Reading Ramblings – April 23, 2017

Reading Ramblings

Date: Second Sunday of Easter ~ April 23, 2017

Texts: Acts 5:29-42; Psalm 148; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

Context: Easter is not a single day but a season, eight weeks that take us to the day of Pentecost and the last major season of the Church year. The readings during the season of Easter emphasize the power stemming from Christ’s resurrection, as well as on elaborating the Easter story itself. Although the assigned Gospel for Year A in the three-year lectionary cycle is Matthew, John’s Gospel is the key one for the high holidays of the Church year, and we’ll revert to Matthew after Pentecost for the remainder of the liturgical year. Also during Easter the Old Testament readings are replaced by readings from Acts that emphasize the resurrection power unleashed in the Holy Spirit.

Acts 5:29-42 – Jesus’ crucifixion was to be the end of his preaching. No doubt the religious authorities expected his followers to disperse rapidly after his execution. But because of his resurrection, his disciples who up until that point were timid and clueless are now emboldened and articulate. Where once they feared the power of the religious authorities they now considered themselves bound to an even higher authority. Confronted with this unexpected turn of events, the Jewish leadership convenes to form a plan. It is Gamaliel who speaks to his colleagues and advises temperance. That which is not from God will flounder on its own – and history is littered with pretenders to the title of Messiah and their disappointed followers. But the true power and authority of God cannot be thwarted, and for 2000 years this has proven true as followers of Jesus Christ, based on eye-witness testimony of the resurrection, continue to share good news with those around them.

Psalm 148 – God’s creation is exhorted to praise him. The heavens and the heavenly host is first exhorted, then the objects of the sky. Next come the mighty creatures of the oceans and the very seasons themselves. Next the earth itself is summoned to praise, creatures of the earth, then the human powers of earth and finally the classes of people considered lowest – women, children and old people. God is to be praised by all of his creation for raising up a horn of salvation, a reliable and trustworthy deliverance in his promised Messiah, Jesus.

1 Peter 1:3-9 – What a beautiful description of the reality of the life of faith! Peter begins with blessing and praising God the Father as the author of the plan of salvation brought to fruition through God the Son, Jesus the Christ. Because of God the Father’s mercy, He has extended life to those who hold faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That life is characterized as a glorious inheritance, far surpassing our best conceptions of inheritances here and now that can be frittered away or destroyed. God’s faithful rejoice in his mercy and his promises despite the reality that life can be very challenging and that God’s faithful have often and regularly been singled out for persecution and destruction on account of their faith. But even in our sufferings, God’s faithful are called to rejoice, trusting that the worst of the world and our defeated enemy Satan can only inevitably be to the glory and praise of God the Father when Jesus returns in glory.

We, the faithful who have not seen Jesus resurrected in the flesh nonetheless can love him and trust him based on the faithful account of his disciples. In doing so, we give thanks to God for what He accomplishes in the faith He himself places within us – our eternal salvation.

John 20:19-31 – John continues the description of Jesus’ Easter appearances. Since Luke tells the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, John instead focuses on Easter evening and Jesus’ appearance to his worried disciples in the locked upper room. The reports are strange and hard to make sense of. Jesus has been seen alive by multiple people, men and women, in Jerusalem and beyond. Finally, the ten disciples see him for themselves, and He offers them compelling proof that He is truly alive again. They are not seeing a ghost, they are not hallucinating. They are able to touch his body, explore his wounds, and verify that it truly is him and not somebody else.

His visit is not simply cordial. He conveys to them the peace of the Holy Spirit and the essence of the Church – the declaration of forgiveness. The Church is to be the one who speaks what Jesus has accomplished, assuring individuals in repentance that their sins are truly forgiven through the death and resurrection of Jesus. While Jesus himself could forgive sins during his ministry (Matthew 9), He is free to delegate that message to his disciples and his Church.

Thomas is not present and is understandably skeptical. Despite the multiple reports of the women and the disciples, he is adamant that he will not believe unless he can see and touch for himself. His insistence on this should be comforting to those who worry that the disciples were weak-minded or easily swayed or fooled. Thomas would fit in well with our post-modern doubt of all things!

But when confronted with the resurrected Christ, Thomas is immediate in his declaration of faith and worship. He is convinced by his personal encounter with the resurrected Christ. John assures that while Thomas was blessed to receive such assurance, the eye-witness testimony of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection should be more than adequate to convince someone of the truth of the matter. The resurrection is incredible, but not beyond belief. John invites us into the same confession of faith as Thomas, to not remain doubting or dubious but to explore the evidence and to believe.

When the Lost Find

Now, I know all you folks are the right kinda parents.

One fine night, they leave the pool hall,

Headin’ for the dance at the Arm’ry!

Libertine men and Scarlet women!

And Rag-time, shameless music

That’ll grab your son and your daughter

With the arms of a jungle animal instinct!

Mass-staria!

Friends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground!

Trouble, oh we got trouble,

Right here in River City!

With a capital “T”

That rhymes with “P”

And that stands for Pool,

That stands for pool.

“Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man

 

I’ve been playing pool all of my adult life, which means countless hours spent in pool halls and bars.  I’ve seen a lot of things in those places, but there’s also a lot of things I haven’t seen, primarily because I don’t know what I’m looking at or looking for.  Pool halls and bars have earned their reputations at least in part, however, and just because I don’t see the sexual solicitations or the drug sales all the time doesn’t mean that they aren’t happening.

But there are also times when it’s pretty obvious what I’m looking  at, and then there are times when I’m reminded that I’m not seeing everything I ought to.  Not by a long shot.

I stopped in to a familiar bar with the best tables in town up the hill from my house the other day to snatch a quick few games of pool before an afternoon of meetings.  I knew a few of the guys playing there, and I quickly got my cues assembled and the balls racked and broke.  It was only after a few moments that I saw a girl I didn’t recognize chatting with one of the guys.  And as the game progressed I rapidly realized that the man was making pretty free use of her as she sat with her eyes glued to her smart phone.  Far more use than a casual acquaintance or even a good friend might, to put it diplomatically.

They disappear to his car for a few minutes and emerge in a haze of marijuana smoke and laughter.  But by this time I have to get back to the office.  I’ve packed up my cues and am on my way out of the bar, giving my regards to the guys I know and passing the couple as they re-enter the bar.  As I exit the cavern-like darkness of the bar into the blinding Central Coast sunshine, fumbling for my sunglasses,  I hear a woman calling Hey! after me.

You and I need to talk, she says as I turn in the parking lot to look back.  It’s the young woman the guy was with.  Her attire is eye-catching without being too over the top.  Faded denim jeans and a white t-shirt.  Her blond-ish hair has purple tints in it and her make-up is not light.  She’s probably in her late 20’s and the scent of her perfume alone is enough to nearly knock me unconscious.

I don’t imagine the conversation will be too long, as there can’t possibly be much to say.  Of the three guys at the pool table she was closest to, I paid her the least attention (by far!).  I assumed she just wanted to make sure I properly acknowledged her vanity, as it should have been obvious that I wasn’t interested in her services.

Are you really a priest? I mean, a real priest?   I assure her that I am, indeed, a card-carrying minister, realizing that the guy must have filled her in on that detail for some reason during their time together.  She’s taking her time now, sizing me up.  We’re blocking traffic in the parking lot so I move us out of the way.  I’m in a slight hurry, and not interested in playing around conversationally or otherwise.  But at length she asks What church?  I tell her the name and where it is.  She hasn’t heard of it.  Not surprising, I think to myself.  I start to search for a business card to give her.  My dad died a couple of months ago, and I’d like to think he’s with you.  When I look back up at her face she has tears on both cheeks that she’s wiping away.  I hope he’s with God, I respond after a stunned second.

In the bar I first saw a young woman who was so jaded in life that she didn’t care how men used her as long as they noticed her.  Then I saw a woman supporting herself with that attention and exploiting it.  What I had failed to see – in part because I didn’t want to pay too much attention to her – is someone lost.

My work in the recovery community has taught me a lot, but the one thing it has to keep teaching me over and over again is something that my faith taught me but is difficult at times to bear in mind.  People are more than the sum of their circumstances and choices.  They might be a train-wreck of addiction and crime and moral degradation, but it isn’t who they are.  It isn’t all they are.  And given the right circumstances and situations and the power of God the Holy Spirit, even the most monumental of train wrecks can be repaired.  The tracks cleared, the rubble swept away and a life of promise and possibility stretching into eternity put in place.

I hadn’t seen that with this girl.  So perhaps God the Holy Spirit sent her after me to make sure that I saw it.  I went to my car to search for a business card and brought it back to her.  By this point she was standing by a beat-up car lighting up a pipe of marijuana.  I recognized the young man in the car as someone who had been sitting at the bar earlier, and surmised it was her boss.  I handed her my card, wondering what he thought of the whole thing and realizing he probably didn’t think anything of it.  I wasn’t likely going to upset their arrangement.

I wasn’t.  I’m not.  But God the Holy Spirit, that’s another matter.  That’s a daugher of God the Father I was talking to.  That’s a woman The Son of God died and rose again for.  And while I may not want to look at her too long or bother to get involved too deeply, the Holy Spirit of God is after her.  He can do what I can’t.  He can lead her away from the pipe and the pimp and the random encounters in darkened bars in midday.  He can find the lost and lead them home and I pray that’s what happens with her.

It was a good reminder of the power and purpose of the Gospel.  One of the key reasons God gathers his people together, so that the Word might go out and reach the lost.  So that He might bring them home – the very people we don’t want to look at to closely or be seen talking to in the bright early afternoon sunlight of a busy parking lot.  It’s not a comfortable place to be, but it’s a necessary discomfort for somebody.  Perhaps even me.

 

 

 

Maundy Thursday

I was surprised when researching the history of Maundy Thursday.  I understand the idea that it is based on the Latin word for command, mandatum.  But I always assumed that this was in conjunction with the Lord’s Supper.  Jesus commands his disciples to take and eat, take and drink.  However the actual service is based on Jesus’ command in John 13:34.  And specifically, the term for this day became associated with Jesus’ demonstration of the kind of love He was commanding by washing his disciples’ feet.

This is a worthy commandment (nice of me to agree with Jesus, eh?).  It is incumbent upon all followers of Jesus to take it seriously.  But by making Maundy Thursday about this, about us and what we do to and with each other, it takes our focus off of Jesus, and that is problematic to me.  Each Gospel writer sees fit to spend a substantial portion of their account of Jesus’ ministry on his last week of ministry.  John spends five chapters alone on the evening of the Last Supper!  I can’t help but think that we are intended to look and listen to Jesus rather than look to ourselves on this night.

So I like this short essay that explains how Lutheran theology ‘hijacked’ Maundy Thursday a redirected the focus towards what Jesus gives to us – himself – rather than what we do to and for one another.

Wet Bar Wednesday – Acalpulco

It isn’t that I haven’t been drinking, I just haven’t taken the time to do anything compellingly different in a while.  However Billie kindly provided me with an amazing bottle of aged dark rum for my birthday, and it seemed only fitting to find a good use for it (other than just sipping it straight and smelling it!).  This led me to the Acapulco, which is quickly becoming a go-to alternative to the Manhattan for my wife.

As with most drinks, there are plenty of variations.  Generally the recipe calls for light rum but I used the delicious dark rum instead.  It adds a more complex, mellow tone to the drink rather than the crispness of light rum.  I think it has a similar flavor to the pisco sour, but the dark rum really adds a different tone from pisco, which is usually unaged.  (Holy cow – I just realized that I’ve never blogged about the pisco sour before!  I guess I’ll have to do that next!)

• 1.5 oz dark rum
• .75 oz Gran Marnier
• .5 oz fresh lime juice
• .5 oz simple syrup
• 1 egg white
• mint sprig for garnish

Place all the ingredients together in a shaker and shake vigorously for at least 90 seconds.  If, like me, you run out of simple syrup and just add equal parts water and granulated sugar, then you want the sugar to dissolve completely.  You also want to make sure that the egg white becomes nice and foamy and takes on the flavor of the other ingredients.  Pour the drink over ice and garnish with a sprig of mint.

This is a top shelf version of the Acapulco.  You don’t need to use Gran Marnier – most recipes just call for triple sec.  You can use white rum instead of dark – whichever you prefer.  Adjust the lime and simple syrup proportions to your particular sour/sweet preferences.  Most importantly, enjoy!

 

 

 

Interpreting Sacrifice

Kudos to this pastor for taking a stab at arguably one of the most difficult passages in the Bible – Abraham’s call to sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis 22.  I don’t know who this pastor is as his blog site has no personal data.  And I thank him for his post because he helped me to clarify some of my own struggles and responses to this passage, and together, we hopefully can help make sense of what God is doing.

Firstly, I think it’s important to clarify a few points of order.  Genesis 22 begins with the clear word to the reader/hearer that this is a test.  The reader/hearer is never under the assumption that what transpires in the following chapter is a directive of any kind from God regarding human sacrifice.  Nowhere in the Bible does God demand or even permit human sacrifice or child sacrifice.  There are plenty of passages that speak to this implicitly and explicitly (Leviticus 18:21, 27:28-29; Deuteronomy 12:31, 18:10, 2 Kings 3:27, 21:6; Jeremiah 7:31).

Secondly, though God does not want child sacrifice, we have nothing in Scripture that clearly indicates Abraham’s spiritual background.  In other words, it would be reasonable to assume that Abraham was not a lifelong follower of the Biblical God.  As such, Abraham would have been very familiar with neighboring religious practices that made use of child or human sacrifice.  The Bible indicates it was a practice among the Ammonites who worshiped Molech.  Scholars have argued that Phoenician Carthage practiced human sacrifice.  The deities from this area have been found in carved sculptures in northern Israel (Hazor), which means that possibly child sacrifice was practiced in those regions by followers of the deities Tanit and Baal Hammon.

A.R.W. Green researched this topic and reported evidence of human sacrifice throughout the Ancient Near East, including  Mesopotamia, Egypt and Syro-Palestine.  In other words, while we today would gasp in horror at this test, it would not have necessarily been such an uncommon test for Abraham.  In other words, Abraham would have been familiar with deities who demanded such things.  So this would actually be a real test – would Abraham be willing to actually give what he actually believed God might actually ask of him?  Or would He refuse?

This test would not have worked in Moses’ day – just a few hundred years later.  Thus the clear indication at the beginning of Genesis 22 that this was only a test.  Moses’ hearers would have been just as aghast and confused at God’s request as you and I, so Moses clearly prefaces the episode with the disclaimer that this is just a test.  Scripture makes it clear that God does not permit or desire such sacrifices, and therefore we don’t need to be concerned that He might ask us to do so.  Even if the “sky opened up and God’s voice boomed down”, we would do right to say no.  It’s clear that such a voice could not be God’s voice.  God might test us in other ways, but not in this one because we already know his clear will in this regard.  I would be far more concerned about the sky opening and the voice of God demanding that I give my entire IRA to someone in need.  That’s not necessarily an impossible (unBiblical) demand.  I can only pray that I would have the faith of Abraham to obey.

There is a confusion about midway in the essay as to the nature of God and his relationship to his rules.  The issue – though not raised this way in the Lutheran Pastor’s essay – centers on what makes something good, and how is God (or the gods) bound in this regard?  It’s an issue that Plato records Socrates dealing with in Euthyphro.  Is good an abstract absolute that the gods must obey, or is good something that the gods determine, and therefore subject to change at the discretion of the gods?  It seems like quite the conundrum.  The Biblical answer to this issue is that neither option is correct.  Good is not an objective absolute – a pre-existing condition to which God is bound.  Nothing pre-exists the Biblical God.  But by the same token, good is not an arbitrarily defined thing.  God doesn’t decide today that the color pink is good and the color green is evil, but then decide thousands of years later to change this.  God doesn’t have to decide what is good because God is good.  It is the definition of God himself.  God could no more command something that was evil than He could create a rock so big He couldn’t lift it.  It’s a matter of philosophical categories and not confusing them.

So God didn’t arbitrarily decide that human sacrifice was demanded of Abraham and then change his mind later.  The preface to Genesis 22 makes it clear that God never intended for Abraham to actually sacrifice Isaac to him.  But Abraham didn’t know that about God yet.

I like the way the author wraps up his essay.  He acknowledges that most of us have a limit to our faithfulness.  Would I really cash out my IRA and give it to someone else because I thought God was asking me to?  That would require a lot of faith.  I’d like to think that if I was convinced that this was definitely God speaking to me, that I would trust him enough to obey.  That’s the goal, of course.

But we all fail at times as well, so we need to focus first and foremost on what God has sacrificed in his Son Jesus, and that this sacrifice is not a moral example for me to follow, it’s actually atonement for my inability to obediently follow God’s directives in my life.  Maybe I’d be willing to cash in my IRA.  But am I willing and able to allow God to dictate my thoughts and actions every moment of the day?  Hardly.  So rather than debate about whether I could be faithful in the big things, I need to recognize that I’m not even faithful in the little things.  I don’t simply need help to be faithful in epic proportions, I need to be saved from the sin that is so much a part of me that I’m blinded to it.

So if you hear a voice from heaven telling you to sacrifice your child, don’t.  Period.  But if you hear a voice from heaven telling you to sell your house and go to a strange land?  Well, do some serious praying and talk with some brothers and sisters in the faith that you really trust.  If you really believe it’s God calling you to this, and if it doesn’t require you to abandon the vocations He’s already given you (spouse, child, etc.), then I pray you’ll have the faith to follow.  And just as importantly, that I would.

 

 

Memories and Magic

I found this article a couple of weeks back and it struck me but I’ve wanted to ponder it for a bit before posting on it.

The gist of the story is that scientists think that superstitious, magical-thinking is behind people’s attachments to personal items belonging to people who have died (or, I would argue, haven’t necessarily died but are no longer part of our lives).  The implicit assumption seems to be that if there are two identical items, then our attachment to the one shouldn’t necessarily be any stronger or different than the attachment to the other.  To reinforce this, they nickname this preference magical contagion.   This is a very materialistic understanding of reality and humanity, and very dismissive of personal attachment to memories evoked from a particular item.  Scientists assume that if two things are identical, then any preference for one over the other based on who it belonged to must be magical.

The assumption is that this is somehow illogical and irrational behavior and therefore requires an explanation.  That explanation they call social connection.  The test they run for this is rather curious, I think.  They first make a group of people feel ostracized or unwelcome in a social setting and then test to see how heavily they prefer items personally related to someone they admire.  The assumption was that the need for social acceptance caused a higher level of attachment to objects personally associated with known people.  Hence, the need for social connection is at the root of magical contagion.  The article notes that social disconnection is not the cause of magical contagion, it just intensifies the belief or need for it.

Thus, the desire to have something that belonged to someone important in some way gets disregarded as essentially irrational.

I won’t venture to assume that everybody likes to keep things that belonged to important people in their lives.  But I’ve met very few people who, when visiting their homes or talking with them don’t have some sort of memento.  These aren’t necessarily lonely people, and they certainly don’t appear irrational.

It’s tempting to make the argument that what is lacking is a spiritual dimension – that somehow an object actually owned or worn or used by someone has some bit of their essence to it, and that this would be the unstated reason why people prefer that item over an identical item without the personal association.  But I’m uncomfortable with that as it leads us slightly down the path towards an almost animist view of creation, where spiritual essences and properties are attached to most everything and we begin to revere objects for this property.  I don’t think it’s my rationalist, materialist upbringing (as a part of Western culture in the 20th and 21st centuries) that wants to discard this.  I don’t think it’s Biblical either.  Nothing in Scripture leads me to conclude that there is a spiritual essence which we pass on to objects.

I think it’s just part of human nature, by and large.  Why do I want the item from that person that they actually owned, rather than an identical one?  Because they actually owned it.  Is that rational or logical?  I can’t see the argument why it is, but certainly not from a strict materialist perspective.  What makes it special is that they owned it or wore it or purchased it.  When we see that item, it reminds us of that person.  It isn’t magical, but it’s important.  Just because you can’t quantify the why of that importance in physical terms shouldn’t denigrate it with such a pejorative term!

Reading Ramblings – April 16, 2017

Reading Ramblings

Date: Easter Sunday – April 16, 2017

Text: Exodus 14:10-31; Exodus 15:1-18; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18

Context: Easter is the center of the Christian faith. Jesus either rose from the dead as He prophesied, thereby affirming his identity as the Son of God, or his life and death have no greater meaning and purpose for us today. Some want to see Jesus as only a kind teacher, but a kind teacher doesn’t claim to be God. A more comprehensive examination of what Jesus said and did leads us to one of three conclusions. He might have been crazy – suffering from delusions of grandeur or some other form of mental illness whereby he believed himself to be divine. But that’s not a person we should follow. Jesus might also have just been thoroughly evil, knowingly lying to his followers about himself and everything else. The final option is that Jesus is who He claimed to be – the Son of God come to save us from our sins and death by offering his life sacrificially for us. The empty tomb leads us to only the third conclusion, and this leads us to celebration of the goodness of our God and his triumph on our behalf. He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Exodus 14:10-31 – The single-most formative event in the Old Testament, in terms of creating a sense of identity as the people of God is God’s rescue of his people from slavery and genocide in Israel. This victory is accomplished in stages. The first stage is actually bringing his people out from Pharaoh’s land, having decimated the Egyptians through a series of brutal plagues and demonstrations of power. But the final victory comes when God draws Pharaoh out of Egypt to pursue the Israelites with his powerful army. Few things could have been as terrifying as hearing the rumble of chariots, watching the immense dust cloud they raised advancing on the horizon. The Israelites are not warriors and are probably not very well armed. They anticipate a massacre. But God delivers his people and instead destroys their enemy. This foreshadows Christ’s victory on Easter morning, and also prepares us, his Easter people for a two-stage revelation of the fullness of God’s victory. Jesus has freed us from the power of sin and Satan and death, though we still see these enemies dangerously active and ominous on our horizon at all time. But on the day of our Lord’s return, the true victory will be obvious to everyone.

Exodus 15:1-18 – Moses and the people of God burst into song as they watch the waters cover over the powerful army of Pharaoh. God has accomplished the unimaginable – the utter defeat of the most powerful empire in the area, and the miraculous salvation of his people through the Red Sea. This song captures the haughty arrogance of Pharaoh and his glittering troops and chariots before their total and complete devastation at God’s hands. Likewise we are to praise the Lord who delivers us from our enemies and promises to bring us to his chosen place. Victory is complete already, but we anticipate witnessing the full repercussions of that victory when our Lord returns in glory and honor.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 – The Gospel, the good news of God, focuses exclusively on our Lord and his victory over the power of death and the grave. This is the first importance. We often want to turn our focus too quickly to our response to this victory, to the process of our sanctification. But sanctification is only possible when we receive the justification won for us in the death and resurrection of the Son of God. To pass too quickly by his victory and obsess about our response is to miss the Gospel. The resurrection is not incidental to the Christian faith, it is the center upon which it stands or falls. Either Jesus rose from the dead and we are saved from our sins, or He didn’t and we are still in our sin and guilt. Hundreds of people could attest to our Lord’s post-resurrection appearances. This was Paul’s message. He did not create it, he simply relayed it faithfully and it became the center of faith for those who heard it.

John 20:1-18 – John’s description of Easter morning focuses on Mary Magdalene, rather than the other ladies reported in the other gospels. This is not contradictory, but complementary. John fills us in on Mary’s particular experience which differed from what the other women experienced but was related to the same truth of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Peter and John race to the tomb to see for themselves. Mary presumed that someone had taken or moved the body, but the sight of the burial cloths on the floor of the tomb made it clear this could not be the case. Nobody would have taken a naked dead body from the tomb, taking the time to remove the burial cloths from it first. So it is that John believes that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Mary followed Peter and John back to the tomb, and as they depart she remains behind. The two disciples do not appear to have spoken to her or otherwise indicated their conclusions to her, and so she weeps under the assumption that the body has been moved or stolen. So certain of this is she that she pays no real attention to the angels. So certain is she of this that she mistakes Jesus for the gardener, hoping that perhaps he knows the whereabouts of the body and can let her know.

The details are simple but compelling. Writing many years later, they are still crisp and clear in John’s mind. It is these details, this reality, that has been the center of John’s life for decades. The tomb is empty. Jesus is risen. Reconciliation with God the Father has been accomplished. Forgiveness is delivered. Grace reigns. Where we would settle from deliverance from debt, from tyrannical government, from sickness or disease, Jesus comes to deliver us from nothing less than Satan, sin, and the grave itself. He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Re-Making Good

If you’re worried about your privacy and the security of your personal information in an interconnected, Internet world, you aren’t alone.  The man who first created the World Wide Web is also concerned.  Fortunately, unlike you and I, he’s the sort of guy who might be able to do something about it.

I Am the Resurrection

The Gospel lesson for this past Sunday was the raising of Lazarus from the dead in John 11.

While we focus on the amazing conclusion, as Lazarus steps out of the tomb alive again after four days of being dead and buried, the critical moment is much earlier, in Jesus’ discussion with Martha outside town.  In response to Jesus’ assurance that her brother Lazarus will live again, Martha responds with an affirmation in a doctrine of resurrection.  Her brother will live again on the day of the resurrection.  But Jesus corrects her doctrine slightly.  She is not, in fact, looking forward to the resurrection as a time or an event.  Rather, she should be looking forward to the resurrection of the dead as a person – the promised one of God.  That one, that Messiah or deliverer will be the source of the resurrection.

We need to bear this in mind today.  Christians are likely (or perhaps it’s just me) to treat the resurrection of the dead as a bit of doctrine associated with a time and place, an event in the life of the Church and all creation.  But more accurately, we anticipate the resurrection of the dead that will result from a person – the return of Jesus the Christ in glory.  Where Jesus is, there is life.  We see this in Lazarus in physical form, but we profess that we have life here and now through faith in Jesus Christ.  We are brought from spiritual death to spiritual life through the Holy Spirit leading us to faith in Jesus.

Our life is in a person, and our doctrine is a profession of that person, not just a dis-embodied event!

Appropriating Identity

Freud convinced us all that our identity is primarily sexual in nature.  Today we’re being programmed to believe our identity is also a matter of citizenship.

A man drowned in our city last week.  He was trying to rescue a young girl who was caught in a rip tide – a powerful current that can prevent people from making it back to shore.  The girl survived but the man in his 30’s did not.  Initial reports said the girl was his daughter.  Later reports claimed that it wasn’t.  It was a tragic situation no matter how you look at it.

But the local paper decided to look at it as a matter of citizenship, proclaiming in the headline that an ‘immigrant’ died trying to save the girl.

The article went on to talk about how the man had come to the US looking for a better life but now was dead.  Really?  This is going to be an immigration issue?

What is this supposed to make me feel?  Am I supposed to feel worse because this was an immigrant or better?  Is this supposed to make me more pro-immigration because this man accidentally died trying to save someone else, or more anti-immigration?  What is the point in turning the story this way at all?  We all know that our nation has plenty of immigrants past and present here.  That is part of our identity as a nation, part of our strength.  The issue isn’t whether or not we have immigrants or continue to have immigrants, but rather how those people arrive here and how they assimilate.  None of which has anything with a man trying to save a life and ending up dead in the process, and it’s a disgusting attempt to politicize a loss of life.

It’s further topped by my state’s ‘glorious’ march towards taking on the Federal government on immigration issues.  Our Senate passed a bill prohibiting local authorities from cooperating with Federal authorities on matters of immigration involving detained individuals.  Since the House is controlled by the same party, it will likely pass there as well before going on to the governor (of the same political party) for signature.

Ultimately, this isn’t going to help legal or illegal immigrants in our state.  It certainly isn’t going to help immigrants gain citizenship.  It’s going to hurt pretty much everyone – even our illustrious leaders.  I hope that the Federal government makes good on threats to cut Federal funding to cities and states that openly flaunt Federal law.  I hope that the cut-off of funding is painful and teaches some important lessons and not simply the idea that you should do what the Federal government tells you.

First of all, I hope it demonstrates the futility and stupidity of simply refusing to obey the law – or demand that the law not be enforced – rather than changing the laws.  The Civil Rights movement was powerful because it challenged the law and sought to change it.  People suffered the consequences of civil disobedience in order to show that the law was wrong and needed to be changed.  But to simply ignore the law and insist that nobody enforce the law?  What does that accomplish?  What victory does that gain?

Secondly, I hope it is a wake up call to people that we rely for a lot of things on the Federal government.  I may not personally think that’s a good idea but it’s a reality.  And states either need to insist on greater autonomy and figure out ways to fund it, or quit whining and complaining and fighting against the Federal government on one hand while putting their other hand out all the time for subsidies, loans, and other forms of support.  The idea that we should get the things we want without having to play by the rules is dangerously endemic in our society at the moment – at least in certain quarters.  It is equally dangerous for our political leaders to have this mindset, for the average citizen to, and for those who come here intent on living illegally.

But before any of this happens, a lot of people are going to suffer.  People who rely on programs funded in part by the Federal government.  We’re going to be told by our political leadership that this is because Trump is a mean President who is intent on causing harm.  But that’s a lie.  The truth is that it’s happening because our political leadership isn’t willing to actually do their jobs to come up with an immigration policy that works for those who wish to abide by it, and politely but firmly tells those who refuse to abide by it to leave.  Like every other country in the world does at some level or another.

Coming up with laws that work is a good situation.  Passing resolutions defying the law of the land is ultimately a cowardly cop-out for the harder work of actually sorting through and solving problems.