Vital signs
Commentary
When President Warren Harding died suddenly, making Calvin Coolidge president of the
United States, several reporters came to Will Rogers asking for his reaction. He is reputed
to have responded, "How can they tell?" While his response seems a bit harsh and
insensitive, there does seem to be truth to the observations that the margin between life
and death seems hard to detect in some cases. Certainly in the biological, as well as the
spiritual, it is growing increasingly hard to draw the line between life and death -- last
breath, one heart beat away, brain death, take your pick.
I wonder if there might be a variety of ways to describe spiritual death. Might we describe some as dead to the world in principle, while others are dead to their friends and neighbors, yet somehow alive to dealing with issues of earth-shaking proportions? Certainly, people are capable of incredible spiritual attentiveness to the needs of others while having a spiritual blindness to the needs of the gathered community. What is the relationship between the forms of death? While one can live with the loss of an arm, the break down of the coronary system will lead to the break down of other systems. We have a dog whose physical blindness has led not to a break down of other systems but to their enhancement, as he uses his hearing, smell, and memory to navigate. On the other hand, one can be brain dead yet find the other systems operating albeit at a reduced level of functioning. The difference between life and death, spiritually and physically, has become quite a tricky business to define.
These texts are permeated with the issues of life and death both spiritual and physical. In the text from the Hebrew scriptures, the work of the prophet is life giving. Yet, we do not have a simple straight path to this conclusion. In matters of life and death, nothing can be matter of fact. In Galatians, Paul narrates the tale of the movement of his pilgrimage from pre-Christian life to Christian witness. Here the progress is not from being clearly lost for as he says he was more advanced in Judaism than most of his generation. One can only say that this is movement from death to life if one buys into deadly portraits of Judaism that the church has held. What can we say when the movement is not from death to life but from one life to another? In the gospel text, Jesus is moved by the plight of the mother of an only son.
In each of these texts there is a movement toward life even in the midst of death. To move in this direction is no mean accomplishment. The kingdom of death seems to have a firm hold of things in so many ways. As I write this, the nation ponders the direction that it will take in the Middle East. The treaties that ended World War One laid out the configuration of the Middle East and the foundation for much of its problems. Since the war to end all wars, the United States has gone to war five times, not counting the numerous less-than-full-scale conflicts it has fought. The kingdom of death has had its day. So far, the world seems to be able to give nothing more than a deer caught in the headlights sort of response to the reality of global warming. It seems that gas prices will have to raise to at least five dollars a gallon for many to make a life-affirming choice about their energy consumption. I know that most of the people I encounter seem capable of demonstrating some fairly high levels of neurological function. Yet, it seems that there are some blank spaces on the scan where there should be some brainwave activity. As Beijing, China, disappears in a fog of pollution and large parts of Canada break and float off from the northern ice shelf, it would be nice to see some sign of life in certain regions of the cranium.
These texts offer us some hints at what it means to be fully alive and what it takes to move from the kingdom of death to a lively response to our context.
1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)
There is a famine in the land, which is about how it feels in the land today. We are parched for a wisdom that would guide away from war toward life-affirming choices. "There shall neither be dew nor rain except by the word of the Lord." All the words spoken and printed cannot bring relief unless they are the word of the Lord.
I am reminded of a trip several years ago to Haiti in the days of the Nestle boycott. You may recall that the boycott was about the sale of powdered baby formula in third-world countries where the supply of unpolluted water to mix with the formula was virtually nonexistent. I remember seeing a huge billboard advertising the stuff in a land where over eighty percent of the water was undrinkable. The word of the Lord had to be spoken that one could not do that, in order to bring the flow of fresh life-giving breast milk and premixed formula to that land. Ahab and Baal had brought drought to the most exposed and vulnerable.
In the midst of such a situation, the prophet Elijah is directed to Zarephath near the center of Baal worship. He is directed to go and live there, and because he must dwell in that land we learn something of the energy consequences of Baal worship. "As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die." At best, the widow has just enough to make her and her son comfortable as they and the land are in their death throes.
Elijah's seeming arrogance and demands puts us off as the story unfolds. In a land of the starving, how dare he become one more mouth to feed? How dare Elijah tell her to first make a cake for himself and then feed her family? Is he so brain dead and heartless that he does not see the need around him?
However, Elijah is alive enough to the word of the Lord that he does go to Zarephath to be fed by a widow. It must have crossed his mind that this might not be the best strategy in the midst of a drought. Nevertheless, Elijah is open to the possibility that being exposed to a widow's story just might be the best place to get a handle on what happens in a world where Baal rules. The story reminds me of Muhammad Yunus, an economist and micro-credit pioneer who won the Nobel Peace prize by founding a bank that now lends to over six million customers, 98 percent who are women in poor third-world countries. The loans of less than $100 enable the women to generate capital and climb out of poverty even in the midst of a Baal-run world. Things can become very lively when you begin with the angle of third-world poor women. Somewhat like Elijah, Yunis can say, "For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth." This is economics that Baal worship knows nothing about and that brings hope in the midst of drought.
Things wind up on some shaky ground when the widow's son dies. The future that has been opened is thrown into doubt. The death of the young throws everything into doubt. The battlefield has taken too many sons and daughters, and too many of them live in the midst of an arid Baal culture as if they have no life in them. Initially, the widow blames Elijah, not for failing to heal her son, but for bringing about the calamity of a child that has no breath in him! "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!" You can feel her slipping away into anger and rage at the prophet.
The story poses a test for the validity of our faith. Can it breathe life into the young? Does our life together make them alive to what God is doing and what God can do with them in the midst of an arid land? Does our fellowship and service enable us to be alive to dreams and visions that are an alternative to the long nightmare of Ahab rule and Baal support of that rule? Elijah's response makes clear that he is committed to this alternative. Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again." I believe that she responds not only to the return of her son but the commitment of the prophet, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth."
The scene ends with the prophet alive to the situation, the son alive, and the widow honoring the living God.
Galatians 1:11-24
Paul is called to a new life. We would like to see Paul as someone who is essentially flawed, broken, and lost. Like previous generations we would like to draw on Paul as a model for our own spiritual development, or process of conversion that has often begun in our lives when we were showing few signs of vitality. We readily see Paul's persecution of the early church as the result of a demented, twisted personality. Or, we see his zealousness for the "tradition of his ancestors" as showing a personality taking refuge in a fundamentally flawed extreme religiosity -- pursuit of an Old Testament God of righteousness that is surpassed by a Christian God of love. The truth of the matter is that we do not know enough to come to such a conclusion. In the second and third chapters of Romans, Paul writes, "For a person is not a Jew who neither is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart -- it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God. Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!" (Romans 2:28--3:4). This is not a person who has left his Judaism behind him. Nor one who came to Christianity because of the flaws in the faith of his birth. Rather, he is a person who has had something happen to him to see the truth of Christianity and to accept that he was destined from his birth to have a role in the extension of the truth of Christianity to the Gentiles.
The notion that Christianity has surpassed Judaism, leaving it bereft, flies in the face of the truths that Judaism expresses in the Talmudic tradition. Often our understanding of Paul tends to lead in the direction of seeing him leave his Judaism behind and that therefore Judaism itself ought to be left behind. As James Carroll reminds us in The Sword of Constantine, this has left the door open to seeing those who have not left Judaism as somehow flawed and deserving of scorn. Yet, Jewish culture and Talmudic tradition has continued to be a source of wisdom and a vehicle of God's blessing.
The context of the Galatians is the struggle of those who would mandate circumcision as a requirement of Christianity. Paul's contest is not with all Jews, but with those who would use the Jewish model and practice as a requirement for Christians. Yet his language and life has been used as a model of conversion that justifies super-sessionism (the belief that Christianity has now surpassed Judaism). As I read this text, I am compelled to reconsider these issues.
Does our sense of authority as Christians arise because we have surpassed Judaism, or is the sign of vital Christianity that we can appreciate, honor, and respect the vitality present in other traditions? Paul in his defense claims that he did not receive his faith secondhand ... "But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterward I returned to Damascus." Who knows exactly what this meant to Paul? However, when I consider what Jesus has revealed to me it is in one who is vitally engaged so that he can embrace the vitality of a Syrophoenician woman who challenged him. It seems to me that the fruits of the spirit are reflected as much in the ability to embrace vitality wherever it has been found as in the capacity to cast out demons.
Christians face this issue not only in terms of Judaism. As I write this, the Cathedral of Cordoba has once again ejected Muslims who have sought to pray in the main sanctuary. The cathedral was once a mosque. This seems to fly in the face of the golden age in Spain when building on the vitality present in all three religious communities, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, meant being engaged in work of translation that brought us the thinking of Aristotle and others that was a blessing to all. As we enter into increasingly complex relations with many faith traditions, we must ask of ourselves what model will govern our relations.
Luke 7:11-17
"He had compassion for her." Jesus demonstrated over and over again that to be alive was to be moved by the plight and experience of others. In the gospels, we have a glimpse that this capacity to enter into the experience of others did not always come automatically or easily. The story of the Syrophoenician woman shows a Jesus who did not initially "get it." The woman must prod him into a response. In the wedding-at-Cana miracle, Jesus is challenged to respond to the situation by his own mother. One might say that to be alive for Jesus is the capacity to respond faithfully when pushed. Jesus' miracles occur not in an idealized setting but in the context of all the things that push and pull at human beings. It is often in the context of the give and take of life and the demands of others that we become deadened to the possibilities at hand.
The issue at hand in Luke is, "Has an authoritative prophet come in the person of Jesus?" Luke models his narration on the Elijah cycle of things to show how once again God's plan is playing out.
For Luke, the plan continues in the life of the gathered community of Jesus' followers. The community's prophetic authority arises out of its ability to give a life-affirming response in the midst of all that denies life. A survey of the church today shows that the vitality remains the same. This must seem daunting; however, I suspect that we do not get a hearing unless we can still raise the dead young who need a more excellent way to survive the materialism of our times. I suspect that we will not gain a hearing unless we can hear the cries of those who mourn the loss of children who have lost their childhood to the consumerism, fear, and violence of our times. In the context of families torn apart by greed and need, we will gain a hearing if we can help families and create a sense of family for those who have not experienced it. The vital sign for the church might be measured in terms of whether we can gain a hearing.
Application
I have a shelf full of books on what the signs are of how we should measure vitality in the church. In an age of declining numbers and financial numbers that have seen better days in the kind of churches I have served, it is certainly not surprising that we ponder what it means to be alive. One of the more depressing signs of decay was a conversation with a group of clergy, none of whom would recommend to a young person that they enter the ministry. This may explain why in my denomination of approximately 10,000 clergy you can count the number of clergy under the age of thirty in the single digits. An inability to raise the enthusiasm of the young for ministry is clearly a warning sign that the church may not be right now an extension of God's plan as Luke understood it.
The Luke text suggests, as do the others, that the signs of vitality when it comes to the church may not be fully reflected in all those books on the future of the church in my library. Perhaps a massive effort to open the doors to ministry for the young who are considering their future might be the place to begin. In the churches, vitality might be demonstrated in appreciating the vitality and vigor of other faith communities. We might gain a far greater hearing by demonstrating what it means to be able to hear others. Designing things around how the world is experienced by a widow with a son who has succumbed might not leap to mind as the route to go. However, in a world where there are too many women who must mourn the premature death of their children in war, it might be the source of new vitality in the worldwide church. It certainly is where we share a great deal of common ground with others.
Alternative Application
Galatians 1:11-24. Paul says that he did not confer with any human being about what was happening in his life when he found God calling him, through the revealing of Jesus' identity, to be an apostle to the Gentiles. I am not too sure that I am completely comfortable with that. It seems that at such a time in one's life that the healthy thing to do is to be surrounded by others and to reach out for their support. Yet, I think Paul may be on to something here.
Here he is facing not only a moment of personal challenge but a major paradigm shift. This may not be the time to consult with others. Friends may not want you to change so radically and instead they will come down on the side of what will affirm their comfort zone. Others will find that such a paradigm shift will be a challenge to their own thinking and if they support you they may knock out the props from their own lives. Thomas Kuhn, in The Structures of Scientific Revolutions, points out that people will only shift their paradigms after the weight of anomalous phenomenon is so great that they can no longer maintain the old paradigm. At the point of his calling, Paul has very little evidence that the Gentiles can be successfully merged into the church without taking on Jewish dietary and ritual practice. The time is not yet to be talking with others whose initial reaction can only be negative, fearful, and hostile.
A sign of vitality in the church in our time might be how well we understand what it means for people to go through paradigm shifts and how well we prepare them to do so. Certainly, it means in part to be cut off from others for a while. People need to work on shifts in their lives without intrusive questioning. Certainly teenagers, for whom each day is filled with potential paradigm shifts, need space. Certainly, people need a spirituality that can guide them as they go through a tipping point in their own lives.
Paul's narrative offers the opportunity to reflect a facet of human experience that is otherwise little talked about.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 146
There is a well-worn axiom that warns against mixing religion and politics. It was probably devised in an attempt to help smooth the rough places in some of those long holiday dinners with seldom-seen relatives. Keep the conversation polite, vague, and unchallenging. That way, all parties can stay through the dessert course and get home in one piece. In truth, there is wisdom in such an unwritten law. However, a serious people of faith must contend with the time after dinner when the relatives have dispersed and it's back to business as usual.
Such a moment arrives in the reading of Psalm 146. The psalm underscores a deep strain of the Judeo-Christian heritage that cannot be easily brushed aside. It is the plaintive call here to "not place our trust in princes or in mortals in whom there is no help." This is no stump speech for some brew of faith-based anarchy. It is not an attempt to overthrow established order. It is, simply put, a statement of obvious reality.
While all people are in need of good governance and reasonable processes for redress, the simple truth is that these systems and those who inhabit them are not to be trusted. A simple reading of history demonstrates this. Broken promises, shattered treaties, bloated bureaucracies, and rampant corruption riddle the governments of this world from Old Testament days right through to the moment of this writing.
The call comes to trust, instead, in God. It is God, we read, who executes justice, who liberates the oppressed, and gives sight to the blind. It is God who lifts up those who are bowed down and who loves the righteous. This is not an isolated notion within scripture. It's interesting to note that in this psalm can be found a thread that runs from here to Isaiah (58) to Jesus, who stands up in the temple in chapter 4 of Luke to announce the year of God's favor.
This thread wraps itself around the reality that all governments ultimately are the same in that they will all collapse and perish into vapors of history. What lasts, what stands, and what will always be with us is the powerful voice of our God. It is in this God we are called to place our trust. It is with this God we are called to walk. And it is this God, come to us in Christ Jesus who calls us to lives that will create the year of God's favor now, in this day, and in this moment.
I wonder if there might be a variety of ways to describe spiritual death. Might we describe some as dead to the world in principle, while others are dead to their friends and neighbors, yet somehow alive to dealing with issues of earth-shaking proportions? Certainly, people are capable of incredible spiritual attentiveness to the needs of others while having a spiritual blindness to the needs of the gathered community. What is the relationship between the forms of death? While one can live with the loss of an arm, the break down of the coronary system will lead to the break down of other systems. We have a dog whose physical blindness has led not to a break down of other systems but to their enhancement, as he uses his hearing, smell, and memory to navigate. On the other hand, one can be brain dead yet find the other systems operating albeit at a reduced level of functioning. The difference between life and death, spiritually and physically, has become quite a tricky business to define.
These texts are permeated with the issues of life and death both spiritual and physical. In the text from the Hebrew scriptures, the work of the prophet is life giving. Yet, we do not have a simple straight path to this conclusion. In matters of life and death, nothing can be matter of fact. In Galatians, Paul narrates the tale of the movement of his pilgrimage from pre-Christian life to Christian witness. Here the progress is not from being clearly lost for as he says he was more advanced in Judaism than most of his generation. One can only say that this is movement from death to life if one buys into deadly portraits of Judaism that the church has held. What can we say when the movement is not from death to life but from one life to another? In the gospel text, Jesus is moved by the plight of the mother of an only son.
In each of these texts there is a movement toward life even in the midst of death. To move in this direction is no mean accomplishment. The kingdom of death seems to have a firm hold of things in so many ways. As I write this, the nation ponders the direction that it will take in the Middle East. The treaties that ended World War One laid out the configuration of the Middle East and the foundation for much of its problems. Since the war to end all wars, the United States has gone to war five times, not counting the numerous less-than-full-scale conflicts it has fought. The kingdom of death has had its day. So far, the world seems to be able to give nothing more than a deer caught in the headlights sort of response to the reality of global warming. It seems that gas prices will have to raise to at least five dollars a gallon for many to make a life-affirming choice about their energy consumption. I know that most of the people I encounter seem capable of demonstrating some fairly high levels of neurological function. Yet, it seems that there are some blank spaces on the scan where there should be some brainwave activity. As Beijing, China, disappears in a fog of pollution and large parts of Canada break and float off from the northern ice shelf, it would be nice to see some sign of life in certain regions of the cranium.
These texts offer us some hints at what it means to be fully alive and what it takes to move from the kingdom of death to a lively response to our context.
1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)
There is a famine in the land, which is about how it feels in the land today. We are parched for a wisdom that would guide away from war toward life-affirming choices. "There shall neither be dew nor rain except by the word of the Lord." All the words spoken and printed cannot bring relief unless they are the word of the Lord.
I am reminded of a trip several years ago to Haiti in the days of the Nestle boycott. You may recall that the boycott was about the sale of powdered baby formula in third-world countries where the supply of unpolluted water to mix with the formula was virtually nonexistent. I remember seeing a huge billboard advertising the stuff in a land where over eighty percent of the water was undrinkable. The word of the Lord had to be spoken that one could not do that, in order to bring the flow of fresh life-giving breast milk and premixed formula to that land. Ahab and Baal had brought drought to the most exposed and vulnerable.
In the midst of such a situation, the prophet Elijah is directed to Zarephath near the center of Baal worship. He is directed to go and live there, and because he must dwell in that land we learn something of the energy consequences of Baal worship. "As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die." At best, the widow has just enough to make her and her son comfortable as they and the land are in their death throes.
Elijah's seeming arrogance and demands puts us off as the story unfolds. In a land of the starving, how dare he become one more mouth to feed? How dare Elijah tell her to first make a cake for himself and then feed her family? Is he so brain dead and heartless that he does not see the need around him?
However, Elijah is alive enough to the word of the Lord that he does go to Zarephath to be fed by a widow. It must have crossed his mind that this might not be the best strategy in the midst of a drought. Nevertheless, Elijah is open to the possibility that being exposed to a widow's story just might be the best place to get a handle on what happens in a world where Baal rules. The story reminds me of Muhammad Yunus, an economist and micro-credit pioneer who won the Nobel Peace prize by founding a bank that now lends to over six million customers, 98 percent who are women in poor third-world countries. The loans of less than $100 enable the women to generate capital and climb out of poverty even in the midst of a Baal-run world. Things can become very lively when you begin with the angle of third-world poor women. Somewhat like Elijah, Yunis can say, "For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth." This is economics that Baal worship knows nothing about and that brings hope in the midst of drought.
Things wind up on some shaky ground when the widow's son dies. The future that has been opened is thrown into doubt. The death of the young throws everything into doubt. The battlefield has taken too many sons and daughters, and too many of them live in the midst of an arid Baal culture as if they have no life in them. Initially, the widow blames Elijah, not for failing to heal her son, but for bringing about the calamity of a child that has no breath in him! "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!" You can feel her slipping away into anger and rage at the prophet.
The story poses a test for the validity of our faith. Can it breathe life into the young? Does our life together make them alive to what God is doing and what God can do with them in the midst of an arid land? Does our fellowship and service enable us to be alive to dreams and visions that are an alternative to the long nightmare of Ahab rule and Baal support of that rule? Elijah's response makes clear that he is committed to this alternative. Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again." I believe that she responds not only to the return of her son but the commitment of the prophet, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth."
The scene ends with the prophet alive to the situation, the son alive, and the widow honoring the living God.
Galatians 1:11-24
Paul is called to a new life. We would like to see Paul as someone who is essentially flawed, broken, and lost. Like previous generations we would like to draw on Paul as a model for our own spiritual development, or process of conversion that has often begun in our lives when we were showing few signs of vitality. We readily see Paul's persecution of the early church as the result of a demented, twisted personality. Or, we see his zealousness for the "tradition of his ancestors" as showing a personality taking refuge in a fundamentally flawed extreme religiosity -- pursuit of an Old Testament God of righteousness that is surpassed by a Christian God of love. The truth of the matter is that we do not know enough to come to such a conclusion. In the second and third chapters of Romans, Paul writes, "For a person is not a Jew who neither is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart -- it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God. Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!" (Romans 2:28--3:4). This is not a person who has left his Judaism behind him. Nor one who came to Christianity because of the flaws in the faith of his birth. Rather, he is a person who has had something happen to him to see the truth of Christianity and to accept that he was destined from his birth to have a role in the extension of the truth of Christianity to the Gentiles.
The notion that Christianity has surpassed Judaism, leaving it bereft, flies in the face of the truths that Judaism expresses in the Talmudic tradition. Often our understanding of Paul tends to lead in the direction of seeing him leave his Judaism behind and that therefore Judaism itself ought to be left behind. As James Carroll reminds us in The Sword of Constantine, this has left the door open to seeing those who have not left Judaism as somehow flawed and deserving of scorn. Yet, Jewish culture and Talmudic tradition has continued to be a source of wisdom and a vehicle of God's blessing.
The context of the Galatians is the struggle of those who would mandate circumcision as a requirement of Christianity. Paul's contest is not with all Jews, but with those who would use the Jewish model and practice as a requirement for Christians. Yet his language and life has been used as a model of conversion that justifies super-sessionism (the belief that Christianity has now surpassed Judaism). As I read this text, I am compelled to reconsider these issues.
Does our sense of authority as Christians arise because we have surpassed Judaism, or is the sign of vital Christianity that we can appreciate, honor, and respect the vitality present in other traditions? Paul in his defense claims that he did not receive his faith secondhand ... "But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterward I returned to Damascus." Who knows exactly what this meant to Paul? However, when I consider what Jesus has revealed to me it is in one who is vitally engaged so that he can embrace the vitality of a Syrophoenician woman who challenged him. It seems to me that the fruits of the spirit are reflected as much in the ability to embrace vitality wherever it has been found as in the capacity to cast out demons.
Christians face this issue not only in terms of Judaism. As I write this, the Cathedral of Cordoba has once again ejected Muslims who have sought to pray in the main sanctuary. The cathedral was once a mosque. This seems to fly in the face of the golden age in Spain when building on the vitality present in all three religious communities, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, meant being engaged in work of translation that brought us the thinking of Aristotle and others that was a blessing to all. As we enter into increasingly complex relations with many faith traditions, we must ask of ourselves what model will govern our relations.
Luke 7:11-17
"He had compassion for her." Jesus demonstrated over and over again that to be alive was to be moved by the plight and experience of others. In the gospels, we have a glimpse that this capacity to enter into the experience of others did not always come automatically or easily. The story of the Syrophoenician woman shows a Jesus who did not initially "get it." The woman must prod him into a response. In the wedding-at-Cana miracle, Jesus is challenged to respond to the situation by his own mother. One might say that to be alive for Jesus is the capacity to respond faithfully when pushed. Jesus' miracles occur not in an idealized setting but in the context of all the things that push and pull at human beings. It is often in the context of the give and take of life and the demands of others that we become deadened to the possibilities at hand.
The issue at hand in Luke is, "Has an authoritative prophet come in the person of Jesus?" Luke models his narration on the Elijah cycle of things to show how once again God's plan is playing out.
For Luke, the plan continues in the life of the gathered community of Jesus' followers. The community's prophetic authority arises out of its ability to give a life-affirming response in the midst of all that denies life. A survey of the church today shows that the vitality remains the same. This must seem daunting; however, I suspect that we do not get a hearing unless we can still raise the dead young who need a more excellent way to survive the materialism of our times. I suspect that we will not gain a hearing unless we can hear the cries of those who mourn the loss of children who have lost their childhood to the consumerism, fear, and violence of our times. In the context of families torn apart by greed and need, we will gain a hearing if we can help families and create a sense of family for those who have not experienced it. The vital sign for the church might be measured in terms of whether we can gain a hearing.
Application
I have a shelf full of books on what the signs are of how we should measure vitality in the church. In an age of declining numbers and financial numbers that have seen better days in the kind of churches I have served, it is certainly not surprising that we ponder what it means to be alive. One of the more depressing signs of decay was a conversation with a group of clergy, none of whom would recommend to a young person that they enter the ministry. This may explain why in my denomination of approximately 10,000 clergy you can count the number of clergy under the age of thirty in the single digits. An inability to raise the enthusiasm of the young for ministry is clearly a warning sign that the church may not be right now an extension of God's plan as Luke understood it.
The Luke text suggests, as do the others, that the signs of vitality when it comes to the church may not be fully reflected in all those books on the future of the church in my library. Perhaps a massive effort to open the doors to ministry for the young who are considering their future might be the place to begin. In the churches, vitality might be demonstrated in appreciating the vitality and vigor of other faith communities. We might gain a far greater hearing by demonstrating what it means to be able to hear others. Designing things around how the world is experienced by a widow with a son who has succumbed might not leap to mind as the route to go. However, in a world where there are too many women who must mourn the premature death of their children in war, it might be the source of new vitality in the worldwide church. It certainly is where we share a great deal of common ground with others.
Alternative Application
Galatians 1:11-24. Paul says that he did not confer with any human being about what was happening in his life when he found God calling him, through the revealing of Jesus' identity, to be an apostle to the Gentiles. I am not too sure that I am completely comfortable with that. It seems that at such a time in one's life that the healthy thing to do is to be surrounded by others and to reach out for their support. Yet, I think Paul may be on to something here.
Here he is facing not only a moment of personal challenge but a major paradigm shift. This may not be the time to consult with others. Friends may not want you to change so radically and instead they will come down on the side of what will affirm their comfort zone. Others will find that such a paradigm shift will be a challenge to their own thinking and if they support you they may knock out the props from their own lives. Thomas Kuhn, in The Structures of Scientific Revolutions, points out that people will only shift their paradigms after the weight of anomalous phenomenon is so great that they can no longer maintain the old paradigm. At the point of his calling, Paul has very little evidence that the Gentiles can be successfully merged into the church without taking on Jewish dietary and ritual practice. The time is not yet to be talking with others whose initial reaction can only be negative, fearful, and hostile.
A sign of vitality in the church in our time might be how well we understand what it means for people to go through paradigm shifts and how well we prepare them to do so. Certainly, it means in part to be cut off from others for a while. People need to work on shifts in their lives without intrusive questioning. Certainly teenagers, for whom each day is filled with potential paradigm shifts, need space. Certainly, people need a spirituality that can guide them as they go through a tipping point in their own lives.
Paul's narrative offers the opportunity to reflect a facet of human experience that is otherwise little talked about.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 146
There is a well-worn axiom that warns against mixing religion and politics. It was probably devised in an attempt to help smooth the rough places in some of those long holiday dinners with seldom-seen relatives. Keep the conversation polite, vague, and unchallenging. That way, all parties can stay through the dessert course and get home in one piece. In truth, there is wisdom in such an unwritten law. However, a serious people of faith must contend with the time after dinner when the relatives have dispersed and it's back to business as usual.
Such a moment arrives in the reading of Psalm 146. The psalm underscores a deep strain of the Judeo-Christian heritage that cannot be easily brushed aside. It is the plaintive call here to "not place our trust in princes or in mortals in whom there is no help." This is no stump speech for some brew of faith-based anarchy. It is not an attempt to overthrow established order. It is, simply put, a statement of obvious reality.
While all people are in need of good governance and reasonable processes for redress, the simple truth is that these systems and those who inhabit them are not to be trusted. A simple reading of history demonstrates this. Broken promises, shattered treaties, bloated bureaucracies, and rampant corruption riddle the governments of this world from Old Testament days right through to the moment of this writing.
The call comes to trust, instead, in God. It is God, we read, who executes justice, who liberates the oppressed, and gives sight to the blind. It is God who lifts up those who are bowed down and who loves the righteous. This is not an isolated notion within scripture. It's interesting to note that in this psalm can be found a thread that runs from here to Isaiah (58) to Jesus, who stands up in the temple in chapter 4 of Luke to announce the year of God's favor.
This thread wraps itself around the reality that all governments ultimately are the same in that they will all collapse and perish into vapors of history. What lasts, what stands, and what will always be with us is the powerful voice of our God. It is in this God we are called to place our trust. It is with this God we are called to walk. And it is this God, come to us in Christ Jesus who calls us to lives that will create the year of God's favor now, in this day, and in this moment.
