The news is filled with scandal, pain, sin. What does it mean to see the church so lost, priests molesting children, superiors secreting them in their brokenness, passing along suffering in place of healing, corruption abounding? For many, the news about the Roman church is another chapter in the neverending story of human perversion, greed and dishonesty. But an important, perhaps the important story, is muted beneath the hubub about sexual orientation and clerical marriage. Like all things of this world, outrage and disgust conceal the deeper and more important truths, the fine meaning behind acts and events and words that change lives, that changes the world.
For while much will be spoken and written over sinful priests in the church, little will be said about the real captivity of Rome, the imprisonment to a simple but enduring word: Infallibility.
Infallibility is the belief system that multiplies tragedy into catastrophe; turns shortsightedness into blindness. It is the simplest, meanest, most popular and destructive mistake in all of human thinking. It runs the world.
It runs the world away from God.
From its birth, the Roman church has founded itself on such a principle, on the belief that the Lord endowed his disciple Peter with particular powers, ordained in his successors. It is what makes the Roman church the Roman church, the absolute trust in the God-granted authority of its words and deeds, and of the men who speak and make them.
To be infallible is to be trustworthy in classic Catholic theology. It influences and locates the laity of the church, it colors and shapes every doctrine, teaching and act of the priesthood.
It is the church’s great blindness.
Infallibility means that the work of God cannot be done by an ordinary human being, and so contrives to transfer divinity to a place where it can never fully reside. Infallibility is a system built on a lie which produces nothing but wrong.
For the sake of fairness, let us know that infallibility is not the sole provenance of the Roman church. It dwells wherever men place final significance in fixed things. It’s consequence is inanity, cruelty, death. Infallibility confuses the text with the truth, leading people to believe, for example, absurdities like humans living with dinosaurs, as if the Flintstones was a Discovery Channel special and not an after-school cartoon. Infallibility confuses lust with love, destroying families and communities. Infallibility confuses free market principles with greed at all cost, breeding obscene wealth and decadent poverty, loss of justice and economic disaster.
And so it goes. Confusing humans with saints preserves a system that cannot bear the truth, until it casts off victims and coddles criminals.
But the true loss is not merely of the world. It is the loss of faith.
Grace draws its power from very fallibility. It is the real brokenness of this world, the humanness of person and text and shortcoming and even sin that breathes life into God’s promise, the resurrects sinners, that infuses days with joy, that incarnates hope. God does not send grace to remove humanity, but to renew it. Faith calls us to trust solely and completely this one promise, in his promise and not our own, to walk always humbly and fearfully of what we could do, dependent on what he will do.
Grace is a promise that comes to fallible people.
But when Jesus heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
that April 20 could be a New National Holiday
It is not an anniversary worth celebrating.
Waco. Columbine. Oklahoma City. A group calling themselves “Hutaree” is in jail in Michigan, or there would probably be another ignominious name to add to the list this year. A day more of infamy than anything else, and if not for the sorrows of many victims, it would be a day well worth forgetting.
Which is why it is an anniversary worth remembering.
Anger is the most underappreciated of all human phenomenon. St. Paul says “Be angry, but do not sin.” (Ephesians 4:26). Of course, he also thinks that wives should follow their husbands and husbands should love their wives like Christ loves us, so his objectivity is questionable, to say the least. In fact, a few verses later, he suggests that we just “put away … all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving …” (Ephesians 4:31-2). As if he heard what he was actually saying and thought better of it, too.
A prominent TV commentator says that God has called him to stand, “peacefully, quietly, with anger.” With what? Anger? How does that work? It’s far too clever by half, as my Grandpa used to say. Most of the angry people I see are neither peaceful nor quiet. They are everything but. Since when did peaceful and angry decide to not be opposites anymore? I didn’t get that memo. What new dictionary are we reading today? Or is there something else afoot? Should we now declare anger a Godly aspiration? Do we need more anger?
No, we have far too much anger I think.
Anger is a tool. A dangerous tool. Fear is the great motivator for otherwise ignorant masses, and anger is fear with an outward bend, fear in search of a scapegoat, of release. Anger provides the convenience of an enemy, a deception that salves failure with violence, replaces hope with passion, and explodes on the lives of the other for the preservation of the lowest, basest part of me. Manipulated by fear, cast down on my anger, I am Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, I am Tim McVeigh.
In the hands of the devil, anger is the crucifixion of Christ all over again.
But in the hands of another? Oh!
Anger could be a different tool. Anger bent introspectively is humility, self-awareness, perhaps even change. Anger felt in truth, about truth, fashioned by truth, refines, distills and purifies life, it clarifies judgment, propels determination.
And that anger is in much short supply.
Perhaps we could enshrine a National Day of a new anger and ritualize a new truth – that we are the force of destruction and death that we fear most, that we are the enemy of our freedom and well-being. Perhaps a new national holiday of anger could be used to attack the foes that deserve our anger, the poverty, despair, pain and greed that are sucking the life out of our community.
A day of a new anger, directed not at the end of what is so much as driving us to the hard work of what ought to be.
Imagine capturing the energy of all of our hatred and building something instead of blowing it up, nurturing life instead of taking it, finding and taking new paths instead of burying each other on old ones. Picture a righteous anger that is not conceived in falsehood nor which leads not to sin, but a sacrificial anger, a cleansing anger, a fragrant offering of an anger. Imagine if we saw the world as it truly is, as God sees it, a world birthed and renewed and spirited in love. Can we know the distance between what we are doing and what we have been called to do?
Maybe if we were angry enough we could do something about it.
And that would be an anniversary worth celebrating.
Waco. Columbine. Oklahoma City. A group calling themselves “Hutaree” is in jail in Michigan, or there would probably be another ignominious name to add to the list this year. A day more of infamy than anything else, and if not for the sorrows of many victims, it would be a day well worth forgetting.
Which is why it is an anniversary worth remembering.
Anger is the most underappreciated of all human phenomenon. St. Paul says “Be angry, but do not sin.” (Ephesians 4:26). Of course, he also thinks that wives should follow their husbands and husbands should love their wives like Christ loves us, so his objectivity is questionable, to say the least. In fact, a few verses later, he suggests that we just “put away … all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving …” (Ephesians 4:31-2). As if he heard what he was actually saying and thought better of it, too.
A prominent TV commentator says that God has called him to stand, “peacefully, quietly, with anger.” With what? Anger? How does that work? It’s far too clever by half, as my Grandpa used to say. Most of the angry people I see are neither peaceful nor quiet. They are everything but. Since when did peaceful and angry decide to not be opposites anymore? I didn’t get that memo. What new dictionary are we reading today? Or is there something else afoot? Should we now declare anger a Godly aspiration? Do we need more anger?
No, we have far too much anger I think.
Anger is a tool. A dangerous tool. Fear is the great motivator for otherwise ignorant masses, and anger is fear with an outward bend, fear in search of a scapegoat, of release. Anger provides the convenience of an enemy, a deception that salves failure with violence, replaces hope with passion, and explodes on the lives of the other for the preservation of the lowest, basest part of me. Manipulated by fear, cast down on my anger, I am Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, I am Tim McVeigh.
In the hands of the devil, anger is the crucifixion of Christ all over again.
But in the hands of another? Oh!
Anger could be a different tool. Anger bent introspectively is humility, self-awareness, perhaps even change. Anger felt in truth, about truth, fashioned by truth, refines, distills and purifies life, it clarifies judgment, propels determination.
And that anger is in much short supply.
Perhaps we could enshrine a National Day of a new anger and ritualize a new truth – that we are the force of destruction and death that we fear most, that we are the enemy of our freedom and well-being. Perhaps a new national holiday of anger could be used to attack the foes that deserve our anger, the poverty, despair, pain and greed that are sucking the life out of our community.
A day of a new anger, directed not at the end of what is so much as driving us to the hard work of what ought to be.
Imagine capturing the energy of all of our hatred and building something instead of blowing it up, nurturing life instead of taking it, finding and taking new paths instead of burying each other on old ones. Picture a righteous anger that is not conceived in falsehood nor which leads not to sin, but a sacrificial anger, a cleansing anger, a fragrant offering of an anger. Imagine if we saw the world as it truly is, as God sees it, a world birthed and renewed and spirited in love. Can we know the distance between what we are doing and what we have been called to do?
Maybe if we were angry enough we could do something about it.
And that would be an anniversary worth celebrating.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Playground Bullies and Nuclear Treaties
“The United States is declaring that we will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.” (President Barack Obama)
And the response?
"It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, "Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want with me." (prominent politician and celebrity)
OK, I get that. I grew up on that schoolyard, I know that inherent violence of this world and the need to stand up for oneself.
It is, in fact, central to the American mythos, this emphasis on strength, on confidence, on self-reliance. The great American dream is to stand up victoriously to the neighborhood bully, to look him in the eye without backing down, to protect our own best interest without flinching.
It is this aspiration which has kept us safe and free for generations.
I can understand it. I can even honor it. I just can’t reconcile it with the teaching of my faith.
“But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Matthew 5:39
It is not, lest we profess our uncertainty, just another one of those things that Jesus uttered out loud. It is not a redactor’s trick, or an invention of the institutional church grown too far from its apostolic roots. It is the very heart and nature of Christ’s teaching, ministry and mission, and that pretenders to expertise in American Christian values do not understand this is our great sin.
Christians are called to be people of peace. Of passive, even non-resistive peace. Of active, sought-out, reconciling-with-enemies peace. Of reaching out, toward, across, down, beyond, peace.
Christians are named to be followers of a Savior who holds not a sword in his hand but the mark of a nail. Of a Savior who asks us not to “conquer” but to “endure.” Of a Savior who called down not armies of angels from his cross but words of forgiveness.
Christians are called to be people of peace as students and heirs of the man of peace, not as a hobby, not as a possibility that may come after every adversary is destroyed, after all other options are exhausted, but people who love peace, hope for peace, seek peace, live peace.
It is a tribute to our ignorance that we do not see how impossible peace is between two peoples who desire either victory or annihilation, not peace. It is a great evil that many of us (often not too secretly) are pleased to see the advance of their hatred. How amazing it is to see even the miniscule reductions of weapons, to hear conversations of any kind reflecting the possibility of less warfare. It should be celebrated, prayed for, not criticized, not scorned.
Oh, how unattainable to live a Christian life in this world! Oh how great our failure to live worthy of our Savior. Thanks be to the God of grace, who practices what he preaches, and offers us not a violent posture but the embrace of compassion, not condemnation for our helplessness, but a Spirit of peace, an opportunity for hopefulness.
And the response?
"It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, "Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want with me." (prominent politician and celebrity)
OK, I get that. I grew up on that schoolyard, I know that inherent violence of this world and the need to stand up for oneself.
It is, in fact, central to the American mythos, this emphasis on strength, on confidence, on self-reliance. The great American dream is to stand up victoriously to the neighborhood bully, to look him in the eye without backing down, to protect our own best interest without flinching.
It is this aspiration which has kept us safe and free for generations.
I can understand it. I can even honor it. I just can’t reconcile it with the teaching of my faith.
“But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Matthew 5:39
It is not, lest we profess our uncertainty, just another one of those things that Jesus uttered out loud. It is not a redactor’s trick, or an invention of the institutional church grown too far from its apostolic roots. It is the very heart and nature of Christ’s teaching, ministry and mission, and that pretenders to expertise in American Christian values do not understand this is our great sin.
Christians are called to be people of peace. Of passive, even non-resistive peace. Of active, sought-out, reconciling-with-enemies peace. Of reaching out, toward, across, down, beyond, peace.
Christians are named to be followers of a Savior who holds not a sword in his hand but the mark of a nail. Of a Savior who asks us not to “conquer” but to “endure.” Of a Savior who called down not armies of angels from his cross but words of forgiveness.
Christians are called to be people of peace as students and heirs of the man of peace, not as a hobby, not as a possibility that may come after every adversary is destroyed, after all other options are exhausted, but people who love peace, hope for peace, seek peace, live peace.
It is a tribute to our ignorance that we do not see how impossible peace is between two peoples who desire either victory or annihilation, not peace. It is a great evil that many of us (often not too secretly) are pleased to see the advance of their hatred. How amazing it is to see even the miniscule reductions of weapons, to hear conversations of any kind reflecting the possibility of less warfare. It should be celebrated, prayed for, not criticized, not scorned.
Oh, how unattainable to live a Christian life in this world! Oh how great our failure to live worthy of our Savior. Thanks be to the God of grace, who practices what he preaches, and offers us not a violent posture but the embrace of compassion, not condemnation for our helplessness, but a Spirit of peace, an opportunity for hopefulness.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Oh to be at Butler now that Spring is here ...
Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” Genesis 28:16
When we were little, we were told that the church was “God’s house,” and we believed it wholly and literally. We were quiet and respectful, as one should be in such an awesome place. When we grew up, we came to understand that God’s presence was not confined in space, that he was ultimately ubiquitous, and we believe that we experience his presence wherever we are.
That is rather encouraging to people who refuse to stay in any one place for too long a time.
But maybe we should rethink the subtleties of that notion.
Barry Collier first came to Butler University as basketball coach in 1989. Prior to his arrival, the Bulldogs had won 20 games only twice in 91 years of competition. His eleven year record there was 196-132, including a 90-39 record in his last four years , four straight post-season appearances, and seven first or second place conference finishes. He was named conference Coach of the Year four times.
In 2000, Collier answered the calling to coach at a major conference school and took over as Head Basketball Coach at the University of Nebraska. In six seasons, he amassed a 89-91 record, with two NIT tournaments bids and no post-season victories. While his tenure at Nebraska was marked by strong academic performance and Collier showed himself a man of significant integrity, it was a long way from his on-the-court performance at Butler.
In 2006, he went back.
In this, the fourth season since his return, Butler won 33 games, and went all the way to the Championship, losing only to perennial powerhouse Duke by a single basket at the end of the game.
Coincidence?
Yes, he is the Athletic Director now and not the coach, and sure, maybe Nebraska will never be the basketball haven that Butler University is. But maybe there is a deeper and more interesting question at play here, one that speaks directly to the spiritual issues that ought to guide us in choosing the path for our lives.
We are conditioned to believe that grass is always greener in somewhere else. Doubt and disbelief haunt us with the insinuation that paradise eludes us in some unseen and exotic locale just beyond our current reach. We are much too often stirred by an occasionally useful restlessness which distracts us from appreciating fully the setting where we are. Right now. Our eyes are cast toward some distant horizon and the possibilities that we certainly miss now, but maybe the good news is that THIS is the place where God is home for us, and we would do best to (as they say) bloom where we are planted.
In a world where too often we must “go off” to seek our fortune, perhaps Barry Collier could this morning teach us the joy of loving what we have and living well where we are.
Jacob named the place of his famous dream Beth-el, the place of God.
What do you call the place where you are?
When we were little, we were told that the church was “God’s house,” and we believed it wholly and literally. We were quiet and respectful, as one should be in such an awesome place. When we grew up, we came to understand that God’s presence was not confined in space, that he was ultimately ubiquitous, and we believe that we experience his presence wherever we are.
That is rather encouraging to people who refuse to stay in any one place for too long a time.
But maybe we should rethink the subtleties of that notion.
Barry Collier first came to Butler University as basketball coach in 1989. Prior to his arrival, the Bulldogs had won 20 games only twice in 91 years of competition. His eleven year record there was 196-132, including a 90-39 record in his last four years , four straight post-season appearances, and seven first or second place conference finishes. He was named conference Coach of the Year four times.
In 2000, Collier answered the calling to coach at a major conference school and took over as Head Basketball Coach at the University of Nebraska. In six seasons, he amassed a 89-91 record, with two NIT tournaments bids and no post-season victories. While his tenure at Nebraska was marked by strong academic performance and Collier showed himself a man of significant integrity, it was a long way from his on-the-court performance at Butler.
In 2006, he went back.
In this, the fourth season since his return, Butler won 33 games, and went all the way to the Championship, losing only to perennial powerhouse Duke by a single basket at the end of the game.
Coincidence?
Yes, he is the Athletic Director now and not the coach, and sure, maybe Nebraska will never be the basketball haven that Butler University is. But maybe there is a deeper and more interesting question at play here, one that speaks directly to the spiritual issues that ought to guide us in choosing the path for our lives.
We are conditioned to believe that grass is always greener in somewhere else. Doubt and disbelief haunt us with the insinuation that paradise eludes us in some unseen and exotic locale just beyond our current reach. We are much too often stirred by an occasionally useful restlessness which distracts us from appreciating fully the setting where we are. Right now. Our eyes are cast toward some distant horizon and the possibilities that we certainly miss now, but maybe the good news is that THIS is the place where God is home for us, and we would do best to (as they say) bloom where we are planted.
In a world where too often we must “go off” to seek our fortune, perhaps Barry Collier could this morning teach us the joy of loving what we have and living well where we are.
Jacob named the place of his famous dream Beth-el, the place of God.
What do you call the place where you are?
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Hunt
Now dawns the new day
mild sun smiling gently down from cornflower sky,
hint of green on softly sleeping lawn,
distant whiff of blossom coming I imagine.
A day to search
white patent leather shoes racing madly,
gladly,
pink wicker basket trailing dangerously,
stooping
stretching
to look
among the remainder of unraked leaves,
in the cool damp shadow of shrubbery.
Clever dad to hide so them so!
Where are they?
Treasures veiled
Look here! Look here!
It must be here
Pleasure -
Fulfillment -
Hope -
Where? Where?
Scampering as fast as short legs can go in search
in search -
it must be found.
Where is it?
Where is this promise?
Hidden
in dim of darkened heart,
wrapped up in the ghost of broken life, suffering, sorrowing, struggling;
a glint of pearl in faint sun,
a promise
life!
From a tomb, from a cross, from days of anguish and woe,
a morning of joy and giggles and sweetness and dreams
It must be found.
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