The Person of Jesus

I am beginning a study with students on the subject of the person of Jesus. Can we really know anything at all about Jesus the man? After all, nearly everything written about him has come down through the faith community, which cannot be considered an unbiased source. At the same time, modern-day skeptics who seek to discredit him and deny that he ever lived are also suspect, with as strong an agenda as members of the Christian faith community. I think that this conundrum is a good thing, because it should mean, at least, that no one should feel too smug when it comes to what we can know about Jesus. While the Gospels offer much to engender admiration and faith, they are not, properly understood, historical documents. They are testimonies of faith, handed down from oral to written tradition in the decades after his crucifixion. I am having a really productive conversation with a colleague who I think considers himself an evangelical Christian, though labels are dangerous things. I consider myself a liberal, or progressive Christian, and again, watch the labels. We sat down to discuss our views on scripture and found that we share many more points in common than at least I had thought we would. It was a pleasant surprise, and we will continue the conversation in hopes of leading our Christian students, of whatever stripe, to do the same thing. Truth is, interfaith cooperation on our campus is superior to intrafaith cooperation, at least as it pertains to the Christian community. I am looking forward to this study with students on the person of Jesus. After all, I expect to learn much from them. They are young enough to ask questions that more seasoned folks might hesitate to ask. To admit that I do not think that I can really know the person of Jesus causes me to listen to the texts more carefully, and to try to peel away the layers of tradition to seek the kernels of original thought that are there. Happily, I cannot, would not, try to do that alone, but must rely on scholars much wiser than I. Of course, I may find out that I have totally misread what is of interest to students and discover that there are few takers for this discussion, as often happens on campus. Either way, it's a good corrective for those of us who work in the faith everyday, and the rest of us who seek to live out the faith everyday. Without examining the very basic tenets of our Christian faith from time to time, we tend to remake Jesus in our own image. If anyone doubts that, just listen to the presidential candidates when they tout their religious credentials. That in and of itself should be enough to spur us on to a daily examination of not only our Christian faith, but also of our motives for believing in the first place!

A Christmas Memory

I grew up in a small town where, for whatever reasons, my church became the center of my life. I have thought about it so often, and I think of the people, the Sunday school teachers, our pastor, my scoutmaster, most of whom are gone now. It was a community where we kids were accepted as we were, and I think that is really true, because even the kids who were picked on in school were treated lovingly at the church. One of my fondest memories there is of a Christmas Eve service when I was thirteen years old. The church may have had such services for years, but this was the first that I ever attended. What made it even more special was that my whole family attended, which indeed was a rare event. The church was packed, and it seemed as if everyone was happy and radiant. At the end of the service, we sang "Silent Night" as the lights were extinguished, and I remember seeing the faces of the senior and junior choir bathed in candlelight. It was a beautiful event, and is a very warm memory. Three months later, the church was destroyed by fire, never to be rebuilt. Members of the congregation fought over the judicatory's decision not to allow us to rebuild. Within a year, the congregation split, with two-thirds of the membership founding a new church. I remained with the original congregation, even though the rest of my friends went with the breakaway group. As a result, I learned a difficult lesson about human nature. I learned that church people are human beings who are imperfect, who bicker and gossip and take sides. Years later, after I had graduated from divinity school and was serving my own churches, I learned from the man who had been our pastor at the time that we could have rebuilt the church, if only members would have agreed to install an outreach ministry in the new building, since our church lot bordered what is now known as a transitional neighborhood. But the folks in power at the time refused. And some of the most obstinate were the very people who had nurtured the members of the youth group so lovingly. Members of my extended family now attend the church that broke away, and my home church, or what was left of it, merged with another congregation in town. A parking lot now occupies the space where a church had stood for one-hundred-fifty years, with no marker or anything to indicate that a house of worship had once stood there. I was the last in a long line of youth from that church who entered the Christian ministry, and I am the last who is still serving actively. The very real and hard lessons I learned about human nature since the fire have not dimmed the mental picture I retain of the beautiful candlelight service in that gorgeous edifice, when I felt as if we were all members of one family. Truth is, we were, and remain so. That, I think, is the heart of the Christmas message: God came to earth that we all might be one. Merry Christmas.

Forgive My Rant!

I have been doing some hard thinking, so I am about to sound-off. Don't say you weren't warned. With all of the lights and sounds (tacky, for the most part) of the season around us, why is it so hard to get the attention of people who claim to follow the Christian faith, but who have little time to participate in it? Perhaps the warm weather has made it difficult for some to get into that holiday spirit that was never present at the original Christmas event, but shall forever be identified with it, thanks to Irving Berlin and White Christmas. Many of the students and faculty with whom I work are quite tired at this point in the semester. Soon, classes will end, and finals will conclude and we will all go home. Then it begins all over again next semester. Such has been the rhythm of my professional life for the past twenty-five years. I spend most of my time working with young adults, whose attention spans have been forever shortened by our electronic culture and its demand for immediate answers. Who can blame them if they have little interest in listening to the story of a man who lived, and died, long ago? Nor are they easily impressed with talk of his still being with us, though in a form not easily seen. This problem with attention span lies not only with young adults, but also with a large portion of the American church, at least. One can read voluminous material about why the old ways the church reached out are not longer relevant, and why new ways have to be adapted to the contemporary realities in which we find ourselves. I do not disagree; I have had to adapt the ways in which I relate to students, and they have changed over time. But the basic need for them to hear the story has not changed, though it is difficult to get folks to take the time to listen. And so, sometimes we pander, to young adults and older adults, enticing them with the promise of much in exchange for little demand on them. I recall asking a campus minister if he spent much time talking about the controversial issues facing our denomination, and faith, with his students. His reply was, "Well, I could do that, and have maybe forty students, or I can avoid it and have two-hundred." And that is what he chose to do. With thinking like that, is it any wonder that American Christians tend to have a theology that is skin-deep? Our Christmas message focuses on the baby, because it is easier to love a baby who never made any demands on anyone, save for his mother and father, than it is to talk about the man that baby would become, a man who made people uncomfortable for the sake of a cause greater than himself. So, we have mainline churches who have stood by their social justice-infused theology struggling to keep their doors open. And we have mega-churches that emphasize "Jesus and me" and individual salvation, instead of the salvation of all people, and they are packed to the rafters. When did the Advent season lose its punch? As it is, those who attend church during Advent see it as the season when the pastor won't allow them to sing Christmas carols as early as they would like. So, Advent is simply that annoying time, leading up to Christmas, that we have to wait out. Many folks who fill churches on Christmas Eve were not in church doing the Advent season, which helps us to make sense of the holiday. We don't like having to wait for the payoff, we want it right away. Why in the world don't people want to hear the Advent message about God "breaking into" our world so that the kingdom may come for all people? Perhaps the trouble worsened when it became legal to be a Christian. Prior to Constantine, Christians were a marginalized people who existed on the fringes of society. When Helen, Constantine's mother, made it clear to her son that she expected him to follow her into this new faith, his subsequent conversion meant that Christianity was now legal, and the oppressed became the oppressor. The closest some American Christians come to feeling persecuted is when they are criticized by others for their intolerance of persons who they believe live outside the house of faith. In America, the Christian faith and the culture wars have become almost indistinguishable from one another. Christians are the "haves" and all others are the "have nots." Well, this Christian believes that Advent is the time to shout out that business as usual is not the will of God, not according to the early witnesses of the faith. I would rather run a small campus ministry that struggles with the tough issues, than have a large one that has no idea what it means to step outside the comfort zone of spiritual security. Advent should fill us with excitement, and make us "stand on the tiptoe of expectation" as the prophet Isaiah once stated. I won't give up on my recalcitrant students, and I believe, with all of my heart, that God has not given up on us, either.

Christ the King in This Skeptical Age.

We have celebrated the Sunday of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the Christian year. The scripture, from Matthew, speaks of Christ who will be seated on high and who will separate the sheep from the goats. We spend much of our faithful lives trying to line up with the sheep, even though it's much more fun to act like a goat. The scene of that final judgment can send chills through the most ardent sheep, because it tells us that, whatever we have done to the least of God's children, we have done to God. I cannot help but think of the gathering of polarized goats we refer to as Congress. Many of the Tea Party darlings speak eloquently of "family values" while cutting programs that aid the marginalized of society. We have many on the left who chide believers as being in love with a fairy tale, and who go so far as to state, with seeming certainty, that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. How does one prove a negative, I wonder? For the record, any serious scholar worth his or her salt has studied the evidence closely and all agree that Jesus is a real person from history. Obviously, what cannot be proven is the certitude of his divinity. We live in a time when there is no real respect given to the idea of religious belief, when a sabbath day is present only in memory, and when immediate personal gratification is the order of the day. No wonder that there is no interest in hearing of a "King" of any type being a standard bearer for the faithful. It takes a lifetime, or at least, it has for this writer, to begin to understand the magnitude of what Christianity claims as its central tenet: God became human and identified with the least and the lost. What passes for Christianity in many parts of the world, and certainly in America, has little in common with that original vision. Christianity has became synonymous with winners and power brokers and people "like us." Working on college and university campuses for the past twenty-five years, I have seen the proportion of students who avail themselves of the services of the religious and spiritual life programs shrink continually. Students arrive at college with no religious "memory," that is, they have little or no experience as a part of a faith community, so why would they choose to affiliate with a program now? So, this is the situation out of which we proclaim Christ as King. Well, this writer will continue to do that, because we need the vision of a great and powerful leader who sides with the poor and dispossessed. When it comes right down to it, every one of us has felt dispossessed, even if we have not been financially poor. More and more of us are at risk of becoming financially poor, and risk falling through the cracks as social programs are cut in favor of tax cuts that curry to the wealthy and powerful. In Advent, Christians have the audacity to proclaim that a baby will be the symbol of a new world order. For a few moments, people will come together to sing carols and light candles. Meanwhile, we will be chastised for failing to spend quite enough on gifts to boost the economy, and the King will again be placed on the shelf until next year. But the image of God as loving the dispossessed will not be hidden, and it will continue to make us uncomfortable and to feel embarrassed when someone asks us if we really believe that stuff about Jesus. And the sheep and goats continue their journey along the road that meanders to the Kingdom of God.

Writer's Block, During This Time in Our History?

My posts have fallen off as of late. I have been puzzling over that fact for the past few days. Are there fewer problems in the world about which to lament? No. Are there no inspirational stories to be found in scripture? Of course not. After the October snowstorm, have we not had the most gorgeous fall weather imaginable? Yes, we have. So, what is going on in this addled brain of mine? Ah, glad you asked. I have been laboring in the field of academia for twenty-five years now, and my moods and energy levels seem to follow the rhythms of the college calendar. We are sloshing through that odd period after midterm and before finals. Thanksgiving is a mere two weeks away, and, after that, there is barely a whisper until the semester will end. Our whole family will be together at Christmas, which is indeed rare. I am in that in-between place, you see, and sometimes the ideas and originality are slow to percolate through the substrata of my inner sanctum. It's difficult, sometimes, to focus on the present when the end is in sight! However, I will offer a commentary on an event here that was not new, but that did serve to renew my flagging spirit. Our Muslim Student Association hosted an Eid - al - Adha this past Sunday evening. They opened with prayers, some corny jokes and a sincere welcome to all. Then we feasted on some of the best Indian food to be enjoyed on this side of the Atlantic. The evening was fun and the place was jam-packed with people. Imagine a large hall, filled with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus and people of no particular faith tradition. And imagine all of those people being very glad that they have come there. Well, that was our event. And it is the norm around here, and also at other campuses where we have hosted interfaith events. Though nothing in my background and formative years would have laid the foundations for an inclination towards interfaith work, it is there that I feel most useful and most fulfilled. I cannot help but feel that God rejoices as much as we do when we gather together. It should be stated clearly that interfaith gathering does not imply that we forget our differences and just celebrate an amorphous amalgamation of watered-down faith traditions so that no one is made to feel that any one tradition is on display. This gathering was for Eid - al - Adha, celebrating Abraham's offering of Ishmael for sacrifice, and God's deliverance of Ishmael before it was too late. What's that, you say, you thought it was Isaac who was offered? Well, it was, as it was Ishmael. You see, the various traditions represented at the gathering are not of one mind regarding the dramatis personae in the story. We do not try to ignore our differences, but affirm them. Truthfully, it is after midterm, and I am tired and we still have several weeks of the semester to go. But even during this strange time, I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to share in the life of this multi-faith community. My Christian faith would be so impoverished without it. God is never more real and authentic for me than when I am in the midst of a group such as I was Sunday evening. Even in the dips in energy past mid-semester, there are mountaintops that never cease to surprise and energize.

A Film You Don't Want to See, but Must!

Several months ago, my wife and I came across a documentary on HBO entitled "How to Die in Oregon." It was described as a film that follows several folks who were terminally ill as they made decisions about their care, and mode of death, some involving Oregon's "Right to Die" law. So, of course, I tuned in. The film was inspiring, shattering, heartbreaking...in other words, my kind of movie! We noticed that it then disappeared from HBO's broadcast schedule, and I could find it nowhere. On a hunch, I contacted the producer and asked it the film would be available anytime soon. Sure enough, it was to be released during the first week of October. I placed my order, the film arrived and I screened it for my death and dying class. They were quite reserved after viewing, even more than they usually are. However, one can understand their understated response in light of the emotional wallop that the film delivers. I have viewed the film three times, and have searched for every review of it that I could find. Most of the reviews have been very positive. I found a review in a conservative Christian magazine, and, as might be expected, the reviewer was lukewarm in his opinion of the film, and seemed to not be able to get past the whole idea of "death with dignity". As a result, he did not deal with the film in any meaningful way. This is evident because he does not even mention the name of a person who became the centerpiece of the film. Cody Curtis was a professional woman, a wife and mother who was given a terminal diagnosis after a recurrence of liver cancer. She and her family allowed the producer of the film into their lives during the final year of her life. Her gentle nature, honesty, and wide-eyed wonder of the illness and its unpredictable course would have been enough to insure that her image remains with a viewer for a long time. But it is the grace with which she dealt with her illness, and the love that she exemplifies for her family and friends that takes a hold and won't let go. I do not know if she professed any faith tradition, and it does not matter to me if she did, or did not. In the glimpse of her life offered in the film I saw perhaps one of the greatest examples that I have witnessed of someone giving flesh and bone to Jesus' promise that those who are poor in spirit will be truly blessed. She approached the end of her life with a dignity, humility, honesty and wisdom that are far from commonplace. I hope that during the rest of my life, and in my dying, I may remember her life and exemplify even a small portion of her grace.

Enough to Send Us Running - Isaiah 45:1 - 7

The Hebrew Bible lesson this week describes how King Cyrus, a Persian, became, for a little while, the holder of the title, "Messiah." Indeed, in Isaiah 45:1, Cyrus is referred to as "anointed one." Whoa there! How does Persia, long an enemy of Israel, get to produce a messiah? Well, think of it as "acting messiah." I work on a college campus where we have acting Deans and Directors somewhere, in some division, almost all the time. They hold the position and title while a person for the permanent position is being sought. So it was with Cyrus: he was a placeholder for the real anointed one, a port in a storm, if you will. The Israelites who had been exiled to Babylon longed to return home, at least, many of them did. Cyrus became the instrument by which God was able to accomplish that feat. I have seen the color drain from the faces of folks when I ask them if they have ever heard that the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty King  that is spoken about in Handel's "Messiah" might have been referring to King Cyrus. We are so used to projecting everything in the Hebrew Bible forward onto Jesus that we can barely entertain the idea that the writer of Isaiah may have been writing about someone else, at least in the case of chapter 45. After all, if some yahoo from Persia could get to be an instrument of God just by allowing some of the residents in a country he had just conquered to go home, then anybody anywhere at any time could have a chance to be an instrument of God. Yikes! That is about as frightening a thought as we are likely to have, ever! If God would choose to use as as instruments, it might mean that our schedules would be thrown into chaos. We like the predictability of our lives, don't we? Our routines are sacred times, and they are ingrained into us and we feel comfortable there. One need not read very far in the Hebrew Bible or New Testament until the idea that God likes to upset comfortable lives becomes readily apparent. We don't know what Cyrus thought of the whole thing, though we do know that he possessed a very healthy ego. Not long after conquering Babylon, Cyrus allowed all exiled peoples to return to their homelands.  The version of this edict on the famous Cyrus cylinder states, "I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, legitimate king, king of Babylon." However, in Isaiah's account, God's attributes are listed numerous times, with Cyrus being mentioned by name only twice. In the eyes of Isaiah, Cyrus was the actor, but God was the writer, stage manager and director. Cyrus was the icing, God was the cake. In a time in America when political egos are larger than ever, and politicians of a certain ilk are only too happy to proclaim their divine credentials, the story of King Cyrus is a cautionary tale. Cyrus was probably the most powerful guy on the planet in his day. But he gets only brief mention in the story of faith, because he was an almost accidental tourist on the itinerary of stops on the way to the coming of the Kingdom of God. What would we give to make such an impact on the lives of the faithful where we live? And why don't we make such an impact?