Showing posts with label Who Do you say that I am?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Who Do you say that I am?. Show all posts

01 July 2013

Moving from Fear to Love: Ours is not a God Who Punishes Evil!

Today's readings speak to us in profound and very challenging ways I think. The first, which I am going to focus on here, is from Genesis 18 and recounts a dialogue between Abraham (the Father of Faith and one whose faith is counted as righteousness) and God over whether God will indeed destroy Sodom if a number of righteous people can be found there. You remember it no doubt: God has heard rumors of the tremendous evil of this city and determines he will find out for himself. If things are as bad as he has heard, then he will destroy the city and everyone therein.

Abraham, the representative of true faith, in a remarkably frank conversation with God, asks a series of questions: What if you find fifty righteous persons, will you destroy everyone? "Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?" (Remember that when God destroys evil innocence is also destroyed; the world, after all, is ambiguous and that is true of each and all of us as well.) How about 45? What about 30? 20? and so forth. In each case, God answers that he would not destroy the whole city if x or y righteous men were found therein, and even only 10 righteous persons are found there. But what is the author of Genesis really trying to say here? Is he revealing a God of vengeance whose justice is retributive and who punishes us for our evil? Is he revealing a God with whom we are called to bargain or remonstrate, a God who will be swayed by our superior reason,  or who may be cajoled into changing his mind if the case made is eloquent enough? Is he revealing a fickle and capricious God who is moved hither and yon like a reed blowing in the wind?

I think reading the text in this way would be a profound mistake. It would then become a variation on the idea that the God of Israel revealed in the OT is essentially different than the God of Christians, that, in fact, he is a God of vengeance where the God revealed by Jesus Christ is a God of mercy. But this story is not an attempt to paint a picture of a God of vengeance or retributive justice being reminded by a reasonable and faithful human being of “the bigger picture”! Instead I think the author is recounting the history of Israel and her own coming to know and reveal the real God; this history is captured or personified in Abraham's dialogue with God as more and more clearly he establishes that Yahweh is not the God who punishes evil (evil is its own punishment and carries its own consequences) nor the one who is wed to an abstract notion of justice which he upholds at the expense of the innocent. Instead Abraham's dialogue gradually reveals to us a God Israel herself slowly comes to know more fully only through her repeated experiences of God's faithfulness, mercy, and compassion. In this dialogue it is not God’s mind that is changed, but Abraham’s (Israel's) as, with questions of increasing wonder and disbelief, he tries to establish and plumb the depths of God’s mercy. It is a God for whom the concrete life of the least and the lost is more important than the most common and convincing principle of justice while the presence of the slightest bit of good is more compelling than a world full of evil. It is the God we come to know in authentic faith.

When we compare the OT and NT side by side what we really see are not two essentially different Gods, but many stories of the movement in history from distorted, inadequate, or partial images and faith to more adequate and fuller images of God and forms of faith; it is the movement from fragmentary, distorted, and partial revelations of a punitive God to the exhaustive revelation of the God of mercy in the Christ Event. The OT is the record of a People coming to be from members of many different cultures and religions --- and doing so as its members outgrow their original theologies and related anthropologies under the influence of repeated experiences of Yahweh's faithfulness, mercy, and compassion. The OT is a history of the progressive (and often inconsistent) purification of Israel's minds and hearts regarding who God is and what constitutes true religion. It is through this purification that they mature as God's own People and persons of true faith. In today's story especially we are listening to Israel slowly relinquish belief in the God who punishes evil and evil doers, the God whose justice is at war with (his) mercy and whose compassion conflicts with his need for retribution or vindication; she does this only in so far as she affirms her own deepest experiences of God and, in an attempt to resolve it, pushes the tension between these two "theological worlds" to the limits of her imagination and narrative capacity.

She has done this in other stories too. There is the story of the flood where retributive justice wars with compassion and eventually in an act of radical humility and self-emptying God "repents" and promises never to destroy the world in this way again. There is the story of the sacrifice of Isaac where Abraham's hand is stayed by God just as he is ready to plunge the knife into Isaac's chest, and where a different and acceptable sacrifice is provided by God. While this story foreshadows God's own gift of Jesus and Jesus' own sacrifice, it also originally served to proclaim an end to human sacrifice because the God of Israel was NOT a God who required retribution for evil. The God of Israel was different and had a different way of doing justice. He called for Israel to embrace a different religious practice so that they could know and serve him intimately as a light to the Nations. It is no wonder that idolatry looms so large in the failures outlined by Israel. The struggle between false gods and ideas of god and Israel's most profound experience of God's own actions in her life characterized her on every level of her existence --- personal, historical, individual, corporate.

In many ways this struggle and story reprises our own as well. After getting his disciples in touch with who OTHERS say that he is, it is not surprising that Jesus' most critical question to them is, "And you, who do YOU say that I am?" This tension and movement between what we have been told of God and who we actually know in light of our own experiences of his faithfulness, compassion, and mercy is a dominant thread in our own spiritual journeys as well.

In particular, letting go of our belief in the God who punishes evil (or sends evil to punish us!!!), our belief in the God who is the focus of a theology of fear in order to exhaustively embrace the God revealed on the Cross, the God who asserts his rights (i.e., does justice) by loving unconditionally, who sets everything right and fulfills it through forgiveness and mercy, is not an easy task. Everything militates against this; whether it is family history, grade school catechetics, punitive nuns, theologically unsophisticated preaching and writing on hell, judgment, or our own super egos, this is one bit of idolatry, one bit of "worldliness" or pagan theology that is hard to shake.

Our inability to really believe in the power of the love of God may be the real face of unbelief in our own lives and in our Church today. Like Israel however (and, through the exhaustive revelation of God in Christ) we can do it only by allowing  the non-punitive God who is Love-in-Act to truly be our Lord and Master. Each day we are called on to discern both who others say that God is, and who we ourselves say that he is. Each day we are called on to allow our own hearts and minds to be purified by the God of Jesus Christ as we experience him. Each day we are called on to become Christians who believe more and more firmly and completely in the loving God he reveals and no other --- not the God who punishes evil but the One who submits entirely to it himself, transforms and redeems it with his presence, and thus (in time) loves the world into wholeness.

22 September 2011

Who Do You Say that I Am? On the importance of Jesus' Questions

Tomorrow's readings focus on the promise of God's coming attached to his covenant with us and how it is that the fruit of that covenant so completely overshadows anything we expect or could have expected. When God reveals himself it is a surprise to us. In fact, God's self-revelation is a surprise that shakes us to the very foundations of our being. And yet, the coming of our God can be subtle, simple, exteriorly unimposing --- even a bit disappointing when we see it with something other than the eyes of faith.

In the first reading from Haggai, the new Temple, the place where heaven and earth literally meet, though still under construction, is disappointing for those who remember the old Temple and its glory. This new Temple, despite being unfinished, "seems like nothing in their eyes." And yet, Haggai tells the people in the name of the Lord, "take courage. . .for I am with you. . .my spirit continues in your midst. . . in a [little while] I will shake the heavens and the earth. . . all the nations (will be shaken). . . and I will fill this house with Glory. . . and give you peace." In that day the new Temple will be even more imposing than that of Solomon. We are not surprised that the language of this coming in fullness is the traditional language of cosmic upheaval, nor are we surprised at the fact that the Lord must counsel his people to patience. It is hard to believe in the fruit when all we hold in our hands is the seed, for instance.

In the Gospel Jesus has been praying in solitude, and he comes out to ask his disciples, "Who do the crowds say that I am?" The response is familiar, "John the Baptist;. . . Elijah,. . . one of the ancient Prophets arisen." And so it goes. Then Jesus asks the really pivotal question, "And you, who do you say that I am?" Peter replies, "You are the Christ of God." Jesus cautions the disciples not to tell anyone and then clarifies, the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the religious leaders of the day, be crucified and raised. Then others really will have to grapple with this question finding that old answers are inadequate and terms they thought they understood have been redefined. Only then will the real meaning of "the Christ of God" be revealed. Only then will the fullness of God's faithfulness and mercy be seen. Only then he will have been revealed on and in his own terms --- surprising, disappointing, and even as offensive as that may be to many.

At some point then, for this revelation to come to fullness, every one of us must answer the question Jesus posed to his disciples. It is certainly true that an important part of coming to faith is trusting in what the tradition tells us, trusting what those we love tells us, listening attentively to the stories they share which move us to faith, listening to the Scriptures as they challenge and inspire us similarly. It is critical that we reflect on the Scriptures which are God's Word in a special way for us. In other words, we must answer Jesus' first question as well: "Who do people say that I am?" However, mature faith is not built on mere information; it is not a matter of merely acting as though what these people have said is true --- though it usually begins here, and can be assisted by doing so in times of difficulty. Mature faith means allowing ourselves to be addressed, challenged, and changed by what we hear because we trust the one addressing us. One of the most powerful, though unpretentious, ways we are addressed by the Word of God is through Jesus' questions.

But what do we ordinarily do with Jesus' questions? For Jesus' questions, deceptively simple and unpretentious though they are, are those little seeds that can eventually bear great fruit, the tiny levers that can shift the very axis of our world, the trigger for the minor tremor that can grow and, in time, shake the foundations of everything built up in our lives and allow God to build something new and more glorious than the original Temple of Solomon. They are dynamite in small, plainly-wrapped packages. But before we can answer the question in tomorrow's gospel passage, we have to entertain it, and in my experience, Jesus's questions are the things we mainly ignore --- partly because we think they are addressed to someone else, partly because we remember the story instead, partly because we look for information (Jesus is the Christ, Peter answered the question this way, etc), and partly because on some level we are afraid of what would happen if we were pressed to let the question work in us and eventually be made to answer ourselves. In our own way, we tend to do as the Jews did with the new and unfinished Temple; we treat them as nothing --- insignificant and as things lacking in power or potential.

For instance, if I were to ask you how many questions Jesus asked, what would you answer? If I asked how many are recorded in the gospels what would you say? If I pressed harder and asked how many you could repeat, how would you do? And if I asked how many you had prayed with, journaled on, spoken to friends about, or been transformed by, what would your answers be? In the past several years I have only written about two of Jesus' questions --- two which I had prayed with, journaled about, etc. These two alone had changed my life: "Who do you say that I am?" and "Do you want to be well?" I could think of several others: "What did you go out into the desert to see?" "Could you not watch with me for one brief hour?" "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do as I command?" but I had never prayed with these, never treated them as addressed directly to me. Imagine my surprise when I found websites listing over 40 questions posed directly to those who would be his followers (not counting duplicates in other gospel accounts)!

As Rainer Marie Rilke once counseled a young poet, it is more important, in some ways, to "live the questions," than to simply be given and have the answer. Doing this uncovers unexamined assumptions and unexplored conclusions, shifts our perspective, triggers in our brains an explosion of creative and imaginative potential and power, breaks us out of psychological and cognitive ruts, reframes the way we see and feel about reality, allows us to get in touch with our deepest and truest selves and all we are and need, and can foster our capacity for empathy and attentiveness. Imagine then what Jesus' own questions can do when they are the vehicle for the Holy Spirit and the coming reign of God!! What comes from living with them is wholly incommensurate with their apparent simplicity and humbleness.

My prayer today is that we all might take a little more care with Jesus' questions and especially that we not dismiss them as the post-exilic Jews did with the new Temple beginnings. For us, these questions are precisely the place where heaven and earth meet, where judgment (harvest!) is accomplished, and where God is given a chance to work in and through us so that he might, if only we are patient, be fully revealed and his creation brought to completion.

Notes From Stillsong Hermitage: On the Importance of Jesus' Questions

17 February 2011

A Little Bit of Lectio: Who Do You Say that I am?


There is something startling about the second question in today's Gospel. Jesus is presented with all kinds of ideas about who people says he is, but he wants the disciples to state clearly who THEY say he is. Most people have several different answers to Jesus' first question, "Who do people say that I am?" The answers include Elijah, John the Baptist, and some of the prophets. But Jesus sharpens the question and moves from this more superficial way of knowing to the disciples own experiential or heart knowledge. He asks, "And you, who do YOU say that I am?"

I am reminded of the kinds of knowing found in last week's stories from Genesis with Adam and Eve in the Garden. As I told the third graders who attended a prayer service with us, the tree of knowledge of good and evil is not simply about knowing in our minds what is bad vs what is good. Instead the passage refers to a deeper, more intimate way of knowing good and evil, namely, deep within our selves. To "eat of this tree" is quite literally to take good and evil and the act of judging within ourselves. The way I illustrated this for 3rd graders was to ask how many of them knew what it felt like to stand on one foot for fifteen minutes. Several hands came part way up and then dropped down again. The kids knew they could imagine what it would be like, but they also saw clearly that only in doing it would they REALLY know in their muscles, memory, emotions, etc. (After the liturgy one of the adults present told me one little girl tried the whole time to stand on one foot!!)

I am also reminded of the conversation from last week between Eve and the serpent as the two of them theologize ABOUT God rather than speaking TO or WITH him. Two forms or levels of knowing, the first which is interesting and maybe even important for Eve, but which involves only a part of her being until she commits to the definition she has come to --- a definition which is not the same as God's self-revelation --- and establishes herself as estranged from God.

And finally I am reminded of my perpetual eremitical profession several years ago when I responded to the Bishop's question about what I desired in a statement which publicly claimed Jesus Christ as "Lord and Spouse" I had never used the term "Spouse" before, and never publicly! The question in Mark's Gospel, "Who do YOU say that I am?" was on my mind and heart. And at this moment, there was no call for my education in theology, no need for theologizing. Instead, I was being asked to bring my whole self before God and the assembly and ask the Church to accept this self gift in the name of Christ. Theologizing was over. Speculation had no place in this exchange. Wishfulness and indecisiveness was definitely out of line here. Instead it was time to claim that identity publicly which had been given privately many years earlier. This was my moment to answer Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?" from the knowledge I carried in my heart; I was actually surprised, and perhaps a little scared by my response.

There are all kinds of ways to avoid a genuine response to Jesus' question. Rote answers carved from creeds and catechesis are the most common. Playing it safe and refusing to answer for fear of what others will think is another common one. I answered on that day of vows, ". . . Jesus who is my Lord and Spouse" but in another situation I might as easily have responded, "You are the one who called me "little one" and who tried to coax me to drink a glass of milk in the hospital all those years ago when I was so very frightened"; and I might have continued, "you have been my elder Brother present at every bedside ever since, revealing the steadfast compassionate love of God to me." There are many other ways to answer Jesus' question in my own life. I call him Christ, and Lord, and Brother, but the content of those terms, consistent as they are with Tradition, is always partly my very own. So should all such answers to Jesus' question be, I think.

Peter apparently answers the question Jesus asks, and does so in the terms of personal experience and trust required: "You are the Christ", but when Jesus begins to redefine what being God's anointed one means in terms of suffering and death, Peter rebukes him and belies the authenticity of his own confession. Once again Divine reality conflicts with human theologizing --- and once again theologizing is estranged from the human heart and the trusting knowledge of faith. Peter even takes Jesus aside to instruct him in the truth of what the term Christ REALLY means (certainly not suffering and ignominious death!)! And Jesus' criticism is devastating: "Get behind me Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do!" He might well have said, Get behind me pseudo-theologian! You are thinking like human beings do, but I need you to know me, and claim that knowledge in a different and more exhaustive way!

The challenge of this Gospel is the same as the challenge to Adam and Eve in the garden, viz, allow God to reveal himself on his own terms. Trust in that revelation. Live from it and for it. Spend some time answering Jesus' question for yourself. He knows who the Church says he is, and what textbooks in dogmatic theology claim and expound on, but who do YOU say that he is?