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A CELEBRATION OF GOD'S GRACE
Fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, but hope in God's love is the end of it.
--Andrew M. Greeley
The Making of the Pope 2005
Try not to become a man (sic) of success but rather try to become a man of value.
--Albert Einstein
Personal memoir of William Miller
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.
--Martin Luther
Table Talk
 The Incarnation ParadoxDecember 8, 2008 |
In chaos theory, constructing a Koch curve is a simple comcept.¹ Start with an equilateral triangle; at the center of each side place another equilateral triangle each side of which is 1/3 the length of the original sides – the result is a star of David. Repeat the process – placing a new triangle at the center of each surface with legs 1/3 the length of those surfaces – to infinity. The circumference of the resulting ‘snowflake’ is a line of infinite length. Draw a circle around the whole construction. The result is a line of infinite length contained within a circle of finite area. The construction may be a simple process, but the result is a complex paradox that cannot be resolved – infinity contained within finitude.
Infinity contained within the finite is the same paradox presented in the opening verses of St. John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us. . . .” (1:1, 14a NRSV) Here, God, who is infinite, willed to become the man, Jesus, who was a finite human being. John began his presentation with a familiar analogy, the word. A word is part of, and an extension of, a person. Many commitments and contracts are made verbally and sealed with a handshake; “My word is my bond” is a matter of honor. A word also has results; “You’re fired!” not only causes emotional devastation, but changes relationships and lifestyles. John relied on his opening words to call to his reader’s mind the opening of Genesis where God created all that is by speaking a Word that challenged the darkness of the chaos with the light of creation. By creating with a Word, God became invested in creation, thereby causing a paradox that puzzled thoughtful people for centuries. How can God be apart from creation, yet closely involved with it? How can God be supreme and remote, yet intimately care for us? John answers those questions by presenting the paradox of the infinite contained in the finite. In Jesus’ day, some thought that God was most present in the Temple in Jerusalem; others thought that the divine was to be found most clearly in the Law, the Torah. John locates God’s presence most fully in Jesus. Tom Wright says it this way, “If you want to know who the true God is, look long and hard at Jesus.”²
At this point the analogy of the Koch curve breaks down, as do all analogies, because of the uniqueness of the Christian faith. Christianity is the only one of the world’s great religions that believes that God is most fully present, not in a place, nor in an object such as a book, but in a person. The Word that created light that sustains life and is the standard of speed now challenges the darkness within creation with Light that makes possible new life and a new standard transformation of relationships with God and each other (“grace upon grace” – 1:16).
1. Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick, 1987, New York, NY: Viking Penguin, Inc., 99.
2. John for Everyone: Part 1, Chapters 1-10 by N.T. Wright, 2002, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 5.
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| What Time Is It? December 18, 2008 |
While waiting for a Metro train in subterranean Washington, D.C., I heard a voice approach me saying, “Excuse me.” My mind had been lost in a book, so as I look up I had to orient myself to the direction of the speaker. When I had focused him, I saw the lined, grizzled face of an outdoorsman long over-exposed to sun and rain. His face was weighed down by a bushy two-inch beard in the shape of a half moon; at the same time, his visage was elevated by an obverse mane of wild hair, non unkempt but with so much body that it radiated out from his head. In the middle of his face rested two large, round eyes. His clothes were clean denim yet anything but the business and student attire of the rest of those on the platform. And out of this vision came a melodious voice of perhaps second tenor pitch asking, “Do you know what time it is?” After our eyes met, I looked at my watch and told him the time. He thanked me and retreated to his perch by his suitcase, and I returned to my book. I did not read again very quickly, as I pondered whether or not I had just seen a modern incarnation of John the Baptist; I just looked at my book to hide what I am sure was astonishment on my face.
Do you know what time it is? Mark’s Gospel opens with John the Baptist living and preaching in the desert. As “the whole of Judea, and all who lived in Jerusalem” came out to the desert to hear him preach, John reenacted the Exodus from Egypt that was such an integral part of Israel’s heritage and theology. Israel had fled from slavery in Egypt, escaped through the river, been led to the Promised Land by God in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Their desert days had been a time of deprivation and temptation, but God had been faithful in bringing them to freedom in their own land. Now John, dressed in the clothes of an ascetic that recalled the people’s desert deprivation, led them once again to the river and baptized them into a new freedom from sin. Now, as Tom Wright notes, the fire in the night and the cloud in the day would be the presence of God’s Spirit (wind) in the air they would breathe and in the fire in their hearts.¹ One can imagine that such a message of freedom would cause the fire in their oppressors’ hearts to turn into heartburn.
Do you know what time it is? It is time to be accountable! For me and my fellow train rider, it was time to get on the train that would take us to our destination. In John the Baptist message to his time and ours, it was and is time to acknowledge our sin:
-- the sin that keeps us from placing God in the prime seat on the train of our personal pilgrimage;
-- the sins of humanity against the environment given us by God;
-- the sins of omission against those we love when we do not affirm our love for them;
-- the sins of commission against those we hold as enemies rather than as beloved adversaries and discussion partners.
Do you know what time it is? It is time to turn around and away from our sin and make amends. The time has come to make our lives and our world ready for the Lord’s arrival, whether we believe the reign of Christ is principally in the present or in the life after death. It is time to spruce up our loving, our ethics, the ‘greening’ of our lifestyle, and our public witness to God’s transforming love and power. Wright tells of a common British joke that wherever the Queen goes, she smells fresh paint.² The Lord of Life is worthy of no less.
1. Mark for Everyone by N.T. Wright, 2001. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 3.
2. ibid., 2.
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| Poor Wayfarin' Stranger January 9, 2009 |
In his short story Tapestries Edward P. Jones imagines an elderly woman, matriarch of a large pride of descendents, telling the story of her courtship and marriage to her grandson who is recording the story for posterity. Her destiny was to migrate from the rural South to Washington, D.C., where at the time of this recollection she would have become “a mother to seven living and two dead, a grandmother to twenty-one living and three dead, a great-grandmother to twelve, (and) a great-great-grandmother to twins.”¹
When she was an eighteen-year-old girl, her cousin returned to a family reunion accompanied by a friend and colleague as sleeping-car porters on the railroad. Anne was not immediately impressed by George; her father would have nothing to do with him because he believed if they formed a relationship, he would take his daughter far from home. However, a year later they were married and set out on the train for Washington. Soon before their departure, her mother sewed some money into the hem of Anne’s dress, saying, “This will bring you home from wherever you are if you ain’t abidin mongst angels.”
The story takes place in the middle of the 20th-century when racial segregation was still deeply entrenched, so the African-Americans had to populate the car just behind the engine, a car which received lots of smoke and cinders from the steam engine. The trip took several days to go from Mississippi to Saint Louis to Washington, and George was working the honeymoon trip. Days into the journey, Anne wanted to see George – just to look at him and say hello. She left the ‘colored’ car and walked through two ‘white’ cars. As she entered the third ‘white’ car, George was at the opposite end being berated loudly and humiliated by his boss. He saw her and passed on the treatment, humiliating her to the point of tears.
She returned her seat in the front car and in her pain decided at the next stop to return home to her parents. After she fell asleep that night George came to her, apologized and asked her forgiveness. It took some time, but she finally accepted his apology. She napped again, and when she woke she found George next to her with his head on her shoulder. In a few minutes, she made him more comfortable by putting his head in her lap. Stroking his cheek finally signaled her forgiveness of him. Her heart was aching from the experience as she silently cried, “Mama, I’m a long way from home.” “Papa, I’m a long way from home.”² The implication at the end of the story is that, having forgiven the one who had hurt her, she left the train in the District of Columbia and made her destiny.
On an evening twenty centuries ago, Jesus looked at what lay ahead of him and cried the cry that is universal to all fearful and broken hearts, “Daddy, I’m a long way from home.” He left the garden to forgive those who hurt him and to make his destiny.
I am a poor wayfarin' stranger,
Travelin' throught this wearisome land,
But there's no sickness, toil, nor danger,
In that fair land to which I go.
1. "Tapestries," in All Aunt Hagar's Children, Edward P. Jones. New York, NY: Amistad, 2006, p. 399.
2. ibid., p. 399.
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| Death of a Dream April 9, 2010 |
“I can’t find you anywhere in the data base,” the Immigration Officer said to him with a shake of her head.
“Does that mean he has no documentation at all?” I asked quizzically.
I had been tutoring him in English for over a year, but his mental handicap made his progress slow – his English was as poor as my Spanish. The Officer had spoken to him in Spanish, and then explained to me in English whatever she said to him. When we arrived at the office for our appointment, she had asked what we needed. I explained my role as his teacher, that he had asked me to help him get a Green Card, and, since I knew nothing about those procedures, that the only thing I could do was to put him in touch with those who could help him, that is, to bring him to the office that issues such permits.
She shook her head again, and out of respect for my attempt to assist him, said, “I really don’t want to call someone.
Realizing that she meant that she did not want to have him arrested on the spot as an illegal, I took his arm and started to guide him out of the office as I said to her with a grateful nod, “Thank you.”
We returned to his county and found a restaurant with a bilingual staff that I could ask to help me, by translating, explain his options to him. They had been gracious in allowing us to meet there for an hour once or twice a week for our lessons. Now, however, it was lunch time and I could not impose on their hospitality. I knew of a public library where one of the librarians supposedly was bilingual. As it turned out, her Spanish was only marginally better than mine, and she referred us to a nearby community center where she was sure that one of the staff spoke Spanish. The lady, however, had left for the day. Oh, well! But they were sure that Progresso Hispano could help us with translation, so we drove ten miles and found their office in a social services building. Yes! They were immigration paralegals.
“Will you please translate for me, so I can let him know what his choices are?”
“Come in. What do you want to tell him?”
And slowly, as she explained his situation, the light went out of his eyes.
“First, he needs to know that he is illegal. Then he needs to know that he can only come here legally for immediate family or for a written job offer. And third, he can stay illegally, as long as he stays out of trouble, and wait for Congress to effect some sort of pathway to citizenship.”
After twelve years of working without documents, employers are demanding the Green Card now and his work opportunities have dried up. He began to realize that without work he could not afford to stay. She also explained that, since he had been here illegally, he would have to wait ten years before returning legally. Could she expand on what I wanted to tell him to include that? Of course.
A week later I was unable to contact him, so I was sure he had returned to Mexico, probably to his parents’ farm where “they have chickens.” I can only imagine the kind of poverty he is returning to, since many of his twelve siblings have left it for the United States.
He had tried to get a passport, but the Mexican authorities told him he already had one. In fact, it was his cousin’s by the same name. The California address and different birth date seems to have made no difference, so his attempt to come legally was dead at birth. Neither he nor anyone close to him had a clue how to pursue and prod the authorities into correct action. My friend’s mental handicap, his lack of social skills -- except for the elaborate handshake he greeted me with each time we met, and inability to deal with the community structures around him leave him perpetually vulnerable to predators of all kinds.
Yet he had character traits that are admirable. When he was given opportunity, he worked regularly and hard. He had just enough vision to know that he would improve himself by learning English. In order to do that, he rode his bicycle 45 minutes each way to his lessons – on the hottest or coldest days of the year, along a very dangerous stretch of a very busy highway. He practiced hours on his own, writing over and over the words he learned, and watching television in English.
Lazarus is in his tomb! He is being wept for and grieved over. Will resurrection come? For this man’s dream, we don’t know. But we can be midwife for other dreams as we work for social justice and participate in social services that move us out of our own comfort zone and into cruciform living like that which Christ lived and died. Only so can the illness of Lazarus lead not to death, but to the glorification of God. (John 11:4)
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