By the Tomb of Lazarus, a devotional thought
In John 11:35 we see Jesus’ response to the death of Lazarus, one of his closest friends. It is pictured for us vividly in what is famously called “the shortest verse in the Bible”: Jesus wept. (Though technically this is only true in the English Bible. In the original languages, the shortest verse is Job 3:2, “And Job said.”)
What struck me, though, is that Jesus is not weeping tears of grief here. Or, if he is (he may be) he is also quite agitated. In verse 33 and again in verse 38 it says that Jesus “groaned in his spirit.” The original word there is embrimaomai, which comes from the root word brimaomai and suggests a sigh or groan of indignation or anger. Jesus is not only weeping, he is groaning with, of all things, frustration. Which sort of leaves us scratching our heads. I understand the tears, Jesus, but what is there to be angry about?
The text suggests the cause, but it doesn’t help: when he saw Mary weeping and the mourners weeping with her, it says, that’s when he embrimaomai-ed.
I am not sure why the sight of their grief over Lazarus would elicit this response in our Lord ... unless... maybe he’s not indignant at them for weeping, rather he is angry at death itself for bringing them to such a moment as this. Maybe it’s this glimpse of the harm that death causes, in the sight of these his friends mourning their lost brother, that touches him so deeply. Maybe he is "groaning" over the indignity, the tragedy, the ugliness of death itself.
If so, it would underscore something that the New Testament consistently claims everywhere else: that death is not the way things should be, that it is an enemy of what is good and right in God’s creation, and that God intends in the end to defeat it in Christ.
The Thursday Review: Apart from the Father?
I know this because that’s what brought its panicked flight to a thudding stop. The vehicle was clipping along at about 40 clicks—not fast, mind you, but fast enough that the bird bumped up, arced over the hood and landed, lifeless, in the gutter.
The timing of the whole event was so precise as to seem inexorable.
I felt sad; I wished I’d reined in the dog; and this morning I’m thinking of Matthew 10:29.
Because according to our Lord’s teaching, what happened last night should have had the effect of emboldening me in my Christian life. Here’s how he says it: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. ... So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
And then for hope’s-sake, he assures me: nor will I be, at the moment of my death when my turn comes. And in that knowledge I do find a beautiful seed of confidence.
Where is Thy Sting?
If you’re a regular reader of terra incongita, you’ll know that over the last few months on this blog, we’ve been spending some time exploring the nature of the church. The theological way of describing what we’ve been up to is to say “we’ve been doing some ecclesiology,” and man have we covered some wide-ranging ground. This is a popular-level pastor’s blog, of course, not a theology textbook, so I’ve taken some liberty to think well outside the box as we’ve explored the theological nature of this strange organism called “the church.” We’ve imagined the church as a comet, the church as a game of Calvinball, the church as an angel, and the church as a comedy sketch. Before we close the book on this series, however, there is one more angle I’d like to come at it from, because there is an important function that church once had in culture that we are increasingly neglecting, to the point, I worry, of being in dereliction of duty.
The church is also, or at least, was meant to be, a memento mori. Memento Mori is Latin for “reminder of death,” and in medieval times, the memento mori was an object, maybe a skull or an urn, or more likely a painting of a skull or an urn, kept in a prominent place, that reminded the owner, whenever he saw it, that he was in fact, mortal and that he would, in fact, die.
The idea behind the memento mori, is that there can be something profoundly cathartic in remembering one’s mortality and, more importantly, it can inspire us to live our lives well, today, knowing that we may not have the chance to do so tomorrow.
I sound morbid. I know.
But that’s part of the problem I’m trying to put my finger on. Our culture generally is a death-denying culture. We want our meat not to bear too close a resemblance to the dead animal it is. We want our cemeteries to look like city parks, and be euphemistically stylized as “memorial gardens.” We want funerals called “celebrations of life,” lest anyone be forced to dwell too literally on the plain fact of death. And, by and large, the church has capitulated to the death-denying pressures of the world around us. We’ve cleaned up our hymns, we’ve moved the cemeteries off our grounds, we’ve out-sourced the funerals to “funeral homes” and we’ve found all sorts of spiritual-sounding ways of talking around the subject.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. Time was you walked past the graves of the dearly departed on your way into church. Time was confessing “the communion of saints” with the creed included a very solid belief that one day we would join them. Time was hymns were replete with references, sometimes quite taunting references, to death. Time was the church was quite clear on its duty to help folks experience a “glorious death” (and we understood that for death to be, in fact, glorious, it must first be remembered, and confronted as a plain fact of life.)
I sound like an old fuddy duddy. I know.
But it’s only because I think there is something neurotic, or at least potentially neurotic, in our culture’s squeamishness about death, and I wonder if the spiritual ennui, the consumeristic vacuity, the manic hunt for the next thrill that seems so wide-spread in our culture isn’t somehow connected to our inability to come to terms with our own mortality.
If I’m on to something here, perhaps, as we continue thinking outside the box about the church, perhaps one of the ways to address the spiritual ennui, the consumeristic vacuity of contemporary North American culture is by regaining the church’s role as a memento mori.
I’m thinking John Keating here, not Eeyore, but I’m also thinking about the fact that only the man who is ready to die can truly live, and that the gospel, rightly understood, doesn’t deny the fact of death but wrestles with it, wrestles it to the ground, and brings it into submissive service to the Lord who conquered it in the cross.
Put differently, it is impossible to taunt death with the ringing victory cry of the Christian—death where is thy sting?—without also, at the same time, looking it dead in the eye and acknowledging that it's there.
A Tale of Two Kings: A Devotional Thought
In 1 Kings 22:41-53, the Bible presents us with the death of two kings, the King of Judah and the King of Israel, juxtaposed against each other in a thought-provoking way. It describes the death of King Ahab of Israel first, who died in battle when a stray arrow pierced a seam of his armour, and then the death of King Jehoshaphat of Judah, who died at the ripe old age of 60. But by worldly standards, Ahab appears to have been the more successful king-- wealthier, more accomplished, and more powerful. Notice the palace of ivory and the huge cities mentioned in v. 39. And yet for all his wealth and influence, what 1 Kings emphasizes about his reign is that he set a new standard for doing evil in the sight of the Lord (his son, for instance, "walked in all his ways," worshipping idols and inciting the Lord to anger).
Jehoshaphat, on the other hand, was less wealthy and influential than his regal cousin to the north. He didn't build any cities or ivory palaces. At least 1 Kings doesn't mention any. But what 1 Kings does mention is the fact that he walked in the way of the Lord, never turning from it and doing right in God's eyes. God, it turns out, measures our lives by a much different rubric than the world does. He doesn't count the degrees on the wall or the number of rooms in the "ivory palace" or the numbers in the retirement fund; he measures success according to one simple standard: "Did you do right in my eyes?"
Not to sound morbid, but it leaves me thinking about the end of my own life, and how I want to go. Will I be a success in the eyes of the world but a failure in the eyes of the Lord, or a success in the eyes of the Lord, come what may?
The Halloween Files (Part V): Zombie Apocalypses, Then and Now
<< back - next >>
The video for Michael Jackson's Thriller came out when I was in Grade 4. I know this with certainty because I can remember quite clearly my Grade 4 Halloween party at school. As part of the festivities, our Grade 4 teacher thought it would be a fun idea to watch this new music video that was all the rage, by a rising star named Michael Jackson.
For those who forget (or never saw) the thrilling Zombie-dance, you can check it out here. Thirty years later, Thriller still has that magical something-or-other about it, despite the light years of sophistication that now stand between film-making-special-effects then and now. Michael Jackson's necromantic choreography may seem somewhat campy today, but I confess here that I came home from that Grade 4 Halloween party absolutely terrified. I lay awake that night, fully expecting an undead horde to burst through the floor of my bedroom as per the zombies that swarm Ola Ray at the 11 min. 11 sec. mark of the video.
I survived that night, of course, but in the continued spirit of confession, let me say that to this day, Michael Jackson's yellow werewolf eyes still send a thrill of terror through my chest.
But here's the thought I'm mulling over today, as I practice thinking theologically about Halloween this month and all. Released in 1983, Thriller opens with the following disclaimer from Michael Jackson himself (who was a practicing Jehovah's Witness at the time): Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.
Three decades later, I find this disclaimer very telling.
Because zombies are experiencing a bit of a renaissance these days, from what I understand. Witness, for instance, the success of The Walking Dead TV show, or the increasing popularity of "zombie walks," or the recent film Contagion, which some reviewers have called "the most believable zombie movie ever made." But what's curious about this resurgence of interest in the living dead is that, back in 1983 our collective imagination associated zombies with the occult, whereas now-a-days we associate them more with the fallout of some technological catastrophe or global pandemic. (This is, at least, how serious academic research on the prospects of a real Zombie apocalypse tackles the issue.)
The original zombie numbered among the "undead"; i.e. it was a re-animated corpse, raised up by some dark art or other: voodoo or necromancy or magic. The modern zombie numbers among the "walking dead," that is, a still-animated corpse, contagious with death because of some biological disaster or other, be it nuclear, bacterial or genetic.
And herein lies the terror of the modern zombie. Unlike vampires and werewolves, they are still conceivable to us, even in our scientifically scoured and technologically dis-enchanted world. In this regard, the shift in the zombie archetype-- from occult horror to biohazard-- reveals something theologically significant about the modern world. To the extent that the monsters we imagine are really just a projection of our deepest cultural fears, it's certainly suggestive that today's zombie is no longer a demonic horror but a monster of our own making. In a rationalistic world that has (for all intents and purposes) disavowed the reality of all things spiritual (good or evil), an occult terror like necromancy has lost its potency. But the possibility that the technological wonders we depend on so deeply may actually erupt into an apocalyptic horror that reduces civilization as we know it to a staggering corpse--that's a thought to keep grown men awake at night.
So what does the mythos of the modern zombie teach us? In short: once we feared the devil; today we fear ourselves.
The Halloween Files (Part II): The Modern Living Room and the Age-Old Denial of Death
<< back - next >>
Time was the modern-day "living room" was called the "parlour." The word derives from the French word parler (to speak) and pointed to the fact that once upon a time this room was reserved for entertaining on only the most formal of occasions. Here we kept the most valuable of our furnishings and the most ornate of our domestic status symbols, in a kind of sacred space within the home that was set aside for momentous events and special visitations.
Like births, and wedding receptions, and funerals.
Yes, funerals. The word "parlour," and the memory that once we hosted funerals in the living-room, actually lives on in our modern euphemism for the local mortuary. These days funerals happen in "funeral parlors," but time was the funeral--at least the open casket and the viewing and the reception parts of the funeral--time was this happened in our own parlors.
The “funeral home” used to be our own home.
Because once upon a time dealing with death was an integral part of life, and by necessity we made space for it in our day-to-day. Like Psychologist Richard Beck puts it, "We used to live with the dead. We were born in our homes and we died in our homes. The wake was in the home, and our dead bodies were viewed in the parlor of the home."
Of course, we don't call the parlour a parlour anymore, anymore than we use it for wakes and funerals. Today professionals deal with death for us, in professionalized space out of sight and out of mind, and, what with all that valuable real-estate taking up space in the home, we've reclaimed the room that once served this purpose. Today it's called "the living room" (perhaps aptly), and the memory that it was once used for dying, too, is all but gone.
This isn't the only way we deny death in our world.
We used to worship alongside the dead, for instance. The churchyard was a cemetery, and once a week you had to walk by that sombre memento mori on your way to meet with the Lord of Life. Time was.
Richard Beck points out how now a-days, cemeteries are kept on the metropolitan outskirts, not at the centre of public life, and since no one wants to drive past a field full of morbid-looking tombstones, we've replaced all those solemn monuments with ground-level grave-markers so the fact that it is a cemetery can be kept strictly on a need-to-know basis. A modern cemetery looks more like a serene city park than real graveyard.
I think there is something almost pathological in our modern world’s efforts to push death to the edges of our awareness and to professionalize and de-sacralise our encounters with it. In general, I would argue that making peace with the reality of death is a vital step towards spiritual maturity, and that the denial of death leads to spiritual emptiness. This is part of what Thoreau was getting at, I think, when he said that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Quiet desperation hums almost audibly in the heart that refuses even to look at death.
But there’s more: because as a follower of the Risen Jesus, I believe both that death has been drained of its despair, but also that the inevitable fact of death can, and should, and does point us to our Maker and the offer of life he makes us in Jesus Christ (so death, defeated, is made to pay tribute to its Conqueror, Jesus Christ). But in a world that refuses even to look at death, the news of its defeat will fall on deaf ears.
Which brings me at last to the point of today’s post. Because in 22 days our culture will celebrate a community-wide ceremony that asks us all to take a good hard look at death, if only for one night of the year. Or at least it used to ask us to. It came knocking on your door asking for a treat, of all things. And even today, the vestiges of that ceremony—plastic tombstones and rubber skeletons and all—are still hung up on display, a Made in China memento mori, but a memento mori nonetheless.
And it seems to me, thinking about Halloween theologically this month, and all, that there’s something going on here that the Gospel can, and should lay hold of. Because the truth is, in Jesus Christ we need neither deny death nor to despair in it. And as the quiet desperation of a death-denying culture is given voice, (mask-muffled voice, to be sure, but voice nonetheless) on this one "All’s Hallowed" night of the year—whatever else is going on October 31—we're being given the opportunity to remember and proclaim the sure saying that we live by: “Death has been swallowed up in Victory.”
Thanks be to God, who gives us victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Colors of Martyrdom
There's an old sermon from 7th Century Ireland called the Cambrai Homily. It lays out an elaborate theology of Christian Martyrdom using Matthew 16:24 as a starting point ("Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me'). The Cambrai Homily famously categorizes martyrdom according to three colours: red, white and green (though the actual hue of the third color is disputed; in Irish it's glas).
"Red martyrs" are perhaps the most obvious. They faced violent persecution, torture or death for the sake of Christ. Red martyrs bled for Jesus.
Such martyrdoms, of course, were both common and precious in the earliest days of the church (witness the horrors described so vividly in the Book of Revelation), but as Christianity became increasingly mainstream in the Roman Empire, bona fide martyrdoms got less and less easy to obtain. On at least one occasion, a group of Christians actually turned themselves in to the Roman authorities, asking to be executed for Christ's sake (and creating no small amount of bewilderment for the Roman governor, who, if not sympathetic towards Christians, was at least indifferent, and certainly not hostile).
So the church needed new ways for the faithful to express their death-defying commitment to Christ. This they found in the concept of a "white martyrdom." A white martyr did not shed literal blood for Jesus, but expressed his or her witness through some life-long vow of asceticism or other--a bloodless "death to the world" that might include things like: vows of chastity, monastic oaths, mendicancy, or becoming a hermit. These are "white deaths" in lieu of the red.
Now this was old news by the 7th Century, but what the Cambrai Homily adds is the third color: a "green" (glas) martyrdom. Green Martyrdom was about self-mortification and denying desire. Fasting was a predominant form of "green martyrdom." So were penitential acts like praying in the frigid Atlantic or spending the night immersed in water (this seems to be a common one). A Green Martyr died to the immediate needs of the flesh, in order to turn the heart to God instead.
I've been thinking about the Cambrai's color scheme for martyrdom ever since I preached this sermon on the Martyrdom of Stephen, back in August. You see: I live in a world where desire is often seen as the driving mechanism of life: consumer desire drives our economy, emotional desire drives our entertainment industry, and, according one author at least, sexual desire drives the Internet (see Patchen Barss's book, The Erotic Engine).
The point is: in a world where life is so closely associated with fulfilled desire, self-denial really does have the odor of death about it. So I'm wondering today how radical a witness for Jesus we might have if we updated the tradition of the Green Martyr.
What if we consciously saw denying those desires that no one in our culture thinks you can live without, as a stand-in for the honor of dying for Christ?
Apart from the Father?
I know this because that’s what brought its panicked flight to a thudding stop. The vehicle was clipping along at about 40 clicks—not fast, mind you, but fast enough that the bird bumped up, arced over the hood and landed, lifeless, in the gutter.
The timing of the whole event was so precise as to seem inexorable.
I felt sad; I wished I’d reined in the dog; and this morning I’m thinking of Matthew 10:29.
Because according to our Lord’s teaching, what happened last night should have had the effect of emboldening me in my Christian life. Here’s how he says it: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. ... So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
And then for hope’s-sake, he assures me: nor will I be, at the moment of my death when my turn comes. And in that knowledge I do find a beautiful seed of confidence.
Helprin on Preparedness and Guidance
It might just be the fact that I was reading it at 1:30 in the morning yesterday, but this exchange from Mark Helprin's very excellent novel, A Soldier of the Great War hit me deeply. To set the scene: Alessandro (who studied aesthetics prior to the outbreak of World War I) is a soldier of the Italian army condemned to be executed for deserting his post (his commander had been murdered and he knew he would be framed and condemned for this crime anyways); Ludovico is his Marxist cellmate.
Ludovico ... was informed that he would be tried on Thursday with fourteen others of his brigade. The judicial apparatus was now working without pause: thousands of new prisoners were headed for Stella Maris, and the cells had to be cleared.
Ludovico now began what appeared to be a series of desperate calculations. It was as if he felt that in a clarified understanding of the workings of economics he could make himself comfortable with the notion of eternity-but due to the minimal relation of economics and eternity, he was forced to calculate faster and faster, and to no avail.
"Marxism won't carry you into the next world," Alessandro said. And then he asked, "How can you reserve your most sacred beliefs for a descriptive system, and one that is imperfect at that? I can't imagine myself believing in trigonometry or accounting, and yet you guide your soul according to a theory of economics."
"It won't fail me as surely as your system will fail you."
"I don't have a system."
"Theology is a system."
"Not my theology."
"Then what is it?"
"What is it? It is the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refuses to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate creature as a man. Unlike Marxism, it is ineffable, and it cannot be explained in words."
I've not finished the novel, but I can say that Alessandro slept soundly that night, and walked unflinchingly to face the firing squad the next morning.