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lenten journal: found in translation

One of my friends from the Durham restaurant, Leonora, told me about a poetry class she has been taking at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies. The class itself doesn’t have much to do with making documentaries, which I suppose means more than anything that the folks at the CDS are mostly looking for new ways to see things, whether or not it ends up on film. In one of the exercises she described, the members of the class were given a copy of a poem in Polish. No one in the room spoke or read Polish and no translation was offered. Their assignment was to decide what the poem meant to them, making whatever associations they could. When they came back the next week, they each presented what they had written and then were given the actual translation to see what connections there might have been.

As I’ve tried to focus my heart and mind on Holy Week today, in the midst of cooking, it strikes me that Leonora’s assignment is not a pretty good metaphor for reading the Bible: we have to take the words and make our own meaning. Yes, I know there are centuries of interpreters who have preceded us and plenty of commentaries and ecclesiastical councils to tell us what we are reading, just as there was an actual translation to her poem. There are also the readings where a “new” phrase appears as something we have never seen before, no matter how many times we have read the story, or we come away with questions we’ve not asked previously because of how we came to the text. Then there are odd little moments in the story, little bits of Polish to unravel, if you will, like this one from Luke 22: 7-12:

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

“Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.

He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there.”

Jesus’ instructions carry a bit of intrigue because of the little details. When they entered the city, presumably unannounced and unscheduled, they would see a man carrying a jar of water; follow him home and ask for the guest room, which he will show you; go in and get supper ready.

Was Jesus doing some sort of Jedi Mind Trick? In a city with no running water, would there really only be one man with a water jar? And what if they had stopped for a falafel and beer on the way in; would they have missed him? How did he know the man? How did he know about the room?

My translation of the Polish in the passage is I think Jesus had friends the gospels never mentioned. We get a healthy dose of life with the disciples, with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, with Mary Magdalene, as well as the occasional contact with folks like Zacchaeus, but what we are not told is there were more folks who mattered to Jesus. There are stories we don’t know. And in these verses we get a peek at one of those people, the way you get a passing glance at someone famous driving by leaving you to wonder if you really saw who you think you saw.

What makes my translation more than recognition of an oddity is what the understanding means to me. I need to tell another story to explain. The first year I taught Honors British Literature in Winchester, there was a guy who sat silently in the back of the class most everyday. He turned in adequate work, but I could not engage him for the life of me. One day after school, I walked out to the sports fields to watch him and others in the class play lacrosse. I recognized him by his physical appearance, but there were no other connections between the kid in the back of the room and the passionate athlete on the field. After the game I went up to him to congratulate him on the win, and then I said, “I have one question. How do I get the guy who was out there on the field to come to English class?” Who I saw for my forty-five minutes a day of his life was not all of who he was, or even a reasonable facsimile.

Admittedly, I have more information about Jesus than I did about the boy in my English class, yet I think the parallel holds up. We have four fairly brief and often repetitive accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth. We’ve got a pretty good telling of his birth, nothing much about childhood or adolescence, and a whirlwind tour of his three years out on the road. John says, at the end of his gospel, that we couldn’t build a library to hold all of the stories if they were told. But they weren’t. What we have is a representative slice of the life of Jesus, and some of it in theological Polish to boot.

Which means, to me, I need to live expecting Jesus to surprise me. As many times as I have headed into Holy Week filled with intention and focus, I must be ready to caught off guard by the guy with the water pot, whom I always assumed to simply be an extra brought in to fill out the scene. The more I think about him, I begin to imagine the disciples following him home only to be invited in for tea. As they talked about Jesus wanting to use the Upper Room, the man began telling stories of who Jesus was to him: how he had spent the night in that room many times, how he had healed one of his children, how hard he laughed at the dinner table, how much he talked about his disciples.

“I’m glad to finally get to meet you,” he would say. “Jesus has told me so many stories.”

I know about the Triumphal Entry and the Last Supper and the Trial and the Cross, but even in Holy Week there were lower case events, incidental encounters that were more than filler, and that remain unexplained and untranslated: Jesus’ Polish poems.

How did you translate them?

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: palm sunday

We started on the courtyard
all waving our palm fronds
and naming them since we never
say frond except on Palm Sunday.

Before the hour was over
we moved from parade to
Passion, from courtyard
to Cross, in a couple of verses.

Tonight I watched basketball
and saw how quickly things
change, how triumph crosses
that thin line into loss.

For years, I’ve thought we
missed the point waving our
fronds in celebration, but
I think I am mistaken:

those who celebrated were
those who saw him crucified;
they were also, thank God,
those who came to the Tomb.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: more than a game

I was a sixth grader at Hubbard Heights Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas in 1967. My family was on furlough from the mission field and we were members at University Baptist Church. America was a foreign country to my brother and me. I learned that year that there were people who lived in one house their whole lives, what penny loafers were, and how to play organized basketball.

I should interject here that I am, and have always been, an amazingly average athlete. Since I was a part of Royal Ambassadors (think Southern Baptist Boy Scouts) with my friends at church and they all played basketball, I joined the team. They were good. I was not. After watching me at practice, coach kept me on the bench. But in one game where we were way ahead, he sent me in with two minutes left. I fouled out. My prowess on the basketball court has remained steady all of these years, as has my allegiance to the Boston Red Sox. 1967 was the year they played the St. Louis Cardinals to seven games, eventually losing, as they had done for many years and would do for many more.

As I got ready to go to school one morning, my dad asked me if I wanted to come home and watch the game with him. It was a time before television decided when the games started, so there were still afternoon games. He said, “Your team is in the World Series and we’re only in the States once every four years; I’ll write you a note to come home.” It remains one of the coolest things my dad ever did. I walked home and watched games and had my heart broken, like any good Red Sox fan. I grew up and went to Baylor, whose teams, traditionally, were accustomed to the near miss, which is to say they were used to coming close but not winning.

Then came November 9, 1974. Earl Campbell and the Texas Longhorns came to Baylor Stadium intending to beat us as they had done every year I had been alive and more. At half time, Texas led 24-0. Stories have been told about what Grant Teaff said to the team and legends have grown, but what we saw was a complete reversal: when the game was over, Baylor had won 34-24 and went on to win the Southwest Conference that year for the first time in fifty years. They left the scoreboard lights on all night long.

In those days, Baylor played basketball at the Heart of Texas Coliseum (that’s the HOT Coliseum to you and me), which was a rodeo arena. No one even thought about the NCAA tournament. We were not good. So to spend this weekend watching both the men and the women who play basketball at Baylor earn their way into their respective Elite Eights is as incredible as beating Earl Campbell and Friends that cool November evening. I must say, here, that the women have a winning tradition, bringing home an NCAA championship just a couple of years ago, but up until last week the men had not won a tournament game in fifty years.

My heart has been pledged to teams who have been occasional winners, if at all. This could be a year when we get a taste of new wine; it could also be another year when we come up short of that final victory. I am not used to expecting the former.

A big part of the reason my father wanted my brother and me to be active athletically was sports was the best metaphor for life for him. It was where you learned a lot of life’s lessons with less pain, he told us. Maybe he’s right. As one who was never fastest or first pick, I learned how to sit on a bench, how to share in the success that comes from what others can do. I also learned how to lose, which was an important lesson. I learned that sometimes you get to win, as well. And then I learned life isn’t life sports after all.

Even if it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game, life is not a game and our existence cannot be reduced to a competition. Well, it can, but then you end up with the ridiculous discourse spewing out of our pundits and politicians in the wake of who won and lost in the health care debate, for instance. When life is measured by victories, it becomes consumed with conquest and we end up believing what Vince Lombardi said about football, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

NO!

To be a success in sports means you have to win. After all of the great games and touching stories, after all the buzzer beaters and overtime thrillers, all that will matter is who wins the championship. Sixty-four out of sixty-five teams will have fallen short, or (as my eighth graders are consumed with saying) will have failed. The point was to win. They didn’t. There is only one winner. That’s the seminal lesson of sports.

Life is not a winner-take-all competition. I do, however, think of it as a team sport. Yes, there are those who keep score, who consider who is winning, and who foul without getting called for it. But here’s the way the writer of Hebrews talks about it:

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

Don’t win; just run. Together.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: play list

Ambition leads to the demand for the shortest path between points to gain the most in the least amount of time; wonder calls the heart to explore the unexpected, nonlinear paths that often create a new unity that could not be expected when one first began.
(from Sabbath: The Ancient Practices by Dan Allender, by way of Beth)

play list 

there is much
to be done and
I am tempted
toward efficiency
the rush for
the reward of
accomplishment
it won’t last

there is much
to be done and
I am called to
wonder wide-eyed
and open-hearted
the slow turn
toward eternity
the slow turn

like the eighth
grader dancing to
the music in her
juke box head
homework can wait
I want her play list
her abandon
there is so much

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: of prophets and pretending

Sunday morning I came into church a little late and slid into the pew beside the spouse of Carla, our Minister of Christian Education as she was gathering the children at the front for their time together. One of the things I love best about our church is the way our children are taught and encouraged to be a part of worship, and to feel that we are being taught and encouraged to welcome them. As Carla began, Lindsey nudged me and said, “Listen closely.”

Carla began asking the kids questions about various people who lead in worship treating like a quiz show, tossing out clues until the children called out the name of the person she was describing. “This person dresses up during Advent,” she began, “and comes down the aisle singing and pretending to be a prophet.”

“Milton!” they called out.

“Pretending?” I said to Lindsey. “Pretending to be a prophet? Really?” Then we had a good laugh.

As long as I have been a part of a UCC church, I’ve been singing and prophet-pretending during Advent. In fact, the first time the folks in Winchester, where Ginger had just begun as Youth Minister, saw me was when I came down the aisle singing, “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” and then declaring, “I am the prophet Isaiah and this is the word of the Lord.” I got the part, then, because I had the long hair and beard to fit the stereotype. I’ve kept the part, now at three different churches over nearly two decades, because I love doing it. Oh, yes, I’m the great pretender.

And I think I’m in good company. Beginning with Moses, none of the Prophets We Know By Name was quick to claim their pedigree. In one way or another they responded to God by saying, “Are you sure you have the right person?” God persisted through their objections, they pushed through their fear and whatever else they needed to push through, and they grew into the role. Frederick Buechner, in his book on preaching, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, likened it to the story of the man who put on a mask of a handsome face to woo the woman that he loved because he thought he was ugly. When she finally coaxed him to take it off, he face had taken on the appearance of the mask. “You can act yourself into a new way of feeling,” my first therapist told me as I began to learn to deal with my depression. Whatever God, the Cosmic Midwife, helps to birth in us doesn’t arrive fully formed. We grow. We pretend. We become. We are born again and again and again.

Nora Gallagher’s account of her process of discernment as she moved towards the Episcopal priesthood, Practicing Resurrection, is subtitled, “A Memoir of Work, Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace.” In one of the sessions she describes with her discernment committee (would that we all had one of those!), they pondered the question, “What is a prophetic priesthood?”

“I guess a prophetic priest would be someone who calls out of the people their gifts and calls the church itself into the future,” Ann replied. “Basil Meeking, the Roman Catholic bishop who preached at Dan Corrigan’s funeral, said Dan was a man who never lost hope for the future, that he was set free by hope.”

“A leadership that is too conservative and rigid is suffocating,” said Mark Benson. “And one that is too far out on the margins is too exotic and solitary. A prophetic priesthood exists between these two extremes; it would be generative and procreative.” (92)

Generative and procreative: calling us to be born again and again and again.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve painted the prophets as bearded know-it-alls, holier-than-thou curmudgeons who came to town to call for repentance even as they secretly hoped for fire and brimstone – a mean cop, a bad piano teacher, and a self-righteous television evangelist all rolled into one flaming mass of raging indignation. Maybe that’s why the talk radio and cable news channel guys get so much play. We’ve allowed ourselves to believe those who shout loudest and act like they know they’re right are who we’re supposed to listen to because they are so good at telling us what is wrong.

That’s not prophetic, it’s judgmental.

Prophets are those who imagine dry bones dancing and the rivers and trees bursting with applause. Prophets are those who are heartbroken by all that alienates us from God and from one another, those who call us to give hands and feet to our faith, those who live lives of discernment, as Gallagher defines it, “looking everywhere for traces of God.” And, in a country bent on being right and best and most powerful, prophets are those deemed either irrelevant or naïve, or even dangerous because they are looking for God in a culture where most are looking out for themselves.

One other thing: we are all called to be prophets. The guys with the books named after them stood out because they took the call of God seriously. That possibility is open to anyone who will say, “Here I am, Lord, send me.” The opportunity for any of us to live prophetically – generatively and procreatively – is right in front of us. We can be midwives to peace and civility and inclusiveness and hope and love, should we so choose to allow the Spirit to dance in our bones.

The reason we can change the world is not because we have a corner on the truth, but because we have stumbled into grace and are set free by hope.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: not normal

I started teaching at my new school just a couple of weeks before the end of the grading term, which means I needed books we could read fairly quickly. I’m also teaching eighth graders for the first time, and adjusting to younger students. When I found The Jungle Book in the supply room, I found help on both counts and, besides, we’ll get to watch Baloo sing “Bear Necessities” the last day of the term.

One of the questions I asked had to do with Mowgli, who was saved from Shere Khan, the tiger, by the Wolf Pack and raised as one of them, though he didn’t exactly fit in. Mowgli then goes back to the human village to learn what he needs to kill Shere Khan, but he didn’t fit in there either. Both groups benefited from his presence and talents, and what he could do that they could not, but he was never one of them: never normal. So I asked,

What do you think the story says about what it means “to fit in” in society? How does society benefit from those who aren’t “normal”? What problems do they cause?

One of the quieter kids in the class raised her hand for help. She pointed to the question and asked what I meant. “Do you think society benefits from people who aren’t normal?” I asked her. Her eyes got bigger and she sat up.

“Of course,” she said. “But there’s different kinds of not normal: there’s insane not normal that can be dangerous and there’s creative not normal that does cool stuff.”

“Does society make room for either one to belong?”

She didn’t answer the question out loud because she had already begun writing.

What Mowgli and Shere Khan shared “not belonging” in common. Khan began hunting on the Wolf Pack’s territory because he was lame and because it was close to the humans, who were easy prey. He arrived uninvited and put the Pack in danger of human reprisals, so they had no use for him. Mowgli was taken from his family by Shere Khan and then raised by the Pack, who gave Khan a cow in exchange. They saved the boy, and so they loved him, even though he didn’t fit in. And they let him stay until he quit acting normal. At the heart of what it meant to be the Pack was the ongoing discussion of who belonged and who did not.

The health and hope of any society depends on how they answer that question over and over. In all the flailing and fighting over health care and immigration reform, I hear the same question: whom do we take care of? At the bottom of both issues — before we talk about cost, before we divide into partisan camps, before we get lost in and frustrated by the wrangling in Washington – is the question of who belongs, who we consider part of us, or perhaps better said: how big is “us” anyway?. The underpinning echo is ominous and convicting: Cain looking up and asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

We, like him, are often too quick to assume the question is rhetorical and the answer negative. It would be too costly to think of everyone as family. But the question demands an answer in the affirmative, if we are to take our humanity seriously, not to mention our faith. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper and that means it will cost us dearly and be incredibly uncomfortable and inconvenient and we will have to learn to live beyond our differences, and perhaps beyond our means.

We’re not called to be normal.

Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. He was killed while serving Mass by a single bullet to the heart that was fired down the center aisle of his church in El Salvador. In his early life, he worked hard to be apolitical and stay clear of controversy: to be normal. When one of his friends, Father Rutillio Grande who was an activist for the poor, was killed, Romero stepped outside of normal and began to make room for everyone. In one of his sermons he said:

Do you want to know if your Christianity is genuine? Here is the touchstone: Whom do you get along with? Who are those who criticize you? Who are those who do not accept you? Who are those who flatter you?

He wasn’t speaking rhetorically either. He was paraphrasing Jesus’ words: “Blessed are you when you are persecuted for my sake.” And then there was the one about the peace makers. Listen to Romero again.

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

Peace is generosity, not silence. Here’s what we’re up against. We live in a society that is quick to ask how much it is going to cost when it comes to relief efforts in countries other than our own or universal health care, but doesn’t show the same concern when it comes to the defense budget or the cost of war. Based on who the media say we are as Americans and how we answer the poll questions they ask, what I just described is normal. But it’s not faithful. And it’s not generous. And it has little to do with practicing peace.

Micah said it boiled down to doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. Jesus said we were called to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Someone in the crowd was looking to find the appropriate boundaries for Jesus’ outlandish statement and asked, “Who is my neighbor?’

He got the story of the Good Samaritan as a response. Forget the boundaries and the propriety that comes with being normal and privileged enough to cross over to the other side of the road. Forget about staying clean and safe. Be generous. Get involved in the messy details of anyone who needs help. Change your schedule, open your wallet, unclench both your teeth and your fists.

That last paragraph sounds as though I’m talking to someone other than me. I’m not. Regardless of my rhetoric, I find it far too easy to be a normal American and to make sure I’ve got all my bases covered before I start thinking about the generosity my faith calls me to live out. I like comfortable as much as the next person. I quoted Donald Miller last night when he said, “Leaders aren’t cynical,” and I haven’t been able to shake it loose. All it takes is a radio interview with just about anyone in Congress and I’m convinced we don’t have anyone up there who can think beyond getting re-elected. (I know that ‘s not true; that’s where the cynicism kicks in.) I also know I am called (dare I say, “We”) to do more than criticize or yell loud enough to get my way.

Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

I know. It’s just not normal. I mean crazy and creative not normal. I hope I get an incurable case.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: de-cynicing myself

I began this morning with this thought from Donald Miller:

Leaders aren’t cynical.

I found this song running through my head this afternoon, from Jackson Browne:

Doctor, my eyes cannot see the skies –
is this the price for having learned how not to cry

And it’s been a long day. I’m going to sing myself to sleep with these words, from Pierce Pettis:

Half of the battle is only with myself
While the other half is something I can’t help

Lest I should stumble I try not to forget
That every hair is numbered, every footstep, every breath
And this life that I’m living it will not end in death
I’ve got a hope that is not in this world
I’ve got a hope that is not in this world

I know my words tonight are both borrowed and brief, but I will let Carolyn Arends sing me to sleep with Pierce’s words.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: here in america

Here in America

we yell at each other as though
anger were a pre-existing condition,
and diatribe an anagram of democracy;
but screaming doesn’t make it so:
louder and truer are not synonyms —
the same goes for rich and smart.

Using poetry to talk politics
is like giving a homework assignment
to a gaggle of eighth graders:
you can talk, but most aren’t listening;
it takes, therefore, the tenacity of
a middle school teacher to try . . .

because both teacher and poet
can name names: immigration is
named Hugo and José and Miriam;
health care is called Stross and Fez:
the Word becomes Flesh
and the shouting cannot put it out.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: mirror, mirror

Years ago – OK, many years ago, my father and I were at a country fair in Cleburne, Texas. We walked around, ate fried things, and I remember enjoying the evening for the way it let him tell stories of his life growing up that I had not heard before. One of the things they had there was a maze of mirrors, and he talked me into trying it. We stood outside of it for a while, because you could see in and watch the people run into walls they thought were pathways. Once I thought I had a system that would work, I paid for my ticket and entered the maze.

My plan was this: I would walk, looking only at my feet. When I saw a reflection, I would know it was not a pathway; when there was not a reflection of my shoes, then I would know the way was clear to go. Now, we were at a country fair, so this maze was actually built in some sort of double wide trailer. Dad said he watched me start through the maze and pick up steam as I became more confident in my approach. Then I zigged when I should have zagged and hit one of the mirrored panels at full steam, shaking the whole trailer. My father was still laughing hard when I made my exit some minutes later.

I thought about the hall of mirrors this afternoon as I reflected on Ginger’s sermon on the lectionary passage for the week, John 12:1-11.

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

I love that the sequence in the lectionary offers this story following that of the Prodigal Son, which shows the boy’s father to be extravagantly forgiving and celebratory at the young man’s shame-filled return. The entire chapter of Luke 15 is made up of parables portraying a ridiculously spendthrift God who is up for a forgiveness celebration at most any turn. My favorite is the middle one, which portrays God as a woman who has lost a coin and tears up the house looking for it. When she finally digs far enough into the couch cushions to collect the runaway change, she blows all of her next week’s grocery budget throwing a party to celebrate.

That’s the extravagant-over-the-top-I’m-here-for-the-party love of God.

Enter Mary, kneeling before Jesus and pouring out a pound of perfume (nard) on his feet and then wiping them with her hair. From what I could find out, nard was something that came from the Far East and was ridiculously expensive, not to mention potent. She poured enough perfume on his feet to fill the entire neighborhood with her fragrance of love, and then she used her hair as a towel. Everything about the scene is over the top and a wonderful incarnation of the Love she knew had saved her.

Judas inserts himself into the story with a tone not unlike the Older Brother in the Prodigal parable. He can’t smell the perfume for the price. Why didn’t she sell the perfume and give the money to the poor? How could she justify that kind of extravagance? And Jesus told him there would be time to do things for the poor; she was making her best offering now.

Ginger did a great job of challenging our sense of extravagant gratitude, or lack thereof. As a committed, well-intentioned, social justice oriented, liberal Christian church, we are good at working and caring, and even giving, but extravagance doesn’t come easily. Ginger put it in terms that hit home. Imagine, she said, you had worked to save $2000 to give to the homeless and you found out someone close to you was dying and wanted to go to the Grand Canyon before he or she died. Would you spend the money to take the trip? If we follow Mary’s example (and Jesus’ as well), she said, we would take the trip and then start working on saving another $2000 for the homeless when we got back.

I got it. Don’t let Judas’ judgmentalism become a characteristic of my life.

Here’s where the mirrors came to mind. One of the things that has always intrigued me about the Gospels is they was they talk about Judas. It becomes readily apparent all four were written after the fact because they work hard to make sure you know Judas was a bastard from the beginning. In this account, John makes no bones about pointing out the villain:

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

BAM! The mirror hits me in the face in one of those the-only-people-I’m-prejudiced-against-are-prejudiced-people kind of moments. Even as the story points Judas out as the sinfully judgmental one, it judges him. Their grief at his betrayal of Jesus in Gethsemane never allowed them to look at why he made the choices he made, or what was happening in his heart. He was a liar and a thief. Let’s all make sure we spit every time we say his name.

And I feel as though that leaves me to choose between Jesus being a terrible judge of character in choosing him, or choosing him because they needed a bad guy to make the whole crucifixion thing work out. I don’t buy either one. None of us is that simple to explain. Who knows why Judas said what he did about Mary. We don’t know his story other than what we’re told. We do know he tried to return the thirty pieces of silver after he saw what happened to Jesus and, when they wouldn’t take the money, he killed himself. His remorse doesn’t sound much different than that of the Prodigal Son coming back home, yet Judas found no one waiting to forgive him.

Shakespeare’s plays are divided into comedies and tragedies. The difference, it was explained to me, is the plot lines are basically the same except everyone ends up getting married in the comedies and everyone ends up dying in the tragedies. The Prodigal came home to a party. Mary found love enough to give her the freedom to respond with extravagant gratitude. And Judas ended up dead and alone, even though he heard the same stories and saw the same things Mary and the others did.

I’m not sure how to get out of this one. I look into the faces of everyone in the story and I see a mirrored reflection of myself.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: random thoughts

Thanks to a link from a friend, I sat down to these words after watching my NCAA Men’s Basketball Bracket go bust, thanks to the upsets of the day:

The world is a confusing place. Correlation looks like causation; the signal sounds like the noise; randomness is everywhere. This raises the obvious question: How does the human brain cope with such an epistemic mess? How do we deal with the helter-skelter of reality? One approach would be to ground all of our beliefs in modesty and uncertainty, to recognize that we know so little and understand even less.

Needless to say, that’s not what we do. Instead of grappling with the problem of induction, we believe in God.

In the midst of the randomness that saw my alma mater, the Baylor Bears, win their second game in as many days, after a sixty year drought, I wished for my friend David, who died three months ago by accident and who have been hollering loud enough for me to hear him from Austin. The randomness of Facebook keeps telling me to write on his wall, and I do. I was not the only one who made a comment this evening. Thinking of David took me to another passage from Nora Gallagher’s book, Practicing Resurrection, where she writes about her brother’s death and her grief. She also quotes a friend who is also acquainted with grief and trying to come to terms with the presence of the absence of his loved one.

Mark called me later and said, “While I was hiking up Tunnel Trail, I was thinking about what we talked about and I realized that I needed back then for the priest to enter into poetry because that is where Phil is. He could have said, ‘Well, Phil is at the zoo now.’ Something that would clearly express the fact that he is gone, no longer literal, not here, not visible, but not absent, not without influence, not dead. The problem with the priest’s response was that it was literal, and Phil is not literal anymore! That’s why poetry and art are so important, because that’s where he is. 

“And to go on preaching my little sermonette here, that’s what ails Christianity, this literalness, this imprisonment with the facts of history. When it becomes this, with the insistence on historical authenticity and whether the water really became wine and Jesus literally being raised from the dead, then it loses its whole point, which is to show me where Phil is and to show us how to relate to the earth and be comfortable with mystery.” (67)

My day began with the third of four Saturday morning meetings o a group of us from church are studying the Book of Job. I was interested to find, when I began doing background reading for our study, that most of Job is considered a poem. The early couple of chapters, when God and Satan are deciding what can be done to the man, and the closing chapters, when God speaks, create a prose frame for the poetry of the cycle of advice from Job’s three friends, though their words are not particularly poetic. At one point in our reading today, Job responded,

I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking? (16:2, 3)

When it comes to the reality and randomness of life and grief and suffering, those of us around the table this morning were a well-informed group. If I were to make a list of the pain each one knows or has known and the losses they carry, it would not be hard to prove they understand Job’s suffering on an experiential level. Our discussion was not theoretical. As we talked about the conversation between Job and his friends, we realized they were trying to describe the moral order of the world, to find an explanation for why things work like they do. Somewhere, almost in our DNA it seems, we want to begin that explanation with the idea that good lives are rewarded with good things and evil lives have hell to pay, even though a quick read of the Bible or an evening with the Coen Brothers’ movie of your choice will let you know the universe doesn’t fit into that system. Still, like Job’s friends, we stick with it and end up deciding we must all be bad because we are all suffering, or our God is a violent God.

Neither explanation offers much in the way of poetry or promise. As we talked around the table, what emerged for me was a reminder that experience has more in common with poetry than explanation; and grace is poetry, as is suffering, in its own way. We don’t deserve either, yet they both show up without reason or explanation. And in that spirit, a couple of chapters later, Job says,

O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

In a random act of basketball, the Baylor Bears won tonight and made me miss my friend David even more. It makes no sense at all for him to not be here. There is not an adequate explanation, period. There is, however, poetry – in the sharing of Communion, in the telling of stories, in the laughter my heart hears when I picture him watching the game at a little pub somewhere in heaven — words full of meaning and mystery that explain nothing and call me to Love.

And so I offer W. S. Merwin’s “Listen” (which I have offered before) because the wind in his words carries the breeze of the Spirit.

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.

Thanks.

Peace,
Milton