"Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”" (Matthew 9:20-21)
Our church was burglarized this weekend. Twice, actually. When the thieves failed to open the safe on Friday, they returned the next night better equipped, and were more successful. I simply don’t know what to say about that.
It got me thinking about robbery. It got me thinking about how so often we take what is not ours, about the unsatisfaction that marks our lives every day, about the envy and the greed and the hunger for power that makes us grasping, violent.
Harold Camping predicted that Jesus was returning at 6:00 p.m. this Saturday past, and the world, easily distracted by shiny and meaningless objects, paid much attention. People spent their life savings promoting his convoluted (and absolutely wrong) biblical analysis, they cancelled plans, they hoped falsely. And were disappointed, while the rest of us laughed at their expense.
And the children asked, didn’t Jesus say you couldn’t know the hour or the time? So why did Harold Camping think he did?
Yes, children, that is exactly the point.
Not “you can’t know” because the mystery is too opaque, because your intellect too dull, your math too imprecise. Not “you can’t know” because the key to the vast scriptural symbology is reserved for a select, chosen few and you are not pure enough or right enough.
NO! “You can’t know” because God does not want you to know, because this is wisdom God reserves for his own self. It is the sole prerogative of the creator to count the days of the creation, the divine freedom to reserve the end of history to his own time and not ours. It is not just the gullible and vulnerable followers who have been robbed. To claim this holy privilege is the greatest act of thievery itself, to try to steal away from God what he chooses not to give.
He desires we live by his grace alone, by his gifts, that we live his life and not our own. He desires that we live by what he gives, and not by what we take.
But we do it all the time.
We claim authorship of our faith for ourselves, we attribute salvation to our “decision” for Christ, we take pride in our good works, we smirk at the rest of the world through the lens of our own piety. We are the keepers of our own salvation, by virtue of our superior chastity and holiness and dogma.
As the great reformer once said, we have robbed the Cross of all meaning.
And that attack is our great crime against God. Not a couple of fools with a sledge hammer smashing apart a safe to steal a few hundred dollars from an emergency assistance fund, but the great mass of daily thefts of grace, the sinful unwillingness to accept that what we have, what we need, for this life and the next, comes completely and only from the hands of Christ, through no desire or deserving of our own. The greatest sin is the pretense that faith is ours for the taking, while it is only Christ’s for the giving.
Which is particularly foolish on our part, since he gives it away for free.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Life
Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me. …Awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. Psalm 59:1, 5
Outcomes are complicated things. A decade of pain and anger ended in the middle of the night by a secretive military act in some far-off strange place. An enemy is defeated in the most final way, an important and (I think) worthy symbolic victory to be sure, but is it justice? Does it bring closure, or is this just the next chapter in the old and tragic story of the world we have made?
I sense relief on the part of many, but are we proud of this? Perhaps there is even satisfaction, but is there hope?
Well, what exactly were we searching for, anyway?
In this world of conflict and violence, this place and time of hate and enmity, perhaps we thought that we could secure ourselves from those who would harm us without being getting caught up in bloodshed too. But it all just bombastic oratory, so much wishful thinking, that we are playing the part of innocent victims even as we took up the sword and sought our revenge. We were fooling ourselves to think that we could play their game without, in the end, becoming just like them.
In cartoons, the bad guys are blown up, shot, smashed by falling pianos, yet never maimed or killed, until they meekly wave their white flag and admit defeat. In the real world, they must be killed.
And who will stop the killing?
If we would dare to look, in the blood on our hands we would see the reflection of our true enemy, our greatest foe, our own selves. The death of one man, if necessary and tragic, is neither a victory nor a conclusion. It is finally just another death, just another day, just another step along a path that has come to dominate our lives in this world. Our enemy is not the other, it is the daily choices we make the tear down justice and thwart peace, the casual insults and selfish slights and callous acts of greed that birth division and misunderstanding and quarrel.
And eventually war. And surely death.
And there is only one way off of this path.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26
Does it mean something that the killing of Osama bin Laden comes in the season of Easter, in the renewal of spring, in the bursting forth from the tomb? This is the promise of the resurrection, that we need not spend one more day imprisoned by death, that we carry within us the divine spirit of promise, that even in our most sinful day we can find the grace to make the next one different.
We do not need an end to the war on terror. We need an end to war. Period. We need an end to the thinking that war in any metaphor leads to anything but more war.
I do not really know how I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden. Except that I hope for nothing more than it would be the last. And I pray that God should deliver us to that new day. And soon.
Outcomes are complicated things. A decade of pain and anger ended in the middle of the night by a secretive military act in some far-off strange place. An enemy is defeated in the most final way, an important and (I think) worthy symbolic victory to be sure, but is it justice? Does it bring closure, or is this just the next chapter in the old and tragic story of the world we have made?
I sense relief on the part of many, but are we proud of this? Perhaps there is even satisfaction, but is there hope?
Well, what exactly were we searching for, anyway?
In this world of conflict and violence, this place and time of hate and enmity, perhaps we thought that we could secure ourselves from those who would harm us without being getting caught up in bloodshed too. But it all just bombastic oratory, so much wishful thinking, that we are playing the part of innocent victims even as we took up the sword and sought our revenge. We were fooling ourselves to think that we could play their game without, in the end, becoming just like them.
In cartoons, the bad guys are blown up, shot, smashed by falling pianos, yet never maimed or killed, until they meekly wave their white flag and admit defeat. In the real world, they must be killed.
And who will stop the killing?
If we would dare to look, in the blood on our hands we would see the reflection of our true enemy, our greatest foe, our own selves. The death of one man, if necessary and tragic, is neither a victory nor a conclusion. It is finally just another death, just another day, just another step along a path that has come to dominate our lives in this world. Our enemy is not the other, it is the daily choices we make the tear down justice and thwart peace, the casual insults and selfish slights and callous acts of greed that birth division and misunderstanding and quarrel.
And eventually war. And surely death.
And there is only one way off of this path.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26
Does it mean something that the killing of Osama bin Laden comes in the season of Easter, in the renewal of spring, in the bursting forth from the tomb? This is the promise of the resurrection, that we need not spend one more day imprisoned by death, that we carry within us the divine spirit of promise, that even in our most sinful day we can find the grace to make the next one different.
We do not need an end to the war on terror. We need an end to war. Period. We need an end to the thinking that war in any metaphor leads to anything but more war.
I do not really know how I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden. Except that I hope for nothing more than it would be the last. And I pray that God should deliver us to that new day. And soon.
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