somewhere approaching 100,000 Syrians have died at the hands of their own government in their faltering opposition to Assad’s failed regime. There has been a fair amount of hand-wringing over the past several months and more than a few tongues wagging and tut-tutting. But the recent allegations of chemical warfare, with hints of supportive evidence, have provided escape velocity to the public outrage. Something must now be done by someone!! Soon!! China and Russia walked out, effectively guaranteeing little more than continuing outrage from the United Nations. Britain dropped out of the forming coalition, leaving the United States and France to be the someones to do something.

The bookends of last week underline an important truth – outrage is neither strategy nor action. Harumphing at whatever volume is not engagement. But it creates the impression of action, of caring. And that, it seems, is enough for us.

But citizens of the Kingdom are reminded, yet again, that principalities and powers are at work in these two flesh and blood moments. And that realization makes action steps clear. First and last – and always – we pray. Then, taking on the defensive armor provided, we hold the ground assigned to us. Prayer is our most effective offense in times like these. After we have prayed, we may be assigned to, or choose, additional action – but until we have prayed, we have done nothing strategic in the coming of the Kingdom. For which, in times like these – and all times are like these – we pray.