Lent I: Love for the Wilderness to Come

Sermon: Lent I
Love for the Wilderness to Come

Mark 1.9-15
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

• • •

The Lord be with you.

On Wednesday night we looked back to last Sunday’s Gospel, which told the story of Jesus’ transfigura-tion. I made the point that this was the start of Jesus’ and the disciples’ journey to the cross. They were about to set on a course that would be dark and difficult, and to strengthen and sustain their hearts, he gave them a vision of great light and splendor, showing them for the only time something of his true glory as the beloved Son of God. This was light for the dark journey to come, a journey we will join them on during this Lenten season.

Today’s Gospel text takes us back to the beginning of Jesus’ journey of ministry. This is when God sent him out for the work he was called to do — proclaiming the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, and demonstrating that through powerful words and acts of love and mercy. This is the traditional text we read on the first Sunday in Lent, and just as the story of the Transfiguration showed how Jesus prepared his friends for the darkness to come, so this story tells us how God prepared Jesus for the wilderness and temptation that was to come as he went about his work.

As we read this text, you may have noticed something similar to last week’s Transfiguration story. In both cases, the heavens were opened and God’s voice was heard from heaven, affirming that Jesus was the beloved Son of God. Immediately after his baptism and this divine affirmation, Mark says, Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, there to be tested by the evil one, to be beset by the wild beasts, and to experience the comforting ministry of God’s angels.

I want to suggest to you today that this story shows us how Jesus was prepared for the difficult journey of ministry he took. It was through his baptism and through the affirmation of God’s love for him as his beloved child that Jesus was strengthened and would be sustained in the days and years to come.

And so, if the Transfiguration was meant to give light to the disciples for their dark journey, Jesus’ baptism was meant to put God’s love firmly in his heart for the lonely and tempting journey into the wilderness he made.

Mark spares us the details of the temptations Satan subjected Jesus to. It is enough to for him to tell us that he went into the wilderness for forty days. This is a clear allusion to the story of Israel, who were delivered from Egypt and became God’s sons and daughters at Mt. Sinai, where they received the word that God had chosen them to be a nation of priests, called to bring his light to the whole world. When they left Mt. Sinai, they travelled into the wilderness and faced temptation after temptation, test after test. In the face of those challenges, they let go of God’s word of redeeming love and failed those tests by failing to trust that God was with them to help and sustain them.

However, unlike the Hebrews, when Jesus went into the wilderness, he held on to God’s word that was given at his baptism, clung to his identity as God’s beloved Son, and trusted God when he was tested. In baptism, God had reinforced his love and calling for Jesus in a powerful, memorable way. Jesus remembered that, and it sustained him.

But that’s not all. Mark includes a message for followers of Jesus here as well. There is an interesting detail in Mark that is not found in any of the other Gospel stories of Jesus’ temptation. Look at v. 13 — “He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

Folks have wondered why Mark added this detail about the “wild beasts.” Let me tell you why I think it’s there.

The traditional view is that Mark was associated closely with the Apostle Peter, and that his Gospel reflects Peter’s point of view. Peter, of course, was identified with the church in Rome, and it is said that Peter died in Rome as a martyr under the Emperor Nero during a particularly intense period of persecution. Commenters think that Mark may have been written as a pastoral Gospel, designed to strengthen and sustain the Christians in Rome who were going through that persecution.

If that is the case, then Mark’s mention of the “wild beasts” here would be very clear to those first readers. It would have a special significance for those called to face the wild beasts in the arena. It would say to them that their Savior faced the same kind of testing and the same danger and difficulty they did.

It would also remind them to find strength and sustenance in the same way Jesus did, by remembering their baptism, when God’s word affirmed them as his beloved daughters and sons, and by knowing that God’s angels were with them to minister to them no matter what they had to endure.

And so, Mark’s account of Jesus’ temptation is meant to be an encouragement to all of us as well. The journey of discipleship is filled with challenges, obstacles, and pitfalls. It can be like the wilderness — lonely and dangerous. We face trials without and temptations within. Sometimes it seems as though we are at the mercy of the wild beasts of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Here is my encouragement to all of us today — let us remember our baptism. As we walk through each day, which can sometime be a wilderness, let us remember and hold on to the fact that God has washed us clean and claimed us as his own beloved children. Let this affirmation strengthen and sustain us.

And as we face whatever “wild beasts” of adversity may threaten us, let us rest in God’s accompanying presence and the ministry of God’s angels. We are his beloved children, and nothing can ever separate us from his love. Amen.

The Saturday Monks Brunch: February 17, 2018

PRESIDENTS DAY EDITION

THE PRESIDENTS’ PERK — CAMP DAVID

Intriguing photo essay at The National from a book marking the 75th anniversary of the presidential retreat at Camp David in 2017.

During his first two terms, President Franklin Roosevelt retreated on the presidential yacht, the USS Potomac. But WWII changed everything. Security officials feared that the yacht could be sunk by German U‑boats or attacked from the air, so they decided that it was just too risky to use. In March 1942, officials from the National Park Service were tasked with looking for a location that could serve as a presidential retreat.

They chose an old WPA site from the 1930s in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, that to this day is very difficult to find. Camp David’s official name is Naval Support Facility Thurmont, and it is commanded by a U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps officer and staffed by a team of sailors, marines and other military personnel under the White House Military Office (WHMO). The retreat was named for President Eisenhower’s grandson.

Today, absolute privacy is the gift Camp David continues to bestow on presidents. Press access is extremely limited, and photography is rarely permitted. Unlike at the White House, where every moment is observed and recorded, at the camp, it is possible to close the door and draw the curtains, shutting out the nation for a precious brief time. It’s a place where presidents can breathe.

Here are a few pictures from over the years, featuring most of the presidents who have enjoyed respite at Camp David.

YEAH, THIS IS GOING TO GO WELL…

From RNS:

The founder of a Kentucky creationism museum will appear at an Oklahoma university, after all, after the student body president initially canceled the event over objections of female and LGBTQ students and their supporters.

Creation Museum founder Ken Ham and the University of Central Oklahoma announced Thursday that the event will happen March 5, as planned.

HAIR TODAY, MULLET FOREVER!

From The Daily Telegraph:

A Hunter Valley town, which some claim is the Australian home of the mullet hairstyle, will host a festival to celebrate the cut which arguably epitomised toughness and sexuality in the 1980s.

The inaugural Mullet Fest in Kurri Kurri will centre around a competition to award the best mullet in five categories — every day, grubby, ranga, ladies and junior mullet and publican.

After the winner in each category is announced, the person with the “best mullet of them all” will be crowned, said hairdresser and festival host Laura Hawkins.

I hope those who are participating realize that wearing a mullet requires maintaining a lifestyle:

SPRING TRAINING REPORT…

Why I love Chicago Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon.

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GLASS GETS IN YOUR EYE

From Bloomberg:

The centerpiece of Apple Inc.’s new headquarters is a massive, ring-shaped office overflowing with panes of glass, a testament to the company’s famed design-obsessed aesthetic.

There’s been one hiccup since it opened last year: Apple employees keep smacking into the glass.

Surrounding the building, located in Cupertino, California, are 45-foot tall curved panels of safety glass. Inside are work spaces, dubbed “pods,” also made with a lot of glass. Apple staff are often glued to the iPhones they helped popularize. That’s resulted in repeated cases of distracted employees walking into the panes, according to people familiar with the incidents.

AN UPDATE ON THIS WEEK’S WORSHIP…

THE SURPRISING HUMMINGBIRD

You MUST check out this set of amazing interactive videos on hummingbirds at National Geographic. New advances in camera technology allowed researchers to record these lightning-fast creatures and observe their behaviors in speeds the human eye can discern. Yes, the picture above shows the hummingbird’s tongue.

THIS WILL NEVER BE ME…

Last week we were watching the tear-jerk episode of This Is Us when it shows how the dad, Jack, died. He went back into the house for the family dog and also brought out “the family photo album.” Remember when we had “the family photo album”? THE family photo album. I looked at Gail (this being shortly after we had moved) and said, “Yeah, I would have had to carry out 20 large boxes.”

MORE SPACEX NEWS

From The Washington Post:

SpaceX is preparing to hit another orbital milestone with the launch of a pair of experimental satellites on Sunday that are designed to beam an ultrafast, lag-free Internet connection down to Earth.

The test satellites, dubbed Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b, are a part of a years-long plan by chief executive Elon Musk to create a fleet of orbiting devices to blanket the globe in wireless broadband connectivity. SpaceX ultimately intends to put about 12,000 broadband satellites in low Earth orbit, and Sunday’s payload will mark the company’s first attempt at realizing the dream. The initial satellites in the network are expected to come online next year.

FINALLY, MORE NICK DRAKE

This may be the prettiest song Nick Drake (our Lenten muse) ever recorded. This is “Thoughts of Mary Jane,” from his first album, Five Leaves Left [LP].

Enjoy, and happy Saturday.

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (4)

Adam and Eve. Fuseli

On Fridays, we’re doing a series on Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. In this book, he examines how “the story of Adam and Eve has over centuries decisively shaped conceptions of human origins and human destiny.”

The next two chapters explore the seminal (pun intended) impact of St. Augustine on how we have read and understood this story ever since.

In the end, for Augustine, it’s all about sex. Just as it was in the beginning.

If Greenblatt’s analysis of Augustine’s life and its important turns is correct, an emphasis upon (obsession with?) things sexual was a common thread through it all.

He begins with an experience Augustine never forgot: the day in 370 AD when he and his father went to a bathhouse in Thagaste, and while there, his father noticed “the signs of active virility coming to life in me, and this was enough to make him relish the thought of having grandchildren.” Though his father was delighted that the young man was awakening to sexual maturity, his pious mother Monica was alarmed.

And thus began St. Augustine’s lifelong struggle with concupiscence, the lust of the flesh understood in primarily sexual terms. Also, so began a way of thinking that led to a deeply theological distrust of sexual desire and its designation as the primary evidence of original sin, passed on from our first parents.

When the young man went away to Carthage to pursue his education, he wrote that he found himself “in a midst of a hissing cauldron of lust.” Within a couple of years, he had settled into a relationship with a woman with whom he lived for 13 years and had a child. This cohabitation was conventional at the time and did not deter his mother Monica from trying to get him married to a good Catholic girl somehow.

But Augustine was on a spiritual journey as well, eventually becoming an adherent of the Manichees, a dualistic, esoteric, and syncretistic religion that for a time satisfied his struggle with where evil in the world originated. However, his devout Catholic mother continued to pursue him, even at one point moving from North Africa to Milan to be with him when he took a teaching post. There, under the teaching of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, Augustine warmed to the allegorical teaching of the Hebrew Bible, a book the Manicheans had despised as the dark story of a God who created an evil world. Eventually, his lover and partner left him, and not long afterward he was converted when reading these words from Romans: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites.”

Putting on Jesus, Augustine put off sex and made a vow of continence. His mother was ecstatic.

The autobiographical portion of Augustine’s Confessions ends with an account of the most intense spiritual experience of his life, one which he had together with his mother while they were conversing one day. As they were discussing “that no bodily pleasure, however great, could ever match or even remotely approach the happiness of the saints” (p. 95), they felt themselves caught up into heavenly realms, where they touched eternal Wisdom “for one fleeting moment.” A few days after this mystical experience, Monica died. She had been the love of his life upon this earth, and this final experience captures Augustine’s longing for what he saw as the blessings of pure love, spiritual love, love that can never be compared with base lust or erotic desire.

In the more than forty years that succeeded his moment of ecstasy — years of endless controversy and the wielding of power and feverish writing — Augustine, priest, leader of a community of monks, and bishop of the North African city of Hippo, spent an extraordinary amount of his time trying to understand the story of Adam and Eve. He thought about it when he sat, book in hand, on his bishop’s chair (his cathedra), when he addressed his clergy and congregation in solemn assembly, when he grappled with complex theological issues, and when he tirelessly dictated letter after letter to his network of friends and allies. He brooded on it through his bitter polemics against heretics. He continued to ponder its mysteries when he heard the terrible reports in 410 of the three-day sack of Rome by a Visigothic army led by Alaric. Over the decades, he had persuaded himself that it was not a story at all, at least not a story in the sense of a fable or myth. It was the literal truth, and, as such, it was the scientific key to the understanding of everything that happened. (p. 96f)

And the key was this: “The world as God made it was good, perfectly so, and it would have remained good, had it not been for the original, terrible act of human perversity. All the miseries that have followed — the endless succession of ghastly crimes, the horrors of tyranny and war, the seemingly natural disasters of earthquake, fire, and flood, and what Hamlet calls the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to — are just punishments meted out by a just God. Such is the meaning of being ‘in Adam.'” (p. 102)

And that brings us back to sex. For, how did every human being born after Adam come to share in this original sin?

The problem is that even the most legitimate form of sexual intercourse — between a husband and wife mutually bent on engendering a child — is also corrupt. The current of sinfulness that courses through it is precisely the mechanism that carries the stain of evil from one generation to the next and infects the dreams of those most determined to keep themselves pure and chaste. Human sinfulness is a sexually transmitted disease. (p. 108)

There’s more. After Adam and Eve, not only does humanity pass along sinfulness through sexual intercourse, but even the very act of intimacy itself has become corrupted. The act of sex (between a married couple intending to beget a child) is not sinful but even within the chaste, consecrated bounds of marriage it cannot be “performed without evil,” Augustine claimed. That “evil” is the overwhelming feeling of erotic desire. Originally, he thought, Adam and Eve somehow must have been created to “unite in the task of propagation as a deliberate act undisturbed by passion” (p. 118). Now, however, passion “disturbs” every act of intimacy. And the most clear evidence of the fact that we are “in Adam,” tainted by original sin, is that we cannot control when we are sexually aroused.

Augustine found further proof of this in the story of Adam and Eve.

In one of his first works, Augustine took an allegorical approach to the early chapters of Genesis. However, about a decade later, he began to work on a book about the literal truth of the story. Given the human condition as he had come to understand it, he concluded that it must be an “unvarnished representation of historical reality” (p. 111).

One of the texts he struggled with was Genesis 3:7, where it says that after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, “their eyes were opened.” Laboring to grasp this literally and refusing to accept any metaphorical reading, Augustine eventually concluded that it meant this: “They turned their eyes on their own genitals, and lusted after them with that stirring movement they had not previously known” (p. 114). Adam and Eve’s original sin led to the original proof that they had fallen — they saw that they had become sexually aroused apart from their own control. This was why they covered up — not simply because they were unclothed but because they felt the throes of passion involuntarily and exhibited the physical signs of that.

One of Augustine’s legacies — bolstered by his interpretation of Adam and Eve — is that Christians have had a intensified focus upon and conflicted relationship with sexuality ever since.

Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible- by John Polkinghorne, Chapter 8- The Pauline Writings

Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible– by John Polkinghorne

Chapter 8- The Pauline Writings

The earliest New Testament writings are the epistles of the apostle Paul.  First Thessalonians is considered to be the first epistle written about the year 50.  Polkinghorne points out that within 20 years of the crucifixion and resurrection Jesus was being described in exalted terms as “God’s Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead” (1:10).  It is also striking that Paul begins almost all his letters with the greeting, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”.  Although there was a common use of kyrios, much like sir, Polkinghorne believes that it reflects the Jewish use of Lord in place of the unutterable name of God.  Despite his being a monotheistic Jew, Paul is bracketing together God and Jesus in an extraordinary way.

It seems to Polkinghorne that Paul, as with other NT writers, is struggling to find words to express his experience of the risen Christ, and is being driven to use both human and divine-sounding language about Jesus, despite his Jewish monotheism.  The NT does not resolve the issue of the Lordship of Jesus and the Lordship of the one true God of Israel (Deuteronomy 6:4).  The issue is simply present, arising as a fact of experience, encouraged by the belief in the Resurrection and the new life that the first believers found had been given to them in Christ.  He says:

The Pauline witness is absolutely clear, both about the presence of human and divine attributes in Jesus and about the reconciliation (atonement) he has effected between a righteous God and sinful humanity, but in neither case are we given, in Paul, or elsewhere in the New Testament, a detailed theological theory of how these things can be.  Experience was everything; theorizing could wait.  In the case of human/divine duality in Christ, the Church was eventually led to the doctrine of the two natures, proclaimed in Chalcedon in 451, requiring the use of philosophical language quite different from the scriptural style of discourse, but, I believe consonant with scriptural testimony.  In the case of Atonement, the Church, while always witnessing to the fact, has not succeeded in formulating a universally agreed theory.

Another remarkable attribute emphasized by Paul is that, although the Christian community knew Jesus as a human individual, it had nevertheless experienced a corporate element in its relationship with Christ.  Paul tells the Corinthian church that they are “the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:12-27, Romans 12:4-8, Ephesians 4:15-16).  Polkinghorne says he is not using “body” simply as a simile, or a literary device, but for him it is a spiritual reality.  Connected with this is the very frequent use of the phrase “in Christ”.  Without denying the humanity of Jesus, this participatory language points to a reality in Him that exceeds the simply human.

Paul’s use of the Hebrew Scriptures is also quite remarkable and scandalous to the literalistic mindset.  In Romans 9:3 he fuses two separate verses from Isaiah (8:14 and 28:16) to form a quotation about the stone of stumbling he wants to use, that although in Isaiah, clearly refer to the Lord God of Israel, he applies them to Jesus.  In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes from Joel 2:32, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  The context makes it clear Paul is referring to Christ, while Joel is clearly referring to the God of Israel.  And in the “Christological hymn” of Philippians 2:5-11, the assertion: “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” is an unmistakable echo of what is said about God in Isaiah 45:23.  Many scholars believe Paul is reproducing a hymn in wide use in the early Church, which would take this form of proclamation of the Lordship of Christ back into very early times indeed.

Polkinghorne touches on the assertion by many modern scholars that it is not certain that everything to which Paul’s name has been attached was actually written by him.  Although in this modern world, that would be considered plagiarism, that was not the case in the ancient world.  There was not the modern concept of authorial integrity, so it was not considered fraudulent to present writings arising in a tradition that stemmed from an original author as if it had been written by that author himself.  It was considered to be giving honor to one’s mentor and acknowledging his influence.  There are varying degrees of doubt about Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians as well as the Pastoral Epistles; 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.  However, Polkinghorne notes, the variations in style and content could have arisen from developments in Paul’s thinking, from different target readership, or even from different amanuensis, since in all probability the letters were dictated.  Some people think this affects their place as “inspired” Scripture; I do not, nor does Polkinghorne.  The testimony of the early Church was that these documents belonged in the canon, and that is good enough for me.  The Church would have thought that, even though the precise document might not have been authored directly by Paul, the thoughts expressed by that disciple of Paul reflected the apostolic authority of Paul himself as passed down through testimony of those in the Church who heard him speak.  As Polkinghorne says:

…their place in the canon, and so their authority as Scripture in the Church, does not depend upon Paul having been their actual author.

If you, dear reader, have a problem with that, it is probably because you have a view of the Bible as a magic book.  I don’t say that to be insulting, after all I had that view for many years; it was what I was taught.  If you all recall last week’s Saturday Brunch and the Gloria Copeland video about the flu , then you will understand that many evangelicals hold the magic view of scripture.  In the Copeland’s and others viewpoint, the words of the Bible are magical incantations that invoke the power of God on your behalf.  They, of course, don’t use the word “magic” as magic is of the devil, but when all is said and done it is the same metaphysical ideological belief system.  But it is not the Book itself or the writings that hold the power. It is the meaning of the words through His human authors that convey the relationship He wishes to have with His people.  Contrary to Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum, the medium is NOT the message, the message is the message.

Ash Wednesday with Nick Drake

Ash Wednesday with Nick Drake

When the world seemed too remote, too difficult to negotiate, I recognised in him a spirit brave and brilliant enough to articulate in music what was an incoherent fog within me.

• Monty Don, about Nick Drake

Each year, either on Ash Wednesday or during Lent, I try to focus some of my attention on a musical artist or album from the popular culture of my lifetime in which I find echoes of the Lenten journey. In past years we’ve considered the music of Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and last year we followed the long, strange  journey of Neil Young.

Here in 2018, on Ash Wednesday, I’m thinking of one of the best singer-songwriters most people have never heard of, whose three brilliant albums weren’t appreciated nearly as much during his lifetime as they have come to be in later years. This is Nick Drake, the prodigious young English guitarist and singer at the turn of the 1970s, whose haunting songs and tragic death from an overdose of antidepressants at age 26 earned him a cult following for a time. However, as the years have passed Drake has gained wider recognition for his genius, and his influence has grown exponentially.

Here is Drake’s bio at Rolling Stone:

Since Nick Drake’s death, his eerie, jazz-tinged folk music has had an ever-growing cult following. Born to British parents, Drake spent his first two years on the Indian subcontinent before moving to the English village of Tanworth-in-Arden. He played saxophone and clarinet in school but turned to the guitar at age 16. Two years later he began writing his own songs. He was a student at Cambridge University in 1968, when Ashley Hutchings of Fairport Convention heard him performing at London’s Roundhouse. Hutchings introduced him to Joe Boyd, who managed Fairport, John Martyn, and other leaders of the British folk revival. Boyd immediately signed Drake to Island Records and put him on Witchseason concert bills. In 1970 Elton John was hired as a session vocalist to record Drake’s songs to use as demos to entice established singers to covet Drake’s compositions.

Drake was a shy, awkward performer and remained aloof from the public and press. By all accounts his isolation and confusion, results of severe mental illness that at times would leave him catatonic and requiring hospitalizations, grew more severe. By the end of 1970 he had stopped doing concerts. He lived for a short while in Paris at the behest of Françoise Hardy (who never released the recordings she made of his songs) and then settled in Hampstead, where he became increasingly reclusive, allowing the company of only his close friends John and Beverly Martyn. He recorded Pink Moon totally unaccompanied, submitted the tapes to Island by mail, and entered a psychiatric rest home.

When he left the home months later, vowing never to sing another song, he got a job as a computer programmer. In 1973 he began writing songs again. Drake had recorded four when he died in bed at his parents’ home in 1974, the victim of an overdose of antidepressant medication. Suicide was considered probable by the coroner, but Drake’s friends and family disagreed. Fruit Tree is a box set containing his three albums plus the four songs recorded in 1973. In 2000 Drake’s music reached a much larger audience than during his lifetime after Volkswagen used his “Pink Moon” in a car commercial, which greatly spurred sales of his recordings. This music also turned up on a few film soundtracks and became the subject of tributes performed by such artists as Duncan Sheik. Drake’s original albums were remastered and repackaged on CD in late 2000.

Nick Drake made three classic singer-songwriter albums: Five Leaves Left (which featured players from seminal British folks groups such as Fairport Convention and Pentangle), Bryter Layter (the most commercial of his records and one in which Drake intended to emulate the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds), and Pink Moon (a solo album featuring only Drake and his guitar). The one song many of you might recognize is Northern Sky, which has been featured on TV and movie soundtracks. The beauty and melancholy is tangible.

Despite his remarkable gifts, Drake, an introvert crippled by depression, was uncomfortable with public performance and the commercial aspects of the record business. An accurate statement of his struggles with life and the fight for public recognition may be seen in his song, Fruit Tree:

Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound
It can never flourish
‘til its stock is in the ground
So men of fame
Can never find a way
‘til time has flown
Far from their dying day

Forgotten while you’re here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style

One of his songs that captures the essence of Ash Wednesday for me is Day Is Done, from Nick Drake’s first album. A few of the songs there, including this one, have an “Eleanor Rigby” ambience, with chamber string arrangements that hauntingly evoke our mortality.

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done

When the day is done
Hope so much your race will be all run
Then you find you jumped the gun
Have to go back where you begun
When the day is done

When the night is cold
Some get by but some get old
Just to show life’s not made of gold
When the night is cold

When the bird has flown
Got no-one to call your own
Got no place to call your home
When the bird has flown

When the game’s been fought
Newspaper blown accross the court
Lost much sooner than you would have thought
Now the game’s been fought

When the party’s through
Seems so very sad for you
Didn’t do the things you meant to do
Now there’s no time to start anew
Now the party’s through

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done

A blessed Ash Wednesday to you. Though among the most somber of days, there is music to express our deepest feelings and darkest fears. Nick Drake, may God give rest to his troubled soul, will be my muse this year as I learn to number my days.

• • •

Further Reading

To be lifted up carefully and carried out of confinement

Cricket. Photo by Mark Robinson

✑

When I woke up this morning, before I’d gotten out of bed, I was looking around to see what was going on in my room. Not much was going on, I’m happy to say. But there was a cricket on the glazed stone floor. He didn’t belong in the room. Crickets don’t belong in rooms. I looked at him and decided to give him a helping hand, so I picked him up as gently as I could so as not to either alarm him or hurt him, and I carried him out into the sunshine. And he hopped away to do whatever crickets do, where they belong. And I thought to myself, that’s what it’s all about: to be lifted up carefully and in a way not to frighten us, to be taken out of the confinement of the room where we’re locked away from where we belong, and to be carried out into the fresh air.

• Frederick Buechner
“The Gates of Pain”

• • •

From A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory
By Frederick Buechner
Zondervan (2017)

Photo by Mark Robinson at Flickr. Creative Commons License

On Resurrection and Eternal Life (3)

As a hospice chaplain, my work revolves around supporting the dying and their families. I officiate many funerals. I deal with questions about death and what happens after people die. I am asked regularly about mysteries beyond our human experience in this life.

On Mondays we are delving into this subject, starting with Gerhard Lohfink and his excellent new book, Is This All There Is?: On Resurrection and Eternal Life.

Chapter 3 discusses another option people consider when thinking about what happens to humans after death.

This concept is represented in an excerpt from an obituary which Lohfink cites: “Dear Mama, you had my back in everything I did in life. Dear Papa, you modeled what it means to work with passion and dedication. You are in me, and you live in me” (p. 20).

“You are in me, and you live in me.” About this idea the author comments:

Behind that statement lies the idea that those who have died live on in their descendants. [emphasis mine] Death is the end for them personally, but the good they have brought into the world is not lost; it continues through their children and grandchildren to distant generations. So it endures, and so the dead themselves remain in the world. (p. 20)

We see something of this idea in the Hebrew Bible: “May his posterity be cut off; in the very next generation may their name be blotted out” (Ps. 109:13). To die without heirs who carry on the family name was to lose a share in God’s ongoing blessing upon Israel. They held on to the concept of a “life” that carries on from generation to generation. As Lohfink says, “…the idea of being embedded in the sequence of generations was firmly tied to the belief that in coming generations God’s promises would continue to be fulfilled again and again” (p. 22).

Though they may not conceive of it in the same covenantal terms as the ancient Israelites, I know people who find great comfort in the idea that there is a continuing life that we receive from our ancestors and pass on to our descendants. If this is true genetically, it is also true in terms of the common narratives we share. Each individual plays a part in the ongoing family story. I think there is a great deal of solace in this, and often use Genesis 25:6 as a funeral text: “After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac.”

I also believe that each life adds something to the world. Something organic, as it were. As though the life we live and the work we do plants “seeds” which sprout and grow up and live after we’re gone. I also encourage families and loved ones to “keep the spirit of their loved one alive” by taking up the ongoing task of sharing memories, telling stories, and paying honor to them by finding ways to commemorate their life and contributions.

However, some people think that the only “afterlife” involves living on in the hearts and memories of their families and friends and in the “harvest” of the seeds planted by how they lived their lives. For example, Lohfink quotes Gerard Mortier:

Every life continues somewhere,
my father and mother in me,
and I in everything I have brought to be.
That is what resurrection means to me.
Paradises do not interest me.

In the end, Gerhard Lohfink (and I) find this concept meaningful but lacking. It may be true that each human life adds something to this world that is good and beneficial, but it is also true that every accomplishment and achievement we might celebrate can be countered, corrupted, and ultimately destroyed by future generations. Or, in a more banal sense, simply forgotten, dissipating into the ether of time.

There is another problem with “keeping our loved ones alive in our hearts” — i.e. through remembering them. Our memories are ours, they do not necessarily represent the essence of the person himself or herself. Lohfink gives us this somber reminder: “Even our memories of our own life stories are fragile, have many gaps, and are full of self-deceptions. Our grandchildren will still know something about us. But beyond that we inevitably begin to be forgotten” (p. 24).

The chapter ends with an honest word from one of my favorite philosophers.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

• Woody Allen (quoted, p. 26)

Epiphany VI: The Transfiguration — Light for the Darkness to Come

Holy Cross Catholic Church. Photo by David Cornwell

Sermon: Epiphany VI – Transfiguration
Light for the Darkness to Come

Mark 9:2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

• • •

The Lord be with you.

My friends, we are about to embark upon a journey. This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season.

The word “Lent” is an old word for “spring,” and in that respect it is a hopeful season. The days will get longer, and hopefully warmer as we move through Lent. Color will return to the fields and the trees. Flowers will begin to bloom. Life will begin to awaken from winter’s slumber. And best of all, we’ll start playing baseball again!

But spring has its challenges too, doesn’t it! When I lived in Vermont, it brought a time called “Mud season,” when some of the roads and lanes became impassable. Here we often have surprise snow storms. Days can be gray and rainy and temperatures up and down like a roller coaster, leaving you chilled. Spring, when life returns to the earth, has its birth pains as well as its joys.

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the final Sunday in Epiphany, the final Sunday before Lent. It marks a momentous occasion in the Gospels, when Jesus took his disciples up a mountain and gave them an unforgettable vision of who he was. As they watched, God took the veil away, and Jesus was revealed for who he really is, the glorious Lord of heaven and earth. His appearance became as bright as the sun. As the disciples fell down in awe, overwhelmed, they saw Moses and Elijah with him there on the mountain. Then God’s voice thundered from heaven as it did at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, listen to him!”

This was a unique experience for the disciples. It was the one time in his life when Jesus was seen in his true glory. Every other day of his life, he looked like an ordinary human being. He didn’t walk around with a halo over his head, as many artists have painted him. He didn’t have a special glow about him. When the prophet Isaiah foretold him, he wrote, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” It’s true that he amazed people with the power of his words and with remarkable works of healing and overcoming evil, but what was amazing was that it was someone who looked just like a common, ordinary man who was doing these things.

But at the Transfiguration, it was different. This was a true heavenly experience. This was a vision of a dimension of Jesus that the disciples had never witnessed. When John wrote about it later in his Gospel, he said, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” When the author of 2 Peter described it, he wrote,

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

This was a once in a lifetime experience. This was never repeated. Even when he was raised from the dead, the disciples did not see Jesus like this. This is the one time when he walked the earth that Jesus showed us his glory, who he truly is, his majesty, his incomparable greatness and splendor.

As I read this story again this year, I wondered why? Why this transfiguration? Why did Jesus take Peter, James, and John up the mountain and give them this experience? Why this unique, never to be repeated encounter with the glory of God?

The answer lies in what is happening in the Gospel story at this moment. Just as Transfiguration Sunday markes a transition to a new season and a new journey that we will take in Lent, this event marked a turning point in Jesus’ life and in the disciples’ journey, according to the Gospels. You see, right before our text this morning, we read these words in Mark, chapter 8:

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly… [and then] He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

It was right after these portentous words about the cross—that’s when Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and they saw him transfigured, they witnessed his glory, they heard God’s voice. Right when Jesus was starting his own journey toward the cross, right when he told his disciples that they were about to make their own journey of taking up the cross, that’s when the Transfiguration took place.

I think Jesus was preparing them for the difficult road ahead. I think he knew that the experiences that lay before them would be so challenging, so trying, so confusing, so unbelievably hard, that he wanted to give them something that would strengthen them and fortify them. He wanted them to know that he would be with them on that journey, but that he was not just any man, not even just a great teacher or healer or miracle worker. He wanted them to see the fullness of his glory and know in their hearts that he was indeed God’s glorious and beloved Son, the true Messiah of Israel, Lord of all.

Why the Transfiguration?

Why did Jesus give his disciples this experience, revealing his glory to them?

To strengthen them for what was to come.

He went up the mountain with them to prepare them for the days to come when they came down from the mountain. The Jesus who was with them on the mountain, revealed in all his glory, also went down the mountain with them. Even though he would not look as he did in that transfigured state, the experience of having seen that was designed to fortify them for the trials to come.

I read one sermon on the Transfiguration that put it this way: “It will be dark where we’re going. We’ll need the light.”

In the days to come, the disciples will see Jesus transfigured in another way. They will see him opposed, arrested, beaten, imprisoned, sentenced, and hung on a cross to die. They will see themselves transfigured and transformed as well. Their confidence will be shaken. In some cases their faith will fail. At important moments along the way to Jerusalem, they will display their lack of understanding, their lack of trust, their hardness of heart. In the end, they will abandon Jesus and run for their lives. It will be a hard and dark journey.

The fire of their faith may fail in the days to come, however, there will be a pilot light in their hearts that will not go out. The experience here on the mountain will guarantee that. No matter how dark the days ahead will be, there will always be a spark, a glimmer, a bit of light. Even though the Jesus who takes them down the mountain will look like an ordinary man, they will not forget the Jesus they saw on top of the mountain. And he is the one who will be with them on their journey.

My friends, remember this Sunday. Remember the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. This is God’s beloved Son; let us listen to him in the days to come.

On Wednesday, we ourselves will experience a transfiguration. We’ll come forward and receive ashes applied to our foreheads. We will hear the words, “Dust you are, and to dust you will return.” We will remember our mortality, our very bodies will be marked with the sign of the cross. Then, like the disciples, our Lenten journey will begin. It will be dark where we’re going. We will need the light.

• • •

Photo by David Cornwell at Flickr. Creative Commons License

The Saturday Monks Brunch: February 10, 2018

FAT TUESDAY EDITION

THE ANTI FLU PSA

Last week we had an iMonk public service announcement about the flu and how to prevent getting it and passing it on. Sorry, but now we’ve learned that wasn’t necessary.

A SPORTS CAR IN SPACE!

BLOOMBERG: On Tuesday, SpaceX (Elon Musk, proprietor) blasted a 230-foot rocket into orbit, returned its two side boosters to Earth for a flawlessly synchronized landing, and propelled Musk’s own Tesla Roadster toward deep space, where it’s expected to orbit the sun for hundreds of millions of years.

Here are some great pictures of the event. You can see more at SpaceX’s Media Gallery and at their Flickr page.

You can read HERE about three more upcoming SpaceX launches planned for 2018.

Oh wait, but if you believe the FLAT EARTH SOCIETY, the whole thing was a hoax.

WINTER OLYMPICS OPEN

Last evening the Opening Ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympics were broadcast here in the U.S. The Olympic cauldron was lit by Yuna Kim, South Korean Olympic champion figure skater.

Lots of political intrigue with these games, given the way North Korea has been in the news this year with nuclear threats and tests. The Washington Post has an article about the political theater being played out in Peongyang.

Here is a fascinating article tracing the history of the games and examining their religious significance by Kimberly Winston at RNS, called “God and the Games.”

WHY I DON’T HUNT

NPR: Robert Meilhammer, 51, of Crapo, Md., was struck in the head Thursday by a dead Canada goose that plunged from the sky after a fellow waterfowl hunter fired a blind shot on a flock overhead. Meilhammer was in the midst of a hunting party with three friends in Easton, Md.

The goose fell about 90 feet, knocking the hunter out instantly and causing head and facial injuries. When Meilhammer came to, he was coherent but “hazy,” according to the Maryland Natural Resources Police.

Natural Resources police officers and EMS responders transported Meilhammer via ambulance to the Easton Airport, where he was airlifted to the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.

Talbot County EMS responders called his head injury “severe.” The dead bird also knocked out two of Meilhammer’s teeth.

HOMEWARD BOUND

Statement From Paul Simon

I’ve often wondered what it would feel like to reach the point where I’d consider bringing my performing career to a natural end. Now I know: it feels a little unsettling, a touch exhilarating, and something of a relief.

I love making music, my voice is still strong, and my band is a tight, extraordinary group of gifted musicians. I think about music constantly. Sadly, we lost our lead guitarist and my friend of 30 years, Vincent N’guini, who died last December. His loss is not the only reason I’ve decided to stop touring, but it is a contributing factor. Mostly, though, I feel the travel and time away from my wife and family takes a toll that detracts from the joy of playing. I’d like to leave with a big Thank You to the many folks around the world who’ve come out to watch me play over the last 50 years.

After this coming tour, I anticipate doing the occasional performance in a (hopefully) acoustically pristine hall, and to donate those earnings to various philanthropic organizations, particularly those whose objective is to save the planet, ecologically.

Once again, I am very grateful for a fulfilling career and, of course, most of all to the audiences who heard something in my music that touched their hearts.

— Paul Simon

A FUNNY ASH WEDNESDAY

This year, Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season, is on February 14. This puts it oddly in conjunction with Valentine’s Day.

Oh, and one other day of love and celebration, known by the greatest 5 words in English language…

First pitchers and catchers workout.

Spring training returns, and we are saved.

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (3)

On Fridays, we’re doing a series on Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. In this book, he examines how “the story of Adam and Eve has over centuries decisively shaped conceptions of human origins and human destiny.”

In chapter 4, Greenblatt writes about a first century Jewish midrash on the early chapters of Genesis, “The Life of Adam and Eve.” This work focuses upon the problems Adam and Eve encountered after their expulsion from Eden.

Probably originating in a Jewish milieu and composed in a Semitic language, this account of the first humans quickly migrated to early Christian communities and appeared in an array of other languages, from Latin to Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic. It continued to be read for centuries. (p. 67)

The popularity of this work, along with a “massive body of commentary, both rabbinic and patristic,” show an increasing interest in questions about what happened to Adam and Eve beyond the few details recorded in Genesis.

This period, in the early centuries CE, was a time when people of faith of many varieties speculated on many aspects of this story. Some communities even blamed God and celebrated the serpent. In The Life of Adam and Eve, the first humans came to understand their kinship with the animals because, after being exiled from the garden, they found they had to forage for food like them. It explains the devil’s deception as a reaction to having been cast from heaven because he refused to bow down before the humans as superior beings. The work tells of Adam and Eve being separated because of marital conflict but reunited when Cain was born. Works like these “wanted what in the theater is called a backstory, a hidden history that would make sense of behavior that in the Bible’s terse narrative seemed to come from nowhere” (p. 70).

Some focused on certain theological questions in the early chapters of Genesis. When God said, “Let us make humankind in our own image,” what did the plural “us” indicate? Some created other elaborate backstories of angelic rebellion behind Satan’s temptation of the first couple. There are stories about Adam and Eve’s deaths and other conflicts between them. Eve is even credited with the idea of writing so as to transmit their story to future generations.

Some, like Marcion, ultimately concluded that the God depicted first in Genesis and then throughout the Hebrew Bible was an evil creator. His views were deemed heretical and other Christian interpreters developed typological interpretations that read the first Adam’s story in the light of Jesus, the last Adam, who was the firstborn of a new creation.

Still, others found the details of the story difficult to swallow and, taking their cues from the Jewish philosopher Philo and later from Origen read the story allegorically. This was a much more culturally acceptable way of reading the texts, akin to the way Hesiod and Plato were understood.

But though allegory seemed to some like the perfect solution to the discomfort and risk of literal readings, soon after Origen’s death treating the story of Adam and Eve as an allegory came under sustained and devastating attack. Contemporary surveys indicate that many millions of people even now, in the wake of so much scientific evidence, still profess to believe int he story of Adam and Eve not allegorically but literally. The reason for this literal belief has little or nothing to do with ignorance. It has everything to do with the history of Christianity, a Christianity stamped by a still more durable philosopher than Origen the Unbreakable: Augustine of Hippo. (p. 79f)

Next time, we’ll look at Augustine and his legacy.