Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, September 4, 2016:


First Reading: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 18:1-11

Psalm: Psalm 1

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 (Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 NRSV)

Second Reading: Philemon 1-21

Gospel: Luke 14:25-33

Here we have another tough Gospel, where Jesus seems to knock all our defenses out from under us. With his reference to the person building a tower, he seems to be telling us to think very carefully before we leap onboard his Kingdom train. We may have to give up (or at least transform our relationship to) much that we've held dear.

First, he tells us that we have to hate our family. Notice that I'm not exaggerating--hate is the verb Jesus uses. He doesn't use a verb that would be more palatable, like reject or leave or forsake. No, we have to hate them. Many of us have spent much of our lives struggling against a certain human tendency towards hating others--now we're instructed to hate our family?

It gets worse. In that list of family, Jesus includes our very lives. We have to hate our own lives? What's that all about?

Many scholars would tell us that Jesus is telling us that we can't have the same lives when we're Christians as we did before we came to Christ. Our relationships will have to be transformed. Many of us place our relationships with our family members above all else. Many more of us place our own self-worth above everything else. We've spent the last several weeks listening to Jesus telling us that we can no longer behave that way. We have to transform our world of relationships. For those of us who have been used to hiding away with our families, we are called to treat the whole world as our family, especially the poor and the outcast. For those of us who put no one's needs above our own, we can no longer behave that way. The only way towards the world for which we yearn is to place the needs of others ahead of our own.

Our relationship to our possessions is not exempt from this discussion. Here is Christ again telling us that we have to give up all that we have. For some of us, it might be easy to hate our family and give them up. For some of us who are filled with self-loathing anyway, it might be frighteningly easy to hate ourselves. But to give up our possessions too? How will we ever feel secure? Again and again, Jesus reminds us that we rely too much on the things of this world, the things (and people and our own egos) that pull us away from God.

At this point we might feel despair about our ability to walk this pilgrim path.

But as our spiritual forebears would tell us, if we would listen, this all gets easier the more we practice. If we think of all that we own as being on loan to us, it's easier to pass our stuff along. If we simplify our lives, it's easier not to clutch to our money as much. If we spend our time in prayer and spiritual reading, it's easier to rely on God. If we spend our time practicing inclusivity, it's easier to expand our idea of family. The world is filled with lonely people who would like to be invited to dinner or coffee.

 And some day, we might look up and realize that the life we once lived was living death. We might realize that by renouncing that life (or by expanding it to include others), we've gained a life worth living.

The Perfect Prayer: "Dona Nobis Pacem"

For several days, I've had the music and lyrics from the ancient canon "Dona Nobis Pacem" in my head.  Our church choir sang it as the offertory on Sunday, so my spouse spent time practicing by watching this video.  And now, the music is stuck in my head.

There are worse things.  It's very calming music, and the lyric translates to "Grant us peace."   I've been thinking about other things one might do to calm one's anxiety, simple things that don't require medication.  I want to remember to sing those lines.

Once I thought that essential oils might provide some soothing, so on Friday night, when I felt anxious for reasons I no longer remember, I looked to see what I had left over from our summer of candle making last year.  Citronella--hm, essential these days in Zika infested South Florida, but probably not soothing.  Likewise lemongrass.  So, I put some of the rosemary oil on a paper towel and waited for calm to descend.

Instead, I got annoyed by the smell.  Clearly that's not the way to calm for me.

On Sunday night, we worked on finger picking techniques.  My favorite was to pluck the top string of the ukulele, then the lowest string, and then the two inner strings.  As we practiced, I noticed that I felt immediately calmer.  Let me remember this too.

Traditionalists would tell me to pray, and I do.  But as with many meditation techniques, like clearing my mind, prayer is not enough to shut down the chatter of my brain, what Buddhists would call the monkey mind.

The ukulele technique works because I have something for my hands to do; it's similar to crocheting prayer shawls, which I've also been doing for a variety of reasons.

But praying set to a simple melody--that's the best soothing technique of all.

They Will Know Us by Our Singing (and Our Love)

Earlier this summer, I was part of a group from church who had 5 weeks of ukulele lessons.  We had such a great time that we decided to keep meeting once a month.  Yesterday was our first meeting.

We could bring music to share or a piece to sing by ourselves.  My spouse spent some time yesterday afternoon looking for a piece we could present, him on violin and me on ukulele.  In the end, we just didn't have enough time.  He can see a piece and play it fairly easily.  I am still having trouble shifting chords.

We did find a version of "They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love" with only 2 chords.  My spouse asked if I thought that everyone would know that song.  Given that our group skews somewhat older, born before 1968, I was pretty sure that we would.  And we did.

When I first found the chords and strummed them, I couldn't make them go with the song that I remembered.  But in a group, with more of us singing and strumming, with the upright bass and the violin, it sounded just fine.

I thought of how many groups I've been in who have sung this song.  Would they be surprised by our ukulele rendition?  Probably not.

It's no wonder we still sing that song--it's fairly simple, with lots of repetition, which makes it easy to remember.  The theology isn't troubling.

The minute I typed those words, I started wondering about the people who might find it troubling.  They might ask about creeds, about choosing Jesus above all.  They might argue that we can love each other without being Christian.

But if we're Christian and we don't love each other, I'd argue that we've failed in a most basic way.  We can still be redeemed, of course.  But we do need to love each other, in all the ways that we know how.

Sharing a meal and singing together is a great way to start.

Job's Happy Ending

On Sunday, Aug. 28, we finish our reading of Job with this passage:  Job 42:7-17.  In this passage we seem to see Job enjoying a classic happy ending:  new wife, new children, fortunes restored.  How do we interpret this ending?

One standard--but troubling!--way to interpret this ending is to see it as Job's reward for being faithful.  One way this approach troubles modern theologians is the interpretation of faithfulness: is he faithful because he talks to God and listens when God responds?  Is he faithful because he stays true to God, even in the midst of suffering?  How much are we expected to endure?

As a 21st century reader, I'm troubled because I know that Christianity has a history of holding up examples like the one we see in Job as a way to encourage people to put up with difficult situations without trying to change the structures that make the difficulty possible.  I'm thinking of generations of women encouraged to stay with their abusive husbands.  I'm thinking of Civil Rights workers being told to suffer and wait for society to catch up with them.

I'm also troubled because Job seems to leave his old family behind and move on to the replacement family, but that probably says more about me.  I'm trying to see this ending as a presentation of Job embracing life and learning to live and love again.

Here's a more radical interpretation:  theologian  Kathryn M. Schifferdecker says, "Job's fortunes are restored. He (and presumably Mrs. Job) have more children, and he gives his daughters names befitting their great beauty and an inheritance along with their brothers (an unheard-of act in that patriarchal culture). In other words, Job learns to govern his world the way God governs God's world: with great delight in his children's beauty and freedom. Like God, Job gives his children the freedom to be who they were created to be."

I wonder how my relationships would change if I, too, could be more like Job at the end and God--if I could give those around me the freedom to be who they were created to be.

Who Is the Gameboard?

As I've watched people around me struggle with a variety of issues, I've also been observing whether or not they feel they have any power in situations.  I recently came across a great way of refocusing this idea.

In this post, MaryAnn McKibben Dana references the work of Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander's The Art of Possibility when she advises:  "Be the gameboard." 

So many of us see ourselves as helpless game pieces, moved by unseen hands, participating in strategies we do not fully understand.  Maybe those hands are those of our boss or upper management or the distant corporations that seem to have acquired all of our American institutions.

What happens if we see those unseen hands as God's hands?  I have real theological trouble with that view of God, that view that everything happens for a reason, a reason known only to God.  I don't believe in God as puppetmaster.  God as gamesplayer, controlling all the pieces--where is the room for free will in that.

So what happens when we view ourselves as the gameboard, not the person playing the game? MaryAnn McKibben Dana  includes this quote from Zander and Zander:  "When you identify yourself as a single chess piece—and by analogy, as an individual in a particular role—you can only react to, complain about, or resist the moves that interrupted your plans. But if you name yourself as the board itself, you can turn all your attention to what you want to see happen, with none paid to what you need to win or fight or fix. …One by one, you bring everything you have been resisting into the fold. You, as the board, make room for all the moves, for the capture of the knight *and* the sacrifice of your bishop… for your miserable childhood *and* the circumstances of your parents’ lives… Why? Because that is what is there. It is the way things are." (emphasis in the original)

I have also started to wonder how our view of God changes if we see God as the gameboard?  We get away from the idea of a God who can control all.  In some ways, we might move to a more widely expansive view of God, a God who is everywhere, not in some distant space like Heaven.  We might also move to a more sacramental view of God.

And maybe we'd move away from some of the dangerous aspects of seeing life as a giant game.

Creating Nests, Creating Construction Sites, Creating Contentment

For the last few days, I've been going to weather sites much more often than is really necessary.  To those who would ask, "Is it ever necessary?", I would answer, yes, when a tropical system is bearing down on you, it's necessary to stay updated.

But the Hurricane Center only updates the track projection every six hours.  Why, then, did I hop from site to site?

If I wanted to justify my action, I could say that the other weather services update at different hours or I could say that I wanted to see what amateur forecasters were saying.  But it's really not that.  I just liked feeling updated, plugged in, caught up.  And there's more than a whiff of enjoying the possibility of impending apocalypse that's part of my psychology.

Truth be told, I spend a lot of time going to various Internet sites on any given day.  I don't usually stay long.  But when I need a break, that's what I do.

I stay away from sites that make me angry.  I connect with friends and family on social media.  I research for inspiration for my writing.  I look for ways that others have dealt with issues.  I admire the meals of others and think about recipes--and it's the same with other art forms that I enjoy.  And I do go to spiritual sites.

Lately, though, my aching back has demanded that I leave the computer.  On Tuesday, I was feeling grumpy for all sorts of reasons--primarily because I tried to fix a student issue that I didn't create, but we were all late to discover--and I wasn't appreciated the way I wanted to be.  So I left my office for a bit of a walk around the building.

Our building is next to a construction site.  While mourning the loss of open space, I have enjoyed watching the construction of the new condo/shopping center complex.  So on Tuesday, I went to see the progress.  I like being reminded that progress can be made.

Standing at a second floor window, I saw two birds working together to build a nest in the palm tree right outside the window. I stood very still and observed for over 10 minutes. My mood brightened.

If I'm being honest, I'll confess that my Internet zipping rarely leaves me in a brighter mood.  It can be hard to avoid content that drags me down.  And of course, all that zipping can leave me fragmented.

I need to remember to leave the computer.  I need to remember to be on the lookout for creation of all types.  And then, let me remember to say a prayer of thanks to the Creator who started it all.

To Return Again

Last night, my spouse thought I would be home by 7--but it was my late night at work, as Wednesdays have been for some time, so I wasn't home until 8:30.  It was a simple misunderstanding, but by the time I got home, he was starting to feel panicky.

He could have been angry when I pulled in the driveway or relieved.  He chose the latter.  He greeted me with a big hug and told me of his fears.  We hugged multiple times last night.  We know how lucky we are--and at some point, we will face this loss.  At some point, one of us will not be coming home.

I thought about this sudden re-orienting, this reminder of what's really important.  I thought about all of my returns.

This morning, I'm thinking about other returns--what would be the most famous return in the Bible?  The Prodigal Son?  God who returns again and again?

I thought about God, who surely wants to welcome us as warmly as my spouse welcomed me home last night.  I thought of all the times I have returned to focus my attention on things spiritual again.  I imagine God saying, "I'm so glad you're back.  I was getting worried."