Called to Doubt -or- Being a Steward of Mystery

Everybody wants answers.

It feels like life would be so much easier if we had the answers.

What are the questions?

Well, ask yourself: what do you want to know?

Why is there suffering?

Why am I suffering?

Is there a God?

Will you marry me?  Do you love me?

Does God love me?

What is the reason for this pain? This tragedy?

What do I do?

What am I going to do with my life?

Where am I going to find a job?

Who is Jesus?

What will the future bring?

What happens when we die?  What will happen when I die?

Who am I?

Who are you?

All these questions and more.

If they were answered, perhaps life would be easier (though I am not so sure).

I have a question for you.  Where do you turn when you don’t know the answer?

Some say that they turn to God.  Others, when in distress--the time we “need” answers most, turn to religion...to the church.

I know a lot of parents, not having been to church for some years, bring their children to Sunday School.  When asked why the response is often, “To learn morality and good ethics.”  In other words, “I want my child to be able to answer the question, ‘What is the difference between right and wrong.’”

Answers.

So many churches (and so many pastors) see themselves as Keepers of the Answers.  It is so easy for Christians, particularly those who are strong and sure about their own beliefs, to think themselves teachers.  And who wouldn’t want to provide answers for people who are blowing in the wind, looking for something to hold on to?

But, I daresay, there are no answers in the Church.

Only questions.  

And pastors are not stewards of answers, but rather stewards of the mysteries of God.

This coming Sunday, many Christians the world over will read the same Gospel reading from Mark, the 8th chapter.  In that episode, Jesus asks the disciples: “Who do people say that I am?”  The disciples respond, “Some say Elijah, others John the Baptist, etc.”  Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?”  And the Twelve answer something to the effect of: “The Holy One of God, the Son of Man, or the Son of God.”  Now why on earth would Jesus ask these questions?  Was he concerned about what was going around about him?  Was this an impromptu opinion poll?  If it was, Jesus never did any damage control, never turned around to do a PR campaign.  And I don’t know that Jesus would have lacked confidence enough to be affected by rumors about him.  So why?  Perhaps he just wanted to start a discussion with the disciples.  He wanted to make sure that the gossip of others was not adversely and unhealthily affecting their experience of who he was, who he is.  He wanted to make sure that they believed not even necessarily him, but that they believed their own impressions and opinions of him.  He wanted them to trust themselves--ultimately to trust in the relationship.  He didn’t want them to get the answers from anywhere but their own hearts--didn’t want them to search for answers outside of their own souls, their own inner lives...where God was meeting each one of them.

If I were one of the disciples there that day, when Jesus was asking all these questions, I would have expected Jesus to come up with some answer.  I would have been disappointed when Jesus didn’t come out and say who was right and who was wrong.  I would have felt a little anxiety at the end of the interview, not knowing whether I had answered correctly or not.  Because all Jesus said that day was, “Don’t tell anybody what you have just said.  Don’t tell anybody what you believe about me.”

What?  Does that mean I am wrong?  Isn’t that the message we are out here to proclaim?  Jesus, if you have the answers, why don’t you tell us?  At least tell us who you really are so that we get the story straight.

Moses had the same experience with God.  Standing before the burning bush, God had commanded Moses to go to Egypt and free the people of Israel.  Moses said, “But who shall I say has sent me?”  God responded: “I am who I am.  I will be who I will be.”  Hardly an answer.  Each person who comes before God and hears God’s name must answer that riddle him- or herself.  The name invites us to lay hold of our own experience of God.  For God is simply (simply!) God.  And in my life, God has done this....  Today, I saw God here....  

That is what the role of the Church is: to make everyone a theologian.  To empower everyone to search for--and find words for--who God is.  The Church is not there to give answers, but to point people toward the right questions: “Who do you say that I am?”

  

Accepting answers to the hard questions in life is a tricky thing.  When we are given answers, it doesn’t go so well--usually.  But when we come to the answers on our own, our belief is firm, unshakable.  When we experience Jesus Christ first-hand, then he is a rock.  That is not to say that the experience cannot be, or should not be (at least in part) communal.  The Israelites had a solid communal grasp on who God was.  God is the one who brought us from the land of Egypt and established us in the Promised Land.  But if you read the rest of the Bible, and the Psalms in particular, you see testimonies about how God did that same kind of thing over and over again in countless lives--on large scales and small scales.

For Christians, the communal experience is: Jesus Christ died, so that our sins might be forgiven, and was raised up again so that we all have victory over death.  And so, as we evangelize, we are to be little psalmists, sharing how God has forgiven us, how God has freed us from oppression and fear and bondage and death.

More than that, we are to be stewards of the mystery of God’s action in others’ lives.  Our stories should be shared in such a way that invite people to look at their own lives, to look at themselves and ask questions: “Is God involved in my life?  Is there anything that I have needed to be forgiven for?  What got me through to where I am today?  Who can I turn to in order to make it to tomorrow?”  And so on...

Jesus is not the answer.  Jesus is the Way.  Jesus is mystery incarnate--a walking question.  How can he be both fully God and fully human?  If he is God why did he die?  Why would God use such a ridiculous and inefficient way to work on behalf of his beloved people?

And so, as Christians, we are stewards of Question.

When we claim to have THE answer, I am afraid that we are--every time, without exception--forcing idols on people.

Instead, we should be inviting people into the mystery...“I can’t explain it...‘Come and see.’”

[Don’t stop looking for answers.  Just don’t be afraid if the answers don’t come quickly.  The point is to struggle with fear and trembling.  Learning is so much more than (and more fun than) being taught.  I pray that the Holy Spirit gives you strength in your inner being as you wrestle with the sacred mysteries, as you wrestle with the Hidden God.]

God is a Workaholic -or- Labor Day and the Moral Question of Work

Labor Day Weekend is huge in Toluca, my new home.  Starting on Friday, a carnival is in town, with all sorts of rides for young people of all ages.  Bands play each night in what could be the largest single beer tent I have ever seen.  Toluca Idol, a talent contest runs dozens of local acts over the course of two nights.  A friendly water fight is held on Saturday.  The largest Bocce Ball tournament in the state of Illinois begins at 11:00am, and this year did not end until after 10:00p.m.  In daylight they play all over town.  By the end, they are playing in a lot up town under lights.  And a host of other events and activities fill the weekend.  The holiday culminates on Monday with a parade full of home-made floats, marching bands, tractors, horses--and even a semi-truck hauling a live band on a flat-bed trailer.  There is tons of food, droves of people, and a lot of fun.

I never really thought of Labor Day before, but the way Toluca celebrates made me take another look.  The holiday began in the early 1890s.  It was started by worker’s unions in New York, and spread throughout the country within a couple of years.  Labor Day was intended to mark and honor the hard work that people did every day of the year.  The kind of hard work that puts food on the table, and makes the whole country successful and prosperous.  Labor Day was a sabbath, meant for Americans to look upon their toil, and its fruits, and say: “It is good.”

A few days ago, I read an article from some periodical (I don’t remember which one because I read it online...and could you believe I can’t find it again).  It may have been a blog that asked the question: “Is work good?”  Briefly, the argument ran something like this: in the garden of Eden, humanity did not work.  After disobeying God’s only rule (don’t eat the fruit), Adam and Eve were punished, sentenced to hard labor, and then expelled from Eden.  After that fateful act, whenever Eve or one of her daughters bore a child, they would go into labor.  Meanwhile, Adam was forced to toil in the fields for food, laboring all day long for sustenance.  And so the question was asked, “Isn’t this a most un-Christian holiday?  Should Christians celebrate and rejoice over a punishment and constant reminder of their fallen state?  Etc., etc.”  

My response is simply this: Yes.  Labor Day meet and good.  Giving thanks for our labors (and the subsequent fruits) is good.  Rejoicing for such a reason is good and right, our duty and joy.

First, we need to establish the difference between punishment and consequence.  The story in Genesis 2 and 3 tries to explain why we toil, why childbirth, a natural and necessary process, is so painful.  Presumably, these things did not happen in the Garden.  The humans did not work hard for their food, but gathered it.  And childbirth probably wasn’t painless--it probably just was going to be happening.  One could guess that Adam and Eve really didn’t know how to pull off the latter.  

In eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, however, all that was about to change.  Now, I don’t know anyone that thinks it is bad to know the difference between Good and Evil.  I don’t know anyone that thinks knowledge is bad, even though knowledge always has consequences, always brings change.  Of a sudden, Adam and Eve knew they were naked.  Thus begins the road to being “fruitful and multiplying.”  

All of a sudden, we had the capacity to weigh, compare and judge.  Humans thus were forced into greater responsibility.  Perhaps God realized that now that we could decide what is good and what is bad, we could handle more, well, life.  Setting us free from the Garden, which had become too small a world for humanity, God gave us the opportunity to be co-creators.  We could help change the face of the earth--recreate the world.  Now we, too, could work six days and rest on the seventh, just as God did.  And we would have the blessed joy of looking back on each of our days, seeing the work we have done, and say “It is good.”  We would not have been satisfied in the Garden, but we are satisfied at the end of a good days work--despite the hardship of the toil.  (At least, we have the capacity to be satisfied by such a thing.)

With our new abilities, gained from the forbidden fruit, we were able now to increase the population of humans on earth.  We were given a greater share of the responsibility for keeping humankind alive on the earth.  Oh, we are more dependent upon God for life and for the continuation of the species than we think we are today, but we have more of a role in that survival than we did in the Garden.  Instead of waiting for the trees we did not plant to bear fruit to eat, we can intentionally grow plants for food.  And we learned that meat doesn’t taste half bad (when cooked)--so we started to do that, too.

Our relationship to animals changed, too, because of our knowledge.  Yes, some became more dangerous to us, since we were not protected within the Garden’s insulation.  However, some animals became trusted companions.  Remember that in the Garden Adam named all the animals, but he didn’t meet one that was anything near a companion for him.  Outside of the Garden, we were a little more open to allies who looked and behaved differently.  Because, all of a sudden, we needed help.  And so we became co-workers with animals such as oxen, mules, horses, dogs, cats, birds etc.  And we started raising (protecting, guarding, nourishing animals--as God did to us in the Garden) in order to use their eggs for food, their fleece for clothing, etc.  It is true that these relationships were not mutual.  We kept/keep some ultimately for their meat, which requires that we kill them.  Whether or not this is, in itself bad (or good), I will leave to another blogpost.  But early in the history of humanity, it was much more a part of survival, and it was not quite so brutally industrial.

So, with knowledge, our world needed to be expanded.  We grew out of the Garden, and God was a responsible enough parent to recognize it and to act accordingly.  Instead of holding us back, God propelled us out and forward.  Yes, we disobeyed by eating the fruit.  But I believe that God forgave that instantly, because forgiveness is the labor God loves most of all.  I believe that every action afterward was not a punishment, but God preparing us for the new world that was ahead.  God was telling us what it would be like out in the world--not to scare us, but to prepare us. 

I could go on, but perhaps you get my trajectory in interpreting this text.  Let me return to the main point.  Should we humans stop and celebrate the work we do?  Yes.  Our toils are not a punishment, but a duty, an honor and a joy.  Even God is proud of what we can do with knowledge of good and evil.  

The important thing is this: as we rest on Labor Day, and celebrate the hard work that we have put in to building a life, to supporting a family, to building a prosperous nation, and all of that, we must keep in mind the Good.  That is, as we celebrate our work, it is good to remember and celebrate God’s labors, too.  Because God’s work has been for us.  God created us, sustains us, forgives us, loves us (even when it is hard), equips us for all kinds of tasks, empowers us to participate in creation and creativity, and even went so far as to do the work of conquering death for us [which means that, in the end, God gave us the fruit of the Tree of Life anyway, even after setting the cherubim up to keep us from it].  

Sometimes I think that God is a workaholic.  Then I remember that even God rested and enjoyed the fruits of his labor.  If we are made in God’s image, that means that the cycle of work and rest/enjoyment is something that we should do, too.  

So every Labor Day (and more often even than that) it is good to remember and celebrate our work...and God’s labor, which makes it possible.

The work we do: it isn’t a punishment, but rather a blessing.

Thanks be to God for that.     

Respirations of Life -or- I Believe in the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life

“Spirit” is a word that is deeply rooted in the concept of breath.  In Greek, the word is pneuma, in Hebrew it is ruach.  Both have a depth of meaning: wind, breath, spirit.  At every level of meaning, however, there seems to be the common theme of movement, of life.  The Spirit of God brooded over the waters in the very beginning, when the universe was waste and void.  Was God calling forth her brood?  And God breathed life into Adam and Eve in the Garden, giving them animation--bestowing them with soul and with motivation.  In the ancient Christian baptismal rite, after the adult catechumens were brought up from the water, the bishop would puff warm breath into their noses and mouths.  It was a symbol not only of a new creation, like Adam, but it was also the giving of the Holy Spirit, which Christ first gave the disciples when he appeared to them after the resurrection.  Jesus breathed upon them, they in turn breathed upon us, and we breathe upon others, imparting the Word and the ruach of communion, love, faith, hope and joy.  

Reflecting on the biblical and ritual spirations of my faith, I examine my experience of life.  And I realize that life itself has a respiration of its own.  It is this concept that inspires the following exhalation.

“Respiration” means “to breathe again.”  It connotes a cycle, or at least it implies that something has stopped only to begin again, to begin anew.  I breathe in our oxygen/nitrogen/etc. air and breathe it out.  Then I must do the same thing all over again, which, thankfully, I do without thinking.  That next breath is the same action, and yet it is a new breath.  Life, particularly because of the way we experience time (which is a fascinating topic, destined for another blogpost), can be described in the same way: we are the same living thing, but are new every moment.  That is, every moment is new, and yet it is the same life that transpires.  

“Transpires” means “to breathe through.”  I wrote this blog, while breathing.  The writing of this blog transpired.  It has also transpired that you have read it (or at least most of it...so far).  We use the word to indicate something that has happened or that has taken place--as I have just demonstrated.  Life is a transpiration.  Not only do we breathe as we travel across the plains of our life...we breathe through life...but also we continue on in time, for the whole of our lives, as life itself is busy with respirations.

What do I mean when I say life has a respiration of its own?  I do not mean breathing here, but use the concept metaphorically.  For example, at once we are inspired to do something, to participate in some hobby or activity.  After awhile our interest in that thing expires and we leave off.  Sometimes we come back to that same activity, other times we are simply inspired to do something else.  The same can be said for relationships.  One inspiration carries a friend into our sphere of life, creating energy and wind in the atmosphere.  And life, always moving, causes that friend to travel on, perhaps as quickly as the wind brought him or her.  The Spirit gathers us and sends us.  But when either I or a friend are exhaled (ideally, the movement is mutual...correction: in the end, the parting is always mutual--it just takes some a bit longer to catch their breath), but when either I or a friend are exhaled, it does not necessarily mean that another breath does not await.  We may hold our breath in fear of rejection or change or newness, but life compels us to eventually and invariably take the next breath, which brings with it new inspirations of its own.  Oh, and how joyful a respiration when a friend enters our life again, and we realize the void that existed in the interim.  When this transpires, we wonder what powers conspire to make it so.

“Conspire” means “to breathe together.”  The word has baggage that we might as well unload, in my opinion.  Immediately, we think of villains, or at least questionable types, meeting in an enclosed space, speaking closely, so that soon the only air one can inhale consists in the rank, stagnant exhalations of the co-conspirators.  Usually what next transpires is equally foul.  But this is not always the result when people breathe together.  When we sing together, whether a song a church or Happy Birthday in restaurant or home, we end up breathing together.  Cheering at Soldier Field or shouting support at a political rally, people are breathing together.  Lovers’ sighs are a breathing together.  Two friends sitting together either in grief or joy, anxiety or peace--they breathe together.  Are not all of these conspiracies good?  At least these conspirators, I think, aspire to goodness and righteousness.  But notice!  Even within each conspiracy there is a respiration!  Yes, that happy spiration we call conversation.  In dialogue, one’s mind (one’s whole being!) becomes a lung, which inhales the breathed utterances of the other.  Once inspired by a conversation partner, that lung-mind extracts the elements it requires, and (energy renewed) exhales something new, perhaps something different.  Some minds, I regret to say, are all too frighteningly like lungs--only taking in the same things, again and again.  The closed mind is like that room where questionable personages gather closely to breathe in the same recycled air.  The open mind seeks to breathe in different air, the air of different places and lands, conspiring with all kinds of different people--even conspiring with animals.  Parenthetically, dogs are only good co-conspirators metaphorically speaking...literally not so much so...on account of dog-breath.

But let us not forget that a rich life is full of aspiration.  “Aspiration” means “to breathe to.”  In order to breathe to a thing, your face has to be pointed in that direction.  And so the first part of aspiration is vision, or more specifically, the focus of the eye (which the face must follow, and thus the head, etc.).  But it is not just the look, no, but also the movement.  Ah, now we return to the wind, the brooding, the spirit--or the will.  Our aspirations inspire us with passion, which in turn grants us motivation...animation.  And here we find another respiration: reaching for a thing, failing, reaching again, failing--each time learning, each time coming closer.  And the faster one moves toward a goal, the more and the harder one trains to accomplish that which they aspire to, the harder one breathes.  Such is the effect of movement on the body: the faster I run, the quicker and harder and deeper I breathe.  For this reason, a life full of aspiration is richer: more inhalations, more inspiration, more perspiration.  More than we expect transpires when we but begin to follow even the smallest aspiration.

Well, I am afraid that the inspiration for this post has turned into an expiration.  “Expiration” means “to breathe out.”  I am almost done breathing out all of these words and ideas.  However, that is not usually how we use the word, is it.  “Expire” is different from “exhale” since in the latter we alway expect a subsequent inhale, but the former carries with it a dread finality.  When a loved one expires, breathes out his or her last, the grief is overwhelming--invariably knocking the wind out of us.  But, when someone dies, there begins all sorts of new respirations: memories flow in and out of one’s mind, conversations eulogize the deceased, and the world inhales (or is inspired by) new generations.  Are not children a breath of fresh hope?  But that is not all.  The deceased him or herself continues on in an even greater respiration.  Different systems of belief say different things transpire: some believe that the body merely decomposes, releasing gases and nutrients which other living things inhale; some believe that the spirit of the one who died is breathed into another body living on the earth; and some believe that death is merely an exhalation...that because of the Breath of God a new inhalation always follows that final exhalation.      

In any case, life is full of respiration.

Breathe it in...

And out...

And in again...

You get the idea.

rha