Sunday’s Coming

The “Jesus asleep in the boat during a terrible storm” story has always seemed unfair to me. I feel for the disciples when they wake him; they are understandably angry that he doesn’t seem to care that they are about to die. I’d be just as angry at Jesus for appearing so calm in the midst of real danger. The disciples are uncomfortable that Jesus is not acting according to the category of “concerned friend,” much less “messiah”—so they kind of yell at him. And when it comes down to it, who hasn’t yelled at God during the storms of life?

Parables aren’t too helpful, are they? Here’s what would be helpful: six steps to better discipleship. Or the three secrets of the kingdom of God, spelled out in an acrostic. If only Jesus’ teachings were as simplistic as they are often portrayed.

In Jesus’ day—as in ours--redefining the family is a provocative act with far-reaching social, political, moral and spiritual implications. If we were to isolate Jesus in Mark 3 from the moments in the other gospels in which Jesus interacts with his family, we might conclude this story with George Aichele’s sharply worded assertion, “Mark’s Jesus is no supporter of family values!”

Ed’s Story is the title of a new series of short films documenting the life of Ed Dobson. The films capture the story of a man with a terminal illness who is coming to grips with his faith, his identity and his lack of control. In his prime, Dobson was the senior minister of a thriving congregation in Grand Rapids, where he preached to more than a thousand people each week.

With every cycle of our respiratory systems, we are sustained by the same intimate inspiration God exhaled into Adam’s muddy lungs. That breath permeates every cell of our being, nose to toes, invigorating our bodies and minds and souls until it is ready to be released, silently, from the same nostrils through which it came. This is as ordinary as oxygen and carbon dioxide, and as extraordinary as spirit and miracle.

I was drying dishes and absentmindedly singing the song that had been stuck in my head for days when my husband suddenly came barreling down the staircase and into the kitchen. Looking frantic, he asked me what had happened. We were both confused; he was convinced that I had cried out in pain, and he fully expected to walk in on a grisly cooking incident. We quickly realized the source of the miscommunication. The song I’d been singing was Lady Gaga’s “Judas,” and I sounded like a lady in distress as I belted out, “Judas, Juda-a-a.”

I have found myself dreading Facebook lately. With the general election beginning to churn, the competing posts are out: “Evidence of Obama’s socialist conspiracy!” “Republicans plan to inspect every woman’s womb!” Some are rather scary while others I quietly cheer; still others simply draw me into grief over how little Jesus seems apparent in any of it.

In the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, I have always been struck by the pronouncements of Philip’s boldness. As a young Christian, I was often called to this kind of boldness: to go out to the stranger and the foreigner and declare the good works of God. But revisiting this passage I am struck by how weak Philip is--and how necessary this is to his ministry.

“What will survive of us is love,” writes Philip Larkin in his remarkably unsentimental poem “An Arundel Tomb.” He is reflecting on the recumbent stone effigy over the grave of a couple buried long ago in an ancient church. Maybe we should take a step further, however, and say that love is that which not only “survives” but also rises, or is raised, from any and every grave. This is especially important to bear in mind in the face of all the threats to love, those powers and forces that try to bury it.

“People must believe what they can,” writes George MacDonald, “and those who believe more must not be hard on those who believe less.” Faith is a gift. We don’t produce it ourselves. We receive it. And we certainly can’t brag about having more of it than other people do.

I remember a film about Doubting Thomas that I saw in Sunday school as a girl. It was one of a series that our church showed us: the Bible story was read while a sequence of tableaux ran on the screen—it was not a motion picture, really, but more like a slide show. The actors were all attractive people with earnest expressions, and their faces stayed on the screen for a long time while the text was read. Sometimes the camera would zoom in, so that we could get a really good, long look at a particularly earnest expression. I think I would find it all a bit too much if I were to view it today. But this was a long time ago. I remember Thomas's face.

You may recall that this ending of the Gospel of Mark, the one that appears in the most ancient manuscripts of the book, seemed too abrupt to later copyists. Before long, 11 more verses had found their way there, a busy digest of post-resurrection experiences from a variety of sources: John's account of the scene at the tomb with Mary Magdalene, John's story of Thomas the doubter, a version of the walk to Emmaus, an account of Jesus' ascension, other material from Luke/Acts. These are entered almost as bullet points. But the tacked-on verses need not concern us here--the Revised Common Lectionary walks away from them politely. We are left with the bald confusion and fear at the end of the ancient tale, from a time before it was canonized and liturgized.

This week is Palm and/or Passion Sunday, and choices will vary as to the form of worship and the point at which the sermon falls. Palm Sunday, with its palms waving and salutations sung to the Savior, is an event that children will enter into readily even if adults are a bit shy. If the choice is for a Passion Sunday emphasis, a dramatic reading is memorable for those who speak the parts and those who listen--and the passion narrative lends itself particularly well to this approach. It is, after all, the greatest story ever told. Another option is to focus on the second lesson.

Among the most stimulating books I've read recently is Samuel Wells's Be Not Afraid, from which I picked up the phrase repeated several times in my current lectionary columns for the Century: "What's God up to?" This is the question that counts.

Jesus and Nicodemus might as well be speaking different languages. Jesus speaks of birth from above; Nicodemus is befuddled. Jesus speaks of the spirit as wind blowing where it will; Nicodemus wonders how this can be. They are like a creationist and a paleontologist comparing notes on fossils--they simply can't fathom each other. Their organizing assumptions are too different. Here's when we sense that Nicodemus begins to understand what Jesus is saying: when Jesus reinterprets the story of Israel in the wilderness, drawing from the language that has oriented Nicodemus's life and thought. It doesn't seem likely, after all, that the series of puzzling metaphors Jesus begins with would push Nicodemus to understanding. But something clearly does.

Paul has a way with a sneer. Nineteen times in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul mentions wisdom, and each time we hear a growing sneer in his voice, until he nominates Christ as the wisdom of God. The word "wisdom" is distasteful to him because it is wooing the Corinthians to pursue a dead wisdom when they might turn to a wisdom he calls the "source of life"--and come alive.   When Paul writes that Christ is the wisdom of God, he's tapping into an ancient way of speaking about God. He's drilling down into proverbs, where wisdom plays the part of the creative spirit of God. Wisdom is begotten of God, the firstborn of all creation, the very spirit alive in Creation, a feminine expression of God. This isn't just some hocus pocus stuff from the Old Testament, either. The New Testament writers are so influenced by this thinking that they pay homage to Lady Wisdom everywhere.

Two of Merlyn's daughters, members of our church, asked me to visit their mom as the end of her five-month battle with cancer drew near. Merlyn was 72, and her life had not been easy. She was widowed at 43 and raised her four children by herself. When I came to see her, she was alone, lying in bed by the window in the back room of the house. One of her daughters introduced me and left.

For some Christians the most important characteristic of God is God's "unchangeableness," God the same--yesterday, today and forever. For myself, I value those instances in which God changes God's mind, "repents," we might even say, of past behavior.

Preaching transfiguration can be confusing. What's this "minor festival" really about?

I have found this year's Republican primaries fascinating, particularly the shifting fortunes of the candidates. While Mitt Romney has been more or less the frontrunner of his ambivalent party, the rest of the field has been one crazy jumble of surges and falls from grace. It's political spectacle at its most interesting, if not necessarily its best.