O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

I found the picture above when I was preparing for an advent service we led for the first week of advent, this year. I used it in the powerpoint and have been wanting to write an advent piece ever since. I find the empty chairs sad and yet hopeful, perhaps evocative of people in exile looking to return. Waiting for someone to come fill them?

I have really been struck this year by the readings in the early part of the advent cycle. Christ's coming is promised in dark and troubled times of exile and oppression.

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel, 
And ransom captive Israel, 
That mourns in lonely exile here. 
Until the son of God appears.
Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel, 
Shall come to you, O Israel. 

 Isaiah 9: gives hope for victory over oppression and evil in the world:

 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. . . .The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.. . . You have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.

So the advent season starts in a time of Darkness but anticipating coming Light - the everlasting light shining in thy dark streets, O little town of Bethlehem. 

Advent is not unlike the season of Lent and Good Friday where, in darkness, we anticipate the Resurrection on Easter. Both of the seasons parallel our ongoing anticipation for the 2nd coming. (Is there a time in the liturgical year when we look forward to the second coming? If not, why not?)

I think part of the reason "O come, O Come Emmanuel" has resonated so much with me this year has been the rather dark times that are upon us in Mali, where I live. There have been 2 separate kidnapping incidents here in the past few weeks (see news report here), and we have had to call people from that region in to the capital where it is safer. In addition to the terrorism, banditry is on the rise, and there is famine in one area of Mali (details and giving options here).

The advent songs remind me, in a way, of the Negro Spirituals, which were written in a time of oppression and looking forward to hope in the life to come. For them to really ring true, you need to be first experiencing that oppression that so few of us can really imagine. 

I noticed another thing in musing over the Isaiah prophecies and the Christmas carols. Much of the language looks forward to a coming Messiah, but not so much as a personal, individual savior (as Christ is portrayed in Western evangelical circles), but as one bringing justice and banishing evil in the world.  Now we know that when Christ did come, he made it clear that his was not an earthly political kingdom, driving out the Romans.
But he did spend a lot of time talking about the Kingdom of God, which was not JUST for the world to come but also very much for now, in how we live in relation to each other. (cf. Sermon on the Mount)
Jesus comes to bring us life and restoration and justice and healing NOW, at least partially, but also in complete fullness in heaven. There is a tension between living out God's Kingdom in the NOW and waiting for what will not be resolved during this time of NOT YET. Until that day, we are called to love and serve people living in the midst of the NOT YET. (paraphrase of Adam Cox, Kansas City Boiler Room).

There is thus a tension between Jesus coming to be my personal savior (very western and individualistic) and Jesus coming to bring common good and "peace on earth - great joy for all the people". Between a Personal Gospel and a Social Gospel.  I'm reading a book, "Finding our way again: the return of the ancient practices". In it, the author suggests that this is not an either/or dichotomy. The Kingdom of God can be both of this world and the world to come. He says that we normally paint 2 opposing ways to live out the Christian life:
              Contemplative Way                      Activist Way
              Personal Gospel                              Social Gospel
              Seeking Private Piety                      Seeking Common Good
              Heaven-Centered                            Earth-Centered
              Sin-Averse (avoid sin)                     Injustice-averse (avoid injustice) (p.72-75).

Our typical evangelical take is to promote the Contemplative, individual-centered way, but the Christmas passages tend to point us to both sides of things:

"Chains shall he break [Yes, chains of personal sin]
For the slave is our brother.[and chains of real slavery]
And in his name, all oppression shall cease".

Certainly in our popular culture there is an idea that there should be Peace on Earth at least at Christmas time. The social aspect comes into play with soup kitchens were people are warm and eat well at least one day a year. And in sappy movies where we wish it was "Christmas all year round."
I think that people are just resonating with the side of the coming of Christ that seeks the common good, stamping out injustice.

And so in this advent time, 

Look forward in Hope to the Coming of the Christ child 
Look forward in hope to his second coming. 
And live to make his kingdom come, first in your heart, and then in the world around you. 

Of Paint and Sin, a metaphor

So I finished up a big painting project in my apartment this past weekend. Today I had some clean-up chores to do - transferring unused paint into a different bucket, after first washing out that bucket. 

"10 minutes max," I thought. And in spite of lots of experience with paint, I had the arogance to think, "I don't need to put on my paintings clothes. I'll just be careful. I know what I'm doing."

Yeah, just like when I tried to do touch-up without a drop cloth....

"Paint is deceitful and unspoiled clothes are fleeting."

That's when it struck me how much paint is like sin. There's no amount of it that's small enough to manage without soiling your clothes. All the best intentions in the world won't keep a big ol glob of paint from flying off your brush and landing on the floor.
And once it's on your clothes, well  it takes a bunch of distilled petroleum products to get it out.


At least with sin we have a sure-fire reagent- "and without blood there is no remission of sin". "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Thoughts on Medevacs – Part II

 Flash forward 11 years, through five other medevacs. One other has involved a special plane and the rest have been on commercial flights, but each stressful in its own way.

All focus and energy for several days is on getting the person out of Mali and to a place where they can get the help they need. People chip in from all sides, much like people do everywhere when someone is in the hospital or has a long illness.

This time around our evacuee was hanging something on the wall at school last Thursday, (Nov 11) and fell off the chair. She broke something in her foot that will require surgery in the US.

So we began the medevac process on Tuesday morning. This was a relatively "easy" medevac - no special plane and no one’s life hanging in the balance. But still stressful, for me calling and emailing folks around the world – and trying to manage the tiling project begun in my apartment that same day.  Others were driving our patient hither and yon to the clinic [thankfully better than the one we had in 2000].

On Wednesday Nov 16, they got the "okay to travel" letter from the local doctor, which specified that we needed a wheelchair at the airport. Then they did the pre-check in at Air France in town (drop off bags, get boarding pass). They were told there’d be a wheelchair at the door of the airport.

So our patient, her roommate and I headed for the airport at 9:15 pm for the 11:40 flight. Wouldn’t you know it, no wheelchair at the door of the airport? The others were waiting in the car and so I went in to the Air France counter and they said, "Oh yeah." They called someone and said it would be coming. But they told me that we could in no circumstances take it TO THE CURB or even outside the front door. If the patient couldn't walk at all, the doctor would have ordered an ambulance. So there!

While we waited, I got our patient and she walked on crutches through the crowd up to the front door. There was a chair just inside where she sat with her roommate, while I went running around to Air France trying to get someone to pay attention.

“Aw ka chaise ma na fɔlɔ?” ("What? Your chair hasn't come yet?") They kept calling someone but never seemed to be terribly concerned about finding it.
I did eventually confirm that the wheelchairs were indeed at the airport and not at someone's house.

Eventually, when they started calling Air France people to the departure lounge, I went up to the nice policeman, Mr. Dembele, at the front door and asked if he could help us. This is where it pays to speak some Bambara. He very kindly left his post, and took me and my passport back through ALL the security checks, saying all the while in Bambara, "His wife is at the front and needs a wheelchair." I did not correct this misassumption. 

We went out the back of the airport and walked right past 3 Wheelchairs. [Note to airport staff: Why not keep these by the front door instead of out on the tarmac?] We went into some sort of operations control room with bright lights and the policeman asked about a wheelchair. They said, "Oh yeah, Air France has been asking for that! It hasn't come yet?" So they got on the radio and called someone named Boubacar.
We went back inside, past the 3 wheelchairs, past all the security points, to the front door and in a few minutes Boubacar arrived with the wheelchair.

The rest was fairly straight forward. With the wheelchair, we were escorted through all sorts of lines. Eventually they took her outside and about 3 blocks down to the airplane and into the little metal room that they put the food in. It has an elevator and gets lifted up to the plane - the only way to avoid the steep metal steps up to the plane.

The good news is that she made it to the US without further incident, and had surgery on Monday November 21. Do pray for that!

All of this got me to thinking about medevacs.

Deep Thought #1: How do we spell “medevac”, especially when you conjugate it: Medevacking? Medevacing? Medevacked? Medevaced? Sometimes I settle for “medevacuated” but that is just too long.

Deep Thought #2: We mobilize the infantry and move heaven and earth to get someone out of the country and to proper medical attention.  But how often do we pay so much attention to the spiritual health of our friends, family and ourselves?

We have the image of the Good Shepherd and the Good Samaritan, who bind up the wounds of the sick and the broken hearted.

Ezekiel 34:16 “I will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak.”

If you think about it, what is a sabbatical if not a time of convalescence for the soul?

Sometimes with a medevac, the person is fully conscious and able to make decisions and so there is much less intervention on the part of those helping out.  Sometimes, we come to the recognition on our own that our soul needs some help and we cry out to those around us.

But other times, those being medevacked are unconscious and the spouse is too shaken up to make decisions and so the administration has to help make those difficult decisions to evacuate or not.

Who do you know that needs someone to come alongside and shake them up a bit to their need for help?

Do you have any wheelchairs sitting tucked away at the back of the airport, far from those who need them? What resources and help do you have that is hidden away, far from those who need it?

We all need help sometimes, someone to take us by the hand to throne room where there is help for the broken-hearted.

The image of the Mr. Dembele, the Policeman, lingers with me. I had a passport but he took it in hand and led me past the immigration check, the yellow-fever check point, the security scan (we beeped going through the scanner) and even out the back door onto the tarmac and into the control room where mere mortals do not go. All that was required was a word from his mouth and we were waived through.

I could not help but think of Jesus who is our high-priest and who takes us and leads us directly before the throne of God. He is there to help us and to intercede.

Thought on Medevacs – Part I

I have just arranged for my 6^th medevac – and I will clarify that as did Hamlet  - “not where I am medevacked but where I medevac someone else”. 

Needless to say at 6 medevacs, if there were a Boy Scout badge in Medevacking, I think I would have earned it by now.

I have some musings on medevacs but can not dive into them or the most recent story without jumping back to my first med-evacuation in July of 2000, back before any of us had cellphones here and the medical care available was even more basic than it is now.

The 4^th of July turned out to be less of a holiday than usual for us. One of our members here came down with a severe case of cerebral malaria, which can be fatal.  We had to arrange an emergency flight for her and her husband and two small children. They live 16 hours from Bamako by car in a town where there is no health care available.

The Mission Aviation Fellowship plane brought them in at midnight on July 4. I followed the ambulance to the best hospital here in Bamako.  The next 2 days were very frustrating as untrained SIL members sat with her and her husband round the clock to provided basic nursing care. The hospital here is a far cry from the ones back home.

On July 5, we began organizing a med-evacuation to Paris. I was on the phone all day the next day to the US, arranging things with the insurance company and her family. A gulfstream jet came that evening and took our patient and her family to a hospital in Paris, but not before we had a bit of a scare. We were at the hospital, 45 minutes before the plane was to arrive and we discovered that no ambulance had been arranged. After frantic calling, [using the pay phones, no cellphones at that time], we asked the hospital if we could use their ambulance – a beat-up station wagon, with no staff other than our own nurse. They had to call the man who drove it – he was at home. And we had to shell out money for gas. Eventually the ambulance blazed away, with me and the family following behind in a pickup – boldly weaving through oncoming traffic behind an ambulance with no siren or lights – just a horn.  We lost the ambulance at one point and figured that it was ahead of us, until it passed us from behind. We found later that it had stopped for gas!!

At the airport, we drove out onto the runway, but there was no plane! I had them drive the ambulance out to one small plane on the runway and I ran across the tarmac to see if it was the medevac plane. It wasn’t.

I felt that we should get the ambulance out of the sun and off the runway, but it would not start. We had to push-start it!  We waited for the plane which eventually came. Fortunately things went smoother in Paris, where our patient got top-notch care and eventually returned to work in Mali for several more years. 

Tomorrow: Thoughts on Medevacs Part II

“Tune our spirits, O Lord, to sing out with the sky.”

“Tune our spirits, O Lord, to sing out with the sky.”

This was part of the daily reading for October 30 in "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals"

I immediately paused and wondered why it is so hard to sing out with the sky, when I am so distracted by things here below and wrote this little poem/prayer.

Tune our spirits, O Lord, to sing out with the sky!

Why is my heart so easily turned to things below?

To earthly groans,

To the hushed oohs and aahs over the latest technology unveiled,

To the whispers of celebrity gossip,

To the harsh warbling of political posturing,

To speculations on wars and rumors of war,

To the cries of my flesh and physical cravings,

To the auto-reminders bleeping away for daily events,

To endless email discussions.

Fix my eyes on things above

That my spirit may hear the cry of your heart, God.

To sing out with the sky and leave earthly cares below, if just for a moment.

It's a constant struggle to weed out distractions and create space for me to hear God speaking. 

Counterbalances to our Natural Impulses (Disciplines)

As I have read and reflected over the past 7 months on my sabbatical journey, the spiritual disciplines keep coming up, something God is calling me back to, or in some cases, to do for the first time. As I read more about various ones, I find that they almost always seem to be a counterbalance against some aspect of our nature, which when left to itself leads us far away from God. The disciplines are like course corrections, guiding us back to center.

It might seem that without these, you will keep going straight, but our sinful natures pull us off to the left, further and further off course, without us even noticing. These disciplines pull us back to the right until we are heading straight on course again. Like a rudder they counteract the winds and currents pulling us off our heading.  

In evangelistic Christian circles, we have a tendency to question certain disciplines as being legalistic and binding. The October monthly reading in Common Prayer: A liturgy for Ordinal Radicals ( p. 462) speaks to this:

“Growing up in a legalistic Christianity” many of us have developed a suspicion a discipline and order that can lead to a pretty sloppy spirituality. Reacting against the institution’s sickness, we easily find ourselves with little to help us heal from our own wounds, create new disciplines and carve out a space where goodness triumphs. People who are afraid of spiritual discipline will not produce very good disciples.”

So here are some of the disciplines I have run across. Not an exhaustive list, and perhaps better called Practices.

[1-4 are time oriented, operating on daily, weekly, annual or even longer cycles. The other ones are not really tied to cycles in the same way]

1.      Daily prayer at set times in the day - “the office” as practiced particularly in monastic communities. As protestants, we resist scheduling times to pray, but if we don’t, we often forget. Oddly enough, we don’t have to schedule daily meal times. We just stop and eat as a matter of course. Stopping to pray at set times regardless of what else is happening reminds  me that the work I’m doing in the kingdom is not paramount. I bend the knee to something that takes priority over what contribution I happen to be making at that moment. Prayer reminds us of our dependence on God and that the real fruit comes from him, not our efforts. It’s a way that God chooses to involve us in the outcomes, even though He is sovereign. St. Igantius says, “Work as if everything depends on God and pray as if everything depended on you.”

2.     Weekly Sabbath keeping is a counterbalance to the idolatry of control through work and technology and the quick pace they bring. Sabbath keeping – it provides a detachment from the workplace, from the world’s way of doing things, from our compulsion to take things into our own hands. Or as Eugene Petersen puts it ‘a weekly housecleaning’ that allows us to enter the week “uncluttered with idols”. It “erects a weekly bastion against the commodification of time, against reducing time to money, reducing time to what we can get out of it, against leaving no time for God or beauty or anything that cannot be used or purchased. It is a defense against the hurry that desecrates time.” (Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 111)

3.      Lent is an annual time to look at our habits and weaknesses. We examine our habits and lifestyle for areas that may seem harmless but may not be and abstain from them. It is also a time to remember Christ’s suffering in the month leading up to Easter.  

4.      Pilgrimage – As mentioned, the first four disciplines take their place in daily, weekly, annual and higher cycles. Pilgrimage is on a very slow cycle, perhaps something you do only a few times in your life. It is also one that few people actually do. The book, Sacred Journey posits that pilgrimage is a counterbalance to Gnosticism, a heresy that says that the spiritual is “good” and the body and all things physical are “bad”.  Going on pilgrimage calls us away from the many aspects of our lives that we control (lodging, meals, who we interact with), to follow God where he leads us, out onto the periphery of society, rubbing shoulders with whomever, depending on the kindness of strangers, etc.  (See Journey's End, Wielding the sword for more from this book).

5.      Fasting is a way to take the focus off of things that distracts us from Jesus. In A man’s guide to the spiritual Disciplines, Partick Morley says “Fasting releases the participant from the confusion of competing voices. Your personality and temperament will affect the kinds of things that distract from your relationship with God. For me, it’s work. I’ve discovered fasting as a way to slow down my RPM’s protecting my focus on Jesus Christ.“ p. 121.

 

6.      Living in Community is a balance to living centered on self. The Benedictine monks placed a high-value on “Stability”: staying put to get somewhere. That is staying with the community of people God has called you to, rather than flitting from church to church and job to job when we come across someone or something we don’t like. If we wander from place to place, we become slaves to our wills and appetites.  God has placed us in communities and has called together “this particular constellation of people to speak and hear from each other what is needed for their mutual growth in Christlikeness.” (Monk Habits for Everyday People, Dennis Okholm, p 91)  Community forces us to practice our gifts, and roots out our selfishness, and develops character in us as we learn to love others, even the difficult ones.

7.      Lifestyle of Poverty – Intentionally living with less, sharing or having things in common. This can be a balance to our protestant work ethic and the materialism around is in the wider culture.

8.      Eucharist – The Lord’s Supper – communion. I keep bumping up against the mystery of the Eucharist, realizing its importance and reality on a level higher than just as a symbol. As someone who grew up Baptist, this is one of the disciplines we regularly do –not often enough, perhaps, but we do hold to it as a practice (ordinance) to be done as a church body.

Communion, as the name implies, is always taken in community, and thus is a counterbalance to our desire for independence, to experience God on our own terms – “just me and Jesus”.  You can’t to communion by yourself. You HAVE to have a group, and it is not even a select group of just folks you like. Everyone gets to come to the table, rich or poor.  Rob Bell calls it a “public display of solidarity wherein we come together and carry each other burdens, elbow to elbow.”

Thomas Merton talks of being “nourished by the sacraments”. What does this mean? The Eucharist seems to have a deep mystical meaning to so many, a mystical meal that nourishes us spiritually, but how? Rob Bell says it is a “time of centering ourselves on where our real strength lies. It is the center of the Christian experience, trust in Jesus crucified.”

It reminds us of Christ’s sufferings, God’s solution to our sin problem: “the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead”.

At one level, the Eucharist very obviously replaces the Passover meal, which was tied to the first covenant. Jesus established the Lord’s Supper as he ushered in the new covenant, sealed with his own sacrifice. The first meal was to be “a memorial day, keep it as a feast to the Lord, an ordinance forever”.  Exodus 12:14.  If Passover is no longer to be observed forever, then it must be only because it is superseded by this new meal.  And so we do what believers have done since that first Lord’s supper: Eat the bread, drink the cup. Receive Christ crucified.

Petersen says participating in the Eucharist “keeps our participation in salvation healthy and not just ‘our thing. It prevents salvation from “being dominated by our feeling and our projects”. (Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 170, 202). We are tempted to make salvation about what we do, but communion is not about what we do, it is just about reenacting in the meal a picture of what Christ did for us. We proclaim the Lord’s death and receive over and over again what we cannot take or perform as our own.

Finally, the Eucharist keeps Christ before us as central to salvation. Otherwise we might think of Jesus only as our Great Example, Great Teacher, or Great Hero. When we take communion, we are not receiving just ideas ABOUT Jesus, but rather receiving life from Jesus.  (Peterson, p 202).

Okay, there they are -  8 practices or disciplines, among others. Lord, grant me the grace to practice these and stay on course to destination’s end.

Journey's End, Wielding the Sword

 

On Saturday at 1 a.m., I arrived back “home” in Mali after my sabbatical journey and more normal furlough activities in the US. It is hard to say whether I feel more at home in Mali or in the US.  After 18 years or so of going back and forth, it is almost like slipping back and forth between different realities that are both valid, but very different. When you arrive in one, it’s like putting on an old comfy pair of shorts that fit nicely and feel great. It’s like you never left. And then you go to the other and pull out the clothes that go there and say, “I love the way this sweater feels on a cold day.”

But there is a real sense in which you are never QUITE at home in either one.

I’ve just finished reading a book called, “the Sacred Journey” by Charles Foster, which looks at the ancient Christian practice of pilgrimage. I kind of bought the book on a whim, since I had a few other books in that series, and was about to set off on my bike ride across Oklahoma, which I didn’t think really qualified as a pilgrimage. However, there is much in the book that has rung true with my spiritual journey this last year.

Certainly being on furlough this time was a time of travel. I counted that I had slept in 38 beds over the 8 months I was in the US. I was on the road from March to mid-july, averaging about a week in each place I stayed. My car was so full, it looked like I was someone who had lost his home and was living out of it: summer and winter clothes, two bikes (one for each leg), books, some food, tools, speaking materials. . .

A pilgrim travels light. Jesus sent his followers out two by two and tells them not to take anything for the journey. “Don’t take a walking stick, a traveler’s bag, food, money or even a change of clothes.”

My luggage, the first time I packed it!

Oops! I tend to think I live rather simply compared with what a lot of people have, but I did have to repack my bags both in Denver and in Houston because they were overweight. I ended up with a trunk, a suitcase, a duffel and a carry-on and some hefty excess baggage charges. Now that everything is all unpacked, I wonder if all I brought is really necessary.

Foster says in his book

“We ask Jesus to be realistic in the constraints of the real world. We don’t have the luxury of wandering luggage free around the world.”

Jesus replies:  ‘WHY NOT? Come. I never said it would be easy. Try my system instead. Few ever have.’ ”

Foster argues that pilgrimage helps us leave behind pain, work and the humdrum of life. “It makes us vulnerable and different. Do something heroic and completely empty ourselves. Leaving things behind and discovering things, destroying things. Vomiting out the old!”

For me, this was very much the case on my sabbatical. There was healing of pain, laying aside of work concerns and distractions, and allowing God to speak through the people and places I encountered.

On the road, there is a stripping away of the things you thought you’d need. You find you really can live with a lot less. The things you thought that were a central part of your identity end up being fripperies.

You learn to depend on other people and to accept hospitality. When you are not living somewhere – not settled, you give up a lot of control, about where and when you will sleep, what you will eat, even where you will go to church.

 Jesus was a traveler and asks us to follow him – and not just on twitter. He traveled the margins of society and mingled with the marginal.

Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is among you. Get up, get out, wake up, walk on, open your eyes. Ask for new eyes: you’ll see it if you are really looking for it… It’s on the road. I’m walking. Walk the road, too, with me. Reclaim the ability to be taken by surprise, and you’ll see it there, glistening, so brightly you will never believe you could have missed it.

The Kingdom of God “is all happening at the edges, in the forgotten places, in the places you can’t get to by car or where your auto insurers wouldn’t let you drive, among the people you’ve put out with the trash.” (Sacred Journey, p. 78).

Foster reminds us, as did Captain Jack Sparrow, that, “It’s not the destination so much as the journey.” Historically pilgrims seldom have epiphanies when they finally get to Jerusalem or Rome or wherever. “If epiphanies happen, they tend to happen in the anonymous no-man’s land en route.”

And then, eventually, you must return home, as I have. This should not be the end of the journey, but a beginning, a time to put into practice what you have learned on the road, to reintegrate that into your life and create something new and better.

RS Thomas says,  

“The point of traveling is not to arrive, but to return home laden with pollen you shall work up into the honey the mind feeds upon.” (p. 178 of Sacred Journey)

Foster tells the story of a man who was given a special sword. It disappeared suddenly and he was sent on a quest. He presumed the point of the quest was to find it, but really it was to get him to the point of asking “What am I going to use my sword for?”
Once you figure that out, THAT is why you have to go back home.

“Get up and go! Come back and wield your sword in the part of the kingdom where you can wield it best.”

This talk of wielding your sword resonates with one of my first blog posts where I wrote about my time in Dallas at the beginning of the journey. I learned that I needed to take time for myself, for reflection and contemplation and planning and rest, so that I could leverage my strengths (my sword) to serve others and advance the work in Mali.

Pray for me as I try to put into practice what I learned on the journey for the daily journey ahead.

Babylon - rejocing in or mourning her fall?

The Young Adult/Seeker class I have been attending off and on here is going through Revelations. We have some unchurched seekers in the class, which makes for some interesting questions from people taking things literally: "The four living creatures are covered with eyes. . . Are those on their t-shirts?"
"Who is the Bride of Christ?" . . . "Uh, Mary Magdalene?" (Thank you, Dan Brown).

[Just for the record, I am certainly not a scholar on the end times and don't even know if I am a pre-, post- or a-millenialist.]

This past week in Sunday school, we were in Revelations 18 which talks about the fall of Babylon. One guy said, "Now wait a minute. . . Babylon is a city and now it's a prostitute? I don't understand". I think I got the guy to understand that Babylon was like a prostitute, leading the people of the world astray.

It wasn't until later that I realized that a good way to explain Babylon in revelations was as a symbol of a system. It is not uncommon for us to do this with cities and places representing a much broader system:

• Hollywood (representing the entire entertainment industry, including films and other content made all around the world): "the evils of Hollywood" or "Hollywood is serving up a lot of good fare this summer." 
• Washington (representing the government of the United States): "Washington is out of touch with America." "Washington is destroying the economy." - Those are from a google search I just did of "Washington is"
• Wall Street (representing the stock market and wider trading system): "Wall Street needs to be reformed." We're not talking about tearing up the street and redoing it. Here's another headline I found: "Washington is annoyed at Wall Street's failure to panic".

Now what got my writing, though, was thinking about what sort of world system Babylon could actually entice all the leaders of the world and the enrich the merchants of the world while selling the rest of us on luxuries.

For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”(Rev 18:3)

Babylon can not represent a single city or even country, but rather an entire system - a multinational economic and entertainment and information system that bundles up hollywood and the cult of celebrity, the internet, google searches, multinational companies spanning the globe and often abusing people in one part of the world so we can have bottled water and ipads and chocolate and cheap goods.

11 The merchants of the world will weep and mourn for her, for there is no one left to buy their goods. 12 She bought great quantities of gold, silver, jewels, and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth; things made of fragrant thyine wood, ivory goods, and objects made of expensive wood; and bronze, iron, and marble. 13 She also bought cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses, chariots, and bodies—that is, human slaves. [e.g. Human Trafficking, and the sex trade]
14 “The fancy things you loved so much
are gone,” they cry.
“All your luxuries and splendor
are gone forever,
never to be yours again.”

But what struck me the most was that the church is called to COME OUT of Babylon, and then to REJOICE at her downfall.

4 Then I heard another voice calling from heaven,
“Come away from her, my people.
Do not take part in her sins,
or you will be punished with her.


20 Rejoice over her fate, O heaven
and people of God and apostles and prophets!
For at last God has judged her
for your sakes.

This sounds easy, of course, but what if the downfall of Babylon means all the things we have become so accustomed to are gone? 

• What if it means a massive fall of the stock market so that what is happening now looks like a boom? Will we we in the church be rejoicing or moaning and looking for economic solutions? 
• What if all those cheap goods at the "Buy More" and the "Stuff Mart" are no longer available? 
• What if the internet crashes and is gone, no more to bring us valuable information but also no more to lead us astray? (I asked THAT question in Sunday School and got a rather surprised  "What?? The Internet will be gone?" question from one guy.) 
• What if the whole transportation system breaks down and we are stuck with only what we get locally? No more lattes with Indonesian Coffee and chocolate from slave labor in Ivory Coast. 
• What if there are no more updates on Charlie Sheen,  and Justin Bieber and Brangelina on TMZ? 
• What if there are no more films out of Hollywood, no more songs out of Nashville? 
• What if my android apps are suddenly gone and your ipad suddenly non-functional? 

What then? (see this great song by Greg X. Volz entitled "What then?"

It really got me thinking whether we'd be rejoicing or mourning the fall of Babylon.

“Come away from her, my people.
Do not take part in her sins,
or you will be punished with her.  (Rev 18:4)

Parallels, or Widening Spirals

 

In much of the reading I have been doing over the past months, I have come across people saying that Jesus did X, Y and Z in the New Testament and that those things parallel A, B and C in the Old Testament part of God’s salvation story.  We miss the ties between these events because the words that screamed out a connection to those First Century readers fly past us so quickly and mean nothing to us given the cultural and historical distance. 

Think about certain phrases, places or objects today that are so loaded with baggage that just to use them sends obvious messages. Consider these situations:  

• A biography in which the main character shows up and begins his public exposure on Wall Street or at Ground Zero or in San Francisco or on Skid Row. What would the setting evoke to the readers?
• A potential but unannounced Presidential candidate shows up at Iowa State Fair. The relevance is not lost on most Americans but may be totally missed by Europeans, even those familiar with our politics.
• A musician journeys to Abbey Road to record their first album.
• A politician talks about “choice” or “life” or “big government” or the “little guy”.  We know instantly where they stand.

I often wonder how much we miss in the Bible because we miss the cultural clues. I know most of these parallel storylines have never dawned on me. It’s probably wrong to call them parallel storylines, as God’s intentionally is obvious. they are more like the same story, being looped back around again in an ever-widening spiral.  

The most famous example is made explicit by Paul in Romans 5 where Adam and Jesus are compared and contrasted.

Here are the ones I have come across so far (listed in chronological order from the Old Testament).

1. Genesis 2: God breathes on Adam to give him the breath of life and makes him a living soul. John 20:22 – Jesus (resurrected) appears to disciples, breathes on them and says “receive the Holy Spirit  (Eugene Peterson, Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 106)
2. The Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden in which Jesus was buried and resurrected. I have seen at least four authors talk about the fact that Jews had an automatic flashing of thought towards the Garden of Eden whenever the word garden was mentioned. They argue that all references to the garden locations in the gospels was intentional, to make a point.

In a garden we fell; In a garden he prayed, ‘Not my will but yours be done’. The cross has made a way so we can enter in to go back to the Garden once again. The cross has made a way. Forever I will say, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.’ (Jonathan David Helser, from the song“The Reward”.)

• In the first garden, man chose to live outside of the way God made for them to live and death entered the picture.
• Jesus was buried in the second garden and was rose again. The message is that there is a “new Adam on the scene, and he is reversing the curse of death by conquering it.. . . He’s reclaiming ccreation. He’s entering into it and restoring it and renewing God’s plan for the world.” (Rob Bell, Velvet Jesus, p. 156 – 157)

3. Jesus was stripped at his crucifixion. This parallels the genesis account of the fall, where Adam was naked and unashamed until he sinned. Jesus was shamed and stripped naked in order to free us from our sin. In this, Jesus shows the ultimate vulnerability of the defenseless. (from the Stations of the Cross)
4. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple parallels the 10 plagues of Egypt. The Plagues were not a punishment on Egypt, but rather a display of God’s sovereignty compared with Pharaoh’s lack of control over the physical world. The Jerusalem temple had become godless place, constructed by a godless King (Herod). Jesus’ sovereignty was obscured there. Pharisees recognized this as the issue when they asked, “By whose authority do you do this?” (Peterson, Christ plays in 10,000 places. p. 168)
5. Passover meal parallels Communion. An ordinary meal eaten in community the night before salvation was provided. No special food or clothes or candles. The Passover celebration took 7 days which again parallels Creation. (Peterson, p. 175)
6. Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years & Jesus temptation for 40 days. His temptation parallels Israel’s 40 years in the desert. Israel faced demons of comfort and food. Jesus faced them all. (Charles Foster: The Sacred Journey, p. 66)

Surely there are more. Feel free to suggest some.

Hagar, the Seen

So the other day I was reading through the Sacred Space daily and weekly reading. This is a great source for a contemplative liturgy, run by Irish Jesuits.
Anyway, there was a reference to Hagar from Genesis 16:1-16

Whenever I am able to pause, and allow myself a time of quiet, I can become conscious of God’s presence to me. I enter into the deepest reality of my life, where I am before the living God. This has always been the experience of people of faith. ‘You are the Living God, who sees me!’ Hagar said, for instance, out in the wilderness. She was alone, and in need, having fled away from Abraham and Sarah. But then she realised how God was close to her, and calling out to her

 I think I have always been struck by this passage. Abraham and Sarah were not willing to wait for the promised offspring and so cooked up this plan whereby Abraham would father a child by Sarah's Egyptian servant Hagar. The result is Ishmael and sudden enmity between Sarah and Hagar. Did no one foresee this? Hagar lords it over Sarah and then Sarah abuses her and she runs away.

I think what got me thinking this time is that Hagar and eventually Ishmael are out on the margins of the story. I wrote back in may about "The God who is Embarrassingly Undignified and Messy". The more I read, the more I see examples of God working in the margins.

If I were God (and thankfully for us all, I am not), I think I would have said, "Well, Abraham and Sarah really have fouled things up here. I'll fix it by giving them Isaac, and just ignore this whole side-story with Hagar and Ishmael." But instead we have God sending his angel out meet Hagar in her distress and comfort her. He said he had heard her cry of distress, and was giving her a son. Pretty impressive for a slave woman. He even blesses her and promises that her son will be a mighty nation, albeit one that will be untamed like a wild donkey and live in enmity with his brothers. Presumably since he was concerned with their sort at the very beginning, that concern lives on, a lesson to remember as we pray for Ishmael's spiritual descendants this Ramadan. (see 30-days prayer guide Aug 1-30, 2011)

It is also interesting that God doesn't alter his plan to make Abraham's child through Sarah to be a great nation that will bless all nations (Genesis 12:1-2). But He doesn't exclude this new thread and works with the people in the margins of the story. He hears and attends to their needs as well.

" Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, “You are the God who sees me.” She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?”Genesis 16:3

 Be encouraged, especially if you feel you are sitting out in the margins, that God is the One who Sees you and hears you in your distress.

Superheros, Villains and Wizards - Of Myths and Men

It's summer time and that means we have a spate of comic book movies - Green Lantern, Captain America, Thor - and related sci-fi/fantasy movies like Harry Potter. Look for people camping out for midnight screenings, grown men taking a long lunch to see them the next day, Happy Meal ties ins and soda cans emblazoned with the latest hero.

WHY are these movies are so popular? Why do the studios keep making them? Well, the obvious answer to the second question is that they consistently rake in the big bucks. But that just begs the question: Why do they resonate with us? What itch do they scratch?

Before I go on, in the interest of full disclosure, I just saw Captain America in 3D with my nephews, caught Thor earlier this year and the last Harry Potter on opening weekend. I stood in line back in the 80s for the first Batman, saw the entire Lord of the Rings franchise (in both English and French) and have Geordi La Forge figurine sitting next to my computer back in Mali. Oh, and I was walking through the Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire in 1999 with an American and a Malian when we saw a poster advertising Star Wars: Phantom Menace (right). It was not easy explaining to our Malian friend why this alternate universe was so compelling to us.


Okay, back to the question at hand. Why do these movies resonate with us? Why are they "rebooting" the Spider-Man franchise next year when they first Spider-man came out in 2002? Why do 130,000 people (in odd costumes) pack out Comic-Con, the annual comic/sci-fi convention held each year in San Diego?

I think these movies fill a basic need for mythology, which our culture is lacking. Mythology helps us probe important issues, sound out what is right and wrong, and feel our way forward in a dark and confusing time where truth has gone missing.  We are searching for real heroes.

JRR Tolkien convinced an unbelieving C.S. Lewis that Christianity was a myth, but one that "just happened to be true." As the one True Myth with its True Hero gets farther and farther from our collective consciousness, we grope for others to lead the way and settle for Captain America, Wolverine or Toby Macguire in tights.

Myths resonate with us because they mirror the story that God is telling through history, how his Son sacrificed himself to reconcile humanity to himself and usher in a new kingdom of righteousness and justice.

How many times do you see our comic book and fantasy heros sacrificing themselves for others (and then brought back to life)? Gandalf, [spoiler] Harry Potter - "the child who lived, come to die", Superman, Neo, Spock - "The good of the many outweighs the good of the one.", ET. In the Thor movie, he sacrifices himself to save earth and is brought back to life by the high god Odin, his father. 


The American culture, having come from so many others, does not have a solid mythology to call our own. Greek, Roman  and Norse mythology is too far removed to be all that relevant. Clash of the Titans, anyone?
The closest we come to is what we have inherited from the Brits: Robin Hood and King Arthur, which admittedly serve us well and are frequently revisited in both books and movies.

Still, J.R.R. Tolkien said he wrote The Lord of the Rings to "provide England with a mythology of its own".

In the American experience, we seem to have generated a mythology expressed in comic book heroes and Star Trek and Star Wars.

What does our choice of myths say about us?

• There is almost always a serious technological element that explains the supernatural side of things. Radioactive spiders, genetic experiments, wonder drugs, or computer programs creating both the villains and the heroes. In a sense, this is a useful expression of our fear of rapid technological change. In the Star Trek universe, we see the false promise of technology bringing an era of peace, a utopia (though it rarely seems to hold). 

• The hero is never perfect in these stories. He often undergoes an interior struggle between good and evil. A sort of Romans 7 conflict with the flesh. There is a temptation to use his power for selfish means. Or just to take more power to help more people. cf. Dark Spidey vs Good Spidey. There are times when we identify with Spiderman's internal battle against Dark Spidey, Bruce Wayne wanting to throw in the towel and be normal, Frodo wanting to put on the ring. Superman seems to be the most "Christ-like" of our comic heroes, and oddly enough the public has lost interest in him, possibly because he is seen as too good and not conflicted enough. (Did Smallville erase some of that? Should it have?)

• The Good guys are always very good and the villains very bad. In a sense this characterization is probably inherent in the genre, which creates prototypical symbols. That is all fine and good but in an increasingly complex, multinational world it seems so many issues are really black and white. (What if your biofuels save the planet but end up starving folks on the other side of the globe?) 
• In recent years it seems the villains have just gotten darker and darker. Compare the 1960's era TV Joker, to Jack Nicholson's Joker in 1989. Already a big shift. Then flash forward to Heath Ledger's 2008 version. 

The extreme nature of the bad guys makes it easy to build a case for justified violence. I mean if your bad guy makes Hitler look like Elmo, then of course, it's okay to use excessive force. Once you get used to that in your movies, then in real life you have to paint your enemies as villains when often the situation is a bit less clear.

• There is a tendency to wrap your hero in the flag of the country he comes from and this can add to an over the top patriotism. Captain America is OBVIOUSLY dressed up in the American flag, but I seem to recall movie posters with Superman and Spiderman draped in the flag.
• A superhero has superpowers and there is a tendency for "Might to make Right". Captain America was a good counterpoint to this where the hero was chosen because he was a weakling who had experience bullying. He ended up a pretty decent picture of the meek use of power (though that got a bit lost as the action built up). 
• Masks and dual identities. What's with that? 
• Almost all of these "universes" are based on a series of books or comics, but we still create a collective myth for Batman, or Star Trek and the fanboys will argue about whether the new plotline is "canonical" or not. Goes to show the importance we place on written texts and fidelity to them. Note the use of the word "canonical" which is normally reserved for Scripture. And before you judge too harshly, consider whether you'd score better on a test  on the Lord of the Rings or the stories in Genesis and Exodus.

Well, that's all I have on this one. Tune in next week, "same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel".